Before He Preys

She wasn’t sure why, but she left out the instructions to meet him in the parking garage. If she was being honest with herself, something about that didn’t sit well with her. Still, she grabbed a bowl from the cabinets, spooned some of Ellington’s dinner into it, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Both of them could tell that it felt mechanical and forced.

“Keep me posted,” Ellington said. “And let me know if you need anything.”

“Of course,” she said.

Realizing she hadn’t even yet removed her holster and Glock, she headed directly for the door. And it wasn’t until she was back out into the hallway and heading for her car that she realized that she was actually quite relieved to have been called away.

***

She had to admit that it felt a little cliché to be slowly creeping along Level 2 of the parking garage across from headquarters. Meeting in parking garages was the stuff of bad TV cop dramas. And in those dramas, shady parking garage meetings usually led to drama of some kind or another.

She spotted McGrath’s car and parked her own car a few spaces away. She locked up and strolled down to where McGrath was waiting. Without any formal invitation to do so, she walked to the passenger side door, opened it, and climbed in.

“Okay,” she said. “The secrecy is killing me. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong per se,” McGrath said. “But we’ve got a case about an hour or so away in a little town called Kingsville. You know it?”

“Heard of it, but never been there.”

“It’s about as rural as you can imagine, tucked away in the last stretch of backwoods before all of the commotion and interstates of DC take over,” McGrath said. “But it actually might not be a case at all. That’s what I need you to go figure out.”

“Okay,” she said. “But why couldn’t we have this meeting in your office?”

“Because the victim is the deputy director’s nephew. Twenty-two years old. It looks like someone tossed him from a bridge. The local PD in Kingsville say it’s probably just a suicide, but Deputy Director Wilmoth wants to make sure.”

“Does he have any reason to believe it was a murder?” she asked.

“Well, it’s the second body that’s been found at the bottom of that bridge in the last four days. It probably is a suicide if you want my opinion. But I had the order passed down to me about an hour ago, straight from Director Wilmoth. He wants to know for sure. He also wants to be informed as soon as possible and he wants it kept quiet. Hence the request to meet with me here rather than in my office. If anyone saw you and I meeting after hours, they’d assume it was about what is going on with Ellington or that I had you on some special assignment.”

“So…go to Kingsville, figure out if this was a suicide or murder, and then report back?”

“Yes. And because of recent events with Ellington, you’ll be flying solo. Which shouldn’t be an issue as I expect you’ll be back late tonight with news that it was a suicide.”

“Understood. When do I leave?”

“Now,” he said. “No time like the present, right?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Mackenzie discovered that McGrath had not been exaggerating when he had described Kingsville, Virginia, as backwoods. It was a little town that, in terms of identity, was tucked somewhere between Deliverance and Amityville. It had a creepy rural vibe to it but with the small-town rustic charm of what most people likely expected of smaller southern towns.

Night had completely fallen by the time she arrived at the crime scene. The bridge came into view slowly as she carefully drove her car down a thin gravel road. The road itself was not a state-maintained road yet was also not completely closed off to the public. However, when she closed in to less than fifty yards of the bridge, she saw that the Kingsville PD had put up a row of sawhorses to keep anyone from going any farther.

She parked alongside a few local police cars and then stepped out into the night. A few spotlights had been set up, all shining down the steep bank to the right side of the bridge. As she approached the drop-off, a young-looking policeman stepped out of one of the cars.

“You Agent White?” the man asked, his southern accent cutting into her like a razor.

“I am,” she answered.

“Okay. You might find it easier to walk across the bridge and go down the other side of the embankment. This side is steep as hell.”

Thankful for the tip, Mackenzie walked across the bridge. She took out her little Maglite and inspected the area as she crossed. The bridge was quite old, surely having long ago been shut down for any sort of practical use. She knew that there were many bridges scattered across Virginia and West Virginia that were very similar to this one. This bridge, called Miller Moon Bridge according to the basic research she’d managed to do on Google during traffic-light stops along the way, had been standing since 1910 and shut down for public use in 1969. And while that was the only information she’d been able to get on the location, her current investigation was pulling out more details.

There wasn’t much graffiti along the bridge, but the amount of litter was noticeable. Beer bottles, soda cans, and empty bags of chips were tossed to the edges of the bridge, pushed against the metal edging that supported the iron rails. The bridge wasn’t very long at all; it was around seventy-five yards, just long enough to span over the steep embankments and the river below. It felt sturdy under her feet but the very structure of it was almost feeble in a way. She was very aware that she was walking on wooden boards and support beams nearly two hundred feet in the air.

She made her way to the end of the bridge, finding that the police officer had been right. The land was much more manageable on this other side. With the help of the Maglite, she saw a beaten path that wound through the high grass. The embankment went down at close to a ninety-degree angle but there were patches of ground and rocks jutting out here and there that made the descent quite easy.

“Hold on a minute,” a man’s voice said from below. Mackenzie glanced forward, toward the glare of the spotlights, and saw a shadow emerging and coming her way. “Who’s there?” the man asked.

“Mackenzie White, FBI,” she said, reaching for her ID.

The shadow’s owner came into view moments later. He was an older man with a huge bushy beard. He was wearing a police uniform, the badge over his breast indicating that he was Kingsville’s sheriff. Behind him, she could see the figures of four other officers. One of them was taking pictures and moving slowly in the shadows.

“Oh, wow,” he said. “That was quick.” He waited for Mackenzie to draw closer and then extended his hand. He gave her a hearty handshake and said, “I’m Sheriff Tate. Good to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Mackenzie said as she reached the end of the embankment and found herself on flat land.

She took a moment to take in the scene, expertly illuminated by the spotlights that had been set up along the sides of the embankment. The first thing Mackenzie noticed was that the river wasn’t much of a river at all – not in the location beneath Miller Moon Bridge, anyway. There were what looked like a few meandering puddles of stagnant water hugging the sides and sharp edges of rocks and large boulders that took up the area the river should have passed through.

One of the boulders among the rubble was massive, easily the size of two cars. Splayed out on top of this boulder was a body. The right arm was clearly broken, bent impossibly beneath the remainder of the body. A stream of blood was trailing down the boulder, mostly dried but still wet enough to seem as if it was still flowing.

“Hell of a sight, ain’t it?” Tate asked, standing beside her.

“Yes, it is. What can you tell me for sure at the moment?”

“Well, the victim is a twenty-two-year-old male. Kenny Skinner. As I understand it, he’s related to someone higher up on your ladder.”

“Yes. The nephew of the FBI’s deputy director. How many men out here currently know that?”

“Just me and my deputy,” Tate said. “We already spoke with your pals in Washington. We know this needs to be kept quiet.”

“Thanks,” Mackenzie said. “I understand there was another body discovered here a few days ago?”

“Three mornings ago, yeah,” Tate said. “A woman named Malory Thomas.”

“Any signs of foul play?”

“Well, she was naked. And her clothes were found up there on the bridge. Other than that, there was nothing. It was assumed to be just another suicide.”

“You get many of those around here?”

“Yeah,” Tate said with a nervous smile. “You could say that. Three years ago, six people killed themselves by jumping off of this fucking bridge. It was some kind of record per location for the state of Virginia. The year after that, there were three. Last year, it was five.”

“Were they all locals?” Mackenzie asked.

“No. Out of those fourteen people, only four living within a fifty-mile radius.”

“And to your knowledge, is there maybe some sort of urban legend or reasoning behind these people taking their lives off of this bridge?”