Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1) (2 page)

Mackenzie felt a knot in her stomach as
she looked out of the car and saw the news vans piled up, reporters jockeying
for the best position to assault her and Porter as they pulled up to the
precinct. As Porter parked, she watched several news anchors approach, running
across the precinct lawn with burdened cameramen keeping pace behind them.

Mackenzie saw Nelson already at the
front doors, doing what he could to pacify them, looking uncomfortable and
agitated. Even from here she could see the sweat glistening on his forehead.

As they got out, Porter ambled up beside
her, making sure she was not the first detective the media saw. As he passed
her, he said, “Don’t you tell these vampires anything.”

She felt a rush of indignation at his
condescending comment.

“I know, Porter.”

The throng of reporters and cameras
reached them. There were at least a dozen mics sticking out of the crowd and
into their faces as they made their way past. The questions came at them like
the buzzing of insects.

“Have the victim’s children been
notified yet?”

“What was the farmer’s reaction when he
found the body?”

“Is this a case of sexual abuse?”

“Is it wise for a woman to be assigned
to such a case?”

That last one stung Mackenzie a bit.
Sure, she knew they were simply trying to land a response, hoping for a juicy
twenty-second spot for the afternoon newscast. It was only four o’clock; if
they acted quickly, they might have a nugget for the six o’clock news.

As she made her way through the doors
and inside, that last question echoed like thunder in her head.

Is it wise for a woman to be assigned to
such a case?

She recalled how emotionlessly Nelson
had read off Hailey Lizbrook’s information.

Of course it is,
Mackenzie
thought.
In fact, it’s crucial.

Finally they entered the precinct and
the doors slammed behind them. Mackenzie breathed with relief to be in the
quiet.

“Fucking leeches,” Porter said.

He’d dropped the swagger from his step
now that he was no longer in front of the cameras. He walked slowly past the
receptionist’s desk and toward the hallway that led to the conference rooms and
offices that made up their precinct. He looked tired, ready to go home, ready
to be done with this case already.

Mackenzie entered the conference room
first. There were several officers sitting at a large table, some in uniform
and some in their street clothes. Given their presence and the sudden
appearance of the news vans, Mackenzie guessed that the story had leaked in all
sorts of directions in the two and a half hours between leaving her office,
heading to the cornfield, and getting back. It was more than a random grisly
murder; now, it had become a spectacle.

Mackenzie grabbed a cup of coffee and
took a seat at the table. Someone had already set folders around the table with
the little bit of information that had already been gathered about the case. As
she looked through it, more people started filing into the room. Porter
eventually entered, taking a seat at the opposite end.

Mackenzie took a moment to check her
phone and found that she had eight missed calls, five voice messages, and a
dozen e-mails. It was a stark reminder that she’d already had a full caseload
before being sent out to the cornfield this morning. The sad irony was that
while her older peers spent a lot of time demeaning her and throwing subtle
insults her way, they also realized her talents. As a result, she kept one of
the larger caseloads on the force. To date, though, she had never fallen behind
and had a stellar rate of closed cases.

She thought about answering some of the
e-mails while she waited, but Chief Nelson came in before she could get the
chance. He quickly closed the conference room door behind him.

“I don’t know how the media found out
about this so quickly,” he growled, “but if I find out that someone in this
room is responsible, there’s going to be hell to pay.”

The room fell quiet. A few officers and
related staff started to look nervously at the contents of the folders in front
of them. While Mackenzie didn’t care much for Nelson, there was no denying that
the man’s presence and voice commanded a room without much effort.

“Here’s where we stand,” Nelson said.
“The victim is Hailey Lizbrook, a stripper from Omaha. Thirty-four years old,
two boys, ages nine and fifteen. From what we can gather, she was abducted
before clocking in for work, as her employer says she never showed up the night
before. Security footage from the Runway, her place of employment, shows
nothing. So we’re working on the assumption that she was taken somewhere
between her apartment and the Runway. That’s an area of seven and a half
miles—an area that we currently have a few bodies investigating with the Omaha
PD right now.”

He then looked to Porter as if he were a
prized pupil and said:

“Porter, why don’t you describe the
scene?”

Of course he’d choose Porter.

Porter stood up and looked around the
room as if to make sure everyone was paying close attention.

“The victim was bound to a wooden pole
with her hands tied behind her. The sight of her death was in a clearing in a
cornfield, a little less than a mile off the highway. Her back was covered in
what appeared to be lash marks, placed there by some sort of a whip. We noted
prints in the dirt that were the same shape and size of the lashes. While we
won’t know for absolutely certain until after the coroner’s report, we are
fairly certain this was not a sexual attack, even though the victim had been
stripped to her underwear and her clothes were nowhere to be found.”

“Thanks, Porter,” Nelson said. “Speaking
of the coroner, I spoke with him on the phone about twenty minutes ago. He says
that while he won’t know for sure until an autopsy is conducted, the cause of
death is likely going to be blood loss or some sort trauma—likely to the head
or heart.”

His eyes then went to Mackenzie and
there was very little interest in them when he asked: “Anything to add, White?”

“The numbers,” she said.

Nelson rolled his eyes in front of the
entire room. It was a clear sign of disrespect but she trudged past it,
determined to get it out to everyone present before she could be cut off.

“I discovered what appeared to be two
numbers, separated by a slash, carved into the bottom of the pole.”

“What were the numbers?” one of the
younger officers at the table asked.

“Numbers and letters actually,” Mackenzie
said. “N 511 and J 202. I have a picture on my phone.”

“Other pictures will be here shortly,
just as soon as Nancy gets them printed out,” Nelson said. He spoke quickly and
forcefully, letting the room know that the issue of these numbers was now
closed.

Mackenzie listened to Nelson as he
droned on about the tasks that needed to be carried out to cover the
seven-and-a-half-mile area between Hailey Lizbrook’s home and the Runway. But
she was only half-listening, really. Her mind kept going back to the way the
woman’s body had been strung up. Something about the entire display of the body
had seemed almost familiar to her right away, and it still stuck with her as
she sat in the conference room.

She went through the brief notes in the
folder, hoping some small detail might trigger something in her memory. She
leafed through the four pages of information, hoping to uncover something. She
already knew everything in the folder, but she scanned the details anyway.

Thirty-four-year-old female, presumed
killed the previous night. Lashes, cuts, various abrasions on her back, tied to
an old wooden post. Cause of death assumed to be blood loss or possible trauma
to the heart. Method of binding suggests possible religious overtones while
woman’s body type hints at sexual motivations.

As she read through it, something
clicked. She zoned out a bit, allowing her mind to go where it needed without
interference from her surroundings.

As she put the dots together, coming up
with a connection she
hoped
she was wrong about, Nelson started to wind
down.

“…and since it’s too late for roadblocks
to be effective, we’re going to have to rely mostly on witness testimony, even
down to the most minute and seemingly useless detail. Now, does anyone have
anything else to add?”

“One thing, sir,” Mackenzie said.

She could tell that Nelson was
containing a sigh. From the other end of the table, she heard Porter make a
soft sort of chuckling noise. She ignored it all and waited to see how Nelson
would address her.

“Yes, White?” he asked.

“I’m recalling a case in 1987 that was
similar to this. I’m pretty sure it was right outside of Roseland. The binding
was the same, the type of woman was the same. I’m fairly certain the method of
beating was the same.”

“1987?” Nelson asked. “White, were you
even born yet?”

This was met with soft laughter from
more than half of the room. Mackenzie let it slide right off. She’d find the
time to be embarrassed later.

“I was not,” she said, not afraid to
tangle with him. “But I
did
read the report.”

“You forget, sir,” Porter said. “Mackenzie
spends her free time reading cold case files. The girl is like a walking
encyclopedia for this stuff.”

Mackenzie noticed at once that Porter
had referred to her by her first name
and
called her a girl rather than
a woman. The sad thing was that she didn’t think he was even aware of the
disrespect.

Nelson rubbed at his head and finally
let out the thunderous sigh that had been building up. “1987? You’re sure?”

“Almost positive.”

“Roseland?”

“Or the immediate surrounding area,” she
said.

“Okay,” Nelson said, looking to the far
end of the table where a middle-aged woman sat, listening diligently. There was
a laptop in front of her, which she had been quietly typing on the whole time.
“Nancy, can you run a search for that in the database?”

“Yes sir,” she said. She started typing
something into the precinct’s internal server right away.

Nelson cast Mackenzie another
disapproving look that essentially translated to:
You better be right. If
not, you just wasted twenty seconds of my valuable time.

“All right, boys and ladies,” Nelson
said. “Here’s how we’re going to break this out. The moment this meeting ends,
I want Smith and Berryhill heading out to Omaha to help the local PD out there.
From there, if needed, we’ll rotate out in pairs. Porter and White, want you
two to speak with the kids of the deceased and her employer. We’re also working
on getting the address of her sister.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Nancy said, looking up
from her computer.

“Yes, Nancy?”

“It seems Detective White was right.
October of 1987, a prostitute was found dead and bound to a wooden line pole
just outside of the Roseland city limits. The file I’m looking at says she was
stripped to her underwear and flogged severely. No signs of sexual abuse and no
motive to speak of.”

The room went quiet again as many
damning questions went unspoken. Finally, it was Porter that spoke up and
although Mackenzie could tell he was trying to dismiss the case, she could hear
a hint of worry in his voice.

“That’s almost thirty years ago,” he
said. “I’d call that a flimsy connection.”

“But it’s a connection nonetheless,” Mackenzie
said.

Nelson slammed a hefty hand down on the
desk, his eyes burning into Mackenzie. “If there
is
a connection here,
you know what it means, right?”

“It means we may be dealing with a
serial killer,” she said. “And even the
idea
that we may be dealing with
a serial killer means we need to consider calling in the FBI.”

“Ah, hell,” Nelson said. “You’re jumping
the gun there. You’re jumping an entire arsenal, in fact.”

“With all due respect,” Mackenzie said,
“it’s worth looking into.”

“And now that your hardwired brain has
brought it to our attention, we
have
to,” Nelson said. “I’ll make some
calls and get you involved in checking it out. For now, let’s get cracking on
things that are relevant and timely. That’s it for now, everyone. Now get to
work.”

The small group at the conference table
started to disperse, taking their folders with them. As Mackenzie started out
of the room, Nancy gave her a small smile of acknowledgment. It was the most
encouragement Mackenzie had gotten at work in more than two weeks. Nancy was
the receptionist and sometimes fact-checker around the precinct. As far as Mackenzie
knew, she was one of the few older members on the force who had no real problem
with her.

“Porter and White, hold on,” Nelson
said.

She saw that Nelson was now showing some
of the same worry she had seen and heard in Porter when he spoke up moments ago.
He looked almost sick with it.