Before he Kills

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Mackenzie felt positive that the killer would not strike until night, and the others agreed with her. That gave them all four more hours of daylight to get ready for what they hoped would be a successful bust. Even if something did happen before nightfall, there were three patrol cars stationed along State Route 411, keeping an eye out for a vehicle entering the dirt road that led to the site the killer had prepared. With the addition of a State PD helicopter on the way to assist, it felt like a victory even before the sun was down.

Mackenzie was in one of the unmarked cars along State Route 411, relieved to be by herself. Nelson had busied himself with heading back to the station to meet with an advisor from the State PD, allowing her to stay behind and keep her eyes on the scene and retain control of the case. Her car was parked a mile and a quarter away from the dirt road, partially hidden from 411 by having pulled backwards into the entrance to what had once been an old cutaway road farmers had used to get from one cornfield to the other.

She’d been sitting there for fifteen minutes and the only car she’d seen go by was a police car, leaving the site and heading back to the station. She still felt certain that there would be no activity until well into the night and knew that she had a long stretch of waiting ahead of her. She wondered if Nelson had given her this duty to keep her out of his hair or if he saw it as giving her a position that kept her front and center of events as they unfolded.

With a sigh and a glance out to the uneventful stretch of State Route 411, Mackenzie picked up her phone and stared at the missed call notification from where Ellington had tried calling her an hour and a half ago. She did her best not to recall the events of yesterday evening when she had made an ass of herself in his presence as she pressed the notification bar. When his number came up, she pressed it right away before she had time to change her mind.

He answered on the third ring and when he did, she hated that it was so good to hear his voice. “Ellington here,” he said.

“It’s Mackenzie White,” she said. “I was returning your call.”

“Oh, hey! I hear you guys have a promising break.”

“Seems like it, but time will tell. We found the next pole, already set up and ready to go.”

“I heard. How do you feel about that?”

“Good,” she said.

“You sound doubtful.”

“It just seems too good to be true. I feel like there’s something missing.”

“Maybe there is,” Ellington said. “Your instincts are pretty sharp. I wouldn’t question them.”

“I usually don’t.”

An awkward silence fell between them and Mackenzie found herself digging for something new to talk about. He’d already heard about the break in the case, so it was useless to rehash it all. This is pathetic, Mackenzie, she thought.

“So,” Ellington said, breaking the silence. “I took the liberty of working up a profile after I got word about the religious ties. The chances are very good that we’re looking for someone with religion in his background. Maybe even a priest or pastor, although history points to an upbringing in a strict religious home. Maybe he went to a private religious school. I’m also thinking he either had no mother at home or a mother that got around. He probably acted out as a kid – not in the extreme ways we’re seeing right now, but more basic kid-trouble.”

“What’s all this based on?” she asked. “Just past cases?”

“Yeah, mostly,” he said. “I can’t take the credit for these insights at all. But truth be told, it’s a formula that works about seventy percent of the time.”

“Okay, so if this site doesn’t pan out, we keep an eye out for one of about one thousand possible suspects.”

“Maybe not so many. Based on my profile, I also assume this guy is a local. If he’s mapping out his own city, as you have pointed out, I’d say he grew up around there. And because of that, I made a few calls. There’s a Catholic grade school within sixty miles of Omaha. There’s one more in the state, but I’m betting the one closest to Omaha is going to be your best bet.”

“That’s amazing,” Mackenzie said.

“What is?”

“Just like that, you’ve narrowed down the search and even have a potential source of background information.”

“Well, the I in FBI does stand for investigation.” He laughed a bit at his own joke but when Mackenzie did not, he shut it down.

“Thanks, Ellington.”

“Sure. One last thing before you go, though.”

“What’s that?” she asked, nervous, hoping he wouldn’t bring up her embarrassing advances of the night before.

“When I gave my report to my director, I told him you were amazing and that I tried to sway you to the dark side.”

She felt flattered.

“The dark side being the Bureau?”

“Right. Anyway, he seemed interested. So if you ever do get that itch to head out our way, I can give you his contact information. It might be a conversation worth having.”

She thought this over and while she wanted to say more, to tell him how much she appreciated him, she only managed a simple “Thanks” in response. The very idea seemed too dreamlike. Great things like that tended not to happen to her.

“You okay over there?” Ellington asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I need to go, though. This thing is wrapping up down here and I need to stay focused.”

“I hear that. Go get ’em.”

She grinned in spite of herself. While he may have been a larger-than-life figure to her, Ellington was also proving that he was just as cheesy and flawed as everyone else.

She killed the call and looked out to State Route 411 again. She started to feel antsy, like she was wasting her time by simply sitting there. She pulled up the web browser on her phone and typed in a search for local Catholic grade schools, and found that Ellington had been spot on with his findings.

She saved the address to her phone and then pulled up Nelson’s number. He answered after the fourth ring and sounded pissed to have been disrupted from brown-nosing the State guys.

“What’s up, White?”

“I want to check on a lead, sir,” she said. “It will require me to leave 411 for two or three hours, though.”

“Absolutely not,” Nelson said. “You’re leading this thing, so you have to stay around. This is your show, White. Don’t even think about letting it get away from you. If we haven’t got this guy by tomorrow, we’ll talk again. If it’s a really promising lead, I can send someone else to check it out.”

“No,” Mackenzie said. “It’s just a hunch.”

“Okay,” he said. “Keep put until I say otherwise.”

She couldn’t even reply before he hung up.

With that, she pulled up the address of the Catholic school on her GPS and saved it. She then looked to the right where, a bit further down State Route 411, a lone pole remained empty in a cornfield, awaiting a sacrifice.

She knew she should stay put, should follow orders and sit here for four hours doing nothing.

But as she sat there, something gnawed away at her. What if he killed the victims before he brought them out?

If so, that meant there was a girl trapped somewhere, right now, being tortured, a girl who would die while Mackenzie merely sat there and waited for her dead body to show up.

She couldn’t stand the thought of it.

And what if that Catholic school – the only one in the area, the one that fit the FBI’s profile perfectly – could give her a name? An ID?

That could bring them to the killer before he arrived her. It could perhaps save the next victim before it was too late.

Mackenzie sat there, waiting, burning up inside as she could hear the next victim’s screams in her head. Each passing minute was agony.

Finally, she floored the gas and peeled out of there.

She pulled up Holy Cross on her GPS.

Disobeying a direct order like this might mean her job, her entire future.

But she had no choice.

She only hoped she could make it there and back before it was too late.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Stupid.

The word ricocheted in his head as he passed the intersection of Highway 32 and State Route 411.

Stupid.

If he needed any proof that God was on his side, it came in the timing of it all. He had been headed for the site of the fourth murder – what would become his fourth city – when he saw the police car heading down State Route 411. When he saw it, he kept heading straight down Highway 32, his heart hammering in his chest.

Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe the cop was on routine patrol, looking for speeding drivers.

Or maybe they had found the pole. He knew they were investigating him; he’d seen the Scarecrow Killer stories in the papers but had not bothered to read them or watch the snippets about his work on television. He was not doing this for the attention or publicity. He was doing this to spread God’s wrath, and to teach the world about love, mercy, and purity.

Of course, the police would not understand this. And if they had found the site that had been destined to raise up his fourth city, it could be over for him. He would not be able to finish his work and that would not please God.

The fourth site would have to change. Maybe it would help him, in the long run. Perhaps the police would be so preoccupied with trying to find him at this fourth site that he could finish out his work elsewhere without risk of being caught.

He came to a convenience store on Highway 32 and turned his truck around in the parking lot. He headed back toward the intersection and passed through without giving State Route 411 a passing glance.

With his sacrifice already chosen and readied, he could still build his fourth city tonight, as he had planned.

He would continue his work elsewhere.

She opened her eyes and a flare of pain exploded in her head. She cried out and found that her voice sounded odd – muffled, almost. She tried lifting her hand to her mouth but realized she was unable to do so. She realized there was a cloth gag over her mouth, tied tightly and cutting into the corners of her mouth.

She blinked rapidly, trying to make the pain in her head go away. As her eyes started to focus and the haze of grogginess departed, she started to get a sense of where she was. She was on a hardwood floor that was layered with dust. Her arms were tied behind her back and her ankles were also tied together. She had been stripped to her underwear.

It was this last fact that brought everything slamming back into her memory. A man had come out of nowhere last night as she had gotten home. It had been four o’clock and she had…God, what had she done?

But the bright pink bra she was wearing made it impossible to forget what she had done last night. She had tried her best to convince herself that an escort was different from what those other women did. She was classier, more controlled.

But at the end of the day, she’d done the same thing those other women did. She’d been paid handsomely (hey, fifteen hundred dollars for an hour and a half of “work” wasn’t too shabby) and afterwards had not felt as bad as she’d expected to.

But then there had been that man, coming out of the shadows. He’d only said hello and then his arm had wrapped around her neck. She’d smelled something for a moment and as she had slipped into blackness, she heard him whispering into her ear about sacrifices and bitter waters.

And now she was here. Her panties were still on and there was no pain, so she was pretty sure she hadn’t been raped. But still, she was in trouble.

She tried getting to her knees but every time she came close, her tied ankles made her tip over, slamming her shoulder into the floor. She lay there, weeping, and tried to remember the last thing the man had said to her before whatever he had placed to her nose and mouth had pulled her under.

Slowly, she remembered it. And surprisingly, the lunacy of it made her want to sag and give up rather than figure a way out of this.

Don’t worry, he said. I will build a city for you.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

It took Mackenzie a little over an hour to reach Holy Cross Catholic School, pushing ninety the whole way. School had let out for the day by the time she arrived, and as she hurried up the stairs and was guided by the receptionist, she found she had caught the principal at a good time of day.

The principal was a rotund lady who filled just about every stereotype Mackenzie had ever had about nuns. Warm and inviting at first, Principal Ruth-Anne Costello was all business and rather curt once Mackenzie was in the woman’s office and taking a seat at the front of her desk.

“We’ve heard rumblings about this so-called Scarecrow Killer,” Principal Costello said. “Is that why you’ve come here?”

“It is,” Mackenzie said. “How did you know that?”

Principal Costello frowned, but it was the sort of frown that held more anger than disappointment. Mackenzie thought it was a frown that could be found on most staff members at any given time of the day in a school like this one.

“Well, those poor women are strung up on wooden poles and flogged, correct? The religious symbolism is unmistakable. And whenever a killer does his work in the name of terribly misguided religious principles or a warped and misguided interpretation of religion, it is always the private religious schools that are put under a microscope.”

Mackenzie could only nod. She knew that this was true; she’d seen it several times since she had started working toward her career as a freshman in college. But her silence also came from the fact that Principal Costello was right: the religious undertones to the Scarecrow Killer’s actions were obvious. Mackenzie had felt it herself when they had found the first body. So why the hell had she ignored them?

Because I was afraid to voice it to Nelson and Porter out of fear of being wrong and then promptly ridiculed, she thought.

But now she had a chance to correct that ignorance and she’d be damned if she was going to let it go to waste.

“Well,” Mackenzie said, “we do have a very specific profile. I was hoping that if I could speak to you or maybe someone that has been here for a long time, I could maybe find a potential suspect. And even if not a suspect, maybe someone that knows something about the killings.”

“Well,” Costello said, “I’ve been here for thirty-five years. I was a guidance counselor first and then became the principal, a position I’ve held for nearly twenty years.”

She stood up and walked to the left side of her office where a row of ancient-looking filing cabinets lined the wall. “You know,” Costello said, “you aren’t the first detective to come sniffing around when a crime is committed that seems to have religious influence. Not by a long shot.”

Costello pulled four folders from the cabinet and brought them back to the desk. She plopped them down on the desk with enough force to show that she was clearly irritated. Mackenzie reached out to scoop them up but Costello’s hand was already pointing to them. Without looking at Mackenzie, Costello started talking again, tapping at each folder with her plump index finger.

“This one,” she said, pointing to the first folder, “is Michael Abner. When he was here in the early seventies, he assaulted a girl on the playground and was caught masturbating in the girl’s restroom in fifth grade. However, he died in 1984. A terrible car accident, I believe. So he’s clearly not a suspect.”

With that, Costello removed Michael Abner’s folder from the desk. She then promptly eliminated two other folders, as one of them had died five years ago from lung cancer and another had spent his life in a wheelchair – obviously not the sort of person that could cart around wooden poles to murder scenes.

“This last one,” Costello said, “belongs to Barry Henderson. While attending Holy Cross, he got into several fights, one of which sent two boys to the emergency room. When he returned from his expulsion, he began sending the teachers dirty letters, an activity which culminated in his attempted rape of the school art teacher while singing his mother’s favorite hymn. This happened in 1990. I regret to inform you, though, that he cannot be your suspect either. He has been a resident of the Westhall Home for the Criminally Insane for the last twelve years.”

Mackenzie made a mental note to verify that, then watched as Costello placed the folders back into her cabinet. When she closed it, she gave it a little slam that filled the office like a bomb.

“And those are the only students you’ve had in the last thirty-five years that would be capable of crimes like the Scarecrow Killer is committing?”

“We have no possible way of knowing that,” Costello said. “With all due respect, we do not keep tabs on every student that has the potential for a life of crime. That would involve detailed reports on every child that breaks even the slightest rule. The four I just showed you were the most extreme cases, and I have had those on hand for the last several years because it saves a great deal of time when we are approached by the police, especially when they have come up with what they believe are fitting profiles. They always want to blame religion for crimes they cannot solve on their own.”

“There’s no blame here,” Mackenzie said.

“Of course there is,” Costello said. “Tell me, Detective. Have you come here to simply find the name of a suspect or what sort of religious doctrine warped them so badly that they are now committing these horrible acts?”

“I don’t care how the information comes,” Mackenzie snapped. “I just need to find out who is killing these women. The why is secondary at this point.”

Mackenzie started to feel idiotic for coming to Holy Cross. What had she been expecting, anyway? A nice and tidy solution? An old student that matched Ellington’s profile to a tee?

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Costello,” she said softly. She got up and headed for the door. As her hand fell on the knob, she was stopped by Principal Costello.

“Why do you think that is, Detective White?”

“What?”

“Why does law enforcement come looking for answers from religion when they can’t solve what they believe are faith-based crimes?”

“It just matches the profiles in most cases,” Mackenzie said.

“Does it?” Costello asked. “Or is it because humans can’t accept evil for what it really is? And because we can’t accept it, we have to find something just as intangible to blame it on?”

A question rose to her lips, one that she was unable to bite back before it came out.

“What is evil, Ms. Costello? What does evil look like?”

Principal Costello grinned thinly. It was a haunting grin, an expression that hinted at some sort of dark understanding.

“Evil looks like you. It looks like me. We live in a fallen world, Detective. Evil is everywhere.”

The doorknob under Mackenzie’s hand suddenly felt very cold. She nodded and took her leave, not bothering to look back at Principal Costello for a goodbye.

As she made her way down the labyrinthine halls of Holy Cross, her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. She retrieved it and saw Nelson’s name and number on the display. Her heart fell.

The killer, she thought. He showed up while I was away and Nelson is going to have my ass for it.

She answered the call with a knot of fear in her stomach. “Hey, Chief.”

“White,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Holy Cross Catholic School,” she said. “I’m following up on Ellington’s profile.”

Nelson was quiet for a moment as he considered this. “We can go over why the hell you’d defy my order and waste time going there later,” he said. “For now, I need you to swing by the station on your way back through.”

“But what about Route 411?” she asked. “I’d like to get back out before rush hour.”

“Another reason you had no business wasting time following up on Ellington’s lead. Just come here now.”

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

But Nelson had already ended the call, leaving Mackenzie to listen to nothing more than a dead line.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Her sense of unease grew even larger when Mackenzie walked into the station and saw Nancy sitting at the front desk. When Mackenzie came in, Nancy gave her only a brief smile and then looked back down to her desk. This was extremely uncharacteristic for Nancy, a woman who usually seemed to stretch her face to accommodate a smile for anyone that came in the station’s front doors.

Mackenzie nearly asked Nancy if she knew what was going on but decided not to. The last thing she wanted was to seem weak and out of the loop as she tried to spearhead the closing to this case. So she bypassed the front desk and headed to the back, marching dutifully toward Nelson’s office.

She opened the door and stepped in, trying to appear confident and as if she were fully in control. But even now, as she closed the door behind her, she knew that taking two and a half hours out of her afternoon to visit Holy Cross had been a mistake. She’d been jumping at shadows in an attempt to be as perfect as possible, making sure she exhausted every opportunity, especially ones offered by impressive FBI agents, to get to the bottom of this case.

Nelson looked up to her and for the briefest of moments, an anxious expression crossed his face.

“Have a seat, White,” Nelson said, nodding to the chairs on the opposite side of his cluttered desk.

“What’s going on?” she asked. The nerves were evident in her voice but that was the last thing on her mind as Nelson seemed to size her up.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said. “And you are not going to like the solution. Our scum-sucking friend Ellis Pope has lodged a formal complaint against you. For now, he’s keeping it quiet – just between us and his lawyer. But he says if immediate action isn’t taken, he’ll take it to the papers. Usually I wouldn’t even care about such a threat, but the papers and even some of the television media have painted you as the head of this investigation. If Pope goes to the media with his complaint, things are going to get very bad.”

“Sir, I was acting on impulse,” Mackenzie pleaded. “A mysterious figure was lurking at the edge of a murder scene. It was private property. He was trespassing. He then took off suspiciously. Was I supposed to just let him run? All I did was stop him. I didn’t assault him.”

He frowned.

“White, I’m on your side on this. One hundred percent. But there’s another factor that I can’t get past. The State PD is involved now. They caught wind of the confrontation with Pope, too. There’s also the fact that you were MIA when they showed up to the scene on State Route 411 this afternoon. I’m pissed about that one myself. But they saw it as sloppy work on your part. Not a good impression.”

He raised a hand before she could talk.

“As if that wasn’t enough, I got a call from Ruth-Anne Costello about half an hour ago. She complained about your being rude and aggressive. She, too, lodged a complaint.”

“Are you serious?”

Nelson looked depressed as he nodded his head.

“Yes, unfortunately, I am. Add all of that up and we get a shit storm.”

“So what do we do to fix this?” she asked. “What is Pope asking for to stay quiet? How can we appease the State and make the nun happy?”

Nelson sighed and then sneered toward the ceiling, making it apparent that he was not happy with what he was about to say.

“It means that effective immediately, I have to take you off of the Scarecrow Killer case.”

Mackenzie felt her skin grow cold. The thought of the killer out there, continuing to kill, and her being unable to try to stop it, was just too much for her.