Before he Kills

She reached out, terrified, but drawn in like a magnet.

Suddenly, he turned and stared at her, still dead.

Mackenzie screamed.

Mackenzie opened her eyes and looked around the room in a glare of confusion. The case files were in her lap, spread out. Zack was sleeping beside her, his back still to her. She took a deep breath, wiping the sweat from her brow. It was just a dream.

And then she heard the creak.

Mackenzie froze. She looked toward the bedroom door and slowly got out of bed. She’d heard the weak floorboard in the living room creaking, a sound that she had only ever heard when someone was walking in the living room. Sure, she had been asleep and in the midst of a nightmare, but she had heard it.

Hadn’t she?

She got out of bed and grabbed her service pistol from the top of her dresser where it sat by her badge and small purse. She quietly angled herself around the doorframe and walked out into the hallway. The ambient glow of streetlights filtered in through the living room blinds, revealing an empty room.

She stepped into the room, the gun held in an offensive position. Every gut instinct told her that there was no one there, but she still felt shaken. She knew she’d heard the floorboards creaking. She walked to that area of the living room, just in front of the coffee table, and heard it creak.

Out of nowhere, the image of Hailey Lizbrook crossed her mind. She saw the lashes on the woman’s back and the prints in the dirt. She shuddered. She looked dumbly down to the gun in her hands and tried to remember the last time a case had ever gotten to her this badly. What the hell had she been thinking? That the killer had been here in her living room, sneaking up on her?

Irritated, Mackenzie headed back to the bedroom. She quietly placed the gun back on top of the dresser and went to her side of the bed.

Still feeling slightly spooked and with the remnants of her dream still floating in her head, Mackenzie lay back down. She closed her eyes and tried to find sleep again.

But she knew it would be a hard time coming. She was plagued, she knew, by the living and the dead.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mackenzie couldn’t remember a time when the station had been so chaotic. The first thing she saw when she walked through the front doors was Nancy rushing down the hallway to someone’s office. She’d never seen Nancy move so quickly. Beyond that, there were anxious looks on the faces of every officer she passed on her way to the conference room.

It looked like it was going to be an eventful morning. There was a tension in the air that reminded her of the thickness of the atmosphere just before a bad summer storm.

She’d felt some of that tension herself, even before she left her house. She’d gotten the first call at 7:30, informing her that they would be moving on the lead within hours. Apparently, while she’d been sleeping, the lead she had managed to pull out of Kevin had turned out to be a very promising one. A warrant was being acquired and a plan was being put into place. One thing had already been established, though: Nelson wanted her and Porter to bring the suspect in.

The ten minutes she spent in the station was a whirlwind. While she poured a cup of coffee, Nelson was barking orders at everyone while Porter sat solemnly in a chair at the conference table. Porter looked like a pouting child looking for any attention he could get. She knew it must be eating at him that this lead had come from a boy that Mackenzie had spoken with – a boy that he had been prepared to walk away from.

Mackenzie and Porter were given the lead, and two other cars were assigned to fall in behind them to assist as needed. It was the fourth time in her career that she had been tasked with such a takedown, and the rush of adrenaline never got old. Despite the surge of energy coursing through her, Mackenzie remained calm and collected. She walked out of the conference room with poise and confidence, starting to get the feeling that this was now her case, no matter how badly Porter wanted it.

On her way out, Nelson approached her and took her softly by the arm.

“White, let me talk to you for a second, will you?”

He led her to the side, guiding her into the copy room before she could answer. He looked around conspiratorially, making sure no one was within hearing distance. When he was sure they were safe, he looked at her in a way that made her wonder if she had done something wrong.

“Look,” Nelson said, “Porter came to me last night and asked to be reassigned. I flat out told him no. I also told him he’d be stupid to drop out of this case right now. Do you know why he wanted to be reassigned?”

“He thinks I stepped on his toes last night,” Mackenzie said. “But it was clear that the kids weren’t responding to him and he wasn’t going to try hard to get through to them.”

“Oh, you don’t have to explain it to me,” Nelson said. “I think you did a damn good job with that oldest kid. The kid even told some of the other guys that showed up – including the social services guys – that he really liked you. I just wanted to let you know that Porter is up in arms today. If he gives you any shit, let me know. But I don’t think he will. While he’s not a big fan of yours, he all but told me that he respects the hell out of you. But that stays between you and me. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Mackenzie said, surprised at the sudden support and encouragement.

“All right then,” Nelson said, clapping her lightly on the back. “Go get our guy.”

With that, Mackenzie headed out to the parking lot where Porter was already sitting behind the wheel of their car. He gave her a what the hell is taking so long sort of look as she went hurrying to the car. The moment she was in, Porter pulled out of the parking spot before Mackenzie had even closed the door all the way.

“I take it you got the full report on our guy this morning?” Porter asked as he pulled out onto the highway. Two other cars pulled out behind them, carrying Nelson and four other officers as backup if needed.

“I did,” Mackenzie said. “Clive Traylor, a forty-one-year-old registered sex offender. Spent six months in prison for assault on a woman in 2006. He currently works at a local pharmacy but he also does some woodwork out of a small shed on his property.”

“Ah, you must have missed the last memo Nancy sent out,” Porter said.

“Did I?” she asked. “What did I miss?”

“The bastard has several wooden poles cut out behind his shed. Intel shows that they’re just about the same size as the one we found out in that cornfield.”

Mackenzie scrolled through her e-mails on her phone and saw that Nancy had sent the memo out less than ten minutes ago.

“Sounds like our guy, then,” she said.

“Damn right,” Porter said. He was speaking like a robot, like he had been programmed to say certain things. He did not look over at her a single time. It was clear that he was pissed, but that was okay with Mackenzie. As long as he put that anger and determination into bringing the suspect down, she couldn’t care less.

“I’ll go ahead and kick the elephant out of the car,” Porter said. “It pissed me off bad when you took over last night. But I’ll be damned if you didn’t work some kind of miracle on that kid. You’re sharper than I give you credit for. I’ll admit that. But the disrespect…”

He trailed off here, as if he wasn’t sure how to finish the statement. Mackenzie said nothing in response. She simply looked ahead and tried to digest the fact that she had just received what could almost be considered compliments from two very unlikely sources in the last fifteen minutes.

She suddenly felt that this could be a very good day. Hopefully, by the end of the day, they’d bring in the man responsible for the death of Hailey Lizbrook and several other unresolved murders over the last twenty years. If that was the reward, she could certainly tolerate Porter’s sour mood.

*

Mackenzie looked out and felt depressed as she watched the neighborhoods change before her eyes as Porter drove into the more derelict suburbs of Omaha. Well-to-do subdivisions gave way to low-rent apartment complexes which then faded away into seedier neighborhoods.

Soon enough they reached Clive Traylor’s neighborhood, consisting of lower-income houses sitting in mostly dead lawns, punctuated with crooked mailboxes along the street. The rows and rows of houses never seemed to end, each one looking less cared for than the next. She did not know what was more depressing to her: their neglected state, or the numbing monotony.

Clive’s block was quiet, and as they turned down it, Mackenzie felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. She sat up involuntarily, readying herself to confront a murderer.

According to the surveillance team who had been watching over the property since 3 AM, Traylor was still at home. He was not due to clock in at work until one o’clock.

Porter slowed their car as he drove further up the street and parked directly in front of Traylor’s house. He then looked to Mackenzie for the first time that morning. He looked a little on edge. She realized she must have looked the same. And yet, despite their differences, Mackenzie still felt safe walking into potential danger with him. Sexist hard-ass or not, the man had a seasoned record and knew what he was doing most of the time.

“You ready?” Porter asked her.

She nodded and pulled the mic from the dashboard radio unit.

“This is White,” she said into the mic. “We’re ready to head in on your word.”

“Go,” came Nelson’s simple reply.

Mackenzie and Porter got out of the car slowly, not wanting to give Traylor any cause for alarm if he happened to look out the window to see two strangers walking up his lawn. Porter took the lead as they walked up the rickety porch steps. The porch was covered in flaked white paint and the shells of countless dead insects. Mackenzie felt herself tensing up, preparing. What would she do when she saw the face of the man who had murdered those women?