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Before He Takes

They left the Starbucks in something of a single file line. Mackenzie was slightly touched when Ellington waited for her, making sure she didn’t bring up the back of the line.

“You know,” Thorsson said, looking back over his shoulder, “I’m glad you guys want to get out there right away. There’s a bad vibe going around about this whole thing. You can feel it when you talk to the local police force and it’s starting to rub off on us, too.”

“What kind of vibe?” Mackenzie asked.

Thorsson and Heideman shared a foreboding look between them before Thorsson’s shoulders slumped a bit and he answered: “Like it’s just not going to happen. I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s not a single clue to be had. The guy’s like a ghost.”

“Well, hopefully we can help with that,” Ellington said.

“I hope so,” Thorsson said. “Because as of right now, the general feeling among everyone working this case is that we might never find this guy.”

CHAPTER THREE

Mackenzie was rather surprised that the local office had provided Thorsson and Heideman with a Suburban. After her own clunker and the template rental cars she’d been stuck with over the past few months, she felt like she was traveling in style while sitting in the back with Ellington. When they arrived at the first scene an hour and ten minutes later, she was almost glad to be out of it, though. She wasn’t used to such nice perks with her position and it made her feel a little uncomfortable.

Thorsson parked along the edge of State Route 14, a basic two-lane back road that wound through the forests of rural Iowa. The road was bordered with trees on both sides. During the few miles they had been on this road, Mackenzie had seen a few small dirt roads that seemed to have been long forgotten, chained off by a thin cable and two posts on either side of the tracks. Other than those few breaks, there was nothing more than trees.

Thorsson and Heideman led them past a few local cops who gave perfunctory waves as they passed. Up ahead, in front of two parked police cars, was a little red Subaru. The two driver’s side tires were completely flat.

“What’s the police force like around here?” Mackenzie asked.

“Small,” Thorsson said. “The nearest town to here is a little place called Bent Creek. Population of about nine hundred. The police force consists of one sheriff—who is back there with those other guys—two deputies, and seven officers. They had a few suits from Des Moines come in but when we showed up, they stepped back. It’s the FBI’s problem now. That kind of thing.”

“So they’re glad we’re here, in other words?” Ellington asked.

“Oh, absolutely,” Thorsson said.

They approached the car and all circled it for a moment. Mackenzie took a look back at the officers. Only one of them seemed legitimately interested in what the visiting FBI agents were doing. As far as she was concerned, that was fine with her. She’d had her fair share of meddling small-town police officers making things harder than they had to be. It would be nice to work a job without having to tiptoe around the sensitivities and egos of the local PD.

“Has the car already been dusted for prints?” Mackenzie asked.

“Yeah, earlier this morning,” Heideman said. “Help yourself.”

Mackenzie opened the passenger side door. A brief look around told her that while the vehicle might have been dusted for prints, nothing had yet been removed and tagged as evidence. A cell phone still sat in the passenger seat. A pack of gum sat on top of a few scattered and folded pieces of paper in the center console.

“This is the author’s car, correct?” Mackenzie asked.

“It is,” Thorsson said. “Delores Manning.”

Mackenzie continued checking the car. She found Manning’s sunglasses, a mostly empty address book, a few copies of The Tin House scattered in the back seat, and spare change here and there. The trunk offered only a box of books. There were eighteen copies of a book called Love Blocked by Delores Manning.

“Was everything back here dusted for prints?” Mackenzie asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Heideman said. “It’s just a box of books, right?”

“Yes, but some are missing.”

“She came from a signing,” Thorsson said. “Chances are pretty good she sold some or gave some away.”

It wasn’t anything worth arguing about so she let it go. Still, Mackenzie flipped through two of the books. They had both been signed by Manning on the title page.

She put the books back into the box and then started to study the road. She walked along the edge, looking for any indentations where something might have been set up that would have flattened the tires. She looked over to Ellington and was pleased to see that he was already studying the flats. From where she stood, she could see the glittering shards of glass still sticking out of the tires.

There was more of the glass in the road ahead. The bit of sunlight that managed to break through the tree branches overhead bounced off of them in a way that was eerily pretty. She walked over to it and squatted down for a better look.

It was obvious that the glass had been placed there intentionally. It was located primarily close to the broken yellow lines in the center of the road. It was scattered here and there like sand but the main concentration had been spaced out to ensure that anyone driving along would run directly over it. A few larger shards remained in the road; the car had apparently missed these, as they had not been ground down into crumb-like bits. She picked up one of these larger pieces and studied it.

The glass was dark at first glance but as Mackenzie took a closer look, she saw that it had been painted black. To kill the glare of approaching headlights, she thought. Someone driving at night would see glass in their headlights…but not if it was painted black.

She selected a few pieces from the debris and scratched at a few larger pieces with her fingernail. The glass underneath was two different colors; most of it was clear but some of it had a very slight green tint to it. It was far too thick to be from any sort of drinking bottle or common jar. It had the thickness of something that a potter might make. Some if it looked to be easily as much as an inch and a half in width even after it had been broken and then shattered by Delores Manning’s car.

“Anyone notice that this glass has been spray-painted?” she asked.

Along the side of the road, the officers were looking to one another as if confused. Even Thorsson and Heideman gave one another a quizzical look.

“That’s a no,” Thorsson said.

“Has any of it been bagged and analyzed yet?” Mackenzie asked.

“Bagged, yes,” Thorsson said. “Analyzed, no. But there’s a team on it right now. We should have some sort of results in a few hours. I guess they would have eventually gotten back to us on the spray paint.”

“And this glass was not at any of the other scenes, is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

Mackenzie got to her feet, looking down at the glass as she started to paint a picture of the kind of suspect they might be looking for.

No glass at the previous scenes, she thought. That means the suspect was purposeful about this one woman. Why? Maybe the first two disappearances were just coincidence. Maybe the subject just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And if that was the case, he’s definitely a local—a rural killer, not an urban one. But he’s smart and calculated. He’s not just doing his tasks by the seat of his pants.

Ellington came over to her and inspected the glass for himself. Without looking up at her, he asked: “Any initial thoughts?”

“A few.”

“Such as?”

“He’s a rural guy. Likely a local, as we thought. I also think this one was planned. The flat tires…he did it on purpose. If the glass was not present at the other scenes, he set it out only this time. It makes me think he had no control over the other two. It was just luck on his part. But this one…this one he had to work for.”

“You think it’s worth speaking to family?” Ellington asked.

She could not tell if he was quizzing her in some weird way like Bryers had once done or if he was genuinely interested in her methodology and approach.

“Might be the fastest way to get any answers for right now,” she said. “Even if it nets nothing, it’s a task completed.”

“That sounds like a robot talking,” Ellington said with a smile.

Ignoring him, Mackenzie walked back over to the car where Thorsson and Heideman had been watching them.

“Do we know where Delores Manning lives?” she asked.

“Well, she lives in Buffalo, New York,” Thorsson said. “But she has family out near Sigourney.”

“That’s in Iowa, too, right?”

“It is,” Thorsson said. “Her mother lives about ten minutes outside of the town. Father is deceased. No one has informed them of her disappearance yet. From what we can tell, she’s only been missing for twenty-six hours or so. And while we can’t confirm it, we can’t help but wonder if she paid her family a visit while she was so close because of her book signing in Cedar Rapids.”

“I think they should probably be informed,” Mackenzie said.

“Same here,” Ellington said, joining them.

“Be my guest, then,” Thorsson chuckled. “Sigourney is about an hour and fifteen minutes away. We’d love to tag along,” he added sarcastically, “but that wasn’t in our orders.”

As he said this, one of the policemen joined them. The badge he wore indicated that this was the sheriff of the area.

“You need us around for anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” Ellington said. “Maybe just the name of a decent hotel around here.”

“There’s only one back in Bent Creek,” the sheriff said. “So that’s the only one I can really recommend.”

“Well then, it looks like we’ll take your recommendation. And we’ll also need one for a rental car in Bent Creek.”

“I can get you fixed up,” the sheriff said, leaving it at that.

With a slight sense of feeling displaced, Mackenzie walked back to the Suburban and took her place in the back seat. As the three other agents piled in, Mackenzie started to think about those little dirt tracks off of State Route 14. Who owned that property? Where did the roads lead?

As they headed toward Bent Creek, the country roads seemed to present more and more questions in Mackenzie’s mind…some menial but some very pressing. She collected them all as she thought about the broken glass in the road. She tried to imagine someone painting that glass with the clear intention of causing someone’s car to break down.

It spoke of more than just intent. It indicated careful planning and knowing the flow of traffic along State Route 14 at that time of night.

Our guy is smart in a dangerous sort of way, she thought. He’s also a planner and seems to be going after women only.

She started to put a profile together for such a suspect and instantly started to feel a sense of pressure…of the need to move quickly. She felt he was somewhere within this little rural hole of trees and winding roads, breaking up more glass, spraying it with spray paint.

And planning to capture another victim.

CHAPTER FOUR

Delores Manning was thinking of her mother when she opened her eyes. Her mother, who lived in a shit-kicking mobile home park just outside of Sigourney. The woman was very proud, very stubborn. The plan had been for Delores to visit her after the signing in Cedar Rapids. Having just signed a contract for a three-book deal with her current publisher, Delores had written a check for $7,000, hoping her mother would take it and use it wisely. Maybe it was snobby, but Delores was embarrassed that her mother was on welfare, that she had to use food stamps to buy groceries. It had been that way since her father died and—

The foggy thoughts of her mother drifted off as her eyes started to grow accustomed to the darkness she found herself in. She was sitting down with her back pressed against something very hard and almost cool to the touch. Slowly, she got to her feet. When she did, she struck her head on something that felt exactly like the surface against her back.

Confused, she reached up and could not extend her arms very far at all. As panic started to creep in, her eyes realized that there were tiny slats of light falling into the darkness. Directly in front of her were three rectangular bars of light. The bars alone filled her in on her situation.

She was in some kind of container…she was pretty sure it was made of steel or some other kind of metal. The container was no more than four feet tall, not allowing her to fully stand. It seemed to be no deeper than four feet and about the same width. She started to take shallow breaths, instantly feeling claustrophobic.

She pressed herself against the front wall of the container and drew in fresh air through the rectangular slats. Each slat was roughly six inches tall and maybe three inches across. When she drew in the air through her nose, she detected an earthy smell and something sweet yet unpleasant.

Somewhere further off in the distance, so faint it may as well have been on another world, she thought she heard a sort of squealing noise. Machinery? Maybe some type of animal? Yes, an animal…but she had no idea what kind. Pigs, maybe?

With her breaths coming more naturally now, she took a step back in her crouched position and then peered through the slats.

Outside, she saw what looked to be the interior of a barn or some other old wooden building. Perhaps twenty feet ahead of her, she could see the door to the barn. Murky sunlight came in through the warped frame where the door did not set flush against it. While she could not see much, she saw enough to gauge that she was probably in very serious trouble.

It was evident in the edge of the bolted door she could just barely see through the slats of the container. She whimpered and pushed against the front of the container. There was no give—not so much as a creaking noise.

She felt panic creeping up again so knew she’d have to use the little bit of logic and calmness she now possessed. She ran her hands along the bottom of the container’s door. She was hoping to find hinges, maybe something with screws or bolts that she could potentially work on. She wasn’t very strong, but if even one screw was either loose or crooked…

Again, there was nothing. She tried the same thing on the back and found nothing there as well.

In an act of absolute helplessness, she kicked at the door as hard as she could. When that did no good, she went to the back of the container and got a running start to throw her right shoulder into it. All that accomplished was having her rebound and fall backward. She hit her head on the side of the container and fell hard to her backside.

A scream rose up in her throat but she didn’t know if that would be the best thing to do. She could easily recall the man from the truck on the road and how he had attacked her. Did she really want him to come rushing to her?

No, she did not. Think, she told herself. Use that creative brain of yours and figure a way out of this.

But she could think of nothing. So, while she was able to choke down the scream that wanted to come out, she was unable to hold back the tears. She kicked at the front of the container and then fell into the back corner. She wept as quietly as she could, rocking back and forth in a seated position and looking to the shafts of dusty light that spilled in through the slats.

For now, it was all she could think to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mackenzie did not like the fact that her mind brought up dozens of clichéd stereotypes as she and Ellington pulled into the entrance of the Sigourney Oaks Mobile Home Court. The mobile homes were all dusty and looked to be on their last legs. The vehicles parked in front of most of them were in the same shape. In the dead yard of one of the trailers they passed, two men sat shirtless in lawn chairs. A cooler of beer rested between them, as well as several empty and crushed cans…at 4:35 in the afternoon.

The home of Tammy Manning, Delores Manning’s mother, was located directly in the middle of the park. Ellington parked the rental car behind a beaten up old Chevy pickup. The rental car looked better than the vehicles in the park, but not by much. The selection at Smith Brothers Auto had been meager and they had ended up selecting a 2008 Ford Fusion that was in dire need of a paint job and a new set of tires.

As they walked up the rickety front steps to the door, Mackenzie made a quick sweep of the place. A few kids were rolling toy cars along in the dirt. A pre-teen girl walked blindly with her eyes glued to a cell phone, her belly exposed through the dirty shirt she wore. An old man two trailers down was lying on the ground, peering up under a lawnmower with a wrench in his hand and oil on his pants.

Ellington knocked on the door and it was answered almost instantly. The woman that answered the door was pretty in a plain way. She looked to be in her fifties and the strands of gray in her otherwise black hair stood out in a way that was almost like decoration rather than the signs of age. She looked tired but the smell that came off of her breath when she said “Who are you?” made Mackenzie pretty sure that she’d been drinking.

Ellington answered but made sure not to step in front of Mackenzie when he did so. “I’m Agent Ellington and this is Agent White, with the FBI,” he said.

“FBI?” she asked. “What the hell for?”

“Are you Tammy Manning?” he asked.

“I am,” she said.

“Can we come in?” Ellington asked.

Tammy eyed them in a way that was not suspicious but something closer to disbelief. She nodded and stepped back, allowing them in. The moment they walked inside, the thick smell of cigarette smoke engulfed them. The air was filled with it. A lone cigarette burned in an ashtray of dead butts on an old coffee table.

Another woman sat on the couch on the opposite side of the coffee table. She looked a little uncomfortable. Mackenzie thought she actually appeared a little grossed out to be sitting there.

“If you have company,” Mackenzie said, “perhaps we should speak outside.”

“She’s not company,” Tammy said. “This is my daughter Rita.”

“Hi,” Rita said, standing to shake their hands.

It was apparent that this was Delores Manning’s younger sister by about three or four years. She looked very similar to the photo of Delores that Mackenzie had seen on the back cover of Love Blocked.

“Oh, I see,” Ellington said. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing that you’re here too, Rita.”

“Why?” Tammy asked, plopping down next to her younger daughter. She plucked the cigarette from the ashtray and took a deep inhale.

“Delores Manning’s car was discovered abandoned with two flat tires on State Route 14 late last night. No one has seen her or heard from her since then. Not her agent, not any friends, no one. We were hoping you might know where she is.”

Before Ellington was done, Mackenzie had gotten the answer from the look of shock on Rita Manning’s face.

“Oh my God,” Rita said. “Are you sure it was her car?”

“We’re certain,” Ellington said. “It was complete with half a box of her latest book in the back. She had just come from a signing in Cedar Rapids.”

“Yeah,” Rita said. “She was…probably on the way here. That was the plan anyway. When she didn’t show up by midnight, I figured she just decided to stay at a motel somewhere.”

“Had you made plans for her to stay here?” Mackenzie asked. She was looking at Tammy when she asked it, but Tammy appeared to be more interested in enjoying her cigarette.

“Sort of,” Tammy said. “She called me last week and said she’d be in Cedar Rapids. Said she wanted to come by to visit, so I told her that was fine. I let Rita know and she got here yesterday right after lunch. Sort of a surprise.”

“I drove all the way up from Texas A and M,” Rita said.

“When was the last time you spoke with Delores?” Ellington asked Rita.

“About three weeks ago. We usually do an okay job of staying in touch.”

“What state of mind was she in the last time you spoke?” Mackenzie asked.

“Oh, she was on cloud nine. She had just signed on to do another three books with her publisher. We made plans to go out on the town drinking the next time she was in Texas.”

“You’re a student, I take it?” Ellington asked.

“Yes. A senior.”

“Mrs. Manning,” Mackenzie said, making sure the mother knew that she was being spoken to and not the daughter, “if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t seem too bothered by this.”

She shrugged, exhaled a mouthful of smoke, and then ground the butt out in the overflowing ashtray. “I guess someone from the FBI knows more about how I should feel about something like this than I do?”

“I wasn’t saying that, ma’am,” Mackenzie said.

“Look…we’re talking about Delores here. She’s got a good head on her shoulders. I’m sure she called Triple A or some shit when the tires went flat. She’s probably already halfway back to New York by now. Making money, traveling the country. If she was in some kind of trouble, she would have called.”

“So she wouldn’t have been embarrassed to call for your help?”

Tammy actually thought about this for a minute. “Probably not. She would have called for help and then raised hell if I asked even one question. It’s just how she is.”

The resentment in her voice was almost as thick as the smoke in the air throughout the tiny trailer.

“So you have no idea where she might be?” Ellington asked.

“None. Wherever she is, she didn’t bother calling me to tell me about it. But that’s not too big of a surprise. She never really tells me much of anything.”

“I see,” Ellington said. He looked around the room with a frown. Mackenzie could tell that he was thinking the same thing she was thinking: That was a wasted hour-and-ten-minute drive.

Mackenzie looked directly toward Rita, currently a little pissed at the lack of help from Tammy. “We’ve got Bent Creek PD on it, as well as agents from two different offices. From what we know, she’s been missing for roughly twenty-nine hours. We’ll be in touch the moment we find anything.”

Rita gave a nod and a soft “Thank you.”

Both Mackenzie and Ellington paused a beat to give Tammy a chance to add anything. When she did nothing more than light up another cigarette and reach for the TV remote on the coffee table, Mackenzie headed for the door.

When she was outside, she breathed the fresh air in deeply and walked straight for the car. She was already opening the passenger side door when Ellington finally made it down the steps.

“You okay?” he asked her as he approached the car.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I just can’t stomach people that have no concern at all for the safety of their own flesh and blood.”

She was about to get into the car when the front door of Tammy Manning’s trailer opened. They both watched as Rita came down the stairs in a quick little jog. She came over to the car and let out a shaky sigh.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry about that,” she said. Mackenzie saw that Rita also seemed to be breathing much easier now that she was outside. “Things with Mom and Delores haven’t been the best ever since Dad died. And then when Delores became this well-to-do writer, something about it almost offended Mom.”

“You don’t have to explain personal problems,” Ellington said. “We see it from time to time.”

“Be honest with me…this thing with Delores…do you think she’ll be found? Do you think she might be dead somewhere?”

“It’s far too early to tell,” Mackenzie said.

“Was it…well, was there anything like foul play?”

Mackenzie recalled the spray-painted glass. She was pretty sure she still had some of the black flakes of the paint under her fingernails. But it was far too soon in the course of events to give such information to family members—not until more information could be obtained.

“Again, we just can’t know for sure yet,” she said.

Rita nodded. “Well, thanks for letting us know. When you do find out anything, just call me directly. Forget about Mom for now. I don’t know what her problem is. She’s just…I don’t know. An aging woman that let life beat the hell out of her and never bothered to pick herself back up.”

She gave them her number and then slowly walked back up the stairs. She gave them a quick wave goodbye as Ellington backed out of the parking spot and headed back through the trailer park.

“So what do you think?” Ellington asked. “Was this a wasted trip?”

“No. I think we now know enough about Delores to know that she would have called if her plans changed and she could have called.”

“How do you know that for sure?”

“I don’t know for sure. But from what I gathered from Tammy and Rita, Delores was trying to reconnect with her family. Rita said there was a strained relationship there. I don’t think Delores would have bothered calling to ask to come by for a visit if there was no hope for reconciliation. And if that’s the case, she surely would have called if plans changed.”

“Maybe she had a change of heart.”

“I doubt it. Daughters and mothers…when they get estranged…it’s tough. Delores would not have made the move of calling only to back out.”

“You’re analyzing this like a shrink,” Ellington said. “That’s impressive.”

Mackenzie barely noticed the compliment. She was thinking about her own mother—a woman she had not spoken to in a very long time. It was easy to strain a relationship that was supposed to be so pivotal to a woman’s life. She knew all about mothers who let their children down, so she could relate to Delores.

She wondered if Delores Manning was thinking of her mother in her desperate time. That was, of course, if Delores Manning was still alive.