Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1) (5 page)

“Yeah,” she said, taking out her phone.
As she pulled up Nelson’s number, she couldn’t deny the slow satisfaction that
was building inside of her. A restraining order placed a year ago and now
Hailey Lizbrook was dead.

We got the bastard,
she thought.

But at the same time, she also couldn’t
help but wonder if wrapping this thing up would really be this easy.

Mackenzie finally arrived home at 10:45,
exhausted. The day had been long and draining but she knew that she would not
be able to sleep for quite a while. Her mind was too focused on the lead that
Kevin Lizbrook had supplied. She’d called the information in to Nelson and he
assured her that he’d have someone call the strip club and whatever law firm
Hailey Lizbrook had been working with to get her restraining order.

With her mind firing off in hundreds of
directions, Mackenzie put on some music, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator,
and ran herself a bath. She was typically not fond of baths, but tonight every
muscle in her body was wound entirely too tight. As the tub filled with water,
she walked through the house and tidied up from where Zack had apparently
waited until the last minute to go to work again.

She and Zack had moved in together a
little over a year ago, trying to take every possible step they could in their
relationship that might prevent marriage for as long as possible. Mackenzie
felt that she was ready to get married, but Zack seemed terrified of it. They’d
been together for three years now and while the first two of those years had
been great, the latter part of their relationship had been based on monotony
and Zack’s fear of being alone and getting married. If he could stay somewhere
in between those, with Mackenzie as his buffer, he’d be happy.

Yet as she picked up two dirty plates
from the coffee table and stepped over an Xbox disc on the floor, Mackenzie
wondered if maybe she was done being a buffer. More than that, she wasn’t even
sure she’d marry Zack if he asked her tomorrow. She knew him too well; she had
seen a picture of what being married to him would be like and, quite frankly,
it wasn’t too promising.

She was stuck in a dead-end
relationship, with a partner who didn’t appreciate her. In the same way, she
realized, she was stuck in a job with colleagues who didn’t appreciate her. Her
entire life felt stuck. She knew changes needed to be made, but they felt too
daunting to her. And given her level of exhaustion, she just didn’t have the energy.

Mackenzie retired to the bathroom and
cut off the water. Waves of steam rolled from the top of the water, as though
inviting her in. She undressed, looking at herself in the mirror and becoming
even more aware that she had wasted eight years of her life with a man who had
no real desire to commit his life to her. She felt that she was attractive in a
simple sort of way. Her face was pretty (maybe a bit more so when she wore her
hair in a ponytail) and she had a solid figure, if a bit thin and muscular. Her
stomach was flat and hard—so much so that Zack sometimes joked that her abs
were a bit intimidating.

She slipped into the tub, the beer
resting on the small towel table beside her. She let out a deep exhale and let
the hot water do its work. She closed her eyes and relaxed as best as she
could, but the image of Kevin Lizbrook’s eyes returned to her on a constant
loop. The amount of sadness in them had been almost unbearable, speaking of a
pain that Mackenzie herself had once known but had managed to push far back
into her heart.

 She closed her eyes and dozed, the
image haunting her the entire time. She felt a palpable presence, as if Hailey
Lizbrook were in the room with her now, urging her to solve her murder.

*

Zack came home an hour later, fresh off
a twelve-hour shift at a local textile plant. Every time Mackenzie smelled the
scents of dirt, sweat, and grease on him, it reminded her of how little
ambition Zack had. Mackenzie had no issue with the job in and of itself; it was
a respectable job made for men that were built for hard work and dedication.
But Zack had a bachelor’s degree that he had intended to use to land a spot in
a master’s program to become a teacher. That plan had ended five years ago and
he had been stuck in the role of shift manager at the textile plant ever since.

Mackenzie was on her second beer by the
time he came in, sitting in bed and reading a book. She figured she’d try to
fall asleep around three or so, getting a solid five hours before heading in to
work at nine the next morning. She’d never cared much for sleep and had
discovered that on nights she got more than six hours, she found herself
lethargic and out of sorts the next day.

Zack came into the room in his dingy
work clothes. He kicked his shoes off by the side of the bed as he looked her
over. She was wearing a tank top and a pair of high-riding bicycle shorts.

“Hey, babe,” he said, his eyes taking
her all in. “So, this is nice to come home to.”

“How was your day?” she asked, barely
looking up from her book.

“It was okay,” he said. “Then I came
home and saw you like
this
and it got a lot better.” With that, he
crawled onto the bed and directly toward her. His hand went to the side of her
face as he angled in for a kiss.

She dropped her book and pulled away at
once. “Zack, have you lost your mind?” she asked.

“What?” he said, clearly confused.

“You’re absolutely filthy. And not only
have I taken a bath, but you’re getting dirt and grease and God only knows what
else on the sheets.”

“Ah, God,” Zack said, annoyed. He rolled
off of the bed, purposefully covering as much of the sheets as he could. “Why
are you such a tight-ass?”

“I’m not a tight-ass,” she said. “I just
prefer to not live in a pig sty. By the way, thanks for cleaning up after
yourself before you left for work.”

“Oh, it’s so nice to be home,” Zack
sneered, walking into the bathroom and shutting the door behind him.

Mackenzie sighed and chugged down the
rest of her beer. She then looked across the room where Zack’s dirty work boots
were still on the floor—where they would stay until he put them on tomorrow.
She also knew that when she got up in the morning and went into the bathroom to
get ready, she’d find his dirty clothes in a pile in the floor.

To hell with it,
she thought,
returning to her book. She read only a few pages while she listened to the
water from Zack’s shower in the bathroom. She then set the book aside and
walked back into the living room. She picked up her briefcase, carried it into
the bedroom, and pulled out the most up-to-date files on the Lizbrook murder
she had retrieved from the station before coming home. As much as she wanted to
rest, even for a few hours, it would not let her.

She looked through the files, digging
for any detail that they might have overlooked. When she was certain that everything
had been covered, she once again saw Kevin’s tear-filled eyes and it pushed her
to look again.

Mackenzie was so enamored with the files
that she didn’t notice Zack coming into the room. He smelled much better now
and, with only a towel around his waist, looked much better, too.

“Sorry about the sheets,” Zack said
almost absently as he dropped the towel and slid into a pair of boxers. “I’m…I
don’t know…I just can’t remember the last time you actually paid any attention
to me.”

“You mean sex?” she asked. Surprisingly,
she found that she was actually up for sex. It might be just what she needed to
finally unwind and get to sleep.

“Not just sex,” Zack said. “I mean
any
kind of attention. I get home and you’re either already asleep or looking
through casework.”

“Well, that’s
after
I’ve picked
up your crap from the day,” she said. “You live like a boy that’s waiting for
mommy to clean up after him. So yeah, sometimes I jump back into work to forget
about how frustrating you can be.”

“So it’s back to this again?” he asked.

“Back to what?”

“Back to you using work as a way to
ignore me.”

“I don’t use it as a way to ignore you,
Zack. Right now I’m more concerned with finding out who brutally killed a
mother of two boys than making sure you get the attention you need.”

“That right there,” Zack said, “is why
I’m in no hurry to get married. You’re already married to your work.”

There were about a thousand remarks she
could have spat back at him, but Mackenzie knew there was no point. She knew
that he was, in a way, right. Most every night, she found the caseloads she
brought home more interesting than Zack. She still loved him, without a doubt,
but there was nothing new to him—nothing challenging.

“Good night,” he said bitterly as he
crawled into bed.

She looked at his bare back and wondered
if it was, in some way, her responsibility to give him attention. Would that
make her a good girlfriend? Would that make her a better investment for a man
that was terrified of marriage?

With the idea of sex now a forgotten impulse,
Mackenzie simply shrugged and looked back to the case files.

If her personal life had to melt into
the background, then so be it. This life, the life inside the case, felt more
real to her anyway.

*

Mackenzie walked into her parents’
bedroom, and before she made it through the doorframe, she smelled something
that made her seven-year-old stomach buckle. It was a tangy sort of smell,
reminding her of the inside of her piggy bank—a smell like the copper of
pennies.

She stepped into the room and saw the
foot of the bed, a bed that her mother had not slept in for a year or so—a bed
that looked far too big for just her father.

She saw him there, legs dangling over
the side of the bed, arms splayed out as if he were trying to fly. There was
blood everywhere: on the bed, on the wall, even some on the ceiling. His head
was turned to the right, as if he were looking away from her.

She knew he was dead right away.

She stepped toward him, her bare feet
padding down in a splatter of blood, not wanting to get closer but needing to.

“Daddy,” she whispered, already crying.

She reached out, terrified, but drawn in
like a magnet.

Suddenly, he turned and stared at her,
still dead.

Mackenzie screamed.

Mackenzie opened her eyes and looked
around the room in a glare of confusion. The case files were in her lap, spread
out. Zack was sleeping beside her, his back still to her. She took a deep
breath, wiping the sweat from her brow. It was just a dream.

And then she heard the creak.

Mackenzie froze. She looked toward the bedroom
door and slowly got out of bed. She’d heard the weak floorboard in the living
room creaking, a sound that she had only ever heard when someone was walking in
the living room. Sure, she had been asleep and in the midst of a nightmare, but
she
had
heard it.

Hadn’t she?

She got out of bed and grabbed her
service pistol from the top of her dresser where it sat by her badge and small
purse. She quietly angled herself around the doorframe and walked out into the
hallway. The ambient glow of streetlights filtered in through the living room
blinds, revealing an empty room.

She stepped into the room, the gun held
in an offensive position. Every gut instinct told her that there was no one
there, but she still felt shaken. She
knew
she’d heard the floorboards creaking.
She walked to that area of the living room, just in front of the coffee table,
and heard it creak.

Out of nowhere, the image of Hailey
Lizbrook crossed her mind. She saw the lashes on the woman’s back and the
prints in the dirt. She shuddered. She looked dumbly down to the gun in her
hands and tried to remember the last time a case had ever gotten to her this
badly. What the hell had she been thinking? That the killer had been here in
her living room, sneaking up on her?

Irritated, Mackenzie headed back to the
bedroom. She quietly placed the gun back on top of the dresser and went to her
side of the bed.

Still feeling slightly spooked and with
the remnants of her dream still floating in her head, Mackenzie lay back down.
She closed her eyes and tried to find sleep again.

But she knew it would be a hard time
coming. She was plagued, she knew, by the living and the dead.

Mackenzie couldn’t remember a time when
the station had been so chaotic. The first thing she saw when she walked through
the front doors was Nancy rushing down the hallway to someone’s office. She’d
never
seen Nancy move so quickly. Beyond that, there were anxious looks on the
faces of every officer she passed on her way to the conference room.

It looked like it was going to be an
eventful morning. There was a tension in the air that reminded her of the
thickness of the atmosphere just before a bad summer storm.

She’d felt some of that tension herself,
even before she left her house. She’d gotten the first call at 7:30, informing
her that they would be moving on the lead within hours. Apparently, while she’d
been sleeping, the lead she had managed to pull out of Kevin had turned out to
be a very promising one. A warrant was being acquired and a plan was being put
into place. One thing had already been established, though: Nelson wanted her
and Porter to bring the suspect in.

The ten minutes she spent in the station
was a whirlwind. While she poured a cup of coffee, Nelson was barking orders at
everyone while Porter sat solemnly in a chair at the conference table. Porter
looked like a pouting child looking for any attention he could get. She knew it
must be eating at him that this lead had come from a boy that Mackenzie had
spoken with—a boy that he had been prepared to walk away from.

Mackenzie and Porter were given the
lead, and two other cars were assigned to fall in behind them to assist as
needed. It was the fourth time in her career that she had been tasked with such
a takedown, and the rush of adrenaline never got old. Despite the surge of
energy coursing through her, Mackenzie remained calm and collected. She walked
out of the conference room with poise and confidence, starting to get the
feeling that this was now
her
case, no matter how badly Porter wanted
it.

On her way out, Nelson approached her
and took her softly by the arm.

“White, let me talk to you for a second,
will you?”

He led her to the side, guiding her into
the copy room before she could answer. He looked around conspiratorially,
making sure no one was within hearing distance. When he was sure they were
safe, he looked at her in a way that made her wonder if she had done something
wrong.

“Look,” Nelson said, “Porter came to me
last night and asked to be reassigned. I flat out told him no. I also told him he’d
be stupid to drop out of this case right now. Do you know why he wanted to be
reassigned?”

“He thinks I stepped on his toes last
night,” Mackenzie said. “But it was clear that the kids weren’t responding to
him and he wasn’t going to try hard to get through to them.”

“Oh, you don’t have to explain it to
me,” Nelson said. “I think you did a damn good job with that oldest kid. The
kid even told some of the other guys that showed up—including the social
services guys—that he really liked you. I just wanted to let you know that
Porter is up in arms today. If he gives you any shit, let me know. But I don’t
think he will. While he’s not a big fan of yours, he all but told me that he
respects the hell out of you. But that stays between you and me. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Mackenzie said, surprised at
the sudden support and encouragement.

“All right then,” Nelson said, clapping
her lightly on the back. “Go get our guy.”

With that, Mackenzie headed out to the
parking lot where Porter was already sitting behind the wheel of their car. He
gave her a
what the hell is taking so long
sort of look as she went
hurrying to the car. The moment she was in, Porter pulled out of the parking
spot before Mackenzie had even closed the door all the way.

“I take it you got the full report on
our guy this morning?” Porter asked as he pulled out onto the highway. Two
other cars pulled out behind them, carrying Nelson and four other officers as
backup if needed.

“I did,” Mackenzie said. “Clive Traylor,
a forty-one-year-old registered sex offender. Spent six months in prison for
assault on a woman in 2006. He currently works at a local pharmacy but he also
does some woodwork out of a small shed on his property.”

“Ah, you must have missed the last memo
Nancy sent out,” Porter said.

“Did I?” she asked. “What did I miss?”

“The bastard has several wooden poles
cut out behind his shed. Intel shows that they’re just about the same size as
the one we found out in that cornfield.”

Mackenzie scrolled through her e-mails
on her phone and saw that Nancy had sent the memo out less than ten minutes
ago.

“Sounds like our guy, then,” she said.

“Damn right,” Porter said. He was
speaking like a robot, like he had been programmed to say certain things. He
did not look over at her a single time. It was clear that he was pissed, but
that was okay with Mackenzie. As long as he put that anger and determination
into bringing the suspect down, she couldn’t care less.

“I’ll go ahead and kick the elephant out
of the car,” Porter said. “It pissed me off
bad
when you took over last
night. But I’ll be damned if you didn’t work some kind of miracle on that kid.
You’re sharper than I give you credit for. I’ll admit that. But the
disrespect…”

He trailed off here, as if he wasn’t
sure how to finish the statement. Mackenzie said nothing in response. She
simply looked ahead and tried to digest the fact that she had just received
what could almost be considered compliments from two very unlikely sources in
the last fifteen minutes.

She suddenly felt that this could be a
very good day. Hopefully, by the end of the day, they’d bring in the man
responsible for the death of Hailey Lizbrook and several other unresolved
murders over the last twenty years. If that was the reward, she could certainly
tolerate Porter’s sour mood.

*

Mackenzie looked out and felt depressed
as she watched the neighborhoods change before her eyes as Porter drove into
the more derelict suburbs of Omaha. Well-to-do subdivisions gave way to
low-rent apartment complexes which then faded away into seedier neighborhoods.

Soon enough they reached Clive Traylor’s
neighborhood, consisting of lower-income houses sitting in mostly dead lawns,
punctuated with crooked mailboxes along the street. The rows and rows of houses
never seemed to end, each one looking less cared for than the next. She did not
know what was more depressing to her: their neglected state, or the numbing
monotony.

Clive’s block was quiet, and as they
turned down it, Mackenzie felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. She sat up
involuntarily, readying herself to confront a murderer.

According to the surveillance team who
had been watching over the property since 3 AM, Traylor was still at home. He
was not due to clock in at work until one o’clock.

Porter slowed their car as he drove
further up the street and parked directly in front of Traylor’s house. He then
looked to Mackenzie for the first time that morning. He looked a little on
edge. She realized she must have looked the same. And yet, despite their
differences, Mackenzie still felt safe walking into potential danger with him.
Sexist hard-ass or not, the man had a seasoned record and knew what he was
doing most of the time.

“You ready?” Porter asked her.

She nodded and pulled the mic from the
dashboard radio unit.

“This is White,” she said into the mic.
“We’re ready to head in on your word.”

“Go,” came Nelson’s simple reply.

Mackenzie and Porter got out of the car
slowly, not wanting to give Traylor any cause for alarm if he happened to look
out the window to see two strangers walking up his lawn. Porter took the lead
as they walked up the rickety porch steps. The porch was covered in flaked
white paint and the shells of countless dead insects. Mackenzie felt herself
tensing up, preparing. What would she do when she saw the face of the man who
had murdered those women?

Porter pulled open the flimsy screen
door and knocked on the front door.

Mackenzie stood beside him, waiting,
heart pounding. She could feel her palms begin to sweat.

A few seconds passed before she heard
approaching footsteps. There came the clicking of a lock being disengaged, the
door opened a little more than a crack, and Clive Traylor looked out at them.
He looked confused—and then very alarmed.

“Can I help you?” Traylor asked.

“Mr. Traylor,” Porter said, “I’m
Detective Porter and this is Detective White. If you have a moment, we’d like
to speak with you.”

“In regards to what?” Traylor asked,
instantly defensive.

“About a crime that was committed two
nights ago,” Porter said. “We just have a few questions and as long as you
answer honestly, we’ll be out of your hair in five or ten minutes.”

Traylor seemed to consider this for a
moment. Mackenzie was pretty sure she knew the train of logic that was chugging
through his head. He was a registered sex offender, and any resistance to help
the police when they asked for it would raise alarms and maybe even further
investigation into Traylor’s current activities.

And that was the last thing a man like
Clive Traylor wanted.

“Yeah, come on in,” Traylor finally
said, clearly not pleased with the situation. Still, he opened the door and led
them into a house that looked like a college dorm room.

There were books stacked everywhere,
empty beer cans strewn here and there, and piles of clothes sporadically placed
on any available surface. The place smelled like Traylor had recently burned
something on the stove.

He led them into his small living room,
and Mackenzie took it all in, analyzing everything at rapid speed to determine
if this were the house of a killer. There were more clothes bundled up on the
couch and the coffee table was littered with dirty dishes and a laptop. Seeing
such disarray made Mackenzie realize that maybe Zack’s living habits weren’t as
bad as she had thought. Traylor did not ask them to have a seat—which was good,
because there was no way Mackenzie was going to sit anywhere in this house.

“Thanks for your time,” Porter said. “As
I said, there was a crime committed two nights ago—a murder. We’re here because
you have a rather shaky past with the victim.”

“Who was it?” Traylor asked.

Mackenzie watched him closely, studying
his facial expressions and posture, hoping she’d find some clues there. So far,
all she could tell was that he was very uncomfortable having police inside his
house.

“A woman named Hailey Lizbrook.”

Traylor seemed to think about this for a
second and then shook his head.

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“Are you sure?” Porter asked. “We have
proof that she placed a restraining order against you last year.”

Realization dawned over him and he
rolled his eyes.

“Oh.
Her.
I never knew her name.”

“But you knew where she lived?” Mackenzie
asked.

“I did,” Traylor said. “Yeah, I followed
her home from the Runway a few times. I had policemen come to my house and talk
to me about that. But I haven’t gone against that order. I swear it.”

“So you don’t deny that you stalked her
at some point?” Porter asked.

Mackenzie saw the embarrassment flush
over Traylor and her heart dropped. She was pretty certain this was not their
man.

“No. I’ll admit that. But after that
restraining order, I stayed away. I even stopped going to that strip club.”

“Okay,” Porter said. “Can you tell me
where you were two nights ago?”

“Well, I worked until nine o’clock and
then I came home. I watched some TV and went to bed around midnight.”

“Do you have proof of that?” Porter
asked.

Traylor looked taken off guard, trying
to come up with a suitable answer. “Hell, I don’t know. I logged into my bank
account online. Can you use that?”

“We can,” Porter said, pointing to the
laptop on the coffee table. “Show us.”

Traylor started wrestling with something
in that moment. He slowly reached for the computer but then hesitated. “That’s,
well, that’s a breach of my privacy. Come back with a warrant and I’ll—”

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Porter
said. “We’ve got more officers outside and I can have them in here within
thirty seconds. We already have a warrant. So make this as easy as possible and
show me your browsing history.”

Traylor was practically sweating now. Mackenzie
was pretty sure he was not the murderer, but he was certainly hiding
something.

“What’s the problem?” Mackenzie asked.

“You’ll have to get that information
directly from my bank,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because there’s no trace of my history
on this computer.”

Porter stepped forward and repeated his
earlier command. “Show us.”