Left To Die

After a moment, the static faded. Foucault tested the mic and then, peering across the room, his eyes slightly off-center—though Adele suspected on his screen, he was staring straight at her—he said, “Well, Agent Sharp? France will have you back. Will you come to Paris?”

“No,” said Adele. Immediately, she felt a jolt of worry. The words had come unbidden to her lips, summoned from deep within her, the residue of past decisions bubbling to the surface.

She couldn’t go to France. Not now. Not so soon after…

She glanced around the room, realizing all eyes were on her. The lights above felt bright all of a sudden, her own breathing sounded loud to her ears. She reached up one hand, rubbing at an elbow but refusing to stare at the ground, though everything in her wanted to avert her gaze.

Christ, Sharp, you’d really throw away a career just to avoid… Avoid what, exactly? Lee Grant said nothing, studying her subordinate with a compassionate expression. Foucault and the diplomat were frowning, but Adele glanced away, locking eyes with Lee.

Of everyone in the room, Agent Lee had her back. But still, refusing a request like this from the higher-ups didn’t come without consequences.

Adele set her jaw and straightened her posture. “I—I can’t go back. Not yet…” Why not, Cara? Come home.

Adele shivered and shook her head even more adamantly. “No. I just can’t…I…” She trailed off, images from her dreams flashing through her mind. Memories of a childhood, of a life once lived, played like shadow puppets across her mind. She thought of Doug in security. Perhaps that was to be her fate: relegated to a metal detector with her own sign, Beware of Sharp: refuses to play nice.

Career was one thing… But this… This was too close to home. She inhaled slowly, trying to clear her mind. It didn’t have to be like last time, did it? Her mother’s case was cold. She wouldn’t absorb herself in it. Not again. This was about the Benjamin Killer. This was about this girl, Marion, and whoever the next victim would be.

Could she really say no? What was she staying for anyway? It wasn’t like Angus had stayed. Why should she?

“Think about it,” said Foucault, studying her. “I’ll send the case file and the doctor’s report. Perhaps you’ll have insight we missed, hmm?”

Adele nodded. She could read a report. Where was the harm in that? Just one lousy report.

“Fine,” said Adele. “Sam, can you forward it to me?”

One small, measly little case file. Perhaps there’d be a clue, after all. Adele puffed her cheeks, then blew softly, exhaling in an effort to steady her nerves.

Why was he killing based on age alone? What did it all mean? Bleeding, bleeding, ever bleeding…

Another crime scene, another killer, another murder. All of it flashed through Adele’s mind, leaving cold prickles across her skin as she stared resolutely out the tall glass windows. When would the Benjamin Killer stop? It was like a countdown—a challenge.

He wouldn’t stop on his own. It was the wrong question. The real question echoed, unvoiced in Adele’s brain: when would someone catch him?

She could feel the eyes in the room staring at her, watching, accusing, waiting…

CHAPTER FIVE

The airplane’s cabin echoed with the sound of the churning engines. Adele leaned back in her seat, savoring the comfort of first class. She stretched, arching her back as she clasped the armrests with her hands. She reached up and adjusted the small knob that turned on the air conditioning, and then brushed her hair aside as airflow wafted through the cabin. No sleazy lawyers this time.

It had taken Lee all of five minutes to convince Adele to go to Paris.

Her supervisor always knew what to say. And, in this particular case, she hadn’t said anything. At least, for the most part.

Adele could still feel her supervisor’s gaze boring holes into the side of her skull. Her own mind had done the persuading. Far too many people were given a pass for the sake of someone else’s comfort. Killers escaped because of lazy law enforcement. These murderers, these monsters, didn’t deserve Adele’s complacency. She wouldn’t permit them her exhaustion. Nor would she allow them, ever, her fear of her past.

It had been a while since she’d been in France. And, if she was perfectly honest, she missed it.

She blended in well enough, and could speak the language to a degree few people suspected her of being a tourist.

Adele shifted, readjusting her position against the headrest. She steadied herself, breathing softly, inhaling for seven seconds, then exhaling for eight. A small breathing exercise her psychologist boyfriend had once taught her. The same boyfriend she’d come back stateside with.

That relationship had plummeted in a fiery crash. Adele had never been great at dealing with other people’s character flaws. Some thought of her as self-righteous, but she considered herself determined.

And when the psych had cheated on her with a mutual friend, she’d decided the relationship had run its course.

Adele reached beneath her seat, pulling out her briefcase and fumbling for the laptop.

Sam had downloaded the report and the files from DGSI before she left. She hadn’t wanted to look at them in the car, on the way to the airport. She’d been permitted to pack a small suitcase, which had taken her all of twenty minutes. She didn’t travel with much luxury; besides the few changes of clothes and toiletries, Adele had only packed her plastic cereal bowl and a spoon.

She felt her fingers trembling a bit as she clicked the latch to her laptop and opened the computer. She shifted, turning the screen toward the window and away from the aisle. Her eyes flicked up and spotted a couple of children sitting in business class six rows back. It wouldn’t do for them to see the screen, and so she shielded it with her body and turned the lid even further.

Of course, she hadn’t wasted the drive to the airport. Going over the files of the previous victims had been no enjoyable task, but it had been a necessary one. The killer seemed to have no particular taste Adele could spot. He chose his victims at random, except for their ages.

Her head pounded, and Adele closed her eyes, loath to witness what she knew she’d find. Images played on repeat across the insides of her eyelids. Angus had accused her of being married to the job.

He was only half right.

She was married to the ghosts of victims past. Wed in sheer will to those whose voiceless lips cried for justice.

Jeremy Benthen. Twenty-nine. Father of two. The Benjamin Killer had rushed this time—his first kill. At least, the first that Adele could trace to him. She could see, in her mind, as clear as if a video were playing before her: Jeremy’s body on the ground, shoved between the middle-school gym and the dumpster. He was the head coach of the junior basketball team. Two gloves discarded near a fire hydrant. The lab had failed to pull prints.

Jeremy had been cut along his chest and groin, and one of his eyes had been slashed. Shaky cuts—adrenaline from the killer’s first. None of the wounds were enough to kill the middle-school coach. Rather, the killer would incapacitate his victims. He was using a substance, but the toxicology reports still weren’t clear. It wasn’t chloroform, and it wasn’t Rohypnol. Whatever he was administering was a combination of sorts, a home brew.

Then, when he had his victims incapacitated, he would go to work.

The second victim. Tasha Hunt. That’s when Adele had determined the killer was using a scalpel. His cuts had become steadier, more confident. Rehearsed. Though, with the single mother from Indiana, he had also used a machete.

Adele gritted her teeth as the memories cycled through her mind. Local enforcement had initially thought the killer was overpowering his victims through other means. But he’d taken off his gloves.

Those gloves by the fire hydrant. A mistake. An oversight—the unforced error of a rookie in his first big game. Except they hadn’t been the killer’s gloves. She’d determined they’d belonged to the victim, to Jeremy. So why had the killer removed Jeremy’s gloves? Such a strange choice. He hadn’t cut Jeremy’s fingers…

Between the fingers, nearly imperceptible—that’s where she’d found the injection mark. She’d once dated a guy who hid his drug habit by injecting between the toes and fingers. She’d missed it with her boyfriend, all those years ago.

But she hadn’t missed it this time. The Benjamin Killer was careful, calculated… But not perfect. No killers were.

Adele knew she hadn’t missed anything in the files. But, at Lee’s insistence, she had done her due diligence on the drive to the airport.

In the past, she thought perhaps the killer was involved in the medical field, and the drug he used was some sort of dentist’s nitrous or some type of anesthetic. But those theories were quickly debunked by the lab. The scalpel was perhaps too obvious a weapon for a surgeon or anesthesiologist.

Still, the most horrifying part: despite whatever substance the killer was using, though it incapacitated their bodies, the victims retained complete use of their minds. They could feel and sense everything done to them.

The killer would cut them in a private setting, then watch. He would witness, for his own viewing pleasure, the slow exsanguination of the chosen target, and then he would leave, long before they were dead.

He never struck a killing blow. He never struck any vital organs or veins or arteries that would allow the victims to bleed out quickly. A weak man? Adele wasn’t sure. A clever man? Certainly.

He liked to take it slow. By the third victim, he’d perfected his craft: he’d bled Agatha Mencia for nearly four hours before she finally died.

“Sick twist,” said Adele, muttering beneath her breath, her mild accent twisting the “i” sound into “ee.” Adele often tried to maintain professionalism. It was the only way to stay sane in a job like this. But every so often, she would come across killers, psychopaths, that beggared one’s ability to maintain sanity.