Drained (15 page)

When Brett was within a few feet, the guy held out his hand for Brett to hand him the address. Brett took another step toward the man, swatted his hand away and delivered a walking forearm to the guy’s face. Sparks from the cigarette’s cherry filled the air. The guy reached for his nose. Brett delivered another forearm, connecting with the tip of his elbow to the man’s temple over his raised arms. The man dropped to a knee. Brett grabbed him by the back of the hair, lifted him back to his feet, and smashed his face into the top edge of the Dumpster. He pulled the man’s head back and slammed it into the metal edge again—and again. Finally, Brett let go. The man collapsed to the ground, not moving. Brett couldn’t take a chance that the man would live and be able to identify him, so he pulled the man to the back side of the Dumpsters, knelt next to him, and wrapped his gloved hands around the guy’s throat. Then Brett squeezed as hard as he could and held the position for minutes. He eventually let go. The man was dead. Brett popped his head up over the top of the Dumpster and looked back toward the factory—he saw no one outside.

Brett casually walked into the darkness beyond the dead end sign at the end of the street.

I woke to rapid pounding on the door of my hotel room. I squinted hard and cracked my eyes open. The red LED time on the alarm clock sitting on the nightstand next to the bed blurred and then came into focus—5:57 a.m. The person knocking had to be Beth.

“One second,” I yelled.

I flipped the sheets back and climbed from bed. I pulled on my pants, lying at the side of the bed, and tossed on my shirt from the day prior. I walked to the door, looked through the peephole, and pulled the room door open. I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and index finger. Beth stood before me in the hall, wearing her same pajama pants and T-shirt from the night before.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Come on, get ready. We have to go.”

“For what? It’s six in the morning.”

“You didn’t hear your phone ringing?”

“No,” I said.

“Okay, well, rise and shine, and get your ass ready. We have multiple bodies.”

“Multiple bodies?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you on the way. We’re leaving in fifteen.”

I nodded and closed the door. I walked to my phone and removed it from the charger—it showed three missed calls and three voice mails. I clicked the button to hear them. All three were from Andrews and within the last twenty minutes. The first said he’d gotten a call from his field office that they’d found a murdered man and Rebecca Wright’s car in Aurora. The second message confirmed the first and added that they’d also found a deceased woman. The third message said he was en route to the scene and we should meet him there as soon as possible. I deleted the messages and headed for the bathroom to get ready.

I started the shower and brushed my teeth, staring at myself in the mirror. My eyes were puffed up from lack of sleep, and black stubble, with a little silver mixed in, filled my cheeks and chin. I didn’t have time for a shave. I quickly showered and dressed in the last clean suit hanging in the closet. Beth was once again banging on my door within a minute of me getting ready. I pulled the room door open. She stepped in, dressed, her brown hair tied back, and ready to go to work.

“I just called for the car. Are you ready?” she asked.

“Think so,” I said.

“Well, grab whatever you’ll need for the day, I’m not sure if we’ll be back before tonight.”

I nodded, rubbed my eyes again, and walked to my desk. I grabbed everything I saw. My brain was still a little slow at functioning to remember what my exact schedule for the day was and precisely what I’d need.

I tucked the files under my arm and followed Beth from the room toward the elevators. She thumbed the button to take us down.

“Where is Aurora?” I asked.

“An hour drive west.”

“I listened to Andrew’s messages. They found Rebecca Wright’s car, another woman, and a man?”

The elevator doors opened. We stepped inside and hit the button for the lobby.

“I talked to him briefly,” she said. “That’s the gist of what he told me.”

“Do we have an ID on either of the deceased?” I asked.

“He didn’t say. The local PD was leaving the scene as is until the FBI arrived. Andrews should be getting there soon. He said forty-five minutes when I talked to him twenty minutes or so ago.”

I nodded.

The elevator doors opened, letting us into the lobby. We walked through and outside. Beth’s car hadn’t arrived.

She jerked her head toward a woman leaning out the door of the coffee shop next to where we stood. “Looks like they are just opening. Why don’t you grab us two coffees and something that would qualify as breakfast. Muffin or something.”

I wouldn’t argue. A coffee was a necessity after the four hours of sleep I’d had.

“What do you want in it?” I asked.

“Lots of sugar. Lots of cream,” she said.

“Right, so chocolate milk?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes.

I headed into the coffee shop, grabbed two tall cups and a couple of muffins, and headed back outside. Beth was waiting in front of the hotel in her car. I walked over, set what I was carrying on the roof and opened the door. I handed Beth’s coffee to her, grabbed the rest of the stuff from the roof, and got in. She pulled away from the curb.

“So the local PD there called the FBI?” I asked.

“I didn’t get the whole story of how it went down or what exactly is going on out there,” Beth said. “Andrews just said they found the car, we had another, and then mentioned there was a deceased man as well. I asked what was up with the deceased man, but he said he didn’t know.”

“I guess we’ll see shortly,” I said.

“How late did you stay up?” Beth asked.

“Until around two. Once I finished up with the bank records, I moved on to the phone records.”

“Anything?”

I shook my head. “Nothing that stood out. Did you grab the schedule we put together for today?”

“Um, yeah, it’s in the bag back there.” Beth pointed over her shoulder to a leather business bag in the back seat. “What do you need to know?”

“What we have for today. I was half awake when we were leaving. I’m thinking maybe we should have taken two cars.”

“I thought about it. We should be fine unless this takes more than two hours. We’ll probably have to leave Aurora by nine to meet with Andrea Fradet at ten. We need her sworn statement. That’s the most important thing right now. After that, we’ll need to go to the local FBI field office. We should be able to get everything filed in order to get a subpoena, as well as check in with the tech-department guys to see if they came up with anything from the computer or tablet. Who knows, maybe they just weren’t able to get to it yet.”

“You never heard anything back from them?”

“Nope.”

“I would imagine you would have, one way or the other, if they got to them. Did we still plan to go out to Skokie, look around, and have some talks with the coworkers of Rebecca Wright?” I asked.

“I think we should.”

I pulled out my notepad and started jotting a few things down.

“What are you writing?” Beth asked.

“We haven’t met with anyone regarding Rebecca Wright. I’m just making myself a note to see what exactly Andrews got and to get a copy of everything he’s collected on her. I think we should introduce ourselves to her family and let them know we are working with Andrews on it,” I said.

“It’s a good idea.”

She reached out and powered on the car stereo. The volume was faint, yet it sounded like some early-morning talk radio. I caught the words “women” and “bodies” almost immediately, so I reached out and turned the volume up. The host of the radio show was talking about our investigation. He said something along the lines of “How many bodies have to turn up before law enforcement connects the dots?” He went on to say that he wasn’t a detective, and he was sure that the authorities were trying, but the body count was rising with no end in sight. I turned the volume back down.

“Sounds like the same things the local news is saying,” Beth said.

“I haven’t been watching,” I said. “No time.”

“Well, it’s been getting pretty bad. I had the news on before I went to sleep last night. When word hits of this new victim, things are only going to get worse.”

“What are the local stations saying?”

“They are doing their best to make everyone in the city scared, splashing the words ‘serial killer’ all over,” Beth said. “Things like local law enforcement has no answers, authorities at a loss, no suspects, and stuff like that. It makes relations with the families worse when the media spins everyone up. Plus, I’m sure the local branch of the FBI is being pressured from all the attention the investigation is getting. I’m guessing that was why Agent Andrews was making midnight statement runs last night.”

I nodded. “You’re probably right. Okay, well, we’re going to need to get all of our information in order today or tonight. We’ll talk with Andrews, contact each family, and try to get something together for some kind of a press conference,” I said. “We need to let the public know that this is being taken seriously and we are doing all we can.”

“I’m not good on camera,” Beth said. “I freeze up and stumble. Fear of speaking in public, I think it’s called.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I said.

Beth and I arrived on the scene around a quarter after seven. A black Aurora patrol car with a single white door and insignia was blocking the entrance to a dead-end street. An officer stood near the trunk. Beth turned the nose of the car toward the police cruiser and stopped. The officer approached.

“Street is closed, ma’am,” he said.

Beyond him and his car were more patrol cars and a black government-issue Crown Victoria sedan parked in the lot of a tool-and-die factory to the right.

Beth showed the patrol officer her credentials. “We’re with the other FBI agent here.”

He nodded and moved his car so we could pull through.

To our left was a small church looking as if it had been built in the early nineteen hundreds. A small home matching the style of the church stood behind it. Straight ahead of us, at the end of the dead-end street, was a maroon Honda Accord with the trunk open. A few officers stood at the back of it. A coroner’s van was parked to the Accord’s left.

Beth drove the short street to the end and turned right into the factory’s entrance. A row of green Dumpsters lined the back of the parking lot to our left, with more police officers standing nearby. We spotted Agent Andrews resting his arms on the roof of his car, speaking on his telephone. Beth parked next to his black Crown Victoria, and we stepped out. I took a minute to look at the factory—it was a small flat-roofed single-story cinderblock building. Above the single entrance door was a rectangular metal sign reading Penn’s Tool and Die.

Andrews clicked off from his phone call and slipped his phone into his pocket. “This is bad,” he said.

We walked to him.

“What do we have?” I asked.

He waved over his shoulder for Beth and me to follow him. “It’s ugly. The man is over here behind the Dumpsters.”

Neither Beth nor I said anything as we followed Andrews. He walked to the front side of the row of Dumpsters, stopped a few feet short, and pointed down at what looked like a large blood pool and drag marks. “This is where it started,” he said.

“This is from the man?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Andrews said.

I looked down at the pool and back up at the edge of the Dumpster, also covered in blood. I noticed a pair of officers and another man standing just on the other side.

Andrews waved us to continue following him. “Looks like drag marks leading around to the backside of the Dumpsters here.” Andrews rounded the corner pointing down.

He walked toward the two officers and the coroner—judging by the patch on his jacket—standing next to a body covered in a yellow plastic tarp.

Andrews stopped near the men. “This is Agents Rawlings and Harper,” he said.

The two officers nodded but said nothing.

I caught the name plates on their shirts, Garlington and Rae.

“We think that he saw the guy dumping the woman and car,” said the one on the left, Garlington. He scratched at the front of his dark hairline, which formed a widow’s peak.

I turned my attention to him. He looked to be early thirties, slim, and an inch or two under six foot. He and his partner both wore all-black uniforms with a yellow-and-navy eagle patch on the shoulder.

“Who was he?” Beth asked.

“Third-shift employee from the tool-and-die factory there,” said the other officer, Rae. He jerked his chin toward the building. The officer looked to be a few years older than the other and quite a bit shorter, probably five six. A pair of dark plastic sunglasses rested on his forehead, and a faint trace of a mustache sat on his upper lip. “His name was Ted Biller,” Rae said.

“What do we know?” I asked.

“The guy went out for a smoke and never came back,” Andrews said. “After about a half hour, another employee, waiting on parts from this guy, came out looking for him. He didn’t find him but noticed his car was still there. After another hour or so, a different employee came out for a cigarette and went to toss his empty pack in the Dumpster. He saw all the blood, followed the smear marks back around the row of Dumpsters, and saw this.” He pointed at the body.

I stepped around the body and motioned for the coroner to lift the tarp. He knelt and raised the corner. The victim lay on his back, facing the sky. His nose looked to be broken, the left side of his face crushed. Most of what I could see was covered in blood.

“C.O.D.?” I asked.

“Bruising on the neck is consistent with strangulation,” the coroner said. “Yet I think the injuries to the head may have been enough.”

“We may have skin under his nails if this was a strangulation,” Beth said.

“My forensics team is on the way. That’s why the bodies haven’t been removed,” Andrews said.

I motioned for the coroner to replace the tarp. “Where’s the woman?” I asked.