Before He Preys Read online

  There wasn’t much graffiti along the bridge, but the amount of litter was noticeable. Beer bottles, soda cans, and empty bags of chips were tossed to the edges of the bridge, pushed against the metal edging that supported the iron rails. The bridge wasn’t very long at all; it was around seventy-five yards, just long enough to span over the steep embankments and the river below. It felt sturdy under her feet but the very structure of it was almost feeble in a way. She was very aware that she was walking on wooden boards and support beams nearly two hundred feet in the air.

  She made her way to the end of the bridge, finding that the police officer had been right. The land was much more manageable on this other side. With the help of the Maglite, she saw a beaten path that wound through the high grass. The embankment went down at close to a ninety-degree angle but there were patches of ground and rocks jutting out here and there that made the descent quite easy.

  “Hold on a minute,” a man’s voice said from below. Mackenzie glanced forward, toward the glare of the spotlights, and saw a shadow emerging and coming her way. “Who’s there?” the man asked.

  “Mackenzie White, FBI,” she said, reaching for her ID.

  The shadow’s owner came into view moments later. He was an older man with a huge bushy beard. He was wearing a police uniform, the badge over his breast indicating that he was Kingsville’s sheriff. Behind him, she could see the figures of four other officers. One of them was taking pictures and moving slowly in the shadows.

  “Oh, wow,” he said. “That was quick.” He waited for Mackenzie to draw closer and then extended his hand. He gave her a hearty handshake and said, “I’m Sheriff Tate. Good to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Mackenzie said as she reached the end of the embankment and found herself on flat land.

  She took a moment to take in the scene, expertly illuminated by the spotlights that had been set up along the sides of the embankment. The first thing Mackenzie noticed was that the river wasn’t much of a river at all—not in the location beneath Miller Moon Bridge, anyway. There were what looked like a few meandering puddles of stagnant water hugging the sides and sharp edges of rocks and large boulders that took up the area the river should have passed through.

  One of the boulders among the rubble was massive, easily the size of two cars. Splayed out on top of this boulder was a body. The right arm was clearly broken, bent impossibly beneath the remainder of the body. A stream of blood was trailing down the boulder, mostly dried but still wet enough to seem as if it was still flowing.

  “Hell of a sight, ain’t it?” Tate asked, standing beside her.

  “Yes, it is. What can you tell me for sure at the moment?”

  “Well, the victim is a twenty-two-year-old male. Kenny Skinner. As I understand it, he’s related to someone higher up on your ladder.”

  “Yes. The nephew of the FBI’s deputy director. How many men out here currently know that?”

  “Just me and my deputy,” Tate said. “We already spoke with your pals in Washington. We know this needs to be kept quiet.”

  “Thanks,” Mackenzie said. “I understand there was another body discovered here a few days ago?”

  “Three mornings ago, yeah,” Tate said. “A woman named Malory Thomas.”

  “Any signs of foul play?”

  “Well, she was naked. And her clothes were found up there on the bridge. Other than that, there was nothing. It was assumed to be just another suicide.”

  “You get many of those around here?”

  “Yeah,” Tate said with a nervous smile. “You could say that. Three years ago, six people killed themselves by jumping off of this fucking bridge. It was some kind of record per location for the state of Virginia. The year after that, there were three. Last year, it was five.”

  “Were they all locals?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No. Out of those fourteen people, only four living within a fifty-mile radius.”

  “And to your knowledge, is there maybe some sort of urban legend or reasoning behind these people taking their lives off of this bridge?”

  “There’s ghost stories, sure,” Tate said. “But there’s a ghost story tied to just about every decommissioned bridge in the country. I don’t know. I blame these screwed up generation gaps. Kids these days get their feelings hurt and think offing themselves is the answer. It’s pretty sad.”

  “How about homicides?” Mackenzie asked. “What’s the rate like in Kingsville?”

  “There were two last year. And so far, only one this year. It’s a quiet town. Everyone knows everyone else and if you don’t like someone, you just stay away from them. Why do you ask? You leaning towards murder for this one?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Mackenzie said. “Two bodies in the span of four days, at the same location. I think it’s worth looking into. Do you happen to know if Kenny Skinner and Malory Thomas knew one another?”

  “Probably. But I don’t know how well. Like I said…everyone knows everyone in Kingsville. But if you’re asking if maybe Kenny killed himself because Malory did, I doubt it. There’s a five-year difference in age and they didn’t really hang with the same crowds from what I know.”

  “Mind if I have a look?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Be my guest,” Tate said, instantly walking away from her to join the other officers who were scouring the scene.

  Mackenzie approached the boulder and the body of Kenny Skinner apprehensively. The closer she got to the body, the more aware she became of just how much damage had been done. She’d seen some pretty grisly things in her line of work, but this was among the worst.

  The stream of blood was coming from an area where it appeared Kenny’s head had smashed against the rock. She didn’t bother examining it closely because the black and red illuminated in the spotlights wasn’t something she wanted popping back into her head later in the night. The massive facture in the back of his head affected the rest of the skull, distorting the facial features. She also saw where his chest and stomach looked as if they had been puffed out from within.

  She did her best to look past all of this, checking over Kenny’s clothes and exposed skin for any signs of foul play. In the harsh yet inefficient beam of the spotlights, it was hard to be sure but after several minutes, Mackenzie could find nothing. When she stepped away, she felt herself start to relax. Apparently, she’d been tensed up while observing the body.

  She went back to Sheriff Tate, who was speaking with another officer. They sounded as if they were making plans about notifying the family.

  “Sheriff, do you think you could have someone pull the records for me on those fourteen suicides over the last three years?”

  “Yeah, I can do that. I’ll make a call here in a second and make sure they’re waiting for you at the station. And you know…there’s someone you might want to call. There’s a lady in town, works out of her home as a psychiatrist and special needs teacher. She’s been on my ass for the last year or so about how all of the suicides in Kingsville can’t just be suicides. She might be able to offer something you might not find in the reports.”

  “That would be great.”

  “I’ll have someone include her information with the reports. You good here?”

  “For now, yes. Could I please have your number for easier contact?”

  “Sure. But the damned thing is glitchy. Need to upgrade. Should have done it about five months back. So if you call me and it goes to voicemail right away, I’m not ignoring you. I’ll call you right back. Some stupid thing with the phone. I hate cell phones anyway.”

  After his rant on modern technology, Tate gave her his cell number and she saved it into her phone.

  “I’ll see you around,” Tate said. “For now, the coroner is on the way. I’ll be damn glad when we can move this body.”

  It seemed like an insensitive thing to say but when Mackenzie looked back at it and saw the gore and broken state of the body, she couldn’t help but agree.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It wa
s 10:10 when she walked into the police station. The place was absolutely dead, the only movement coming from a bored-looking woman sitting behind a desk—what Mackenzie assumed served as dispatch at the Kingsville Police Department—and two officers talking animatedly about politics in a hallway behind the dispatch desk.

  Despite the lackluster feel of the place, it was apparently very well run. The woman at the dispatch desk had already copied all of the records Sheriff Tate had mentioned and had them waiting in a file folder when Mackenzie arrived. Mackenzie thanked her and then asked for a motel recommendation in the area. As it turned out, Kingsville only had a single motel, less than two miles away from the police department.

  Ten minutes later, Mackenzie was unlocking the door to her room at a Motel 6. She’d certainly stayed in worse places during her tenure with the bureau, but it wasn’t likely to get any glowing Yelp or Google reviews. She paid little attention to the lacking state of the room, setting the files down on the little table by the single bed and wasting no time in diving into them.

  She took some notes of her own while she read through the files. The first and perhaps most alarming thing she discovered was that of the fourteen suicides that had occurred in the last three years, eleven of them had been from the Miller Moon Bridge. The other three included two gun-related suicides and a single hanging from an attic beam.

  Mackenzie knew enough about small towns to understand the allure of a rural marker like the Miller Moon Bridge. The history and the overall neglected creepiness of it was appealing, especially to teens. And, as the records in front of her showed, six of the fourteen suicides had been under twenty-one years of age.

  She pored over the records; while they weren’t as explicitly detailed as she would have liked, they were above par for what she had seen from most small-town police departments. She jotted down note after note, coming up with a comprehensive list of details to help her better get to the bottom of the multiple deaths that were linked to the Miller Moon Bridge. After an hour or so, she had enough to base a few rough opinions.

  First, of the fourteen suicides, exactly half had left notes. The notes made it clear that they had made the decision to end their lives. Each record had a photocopy of the letter and all of them expressed regret of some form or another. They told loved ones they cherished them and expressed pains that they could not overcome.

  The other seven could almost be looked at as typical suspected murder cases: bodies discovered out of nowhere, in rough shape. One of the suicides, a seventeen-year-old female, had shown evidence of recent sexual activity. When the DNA of her partner had been found on and in her body, he had provided evidence in the form of text messages that she had come to his house, they’d had sex, and then she’d left. And from the way it looked, she had launched herself off of the Miller Moon Bridge about three hours later.

  The only case out of the fourteen that she could see that would have warranted any sort of closer look was the sad and unfortunate suicide of a sixteen-year-old male. When he had been discovered on those bloodied rocks beneath the bridge, there had been bruises on his chest and arms that did not line up with any of the injuries he had suffered from the fall itself. Within a few days, police had discovered that the boy had been routinely beaten by an alcoholic father who, sadly enough, attempted suicide three days after the discovery of his son’s body.

  Mackenzie finished off the research session with the freshly put together file on Malory Thomas. Her case stood out a bit from the others because she had been nude. The report showed that her clothes had been found in a neat pile on the bridge. There had been so sign of abuse, recent sexual activity, or foul play. For some reason or another, it simply seemed that Malory Thomas had decided to take that leap in her birthday suit.

  That seems odd, though, Mackenzie thought. Out of place, even. If you’re going to kill yourself, why would you want yourself exposed like that when your body is found?

  She pondered it for a moment and then remembered the psychiatrist Sheriff Tate had mentioned. Of course, now that it was nearly midnight, it was too late to call.

  Midnight, she thought. She looked to her phone, surprised that Ellington had not tried reaching out. She supposed he was playing it smart—not wanting to bother her until he thought she was in a good place. And honestly, she wasn’t sure what sort of place she was in. So he’d made a mistake in his life long before he knew her…why the hell should she be so upset about that?

  She wasn’t sure. But she knew that she was…and in that moment, that was really all that mattered.

  Before turning in for bed, she looked at the business card the woman at the station had placed in the file. It was the name, number, and email address of the local psychiatrist, Dr. Jan Haggerty. Wanting to be as prepared as possible, Mackenzie fired off an email, letting Dr. Haggerty know that she was in town, why she was there, and requesting a meeting as early as possible. Mackenzie figured if she had not heard from Haggerty by nine tomorrow morning, she’d go ahead and place a call.

  Before turning out the lights, she thought about calling Ellington, just to check on him. She knew him well enough; he was probably having a pity party for himself, likely downing several beers with plans of passing out on the couch.

  Thinking of him in that state made the decision much easier for her. She turned out the lights and, in the darkness, started to feel like she might be in a town that was darker than others. The kind of town that hid some ugly scars, forever in the dark not because of the rural setting but because of a certain blemish on a gravel road about six miles from where she currently rested her head. And although she did her best to clear her thoughts, she fell asleep with images of teenagers falling to their deaths from the top of Miller Moon Bridge.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She was stirred awake by the ringing of her cell phone. The bedside clock told her that it was 6:40 as she reached for it. She saw McGrath’s name on the display, had just enough time to wish it were Ellington instead, and then answered it.

  “This is Agent White.”

  “White, where are we on this case with Director Wilmoth’s nephew?”

  “Well, right now it seems like a clear-cut suicide. If it plays out the way I think it will, I should be back in DC this afternoon.”

  “No foul play at all?”

  “Not that I can see. If you don’t mind my asking…is Director Wilmoth looking for foul play?”

  “No. But let’s be real…a suicide in the family for a man of his position isn’t going to look good. He just wants the details before the public gets them.”

  “Roger that.”

  “White, did I wake you?” he asked gruffly.

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Keep me in the loop on this,” he said and then ended the call.

  A hell of a way to wake up, Mackenzie thought as she got out of bed. She went to the shower and when she was done, a towel wrapped around her, she walked out of the bathroom to the sound of her phone going off yet again.

  She did not recognize the number, so she picked it up right away. With her hair still wet, she answered: “This is Agent White.”

  “Agent White, this is Jan Haggerty,” said a somber-sounding voice. “I just finished reading your email.”

  “Thanks for getting back to me so soon,” Mackenzie said. “I know it’s asking a lot for someone in your profession, but is there any way you and I could meet for a chat sometime today?”

  “That’s not a problem at all,” Haggerty said. “My office is out of my home and my first appointment isn’t until nine thirty this morning. If you give me half an hour or so to prepare for my day, I can see you this morning. I’ll put on some coffee.”

  “Sounds great,” Mackenzie said.

  Haggerty gave Mackenzie her address and they ended the call. With half an hour to spare, Mackenzie decided she should do the grown-up thing and give Ellington a call. It would do neither of them any good to hide away from the issue at hand and just hope the other simply forgot about
it or was able to sweep it under the rug.

  When he answered the call, he sounded tired. Mackenzie assumed she had woken him up, which wasn’t all that surprising since he tended to sleep in on the days he had off. But she was pretty sure she also detected some hopefulness in his voice.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Good morning,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said almost right away. “Out of sorts would be the best way to describe it. But I’ll survive. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that this will all blow over. I’ll have a little blemish on my professional record, but as long as I can return back to work, I think I’ll manage. How about you? How’s your super-top-secret case?”

  “Pretty much over, I think,” she said. When she had called him last night on her way to Kingsville, she had not shared too much information with him, just letting him know that it was not a case that would place her in any danger. She remained careful not to spill too much information now. It sometimes tended to happen among agents when a case was closed or close to being closed.

  “Good,” he said. “Because I don’t like how things ended with us when you left. I don’t…well, I don’t know what I need to apologize for. But I still feel like I’ve done you a disservice in all of this.”

  “It is what it is,” Mackenzie said, hating the sound of such a cliché coming out of her mouth. “I should be back by tonight. We can talk about it then.”

  “Sounds good. Be careful.”

  “You, too,” she said with a forced chuckle.

  They ended the call and while she felt a bit better having spoken to him, she couldn’t deny the tension she still felt. She didn’t allow herself time to dwell on it, though. She headed out into Kingsville in search of a bite to eat to pass the time before heading to Dr. Haggerty’s house.

  ***

  Dr. Haggerty lived alone in a two-story Colonial-style house. It sat in the center of a beautiful front yard. A thick group of elms and oaks in the backyard hovered behind the house like nature’s own form of drop shadow. Dr. Haggerty met Mackenzie at the front door with a smile and the scent of freshly brewed strong coffee right behind her. She looked to be in her late fifties, with a head of hair that was still managing to maintain most of its chestnut brown. Her eyes took Mackenzie in from behind a small set of glasses. When she invited Mackenzie inside, she gestured through the front door with rail-thin arms and a voice that was little more than a whisper.