“We have to be super careful,” she said. She craned her neck to look around to see that no one was stirring though Megan was sure no one would be able to hear them- they could barely hear each other! “Everyone is so scared they could do anything if they heard us talking about escape.” Megan nodded that she understood. She already had an idea they would be able to communicate in the bathroom using writing with their fingers in the steam on the mirror.
Megan ran her hand across the floor and grasped the fingers of Ellie’s hand.
“We can do this,” she said and Ellie smiled briefly at her.
Chapter 28
BY THE TIME SARAH AND Malick arrived at the scene of what was to be the ‘Agrarian’s’ fourth victim, there were already two squad cars, an ambulance and fire brigade and the forensics van. Flashing lights lit up the rural sky and could be seen for many miles around. There would be no shortage of people by now who knew the location of the latest murder and by that fact most likely the name of victim too. This was going to be all over the press in no time flat.
Thankfully, the officer on the door reported no one had entered since he called in the crime. Sarah felt sorry for the officer, he looked pale and nauseous and she imagined what he'd seen inside was worse than anything a rural cop should ever have to come up against.
“We need to get in there,” a man from the forensics team said coming to the door.
“You can get inside in a minute, I just want to have a quick sweep first, don’t worry I won't disturb anything,” Sarah said, the last part pre-empting his objection.
“You know that’s impossible,” he replied exasperated, but he knew Sarah was in charge here. She didn’t bother to reply and out of the corner of her eye as she went through the front door, she saw Malick shrug to the man as if to say, “What are you gonna do.’
“What was that about?” she snapped once they were both inside the house.
“The usual, good cop, bad cop,” he said smiling.
The smell of blood was overpowering and when they came to the door of the kitchen where the body was, the floor was covered like a still lake with thick drying blood. It was still drying, Sarah thought, how recent had this been?
“Jesus,” Malick said, “Look at this mess.”
Sarah looked at the body and saw it was a male in his thirties, like the others. His legs had been cut off and left on the floor beside the body. Casting her eyes about the room, she sought the message she knew would be here. The murder was in a different fashion than before but this had to be the same guy.
There were no items strewn about at all, and for a long time Sarah looked, just knowing there was going to be something. But there wasn’t, unless forensics could find something too small for her to see, or else covered already in the blood.
Then her eyes saw it. A simple white envelope was stuck to the refrigerator door with a magnet. On the front read: ‘FAO S. Brightwater, F.B.I
Sarah felt sick that it was addressed to her personally, but that didn’t mean anything. Her name as lead agent on the case had been in the various newspapers and online rags multiple times in relation to this case. Malick followed her gaze and saw the letter too.
“I think someone left you a love letter,” he said grimly. Sarah didn’t answer, instead she was looking to the floor for the route to the letter that wouldn’t involve her stepping in blood. Once she found this she followed it and then stood before the letter. She slipped on her plastic gloves and removed the magnet, lifted the letter and replaced the magnet exactly where it had been. Forensics were not going to like she’d touched the letter at all but to hell with them, she thought.
Malick was beside her now as she drew the single sheet from the envelope as carefully as she could. She handed the envelope to Malick and then unfolded the sheet.
“Bastard!” she shouted after reading the single line of handwritten text on it.
“What is it?” Malick asked, trying to see the paper for himself.
“It says ‘Oh, so close this time!’”
“Asshole,” Malick said through clenched teeth. Sarah nodded and took the envelope back and bagged it together with the letter. There wasn’t anything else of interest on first glance around the room, so it was time to let the forensics people in to see if they could gleam anything more, though she doubted it.
They searched the rest of the building to be sure no one else was here and then let the forensics team in once it was all clear. Sarah was standing by the door of the kitchen watching the team go about their business when Malick came back up to her.
“I don’t see anything else that looks like a message this time. Do you?” he asked. Sarah had been looking for just this since arriving in the house but she’d seen nothing. She shook her head dolefully and sighed. This one was hard to bear, they were only hours from getting it right. They could have caught him, she was sure of it.
As if reading her mind, Malick said,
“You know there’s a real good chance we wouldn’t have got him even if they had cracked the code earlier than today. I mean, we don’t have the manpower to be sitting on every single farmer in these three States waiting for him to show up.”
“I know, I know,” Sarah said, batting his argument away with her hand, but she felt differently. Except it was more than feeling differently, she knew differently. This had been
