Silent Graves (16 page)

Chapter 29

Jack held up all required documentation, his badge, and the warrant. “We’re here to see Brad Keyes.”

I stood a few steps behind Jack, ready to pull my gun if the need arose. Jack told me to have his back but not to anticipate too soon. He’d call it a rookie mistake. Coming in with all guns blazing, people screaming and running for cover—he’d prefer that scenes like that stay in the movies. In real life, the FBI had standards to uphold, a professional reputation which wouldn’t be sullied by an inexperienced pending agent—especially one from Jack’s team.

I scanned the gym after studying the girl behind the counter. Both her hands were in the air as if she were being arrested. Panic and fear mingled on her facial expression, her mouth gaped open and her eyes enlarged.

Three people were on cardio equipment located at the front of the gym where we were. One man was in an outright run on a treadmill, another lady, carrying easily an extra fifty pounds, was in a fast walk on another one, an electronic reader in her hand. The third member was a woman on a bike who was sweating profusely. None of them paid us any attention. They were intent on their workout.

“I’ll get—” The girl lowered one hand and went beneath the counter.

“Let me see your hand,” Jack barked.

“It’s just the release…for the…” Where her words failed, the wild gestures of her hand toward the bar blocking our entrance filled in the missing syllables.

“You’ve got to go. Now.”

She stared at Jack as if in a daze. She moved slowly, and then there was a soft click. The bar gave way and as we walked in, she left.

I looked past Jack, taking in the room. The gym was laid out in a simple fashion. Circuit machines were grouped behind the cardio equipment and beyond that there was a free weights area. Two men worked out there but didn’t pay any attention to each other. All of this was off to the left of the main ceramic tile walkway where we were standing. I assumed the route would lead to the back of the gym and the change rooms.

Off to the right, were bar-height tables and chairs. This would be where they signed up new members and gave them the details on what they would get for their bi-weekly payment.

The room next to that had a schedule for cycle class. The glass wall that faced the rest of the workout area revealed a darkened room. No class right now. That was a relief.

I sensed someone watching us and turned to see the heavier woman from the treadmill facing us.

We needed these people out of here. That was my responsibility. While we didn’t expect any trouble at the gym, we needed to be prepared. If Keyes were the man who kidnapped, raped, and murdered all those women, he would fight for his freedom and wouldn’t be opposed to taking others down in order to retain it—unless Zachery’s theory about him wanting to be stopped was correct.

“Got this?” I asked the question close to the back of Jack’s head. He nodded, and I went off to gather the people working out while he set out in search of Keyes.

I went to the heavier woman on the treadmill first. She had since slowed down her stride and watched me approach. The machine let out a beep and the tread halted its cycle.

“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me,” I said.

Her eyes went over me for only a few seconds before she hopped off the machine and hurried in the direction of the change room.

“Miss?”

She stopped and turned around.

“You stick with me.” I didn’t need her going on ahead and falling right into Keyes’s hands. I wasn’t losing my place on the team today.

“Okay.”

She was shaking, and I wasn’t sure if it were her nerves from our presence or from an amped-up heart rate. Her cheeks were a flaming red and sweat beaded on her forehead. Her ponytail was dangling loosely with the elastic somewhere near the base of her neck.

“Come with me.” I headed to the man who was in a run on another treadmill. Buds were in his ears, the cord heading to a bright blue MP3 player, clipped to the waist of his running shorts. He didn’t notice me until I was right beside him. He pushed some buttons on the machine and the speed slowed down. He walked at a fast pace.

“We need you to leave,” I said.

“I pay to work out here.”

I pulled out my identification.

Another beep and the machine came to a halt. He grabbed the towel he had hung over the machine and ran it down the length of his neck, behind his hairline and across his forehead.

“What’s this about?” He stood with his legs on the starter plates on both sides of the tread.

“Official FBI business. We need you to leave.”

“Okay.” He drew out the word and got off the machine. While doing so, he passed a judgmental glance to the woman who had peacefully been reading and getting a workout before we became involved in her life.

As I gathered up the other gym members, I couldn’t help but think how much easier this looked in the movies, but it had taken less than two minutes to get the five members out of the building.

They just cleared out when Keyes burst around the corner with a girl who appeared ten years younger.

Jack followed, his hand gripped on Keyes’s shirt, leading him with the bunched fabric—a makeshift rein on a horse.

The girl ran toward me, tears streaked down her face, but I sensed more from fear than anything else. She hit the door, and, when it wouldn’t give, she banged on the glass.

“Let me out of here.”

“It’s locked,” I said and went to help her out. By the time I reached the door, she had already slipped out to the freedom of the street. I re-locked the door.

Jack pushed Keyes forward.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Keyes’s cheeks were red from anger. His eyes were no longer those belonging to a man hurt over his lost wife, instead they contained a darkness that was hard to penetrate.

“We have a warrant to search this place.” Jack slammed the paperwork on the counter and signaled me to open the door again.

I noticed the investigation team was here, with their collection cases and gear, ready to get to work. Six of them came in and spread out over the place, like dispersed metal shards being drawn to magnets in four corners. It was moments like this I was proud to be with the FBI.

“What do you expect to find?” Keyes leaned against the counter. His body registered defeat, not fight.

I continued to watch him closely.

Jack ignored his question. “As we speak, investigation teams are going through your house and your cabin—”

“Tristan? He’s going—”

“He’s in good hands. The babysitter’s going to be fine too,” I said.

“Where are they Keyes?”

He shook his head. “Where are who?”

Jack got within inches of the man’s face. “The missing women—Rogers, Poole, and the others. Where are they? Are they still alive?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“I’m not going to ask again.”

“I don’t know.”

Jack gestured to me. “Cuff this shit.”

“I’m telling you, you have the wrong guy.”

“They all say that.” I snapped the cuffs without care about cutting into his wrists. He tortured all those women—he deserved payback.

Keyes spoke over his shoulder. “In my case, it’s the truth. You guys are going to pay for this. You can’t just come into my business and—”

“We just did, and now it’s time to go for a ride.”

Chapter 30

“She must have been sixteen. We’ll add statutory rape to your list of charges.”

Jack sat in the chair opposite Keyes in an interrogation room inside the PWPD.

Keyes patted the flat of his hand on the table in an uneven rhythm. “She’s twenty-one.”

“Did she turn that last week?”

“You’re the FBI. Don’t you know anything?” He stopped tapping and leaned forward. “Like the fact I’m innocent?”

“Tell us about your father.” Jack tossed a photograph from the file across to Keyes.

Keyes sat back in his chair and didn’t reach for the photograph.

“I take it you weren’t close.”

“What does that matter?” Keyes’s eyes traced to the ceiling and then back to Jack. “What does any of this have to do with anything? Why do you even think I’m involved?”

“We don’t think you’re involved, we think you’re the one taking these women. Where is Amy Rogers?” Jack slid her photo across the table. “Where is Sydney Poole?” Her picture was placed beside the one of Rogers.

Keyes touched his brow with an index finger and pressed. “Besides hearing the news, I wouldn’t even know their names, let alone what they look like.” He dropped his hand. “I’m telling you, I’m innocent.”

Jack leaned back, patted his shirt pocket, passed me cursory glance, and went back to focusing on Keyes. “Your father owned Hartland Packers. They hauled meat for local farmers and butchers starting in the mid-sixties.”

“So what?” Keyes lifted the glass of water in front of him with both hands. He set it back down heavily.

Jack went back into the folder and pulled out crime scene photos of Nina Harris. He laid out a spread of seven shots. With each one he took out, he placed them down with a distinctive thump from the side of his hand against the wood, stacking them with emphasis.

Keyes closed his eyes. “Please take those away.”

Jack made no motion to gather the photos back into the concealment of the manila jacket. “How was your childhood?”

Keyes twisted his lips with his fingers for a second. “It sucked.”

“Tell us about it.” Jack clasped his hands on the table.

“He never touched me if that’s what you’re thinking, but I never got along with the man. At least, most of the time I didn’t.”

I noticed he had no apparent emotional connection with his father. His articulation never carried anxiety, and his words were stated stoically.

“You got along just fine when you were abducting women together.” Jack didn’t phrase it as a question.

“You want me to talk or not? I can lawyer up. Isn’t that how you phrase it?”

Jack let Keyes’s threat lay out there in silence.

Keyes spoke again. “My mother was a good woman. She’d do anything for anyone.”

“Then she wouldn’t be too happy to find out that you and your father killed together?”

I was wondering why Jack was pushing him so hard. I feared Keyes would shut up, demand representation, and everything would get delayed. The more time that passed without the missing women in our hands, the higher the likelihood they wouldn’t be coming back to us alive.

Keyes didn’t bite Jack’s bait. He remained silent.

“Tell us more about them. Did your mother cheat on your father?”

Keyes’s eyes glazed over. “I don’t think she did. Like I said, she was a really sweet woman, still is a very sweet woman.”

“Still is? She died in a car accident years ago.”

“She’s here with me.” He balled a fist and held it over his heart. “She always will be.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t say
okay
like that. I know what you mean by that. You think I’m crazy because I carry a dead woman around with me.”

Jack paused for a few beats. “With him being on the road all those hours, she never got lonely?”

“How did she have time to be lonely? I was around. Do you have any idea how much work it is to have a kid? Let me guess, no.”

“I know.”

I pushed off the wall I had been leaning against. Jack didn’t look in my direction.

“You know how much is involved? She wouldn’t have had time to
get
lonely.”

“Your father—”

“What about him? I hardly knew the man.”

“Spend any summer vacations with him, on the road, learning the business?”

“I don’t like what you’re implying.”

“I wasn’t implying anything. Should I have been?”

“You are driving me mad. Listen, my father was one of those never-in-the-picture kind of deals, all right? I believed he loved me in his own way until I was about fifteen. Then I stopped living the fantasy and let him go from my life. It was either that or go crazy trying to seek approval from someone who was never going to give it to me.”

“What happened at fifteen?”

I knew where Jack was headed with this—that age group was right on target.

Keyes didn’t answer.

“Fifteen? What was it?” Jack pulled a photo from the file, rose, and paced the perimeter of the table, walking so close that he nearly brushed against Keyes’s arm. He came to a standstill beside Keyes and bent over to the level of his ear. “Did he make you rape this woman?” He slapped the photo of the female victim from two thousand in front of him.

Keyes turned to face Jack. “I want that lawyer now.”

“You’ll be needing one.” Jack didn’t gather up the pictures he had laid out over the table. It resembled a montage of faces and places, the colors blending. The only thing he picked up was the file folder before we left the room.

We watched Keyes from the observation room. He fanned his fingers through his hair, and then rested his elbows on the table. His head was facing down and seconds later he had scooped up the photos into a pile and flipped them over. He pushed them to the far end of the table.

“You think he did this? That he has Rogers and Poole?” I asked and shoved my hands into my pockets.

Jack reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and let it perch in his lips. “It doesn’t really matter what I think. It matters what the facts show. The facts show our unsub had a traumatic childhood. His mother died when a transport truck skidded through an intersection. The ruling was careless driving. The driver never even faced jail time.”

I nodded. “But there’s nothing traumatic that exists, on record anyway, of his relationship with his father. We felt that was our trigger, right? An older man took a younger one along in his abduction and murder of women.”

“I’d say you don’t sound too convinced about his guilt.”

“I’m not sure how I feel and we thought maybe it was a father’s or uncle’s voice that directed him in the abduction and murders, but maybe it was his mother’s. It could explain why originally there was no rape?”

“Then all of a sudden, in two thousand, mommy turns the other way while her son rapes a victim?”

I heard it in Jack’s voice. Thinking that Keyes’s mother was a trigger at all was a far-fetched notion. I pulled it back to the basics we knew. “It seems everything was really triggered with Leslie, Keyes’s wife. That girl Keyes was with at the club. Was she married?”

Jack shook his head.

“That means he abducts and kills one type of woman while he dates another kind? I’m not sure I’m buying it.”

“Well, it is possible he holds more respect—”

“More respect for the one who will make out in the change room of a public business?” I let out a laugh. “Hardly respectable.”

“Hmm.”

“Well, you have me here for my opinions, right?”

Jack faced in the direction of the one-way mirror but gave me a sideways glance.

I continued knowing what I had to say applied to my promiscuous affair but dismissed its implication. “How could anyone have respect for women who cheat on their husbands? They’ve made vows, whereas the single, promiscuous woman is only accountable to herself.”

“He did bury Nina Harris with her ring.”

“Maybe that factors into the equation?” My attention went to Keyes. He sat there staring in our direction as if he was able to see us. “Why did you push him so hard? We could still be in there.”

Jack pulled the cigarette from his mouth. “Keyes is a narcissist. I sized him up as one the first time we met. He takes pride in running the gym, in being a father, in being in good shape.”

“Nothing wrong with those things.”

“But he also needs to be heard and to be in control. I pushed him because I didn’t see him pushing that control on to anyone else, even a lawyer.”

I didn’t say the words,
seems you were wrong in this case
, but it took all my self-control. I didn’t have any left to hold back the question about Jack’s personal life. I cleared my throat. “You have a kid?”

He bobbed his head toward the glass. “Turns out I was right.”

Keyes was motioning for us to go back.

“You have a kid?” My repeated question fell to Jack’s back as he already cleared the doorway, headed to the interrogation room.

I’ll be damned.

“You’re waiving a lawyer then?”

Jack slipped into the chair across from Keyes.

I took up my position in the corner of the room again.

“Just don’t go accusing me of things.”

“I can’t promise that.” Jack took the pile of photos Keyes had stacked, flipped them over, and laid them back out again.

“No. God, please don’t do that.” Keyes put a hand over the photo closest to him.

“Why did you kill your wife?”

“See?  You’re accusing me again. Stop doing that. Fuck!” Keyes swiped a hand through his hair. “I would never have touched a hair on her fuckin’ head! Ever! I loved her. We had a child together. We were happy.”

“Until she had an affair.”

Keyes shook his head. “She didn’t…well, if she did, I didn’t know about it. She was a great actress.”

“You weren’t around all the—”

Jack’s cell rang.

“I don’t know, all right? Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t, but I didn’t kill her.”

Jack read his caller’s identity and held up a finger to Keyes. “Harper.”

Less than a second later, he was on his feet, his phone pressed to his ear, and I was following him out the door.

“Where do you think you’re going? Are you just going to leave me here?” Keyes called out.

I ignored Keyes and kept up with Jack. The odd word from his phone conversation was making it through.

The case just took another turn.