Consumed (25 page)

“That may be why we couldn’t find jack,” he said.

“I’m going to get a coffee,” I said. “Need one?”

“Nope.” Lewis lifted his iced coffee in a see-through plastic container, probably purchased at a coffee shop on the way into work. He shook it. “I’m still full.”

I nodded, closed his office door, and continued to the lunch room.

A few minutes later, a coffee in hand, I took a seat and began going through all the paperwork. Each piece of information that Beth and I had put together needed to be compiled into a file that was somewhat organized—it needed to include notes, evidence gathered, photos taken, and a full briefing of what had transpired, start to finish. I was fifteen minutes into the organization process when Beth walked into the office.

“Didn’t feel like taking the day off either, huh?” she asked.

“Nah. This should be taken care of, and I kind of figured you would be in here today. Which means if I didn’t come in to get going on it, you would have done it all by yourself, which isn’t really fair.”

“Ha!” Beth said. “I only came in because I figured the same thing. We could both leave.”

I smirked. “Already here. May as well get it taken care of.”

Beth rolled out her chair and took a seat at her desk. “Where are you at with it?”

“Just starting to get everything organized,” I said.

“Okay, you do that, and I’ll start the briefing. Once I’m done with it, you can look it over and see if there is anything you’d like to add.”

“Works for me.” I caught movement to my right and looked over—Scott was heading toward Beth and me and his desk.

“Looks like we’re all back, huh?” Scott said in his Boston accent. “Heard you guys had a catch.”

“Yeah, in custody,” Beth said.

“Awesome,” he said. “One less on the streets.”

“When did you guys get back?” I asked.

“Wednesday,” Scott said. “We ID’d the guy, but that’s about it. By the time we got the information that we needed, he was in the wind. My guess is he gets picked up before too long, though.” Scott hung his dark-gray suit jacket over the back of his desk chair and took a seat. He wore a navy dress shirt with a lighter-blue patterned tie. He scratched the side of his gray-and-black hair. “It’s going to be hard for him to hide when his name and photo are at every law enforcement agency from here to Mexico.”

“How did you ID him?” I asked.

“Bill did, actually. Turned out that the type of wire being used in his homemade garrotes was a commercial grade that is common with television and Internet companies. Well, Bill found us a witness that saw a cable van parked out front of one of the victim’s home a day or two prior to them being murdered. We contacted the company, found the work order and installer, and that was it. Unfortunately, we were a day or so too late. By the time we got to his house, he was cleared out.”

“Found some more of the wire in the garbage cans outside of the house he was renting, though,” Bill said. He leaned against the wall next to our morning meeting room, his arms crossed over his chest—a thick tactical-looking watch wrapped his left wrist. Bill was thirty-eight with a round, clean-shaven face that made him look ten years younger than that. His brown hair was trimmed short without a sprinkle of gray mixed in, and I don’t think I’d ever seen him without an energy drink in his hand. From our talks, I’d learned he was married with a pair of young ones. Bill pulled himself from leaning on the wall and walked toward his desk. “Jim in yet?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Haven’t seen him.”

“I need to be reimbursed for a few hundred bucks of miscellaneous. I finally gathered all of my receipts from Louisiana together last night.”

I went back to looking at my computer screen and the task of organizing everything regarding Kirkwood. Before I even touched a key, I heard my name called from over my shoulder.

“Rawlings, Harper, my office,” Ball said.

We both rose and walked over.

Ball took a seat at his desk and clasped his hands behind his head. “First, good job. Second, why am I looking at either of you two? I thought I said that I’d see you both on Monday.”

“Just wanted to get a bit of a jump on the paperwork for the investigation. Plus, I need to call the Memphis office to get the exact number of bodies removed from both properties. They were still working on the chief deputy’s when Beth and I left Thursday.”

“What did they get at Kirkwood’s?” Ball asked.

“Fourteen more female remains, plus one male,” Beth said.

“We’re thinking the single male may have been Owen Matheson,” I said.

“The father?” Ball asked.

“Correct.”

“And the chief deputy’s place?”

“Just yesterday, they pulled twelve bodies from the farm pond on the back of his property—all missing arms and legs. Each one had a cinder block chained around its neck. Apparently, the pond had been where the chief deputy was dumping his brother’s women.”

Ball shook his head. “So this guy could have very well killed over fifty people?”

“Forty-five years of killing people or so,” I said. “Fifty is probably underestimating it.”

Ball went quiet for a second. “Do we have IDs on everyone we can ID?”

“That’s going to be a long, ongoing process,” Beth said. “The Medical Science place in Nashville is also taking the new bodies that have been found from the excavation team. They are going to start doing dental records now and work with the missing persons units in the state to try to match some of them up.”

“Yeah, Agent Clifford, from the Clarksville resident agency, was going to keep up with them on that and do his best to stay in the loop with what Memphis was doing,” I said. “He has my number here and was planning on touching base with me next week.”

“Okay. You two put some kind of plan together for what you need to get done paperworkwise on this and go home.”

“Sure,” I said. “Need anything else?”

“Nah, that’s it.”

Beth and I turned toward the door.

“Actually wait, that’s not really it.”

We turned back around and faced Ball.

He let out a breath. “I think we’re going to stick with this arrangement if neither of you two mind.”

“Arrangement?” Beth asked.

“You two going out on investigations together. Why split up something that’s working?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with that.”

Ball looked at Beth. “Well?” he asked.

“If I have to,” she said.

I flashed her a sideways glance.

“Totally kidding. Working with Hank is just fine.”

“Good and done,” Ball said. “All right.” He motioned us out of his office.

“Come on, partner,” she said, with a fist to my shoulder and a smile.

I smirked and closed Ball’s office door at our backs.

Thank you!

Thanks for reading Consumed, Book 2 in The Agent Hank Rawlings Series of FBI Thrillers. I hope you enjoyed it!

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