The Night Shift(57)
“Run!” Chris yells to her.
With bare feet she races past him and into the darkness. Chris suffers a wave of nausea as he realizes she’s not wearing pants.
The boy continues to push toward Chris, the knife slashing the air, blood pouring from his nose.
Chris jumps back, avoiding the arc of the blade, then connects a punch on the bloody red bandage, which elicits another wail of pain. The kid’s unsteady on his feet. Chris charges him, grabbing his wrist to keep the knife at bay, using his weight to knock the kid to the ground. Still holding his wrist, Chris slams the kid’s hand against the earth over and over until the knife skitters away. The kid’s whimpering now. Chris rolls off him and springs to his feet.
Chris stands over him. He yanks out his phone, dials 911, tells the operator his coordinates on the phone’s GPS.
The kid will live. In the distance, Chris sees the silhouette of the girl still running. He feels a flood of melancholy watching her.
Then he feels something else. A new emotion washes over him: pride. And he has an epiphany. This is how he wants to feel in his life.
His glance turns back to the groaning kid who’s still on the ground. The boy’s eyes raise to meet Chris’s. They widen, like he’s looking at something behind Chris.
Chris turns to look, when he feels a crushing blow to the head. Instantly, he’s on the ground. He sees starbursts, debilitating pain, then feels a boot in his stomach, ripping the wind out of him. His watch is torn from his wrist. He tries to speak, but can’t form the words.
The figure, carrying a large branch the size of a baseball bat, walks over to the kid with the bandage. He kicks him in the ribs. Then searches his pockets. The figure drifts into the gloom. And Chris drifts away as well.
DAY 3
CHAPTER 51
KELLER
“You got a positive ID on the body yet?” Hal asks, taking a sip from his coffee mug, wincing at the awful brew. The blinds in his office are open, giving the room a gray hue from the gloomy morning outside.
“It’ll take a day or two for the DNA results, but her purse was in the barrel,” Keller says. “And Atticus is tracking down dental records, so we’ll get confirmation soon. But it’s her.”
Mary Whitaker.
Wife of Rusty. Mother of Vince and Chris. The woman who reportedly ran off nearly twenty years ago, but was actually rotting inside a steel drum at a storage unit near the sewage plant.
“What’s the husband say?”
“Four words: ‘I want a lawyer.’”
“I guess he’s not such a dumb son-of-a-bitch after all. Unless you count the years he had to get rid of the body.” Hal’s phone rings and he gets an annoyed look on his face as he waits for his secretary to answer the line. “The media’s gonna go nuts once they learn the victim is Vince Whitaker’s mother. Let me know when you get a positive ID. We’ll need to release a statement.”
“Will do. As for notifying the family, we obviously don’t know how to reach Vince Whitaker, but he has a younger brother.”
Hal releases a loud exhale. “I remember. The kid not only got to be the old man’s punching bag, he believed his mom abandoned him.”
“Any idea how to reach him? We’re having a hard time. It looks like he was adopted. Probably changed his name.”
“Let me make some calls,” Hal says. “We should be able to get foster care information. He got placed with a nice couple, if I recall. Maybe they’ll know how to reach him. Remind me, what’s his name?”
“Christopher.”
“That’s right. I’ll get on it.” Hal sits back. “Well, Agent Badass, you’ve had a busy couple days in Union County. Tell Stan we appreciate the help, but I think we can take things from here.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to tie up some loose ends?”
Hal scrutinizes her. “Sure. Why not? Maybe you can find Hoffa’s body while you’re at it.”
Keller debates whether to ask the next question. She regards Hal for a long beat, then says, “I have a question about the Blockbuster case.”
Hal gazes at her from over the lip of his mug, cocks an eyebrow for her to continue.
“We met with Tony Grosso.”
“Grosso? Haven’t heard that name in years. How is he?”
“Very retired.”
“That’s how he was on the job too.”
She smiles at that. “He was one of the leads on the Blockbuster case.”
“I remember.”
“We asked him about the file, and he said something interesting.”
Hal waits.
“He said that the investigative team buried something from the official file—something that might have been embarrassing to a victim’s family. He said someone on the team at the time was tight with the family.”
Hal furrows his brow. “What are you asking me, Agent Keller?”
He’s no longer calling her Agent Badass or Sarah, Keller notices.
“Grosso said one of the victims, Katie McKenzie, had been pregnant. Not when she was killed, but before. He said it was an open secret at the office, but left out of the file.”
“And you think I was aware of the ‘open secret’?”