Before He Takes

CHAPTER SEVEN

Filled with Chinese food and an abundance of information on the three abductees, Mackenzie and Ellington left the Bent Creek PD at 9:15. The only motel in town—a Motel 6 that looked like it hadn’t been painted, decorated, or looked at twice since the ’80s—was five minutes away. It was no surprise at all to find two vacant rooms, which they booked for the night.

When they left the office and stepped back out into the night, Mackenzie looked around the parking lot. Bent Creek truly was a very small town. It was so small, in fact, that the business owners apparently worked together to ensure an efficient use of space. This was evident in the fact that a small bar sat on the other side of the parking lot from the Motel 6. It made sense, Mackenzie thought. Anyone that needed to stay in a motel in Bent Creek was likely going to need a drink.

She certainly could go for one.

Ellington patted her on the back and started in that direction. “Drinks are on me,” he said.

She was starting to enjoy the dry and rather basic humor that existed between them. They both knew that there was a shifting awkwardness between them but it had been buried. To get around it, they had created a tentative friendship based on their jobs—jobs that insisted they think logically and approach things with a no-nonsense attitude. So far, it was working quite well.

She joined him as they crossed the parking lot and when they stepped inside the bar—unoriginally named Bent Creek Bar—the gloom of the night was replaced by a smoky and dank sort of twilight that only existed in small-town bars and honkytonks. An old Travis Tritt song was playing on a dusty jukebox in the corner as they took a seat at the edge of the bar. They both ordered beers and, as if that staple of a bar visit had been their cue, Ellington somehow went straight back into work mode.

“I think those offshoot roads off of State Road 14 are worth looking into,” he said.

“Same here,” she said. “I find it odd that it wasn’t mentioned in any of the copious notes the police put up on that board.”

“Maybe they just know the geography of the place better than we do,” Ellington suggested. “For all we know, they could just be little dirt tracks that dead end. Any reason you didn’t ask about them while you were running the conference room?”

“I almost did,” she said. “But they’d put it all together so well…I didn’t want to step on any toes. This whole thing of a cooperative police department bending over backwards for us is new to me. I’ll get to it tomorrow. If it was crucial or important, they’ve either already checked them or they would have at least mentioned it to us.”

Ellington nodded and took a gulp of his beer. “Hell, I nearly forgot,” he said. “I was sorry as hell to hear about Bryers. I only worked with him a few times and it wasn’t in a close capacity. But he seemed to be a genuinely nice man. One hell of an agent, too, from what I hear.”

“Yeah, he was pretty awesome,” Mackenzie said.

“I don’t know if you’d want to know this or not,” Ellington said, “but there was quite a bit of controversy about pairing you with him when you came in. Bryers was something of a hot commodity. One of the best. But when the idea was given to him, he was all for it. I think deep down, he always wanted to be a mentor. And I think he got a good one for his first try.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But I don’t quite feel as if I’ve proven myself just yet.”

“Why not?”

“Well…I don’t know. Maybe it will hit me when I can wrap a case without getting McGrath pissed off at me over some detail or another.”

“He only does it because he expects so much out of you. You came in like this fuse on a stick of dynamite that had already been lit.”

“Is that why he has me partnering with you right now?”

“No. I think he just wanted me on this because of my connection with the Omaha field office. And between you and me and no one else, he wants you to succeed on this one. He wants you to knock it out of the park. With me on board, you won’t be able to resort to one of your patented solo endings that you’re so prone to.”

She wanted to argue this point but she knew he was right. So instead, she drank from her beer. The jukebox was now churning out Bryan Adams and somehow, she was ordering her second beer.

“So tell me,” Mackenzie said. “If I wasn’t on this one with you, how would you be handling it? What approaches?”

“Same as you. Working closely with the PD and trying to make friends. Taking notes, coming up with theories.”

“And do you have any?” she asked.

“None that you didn’t already nail in that conference room. I’m thinking we’re onto something…thinking of this guy as a collector of sorts. A bashful loner. I feel pretty safe in saying he’s not getting these women just to kill them. I think you’re exactly right on all those points.”

“The thing that gets under my skin,” Mackenzie said, “is thinking of all of the other reasons he would be kidnapping and collecting women.”

“Did you notice that Sheriff Bateman kept a female officer in the room the whole time?” Ellington asked.

“Yeah. Roberts. I assumed it was to keep the conversation centered on the facts and not speculations. Speculations regarding why the suspect would be keeping women. Talking about rape and sexual abuse is a little easier when there isn’t a woman around.”

“That kind of stuff bother you?” Ellington asked.

“It used to. Sadly, I’ve gotten almost jaded about it. It doesn’t bother me anymore.” This wasn’t one hundred percent true, but she didn’t want Ellington to know it. The truth of the matter was that it was often things like these that drove her to be the absolute best she could be.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” he asked. “That part of your humanity that sort of becomes numb to things like this?”

“Yeah, it does,” she said. She hid herself behind her beer for a moment, a little shocked that Ellington had just taken such a step. It had been a small step for him but it also showed a degree of vulnerability.

She finished her beer and slid it to the edge of the bar. When the bartender came over, she waved him off. “I’m good,” she said. Then, turning to Ellington, she said: “You said you were paying, right?”

“Yeah, I got it. Hold on a second and I’ll walk you to your room.”

The slight excitement she felt at this comment was embarrassing. To stop it in its tracks before she could even entertain it, she shook her head. “Not necessary,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know you can,” he said, sliding his own empty glass toward the edge of the bar. “Another for me,” he told the bartender.

Mackenzie waved to him as she made her way out. As she walked across the parking lot, that small and eager part of her couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to walk back to the motel with Ellington by her side, pushed forward by the uncertainty that would await them once the doors were closed and the blinds were drawn.

***

It took less than twenty minutes for the sting of lust to subside. As usual, she used work to distract herself from such lures. She opened up her laptop and went directly to her e-mail. There, she found several e-mails that had been sent to her by the Bent Creek PD over the last half a day or so—just another way they were starting to spoil her, really.

They had provided maps of the area, the only four missing persons reports within the area over the last ten years, the traffic analysis conducted by the state of Iowa in 2012, and even a list of all arrests made in the last five years that involved subjects with a history of assault. Mackenzie pored through it all, taking a bit of extra time to look at the four missing persons cases.

Two of them were assumed to have been runaways and after reading the reports, Mackenzie agreed. They could both be used as a template for angst-ridden teenagers who were tired of small-town life, leaving home earlier than their parents would have liked. One of them was a fourteen-year-old girl who had actually contacted her family two years ago to let them know she was living quite comfortably in Los Angeles.

The other two were a little harder to understand, though. One case involved a ten-year-old boy who had been abducted from a church playground. He’d been missing for three hours before anyone even raised much of a fuss about it. Local gossip mills suggested it was the grandmother who took him because of a hairy family situation. The family drama, plus the gender and age of the victim, made Mackenzie doubt there was any connection to the current kidnappings.

The fourth case was more promising but still seemed a little thin. The first red flag was that it involved a car accident. In 2009, Sam and Vicki McCauley had been run off of the road during an ice storm. When police and the ambulance arrived, Sam was barely alive and died on the way to the hospital. He had begged to know how his wife was. From what they could tell, Vicki McCauley had been thrown from the vehicle, but her body had never been found.

Mackenzie looked through the report twice and could not find any descriptions of what had caused the car to leave the road. The term icy road conditions was used several times and while that was a good reason, Mackenzie thought it might be a good idea to go deeper. She went through the report several times and then reread Delores Manning’s report. The fact that there was a car accident of some kind seemed to be the only connection between the two.

She then shifted gears and tried to weave the current three victims into those scenarios. It was nearly impossible, though. The two unexplained cases were assumed runaways and while both were female, it left far too many options open. More than that, the three current victims were taken from their cars. Maybe because being stranded on the road was a fairly common occurrence. It was a far cry from nabbing a teenage runaway. It simply didn’t fit.

This guy doesn’t want runaways or troubled teens that storm out to get a rise out of mom and dad. He’s going after women. Women that are, for some reason or another, out in their cars at night. Maybe he realizes the hope that the apparent kind stranger instills in people—women especially.

On the flip side of that, though, was the fact that she knew most women would assume the worst of a strange man on the side of the road. Especially when their cars were busted and it was dark.

Maybe they know him, then…

That seemed like a stretch, too. From the information they had gathered from Tammy and Rita Manning, Delores likely didn’t know anyone in Bent Creek.

She went back to the McCauleys’ case, mainly because it was the only one with even the thinnest thread of similarity to it. She pulled her e-mail back up and opened the most recent mail from the Bent Creek PD. She replied to it and wrote: