Breaking Creed (11 page)

Recently he had made the mistake of confessing that he wanted children. O’Dell shouldn’t have been surprised, knowing he had lost his only daughter at the age of five. But when he announced it as though it were a requirement before they proceeded—that request, that admission, had been like a cold shower, putting the skids on whatever physical attraction had been there. So they had decided that they would be friends only. And just when they decided that was best, things started to heat up again. They were in the middle of heating up again over the last month or so, and neither of them seemed to want to admit it and rewrite the rules all over again. So they resorted to flirting, exchanging long, meaningful glances like a couple of goofy teenagers. Yes, a crazy dance.

They ordered burgers, fried calamari, and house salads off the late-night menu. Ben asked for blue cheese on his burger, raising O’Dell’s eyebrow and making him grin, as if to say, “See, I’m not so
predictable after all.” So he had known exactly what she had been thinking.

As soon as the waiter left, Ben asked, “How’s Gwen doing?”

Gwen Patterson was O’Dell’s closest friend. No, she was more than that. Fifteen years O’Dell’s senior, Gwen was also a mentor as much as confidante. Three months ago, she’d been diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. O’Dell knew that Gwen was still trying to wrap her mind around that fact. As she told Ben about Gwen’s latest consult for yet another opinion, O’Dell couldn’t hide how worried she was that putting off the inevitable surgery would only make matters worse. All she could do was continue to nag Gwen, but her friend was already avoiding seeing or talking to her because of it.

By the time the calamari arrived, O’Dell realized she needed to change the subject. She asked Ben, “Can you take Jake and Harvey for a couple of days?”

Ben had become her dog sitter for her overnight assignments. Even their dogs got along great, and Ben had a huge backyard to accommodate them. It was as though they already shared custody.

“Sure. Digger will love having them. Where is Kunze sending you this time?”

She told him about the floater they’d pulled from the Potomac. Sharing her suspicions of it being a drug hit, and even how she had found Senator Delanor-Ramos in Kunze’s office. Any details she shared she knew Ben would keep to himself. His position at USAMRIID had conditioned him to keeping classified information classified, and therefore, made him the perfect confidant.

“You think it has something to do with the senator’s husband?” Ben knew where she was headed.

“His trial is coming up.” George Ramos was being held without bond in a federal prison in Florida.

“She’s on the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee. Maybe she was just going over Senate business.”

“Since when do senators come to Quantico for meetings?” O’Dell gave him a look, and he shrugged as if he already knew it was lame.

“Still, you don’t know that her visit had anything to do with this victim.”

“A package in the Potomac,” she said. “Stan thinks the guy was probably killed hundreds of miles south of here. Someone delivers a body, calls it a package, and deposits it within view of Washington, D.C.—do you really believe it’s not politically connected?”

“Could be a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences.”

They sat back as the waiter brought their burgers and salads.

“Two more?” He pointed to their glasses but spoke directly to Ben. And Ben looked to and waited for O’Dell.

“Sure,” she said, knowing full well she wouldn’t allow herself a second. She’d take a few sips, and Ben wouldn’t notice, or at least he politely wouldn’t acknowledge it.

When the waiter left, Ben leaned across the table. “So I’m guessing Kunze
isn’t
sending you someplace? Where is it that you’re headed?”

“Andalusia, Alabama.”

“How exotic. Probably not a vacation destination.” He stared at her, elbows planted on either side of his food, hands clasped with no intention of beginning his meal until she explained.

“Kunze wants me to investigate,” she said as she picked up her fork and stabbed at her salad, trying to diffuse the concern in his eyes. “In order to do that, I need to find the original crime scene.”

“In Alabama?”

“That’s the address on the victim’s driver’s license. Seems like a good place to start. Besides, I’m guessing there are probably a lot of fire ants somewhere around there.”

21

T
HE
FIRST
THING
THAT
WENT
through Amanda’s mind was that she had traded an angry, skinny, old woman for an angry, large, black woman. Both of them seemed like they would rather kill her than deal with her.

She couldn’t believe Ryder Creed had chosen to put her fate in the hands of this woman. He looked like such a nice guy. She hadn’t seen anger when she looked into his face. His eyes were a deep sky blue, like on a warm, sunny day when there isn’t a single cloud. She hadn’t seen a hint of anger in them—frustration, suspicion, impatience, but not anger.

Those eyes had convinced Amanda that he could be trusted. She was second-guessing that decision now. All of this simply reinforced what she already believed—that she couldn’t trust anyone but herself, even when she was sick and hurting.

“You need to take her to a hospital emergency room,” the woman,
named Hannah, said while her eyes lasered up and down Amanda’s cramped body. “That’s my best advice.”

“They’ll kill me,” Amanda muttered. She had already said this three times to Ryder Creed, and she made sure her eyes remained focused on him and him alone. Did she really need to guilt him into rescuing her a second time? She didn’t have the energy to do that.

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you swallowed their product.”

“Hannah, she’s just a kid.”

It was still too soft for a scold but Amanda was relieved that Ryder Creed had finally said something, anything, that sounded like he might defend her.

“She’s only fourteen,” he added.

“That what she told you?” And the black woman rolled her eyes. She didn’t believe a word of it.

“It’s true.” Amanda shouted it, surprising herself. She had lied about her age for so long, always trying to look and sound older, and here she was telling the truth and this woman only raised her eyebrows at her.

She grabbed her stomach. The pain hadn’t gotten any worse but she didn’t want them to know that. Instead, she needed to keep reminding them that she was hurting . . . bad. Right now, it was her only salvation.

“I think one of the balloons might have ruptured,” she told Ryder Creed, mustering up some tears.

“None of them ruptured, missy,” Hannah told her with a bite on the title “missy.” In fact, the indifference on her face hadn’t changed in the least, even the risk of a ruptured balloon didn’t seem to alarm her. “If one of them had ruptured, you wouldn’t be here telling us about it. You’d be dead. But I don’t suppose they told you that, did they?”

“It just hurts so bad.”

“Did your boyfriend use latex condoms?”

“My boyfriend?” How could she know about Leandro?

“The man who talked you into doing this. I bet he talked real sweet to you, didn’t he?”

Amanda felt her face go red. She was already hot and sweaty. Maybe they wouldn’t notice.

“The balloons . . . they’re condoms, isn’t that right?” the woman asked. “Did he use latex ones?”

Amanda only shrugged. Leandro had said he used the best, the strongest. He tied them so carefully. But she didn’t know what condoms were made of.

“I don’t know,” Amanda finally said.

“You might be allergic to latex,” Hannah said.

The woman crossed her arms over her chest and glanced at Ryder Creed. For the first time, Amanda thought she saw a hint of sympathy in the woman’s face.

“It didn’t hurt this bad the last time.”

And then immediately she realized her mistake, even before Hannah scowled at her. Any hint of sympathy disappeared. She could hear the disdain in the woman’s voice.

“Just how many times you done this?”

“Hannah, come on. You know they made her do this.”

“They put a gun to your head?”

“Hannah—”

“I just want them out of me!”

“The ER will know what—”

“No! They’ll kill me. Don’t you understand that?”

Amanda curled herself into the corner of the sofa, pulling her knees to her chest. She watched them out of the corner of her eye, from underneath sweaty bangs and long hair that she’d let fall into her face to hide behind. She felt tears stream down her cheeks,
but she muffled her sobs. She could see them staring at each other and they seemed to do it for the longest time, as if neither one wanted to give in to the other.

“Upstairs bathroom,” Hannah finally told Ryder. “Get me the laxative from the top shelf in the medicine cabinet.”

“Laxative?”

“How else you think they’re coming out?”

He glanced at Amanda in the same way someone looks at a wounded animal, but then without saying a word, he headed out of the room.

“And you,” Hannah said to Amanda, “get ready to start counting. I hope to God for your own sake that you remember how many you swallowed.”

22

NEWBURGH HEIGHTS, VIRGINIA

M
AGGIE
O’D
ELL
CURLED
into the sofa, bare feet tucked underneath her and her head swirling from the nightcap she had convinced herself she deserved, since she hadn’t finished her second beer at Old Ebbitt’s. Now she wished she had invited Ben to come back to her house.

She had recently rebuilt and remodeled much of the two-story Tudor after a fire had destroyed the front section of the house. The process had been painstaking, but amazingly, she could no longer smell soot or ash or any hint of what had happened. Still, the place felt different.

She knew the fire had destroyed more than the plaster and beams and furniture. It had taken a chunk of O’Dell’s sense of security. The house sat on a wooded acre, isolated by a creek and a natural preserve behind the property. Ironically, she had bought the place with a trust her father had left her—her father, who as a
firefighter had died in the line of duty when O’Dell was just twelve. She thought she had created a sanctuary with its high-tech security system and the natural barriers of the high-banked creek that ran along the back of the property. Even the stately pines that bordered the sides reminded her of sentries standing guard, shoulder to shoulder.

She also had two canine bodyguards: one she’d rescued and the other had rescued her. Harvey, a white Labrador retriever, lay on the sofa beside her, his head against her thigh. Jake stayed at her feet, the German shepherd constantly on alert. The dogs put up with her late nights, many of which were spent here in the living room instead of her upstairs master bedroom. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept more than three or four hours at a time. She accepted the insomnia as if it were just another occupational hazard. However, the nightcap was beginning to do its job.

Just as she decided to call it quits for the night, she noticed a new e-mail. The icon flashed in the corner of her laptop’s screen. She’d come up empty-handed after putting through several searches in the databases she had access to. ViCAP hadn’t come back with any matches close to an MO of fire ants being used as torture. Not that she expected any. What was more remarkable was that none of the floater’s info seemed to ring any bells.

O’Dell was used to looking closely at a victim’s lifestyle, habits, whereabouts, connections—anything that might lead her to the killer. Some victims were at higher risk than others, even if they were chosen randomly by a killer. Driving late at night in an unfamiliar area, accepting a ride from a stranger, drinking at an establishment of ill repute, buying drugs, engaging in prostitution put a person at higher risk. Yes, it might sound like blaming the victim, but it was an unfortunate fact that some homicide victims—like, perhaps, a drug dealer—put themselves at more risk than the ordinary person. And knowing how and where and under what
circumstances the victim met his or her killer could oftentimes beat a path to the killer’s identity.

However, Trevor Bagley had no outstanding warrants, no arrests, no fines—not even an unpaid parking ticket. All taxes—property and income—were up-to-date. According to the Alabama real estate tax assessor, Bagley owned a house on ten acres. His mortgage had no late-payment fees.

His 2012 Dodge Ram pickup had been paid off. As was a brand-new Land Rover that was also registered in his wife Regina’s name. Bagley’s driver’s license was current. He was self-employed and so was his wife. In the last year he had been an independent contractor working for a commercial fisherman.

There was no record of drug use or abuse for either Bagley or his wife. No debt or liens against them or their property. Just two respectable taxpayers minding their own business.

The only thing O’Dell could find about Trevor Bagley that possibly sent up a red flag was his discharge from the military. She wasn’t given access to see why and suspected it might have been a dishonorable discharge. She’d need to investigate that more closely.

Now, as she scanned the e-mail that had just come in, she saw no new information. Nothing to even suggest drug dealing. How could she have been so wrong? Had she let a tattoo of Santa Muerte judge this poor man? Was it possible he was the random victim of a sadistic killer?

She typed Bagley’s home address into the Google Maps search. Just as she suspected, the ten acres were in a remote part of southern Alabama. Few roads showed up. The Conecuh River ran on the left side of the property. Not far to the south was the Conecuh National Forest. Before she clicked on the satellite view, she found herself wondering if it was possible Bagley was tortured in his own backyard.

Maybe Regina Bagley could help shed light on how her husband could have met a fate like this. Unfortunately, the woman wasn’t answering her phone. O’Dell had already reserved a morning flight but she wasn’t looking forward to it. Never mind that she hated flying, she hated even more to have to break such news to a family member. How exactly was she supposed to tell Mrs. Bagley that her husband had been tortured and his body dumped nine hundred miles away in the Potomac River?