Since the family only had one car—a bone of contention he brought up at least weekly—he’d walked over to the station from Morgan’s house, and his father had ordered him to sit in one of the empty offices and plan for next week’s Bible study. When Sam arrived, his father had been on the phone, red-faced and yelling. The second murder seemed to have sent him over the edge completely.
Absently Sam ripped into another sugar packet and emptied it into his mug, listening to the dull thud of booted feet move past his door as he scrolled through the forum.
A few people had replied to his query.
UnknownPotato: They saw that ages ago. Nothing but uneven paint on the wall.
AlexaPanda: Maybe it’s blood.
CrimeBuff69: I dug into this a bit and found…a lot. There’s tons of wacko theories.
There was a link below, which led Sam to a website that had blown up the grainy footage and traced shaky lines over the red on the wall, creating a circle with a vague, squiggly blob in the center, and several white dots around the outside. Underneath was a long, rambling post about how the Butcher was supernatural, and he trapped his victims with black magic. Sam blew out a breath, shaking his head.
So…aside from insane theories and possibly imagined ghostly markings, he had a whole lot of nothing. The lack of clues should have frustrated him, discouraged him, even. Instead it just seemed to goad him onward, to fan the constant, low burn of his curiosity into full flame.
He needed to uncover what was really going on. Something in his soul demanded answers.
Sam sat up straight a second later when he heard his father’s voice outside the door.
“Bertie, make sure desk three is clear. I can’t stop NBCI coming, but they certainly won’t be setting up shop wherever they please.”
Sam listened intently. If they were calling in the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, then maybe his father was finally taking this case seriously.
There was a high-pitched electronic beep from the front door, followed by Bertie’s cheerful greeting. A moment later the office door creaked open, and Samuel’s breath caught. Dayna stood in the doorway, hands in the pockets of her red sweater.
“Hey. What are you doing here?” He added hastily, “I mean, not that I mind.”
“Your mother told me you were here,” she said. “You mentioned earlier that you had some new info, so I thought I’d drop by.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Looks like a lot of activity going on back there.”
As she stepped closer it seemed there was something different about her. Maybe the way her skin seemed to glow, though that might have been a flush from the wind. And…did she seem taller? She was holding herself differently.
She hadn’t answered his text from last night, and he was still thinking about who she might have been with; Carman was too small for a wide dating pool. Whoever it was, they were a traitor as far as he was concerned. Everyone knew he still liked Dayna, so who the hell was this guy to move in on her?
He pulled himself together a second later and dragged the chair out from beside him. Her timing couldn’t have been better; he hadn’t really had anything new when he had texted her, but maybe this was something new. “I’m eavesdropping. I’m pretty sure NBCI are on their way.”
Dayna hurried across the room and settled in at the desk, shoving her bag onto the table. “Shit, really? Did your dad say that?”
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, determined to ask about her date last night. “Hey, so, when you texted—”
The beeper above the door went off again, and they both fell silent. Sam rose from the desk as quietly as possible and shoved the door open an inch. A second later he felt Dayna’s presence at his elbow. She smelled like mangoes.
Through the open door he could see two men talking to Bertie at the front desk. After a moment his father joined them. To his frustration the men spoke in low voices, too low to overhear anything.
The strange men wore black suits and ties and seemed utterly serious. They couldn’t have looked more like Men in Black if they’d tried.
He needed to know what they were saying, and he only had a minute at most before they shut themselves in his father’s office. He turned to Dayna. “Quick, let me borrow your phone.”
Dayna blinked at him, but she reached into her pocket and unlocked it. Sam pulled up FaceTime, pleased to see his contact was still at the top. He hit the button and waited for his phone to ring.
“What are you doing?” Dayna whispered. He hit the answer button and put Dayna’s phone on mute.
“Stay here and tell me if my dad comes.”
Surprisingly she didn’t protest as he slipped out the door and down the hallway. The offices were mostly full, and a few officers even glanced up from their desks as he passed, but none of them stopped him. It wasn’t a big deal for him to visit his father’s office. He did it all the time to get extra paper, or to pillage the jar of candy his father kept in the drawer.
Still, his heart was beating hard by the time he snuck into the office. He glanced around quickly and set his phone facedown on the middle shelf in the bookcase behind the desk.
While he was there, he grabbed a handful of wrapped spearmints for Dayna—she’d always had a sweet tooth for them—and turned for the door. He stopped short, heart jumping. His father was in the doorway, flanked by the two men in suits, who were currently regarding him as if Sam himself might be the Butcher.
“Gentlemen, this is my son. Sam, this is Sean Smith and Dan Wesson, agents from NBCI.” The sergeant’s expression was unreadable, which usually happened when he was angry. Sam held up the handful of candy and gave his dad a wide grin. “Sorry, Dad, just raiding the candy jar.”
He slid past one of the agents in the doorway, stomach churning. The man barely moved, and he gave Sam a long, piercing look.
A minute later, back in the empty office with Dayna, he let out a breath of relief. She was already leaning over the phone, her hair obscuring her face. The voices were slightly muffled, but they could make them out clearly enough.
“…what you know so far,” one of the men was saying.
“Information from previous cases.” His father’s voice was low, and Sam could hear the undercurrents of anger simmering there. “Look, I only called you because it’s procedure, but…a serial killer in Carman…the idea is ridiculous.”
There was an audible pause, and Sam winced. His father clearly wasn’t bothering with politeness.
When the agent spoke again, his voice was quiet, but there was a definite edge to it. “You’ve had two murders so far. Not only should you be treating this like the Butcher may be back and already lining up his next four victims, you should be keeping all of this out of the press. Which is clearly not the case.”
The sergeant grunted. “We have a leak. One of my men, no doubt. Some of them don’t like the way I do things.”
“Then I’d say they’re a sight smarter than you are.”
“What?” The sergeant sounded ready to explode.
“You have completely cocked up this investigation from the start.” The second agent’s voice was like the lash of a whip, and Sam’s grip tightened on the edge of the table. Beside him, Dayna was staring at the phone, openmouthed. “You’ve done nearly everything wrong as far as I can see. You didn’t tent the scene, and now it’s completely ruined. You’ve a leak, so there’s going to be loads of tourists tramping all over, and you can bet you’re going to have press flying in from out of town. This is going to be a complete nightmare to work, and it’s entirely your fault.”