Silent Graves (18 page)

“See,” he yelled at the voice.

You are a loser.

The voice carried through the long grass that rustled in the breeze.

He focused his scope on the female. Petite with red locks of hair that reached her shoulders. The gun holster she wore was large on her frame. She looked out over the field in his direction. She was older than his regular targets, but she was beautiful.

He put a hand to his cock and rubbed until it fed him to full erection. No one was around. He unzipped his pants, freeing himself, and finished it to conclusion.

Kill her!

Do it. Prove you’re a real man!

The tremors that took his body to climax relaxed, leaving him blanketed in warmth.

The voice was loud and demanded his attention. He would satisfy it too, but this time he wouldn’t do exactly as he was told—at least not yet.

Chapter 32

An officer led a handcuffed Keyes into the integration room. He took the cuffs off and pushed Keyes toward a chair.  The officer’s thought was clear in his eyes,
crucify the son of a bitch
.

Like before, Jack sat at the table, and I took up position in the corner of the room. The observer. Again.

“As you know, we searched the gym, your home, and your cabin,” Jack began.

“And you found nothing.”

“Actually, we didn’t find anything at the gym or your home initially, but we’re combing through them even closer. Your cabin gave us quite the find however.”

“What are you talking about?”

Jack slammed the flats of his hands onto the table. The action made Keyes jump and sit farther back. “Where is Sydney Poole?”

The plan was to push Keyes to a breaking point. While we questioned his guilt, he still needed to prove his innocence.

“What? I don’t know. What are you talking about?”

“Is she still alive?” Jack asked.

Keyes’s eyes blanked over.

Jack repeated his question, leaning across the table—his butt off the chair and his face inches from Keyes. “Poole. Is. She. Still. Alive?”

Keyes shook his head. “I…I don’t…”

“Simple question, simple answer. Last time I’m asking.”

Keyes’s eyes shot to me, but his gaze settled on Jack. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You wouldn’t know?”

“Why would I? I didn’t take those women!” Keyes’s face flushed a bright red.

The two men locked in eye contact, a battle of the wills as to who would back down first. I knew it wouldn’t be Jack.

“What did you find?” Keyes asked and turned away.

Jack kept his eyes on him a few seconds longer before retreating back to his side of the table. He opened up the file folder.

My stomach tossed, thinking about the photograph. If we leaned toward Keyes being innocent, I wondered why we’d put him through that. Jack must have agreed. He shut the file without taking anything out.

“What did you find?” Keyes repeated his question.

“We found remains of Amy Rogers in your cabin.”

“What? No. That’s…that’s not even possible.”

“Well, it was, and it is.”

“Where did you? This is crazy. I knew I should go up there more than I do.”

I pushed off the wall.

Evidence indicated that Keyes, or someone at least, held up regular attendance at the place. The cabin was kempt—no dust was on any of the furniture or floors. There were sexual fluids found on the sheets which, if not from recent activity, could have degraded beyond usefulness to a lab.

Jack told me a long time ago not to interrupt his interrogations unless it was for a damn good reason. In this case, I had to take a shot. “When was the last time you were there?”

I had expected Jack’s eyes to be full of reprimand, but, instead, I saw that he was impressed.

Keyes looked between the two of us and settled on me. “I don’t know. Years ago anyway. I tell you that.”

“Well, someone must take care of the property.”

“Yeah, it’s covered. I hire someone to empty the mailbox, cut the grass, etcetera.”

“Do they have a key for the cabin?”

“No.”

I found his response interesting, and it didn’t explain the tidy inside. “You said you were there years ago, but I think you know exactly when.” There was something in his eyes. I moved closer.

Keyes blinked rapidly. His eyes misted. “It was…” He swallowed hard. “It was not long after Leslie went missing, but I was starting to accept that she wasn’t coming back, that she wasn’t going to be found, that maybe she was even dead.” Any anger from earlier had abated and the man sat in front of us broken, with nothing more to lose. “I was lonely. I was depressed. Tristan was only a baby. He’d scream for his mother. I…I couldn’t give her to him.” He choked back tears, evidenced in the gruffness of his voice, the faraway gaze to his eyes, and the odd misalignment of his jaw as it slid right and left.

“You took women there?” I asked the question without judgment. Keyes was only a man, after all, and a man who had been undergoing a life-changing situation.

Keyes nodded.

“Did you take Amy Rogers recently?”

Keyes remained silent.

“We have to ask these questions.”

“No.” His face fell, his eyes focused down on the table. “I told you…”

“You said you were there not long after Leslie went missing. Did you go there often?”

“What? No?” Keyes swiped the flat of his hands down his cheeks, and wiped away tears. “You think I became a male whore when she died? That I escaped my child and had sex with a bunch of women at the cabin?”

“We never mentioned a bunch of women.”

Keyes slammed his hands on the table. “It was a figure of speech.”

“And you said she died. Do you know this for a fact?”

“Impossible. I’m trying to talk to you. I’ve been cooperative, and I’m not sure the hell why. Actually, I’ll tell you why. For Leslie. She’s the only reason I’m any semblance of a good person at all.”

“There was evidence of sexual activity found on the sheets in the bedroom.”

“Well, if it’s recent, it wouldn’t be from me. You said you found Amy Rogers there?”

“Part of her,” Jack corrected.

“Part of her? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Jack gestured toward me but addressed Keyes. “Answer the agent’s question.”

“Which one?”

“How did you know Leslie was dead?”

Keyes took a choppy, deep breath. “It was something I felt in the deepest parts of me. I’d have nightmares of her, screaming and calling out to me. I wanted to help. I tried to help, but my reach was just shy of contact.” A single tear slid down his cheek, and he didn’t move to wipe it. “I tried to go about my day-to-day life. Then one day I felt very dark and empty. I felt cold.”

Keyes studied our reactions to what he was saying. “I just knew I was alone. Well, alone with Tristan. I had to be strong for him, when I felt anything but. What’s the phrase, life goes on? It’s an easy mantra to preach, a little harder to accept.”

Keyes’s words hung in the room for a few seconds, and then he continued. “Whatever you need from me, I will give it to you. I want to find Leslie—even if it’s to give her a proper burial.” His last words had his voice constricting and sounding rough. “And if we can stop this from happening to other women.”

 “We’ll require your DNA,” Jack said.

“Consider it done.” He paused, seemingly unsure whether to continue. “I loved my wife, I still love her. I know what these other men are going through—an absolute nightmare. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”

Jack closed the file and rose. “We’ll get someone in here to swab your mouth. I’m sure you’ve already been contacted, but we’ll need the employment records at the gym.”

“Sure. No worries.”

“The warrant is in place—”

“That wasn’t necessary. There’s nothing to hide, and if this creep you’re looking for turns out to work there, I’ll kill him myself.”

“Hmm.”

Keyes passed a nervous glance to me as we left the room.

Chapter 33

I stood with Jack in the hallway outside of a conference room at headquarters, waiting for Kirk Rogers. We had debated providing notification at his place of work but thought it more beneficial to bring the man in. We also wanted more neutral territory, as opposed to Washington where his friend sat in the chief of police chair.

Kirk Rogers came toward us with another man in a pressed suit. The man was about the same age as Rogers—no older than his early thirties. His eyes were a dark brown and matched the color of his hair. He crossed his arms, shortening the sleeves of his suit to expose his shirt cuffs and designer watch.

“Did you find my wife?” Rogers asked.

I picked up on his efficient nature, which had been apparent from our first meeting. Besides skimming along in the wakes of his father’s empire, he had made his own waves in the industry. I thought of extending a hand, but Rogers wasn’t in a civil mood so I gestured him toward the room.

This was one aspect of the job I hated the most, and, with this case, I didn’t even have a full body to provide the widower for identification. We had a head—a body part no one would want to see severed from their loved one. A vision like that would change a person forever.

We sat around the table, and Rogers introduced the man with him. “This is Bruce. He’s my brother.”

Bruce poured a glass of water for Rogers and himself, then sat down.

Rogers nodded a thank you to him. “He’s also a lawyer.”

I didn’t really find it surprising that a man like Rogers had lawyers in the family or that he traveled with them.

The image of Amy’s head sitting in that toilet bowl knotted my stomach. Identification wasn’t necessary. We knew it was her. There was no way to go about this other than to come out with it, and Jack made it clear that he wanted me to handle this. Something about getting used to it.

“We found your wife,” I said.

“Where is she? Please tell me she’s alive.” His gaze faltered as he received the message from my eyes.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

Silence enveloped the room for a few seconds before Bruce broke it. “How? Where did you find her?” He reached an arm out to his brother.

Rogers pulled back and lifted a hand to stave off the act of affection.

Bruce, unaffected by Rogers’s reaction, set his focus on me for elaboration.

“She was found at a cabin outside of the city.”

“A cabin?” Rogers’s lashes were soaked with tears. He pinched the tip of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut.

“We know who the cabin belonged to, and we will find the one respons—”

“Save the speech. I’ve heard it on TV before. Is he under arrest? I want this son of a bitch to pay with his fuckin’ life. You hear me? I will testify in court. I will pay for the trial. Fuck, I’ll pay for the lethal injection.”

Jack’s facial features cut at sharp angles.

“We need you to trust us,” I said.

“Trust you?” Rogers let out a mock laugh, and it had Bruce placing a hand on his forearm again. Rogers didn’t dismiss the gesture.

“We’ll be in touch with you as the case progresses.” I hoped that would serve to pacify him for the moment.

“How did she die?”

“There will be an autopsy conducted to determine this.” I didn’t have the fortitude to dwell on the fact that a
full
autopsy would be impossible. “There is something you can help us with though. Do you have any close friends in your life that may have noticed, or should I say, thought, that you had problems in your marriage?”

“Why would anyone—”

“You’re a busy man Mr. Rogers. You have a large company to run. Someone could take that as you leaving your wife to live her own life separately. They may think she was lonely and neglected.”

“My Amy was the most spoiled bitch on the planet, and I mean that affectionately. She suited it just fine too. You know that. She had no problem spending my money, getting us involved with charity events and save the world type things. I went along. It’s good PR. She said I look great in a tux. You know women. When they want something, they sweet-talk you and either make you think it was your idea or make an irresistible offer.”

Part of Rogers’s statement sounded familiar, and I knew why. I hadn’t thought anything about it at the time. I scribbled it in my notepad to make sure I let Jack know after this meeting.

Jack came out of the meeting room at a fast pace, but I kept up. I touched his shoulder, and he stopped walking and turned around.

“When Poole came in to report his wife missing, I remembered something in the report that said she was involved with charity events. He said that he knew Rogers but only through these types of events. I didn’t think anything at the time, but now that we’re analyzing things from another angle, from the unsub being close to the husbands and getting to the wives that way, I think it matters now.”

“They knew each other and moved in the same circles.” Jack summarized what I brought to light.

“Yeah. Like I said before, we didn’t think it meant anything.”

“Rogers has a payroll for private investigators. We know this because he utilized them when his wife went missing. If he finds out that Keyes owns the cabin where she was found, he could be as good as dead. Do we still have him in holding?”

I dialed the PWPD and a few seconds later had my answer. “He was released about an hour ago.”

“We need to get to him. Now.”