I shake my head. “She said it was a clusterfuck, but we didn’t get the chance to get drinks for the stitch-n-bitch before this came up. At lunch on Wednesday we were talking about this case.”
“Simpkins rode the local law enforcement officials so hard they withdrew their request for aid before the case had been solved.”
“In Idaho?” Sterling squeaks. “It’s hard enough to get invited in there.”
“It should have gone to me as unit chief, but Simpkins took it over my head to the section chief. IA was reviewing the situation when the request from Holmes came in, but they hadn’t reached a conclusion and Gordon wanted the lead agent to have at least twenty years. It brings a weight to it that can go far in protecting the targeted agent.”
“I’ve heard rumors that she put herself forward for your job,” Eddison notes.
I look down at my hands. I’m not going to throw Cass under the bus by confirming it.
Vic grimaces. “We don’t know yet if that’s connected,” he cautions. “She hasn’t been notified, so mouths shut. It’ll be later today, once Gordon can get everything together.”
“The Smiths have the most seniority,” I note, “but neither of them is suited to leading a team. Cass is a great agent but she doesn’t have the leadership experience, not for a case like this, and Johnson is still transitioning back from medical leave, so he’s desk bound. That leaves . . . who—Watts and Burnside?”
“He’s asking Watts. Burnside is the best on the team at tracking through digital trails, so they want him focused on the CPS office.”
“Watts is good,” Eddison says, more to me than to the others. “She’s steady.”
“Simpkins was, too.”
Sterling brings her legs up onto the chair, sitting cross-legged with a napkin across her lap to catch the crumbs from the croissant she’s picking apart. She’s frowning a little; this is her deep-in-thought frown, one of the distinctive ones, marked by her mouth twisting into a sideways moue. I watch her for several minutes, the frown shifting minutely as she works her way through the set of thoughts.
Then Eddison throws a blueberry at her from his muffin, and she looks up with wide, startled eyes. “Share with the class, Thumper,” he says.
“What if it isn’t anything nice?” she retorts automatically.
“Two kids died this morning, and a family of five became a family of one very broken little boy,” I say softly. “I don’t think there’s any nice right now.”
She takes a deep breath and lets Vic pull the mangled pastry from her hands. “The killer was too late to save the kids,” she says in a rush. “It’s even possible that the stress of the so-called rescue exacerbated the effects of the drugs on their systems. So. She didn’t save the kids. Add that to the fact that she’s already accelerating the kills, and what happens next?”
“She needs to save these kids.” Eddison scowls down at what’s left of his muffin. “Whatever’s driving her, whatever personal trauma is nipping her heels, doing this is a need. Failure will either drive that violence inward, or—”
“Or outward, exploding in a frenzy,” I finish.
“She’s not even trying your house anymore,” Vic notes. “Sterling checked your cameras. Only two cars came through that didn’t belong to residents, and they went to homes and stayed there all night. Are still there, in fact.”
“But she’s still giving them my name. Why?”
“How far did you get into your cases yesterday?”
“Thursday? Not far. Assessing and running every name takes time.”
“Can you make a rubric to narrow them down, so we can help you sort through? You can dismiss the cases where the victims were boys—”
“We can’t, actually,” Sterling interrupts with a wince. “He could have had a sister, a cousin, a neighbor, a friend, some girl who was influenced by Mercedes helping with the rescue. We give bears to all the kids, not just the immediate victims.”
“And we haven’t eliminated the possibility of the killer being male,” adds Eddison. “Plenty of men have higher-pitched voices, or can fake it. Given popular depictions of angels, the wig may not even be out of place. We don’t know gender. It’s just easier to say ‘she’ because that’s what the kids assume.”
Despite our instincts screaming otherwise, he’s right. “And we can’t rely on cases where I felt a particular connection with someone, because they’re not always mutual. I could have had a drastic impact on someone’s life and have absolutely no idea.”
“Shit,” sighs Vic, and we all flinch. He so rarely swears; I think we’ve all grown to think of him cursing as a sign that things are really fucked.
Cass clears her throat from the hallway, getting our attention before she joins us. “I thought you’d want to know, CPS contacted both sets of Brayden’s grandparents. Paternals live in Alabama, maternals in Washington State, and both have indicated they want custody. They also really don’t like each other. It could get nasty.”
I sigh. “Cass, one of these days, you’re going to remember the difference between want to know and need to know.”
She gives me a tired smile. “The warrant went through. Mr. Lee should be getting me the list of file access by end of business Monday. Burnside got approved for access to their system to examine digital footprints.”
“Word to the wise, Gloria Hess is helping Lee put the list together.”
“Fuck.” She glances at Vic and turns bright red, but doesn’t apologize.
His lips twitch in a reluctant smile.
“Brayden isn’t talking to Tate,” Cass continues after a moment. “He isn’t talking to anyone. But he doesn’t seem to mind Tate staying with him.”
“Tate seems like very good people.”
“I got that impression too.” She straightens out a wrinkle in her shirt, then frowns down at it. “I can’t tell if this is inside out or backward.”
“Backward,” Sterling answers. “I can see the lines of the tag.”
“Huh. Anyway, Brayden probably isn’t going to communicate for a while. Tate said, and Holmes agrees, you should probably head on home and get some rest. You know, if you want.”
I eye the last splashes of my coffee and wonder if I can fall asleep before the caffeine kicks in.
“Thank you, Cass,” Vic says for all of us. “You’ll keep us updated?”
“Yes, sir.”
Eddison and I both snort, followed by Cass’s blush deepening. Sterling just gives her a commiserating look.
“Cass? Killer left bruises on Zoe’s left wrist; I don’t know if you’ll be able to get fingerprints, but it can probably tell you her general size. Talk to Holmes and her medical examiner.”
We end up following Vic home and sacking out in his living room rather than separating. Sterling curls up in the armchair, face buried in her knees. Eddison and I each take a couch, and it says a lot that despite the adrenaline, the caffeine, the light pouring in through the sheer drapes, we’re out cold pretty damn fast.
Several hours later, the ringing of my personal phone snaps me awake in nothing flat, my heart thumping painfully against my ribs. Sterling wakes just as abruptly, flailing off the chair and landing on the floor with a squeak that has Eddison attempting to prop himself up on an elbow, and sort-of managing it three attempts later.
The screen says Esperanza. “It’s not another kid,” I announce, and Eddison drops back into the couch and blanket.
“You’re not answering it,” mumbles Sterling, hauling herself up the chair.
“I’m not sure if it’s my cousin or my aunt.”
“Are either of them bad options?”
“One of them is.”
“Oh.”
Eddison cracks open one eye. “Why is it still ringing?”
“Because I don’t want to pick up if it’s Soledad.” I wait for it to go to voice mail, and listen to the message. It’s Esperanza, afortunadamente, but her message doesn’t really tell me much. There’s something big, call me back so I can be the one to tell you, rather than my mother.
Big or little, I really don’t want to know. Don’t need to know.
Before I can decide whether or not to call her back, the phone starts vibrating and ringing again, her name lighting up the screen. Damn it. With a bone-deep sigh, I accept the call. “Hello?”