Eleven (Brandon Fisher FBI Series)

Chapter 13 & 14

Chapter 13

"YOU CAN'T PROMISE ANYONE ANYTHING. First rule." Jack spoke with a lit cigarette perched in his lips.

The four of us were standing near the SUVs in the parking lot.

"All I said is we would look into her missing daughter."

"What you in effect promised is something that might not even factor in to this case." He took a solid drag from the cigarette, letting the ash build up on the butt.

"But she very well might."

"You a gambler, Kid? Because that's what you just did."

"Her daughter knew Bingham, went to the same church—"

"But three years ago Bingham was in prison. If, and I'm using that generously, if the girl is the last victim, it wasn't Bingham who killed her." He dropped the burning cigarette to the dirt and extinguished it with a twist of his shoe. "Their prior relationship might not mean anything. We don't give people false hope." Jack turned to get in the SUV.

"And what's wrong with false hope? Isn't hope of any kind better than none?"

Jack stopped moving and didn't say a word. Zachery watched me with large eyes, and Paige's movements froze with the SUV door open and her hand on the handle. Seconds passed.

"Seriously." I knew the single word came out as a desperate appeal.

Jack got into the SUV and slammed the door.

"Shit!" I stomped a foot into the dirt of the parking lot and found myself turning to Zachery for reassurance. He shook his head and got into the other SUV.

*****

IT HAD ALREADY BEEN DECIDED before I got a lesson on what to say and what not to, which direction we would be heading. Jack and I would be seeing Colt Smith, Sally's fiancé, and Paige and Zachery would be paying the guy's parents a visit. I found it ironic how something that might not even have to do with the case, as Jack put it, had us literally spinning wheels on the gravel to investigate it. Of course, I kept that part to myself.

We now knew the name of the church that Bingham had attended, the Lakeview Community Church, a non-Catholic denomination. We had assumed that he would have an affiliation with Catholicism because the talk about repenting and gaining forgiveness was similar terminology as was used in the religion.

This factor just proved, however, nothing in the analysis was concrete. Maybe Bingham's connection to the religion went back further than Salt Lick. Maybe there was Catholicism in his past, maybe there wasn't.

We had forwarded the photograph of Sally to Jones for comparison to the most recent victim. Jack activated the hands-free and called Jones to see how he was making out. Jack had to leave a message, and that didn't improve his mood any.

We pulled up to the address indicated for Colt Smith and were about to get out of the SUV when the phone rang. Caller identity read Nadia Webber. Jack answered by saying, "You got the Twit thing figured out?" He looked over at me. He had intentionally referred to Twitter incorrectly.

"I have something better than that. You also asked me to dig into any open cases that show similar MOs to this case. Sarasota, Florida, sir."

"What are we looking at?"

"Eleven bodies."

"Ah, shit."

"The murders date back to seventy-one."

"Bingham would have been twenty-two at the time," I said.

"Tell them to forward all the information they have on the case."