Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1) (8 page)

“So,” he said, “they really look down on
you because you’re young and a woman?”

She shrugged.

“Seems that way. I’ve seen rookies come
in—men, mind you—that get some ribbing, but they aren’t spoken down to the way
they speak down to me. I’m young, motivated, and, according to a few, not too
bad to look at. Something about that combination throws them off. It’s easier
for them to write me off as the over-ambitious piece of ass than a woman under
thirty years of age that has a harder work ethic than them.”

“That’s unfortunate,” he said.

“I’ve felt a slight shift in the last
few days,” she said. “Porter in particular seems to be coming around.”

“Well, let’s wrap this case up and bring
them all around,” Ellington said. “Can you arrange to have every photo from
both sites brought into your office?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Meet me there in
about ten minutes.”

“You got it.”

Mackenzie decided right there and then
that she liked Jared Ellington a little too much for her own good. Working with
him for the next few days would be challenging and interesting—but for reasons
other than the case at hand.

Mackenzie got home just after seven that
night, knowing full well that she could be called at any moment. There were so
many avenues open now, so many different leads that could potentially require
her attention. She could feel her body getting tired. She had not been sleeping
well since visiting the first murder scene and she knew that if she didn’t
allow herself time to rest, she’d end up making clumsy mistakes while at work.

When she walked through the door, she
saw Zack sitting on the couch with an Xbox controller in his hand. A bottle of
beer was on the coffee table in front of him, with two empties lined up in the
floor. She knew he’d had the day off and assumed this was how he’d spent it. It
made him look like an irresponsible child in her eyes and it was
not
what she wanted to see after coming in from a day like today.

“Hey, babe,” Zack said, barely looking
away from the television.

“Hey,” she said dryly, heading for the
kitchen. Seeing the beer on the coffee table, she had the urge to enjoy one.
But honestly, feeling exhausted and on edge, she decided on a cup of peppermint
tea instead.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, Mackenzie
walked into the bedroom and changed clothes. She had overlooked dinner and was
suddenly faced with the fact that there was very little in the house to eat.
She hadn’t been grocery shopping in a while and she knew damn good and well
that Zack hadn’t thought to do it.

When she had changed into gym shorts and
a T-shirt, she walked back out to the enticing whistle of the tea kettle. As
she poured the water over the bag, she heard the muted gunfire from Zack’s
game. Curious and wanting to at least broach the topic to see how he’d respond,
she was unable to keep her frustration to herself.

“What did you do for dinner?” she asked.

“Haven’t eaten yet,” he said, not
bothering to look away from the television. “Were you going to make something?”

She glared at the back of his head and,
for a moment, wondered what Ellington was doing. She doubted that
he
played videogames like some loser locked in his childhood. She waited a moment,
letting her rage pass, and then took a step into the living room.

“No, I’m not making anything. What have
you been doing all afternoon?”

She could hear his sigh even over the
explosions from the game. Zack paused the game and finally turned to look at
her. “And just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It was just a question,” she said. “I
asked what you had been doing this afternoon. If you hadn’t been playing your
little game, maybe you could have made dinner. Or at the very least picked up a
pizza or something.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sarcastically and
with volume. “How am I supposed to know when you’re going to get home? You
never communicate that stuff with me.”

“Well, call and ask,” she snapped.

“What the hell for?” Zack asked,
dropping the controller and getting to his feet. “The few times I
do
bother calling you at work, the call goes straight to your voicemail and you
never call me back.”

“That’s because I’m
working,
Zack,” she said.

“I work, too,” he said. “I bust my ass
at that damn factory. You have no idea how hard I work.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “But tell me this:
when was the last time you saw me just sitting on my ass? I come home and I’m
usually faced with your dirty clothes on the floor or dirty dishes in the sink.
And you know what, Zack? I work hard, too. I work
damn
hard and I have
to see shit on a day-to-day basis that would make you crumble. I don’t need to
come home to a little boy playing video games and asking what we’re having for
dinner.”

“
Little boy?
” he asked, nearly
shouting now.

Mackenzie hadn’t meant to go that far,
but there it was. It was a plain and simple truth she’d been holding in for
months now and now that it was out, she felt relieved.

“That’s how it seems sometimes,” she
said.

“You bitch.”

Mackenzie shook her head and took a step
back. “You have three seconds to take that back,” she said.

“Oh, go to hell,” Zack said, coming
around the couch and approaching her. She could tell he wanted to get in her
face, but he knew better than to do that. He knew that she could easily take
him in a fight; it was something that he had no problem telling her whenever he
vented about things that made him unhappy in their relationship.

“Excuse me?” Mackenzie asked, almost
hoping that he’d get aggressive and get in her face. And as she felt that, she
felt something else with absolutely clarity: their relationship was over.

“You heard me,” he said. “You’re not
happy, and neither am I. It’s been that way for a while, Mackenzie. And quite
frankly, I’m tired of putting up with it. I’m tired of coming second and I
know
I can’t compete with your work.”

She said nothing, not wanting to say
anything else to provoke him. Maybe she’d get lucky and this argument would be
over soon, bringing them to the end they both wanted without an extensive
knock-down-drag-out fight.

In the end, all she said was, “You’re
right. I’m not happy. Right now, I have no time for a live-in boyfriend. And I
certainly don’t have time for arguments like this one.”

“Well then, sorry to waste your time,”
Zack said quietly. He picked up his beer bottle, gulped down what remained in
it, and set it hard on the table—so hard that Mackenzie thought the glass might
break.

“I think you should leave for now,” Mackenzie
said. She held eye contact with him, holding his gaze so he’d know this was non-negotiable.
They’d had fights in the past where he’d
almost
packed his things and
left. But this time, it needed to happen. This time, she’d make sure there were
no apologies, no makeup sex, no manipulative conversations about how they
needed each other.

Zack finally looked away from her and
when he did, he looked furious. Still, he made sure to leave a few inches
between them when he stomped past her and toward the bedroom. Mackenzie
listened to him go, standing in the kitchen and idly stirring her tea.

So this is what I’ve become,
she thought.
Alone,
cold, and emotionless.

She frowned, hating the inevitability of
it all. She’d once had a mentor who had warned her about this—how if she
pursued a career in law enforcement with high ambition, her life would become
too busy and hectic for anything resembling a healthy relationship.

After a few minutes, Mackenzie heard
Zack start muttering to himself. As drawers in the bedroom opened and closed,
she heard the terms
fucking bitch,
work obsessed,
and
heartless
fucking robot.

The words hurt (she didn’t try to
pretend to be so hardened that they didn’t), but she shrugged them off. Instead
of focusing on them, she started cleaning up the mess Zack had accumulated
during the day. She cleaned up empty beer bottles, a few dirty dishes, and a
pair of dirty socks as the man who had created the mess—a man she had, at one
time, fallen in love with—continued to curse and call her names from the
bedroom.

*

Zack was gone by 8:30 and Mackenzie was
in bed an hour later. She checked her e-mail, seeing a few reports flying back
and forth between Nelson and other officers, but there was nothing that needed
her immediate attention. Satisfied that she might actually get a handful of
uninterrupted hours of sleep, Mackenzie cut off her bedside lamp and closed her
eyes.

Experimentally, she reached out and felt
the empty side of the bed. Having Zack’s side of the bed empty wasn’t too
jarring because he was often not there when she went to sleep because of his
work shifts. But now, knowing that he was gone for good, the bed seemed much
larger. As she stretched out and felt that empty side of the bed, she wondered
when she had fallen out of love with him. It had been at least a month, she
knew that for sure. But she’d said nothing in the hopes that whatever had
existed between them might resurface.

Instead, things had gotten worse. She
often thought that Zack had sensed her becoming more distant as her feelings
had died down. But Zack was not the type to acknowledge such a thing. He avoided
conflict at all costs and, as much as she hated to admit it, she was pretty
sure he would have stuck around for as long as possible just because he feared
change and was too lazy to move out.

As she sorted through all of these
things, her cell phone rang.
Great,
she thought.
So much for sleep.

She switched her lamp back on, fully
expecting to see Nelson’s or Porter’s number on her display. Or maybe it would
be Zack, calling to ask her if he could please come back. Instead, she saw a
number she did not recognize.

“Hello?” she said, doing her best not to
sound tired.

“Hi, Detective White,” a man’s voice
said. “This is Jared Ellington.”

“Oh, hi.”

“Did I call too late?”

“No,” she said. “What’s up? Do you have
something new?”

“No, I’m afraid not. In fact, I got word
tonight that we won’t have the results on that wood until morning.”

“Well, at least we know how the day will
start,” she said.

“Exactly. But listen, I was wondering if
you could meet me for breakfast,” he said. “I’d like to go over the case
details with you. I want to make sure we’re on the same page and not missing
even the smallest detail.”

“Sure,” she said. “What time do you—”

She stopped here, looking toward her
bedroom door.

For a split second, she’d heard
something move out there. Once again, she’d heard that damned floorboard creak.
But more than that, she’d heard a shuffling sound. Slowly, she got out of bed,
still holding the phone to her ear.

“White, you still there?” Ellington
asked.

“Yes, I’m here,” she said. “Sorry. I was
asking what time you’d want to meet.”

“How about seven o’clock at Carol’s
Diner? You know it?”

“I do,” she said, walking to the
doorway. She looked out and saw only shadows and dark, muted outlines. “And
seven sounds good.”

“Great,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

She barely heard him as she stepped out
of her bedroom and into the small hallway that led to the kitchen. Still, she
managed to get out a “Sounds good,” before hanging up.

She cut on the hallway light, revealing
the kitchen and making the living room look murky. Just like several nights
ago, there was no one there. But, just to make sure, she walked into the living
room and cut on the light.

Of course, there was no one there. The
room offered no places to hide and the only thing unchanged about it was the
missing Xbox that Zack had taken with him. Mackenzie looked around the room one
more time, not liking the fact that she had spooked so easily. She even walked
across the creaky board, testing its noise and comparing it to what she had
heard.

She checked the lock on the front door
and then headed back to her bedroom. She looked back behind her one more time
before cutting out the lights and returning to sleep. Before she turned her
lamp off, she took her service pistol out of the bedside drawer and placed it
on top, within arm’s reach.

She looked at it in the gloom of the
bedroom, knowing that she’d not need it but feeling safer that it was right
there, in plain sight.

What was happening to her?

“Daddy? Daddy, it’s me. Wake up.”

Mackenzie stepped into the bedroom and
braced herself, turning from the sight of her dead father.

“What happened, Daddy?”

Her sister was in the room, too,
standing on the other side of the bed, looking at their father with a
disappointed look on her face.

“Steph, what happened?” Mackenzie asked.

“He called out for you and you didn’t
come. This is your fault.”

“No!”

Mackenzie stepped forward again and
then, knowing it was lunacy to do so, she still crawled onto the bed and
snuggled up next to her father. Soon, she knew, his flesh would be cold and
pale.

Mackenzie woke with a start, the
nightmare jarring her awake at 3:12 AM, matted in sweat. She sat there,
breathing hard, and despite herself, she started to cry.

She missed her dad so much that it hurt.

She sat there, alone, crying herself to
sleep.

But it would be hours, she knew, before
she fell back asleep. If at all.

In a strange way, she yearned to throw
herself back into the case. Somehow, that was less painful.

*

When Mackenzie arrived at Carol’s Diner
a few hours later, she was awake and alert. Looking across a small diner table
at Agent Ellington, the idea of how much her nightmare had affected her, of how
easily she had gotten spooked last night, was embarrassing. What in the hell
was wrong with her?

She knew what it was. The case was
getting to her, stirring up old memories she thought she had laid to rest. It
was affecting the way she lived. She’d heard of this happening to others before
but had never experienced it herself until now.

She wondered if Ellington had ever
experienced it. From her side of the table, he looked well-polished and
professional—the spitting image of what Mackenzie expected an FBI agent to be.
He was well built but not massive, confident but not cocky. It was hard to
imagine him being rattled by much of anything.

He caught her looking and rather than
looking away embarrassed, she held his gaze.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing, really,” she said. “I’m just
wondering what it’s like to know that with a single phone call, you can get the
Bureau looking into something that it would take me several hours to convince
the local PD to look into.”

“It’s not always that smooth,” Ellington
said.

“Well, with this case, the Bureau seems
motivated,” Mackenzie pointed out.

“The ritualistic set-up of the murder
scenes practically screams serial killer,” he said. “And now, with another body
discovered, it seems that’s exactly what we have.”

“And has Nelson been accommodating?” she
asked.

Ellington smiled and it showed signs of
a subtle charm lurking under his finely composed exterior. “He’s trying to be.
Sometimes the small-town mentality is hard to break out of.”

“Don’t I know it,” Mackenzie said.

The waitress came by to take their
orders. Mackenzie opted for a veggie omelet while Ellington ordered a huge
breakfast platter. With that distraction over, Ellington clasped his hands
together and leaned forward.

“So,” he said. “Where do we stand on
this?”

Mackenzie knew he was giving her a
chance to show him how she worked. It was in his tone and the slight smile that
barely touched the edges of his mouth. He was ruggedly handsome and Mackenzie
was slightly uncomfortable with how often her eyes were drawn to his mouth.

“We have to wait on the leads for now
and really study them,” she said. “The last time we had what we thought was a
promising lead, we were dead wrong.”

“But you busted a guy that was selling
kiddie porn,” Ellington pointed out. “So it wasn’t a total waste.”

“That’s true. But still, I’m going to
assume you’ve noticed the hierarchy of our local PD. If I don’t figure this out
soon, I’ll be stuck in my position for a very long time.”

“I’m not so sure about that. Nelson
thinks highly of you. Whether or not he’d admit it to the other guys, well,
that’s a different story. That’s why he has me helping you. He knows you can
get this done.”

She looked away from him for the first
time. She wasn’t sure how she’d get this case wrapped up if she didn’t stop
jumping at every little sound in her house and sleeping with her gun on the
nightstand.

“I figure we start with the wood
sample,” she said. “We visit whoever is the local supplier of that sort of
wood, right down to how it’s sawed. If that doesn’t produce anything, we’re
going to have to really start grilling the women that Hailey Lizbrook worked
with. We may even have to get as desperate as to look through security cameras
from the club she worked at.”

“All good ideas,” he said. “Another idea
I’m going to pitch to Nelson is to have undercover officers on site at some of
the strip clubs within a one-hundred-mile radius. We can pull some agents from
the Omaha office if we need to. Looking back through old cases—which, I must
say, you nailed right on the head during an earlier meeting according to
Nelson—we may also be on the lookout for a man that’s pursuing prostitutes as
well. We can’t just assume it’s strippers.”

Mackenzie nodded, even though she was
beginning to doubt that the case she had recalled from the ’80s where a
prostitute had been strung from a line pole was related to this case. Still, it
was nice to have her efforts acknowledged by someone with experience.

“Okay,” Ellington said. “So I have to
ask.”

“Ask what?”

“It’s clear that you’re undermined at
the local level. But it’s also clear that you bust your ass and know your
stuff. Even Nelson has told me that you’re one of his most promising
detectives. I had a look at your records, you know. Everything I saw was
impressive. So why stay here where you’re sneered at and not given a fair
chance when you could easily be working as a detective anywhere else?”

Mackenzie shrugged. It was something she
had asked herself multiple times and the answer, while morbid, was simple. She
sighed, not wanting to get into it but, at the same time, did not want to pass
up the opportunity. She’d spoken about her reasons for staying local with Zack
a few times—back when they had still been communicating—and Nelson knew some of
her history as well. But she could not remember the last time someone had
willingly invited her to speak about it.

“I grew up just outside of Omaha,” she
said. “My childhood was…not the best. When I was seven years old, my father was
killed. I was the one that discovered the body, right there in his bedroom.”

Ellington frowned, his face filled with
compassion.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly.

She sighed.

“He was a private investigator,” she
added. “He’d been a beat cop for about five years before that, though.”

He sighed, too.

“It’s my theory that at least one out of
every five cops has some sort of unresolved trauma from their past that is
related to a crime,” he said. “It’s that trauma that made them want to protect
and serve.”

“Yeah,” Mackenzie said, not sure how to
respond to the fact that Ellington had just sized her up in less than twenty
seconds. “That sounds about right.”

“Was your father’s killer ever found?” Ellington
asked.

“No. Based on the case files I’ve read
and the little bit my mother has told me about what happened, he had been
investigating a small group that dealt in smuggling drugs in from Mexico when
he was killed. The case was pursued for a while but was dropped within three
months. And that was that.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Ellington said.

“After that, when I realized that there
was a lot of lazy, sloppy work in the justice system, I wanted to do something
in law enforcement, to be a detective, to be exact.”

“So you achieved your dream by the age
of twenty-five,” Ellington said. “That’s impressive.”

Before she could say anything else, the
waitress came by with her food. She set the plates out and as Mackenzie started
to dig in on her omelet, she was surprised to see Ellington close his eyes and
say a silent grace over his food.

She couldn’t help but stare for a moment
as his eyes were closed. She had not thought of him as a religious man and
something about seeing him pray over his food touched her. She stole a glance
at his left hand and saw no wedding ring. She wondered what his life was like.
Did he have a bachelor pad with beer stocked in the fridge, or was he more of
the type to have a wine rack and IKEA bookshelves lined with classic and modern
literature?

She was working with an open book here.
More interesting was how he had become an FBI agent. She wondered what he was
like in an interrogation room, or in the heat of the moment when guns were
drawn and a suspect was within a hair of either surrendering or opening fire.
She knew none of these things about Ellington—and that was exciting.

When he opened his eyes and started
eating, Mackenzie looked away, back to her food. After a moment, she couldn’t
help herself.

“Okay, so how about you?” she asked.
“What led you to a career with the FBI?”

“I was a child of the eighties,”
Ellington said. “I wanted to be John McClane and Dirty Harry, only with more
refinement.”

Mackenzie smiled. “Those are pretty good
role models. Dangerous, but risky.”

He was about to say something else when
his cell phone rang.

“Excuse me,” he said, reaching into his
jacket pocket and pulling out the phone.

Mackenzie listened in to his side of the
conversation, which turned out to be short. After a few affirmative responses
and a quick
Thanks
, he killed the call and looked forlornly at his food.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re going to need to
box this up, though. The results from the wood sample came in.”

He looked right at her.

“The lumber yard it originated from is
less than half an hour away.”