Mackenzie's phone started ringing less than ten minutes into her ride with Nelson. She checked the number on the display and although she had not yet saved it, it was fresh and familiar in her mind. She had nearly forgotten that Ellington had sent a text stating that he would call her. She knew he'd sent the text that morning but it seemed like a very long time ago. She checked the time on her phone's task bar and saw that it was only 3:16. This day was turning out to be incredibly long.
She ignored the call, not wanting to add another level of complexity to what was turning out to be an already chaotic afternoon. At the same time she was ignoring Ellington's call, Nelson was on the phone with Nancy. He spoke curtly, straight and to the point. It was clear that he was on edge and beyond stressed out, something that Mackenzie was beginning to feel herself.
He ended the call several seconds later and started nervously tapping at the steering wheel with his thumbs. "Nancy just spoke to the State boys," he said. "They'll have a helicopter flying over the area within an hour and a half."
"That's good news," Mackenzie said.
"Tell me," Nelson said. "Do you think he's killing the women before he puts them on the poles or does he kill them there?"
"There's nothing solid to prove either way," Mackenzie said. "However, the first scene in the cornfield makes me think the women are alive when he puts them on the poles. There were marks on the ground where the whip or whatever he uses was dragged."
"So?"
"So, he was pacing. He was anxious and biding his time. If the woman was already dead, why wait around with the whip?"
Nelson nodded and gave her a smile of appreciation. "We're going to nail this bastard," he said, still drumming on the steering wheel.
Mackenzie badly wanted to join in on his enthusiasm, but something felt incomplete. She almost felt as if she had overlooked something but could not for the life of her figure out what it was. She remained quiet, pondering this silently, as Nelson drove on.
They entered what Nelson was referring to as the Area of Interest twenty minutes later. She had listened to several brief phone calls from Nelson's end during the drive and gathered that Nelson was setting up a perimeter of sorts to block in an area of thirty square miles. The area consisted of mostly scrub land and secondary roads. A few of those secondary roads were surrounded by cornfields just like the site of the original crime scene that had started all of this madness.
As Nelson drove them down such a road, the BC radio squawked at them. "Detective White, are you out there?" a man's voice asked.
Mackenzie looked to Nelson, as if for approval. He gestured to the CD radio installed under the dash with a smile. "Go ahead," he said. "It's your show."
Mackenzie unclasped the mic from the radio and clicked down the send button. "This is White. What have you got?"
"I'm out here off of State Route 411 and came across a side road-nothing more than an old gravel road, really. The road heads straight into a cornfield and is not on the maps. It's about half a mile long and dead ends into a small clearing in the cornfield."
"Okay," she said. "Did you find something?"
"That's putting it lightly, Detective," the officer on the other end said. "I think you need to get out here as fast as you can."
*
It was beyond eerie to find herself standing in another cornfield. It was almost like she had come full circle, only it did not feel like she was coming to the end of something. Quite the contrary, it felt like she was starting all over.
She stood at the edge of the clearing with Nelson and Officer Lent, the man that had contacted her on the radio. The three of them stood among the thinned cornstalks and looked out to the small clearing.
A wooden pole had been erected in the middle of the clearing. Unlike the other poles they had recently seen that were identical to this one, there was no body strung up on it. The pole was bare and looked almost like some weird sort of ancient monolith in the empty clearing.
Slowly, Mackenzie walked up to it. It was cedar, the same as the other three. She got down to her knees and felt the earth around the bottom of the pole. It was soft and had very obviously been loosened and then packed back down rather recently.
"This pole hasn't been here very long," Mackenzie said. "The loose dirt is very fresh. I'd almost guess it was done earlier today."
"So he preps the sites before he brings his victims," Nelson speculated. "I don't know if that's genius or cocky."
While Mackenzie was repulsed by the word genius being tied to the killer in any way, she ignored him. She went to the back of the pole and instantly spied the etchings along the bottom, several inches from the loose dirt that held the pole into the ground: N511/J202.
"I wouldn't say it's either," Mackenzie said. "What I do know is that he's essentially left us his business card. We know he's coming back, and he'll probably have his latest victim with him."
As she got back to her feet, she was struck by a sense of vengeance that she had never felt before. The man behind these crimes had somehow shaken her. He had become a specter of sorts, a ghost with the ability to haunt her house, her mind, and her confidence. He had her jumping at the sound of creaking floorboards and getting to such a low point that she was hitting on larger-than-life FBI agents. He'd affected her so much that she hadn't had the energy or emotion to care that Zack had finally left.
On top of that, he was taking women as his victims simply because they used their bodies as a means to make a living. And who the hell was he to judge them for that?
"I want to be here," Mackenzie said. "I want to be on patrol or stakeout or whatever we do to make sure we catch him. I want to put the cuffs on the fucker."
She knew it sounded selfish, but she didn't care. In that moment, she didn't give a damn what Nelson thought of her. She didn't care if he went back to the boys at the station and laughed about how the cute little woman had demanded things from him. Suddenly, catching the man behind these murders was more important than anything-including her job and her reputation.
"I can see to that," Nelson said with a smile. "Good to see a pissed off spark in you, White. I didn't know you had it in you."
She bit back the remark that danced on her tongue, simply thinking it instead.
Neither did I.