Before He Hunts (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 8)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

The Omaha field office was pleasant to the eye. It was smaller than the headquarters in DC, meaning there was less chatter. There was also not the tension of something always on the brink of happening, a trait that the offices in DC were usually rife with. The place felt calming.

As they were signing in at the front desk, Mackenzie noticed a man headed directly for them. He was walking with purpose, a thin smile on his face. His face was familiar but she could not for the life of her recall the man’s name.

“Agent White, it’s great to see you again,” the man said as he approached. He was roughly six feet tall and carried himself well. He was rather slim but still intimidating looking. His slicked back black hair made him look a bit older than he probably was.

“Likewise,” she said, shaking the hand he extended to her.

She was thankful that Ellington remembered his name, using it as the two men greeted one another. “Agent Penbrook,” he said. “Great to see you.”

She then remembered; Agent Darren Penbrook had been the lead on the case when she had flown out in the hopes of arresting Gabriel Hambry—only to find out within less than an hour that he had been killed.

“Come with me,” Penbrook said. “There won’t be much of a meeting, but there are a few details I think you guys should be caught up on…some of which are fairly recent.”

“How recent?” Mackenzie asked.

“Within the last twenty-four hours.”

Mackenzie knew how things worked at most levels within the bureau and assumed they were no different in Omaha than they were in DC. There was no use asking questions in that moment. So during the elevator ride to the second floor and a quick jaunt through a hallway that led to a blocked-off conference room, the three of them passed the time with small talk: the flight, the weather, how busy things stayed in DC.

But those niceties were dashed the moment Penbrook took them into the conference room. He closed the door behind them, leaving the three of them in the large room with an elegant and finely polished conference table. There was already a projector set up and ready to go in the center of the table.

“So what sort of updates were you referring to?” Mackenzie asked.

“Well, you know about the fourth murdered vagrant, right?” he asked.

“Yes. It happened yesterday, right? Sometime in the afternoon?”

“That’s right,” Penbrook said. “He was killed with the same model of gun the others were killed with. This time, though, the killer had placed the business card between the victim’s lips. We had the card tested and there were no fingerprints. The vagrant wasn’t a local. His last known address was in California and that was four years ago. Looking for family members or people he worked with has turned into nothing but a ghost hunt. And that’s been the case with most of these vagrants. We did, however, find his brother. He’s also a vagrant and according to his reports, might be slightly delusional.”

“Is there anything else?” Ellington asked.

“Yes. And this one really sucks. It’s actually thrown us for a loop and is currently where the case is stuck at the moment. You recall the fingerprints we got off of Gabriel Hambry’s body, correct?”

“Yes,” Mackenzie said. “They belonged to a man named Dennis Parks—a man who had a history with my father.”

“Exactly. Sounded like a promising lead, right?”

“I take it the lead fell through?” Mackenzie asked.

“It never had a chance. Dennis Parks was found dead in his bed this morning. Shot in the back of the head. His wife was also killed. From what we can tell, she was also killed while in the bed but her body was moved to the couch.”

Both Penbrook and Ellington looked in Mackenzie’s direction. She knew what they were thinking. The killer set it up to look like the scene at Jimmy Scotts’s murder…like my father’s murder.

Penbrook took this moment to show a slide from the crime scene. It was of Dennis Parks, face down in bed with the back of his head blown out. The positioning of it was almost too eerie for Mackenzie. Had she not known the identity of the victim, she could have easily thought she was looking at a photo from her father’s crime scene all those years ago.

The slide then shifted to an image of the wife. She was on the couch, her dead eyes staring slightly upward. There was dried blood on the side of her face.

“Was there a business card at the scene?” Mackenzie asked.

“Yes,” Penbrook replied. “On the nightstand. And, just so you can get the scope of it all, here’s a shot from the latest vagrant scene.”

He changed slides and Mackenzie found herself looking at a man lying on a city sidewalk. The side of his head was a bloody mess, contrasted almost too perfectly with the white business card that had been partially shoved between his lips.

“It seems like the killer is just having fun at this point,” Ellington said. “That’s messed up.”

He was right. Mackenzie was sure that there was an almost playful nature to the way the card had been placed in the victim’s mouth. Add that to the fact that the killer was also apparently placing fingerprints on the cards and other victims to lead them to red herrings and that meant you had a determined, smart, and morbid killer.

He thinks he’s being funny here, she thought as she looked to the picture of the victim.

“So why is he choosing vagrants to kill?” Mackenzie asked. “If he’s coming back to kill more so long after having killed my father, why the homeless? And is there any connection between these vagrants and Jimmy Scotts or Gabriel Hambry?”

“None that we have found,” Penbrook said.

“So maybe he’s just rubbing our noses in it,” Mackenzie said. “Maybe he knows the deaths of vagrants aren’t going to be as high of a priority as if he were killing everyday citizens. And if that’s the case, he really is doing this as an almost playful act.”

“That about the vagrant community,” Ellington said. “If we ask around, do you think we might get some sort of information from other vagrants in the area?”

“Oh, we’ve tried,” Penbrook said. “But they won’t talk. They’re afraid whoever is doing the killing will come after them next if they speak up.”

“We need to talk to the brother of the latest victim,” Mackenzie said. “Any idea where he might be? Does he live around here?”

“Sort of,” Penbrook said. “Like his brother, he’s living on the streets. Well, he was. He’s at a correctional facility right now. Can’t remember what for, but maybe public intoxication. His record is filled with little misdemeanors that put him in prison for a week or two at a time. It happens a lot, you know. Some of them do it just to get free housing for a few days.”

“You have any problems with us going to see him?” Mackenzie asked.

“Not at all,” Penbrook said. “I’ll have someone make a call and let them know you’re coming.”

“Thanks.”

“I feel like I should be thanking you,” Penbrook said. “We’re excited to finally have you out here working on this thing.”

Finally, she thought. She said nothing, though, and left it at that.

Because the truth was, she was excited, too. She was excited to finally have the opportunity to wrap up a truly bizarre case that reached all the way back into her childhood and pointed directly back to her father.