The Trees Beyond the Grass (A Cole Mouzon Thriller) (23 page)

CHAPTER 68

“COME IN. PARDON
THE MESS.” Agent Leas had called after everyone had left and requested Cole come to his hotel. From his voice, it sounded urgent, and Cole did not hesitate at the offer. The request to go to his hotel seemed unusual, but it was late. As Leas put it, ‘She won’t be looking for you here unless she’s really dumb and I’d like your insight on some things.’

Thirty minutes later Cole pulled up to the old roadside hotel. Walking in, the room was dank with the scent of spent booze and musky carpet. Cole suspected the odor arose from the several empty liquor bottles that lay on their sides in the corner. One of the two queen beds was undone and a mess, the other apparently a makeshift desk.

Cole spoke without thinking. “This may be the first time I actually wish the government spent more. Did you find this place in the back of some seedy magazine or a bathroom stall?”

Leas grinned, liking Cole’s candor. “The latter. But I didn’t invite you over to admire my room. I’ve pulled all the files for the six children, including you, who were taken around the time of your kidnapping. All with brands. All released.”

“Yeah, and what have you found?”

“Sit, sit. This may take a moment.” Seeing no place to sit, Cole swept some old newspapers off the corner of the bed and caught an article from what appeared to be Texas with the headline, “Man Butchered In Dallas.”

Several manila folders had been spread across the floor, each with a name and a date. His name was missing. “These are the three victims to date. Tony Patrick, Whitney Havex, and Phillip Neal. New York, Texas, California. The only things holding them together are the missing marks at this point.” Cole picked up the Neal file and let it fall open in his hands. There were pages of police reports, but what caught his eye were the photos. There, lying face down, was a man associated with him by a common thread, a dangerous past that held them together like a web. That thread ran between all the kidnapping victims and now, like a spider, someone was waiting for vibrations on the thread to direct their attack.
What had these three done to be killed? What have I done to be next?

“I suspect you’ve already cross-referenced their cell phone records, emails, and credit cards, correct?” Cole’s days as a criminal defense attorney had taught him a tremendous amount about the crumbs we all leave when we go about our daily lives. With the right eyes, most people’s activities read like a very tight schedule.

Leas sat down on the unkempt bed. “Yeah, there was nothing. Just static.”

“And the coroners’ reports? Anything of interest in there? There was poison in the Patrick case, right?” Cole had read the police for Patrick that Leas had provided at their meeting. He wasn’t given the entire file now sitting on the bed, or the report in the New York case.

“Yeah, but we haven’t any indication of that in the Havex case. But you’re more than welcome to look.” Cole pulled out the Havex report and began eyeing it for facts.

Lacerations, cardiac failure, contusions… Nothing stood out for someone who had been in a struggle, cut up from her navel to her neck and then spread open like the doors of a bloody bird cage. “Did you say she died from poison?”

Leas looked up from the file he was reading. “No, that was the other one. We have no injection site in the Havex case. But there is evidence her heart just stopped, so there is some suggestion of an agent. Of course, without any clue, it’s almost impossible to isolate the agent if one was used.”

Cole’s brain began flicking through his metal library of images from book pages and medical articles he had seen over the years until it stopped on a particular page. “Have you looked into a poison, such as
belladonna
?”

Looking quizzical for a moment, Leas slowly took a deep breath. “Uhm, not sure. But, how would you know about poisons?” Leas leaned in.

Cole laughed. He often got this response when he spat out random information. “I worked a few murder cases when I was a PD involving poisons and otherwise have come across it handling toxic cases. The ME’s report says dilated eyes and a bad heart. The tropane alkaloids in
belladonna
, or nightshade, cause sensitivity to light, blurred vision, loss of balance, confusion, elevated heart rate and ultimately death if not treated immediately. The tell-tale sign of
belladonna
is dilated pupils.” Cole grinned at Leas. Cole’s ability to recall everything he had seen impressed even himself on occasions. But, the revelation of his childhood had shaken his confidence in that skill until this moment. He liked that he was still a walking encyclopedia. It comforted him.

Leas wanted to laugh in amazement, but opted to just shake his head with a large grin on his face. “Hmm, that’s interesting. Well, assuming poison was used, ingestion versus injection would clearly represent a swap in methodologies versus the Patrick matter and there is still no sign of poison in the San Diego killing.”

COLE FLICKED FURTHER
in the file, stopping at interior pictures of the scene. He stared at them for a minute or more and then looked up to the empty beige wall of the hotel room. Slowly, he pushed what he had just seen out and onto the wall, creating a mental transparency that existed in all three dimensions in his eyes. The mental space constructed, he mentally walked around in the crime scene of the Havex murder, maneuvering corners and furniture. Wine bottles lay next to her chair. Cole turned to the kitchen and saw a wine cart with a missing glass. He pulled one from the hooks and inspected it. Then he withdrew from the space, his vision going black before refocusing on the wall.

After several seconds he asked, “I don’t see a chain of custody for the glasses. I saw where it said that Havex had alcohol, wine in her system at the time of death. Ten to one, she was poisoned by her chardonnay. There are stray wine bottles on the floor; so likely not by the bottles. Perhaps lacing of the glasses sitting on the wine cart, a wine goblet is missing?” Cole turned away from the wall to Leas, whose mouth was wide open.

“What the hell just happened?”

Cole sheepishly smiled, worried that he had exposed himself to ridicule or judgment. “Sorry about that. It’s…it’s something
I do
. I can kinda make this photo real in my head, 3D and everything, and then manipulate everything in the space, analyzing it and such. It’s called ‘spatial intelligence.’”

“Spatial what? Is that like some special power or something?”

Cole slightly recoiled, feeling he was being judged. He tried to explain again. “No, no super power other than a very over-active imagination. ‘Spatial intelligence’ or so some Gardner expert says. I think it’s also called ‘picture smarts.’ We all kinda have it as kids. Think about invisible friends and such. As a child, that person or thing is our imagination being projected across our vision so that we think we are seeing it, that it’s there. Most people lose that mental skill early. But, some…like me, maintain it. I wouldn’t be surprised if schizophrenics also have the skill, but unlike them, I know real from imagination and mine is not involuntary. I have to actually force it to happen. It doesn’t mean I’m super intelligent or anything; it’s just that I process everything by visualization.”

Cole couldn’t remember a time that the gift wasn’t there, but he knew it wasn’t something you talked about without being seen as a freak. He had always relied on it…trusted it in secret. But, emotions disrupted it like static. It lied to him in such moments, making accuracy impossible. That scared him now where emotions were constantly flooding against his wall since the revelation of being hunted and the story of his mother’s last act of protection. To him, if there were ever a time he needed to be able to think clearly it was now.

“Holy fuck! What does it feel like? Can you see anything?”

Cole laughed, Leas wasn’t judging…he was entertained. “I can’t see anything. Ever see Star Trek, the holodeck thing they go into? It’s just like that, but transparent. I see the wall that I am looking at. In that image I can walk, look under things, pick up things and such, as if I was actually in it. But it’s limited by the information I have, the images I have. That’s where having a photographic memory really pushes it to the limits. My mental images are very clear with all that information. So, for example, looking at this picture of Havex’s kitchen, I can work that space in my mind up to the edge of the photo. My imagination can certainly fill in the visual gaps, but I try to avoid that because I’ve discovered I’m usually wrong about what lays off the edge of the photo. So, if I look at in my mind, in the space, I let it just fall off into darkness.”

Leas shook his head and started laughing hard. “Damn man, what kind of attorney are you? You’re like psychic or something. I would not want to be cross-examined by you. And, yes. Even the local detective missed that bit about the glasses. Of course, until Texas, we really weren’t linking the poison to anything.”

“Ha, well the glasses are in the picture. They are just kinda dark. It’s my criminal background that made me pay attention to them. Working serious felonies like child molestations and murders I may have picked up a few things. Test any bottles or the wine glasses in that place and you will likely find poison.”

Still chuckling to himself, Agent Leas was on the phone even before Cole could get the words out. “Yeah, Leas here. Is that crime scene in the Havex case still sealed off? Good, can you send one of your guys out there and collect any glasses that may be lying around or on a wine cart and test them for poison, specifically those that would cause immobilization.
Belladonna
, check for belladonna. Appreciate it.”

Cole kept reading. According to the Havex file, a suspicious woman, like in Texas, had been identified in the security footage. The front desk security guard had messed up, buying the lady’s story that she was surprising her boyfriend with a striptease for his birthday, but needed access to his floor to get the party underway. The price, a flash of her breasts, had been caught from the back on the video footage. Havex was seen entering the underground garage and accessing the elevators within twenty minutes after that, providing ample time for the killer to prepare.

FROM WHAT THE
investigators could tell, the murder didn’t happen for almost an hour, suggesting the killer hid and waited until Havex was likely drugged and unable to resist. In the bathroom, Havex’s hands were bound by rope and she was dragged over the room’s door until she hung by her hands against its back, the rope tied to the handle on the other side. That’s when the cutting started.

Leas got off the phone with a slight smile “Sure you’re not a psychic? That’s some good stuff. Mind going through the rest of these and tell me what you see? A pair of fresh eyes may be what’s needed. You can stare at my grungy wall all night if you want. I promise not to laugh…too much.”

Laughing, Cole said, “Of course.”

The video of the bars Patrick frequented had been pulled. He had been spotted at some Mexican restaurant the night of the murder. There was a female, blonde hair, slender, but she avoided the camera.
A pro
. From the notes, she played him like a fiddle, getting him to buy her a drink and then leaving with him within twenty minutes.

By one a.m., all the files were reviewed. It was apparent the Neal murder in San Diego was the first, based on the timeline, and the killer was still cutting her teeth on it. There was no evidence of poisoning, just pure violence—leading the investigators to initially believe they were dealing with a male suspect. Other than the removed singe mark on the back hip, there was nothing that linked it to the two other murders. It had occurred over two months earlier and then there was silence until three weeks ago.
Why the rush? Police pressure
? That remained unanswered as Cole left with his private escort.

CHAPTER 69

AGENT LEAS HAD
walked Cole out and then ran to his car for a fresh bottle he had picked up at the ABC package store around the block earlier in the day. As he slowly walked back to his room he noted the hotel appeared from its exterior to be abandoned. The few guests it did host were shadows, rarely revealing themselves to anyone. As he shut the door behind him he placed the brown-bag wrapped bottle of whiskey on the cheap table next to the bed. He stared at the bag. He knew once he started the bottle, it was unlikely he would quit until it was gone. Too many times he had lied to himself about his ability to stop, to control just how much was enough.

It hadn’t always been this way. The drinking had come on fast, real fast with the death of his wife Maria. He could hardly think of her without craving a drink now. But, when she was alive, thinking of her was all he could do. She was beautiful. Not in the ‘cover of some fashion magazine’ way, but close. It was her spirit that really made her attractive and that made him fall in love with her. The day she died broke him like glass upon concrete, into a million shards of pain.

He wanted to kill him, her murderer. And, but for six other agents in his way, he would have. He had been investigating George Kelley for a year, but he got too close. Kelley had discovered his pursuer and aimed all his evil at Leas. The vision stuck in his head, the unmovable Post-it that, though frayed at its edges, refused to be torn away. Kelley had tortured her; that was the pain Leas could not let go, the thought of her calling out for him and him never rescuing her. The horror and sense of abandonment she must have felt in those final moments. He put himself through this mental exercise whenever he was alone.

Knee-deep in these thoughts, Leas twisted the cap off the still-wrapped bottle. The whiskey burned going down. He had hated whiskey before his loss of Maria. But now, it was the only thing he could stomach. Kelley sat in some dark cell, smiling at his success, while Leas toiled with the results. The death penalty wasn’t an option, according to the DA. If he only had five minutes with his wife’s killer, maybe then there could be some relief, some sense of closure to it all.

Leas lay back against the pillows of the bed and closed his eyes, savoring his second swig.
Everyone has their day,
he told himself over and over again.
Everyone has their day.