Silent Graves (24 page)

Chapter 42

 “Rise and shine!” Jack’s voice was coming over the answering machine on the main level, and I could hear him upstairs.

I rolled over, and the sheets were wrapped around me as a cocoon. I struggled to break free.

“Son of a bitch.” I let the expletive go and finally pulled the covers off. My eyes felt like they held grits of sandpaper. I could barely open them to see the clock.

“Seven a.m.” I let my head drop back onto the pillow.

I should have thought the FBI thing through more—it wasn’t a standard eight to five job.

These days it usually wasn’t a problem to wake up, but I didn’t crawl into bed until after two a.m. That fault was entirely mine, although, I would like to blame the women in my life for keeping me up and for torturing my good sense into oblivion.

Who the hell needs this thing called love anyhow?
I for one was done with it.

I pulled my cell from the nightstand. Three missed calls. It explained why he had moved on to my home phone.

I heard it, and it took a while to make sense of it. The doorbell.

Shit!

I gathered my pants from the floor and slipped on a t-shirt that was also there but stopped when I noticed my reflection in the mirror. I couldn’t answer the door like this. I had to be ready to go.

 “Come on. Answer. I know you’re in there.” Jack’s voice came over the answering machine.

I balled my fists and found my center—something I was desperately trying to do since Deb left. Most times I wondered if I had a central point from which to derive strength.

“Hurry up Kid. We don’t have all day.” I heard a distinct click. Jack had hung up, but he would expect me at the door in seconds.

I slipped on a pair of dress pants and a white collared shirt. I ran the comb through my red hair, momentarily cursing it for my temper, before racing down the stairs.

“Well, it’s about time you answered the door.” Jack stood on my steps with a cigarette perched in his lips. Beyond him, at the curb, Paige and Zachery were in the SUV. They both faced my house.

“Just wanted to look good for you.” I smiled.

“Hmm.”

“What, I don’t look good? And after all the extra effort I put in.”

Jack’s eyes snapped to mine, and he exhaled a puff of cigarette heavenward. He was the human equivalent of a chimney, and there was always a fire. “We have a lead.”

He couldn’t keep her here forever, but it was great having her in his home. When he was gifted the house he had decided he could rise above his past. Too bad it had come barreling down after him. It ravaged him and conquered him, as a lion does its prey. He had no opportunity to flee, no means of escape. It captured him, and it would take him down. He accepted this fate, but he wouldn’t leave without at least a menial effort at proving himself.

Her eyes fluttered open. They widened shortly afterward.

“You are safe.” He brushed a hand across her forehead, sweat glistened there. “We are finally together. We will be forever.”

“Who—”

“Hush now. It is time we—”

Kill her!

Take off her head!

She destroyed you!

He pulled back from her and shook his head. The voice still came to him, haunting him.

Do it now!

“It’s time we made—”

Off with her head!

“Shut up! Just shut up!” He paced around the fold-out bed where she was lying.

Her eyes followed him as he moved, but his attention was on that voice—the one that never shut up.

“We made what?”

Her voice broke through the nightmare that lived in his mind which controlled him like a puppet. He would come out of this. He would return to a normal life. She—His Angel—would help him.

He stopped pacing and bent over. “Time we made love again.” The phrase make love always came foreign to him, but he hoped, with repetition, he would come to experience it.

Tears seeped from her eyes. “Please don’t do this to me. Please.”

“You don’t want my love? We are destined to be.”

You are a loser!

She cried. It stole her breath and heaves racked her body.

“I would never hurt you.” He caressed both her breasts. They were round and firm. She wanted him as much as he craved her. “You remember when we had champagne in the afternoon?”

“What do you want? Do you want money?” She pulled on her wrists. They were secured to the bed frame above her head and didn’t give her much leeway.

“Why try to escape when you know our love is meant to be? Why leave?”

Her eyes pinched shut and her body became rigid. She had submitted herself to his will.

He unfastened his belt buckle and let his pants fall to the floor. He stepped out of his boxers and made his way to the bed, coming up the end and affording himself the full view of her soft womanhood, open and in want.

“Please…don’t…do this.” Her words broke through panting breaths.

It confirmed that she yearned for him too. She craved more than his touch—she hungered for his possession. He moved up the bed and positioned himself over her. Her smell reached his nose, and he inhaled appreciatively. Her desire was confirmed.

“Nadia got the employment records from Fitness Guru. She’s working on the rest.” Paige filled me in once I got into the back of the SUV with her. “There’s one man of interest. His name is Chad Holmes.”

“And we are interested in him why?” I took the coffee Zachery extended from the passenger seat and nodded with appreciation.

“Because he was let go two weeks ago from Fitness Guru. Keyes confirmed the reason was he had become unpredictable. He would show up for some classes and not others.”

“Classes?”

“He taught cycle class there.”

“It would align with what we’ve said about him fitting in and being attractive to the women he abducts,” Zachery said.

“Very true. Was he always this way for Keyes, or did it begin recently?” I asked. “How long did he work there?”

“Guess he has had issues off and on. He’s worked there for over six years. Keyes is digging up his resume as we speak, but from what he remembers his career references were all for brief stints, nothing substantial there,” Paige said.

“That would put him there before Leslie disappeared. Keyes remembers all that about his resume?”

“He said that it was one thing that made him leery of hiring Holmes in the first place.”

“Hmm.” I uttered the expression, and it had everyone looking at me, including Jack, who peered into the rearview mirror.

I cracked the lid on the to-go cup and drained back some coffee. I had a feeling it was going to be a long day, and this might be the last time I’d get a coffee. “Did Keyes remember conducting any reference checks? Calling these places up?”

Paige shook her head. “Said he didn’t have time. They needed someone fast.”

“Does the guy have a record?”

“Nope.”

“And we’re certain this could be our guy?”

“There’s only one way to find out Pending,” Zachery said.

Jack pulled the SUV into an older, established neighborhood.

“Doesn’t look like the house of an unraveling psychopath,” I said, taking in the grounds, which were well maintained. The garden beds had flowering perennials, and the walkway to the front door looked swept. Heavy drapes were drawn in the front window. “This place is nowhere near where the remains of Harris or Rogers were found.”

“Minor details,” Zachery said.

“How are we going to approach this?”

Jack turned off the ignition and spoke over his shoulder. “You and I are going to ring the doorbell.”

He really had a thing with ringing doorbells today. I buried my sour expression behind the lip of the cup.

Chapter 43

 
“You give people five seconds to answer the door. After that, it becomes suspicious.”

I glanced at Jack. “Five seconds? You must have been ready to break down my door.”

“No, but I was right, wasn’t I.”

“Right about what?”

“The fact that you stayed up too late and slept through your alarm—again. You have a problem with alarm clocks. I’ll get you one for Christmas.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be honored I made his shopping list or insulted by the item I would be getting.

“Second ring. Never a good—”

The door cracked open to a man in his mid-twenties. His hair was slightly disheveled as if we had pulled him from bed. In contrast, his eyes were alert. His hair was gray, despite his age. He studied both Jack and me in less than a second and looked past us, I assumed to the SUV in his driveway and the two other people who occupied it.

“We’re FBI Special Agents Harper and Fisher,” Jack said. “You’re Chad Holmes.”

“Yeah.” His eyes wouldn’t stay focused on us. “What do you want with me?”

“Do you have a few minutes?” Jack didn’t pose the request as a proposition that insinuated a choice. He moved toward the man which caused him to step back into the house.

Chad shut the door when we were all inside. He tightly folded his arms.

“I’m not sure what you…I stick to myself.” Chad walked backward into the living room.

We followed.

I did a visual swoop of the area. Everything had its place. There wasn’t a sign of dust anywhere. This didn’t fit with the profile of our unsub, who was apparently falling apart, but it did match the condition of Keyes’s cabin. The furniture was from a big-box store but modest and fairly new looking. There was a large flat screen TV that took up residence at one end of the room.

“We have a few questions for you.” Jack didn’t wait for the invitation to take a seat but lowered onto a nearby sofa.

I didn’t follow his lead but walked around the edge of the room toward a staircase that led to an upper floor.

“I stick to myself.” Chad repeated.

I detected strain to his voice. He came at me in a few long strides. Inches from my face, he studied my eyes, scanning left to right, right to left.

“What are you doing? What are you looking for?”

I lifted my shoulders. “Nothing really.”

“Good then, ’cause you won’t find anything.”

The exhale of
hmm
burned to eject from the back of my throat. I fought not giving birth to my mentor’s audible expulsion of thought. There was one thing Chad didn’t realize—when he studied my eyes, I studied his in return. He was hiding something, but whether it was the abduction and murder of many women, I wasn’t sure. Yet.

I resumed walking and went into the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it was modest and kept clean and tidy. No dishes, clean or dirty, were in the sink or on any counters. Everything, again, had its place. I was turning around to come back into the living room when I noticed the door to the right of kitchen. It could be a pantry, but I didn’t think it was. I twisted the knob and cracked the door slightly when Chad put a hand on mine.

“You’re not going to snoop…what am I guilty…I don’t see a warrant.”

We stood there for a few seconds, frozen in place, watching each other closely, trying to anticipate the next move. I let go of the handle.

“No, you’re right.” I passed him a fake smile and went back to the living room. I remained standing.

Chad stood at the edge of the room. “I think it’s time for you guys to leave.”

“Just a few questions.” Jack gestured across to a chair.

“One minute only. I have things I have to do today.” Chad dropped down on the arm of the chair. His hand slapped his thigh in a soft, even rhythm.

Tappity, tap. Tappity, tap.

“You worked for Fitness Guru up until recently,” Jack said.

“Yeah, until they—I was the best trainer they had.” Chad shook his head. “Stupid, stupid mistake…they lost their best employee. But there will be other jobs.”

“It seems you have held a lot of jobs.”

Anger flashed over Chad’s eyes. “I just haven’t found the right place. When I think I have…they don’t appreciate me. They don’t deserve me. Why are you here? I doubt it’s about…I remit my taxes.”

“That part’s the Internal Revenue Service, nothing to do with us. We’re here because these three women went to Fitness Guru.” Jack extended photos of Leslie Keyes, Sydney Poole, and Nina Harris. “Did you ever have contact with them?”

Chad remained quiet.

“I’d suggest you answer honestly. He can get pretty nasty if you piss him off,” I said.

Jack’s resultant condemnation burned as if a laser beam were aimed at the side of my head. I refused to let him know I sensed the chastisement.

“I knew this one.” Chad pointed to the picture of Leslie Keyes. “She was the owner’s wife.”

Neither Jack nor I interjected any comments. We wanted Chad to keep talking. If there were something in regards to her abduction that he was hiding, there was a chance it might slip out.

“She went missing, if I remember right, didn’t she? Well, it was really hard on all of us.”

“You were close to her?” Jack asked.

His question met with a shoulder shrug. “She was just really intelligent.”

“Intelligent? Most guys will say a girl’s got a great ass or a beautiful face.”

“See, she had that too. Leslie was the complete package.” He moved from the arm of the chair onto the cushion. “She had a way of making you smile even when you didn’t feel like it.”

“You had a thing for the boss’s wife?” I smiled at him, mischievously playing up on the allure while it was really laid as bait.

Chad nodded. “That’s probably the real reason Keyes fired me.”

“You worked there a long time after her disappearance,” Jack said. “I’m sure he never even knew about your attraction.”

“Oh, I think he did. He kept me close by to watch me.”

His words made me think back to the file when Leslie was first reported as missing. No one was named as a potential suspect in her disappearance. If Brad Keyes held any suspicion of Chad Holmes, why not mention it before now? It confirmed at least one thing—Holmes held an elevated opinion of himself.

“Do you know of anyone who could have abducted Leslie?” I asked.

Tappity, tap. Tappity, tap.

“She probably ran away to get free of Keyes. He didn’t treat her right.”

“He hit her? They had a child together.”

“Children do not a family make.” Chad brushed his one cheek against a shoulder. “Sorry, my love of literary art sometimes seizes me.”

Although I worked on writing a novel and considered myself to be somewhat influenced by the greats, his garble was nothing that I recognized. When I did a visual sweep of the house, there were no bookshelves. Even in the electronic age of e-readers, dedicated readers had paperbacks around, maybe a few hardcover books. I tucked this fact away.

“Well, thank you for your time.” I rose to my feet, and received a corrective glance from Jack who normally was the one to call an end to interrogations.

“Any time.”

“And don’t worry about getting up, we’ll let ourselves out.”

“What the hell do you think you just did in there?” Jack slammed the driver’s door. The energy emanating from him could have started a forest fire.

“We need to do more digging on that guy. Something is definitely not right with him.” I would defend that thought to the point of staking my career on it.

“He liked the woman. We have nothing more right now, and we don’t because you got your ego into the equation.”

Paige and Zachery turned their heads to follow our conversation.

“Ego? This has nothing to do with it. I’m not trying to prove my—”

“You’re always trying to prove yourself. It’s what you do.”

His words bit. Paige sank farther into the leather seat beside me.

“He had someone there with him.”

Jack adjusted the rearview mirror so it was focused on me.

“He spoke of his love of literary art, but there were no books in his house.”

“That you could see,” Jack said.

“That I could see. I suppose he could have them upstairs in an office or study. Maybe he reads in his bedroom.”

“Speculation. That’s all you have.”

“It’s a place to start and more than we’ve had so far, don’t you think?” Anger rose within and I feared I wouldn’t be able to tamp it down.

Jack put the car into gear. “You said he had someone there? How would you know that?”

“I heard a shower running on the second floor when I was standing at the base of the stairs.”

Jack stuck a lit cigarette in his mouth. “It could have been anyone.”

I let out a deep breath. “What do we know about our unsub? He’s egotistical—” I paused, half expecting Jack to comment on how I should recognize my trait in others. He didn’t. Now I was disciplining myself. “He’s attractive to women. He’s driven to prove himself. Those are just a few aspects. Chad ticks off each one of them. He has guilt, at least to some degree, over Leslie going missing. He said that Keyes kept him around to keep an eye on him, but that was Chad’s viewpoint, not Keyes’s. Not once has Keyes mentioned a concern with Chad when it came to his missing wife.” The words gave birth in a quick rush and sat in the open without comment for at least twenty seconds. “And did you notice how he talked? His sentences were fragmented.”

“That is one side effect of auditory hallucinations,” Zachery said.

“He never smiled either, even when talking about how wonderful Leslie was,” I added, knowing it was another strong indicator.

Jack inhaled from the cigarette, suctioning around it audibly, and the smoke was let out in a
puff
. “We’ll do more digging on this guy and go from there.”