Games We Play (21 page)

Sasha grasped the printout and couldn’t believe her eyes. She leaned in closer and as she studied every angle of his face her heart stopped and her blood boiled. “That’s because he stopped going by Jeffery Spears and started going by Jim Carson two years prior to meeting my sister.”

Chapter 27

On the ride to Carolyn’s home Sasha replayed very encounter with the unsub and noted his voice had seemed too deep like it was something he was forcing while Jim had more of a regular almost high voice. Never once had she thought the killer was Jim but she hadn’t really been thinking about him in those terrifying moments either. She didn’t like the guy one bit but to call him a serial killer? Again she stared at the picture; it was indeed him.

“Did you notice anything in his neck?” she asked Nick as he drove, Pete and Noah were in the back seat.

“That sweater he had on covered his neck but from what I could tell there was no bandages or anything like that.”

“It wasn’t deep enough that he’d need one.” Sasha didn’t want to believe her sister had been married to a serial killer for the last several years or that she was involved with him during the first cycle but the facts didn’t lie and they were sitting on a whole lot of facts. “He said he was closer than I thought and boy he wasn’t kidding.” She voiced her thoughts out loud as she fantasized about wrapping her hands around his throat and watching the life go out the same way Carolyn had no life left in her eyes.

At the house they decided to go in smooth not to alert Jim they were on to him. Sasha got out of the car with Nick and knocked on the front door while Noah and Pete acted as back up if necessary.

Sasha knocked again and when there was no answer she reached on top of the window seal for the spare key. Carolyn always kept a spare in the same spot because she frequently would leave the house without her keys. “His car is in the driveway but he’s not here.” She was bitter to point out the obvious as they stepped inside the house.

“We could have CSU do a complete sweep of the grounds.”

“You call them, I want to take a quick look around.” Sasha started upstairs in her sister’s bedroom and the firs
t
thing to hit her was that familiar scent of perfume. She could close her eyes and pick her sister out of a crowded room because of that scent. Tears welled up in her eyes as the loss struck her raw, Carolyn was never coming home.

Opening her eyes she saw a white sheet of paper lying on the blue comforter. A bad feeling settled in her chest as she reached for it.

‘Sasha I know you’re probably the one reading this. I heard about Caro and can’t be here anymore. I’m leaving town to try and process the loss of my wife.’

“You fucking bastard.” Sasha scoffed at the fake words written across the paper in black ink meant to add a personal touch to emotionless words. The good news was he didn’t suspect the law was on to him and that worked greatly in their favor. The cycle wasn’t over and there was no way he’d leave before finishing his work. His derangement was going to be his biggest downfall.

Sasha folded the note and put it in her pocket. She moved over to her sister’s jewelry box and opened it for the main reason she started with the bedroom; their mother’s locket necklace. It had been in their family four generations and it was the last link connecting them.

“CSU are on their way.”

“Jim left a note saying he needed time to mourn Carolyn’s death.”

“He wants to finish his work in the shadows.”

“That’s what I figured. He doesn’t know we’re on to him and we need to keep it that way and catch him off guard.” Sasha wasn’t sure how deep Jim’s connections ran in Maple Oaks or who he called friends.

“Right now no one knows of his identity except our team. We’ll keep it to ourselves and Sheriff Howard. With an official murder investigation going on it doesn’t look uncommon for us to want to search the house, he should think nothing of it.”

Sasha nodded. “I’ll call him and leave him a message that makes it sound like I understand and give him a false lead on the killer. He’ll think we’re chasing our tail and drop some of his guard. He’ll be hunting looking for number five and if he sticks with his pattern the diner is where we can catch him.”

“Not with the deputies lurking close. I’ll talk to the sheriff and have them pulled off and we’ll get a plain clothes keeping a look out.” Nick was already reaching for his phone.

“A false sense of security.” It was a tactic they used a lot to trip up their perpetrators and more times than not it worked. All killers had one thing in common; their ego.

Back at the station house the rest of the pieces started to fall together. Pete’s friend in the white house sent over Jeffery Spears sealed military records and transcripts by courier.

Taped inside the back flap of the thick folder was the most recent picture they had of Jim, he was in his uniformed greens with murder in his eyes. They started to compare the information of Jeffery with the most recent search Gage ran under Jim’s name.

Jeffery served in Texas, Maryland, Hawaii and Arizona before retiring from the military all together. Under his alias Jim Carson he was in Illinois working with an up and coming brokerage firm where he reconnected with his past girlfriend and future wife Carolyn Madden.

“Sasha,” Pete began. “tell us about Jim from your point of view.”

“I’ve never really known the guy. He started dating my sister when she was in her senior year of high school and I remember my parents being mad he was so much older than her by eight years. I can close my eyes and hear so many arguments about how she was an adult and had a right to make her own choices but my dad forbid her to see him.

“Our parents were killed in a car accident about two months after that. Caro engrossed herself in Jim for months after their death as her own way of coping but they broke up and he left town. I never heard about Jim again until she told me they got married.

“Back then I knew he was older and my parents hated him so I hated him. I never knew he was in the army or anything really about him.” Sasha sat there as an accomplished adult but it wasn’t easy to forget your childhood memories and remembering them now left her sad. So many times she wished for Jim to go away so her sister would grieve with her, love her, tell her somehow it’d be alright.

Nick asked softly, “You weren’t there for the wedding?” it was hard for him to accept family could live with such a big distance between them.

“No. I think Caro remembered how much I disliked Jim and decided to have a quick small ceremony at the justice of peace.”

Pete asked, with a small
leather bound
notepad in his hand containing all his private notes. “Has Jim ever shown aggression that you remember?” 

“Yeah, he used to smack and push me around. He would always make Carolyn tell him who she was hanging out with in school and get mad if he saw her with another boy. She never told me but I always believed he used to hit her too.” Nick grabbed her hand and squeezed, the simple action bringing her back to reality and all the ways she was no longer a scared little girl. He made her feel strong and loved for the first time in a very, very long time.

Pete finished writing and pocketed the notepad. “I called in the local field office for some help covering all our bases. The diner is being watched and so are other establishments like it just in case he got scared away from his usual hunting ground by the uniform presence. How are you doing?” he glanced down at her and Nick’s hand and gave away his true meaning behind the question.

It was absurd under the circumstances but Sasha managed a smile. “I’m trying to go one minute at a time.” Carolyn’s lifeless face and bruised body wasn’t far from her mind’s eye but it was getting better as they got closer to nailing the son of bitch to rob her of life. Jim would never be Caro’s husband again as far as Sasha was concerned.

Wayne nodded, clicking his tongue as he pointed at Sasha and then Nicholas. “They’ve been acting different since we got into town.” Out of the small group of friends Gage was the only one not surprised by the latest development and turned his attention back to his computer. Sasha had already told him where her head and heart was last week.

Noah crossed his huge arms over his equally huge chest. “Do we have to start planning a real wedding?” he nodded to the ring still on Sasha’s finger.

Sasha’s face turned beet red. Wedding? Now that was just past the point of good humor and well at the point of insanity. “Oh god.” There was no masking her embarrassment and she knew it. “You guys are worse than a soap opera. I need some air.”

Nicholas was chuckling as he followed her down the hall. “They’re harmless.”

“We both know that’s not true but I really did need a break from all the testosterone in the room.” Sasha stopped in the parking lot and took a good look around at the other offices in the plaza and the businesses across the street. “I can’t wait to put this place in my rearview mirror again.” Maple Oaks held many bad memories and now there was the murder of her sister. When the case was closed there wouldn’t ever be a reason for her to return.

Nick wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the base of her neck. “We’re almost there.”

Sasha leaned back into his touch and focused on the scent of his cologne and the beating of his heart. It was much easier said than done trying to push out the biggest trauma of your life. “Pete always tells us to play the game and sort out all the pieces.”

“What pieces are you having trouble with?”

“Carolyn must’ve told Jim about me being undercover in town, did he kill her because she hadn’t told him sooner and he saw it as betrayal or did he do it to get back at me? He cut into her as easily as all the other victims like she was never his wife.” Sasha couldn’t try to imagine what her sister must’ve been thinking and feeling during those moments she learned her husband was the bad guy the whole time. A man she vowed to love for life while he was killing innocent women and men all for his personal enjoyment.

“We can try all we want but at the end of the day we’ll never know exactly how his or any other killer’s brain works. His reasoning will never make sense to us.”

“I keep thinking of his last call to me. He’s angry and I’m the one that he wants.” Sasha turned around and met Nick’s steady blue eyes, he seemed to have already guessed where her head was at. “He has no idea we’re on to him. The whole point of this mission was for me to bait him out of hiding and be ready when he came. We can still do that and nail him. With the heat coming from the sheriff and the bureau he’s going to want to finish this cycle quicker than ever. He’ll be on the hunt tonight and more so if we give him a reason.”

Chapter 28

Sasha sat alone in her hotel room trying to find the right state of mind to prepare for tonight. She knew as an agent what was expected of her and what rules to follow but as Carolyn’s sister she wasn’t sure she could follow those rules and face her killer without giving into the burning hate beating along her heart.

Jim didn’t deserve to be locked up in a cozy cell still breathing day after day when all his victims were robbed of that same courtesy. Carolyn was never going to see the sun set again, never smile, never become a mother like she had always dreamt of. Nothing.

She blinked rapidly and refused to shed another tear until justice was served. Tonight was the most important aspect of the case and she wasn’t going to let anything mess with that. Jim Carson would never be a free man again after tonight.

The 7Xs killer already knew her true identity leaving no need to try and play dress up to fool him. She dressed in a fresh t-shirt this time barrowed from Gage and pulled her hair up. It was going to appear she and Nicholas were stopping by the diner for a break and something to eat.

If Jim was keeping a close eye on her and the investigation or the diner he’d be there tonight to see her out in the open. His ego and fury wouldn’t allow him to walk away without trying something even just to taunt her like he had done last week.

Sasha reached for her keys off the table and saw the funeral home pamphlet. The folded piece of paper reminded her all over again how important tonight was and how very real her sister’s death was. There was only one funeral home in Maple Oaks and that’s where Carolyn would be taken after the medical examiner finished with the autopsy. It was up to Sasha to figure out what her sister wanted for a funeral. It was never something they had talked about and being only forty Carolyn didn’t have a living will.

With a big sigh she grabbed her keys and left the hotel room.

Nicholas and the rest of the team were waiting out in the hallway near her room door. “Nice shirt.” He said with a smirk. The shirt was a dash of humor in a very heavy depressing night.

The blue t-shirt on loan from Gage said in red lettering ‘
Geeks need love too’
and it had the Superman symbol under the sentence. Gage always identified himself as a geek because his early years were spent in front of a computer and not many friends but if you looked at him now
geek
was the last word to come to mind. He was a field agent that knew how to run two miles in ten minutes, how to handle firearms and kick your ass at the same time. But alas your childhood defined you to a point, something Sasha was very well familiar with.