Before he Kills

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Mackenzie had not stepped foot into a church since the wedding of her college roommate. After her father died, her mother had tried dragging her and Steph to church on numerous occasions and it was for that very reason that Mackenzie did everything she could to avoid it.

Still, as she entered the sanctuary of New Life Methodist Church, she had to admit that there was a certain degree of beauty here. It was more than the stained glass windows and the ornate altar – there was something else entirely that, quite frankly, she could not put her finger on.

As she neared the front of the sanctuary, she saw an older man sitting in one of the pews to the front. He had apparently not heard her enter because he had his head down, reading in a book.

“Pastor Simms?” she asked. Her voice boomed like the Almighty in the cavernous sanctuary.

The man looked up from his book and turned to face her. He was a man in his fifties, dressed in a button-down shirt and khakis. He wore the sort of eyeglasses that instantly made him appear to be infinitely kind.

“Detective White, I presume?” he asked, getting to his feet.

“You presumed correctly,” she said.

He looked a bit shocked but met her at the head of the sanctuary all the same.

“Forgive my surprise,” he said. “When your Chief Nelson called to request some of my time for your research, I wasn’t expecting a woman. Due to the heinous nature of the crimes, I find it rather odd that a woman would be heading it up. No offense to you, of course.”

“None taken.”

“You know, Clark speaks favorably of you.”

The name Clark threw her off and it took her a moment to realize that he was talking about Nelson – Police Chief Clark Nelson.

“I’ve heard that a lot lately,” she said.

“Well then, that must be nice.”

“And unexpected,” she said.

Simms nodded, as if he understood perfectly. “Nelson’s a bit of a blowhard at times. But he’s also extremely kind when he needs to be. I imagine that’s a hard part of himself to show at work.”

“So he attends this church?” Mackenzie asked.

“Oh yes,” he said. “Every Sunday. But I digress. Please,” he added, gesturing to the pew he had been sitting on. “Have a seat.”

Mackenzie did so and looked to the book Pastor Simms had been reading from and was not at all surprised to find that it was a Bible.

“So, Chief Nelson tells me that you have questions about scripture that may be able to lead to the arrest of the man that has been killing these poor women.”

She pulled out her cell phone and pulled up the picture she had snapped of the old Bible from the abandoned house. She handed it to him and he took it, adjusting his glasses as he looked at it.

“Numbers, chapter five, verses eleven to twenty or so. Do you think you could tell me how you interpret the verse?” she asked.

He glanced at the picture briefly and then handed the phone back.

“Well, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Not all Biblical passages need to be decoded. This one simply speaks of adulterous women being forced to drink bitter waters. If they were pure, no harm would come to them. But if they had engaged in sexual relations with anyone other than their husbands, the waters would bring a curse upon them.”

She pondered that.

“The killer has carved N511 on each post he has hung a victim from,” she said. “And based on the sort of women he has been choosing, the allegory seems pretty fitting.”

“Yes, I’d agree,” Simms said.

“He’s also carving J202 into the posts. There are too many books of the Bible that begin with J for me to make an educated guess. I was hoping you’d have some insight?”

“Well, Numbers is an Old Testament book and if this killer is killing based on what he thinks is Old Testament law – however misguided his interpretations and actions may be – I think it’s safe to say that this other reference would be Old Testament as well. If that’s the case, I feel certain that it’s referring to the book of Joshua. In Chapter Twenty of Joshua, God speaks of Cities of Refuge. These were cities where people who had accidentally killed others could flee to without prosecution.”

Mackenzie chewed on this for a moment, her heart racing, something starting to click inside. She picked up the Bible and found Joshua and dug up the passage. When she found it, she read it out loud, a bit creeped out by the sound of scripture coming out of her voice in this empty church.

Then the Lord said to Joshua: Tell the Israelites to designate the cities of refuge, as I instructed you through Moses, so that anyone who kills a person accidentally and unintentionally may flee there and find protection from the avenger of blood. When they flee to one of these cities, they are to stand in the entrance of the city gate and state their case before the elders of that city. Then the elders are to admit the fugitive into their city and provide a place to live among them. If the avenger of blood comes in pursuit…

She trailed off here, astounded, knowing she had finally figured out the source of the numbers. It was both thrilling and deflating. She had a window into his MO now – and yet it was still so vague. None of this could bring her to his front door.

“There’s more, you know,” Simms said.

“Yes, I see that,” she said. “But I think that’s enough. Tell me, Pastor, do you know how many of these Cities of Refuge there were?”

“Six in all,” Simms said.

“Do you know where they were located?”

“Roughly,” he replied.

He picked up the Bible and turned to the back, showing her a series of glossaries and maps. He came to a map that represented Israel in biblical times and, adjusting his glasses again, pointed out six locations.

“Of course,” he said, “these locations may not be exact, but – ”

Her heart started beating hard as she made a connection that almost seemed too good to be true. She gripped the book tightly.

“May I take a picture?” she asked.

“Of course,” he replied.

She photographed it with shaking hands.

“Detective, what is it?” he asked, studying her. “Have I been of help in some way I don’t understand?”

“More than you know,” she said.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

When Mackenzie entered the conference room, the place was abuzz. Nancy sat at her usual spot at the end of the table, divvying out the most updated reports on the Scarecrow Killer case. Policemen were taking their seats at the table, murmuring solemnly as if they were attending a funeral. As Mackenzie wedged her way to the front of the room where she saw Nelson speaking to another officer, she noticed that she was getting a lot of looks from the officers she passed. Some were still scowling at her as they had three days before in this very same room. But (and maybe this was her imagination) some were looking at her with genuine interest and, dare she say it, respect.

Nelson saw her coming and ended his conversation with the other officer right away. He put an arm around her and turned her away from the crowd that still continued to gather in the room. “This news,” he said. “Is it going to net us an arrest within the next few hours?”

“I don’t know,” Mackenzie said. “But it can certainly narrow our search. It’s going to bring us very close.”

“Then you run this show,” he said. “Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she said, ignoring the pit of worry that bubbled up in her stomach.

“Well then, here we go,” he said. With that, he turned to face the room and slapped his meaty hands down on the table several times. “Okay, everybody,” he shouted. “Take a seat and zip your mouths,” he said. “Mackenzie has a break in the case and you’ll give her your full attention. Save any questions until she’s done.”

To Mackenzie’s surprise, Nelson took one of the remaining chairs against the wall, pushed away from the large conference table. He looked to her and that was when she realized that it was all on her. Maybe it was a test or maybe Nelson was just at the end of his rope. Either way, this was her chance to grab this precinct by the balls and prove her worth.

She looked out to the room and saw Porter sitting among the faces. He gave her a quick smile, almost like he wanted to ensure no one else saw it. It was probably the sweetest thing he’d ever done for her and she found that Porter was starting to surprise her at every turn.

“I revisited one of the crime scenes this morning,” Mackenzie explained. “While the visit itself did not reveal the break, it led me straight to it. As many of you know, each post the killer has strapped the women to has had two code-like groupings of letters and numbers: N511 and J202. After speaking with a pastor earlier today, I discovered that these are references to Numbers 5:11 and Joshua 20:2.

“The Numbers passage talks about an Old Testament approach to adultery. Any adulterous woman was brought to the priests and given what were called bitter waters. The thought was that the blessed water would curse adulterous women and would not affect a pure woman. In essence, it was the church’s way of judging or accusing women thought to be unclean.

“As for the reference to Joshua, that passage refers to Cities of Refuge – cities that men could escape to if they had accidentally committed murder or killed to protect themselves, their families, or their people. In these Cities of Refuge, the murdered could not be prosecuted. In fact, it is said in the passage that all men residing in a City of Refuge would be spared from the avenger of blood.

“Now, according to the pastor I spoke with, there were six of the cities. And that leads me to believe that there are going to be at least three more murders.”

“Why is that?” Nelson asked, disregarding his earlier rule of keeping all questions for the end.

“I believe the killer is killing these women to use them as a representation of each City of Refuge. And, as he is killing them, he believes he is taking on the role of the avenger of blood. More than that, he is, in a sense, building a city.”

The room fell silent for a moment as they waited for her to explain. She turned to the wall behind her where a well-used whiteboard had recently been cleaned. She grabbed a marker and drew a crude map from memory, sketching out the map Pastor Simms had showed her in the church.

“These are the rough locations of the six cities,” she said, placing large dots along her crude map. They made a crude oval shape, each city almost the same distance from one another.

“Now, if you were to take a map of the area containing the sites where we have found each of the bodies,” she said, “it would resemble this almost exactly.”

Right away, Nancy started typing something into her computer at the back of the table. Without looking up from her screen, she said, “I’ll bring up a map,” she said. “Lights, please.”

The officer closest to the light switch hit the lights while another flipped on the projector that sat in the middle of the cluttered conference table. Mackenzie stepped to the side to allow the light to shine directly on the dry erase board.

Nancy had brought up the same map that was attached to the reports that she had handed out earlier. It showed each highway, secondary road, and town within a one-hundred-fifty-mile radius. On the map, three Xs had been placed where each of the victims had been found.

“While the locations don’t line up perfectly,” Mackenzie said, “they are extremely close in proximity. What this means is that if this isn’t simply a coincidence – and at this point, I think it’s clear that it is not– then we can pinpoint the rough location of where the next crime scene might be.”

“How do we know which order he’ll go in?” one of the officers at the table asked. “If there are three remaining, is there any guarantee he’s going on geographical order?”

“No, there’s no guarantee,” Mackenzie admitted. “But so far, that’s been the case.”

“And are we still unsure about how he’s selecting the victims?” Porter asked.

“That’s being checked as we speak,” Mackenzie said. “We have men checking in with the three strip clubs in that hundred-mile radius. But I think we also need to assume that he wouldn’t look beyond prostitutes as well.”

“What about these bitter waters?” someone else asked. “What kind of water is that?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Mackenzie said. “But we’ve already informed the coroner to check the stomach contents of the victims to see if there is anything out of the ordinary: poisons, chemicals, anything like that. I personally believe that it could just be holy water and if that’s the case, it will be impossible to pinpoint it.”

“You mean blessed water doesn’t glow magically?” another officer asked. There were a few chuckles around the table.

“Hey,” Nelson said, taking the front of the room again. He went to the board and grabbed a red marker. He circled the phantom area on the projected map that seemed to align the best with the fourth city on the map Mackenzie had drawn.

“I’m putting White in charge of locking down this area right here,” he said. “I want at least eight available men out there within the next hour to take a survey of the place. Get a lay of the land, learn the roads, and stay on patrol within the area until you hear otherwise from me. Nancy, I need you to get on the phone with the State PD and request the use of a helicopter to sweep the area.”

“Yes, sir,” Nancy said.

“Another thing,” Mackenzie said. “Unmarked cars only. The last thing we want is to tip this guy off.”

Nelson considered this and she could tell something about it irritated him. “Well, with only four unmarked cars, that limits us. So I’m allowing patrol cars, but not to be parked or stationary. Now, with everything we now know, there’s no excuse to not catch this guy before a fourth woman has to die. Any questions?”

No one said anything as everyone within the room got to their feet. There was a tingle of excitement in the air that Mackenzie could almost feel like a physical presence. Officers started to file out eagerly, sensing that the end of this wretched case was upon them. She knew the mentality; at this point, anyone could potentially have the chance to arrest the suspect. Although someone else (in this case, her) had made the connections and presented them with an endgame solution, it was anybody’s ballgame now.

As Mackenzie headed for the door, Nelson stopped her. “That’s some damn fine work, Mackenzie. And I’ll tell you something else, too: Ellington was singing your praises when he got back to Quantico. I got a call from his director and they were complimenting you.”

“Thanks.”

“Now if I could just keep you from chasing down overweight online journalists and scaring the hell out of them, I think you’d have a promising career ahead of you. That Pope creep has had two different lawyers calling after you. I don’t think he’s going to leave this alone.”

“Sorry, Chief,” she said, meaning it.

“Well, push that to the back burner,” Nelson said. “For now, let’s concentrate on catching this killer. Journalists are almost as bad but at least Ellis Pope isn’t stringing women up by poles and beating them to death.”

She cringed internally at how lightheartedly Nelson was referring to the victims. It reminded her that, even in the midst of a sudden and unexpected stream of confidence and praise from the man, he was the same creature of habit he had been when she had first started working under him.

“And if it’s okay with you,” he said, “I’m driving up with you. If I’ve put you in charge of this scene, I’d like to be your wingman.”

“Sure,” she said, instantly hating the idea.

As they walked out of the conference room, she looked around for Porter. It was funny in an ironic sort of way how much she’d prefer to share a car with Porter as this case drew to a close. Maybe it was familiarity or just the fact that she still felt like Nelson was a little too much of a chauvinist to take her seriously, despite praises from the FBI.

But Porter had gotten lost in the shuffle and excitement as everyone had filed out of the conference room. She did not see him in the hallway as she stopped by her office to retrieve her badge and gun and he was nowhere to be found in the parking lot.

Nelson met her at the car and it wasn’t even a question of who would drive. He instantly got behind the wheel and seemed very impatient as he waited for her to get into the passenger seat and buckle her seat belt. She did her best to hide her irritation but thought it really didn’t matter. Nelson was so caught up in the prospect of catching the Scarecrow Killer that she was basically an afterthought – just the cog in the mostly man-driven machine that had brought them this far.

Suddenly, Ellington’s suggestion of trying to get into the FBI seemed more appealing than ever.

“Ready to catch this asshole?” Nelson asked as they pulled out of the parking lot behind two patrol cars.

Mackenzie bit at her bottom lip to hide the sarcastic smile that tried to spread there and said:

“More than you know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Mackenzie’s phone started ringing less than ten minutes into her ride with Nelson. She checked the number on the display and although she had not yet saved it, it was fresh and familiar in her mind. She had nearly forgotten that Ellington had sent a text stating that he would call her. She knew he’d sent the text that morning but it seemed like a very long time ago. She checked the time on her phone’s task bar and saw that it was only 3:16. This day was turning out to be incredibly long.

She ignored the call, not wanting to add another level of complexity to what was turning out to be an already chaotic afternoon. At the same time she was ignoring Ellington’s call, Nelson was on the phone with Nancy. He spoke curtly, straight and to the point. It was clear that he was on edge and beyond stressed out, something that Mackenzie was beginning to feel herself.

He ended the call several seconds later and started nervously tapping at the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Nancy just spoke to the State boys,” he said. “They’ll have a helicopter flying over the area within an hour and a half.”

“That’s good news,” Mackenzie said.

“Tell me,” Nelson said. “Do you think he’s killing the women before he puts them on the poles or does he kill them there?”

“There’s nothing solid to prove either way,” Mackenzie said. “However, the first scene in the cornfield makes me think the women are alive when he puts them on the poles. There were marks on the ground where the whip or whatever he uses was dragged.”

“So?”

“So, he was pacing. He was anxious and biding his time. If the woman was already dead, why wait around with the whip?”

Nelson nodded and gave her a smile of appreciation. “We’re going to nail this bastard,” he said, still drumming on the steering wheel.

Mackenzie badly wanted to join in on his enthusiasm, but something felt incomplete. She almost felt as if she had overlooked something but could not for the life of her figure out what it was. She remained quiet, pondering this silently, as Nelson drove on.

They entered what Nelson was referring to as the Area of Interest twenty minutes later. She had listened to several brief phone calls from Nelson’s end during the drive and gathered that Nelson was setting up a perimeter of sorts to block in an area of thirty square miles. The area consisted of mostly scrub land and secondary roads. A few of those secondary roads were surrounded by cornfields just like the site of the original crime scene that had started all of this madness.

As Nelson drove them down such a road, the BC radio squawked at them. “Detective White, are you out there?” a man’s voice asked.

Mackenzie looked to Nelson, as if for approval. He gestured to the CD radio installed under the dash with a smile. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s your show.”

Mackenzie unclasped the mic from the radio and clicked down the send button. “This is White. What have you got?”

“I’m out here off of State Route 411 and came across a side road – nothing more than an old gravel road, really. The road heads straight into a cornfield and is not on the maps. It’s about half a mile long and dead ends into a small clearing in the cornfield.”

“Okay,” she said. “Did you find something?”

“That’s putting it lightly, Detective,” the officer on the other end said. “I think you need to get out here as fast as you can.”

*

It was beyond eerie to find herself standing in another cornfield. It was almost like she had come full circle, only it did not feel like she was coming to the end of something. Quite the contrary, it felt like she was starting all over.

She stood at the edge of the clearing with Nelson and Officer Lent, the man that had contacted her on the radio. The three of them stood among the thinned cornstalks and looked out to the small clearing.

A wooden pole had been erected in the middle of the clearing. Unlike the other poles they had recently seen that were identical to this one, there was no body strung up on it. The pole was bare and looked almost like some weird sort of ancient monolith in the empty clearing.

Slowly, Mackenzie walked up to it. It was cedar, the same as the other three. She got down to her knees and felt the earth around the bottom of the pole. It was soft and had very obviously been loosened and then packed back down rather recently.

“This pole hasn’t been here very long,” Mackenzie said. “The loose dirt is very fresh. I’d almost guess it was done earlier today.”

“So he preps the sites before he brings his victims,” Nelson speculated. “I don’t know if that’s genius or cocky.”

While Mackenzie was repulsed by the word genius being tied to the killer in any way, she ignored him. She went to the back of the pole and instantly spied the etchings along the bottom, several inches from the loose dirt that held the pole into the ground: N511/J202.

“I wouldn’t say it’s either,” Mackenzie said. “What I do know is that he’s essentially left us his business card. We know he’s coming back, and he’ll probably have his latest victim with him.”

As she got back to her feet, she was struck by a sense of vengeance that she had never felt before. The man behind these crimes had somehow shaken her. He had become a specter of sorts, a ghost with the ability to haunt her house, her mind, and her confidence. He had her jumping at the sound of creaking floorboards and getting to such a low point that she was hitting on larger-than-life FBI agents. He’d affected her so much that she hadn’t had the energy or emotion to care that Zack had finally left.

On top of that, he was taking women as his victims simply because they used their bodies as a means to make a living. And who the hell was he to judge them for that?

“I want to be here,” Mackenzie said. “I want to be on patrol or stakeout or whatever we do to make sure we catch him. I want to put the cuffs on the fucker.”

She knew it sounded selfish, but she didn’t care. In that moment, she didn’t give a damn what Nelson thought of her. She didn’t care if he went back to the boys at the station and laughed about how the cute little woman had demanded things from him. Suddenly, catching the man behind these murders was more important than anything – including her job and her reputation.

“I can see to that,” Nelson said with a smile. “Good to see a pissed off spark in you, White. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

She bit back the remark that danced on her tongue, simply thinking it instead.

Neither did I.