Heads Will Roll – Chapter Nine

NOT EDITED

Rick lifted his head as Jeff dropped into one of the chairs in front of his desk. “So I’m guessing nothing came of any good hiding places?” he asked.

Jeff shook his head. “No. Couple rats, a big raccoon. That’s about it. Did you guys already go check out Tina’s place again?”

“Not yet. Bo wanted to catalog the evidence from the school first.” Rick tilted his arm toward himself to check his watch. “Should be finishing up soon, though, and then we’ll head over.”

“Did he find anything other than the blood?”

“A couple hairs. He’s going to compare it to Bonnie’s after he’s checked her room. He says the blood’s recent enough that it’s very unlikely to be anyone other than Bonnie’s or the kidnapper’s, and we already know it’s not Bonnie’s. I doubt the bastard’s blood is in the system, but it’s still something.”

“Yeah. Something’s… better than nothing.” Jeff shifted in the chair. “What’s he hoping to find at Tina’s? Just hairs for comparison?”

“And fingerprints, also for comparison. He says it’s likely the guy was wearing gloves, but on the off chance he wasn’t, comparing the ones in the basement to Bonnie’s will eliminate any of the ones that are hers. It’s likely students aren’t usually allowed in there, so the rest of the prints should belong to staff members, and their prints should already be in the system.”

“What if the guy who took he is a staff member?” Jeff asked.

“Bo, umm, Bo says that’s a pretty good possibility. But if he didn’t wear gloves, if we find her car, any prints that are in her car and the basement likely belong to our guy,” Rick said. “Speaking of, did you keep an eye out when you and Miss Decker were looking at places?”

Jeff nodded. “Nada. No brush moved to hide something or brush disturbed enough to indicate a car had recently passed through any of the ditches, near the lake, or into the woods. No sign of it or any of its pieces at any of the good hidey places either.”

“Dammit.”

“I know. But if he’s ditched it somewhere, we’ll get our hands on it.”

“God, I hope so.” Rick pulled off his ballcap to scratch the top of his head before pulling it back on. “Bo says we should keep an ear out for any reports of missing persons, whether it be someone who never came home, someone whose kids haven’t been able to reach them, someone who hasn’t turned up to work. Anything. They’ve had cases in California where the guy has killed someone and squatted in their home for the rest of the kidnappings or killings.”

“I don’t think we’ve had anything like that. ‘Cept when Jim wandered off a couple weeks ago, but we tracked him down no problem.”

“That’s what I said. Bo says that if Jim ‘wanders off again’, we have to assume the worst instead of assuming it’s just his dementia again.”

“Jesus. Does he really think there’s a chance this guy will just be out here killing random people?”

“It’s better to be overprepared than under, you know? That goes for both this guy and for us, I guess.”

“Rick.”

He lifted his head. Georgia, the station’s only dispatcher, stood behind Jeff’s chair, a look on her face that he’d recognize anywhere. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” she asid, her voice shaking just a hair. “We just received a call about a… a headless body at the lake. They need you down there.”

“Oh, my God,” Jeff whispered. He pushed himself to his feet, seeming unsure as he looked down at Rick. “I’ll… I’ll go grab Bo and Bridget?”

Rick forced a nod. “Yeah. Meetcha… in the parking lot.”

***

Rick and Jeff let Bo go first. They stayed in the cruiser, Bridget still in the backseat, and watched the short blonde make his way up to the frozen lake. Bo looked at the body for all of three seconds before turning and giving them a thumbs-up.

“What the hell does that mean?” Jeff asked.

“It’s not Bonnie,” Bridget said from the back. “Come let me out.”

Jeff climbed out of the passenger seat and pulled open the back door. As she got out, he leaned back into the car. “You good to come out?”

“I’ll, uh… I’ll catch up in a moment,” Rick said, hands still wrapped tightly around the steering wheel.

“All right, man. See you out there.”

“Yeah,” Rick whispered.

Jeff closed the door and jogged to catch up with Bridget. “You ever been worried about Bo working a certain case?” he asked.

“Of course. Some of his first cases were kids our age. I mean… dead, murdered kids that were the same damn age as him. I didn’t want him involved in anything like that. Neither did the other analysts at the station.”

“What’d you do about it?”

“I think he handled it better than anyone else did, but it didn’t make us less worried. One analyst tried to essentially bully him off the case so he’d go away and wouldn’t come back, which didn’t work. The other analyst encouraged him, taught him, and let him know it was okay to not be okay, and if he wasn’t okay, he could step back at any time.”

“What’d… you do?”

“I was just a kid in school, so there wasn’t much I could do. But I did insert myself into the living people part of the case to try and get information for him, help solve the case faster.”

“Did it work?”

“Depends on who you ask, I guess. They solved it, for the most part. Killer in that specific one got away, though.” Bridget glanced up at him. “Are you worried about Rick?”

“Very.”

“Because Bonnie is dating his son?”

“Rick left California because of a bad case. His last case. I don’t know what it was, but I know it… broke something in him. He came here to get the hell away from violent killers and murder plots and victim ‘displays’. If this isn’t the only victim, if there’s gonna be more of this? I don’t know how that broken part will handle being broken more.”

“Have you ever tried to talk to him about that last California case?” Bridget asked.

“No, and the little bits I do know are from a drunk Rick. I’ve just, uh, I’ve never worked anything like what he did in LA. I wouldn’t know what to say or how to help him, so asking about it always seemed pointless.”

“After this, you will have worked something like what he did in LA. Maybe now you can talk to him, make sure he’s okay. And if not, Bo’s really good at making sure people are… good. You know?”

“Maybe I’ll see what Bo says. He’s got a hell of a lot more experience than I do.”

Bridget gently elbowed him in the side. “He’s got more experience than all of us.”

“The victim is an elderly woman, based on her skin,” Bo said. “Once she’s at the station and has had x-rays taken, her bones will give us a better clue as to her actual age. Her head and hands have been removed. Initial examination indicates all three were removed post mortem, likely to reduce the chances of positive identification of the body.”

“Miss Jameson.”

Squatted down beside the body, Bo tilted his head back to meet Jeff’s gaze. “Hmm?”

“Carol Jameson. She, umm… she used to be an art teacher at the school. Th-the necklace she’s wearing, umm, was given to her by a student.”

“You’re positive?”

“Positive. H-he died, umm, in a car accident in high school. I don’t remember the day, but the year would have been 1991. She had it engraved on the back side of the charm.”

With a gloved hand, Bo flipped the charm over. “You’re right.”

“She’s retired,” Rick said from a couple feet away. “What the hell’s the point in that? She didn’t see him at the school. She didn’t see him get into or out of Bonnie’s car. She didn’t see him move her to the basement or back out of it. So what the hell is the point?”

“There are practically limitless possibilities,” Bo said.

“Give me a few.” Bo stared up at him for a moment, holding his breath. “Bo?” Rick asked. “Please tell me about a few of the possibilities.”

“She may have seen them at a stop sign, she may have been Bonnie’s favorite teacher, they could be killing every teacher ever involved at the school, they—”

“They?” Jeff asked. “They as in this bastard and Bonnie?”

“They as in he won’t call the suspect a he or she without conclusive evidence for one of the two,” Bridget said.

“Oh,” Jeff whispered. “Thank God.”

“There’s nothing in Bonnie’s history that suggests she would participate in something like that,” Bo said. “In that specific regard, I believe we’re safe and have nothing to worry about.”

“Why would he kill all the teachers? And if that was the point, what’s the point in kidnapping Bonnie?” Rick asked.

“He doesn’t like answering questions like that,” Bridget said. “I know it’s tempting to ask, and I know it’s hard not to want an answer to it, but he just… he doesn’t feel comfortable answering them.”

“If that’s… okay,” Bo added.

“That’s… that’s fine. I knew that. I’m sorry.” Rick shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, really. I’ve worked with people every single days for years that still ask. Don’t worry about it,” Bo assured. He gestured past the body, to the line of footprints and drag marks. “Those are the same treads as the prints from the school, and they’re approximately the same size. The likelihood they were made by the same person is very high, but I’ll stll confirm measurements and molds back at the station.”

Rick nodded. “What about the blood on her shirt? It’s a lot.”

“It is,” Bo agreed. “I prefer to be a bit further along in my photo documentation before I start messing with the victim’s clothing, but without moving anything, I can see the rips and tears in the front of her shirt, and they’re littered all over the area the blood is. More than likely, once her shirt is removed at the station, I’ll find several stab wounds. Outside of that, I don’t see any other obvious causes of death, but I won’t know for certain until I’ve had the chance to run toxicology reports and the like.”

When neither deputy spoke up again, Bridget cleared her throat. “Do you know where she lives?”

“Outside of town, close to the farm lands at the edge of Blairsburg,” Jeff said.

“Perfect. I’d like to be the first one inside her home, to preserve the sanctity of the potential crime scene. But in the meantime, you guys can take Bridget with you and talk to her neighbors, as well as talk to dispatch about who called this in,” Bo said.

“You’ll be okay by yourself?” Bridget asked.

Bo offered a smile. “That’s my comfort zone, Bridge. I’ll be okay.”

She gave his shoulder a tight squeeze before turning around to face the deputies. “If you boys are ready?”

Rick drew in a long breath before slowly letting it back out. “I don’t think we get any readier. Let’s go.”

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Chapter Eight

Chapter Ten

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Eight

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“Any chance you’d let me take you out for a drink or two tonight?”

Bridget lifted her head, expecting to meet Jeff’s gaze. Instead, she found him toying with the lid of Bo’s centrifuge. “What’s your girlfriend going to think?”

“We truly are off again. I’m not a cheater.”

“She moves fast.”

Jeff chuckled softly. “Yeah, her feelings are, uh… fickle and very conditional. You piss her off, and the conditions for care have vanished.”

“Brutal,” Bridget said. “I’d like to take you up on your offer, but I’m going to make sure Bo’s okay with it first.”

Finally, Jeff looked over at her, one eyebrow raised. “Are you guys, like, a thing?”

Bridget shook her head. “I’m here for him. To make sure he’s comfortable and feels safe and is integrating okay. I just want to make sure he’s okay with me not being at the hotel with him tonight. But after that, I’ll let you know, as long as you remember to give me your number before the day’s done. Ball’s in your court, Biggs.”

“I’ll see you at the end of shift for an exchange of numbers then.”

One corner of her mouth lifted. “Deal.”

Jeff simply watched her straighten out Bo’s equipment for a moment before clearing his throat. “In your Californian expertise…”

“Yeah?”

“You think there’s any chance at all that she’s a runaway?” he asked.

“I never say never, y’know? But I think the chance that she’s a runaway is so minimal that it’s not even worth digging into any leads that are for that particular half of the investigation.”

“Yeah,” Jeff whispered. “There’s a part of my brain that still hopes she is, a part that keeps trying to find any glimmer of an excuse that she is. But it’s just… Even in Ellepath, that doesn’t really seem possible anymore.”

“It’s hard. Any case involving kids is hard. And for you guys here, you throw in the fact that you know all the kids and all the parents, and that makes it a million times harder. For me, y’know, the vast majority of the time I work a case, I don’t know any of the people involved. I don’t know the victim, I don’t know their family, and I don’t know the killer or the kidnapper or the burglar. For you guys here, the chance you know all of the above is pretty high, and that makes it all so much harder. I can’t blame you for still clinging to the hope of a runaway case. I’d do the same thing if I were in your shoes.”

“You would?”

“Of course. I think it’s human nature to hope that a kid’s not in serious danger. Even more so when it’s a kid you know.”

After a moment, Jeff nodded. “Yeah, I suppose it is.” He sighed. “She’s a good kid. I feel terrible for suggesting to her mom that she was a runaway.”

“It’s what you were hoping for. No one can blame you for that. Hell, I’m sure her mom was hoping for it too. She just… knew it wasn’t possible, even if she wanted it to be. And bringing her daughter home safely? That’ll be the best apology there is.”

Jeff nodded, though when she turned to look at him again, he was looking at his phone. “Rick wants me to make a list of abandoned buildings and empty houses, wooded areas… anywhere someone could hide her in and around town.” He lifted his head, one eyebrow raised. “Screw the list. You done here?”

“Yeah, everything’s good to go.”

“Great. You wanna come search some scary places with me, hope like hell we find an alive teenager?” Jeff asked.

“Let’s do it. Lead the way.”

***

He wasn’t surprised at how quickly the people in this podunk little down had realized Bonnie Young was missing the day before. What did surprise him was the shutdown of the school and the presence of the little blonde analyst. Bo? That sounded right. He couldn’t help but wonder if that meant Rick had already put some of the pieces of the puzzle together, or if it was a complete coincidence that he had called Pitman for a favor.

He didn’t think he had given anywhere near enough clues for Rick to have begun putting anything together just yet, and it wasn’t like Rick was some kind of super genius, so coincidence seemed more likely.

After watching Rick and the blonde leave the school, he made his way back home. With Bonnie’s car tucked away in his garage, he left his own in the driveway and headed inside. It was unlikely Ricky-boy would be able to get a warrant for garage searching anytime soon, but he still planned on getting the damn thing out of there as soon as possible. The less time it spent in his garage, leaving potential clues for the blonde to find, the better. He’d been wearing gloves when he’d nabbed Bonnie in it, but he wanted to do a good wipe-down of everything and a sweep, just to be safe. He wouldn’t be in the system, but the DNA that was would give Rick and Bo more of a clue than he was ready to give them.

Better to be safe than sorry.

***

Bonnie’s eyes shot open at the sound of a door opening upstairs. He was back. He’d left hours ago, shortly before the sun had come up, based on the light she’d seen shining through the small windows near the basement ceiling. What he had left to do, she hadn’t the foggiest idea. She hadn’t seen him since the night before, when he’d told her this was all some grand lesson he needed to teach Rick Downs.

There wasn’t a world Bonnie could even begin to imagine where someone like Rick would need some elaborate, violent lesson taught to them. But even if there was a world where that was possible, she couldn’t understand how kidnapping her was meant to teach Rick a lesson. Teach him a lesson by… upsetting his son? His daughter? What kind of lesson was that supposed to teach him? Don’t let your children have friends? Don’t let them date? Did her kidapper even know what the ‘lesson’ was? Or how she related to it all?

Who the hell knew.

Bonnie lifted her head as the door at the top of the stairs opened. “I left for two reasons today,” he said as soon as her eyes met his. He was still wearing a mask to cover the lower half of his face, but his eyes felt so damn familiar, even with his body blocking most of the light behind him. “The first was to check out the school, which was closed. They’re going all out for you, Bonnie. Even brought in a forensics guy from California. See how special you are? Why I chose you?”

Bonnie swallowed rather than responding.

“The second was a test. One that you failed. I told you that you could scream as loud as you wanted, but that I couldn’t promise how I would react.” A chill ran down Bonnie’s spine, burning tears jumping to her eyes. Wherever this was going was not good. “You screamed for help when I left, Bonnie. I waited to see if you would, and you did. Most people, see, they mind their business. They don’t want to get involved. But Miss Jameson across the street, well… You know how nosey the elderly can be.”

He tossed something down the stairs. It wasn’t until it landed at Bonnie’s feet that her brain truly registered what she was seeing.

She screamed, scurrying back and away as much as the handcuffs would allow. From a few inches away, Miss Jameson’s dead-eyed gaze glared up at her.

“She wasn’t exactly the first person in this town I planned to behead, but… sometimes, you just have to go with the flow of things. Change your plans to better suit the situation. It gets across a certain message, don’t you think?”

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Chapter Seven

Chapter Nine

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Seven

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Three drops of blood. The rest of the school had been clean, but the basement had held blood. Bo pulled his homemade blood tester out of his camera bag and plugged it into his phone. From there, he swiped a test strip through one of the blood drops and inserted it into the tester.

“Do you… do you think it’s hers?” Rick asked from behind him.

“I’m technically required to repeat this test in the lab with the ‘official’ method to confirm or deny that,” Bo said. “But with that said… no. This blood belongs to someone who is AB-negative. Bonnie was listed as B-positive in the file.”

“You can already tell that?”

After a moment, Bo nodded. “Blood type, I can get you in about thirty seconds. Sex and race take a bit longer, and I have to verify it all in the lab before I can put anything in my report as actual evidence.”

Rick pointed at the device plugged into Bo’s phone. “You’re telling me you upgraded that thing to plug into your cell phone instead of be its own little thing, and you still haven’t patented it? Or registered it?”

Bo offered a sheepish smile. “Jamal’s been pressuring me to for years.”

“Yeah, and everyone else who knows about it,” Bridget said from the bottom of the stairs.

“I like… this,” Bo said, setting his phone in his camera bag while it continued its testing of the blood. I like my life the way it is, and I like my job the way it is. I don’t want to be the inventor or the innovator or the guy who pushes forensics forward. I just want to be… the guy. A guy. The lab geek. I’ve given Jamal permission to patent anything I create and market and distribute from there, but he won’t.”

“Because he doesn’t think anyone but you deserves the credit for your inventions,” Bridget reminded.

“I don’t need credit for it. I just want to… use it.” Bo cleared his throat as he pushed himself to his feet, hands moving back to his camera. “Besides, with how long it took science to accept that washing your hands before performing surgery was good for your patients and that actually taking fingerprints and blood from crime scenes was good, I don’t think any of my… inventions, if you must call them that, would take very quickly.”

Jeff, who leaned back against the wall near Bridget, snorted. “That’s probably fair.” He nodded toward Bo’s camera bag. “Still pretty cool though.”

“Thank you.” Bo turned his camera back on. “I’d like to do a thorough documentation of the basement, including photographs, and a full sweep for further evidence. In the meantime, Jamal’s people should have gotten my lab equipment brought to the Ellepath station. If you want to head back there with Bridget, she’ll make sure everything’s good to go so I can get right into it when I’m done here.”

Jeff pushed away from the wall, hand shooting up into the air. “I call Bridget.”

Bridget laughed. “I thought you had a girlfriend?”

“Psh, on and off. Totally mentioned that earlier,” Jeff said as he headed up the stairs. “And between you and me, she’s currently big mad at me for canceling plans two days in a row.”

She snorted, rolling her eyes before following him up the stairs.

“He’s a good guy,” Rick said once they were both out of the basement.

“Hmm?”

“Jeff. He’s a good guy. A bit of a slacker sometimes, and probably the closest thing this town has to a playboy, but a good guy.”

“Well then, as long as he and his girlfriend are ‘off’ again, I’m sure Bridget will enjoy our time here in Ellepath.” Bo offered a soft smile. “She’s always had a thing for pretty playboys.”

Rick chuckled, thankful his mind had allowed him this brief distraction. “She’ll like Jeff, then. Bastard tried to sleep with Heidi when we first came to Iowa.”

Bo snorted. “And this man is… your friend?”

Rick couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Unfortunately. But hey, he’s since grown as a person and has limited himself to single women.”

“I suppose that’s an improvement.”

“I take what I can get with people changing who they are. It doesn’t happen as often as you want it to, y’know?”

Bo nodded. “Unfortunately,” he echoed.

Rick scratched the side of his head, eyes following Bo as he walked around the basement, blue eyes scanning every centimeter of the place. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Bridget likes pretty playboys. Jeff likes, well, most single women. I’m married. What… about you? The last time we met, you were a teenager, so it, y’know, would’ve been inappropriate to ask if you were married at the time.”

Bo chuckled. “I suppose it would have been, yes. It’s… just me, for the most part.”

“Have any plans to change that?”

Bo offered a shrug. “Bridget and I have a contingency plan of sorts, in regards to having children. IVF. The main parts of that are already said and done. Outside of that… I don’t know. Most of the people I’ve taken any inkling of an interest in haven’t exactly returned the favor. Bridget is probably the only person who ever would, but we tried that way once upon a time, and we just work better together this way.”

“Well, for what it’s worth… raising a kid with your best friend someday isn’t that bad of a plan.”

A little smile tugged at one corner of Bo’s mouth. “That’s the hope.”

“She seems like a nice gal.”

“She is. Aside from my parents and the analyst I usually work with, she’s… the only person who has stuck around longterm in my life. I don’t think I could find a better person to raise a child with, friend or otherwise.”

“I’m glad you have in your life. I know, uh, when I was still there with the LAPD, you were having a pretty rough go of it. I’m glad some of that has changed.”

“Me too,” Bo said after a moment. “There are a couple hairs over here. The likelihood that they’ll give us DNA or be noteworthy is relatively low, but…”

“But you’d rather have them and they prove useless than not have them and risk leaving something useful behind,” Rick said.

“Ah, I see you still speak a little bit of my language.”

Rick chuckled softly. “Yeah, a smidge. The years of working little more than drunk teens trespassing and small cases of vandalism may have lulled me into a false sense of security, but the detective brain’s still back there somewhere.” He nodded toward Bo. “And you, Jesus, it’d be impossible to totally forget you and all your weird little quirks. Which is not an insult. Your weird little quirks invent shit and solve cases like no other. If you and your quirks didn’t exist, Bonnie wouldn’t have… a Goddamn chance of ever being found alive.”

“I have… certainly pulled a miracle or two in my time with the LAPD. I only hope I can do the same here,” Bo said as he lifted his camera to photograph the hairs.

“If anyone can, it’s you. I know you’ve gotta be sick of hearing that, but none of us are saying it to blow smoke up your ass. We’re saying it because we know it’s true. You’re the best there is, Bo.”

Bo offered that awkward little smile Rick had seen plenty of times during their LA case together. He was relatively certain it was Bo’s attempt to ‘appease’ anyone complimenting him without necessarily having to accept it in order to move past it. “When we’re done here, I’d like to pay a visit to Miss Young’s mother. I’d like to do a once-over of Miss Young’s bedroom, just so it can be crossed off the checklist. I’ll also take the opportunity to collect hairs from her hairbrush to compare against these. I should also be able to collect a few fingerprints to run against anything we find in here or in her car. Which… I assume hasn’t been located?” he asked.

“No, but we put out a BOLO for it.”

“In and out of town?” Bo asked.

Rick nodded. “Yeah, and Jeff and I were planning on doing a pass through Webster in the cruisers, see what we can see. If this guy dumped her car, I can’t see him going much further than that. Unless he had an accomplice, he’d have to walk back home afterward.”

Bo lowered his camera to his chest as he glanced up at Rick. “How far away would that be?”

“Webster? About ten miles.”

Bo nodded as he picked up the first hair with a pair of tweezers. He put it into an evidence bag and sealed it shut. “Even if you’re consistently running six-minute miles, it’s still an hour to get back home, assuming that ‘home’ is here in Ellepath. And that ‘home’ is where Miss Young is being kept.”

“How likely do you think that is?”

“Six-minute miles, or the location of Miss Young?” Bo asked.

“The location.”

Bo rose to his feet, evidence bags in hand. “It’s hard to say for sure. Some unsubs take their victims home, some take them to an abandoned location, some take them to the woods. In a town this size, you don’t exactly have a ton of abandoned buildings, right?”

“Not that I know of, but Jeff would know for certain. He grew up here. Knows this place, its secrets, and all of its backroads like the back of his hand.”

“Good.” Bo set the evidence bags in his camera case and pulled out a clipboard. On his little sketch of the basement, he marked where the hairs had been located. “Abandoned buildings, empty houses, wooded areas, old sheds, old cellars… Anything you could contain a person in with a chance of nobody seeing them is a place that needs to be checked out.” Bo cleared his throat. “It’s also possible her car is being kept at the kidnapper’s house. Or… wherever she’s being kept. If the location has a garage or a big enough shed, the car doesn’t have to be dumped anywhere. That’s unfortunately something we’ll have to factor in too.”

“Lot of factors.”

“I know.”

“And so little time and man power to cover them all.”

Bo nodded. “Yeah. It’s not… ideal. But it’s doable, in some regard. We’ll make it work. I’ll go over this whole entire town with a fine tooth comb if needed. We’ll make it work, and we will cross every damn T and dot every damn I until we find her.” He gestured around the room with his camera. “In the meantime, a second pair of eyes would be nice, if… you want?”

“I can do that.”

“Wonderful. If you see anything, no matter how benign, let me know.”

“Will do, lab geek. Will do.”

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Chapter Six

Chapter Eight

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Six

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Bo climbed out of the cruiser practically the second Rick had put it into park and headed up toward the school. Not necessarily in a hurry, but definitely on a mission. Bridget followed, and after a moment, so did Rick, jogging lightly to catch up to the woman. “How long have you known Bo?”

“Oh, gosh, uh… quite a while. If he hadn’t been a boy genius, we would’ve been in the same grade in school. Though I guess he wouldn’t have moved to California at the right time to be friends if he hadn’t been, well, Bo,” she said with a soft laugh. “I’ve known him about a decade now. He was friends with one of my classmates, who introduced us. I joined the LAPD after college and was finally able to actually work with him. He’s damn good at what he does.”

“Oh, I have no doubts about that,” Rick said as he pulled open the office door, gesturing for Bridget to walk inside. “I only worked a case or two with him, but he was great. I can only imagine he’s progressed with time.”

He looked down both ends of the hall before catching sight of Bo and Jeff at the other office exit, where the receptionist had seen Bonnie leaving from. Bo had already donned a pair of gloves. Squatted down in the doorway, his fingers slowly dragged up and down either side of the doorframe. “How does he work best?” Rick asked. “Is he better off if Jeff and I aren’t here at all? If we’re in the building but not, y’know, right on top of him? What does he prefer?”

Bridget offered a shrug. “He’s… versatile. The people at the station have kind of forced him to be, not usually in good ways. But he can work in just about any condition. And as long as you guys aren’t assholes to him, I won’t have to tackle you down.” She looked back at him over her shoulder, a little smile on her face. “I’m not allowed to tackle my superiors at my station, but I think I could totally get away with it here.”

Rick laughed, patting her on the back. “I think we’ll be okay, no tackling necessary. But I appreciate that, and I’m sure he does too.”

“Oh, God, no. If you told him I was defending him, he’d beg me not to. So, y’know, lips zipped or I’ll kick your ass.”

He snorted. “Deal.”

In the doorway, Bo continued his search of the doorframe, once with his eyes open and once with them closed, hoping his fingers would pick up on an abnormality his eyes had missed. Unfortunately, neither tactic revealed anything. He sat back on his heels, a frown set deeply on his face. “When you spoke to the receptionist, did she mention seeing anyone else near this doorway?”

“No. She watched Bonnie head toward the parking lot and then received another phone call,” Jeff said.

“The mother?”

“No, Tina called as Bonnie was walking through the door. The second call was around the time Bonnie hit the grassy patch there right before the parking lot.”

Bo rose to his feet. “Which parking lot?”

Jeff pointed to his left. “The one in the back here. The one out front is for teachers and parents. This one is for students.”

Bo headed for the grassy patch in question, his steps slow and his eyes glued to the ground. “Do they have designated parking spots?”

“The seniors do. They’re usually decorated around homecoming and then stay that way for the rest of the school year.”

“So… Miss Young’s should have her name on it?” Bo asked.

“It should.”

“If not, I’ve got a rough idea of where it is,” Rick said from behind him. “It’s next to Pete’s.”

“Excellent.” Bo squatted down in the grass, clearing his throat. “How’s Peter doing, Mister Downs?”

“Rick’s fine. And… some minutes of the day are easier than others,” Rick said.

Bo nodded. “I can imagine so. And your daughter?”

“Jen? She’s, uh… I don’t know. They were both staying home today regardless of if Jamal got the building shut down for the day or not.”

“Mister Pitman asked me to tell you that if you or the children need any counseling, to let him know, and he’ll have it taken care of.”

“What’s he want in return for that?”

Bo lifted his head, turning to look up at Rick. “For you to be okay.”

“Yeah,” Rick whispered with a small shake of his head. “Old man always was a softie.”

“Of course. How else would I have been employed as a boy genius, hmm?”

Bridget rolled her eyes. “Of course you heard me.”

He flashed a smile. “Always do.” He turned back toward the grass. It was that yellowish-brown color of winter, and a thin layer of snow covered the base of the grass blades. “Do you know when it snowed yesterday?”

“Uh… I don’t know. Afternoon sometime?” Rick suggested.

“Three-thirty. More like… Three-thirty… seven,” Jeff said.

Rick raised a brow at his partner. “Since when did you start memorizing the exact time of snow fall?”

Jeff cleared his throat, using the bill of his ball cap to scratch his head. “Mary might’ve, y’know, sent me an, uh, important text when it started snowing.”

“She sexted you.”

“Hey, you said it, not me.”

Bridget snorted. “Damn, you Ellepath boys have way more game than the LA officers.”

“Damn, girl, reel it in. I’m a taken man,” Jeff said, a hand on his chest. “Mostly. On and off. I’m free a lot.”

“You do not want Jeff,” Rick assured, a hand on Briget’s shoulder.

“Rude.”

Bo cleared his throat. “Would your recollection of the sexting happen to tell you when the snow stopped?” he asked.

Jeff glanced up before pulling his phone from his pocket. After scrolling through his texts for a moment, he nodded. “Around four. Maybe five after.”

“So not too long before Bonnie left the school.”

“Right.”

“There are two sets of prints here. One set is smaller than the other. The larger set is slightly dusted with snow, and the smaller set is not, which means the person with the smaller feet came outside after the snow had stopped, and the person with the larger set came out soon after the snow started. I’ll measure them to be certain, but the smaller set appears to be a seven and a half—”

“Bonnie is a seven and a half,” Rick interrupted. Jeff raised an eyebrow in his direction. Rick offered a shrug. “Jen is too. They loan each other shoes for gym sometimes.”

“He’s not going to say those prints belong to Bonnie because it’s technically an assumption, but he did hear you,” Bridget said.

Bo nodded his thanks. “The larger prints are approximately a size twelve or thirteen. Again, I’ll measure for confirmation.”

“Are you able to estimate a height based on that?” Jeff asked.

“Not… necessarily. Shoe size generally increases with height, but it isn’t a precise calculation by any means, and there are always outliers on either end of the spectrum following any attempt at calculation. But, I will be able to take a casting of both sets, give you an exact size, and more than likely be able to get you a brand name based on the treads of each set.” Bo rose to his feet, turning to look at Bridget. “The suitcase in the trunk of Rick’s car has my casting supplies, if you could… please grab it for me?”

“Absolutely. You go ahead and check out the parking space, and I’ll have your stuff set up right here when you’re done.”

Bo offered a smile. “Thank you.” As Bridget headed back into the school, Bo continued toward the student parking lot, the Ellepath deputies in tow. Bonnie’s parking spot was painted red with her name in white at the bottom. Bo recognized the dark-haired man with the red hoodie as the main ‘corpse’ from the movie Warm Bodies.

“She and Pete loved that movie,” Rick said, his voice quiet.

“They’ll get to love it again,” Jeff said.

Bo hoped that was true, but he was still doing his best not to make too many promises. There were never any guarantees, especially with kidnappers and potential killers. When you were kidnapping teenage girls, you weren’t exactly in your right mind, and people not in their right mind were… unpredictable.

“What d’ya see, lab geek?” Jeff asked.

“There’s no blood on the ground here. The footprints don’t show a scuffle. Both sets continue over here. The smaller set go to one point, and the larger prints go to two, only a couple feet apart.”

“Like he went into the backseat and then the front,” Rick said.

“If I were to make an assumption on the matter… The footprints are approximately as far apart as the doors would be, yes.”

“The bastard was waiting for her in the backseat.”

“That is… an unfortunate possibility,” Bo agreed. He followed the tire tracks from Bonnie’s parking space out of the parking lot and around the school to three sets of doors. He looked back at Rick and Jeff, one eyebrow raised. “What do these lead to?”

“Uh… those two lead into the commons, and that one leads into the kitchen,” Rick said.

“And what would the commons be in this… situation?”

“The hallway that the senior lockers is in.”

“Mm.” Bo’s eyes shifted back to the ground. “The overhang here kept the snow off the sidewalk, but up to that point, the tire tracks and footsteps indicate one set of footsteps and a set of… drag marks headed toward the commons.”

“Jesus Christ,” Rick whispered.

“The drag marks, uh, look pretty small, right?” Jeff asked.

Bo nodded. “Correct. It’s indicative of two feet dragging rather than a whole body or buttocks. So if we assume — I’m sorry. Uh, in your theory that the small set would be Bonnie’s footprints, the drag marks would indicate she was unconscious or unable to fight back when the kidnapper pulled up here and took her out of the car. More than likely, their hands or arms were under her armpits as they dragged her toward the building here, and the heels of her shoes are likely what would have been making contact with the ground.”

“Why wait for her to come out of the school and then take her back inside?” Jeff asked. “What’s the point?”

“I… wish I had an answer to that,” Bo said. “It looks like Miss Young’s car eventually turned around and headed out the exit there. After that, it would be hard to track on the tire tracks alone. We only luck out here because Jamal shut down the school before any students arrived.”

“Good thing we didn’t wait any longer to call, huh?” Jeff asked.

Bo nodded. “A very good thing.” He pulled open one of the doors to the ‘commons’ and walked inside. Rick and Jeff followed, and Bridget caught up shortly after.

“I’ve got all your stuff set out by those prints, B.”

“Thank you.”

“Mmhmm.”

Bo gestured to the stairs. “That leads to…?”

“The gymnasium,” Rick said.

“And the little grate thing next to it. What’s that?”

“Wheelchair elevator. It leads up to the gym. And the little half door goes into the band room.”

“Hmm.” Bo dragged his gaze along the ceiling and down the walls at both end of the hall. “No cameras?”

“It’s a small town,” Rick said quietly. “There are cameras in the main hall. The one that leads past the office and to the lunch room.”

“So the hallway past that doorway at the end of the hall?”

“Yeah.”

“What about in the gym?”

“Just one, but yeah.”

“Well… if we assume the kidnapper knows that, this little crawlspace door into the band room makes the most sense. Is it usually unlocked?” Bo asked.

“I think it always is. A lot of the seniors go in that way to avoid the traffic from the other kids in the halls,” Rick said.

“Hmm.” Bo pulled his fingerprinting powder out of his satchel and squatted down in front of the small door. It was incredibly unlikely he’d find any prints that didn’t belong to a student or faculty member. The likelihood that someone within one of those categories was the kidnapped was slightly higher, but it still wasn’t a guarantee. Regardless, he had every intention of documenting all prints on the front, sides, and back side of the door. Just in case. A ‘just in case’ collection of information had solved a case more than a time or two.

“Were you able to speak with anyone before Jamal shut the school down?” Bo asked as he dusted the door.

“The receptionist, an English teacher, and the superintendent were here. The receptionist was the only one with any helpful information about Bonnie,” Jeff said.

“She’s the one who watched Bonnie leave yesterday?” Bo asked.

“Yeah, and answered the phone.”

“Did she tell you anything about the phone call?”

“She said no one was on the other end. Either a butt dial or a weird prank call.”

“Or your kidnapper needed to make sure she wasn’t watching Bonnie,” Bridget said.

“That was sort of my thought,” Rick admitted. “But it seemed a little too… pre-planned for a place like this.”

“As in… because the town is small?” Bo asked.

“Yeah.” Rick raised a brow. “Is there… another reason?”

“He just wants to make sure you’re on the same page. Confusion breeds conflict, and that brain is a conflict magnet,” Bridget said.

Bo whispered his thanks, and she gave his shoulder a tight, reassuring squeeze. “It can be hard to imagine a criminal walking amongst us, especially in a small town. It’s that tight-knit, everyone-knows-everyone thing, I believe, that causes a sort of disconnect in our minds. But knowing someone doesn’t stop them from committing a crime, much as we wish it did. Small town or not, people are still people, and people are capable of truly horrendous things.”

“People in this town are going to lose their everloving minds when they discover that,” Rick said.

“For what it’s worth, it doesn’t mean the kidnapper is from here. It doesn’t mean they live here, currently or otherwise. Itoesn’t exactly change the crime or anything, but it being comitted by some traveling shitbag instead of someone you’ve lived across the street from for years is, you know, an improvement,” Bridget said.

“Do you deal with that a lot?” Jeff asked. “Traveling, uh… shitbags?”

“Not as frequently as local shitbags, but we’ve definitely had a few.”

Though Bo was able to tune out most of the small talk and idle chitchat as he fingerprinted the small door, Rick’s general lack of contribution to sat chitchat stuck out like a sore thumb. Bridget and Jeff didn’t seem to notice, at least not out loud, but Bo couldn’thelp but glance up at the man in between every print he stuck on his printing card.

“How’re you doing, Rick?” Bo asked, his voice quiet.

Rick squatted down beside him, arms crossed over his thighs. “Not great,” he whispered.

Bo nodded. “I was… picking up on that.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t like to make sweeping promises, but I… We’re going to do everything we possible can to find this person. To find Bonnie.” He pulled off his glove before reaching out to give Rick’s shoulder a tentative squeeze. “This isn’t California, and that means a lot of things, good and bad. But one of the good ones is that you don’t have a million cases piling up on your desk, demanding you split your attention between all of them because if you don’t, they go cold and the detectives get pulled off them. It means that finding Bonnie and this asshole is our only job, and we’re sure as hell going to do it.”

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Chapter Five

Chapter Seven

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Five

NOT EDITED

Almost two thousand miles away, in California, Bo Austen lowered himself into one of the chairs in front of LAPD Chief Jamal Pitman’s desk. The older black man offered a smile. “I know being in the West Department makes you a bit uncomfortable, and I’m sorry for that. But I didn’t want to pull you aside at East and make people start talking about you.”

“I appreciate that, sir,” Bo said, his voice soft. Quiet. “Is everything okay?”

“Absolutely. But I have a proposition for you, if you’re willing to hear it.”

“I’m still not willing to work at West, sir.”

Jamal chuckled. “Oh, I know, kiddo. I’ve long since given up on that dream. No, I wanted to talk to you about being… leased out to another department in need of someone with your skills.”

“What department?”

“When you transferred to West for a bit after the Mammoth case, do you remember working with Rick Downs?”

After a moment, Bo nodded. “Briefly, but yes.”

“He was good to you, wasn’t he?” Jamal asked. Bo only nodded. “He’s in Iowa these days, at a small sheriff’s department. They don’t have a lab or a lab tech. Evidence has to be sent out to be analyzed. Normally that’s not a big problem, but right now, they’ve got a teenager missing, and they’ve pretty much ruled out the possibility that she ran off on her own.”

“When did she go missing?”

“Yesterday after school let out, it sounds like.”

Bo lifted his left hand just enough to get a good look at his watch. “I’ll go. She still has a very good chance, and I’d like to help further improve that if I can.”

Jamal smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. Do you want a detective with you?”

“I… It doesn’t have to be Miss Baker, does it?”

He snorted before shaking his head. “Of course not. If you want someone with you, the ‘someone’ is entirely your choice. But if you’d like suggestions, I was thinking you might like to take Detective Silver or that blonde officer you like. Decker, I believe?”

“I can’t take Dallas off of a case, and I can’t…” Bo shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Bridget isn’t a detective. She’s an officer. She’ll never have what she needs to be promoted if she doesn’t get cases to work.”

“She’d be working a case with you. The location of the case doesn’t matter, as far as I’m concerned. What matters is she works one and sees it through. Where that happens doesn’t change if she’s deserving of a detective’s shield or not.”

Before Bo could respond, the door to Jamal’s office opened. Katherine Baker stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip, the other clutching a travel coffee mug. Jamal couldn’t help but wonder what the ratio of coffee to booze was today. God, if only her father could see her now. He wasn’t certain who he’d be more disappointed in — Katherine for turning out this way, or Jamal for allowing it to happen.

“Where’s he going?” she asked.

“It’s none of your concern, Katherine,” Jamal said. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Bo shrink into his seat, seemingly trying to disappear like a turtle into his shell.

“If the fucking basement geek is going somewhere, I am going somewhere. Where is he going?”

Jamal sorted through the files on his desk with a sigh. He grabbed the one Franklin, his bodyguard, had drawn up for him almost immediately after Rick had called him. He held it out to Katherine, who stalked across the room and snatched it from his grip. “It’s a body from over seventy years ago. They found it encased in concrete. They want Bo’s help identifying the victim and determining if it was an accident or a homicide. There’s no one to question, no cameras to check, no scenes to canvas. It’s lab geek work.”

She flipped through the folder. “Than why the hell is he taking Decker with him? And who the hell is Decker?”

“She works at the East Department, which also makes her none of your concern. Bo works well with people he already knows, and I want to make sure he has a familiar face at his side.”

She rolled her eyes, tossing the file at Bo rather than Jamal. The man flinched, but he managed to catch it against his chest. “Whatever.” She walked back out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

Jamal closed his eyes for a moment, drawing in a breath. As he forced his eyes open, he blew out a harsh sigh. “I’m sorry about that, Mister Austen.”

“It’s all right.” Bo cleared his throat. “Thank you for… this. Instead of, you know, the truth,” he said quietly.

Jamal nodded. “Of course. So. Decker?”

Bo’s affirmative nod was short. “Yes, please.”

“Perfect. I’ll get everything arranged, and Franklin will take you and Miss Decker to my plane. You’ll be in Iowa very soon.” Jamal pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. “Thank you, Bo. Your help in Ellepath will be incredibly appreciated.”

“I’m happy to help wherever I’m needed.” Bo offered a smile. “Except for the West Department.”

Jamal chuckled. “I know, kiddo.” He rounded the desk and gave Bo’s shoulder a tight squeeze. “Go on back to East and collect what you’ll need. I’ll call you when everything’s ready.”

***

Though Jamal had told him his people wouldn’t need a ride back from the airport, Rick couldn’t help but feel like not being there was very un-Midwestern. Rick had only been outside for ten minutes when two blondes walked out of the airport. The woman was dressed in a standard police uniform, and the man was dressed in a flannel and blue jeans. Though it’d been a long time since he’d seen the kid, Rick still recognized him instantly.

Rick pushed himself away from the cruiser. “Bo. Looks like you grew an inch or two.”

Bo rolled his blue eyes, but a faint smile tugged at either corner of his mouth. “Just a hair. Hardly worth mentioning.” He moved his camera case over to his left hand and held out his right, which Rick promptly grabbed and gave a good shake. “This is Officer Bridget Decker. She’s my… Well, ‘babysitter’ is the word that comes to mind.”

The woman laughed, bumping Bo’s shoulder with her own. “Bo’s the genius lab geek, and I’m his people person.”

“Ah, so you’re still a little shy, huh?” Rick asked as he shook Bridget’s hand.

Bo seemed to consider the question a moment before simply lifting his shoulders. “I expect to be given a relatively hard time no matter where I am. Bridget helps mediate that a little.”

“Good. To the mediation part. Being given a hard time is less great.” Rick pulled open the back door of the cruiser. “We’re only about twenty minutes out from Ellepath. I brought along Bonnie’s case file in case you wanted more of a rundown on the drive, but there isn’t much in there right now.”

“That’s all right. I generally work from nothing and build from there,” Bo said before ducking into the car.

Bridget laid a hand over Rick’s on the door. “If anyone is going to find this girl, it’s Bo. I promise.”

Rick offered a smile before she slid into the car. He closed the door, blowing out a harsh breath. He hoped Bridget was right. That Jamal was right. That Jeff was right. Bo Austen was their best chance at finding Bonnie before it was too late, and every damn second that passed was a second closer to her kidnapper turning into her killer.

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Chapter Four

Chapter Six

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Four

NOT EDITED

Thursday: January 30, 2014

According to the red numbers on his alarm clock, it was barely after five when Rick awoke from a restless sleep. He carefully pulled his arm out from under Heidi’s shoulders and sat up, grabbing his cell phone from the nightstand. He had a text from Tina, timed a little over half an hour ago.

Tina: I couldn’t sleep. Just kept thinking about what you said. I found the letter in her room. She knew he was being released.

Rick scratched his cheek, unlocking his screen with his free hand. If she were still awake, he could head over, check where Tina found the letter, and go over the rest of Bonnie’s room, see what else she was hiding. If he were lucky, there’d be even one little clue that insinuated she had gone to Florida to see her piece of shit father.

One little clue that insinuated she wasn’t already dead in a ditch somewhere.

Rick closed his eyes for a moment before forcing himself to text Tina.

Rick: Are you still up? I’ll come over and check out the letter and her room

Her simple ‘yes’ came almost immediately. Rick changed into his uniform, left a note for Heidi, and headed out.

Tina was waiting for him on her porch, hands clutching her robe closed against her chest. “Jesus, Tina. It’s too damn cold for you to just be standing out here.”

“I saw your headlights. I… I wasn’t out for long, I don’t think.”

“Still.” Rick laid a gentle hand between her shoulders and guided her back inside. “Where’d you find the letter, Tina?”

“Tucked into her diary.”

Rick would have to tell Heidi she’d been right about that one. “Where does she keep that?”

“On her nightstand.”

According to Heidi, keeping the letter in her diary meant Bonnie trusted Tina. The fact she kept the thing out in the open was also a pretty good sign Bonnie trusted her implicitly, which meant the likelihood Bonnie had run away to Florida to see if the stories were true was, well, unlikely. “Did you read it?”

Tina shook her head, fingers still clutching her robe. “I couldn’t. I-I tried, but I just… She knew she didn’t have to hide that kind of stuff from me. She knew I wouldn’t go snooping around in her things. I just can’t bring myself to let this change any of that trust.”

Rick squeezed her arm. “You don’t have to break any trust or do any snooping, Tina, I promise. How about you go ahead and sit down while I go take a look at her things, okay?”

Tina nodded and headed toward the living room. Rick watched her long enough to confirm she had made it to the couch before he headed down the hall to Bonnie’s room. It had been a long time since he’s actually been back this way in the house. Jennifer had been much younger and having a sleepover with Bonnie, and she had dragged Rick back to the girl’s room to show him whatever they had been working on the night before. What, he couldn’t remember, but they had both been excited about it.

Things had certainly changed in the room, but nothing drastic. Her Justin Bieber and boy band posters had been replaced with posters for TV shows. The pictures on her little cork board had been switched out for more recent ones. He recognized Bonnie and Jennifer in their junior prom dresses in one of them. Rick did his best not to think about the girls not getting the chance to have a second prom together.

He grabbed Bonnie’s diary and sat down on the edge of her bed. The envelope from the prison was tucked between the pages at the back of the book. Though they would have arrived at separate times, there were two letters inside — one to alert Tina of the impending parole hearing, and one to notify her of his release. It had been tucked between two blank pages. He flipped back toward the beginning, until he found the date the first letter had been timestamped with. A few days later in the diary, Bonnie had written about it. In the entries for both letters, she had written about protecting her mom, about being worried hiding the letters was the wrong call. No matter how many pages he flipped through, he saw absolutely no indication that Bonnie doubted Tina about her father’s abuse and subsequent imprisonment.

And absolutely no indication that she had any desire to run off to Florida, or anywhere else, for that matter.

On one hand, it was good news. Bonnie wasn’t on her way to Florida to hang out with or confront an abusive piece of shit. But on the other hand, it was horrible, horrible news. Because if Bonnie wasn’t on her way to Florida, if she hadn’t been planning to run away to somewhere else, then she had been taken and hidden away, and the chance of her being killed within forty-eight hours of when she left the school the day before was monumental.

***

Rick had left Tina’s and gone straight to the school. No one would be there until seven, but it was better than going back home and pretending everything was fine. When Jeff finally showed up — on time, impressively enough — he parked his cruiser next to Rick’s and climbed into the passenger seat. Before he could even open his mouth, Rick held Bonnie’s diary out to him.

“What’s that?” Jeff asked, setting two coffee cups on the center console.

“Bonnie’s diary. Tina found the letters from the prison tucked inside.” Rick cleared his throat as Jeff grabbed the book. “I’ve read the thing front to back. There’s no indication she wanted to go see him. She took the letters to protect her mom, and then she dwelled on if that was the right call or not.”

Jeff nodded, skimming each page he thumbed through. “She and Peter had a fight?”

“Yeah. I… I knew about that last night, but I was worried you’d completely dump the case if you knew.”

After a moment, Jeff shook his head, flipping another page. “Like I said, I trust your gut, even when it goes against mine. If you think she’s in danger, we’ll work this like she is, either until we find her or we prove she’s safe.”

“Thank you.”

Again, he nodded. “Looks like she thought she and Pete were going to make up. You talk to your kids about that?”

“Last night, yeah. Peter was pretty sure she’d probably never talk to him again, but Jen was certain Bonnie would realize it was a stupid thing to be upset over and make up with him. The couple entries toward the end there kinda solidified that for me,” Rick said.

“Mmhmm.” Jeff flipped through a few more pages. “Applying to colleges, enjoying school, working on the volleyball section of her PE test… She was doing well.”

“Very. Always. She’s… Jesus.” Rick raked a hand through his hair before pulling his sheriff’s department ball cap back down over his head. “Pete was going to propose to her after they graduated this year. I was going to be her father-in-law. I just…”

Jeff gave Rick’s arm a tight squeeze. “Pete is going to propose to her, and you are going to be her father-in-law. We’re going to find her, Rick, no matter what happened or where she is. We’re going to find her.”

“In Ellepath, with our resources? You really think there’s any damn chance of that?”

“I’ll admit we’re at a disadvantage,” Jeff said after a moment. “But I don’t think that automatically makes finding her impossible.”

“That makes one of us.” Jeff patted the back of Rick’s hand rather than offering any further refusal of that statement. “We don’t even have a lab, Jeff. Our coroner is our pediatrician. We don’t—”

“I was thinking about that after I got home last night. Your old boss in California. You still talk to him sometimes, don’t you?”

“Pitman? Yeah, usually at the beginning of every month.”

“Thought so. One of his forensics people is in the news all the time for basically being a walking crime lab, isn’t he?”

“Bo,” Rick said after a moment. “Yes. But you don’t usually send your best asset halfway across the country to help a department you’ve got nothing to do with.”

“He sends that detective to other states all the time,”

“Kathy?” Jeff nodded. Rick snorted. “Kathy isn’t really an asset. She’s… a liability. She’s a drunk. I don’t know why he sends her places — I’ve never asked — but it’s not because she’s an asset.”

“Well, maybe we should see about getting the lab geek drunk too so Jamal will send him our way.”

Rick chuckled, a brief but welcome relief to his mood. “Yeah, maybe.” He sighed. “Getting him drunk aside, you’re right about bringing him in. Or seeing if Jamal will send him. Whoever took Bonnie, unless they’re a complete idiot, there isn’t going to be evidence lying around for a couple deputies to collect with fingerprinting powder and a couple small evidence bags. And if he did leave evidence around, Bonnie doesn’t have weeks for it to be shipped out, analyzed at the backend of a backlog, and then shipped back. If we want any chance at bringing her back alive, we need more than what we have.”

Jeff nodded. “Call him. Ask about the forensics kid. Beg him if you have to. Just… tell him a girl’s life depends on it.” He opened the passenger side door and dropped his foot to the asphalt. “I’m gonna grab a smoke. When you’re done with Pitman, we’ll head in. All right?”

“All right.” After Jeff stepped outside and closed the door, Rick pulled his phone from his pocket. He dialed Jamal’s number and pressed his cell to his ear.

Like he did every month, Jamal picked up after the first ring. “Rick. I’d say it’s a pleasure to hear from you so soon, but I can only imagine it’s not for a casual conversation.”

“It’s not. I’m sorry for that.”

“Don’t be. What’s going on?”

“Pete’s girlfriend, umm… It looks like she was abducted yesterday. Her father’s out of prison in Florida, so we’ve looked into that angle, but based on her diary, it doesn’t seem like there’s any way she’d be on her way there to see him. Her mom, Pete, and Jen all say she was totally normal Bonnie in the days leading up to it. Tina — the mother — called the school yesterday when she started getting worried that Bonnie hadn’t come home yet, and the receptionist said she was leaving the school at that time. Jeff and I are here to talk to the receptionist and see if she physically watched Bonnie leave or not. But if she’s been abducted…”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jamal said after a moment. “What can I do to help you find her?”

“We don’t have our own lab, our own crime scene techs. It’s just, you know, us deputies with some cheap cameras and a couple fingerprinting kits. If we find anything — blood, saliva, hair — she’ll be…” Rick cleared his throat. “By the time the results come back from whatever lab we send it to, it’ll be too late for it to help Bonnie.”

“Do you want expedited shipping to my labs?”

“I was thinking, umm…” Rick scratched his cheek. “The kid still works for you, doesn’t he? Bo?”

“He does. He is an adult now, however,” Jamal said. “They do that, you know. Age.”

Rick chuckled. “Yeah, I know. Is he still his own lab?”

“More or less.” Rick could hear some papers shuffling. “Do you want him sent out there?”

“I don’t know how we can do this without him. O-or someone like him.”

“There’s no one like him. Just him.” A pause. “Do you want a detective too?”

“Not Kathy.”

Jamal snorted. “I don’t send Kathy anywhere without a direct request, and even then, she doesn’t go anywhere without a backup plan. Don’t worry about that. Bo works best with two of my people. I’ll see who he wants to go with him. Have you been inside the school yet?”

“Not yet. We’re in the parking lot.”

“You guys sit tight. I’ll make some calls and get the school closed for the day. My boy prefers an untampered scene, or as close to it as you can get.” Jamal cleared his throat. “Sit pretty for a bit, kiddo. I’ll get your scene locked down and in a few hours, you’ll have a lab and the analyst who knows how to work it.”

“Thank you, Jamal. I don’t know what the hell we’d do here without you.”

“Ah.” Rick could practically see the dismissive hand Jamal likely slashed through the air at that. “We’ll find your girl, Rick. Talk soon.”

“Talk soon,” Rick echoed, pulling his phone from his ear once Jamal ended the call. He slid his cell onto the dash, letting out a long breath. Most people would consider what he’d done akin to making a deal with the Devil. Though a part of Rick still considered the man to be family, it was hard to ignore the things the reporters and the media speculated and posited about him.

If they were to be believed, Rick had just pulled a favor from the biggest player in the American mafia. Who knew what the hell kind of favor he would owe Jamal in return.

But for Bonnie, he didn’t have a choice. For a missing kid, he didn’t have a choice.

If he had to sign his soul over to the devil in a suit and tie, so be it.

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Chapter Three

Chapter Four

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Three

NOT EDITED

Bonnie’s head felt like it was being torn in two. The concrete room spun a little around her. She squeezed her eyes shut again, which seemed to make it worse. Though she could no longer see the spinning, she could feel it, like she was in one of those amusement park rides that spun fast enough to keep the riders pinned to the walls when the floor dropped beneath them.

She leaned her head forward, forehead clunking dully against something cold. A metal pole, maybe. She kept her gaze on the floor for now, giving her brain fewer things to imagine spinning in that horrifically nauseating way. The pole or beam or pipe — whatever it was — was smooth and cooling and nice.

Bonnie closed her eyes again. This time, that nauseating feeling didn’t rise in her throat and squeeze her head.

Everything felt sort of… hazy. There at the edge of her mind but just beyond her grasp. Like if she reached out as far as she possibly could and wiggled her fingers, the very tips of them would just break through the haze.

She remembered… the high school. A sharp pinprick in the side of her neck. She tried to move her hand toward the phantom pain, but it didn’t get far. Something rattled and tugged painfully at her wrists. She opened her eyes. Handcuffed. Handcuffed to the metal pole her head still leaned against. Beneath each cuff, her wrists were wrapped in a thin layer of bloodied gauze.

She remembered ropes biting into her wrists as she tried to untie the knot or slip free. The school basement.

Bonnie lifted her head and scanned the room. It looked like a basement. Concrete floor. Unpainted brick walls. Tw+-o very small windows right beneath the ceiling. A drain in the middle of the floor. A water heater in the corner.

This one wasn’t the school basement. Or… certainly not a part of the school basement she had ever seen. She’d been moved.

A masked man. She remembered him. Remembered her phone ringing several times before he ripped it from her pocket and threw it across the room. Remembered fading out. Waking back up in the school basement.

Bonnie swallowed, wincing. Her throat hurt almost as much as it had when his hands had still been wrapped around it.

“You’re awake.”

Bonnie’s head whipped around toward the voice. The man stood at the top of the basement stairs. He had changed clothes, but he still wore the same mask he’d had on in the school basement.

He came down the stairs, one hand on the railing. Unlike at the school, he wasn’t wearing gloves. He squatted down in front of her, hands clasped between his knees. “The gag, it’s a handkerchief. I’m going to untie it. Go ahead and scream. No one will hear you but me. I can’t promise what I will do in response, but you go ahead and do what you need to.”

Bonnie fought the urge to headbutt him as he reached behind her head to untie the gag. It wouldn’t gain her anything. It would piss him off. Maybe earn her another head bashing or choking. But it wouldn’t gain her anything. If he killed her, there was no chance of escaping, and alive but brain-damaged greatly reduced her chances too.

So she swallowed the urge and kept her eyes shut until he pulled the gag from her mouth. He tossed the fabric to the floor and sat back on his heels. “Bonnie—”

“I don’t know who you are,” she interrupted, her voice shaking. “I-I haven’t seen your face. I don’t recognize you. You can let me go a-and I’ll go home, and I won’t tell anyone about this. No one has to know. I promise.”

“Oh, Bonnie. They’re already looking for you, dear. The deputies have already been to your mother’s house.”

“H-how long have I been gone?”

“Not horribly long. It’s a little after ten now.”

“Ten… at night? O-on Wednesday?”

“Mmhmm.”

Under twelve hours.

“I still won’t tell anyone. I’ll say I just… went on a long walk. That I needed a break from life for a couple hours.”

“I’m not letting you go, Bonnie. You weren’t some random choice. You weren’t taken because of random chance or random opportunity. I’ve been planning this for a long time,” he said as he rose to his feet.

Bonnie watched him as he walked across the room. “Why me?” she asked, unable to force her voice to be any louder than a whisper.

“I told you we had a lesson to teach Mister Downs. I wasn’t lying about that.”

“Why?”

His back to her, he lifted one shoulder. “He’ll understand the why. That’s all that matters.”

***

A little after eleven-thirty, Jeff pulled the cruiser into Rick’s driveway and shifted into park. When Rick didn’t undo his seatbelt or open the door, Jeff cleared his throat. “All right, Ricky, here we are.”

Rick lifted his head to look out the window. “I want you to meet me at the school in the morning. I’m thinking around seven.”

“So you don’t think she’s on her way to Florida, then.”

“I think… we shouldn’t put all our eggs in one basket, is all. If we wait until she could be in Florida, and then we wait for his parole officer to do a search of his house…” Rick let out a breath. “If we wait on that and she isn’t there, we’ve wasted so many valuable hours. Important hours. I can’t do that, even if this is Iowa. Even if it’s Ellepath. I just can’t.”

After a moment, Jeff nodded. “Okay. Tomorrow morning, seven o’clock. I’ll meet you at the school.”

Rick turned toward his partner and offered a tired smile. “Thanks, Jeff.”

“If this case were the other way around, if I believed she were in danger and everyone else in the whole fucking world believed she was a runaway, you wouldn’t sleep until you explored that angle with me, until you were absolutely certain she ran away on her own volition. If I can’t do even half of that for you, then I’m not worthy of being your partner.”

“Still, thank you. If she weren’t dating Peter, I’m not sure I’d worry she was in danger. I don’t know that I’d give it a second thought. I’m not… blind to the fact that her relationship to my kids is clouding to my judgment. And I know you know that. So the fact that you’re working with me on it even knowing that? I appreciate it. Deeply.”

“I know, man.” Jeff reached out and gave Rick’s shoulder a tight squeeze. “Go inside, shower, get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Rick patted Jeff’s hand before finally undoing his seatbelt. He headed up to the house as Jeff backed out of the drive and back onto the road. Rick unlocked the door and walked inside. He closed and locked the door, leaning his forehead against the door. He heard quiet footsteps behind him. Before he had the chance to lift his head or turn around, his wife’s arms wrapped around him. Rick let out a breath, shoulders relaxing as he lifted a hand to cover both of hers.

“I was starting to worry you weren’t ever coming back,” Heidi said.

“I always come back.”

“That’s the hope.” Heidi pressed a kiss to his bicep before shifting to rest her cheek between his shoulders. “Did you find out anything?”

“No. I mean… nothing that finds Bonnie and brings her home tonight.”

“Do you wanna talk about what you did find?”

“Bonnie’s dad was released on parole three weeks ago. Has a job in Florida. Tina wasn’t alerted about his impending release, or that he even had a parole hearing, so I think… that Bonnie found and read the letter, and then she hid it. Or threw it away. I just don’t know if she hid it or tossed it to protect her mom or because she was planning on going to see him, see if the stories about him were true. Or maybe just to tell him to stay away. But I don’t know.”

“Did you search her room?”

“No, I talked to Tina about it, but I didn’t ask about searching her room. It felt… I don’t know. Invasive. She’s dating Peter.”

“You can’t see her that way while you’re investigating. She has to just be another missing girl. Anything more than that will mess with your head far too much, and we’ll lose you again.”

“I know,” Rick whispered. “You’re right. I’ll… I’ll talk to Tina about searching Bonnie’s room tomorrow. Where would you hide a parole release letter if you were a teenage girl?”

“If I trusted my mom? Folded inside my diary. And if you find one, you should read the most recent entries too, no matter how it feels. Okay?”

Rick nodded. She was right. He knew she was. But it unfortunately didn’t make the idea of reading his son’s girlfriend’s diary any more appealing. “Jeff and I are going to the school tomorrow before it opens to the students. I want to talk to the staff, see if anyone noticed anything strange about her. She was leaving the school when Tina called reception. I want to make sure they physically saw her leaving.”

“That’s a good idea, baby. You know what you’re doing.”

Rick chuckled. “You’re like a mindreader. That’s been eating away at me all evening. What if she really is in danger and I’ve been out of practice with real cases for so long that I can’t save her?”

“You know all the laws, all the rules, all the procedures. Unlike everyone else, you have actual practice with real cases. If Bonnie’s in danger, you’ll save her. You’ll find her. I have no doubt about any of that, Rick.”

“We left California because I got too involved in cases with people I didn’t even know. If she’s really in danger, how the hell am I going to survive working this one?”

“Every single night, when you come home, we’ll re-ground you. We’ll bring you back to earth each time, make sure your mind is back home too, not just your body.”

“Thank you, Heidi.”

“Of course, baby.” She pulled back, pressing a kiss to his upper back. “Let’s go take a shower, make sure your mind is here, and then get some sleep. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.”

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Chapter Two

Chapter Four

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter Two

NOT EDITED

By the time Rick got home, it was approaching six-thirty in the evening. The twins had probably gotten home around five, after their respective basketball practices. Enough time to have supper, enough time to get started on their homework. He made his way back to the rooms of his two eldest children, Jennifer and Peter. It seemed wise to start with Jennifer. She was friends with Bonnie. If something was going on with Bonnie, Jennifer was more likely to know the details, so long as Bonnie had gossiped about it. If there were rumors about Bonnie thinking of running away, Jennifer would have probably heard about them before Peter would.

Rick lifted a hand and knocked on Jennifer’s bedroom door. “Hey, honey, you too busy for a chat?”

It didn’t take long for Jennifer to pull open the door, one earbud pulled out of her ear and held in her hand. “You say something, Daddy?”

“Can we talk?”

Jennifer’s brow furrowed, but she nodded and took a step away from the door. Rick stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. It felt odd to be standing in his child’s room for what was essentially an interrogation. He’d done a lot in his career — seen a lot — but this one was a first for him.

“I wanna talk about Bonnie,” Rick said once Jennifer had sat back down at her work desk.

She threw her head back with a groan. “Did Pete send you? I already told her I don’t want to be involved.”

Well, pretending Peter had told him something was a damn good starting point, not to mention a good way to avoid telling Jennifer why he wanted to talk about Bonnie. “Yeah, but based on that reaction, I’m not sure he gave me all the details.”

“It’s just a little fight. It’ll blow over, and they’ll get back together. I’m not going to interfere with it.”

“Peter’s worried she isn’t going to come back on her own.”

“She will once she realizes she was wrong and that Pete doesn’t even see other girls when Bonnie’s in the room.”

Rick nodded. “When she was talking to you about the fight and the break-up, did she say anything weird to you?”

“Weird like how?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Something like… wishing things were different? That she had a different life or lived somewhere else? Anything like that?”

“No.” Jennifer’s brow furrowed again. Finally, she pulled out her second earbud and set it on her desk. “Is everything okay?”

Rick let out a breath. That one, he wasn’t going to lie about. He couldn’t, not to his little girl. He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of her bed, hands falling to his lap. “Bonnie’s mom came into the station not too long after school ended today. Bonnie didn’t come home tonight.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in, but I need to know if you think there’s any chance she would run away.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Not Bonnie. She’s mad at Pete, but that’s it, and that’ll pass. She loves her life. She loves here. She’d never run away from it.”

“That was sort of where my mind was too.” Rick cleared his throat. “What, uh… what’s the issue with Pete? How much about it do you know?”

“It’s stupid. He’s applying to other colleges that she didn’t apply to, and she thinks it’s because he wants an excuse to see other hot girls and cheat on her without her knowing. She’s just stressed out from semester one finals and all of that. But she wouldn’t run away. She’d go home and talk about it with her mom.”

“When was the break-up?”

“Uh… Monday, I think. But she’s been trying to talk to me about it since. I don’t wanna get involved and tell her how crazy she’s being about it and have her hate me forever because of it.”

“Okay,” Rick said, his voice soft. “She’s been her normal self outside of that? No strange behaviors? Paranoid looking over her shoulder or anything like that?”

Jennifer shook her head. “No, just… normal Bonnie.”

“Thank you, honey.”

Jennifer watched him stand up. “You’re gonna…? She’s gonna be okay, right? I-I mean, we’re in Ellepath. She’s okay. You’re gonna find her.”

Rick offered a smile. “That’s the plan, honey. We’re workin’ on it.”

***

After interrogating a second one of his own children, Rick stepped outside for some much-needed fresh air. Before he could even pull his phone out of his pocket to call Jeff, the man pulled into his driveway. Rick lowered himself to the stairs as Jeff climbed out of the cruiser. “What’d you find?”

“Ex-husband is nowhere near Iowa. Still in Florida. Was working today until about five-thirty,” Jeff said. He walked up the drive and sat down beside Rick. “How’d the convos with the kids go?”

“Both say there’s no way she would have run away. She was normal Bonnie today. Nothing out of the ordinary.” Rick chose to keep her and Peter’s fight to himself. Right now, he had no intention of adding fuel to Jeff’s ‘runaway’ fire. Everyone at the station would think she was just a teenage runaway. It was a small town. There was no way she could be in danger. But Rick knew better than that idyllic bullshit. Kidnappers didn’t stop kidnapping simply because they lived in a small town.

“Normal Bonnie,” Jeff echoed as he sat down beside him. “What does that entail for her?”

“I don’t know, what does it entail for any teenager?” Rick’s brow furrowed as he turned to look at Jeff. “Sorry, before you came up here, you said Tina’s ex was working today?”

“Yeah.”

“Like, the prison work camp?”

“No, he’s a mechanic. I talked to his parole officer.”

“Parole?” Rick echoed. “As… as far as I know, Tina believes he’s still in prison. Did the PO say how long he’s been out?”

“Three weeks.”

“We should talk to Tina about that.”

Jeff glanced down at his watch. “Tonight?”

“Her baby’s missing, Jeff. She’s not going to be doing any sleeping tonight, no matter what time we pay her a visit.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, his voice quiet. “I told her I thought Bonnie was a runaway. And I still… I still think that’s possible. But because she already knows that’s how I feel, I don’t know… if I should be there when you talk to her.”

Though Rick knew part of that reasoning was likely Jeff’s desire to get home to whatever sexcapade Mary had planned for him, it was still sound reasoning, regardless of the driving force. “I’ll handle it and let you know how it goes. You and Mary can pick up your plans for the night.”

“I called ‘em off. I don’t think I should go inside, but I’ll sit out in the cruiser. I…” Jeff cleared his throat, lifting a hand to rub the back of his neck. “I think Bonnie’s a runaway. I’ve always believed every missing kid in Ellepath to be a runaway or a good hide-and-seeker, and I’ve always been right. But I can’t just go home, let you do all the heavy-lifting, and find out far too late that this time, I’m wrong. I don’t trust Tina enough to trust her gut, but I do trust you enough to trust yours. I’m tagging along, no matter how late of a night it is, or how many late nights it is. Okay?”

Rick smiled, reaching out to pat Jeff’s shoulder. “All right. Let’s roll.”

***

“He thinks I’m crazy,” Tina said as she set a coffee mug down in front of Rick.

“He doesn’t think you’re crazy. He’s just… like everyone else in this town. This is the only place they’ve ever lived. They’ve been lucky. Shielded from the real horrors of humanity. On one hand, that’s great. On the other hand, it makes people in small towns think crime in those small towns is impossible. That they’re immune.”

She nodded slightly, brow furrowed as she lowered herself into the chair opposite Rick at the dining room table. “Have you…? Have you found something?”

“Yes and no. Umm… your ex. Where is he these days?”

“Prison. Rotting in prison.”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Rick said softly. “When there’s a missing kid, one of the first things we usually do is check out any estranged family members, and in doing that, we discovered that he’s been paroled.”

“He…? He what?” Tina asked, her voice breaking.

“He was paroled three weeks ago, Tina.”

“I-I never got a letter. I-I didn’t even know he was up for parole. Aren’t they s-supposed to tell me?”

“Usually, yes. I’m so sorry you didn’t know, Tina, and I’m so sorry that they let him out. What he did to you girls is… I don’t even think the man deserves to be alive, much less walking around in public. But, umm, I have to ask, and I’m so sorry that I have to. Has Bonnie ever shown any interest in reconnecting with him? I know she was young. I don’t know how much of the abuse she remembers versus what she just knows about because she’s been told.”

“What are you asking me, Rick?”

“Do you think there’s any chance Bonnie would leave to visit him? See him for herself? See how true the stories are?”

“She wouldn’t… I don’t…” Tina shook her head. “She wouldn’t, Rick,” she whispered. “She wouldn’t.”

“You’re absolutely, one hundred percent certain she wouldn’t? Bonnie intercepting a letter of parole notification is a damn good reason for why they didn’t tell you. They tried, but the wrong person opened the envelope.”

“She believes everything she knows about him. I-I keep the information limited. She shouldn’t have to know everything. But she has always believed that the abuse happened, was documented, and that he was imprisoned for it. She’s said more than once that she doesn’t have a  father or a dad, and she’s happy with that. She wouldn’t, Rick.”

After a moment, Rick nodded. “What about him? You think there’s any way he’s smart enough to track you down?”

“Yes, but not because he’s smart. Because he’s persistent. If he has an ankle monitor, he’s not smart enough to get around that.”

“I… will check into that. Jeff is the one who talked to his PO. I don’t know what the conditions of his release were.” Rick cleared his throat. “I’ll find out more about that and work from there. In the meantime, if you were to hear from him in any form, I want to know immediately. No matter the time of day. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Rick reached out and wrapped his hands around hers on the coffee mug. “We’re going to bring her home, Tina. If it’s the last damn thing I do, she’s coming home.”

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Chapter One

Chapter Three

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Heads Will Roll – Chapter One

**When I was in high school, I wrote the Kathy Baker series, which was an incredibly under-researched (often times written with no research at all) series. In addition to this, the first book only begins to feature Kathy about halfway through, if not closer to 75% of the way through. Because Rick has already been mentioned at the end of The Surgeon (Jamal refers to them as “that station in Iowa”, I believe), it seemed like a fitting time to finally rewrite the book in Rick’s full perspective. If you’ve read the original book, things will absolutely change. I’m only two chapters in and have already changed quite a bit. But I think it’s necessary to kind of try to get me back into the writing headspace. I’ll give it a real title and such down the road, but my brain doesn’t work that way anymore, where I always have a title first. So… here we go, and I hope you enjoy. ❤

NOT EDITED

Wednesday: January 29, 2014

For a third time in less than half an hour, Tina Young turned her wrist enough to look at her watch. Four PM. Bonnie should’ve been home by now. The high school was little more than two blocks from the house, and Bonnie had been out of class for over half an hour.

“Everything’s fine. You’re being paranoid,” Tina whispered to herself. Ellepath was one of those tiny little towns in the middle of nowhere, Iowa where nothing bad ever happened. On the rare occasion a child went missing, they were found within hours, usually hiding in a bathroom stall or on one of the lowest shelves in the grocery store. But Tina and Bonnie had been forcibly separated before, and him being in prison and them living unharmed in a new town in a new state for over a decade hadn’t taken away the trauma or the paranoia that came with it.

Something could be wrong. Something could be very wrong.

With a heavy sigh, Tina set her book on the end table and pushed herself out of her rocking chair. She hated bothering the office staff at the school, but what other choice did she have?

In the kitchen, she unplugged her cell phone and leaned back against the counter. The high school was on speed dial number one. As the phone autodialed the number, she pressed the device to her ear and waited.

“You’ve reached Ellepath High School. This is Lilly speaking. Is there anyone I can patch you through to?”

“Hi, Lilly. This is Tina Young. Umm, is Bonnie still there at the school?”

“She’s actually leaving right now. Just waved her through the door. She’ll be home in no time, Tina.”

Tina closed her eyes, her shoulders falling with a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Lilly. Bye-bye.”

“Uh-huh, no problem. Bye-bye, now.”

Tina ended the call and put her cell back on the charger. For about the millionth time since they had moved to Ellepath, she had been worried about absolutely nothing. Bonnie hung around the school sometimes to help teachers prepare handouts for the next day. It was totally normal. Everything was fine.

And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something just wasn’t right.

***

“Ma’am—”

“Don’t you ma’am me, Jeff. Bonnie is missing, and I want something done about it. I want to file a report.”

Deputy Jeff Biggs cleared his throat. “Ma’am—Sorry. Habit, I swear. Tina, school ends at, what, three-twenty? It’s been an hour and a half, give or take a few. Don’t you think she’s just… out with her friends? With her boyfriend? She’s still dating Rick’s boy, isn’t she?”

Tina had started shaking her head long before Jeff had finished talking. “She wouldn’t go out without talking to me first. I already called her friends. I already talked to Heidi. She’s not with anyone.”

“Have… you called her phone?”

“Do you think I’m stupid, Jeff? Of course I called her phone.”

“I’m not trying to call you anything, Tina. It’s human nature to forget the seemingly simple things in the midst of an emergency or an anxiety-fueled situation. I just want to make sure it got done, is all.”

“I called her damn phone.”

Jeff blew out a breath. “And?”

“She didn’t answer. Not my calls, not my texts. After the fifteenth or sixteenth call, it sent me straight to voicemail. Her phone’s dead.”

“Or off,” Jeff said. “Bonnie’s top of her class, isn’t she? Set to be valedictorian and everything? Maybe she just needs a break from everything, and this is her way of doing that. You’re getting yourself worked up over nothing, Tina. This is a damn small town. Kids don’t just get abducted in Ellepath, for God’s sake. Especially teenagers.”

Tina leaned forward in her seat, as close as she could get to him with the desk between them. “Something is wrong. Bonnie was leaving the school and on her way home when I called them at four. We live two blocks away. You do the Goddamn math on that one. Something is wrong, and I would like to file a report.”

“Okay,” Jeff said, his voice soft. He pulled open the bottom desk drawer and grabbed a folder and a clipboard. After pulling a form from the folder, he handed it, the clipboard, and a pen over to Tina. “I’ll be back in a moment, okay?”

“Yeah,” Tina whispered.

Jeff rolled his chair back and pushed himself to his feet. He grabbed his empty coffee mug and made his way to the breakroom. His shift was supposed to end at five, but he had a feeling he’d be busy for at least an hour, maybe two, before everything could be filed away for tomorrow. Hopefully Mary was okay with pushing their plans back an hour or two.

***

“Hey.”

Jeff met Deputy Rick Downs’s eyes before going back to putting on his coat. “Hey.”

Rick jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Was that Tina Young in the parking lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Her ex-husband hasn’t made a reappearance, has he?” Jeff only shook his head. “What, then?” Jeff cleared his throat. There was no good way to tell Rick about Tina’s suspicions. He settled for handing him the clipboard. “Jesus Christ. Just since school let out?”

“Little after, but yeah. Not long.”

“I’ll talk to the twins, see if either of them has—”

“I think it’s pretty likely she’ll be back home tonight, Rick.”

Rick stared at him for what felt like an eternity. “You think Bonnie is a runaway?”

“I think ‘runaway’ is a strong word. I think she’s just… a teenager who needs a damn break from everything, even if only for a couple hours. She’s balancing about a million hobbies and afterschool activities, top grades, valedictorian speeches, probably class prez bullshit. I know I’d need a break. Get my mom off my back for a few minutes.”

“Tina isn’t some hounding bitch, Jeff. She’s—”

“I’m not saying she is. I’m saying she’s overprotective. She’s got a reason to be, but that doesn’t make it eat away at a kid any less. Especially the ‘talented and gifted’ type.” Jeff’s offered a smile he hoped was sympathetic. “This isn’t California, Rick. Kids don’t just go missing in Ellepath. They don’t get abducted. They run away, and then they come home.”

Rick set the clipboard on Jeff’s closed laptop before tapping his finger to it. “Ellepath or not, this is a missing child, and she will be treated as such. I will go speak to my kids and see how Bonnie was today. You will find out where Tina’s ex is locked up nowadays, and you’ll make sure it’s nowhere near Ellepath. Understand?”

Jeff blew out a harsh breath. Mary would be pissed, but pissing off his on again, off again girlfriend was a hell of a lot better than pissing off Rick. “You got it, partner.”

***

Bonnie Young struggled against her bindings. They were unreasonably tight on her wrists. When she tried to get her feet beneath herself to stand, they tightened around her ankles. The tug and pull on her skin felt like rope. She wasn’t going anywhere.

It was dark. Her eyelashes rubbed against the fabric of her blindfold. The roughness of it scratched her cheek. Wool?

Jesus. Wool. Who cared. She was tied up. Bound. Blindfolded. She didn’t know what was over her mouth, but something sure was. She couldn’t scream for help. Couldn’t run for help. Couldn’t look for identifying clues in case her captor let her out alive.

Rustling. Paper? Bonnie turned toward the sound, trying to slow her breathing to focus on it better. Paper shuffling. Shuffling was more accurate. And a fan.

“You’re awake.”

Bonnie whipped her head toward the voice. Heart pounding in her chest, she struggled against the ropes, tried to scream behind the gag or tape or whatever the hell it was.

“Hey, hey, Bonnie, hey. You gotta relax, sweetheart. You’re gonna hurt yourself. Hey.”

A man’s voice. Familiar. Clammy hands on her cheeks. She stilled, a stiff chill running down her spine. “If you settle down, I’ll take the blindfold off. Okay?”

Panicked, stilted breaths forced their way out of her nose, but she nodded.

The hands moved to the back of her head, working to untie the knot. The blindfold fell to her lap. The room was lit but not bright. Concrete walls and floor. Wooden stairs. Two small windows near the ceiling. They were… familiar too?

Her brow furrowed as she scanned the room a second time. The school’s basement? What the hell?

Her eyes shot over to the man as he stepped toward her again. A mask. He was wearing a damn mask. The mask covered the lower half of his face, leaving her staring at vaguely familiar eyes beneath the bill of a ball cap, familiar eyes she couldn’t quite place either. “I don’t want to have to hurt you, Bonnie, but I need to move you out of here, away from the school. If I untie you, will you walk with me to my car? Nice and easy?”

Bonnie whimpered behind the duct tape, her lazer focus blurring a unshed tear burned her eyes.

“It’s not a long walk, but it’ll be easier on you if you just work with me on this.

Her words were muffled by the tape, her lips barely able to move against the sticky backing, but she still tried to beg him not to do this, plead with him to let her go.

Though her captor couldn’t understand a single word of it, the crinkling at the corners of his eyes told her he was smiling. Smiling that she couldn’t talk. Or smiling that he knew what she was likely asking for. Either possibility made her stomach twist and flip, made her chest tighter than waking up blinded and bound had.

“I didn’t figure you’d make it easy, but I thought I’d give you the chance.” He wrapped his hands around her bound ankles and yanked her away from the wall. Her head thunked against the floor, but it didn’t stop her from screaming as loud as her lungs would allow. The tape muffled it. There was no way around that. But she knew it was still loud. It had to be. If someone was around, there was no way they wouldn’t notice.

Right?

She managed to pull her ankles from his grasp and drove them into his knee. It buckled, and he went down. His hands wrapped around her throat. Her pulled her up enough to bash her head against the floor. Once. Twice. Thrice. He let go of her throat. Bonnie threw her head back, fighting her body’s natural urge to try and breathe through her mouth. Her nose didn’t give her nearly enough air, but it was all she had now.

“Jesus. Not as meek as you seem, Bon.” He straddled her, hands pressed to the ground above either of her shoulders. “Rick teach you that?” He patted her shoulder before pushing himself to his feet. “Don’t worry, I’ve got something planned for us to teach him too.”

Bonnie blinked, slow and hard. Had she heard him right? Everything felt fuzzy. Sounded fuzzy. Looked fuzzy. She couldn’t have heard him correctly. If he was kidnapping teenage girls, what the hell could he possibly have against Rick Downs? What kind of lesson could he have to teach him? “Now, we’re gonna try this again. And if you fuck around a second time, you’ll have a hell of a lot more problems than a sore throat and a headache.”

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Highway Butcher – Chapter Nineteen

**I had most of this chapter written before everything happened with the animals and then my grandpa. I was actually in a Bo and Jensen mood last night, so finishing this chapter wasn’t too big of an issue, which was nice. I hope you enjoy ❤

NOT EDITED

Chapter Nineteen

8:45 PM; LOS ANGELES, APARTMENT COMPLEX, PARKING LOT

The drive to the apartment building had been silent, save for whatever songs had played on the radio. Jensen hadn’t been able to focus much on them. Bo had sat practically motionless in the passenger seat, head turned to the side to stare out the window. A time or two, Jensen had been certain the blonde had been sleeping, but the occasional check of his dimmed phone had served as proof he was awake. He had just been… far away.

Now, as Jensen pulled into a parking space, Bo undid his seat belt and leaned up enough to tuck his phone into his back pocket. “The place has been condemned for a few years, and before that, my little bit of sleuthing indicated most of the residents moved not long after your mother’s passing,” Bo said. “It’ll be empty, but if you don’t want to come with, there’s no shame in that. I won’t be long.”

“Is it… is it wrong to want to see it?” Jensen asked as he shut off the car.

Bo only shook his head. “No. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see the place your life began. But I don’t know what it looks like in there. Without trying to track down online records of the previous landlord’s contracts, I can’t say how many people have lived in that apartment since, before the condemned status began. I can’t say if anyone did, or if the landlord ever cleaned anything up. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Unfortunately, he did. For all they knew, the place still looked exactly as it had the day the police had finally found him and his mom in the apartment. It was possible her blood still stained the floor.

“Yeah,” Jensen managed to force past the lump in his throat. “Maybe… maybe seeing it will trigger something. Like, I’ll remember something. That’s possible, right?”

“Yes,” Bo said after a moment. “But it’s playing a bit of a dangerous game with your trauma and mental stability.”

“I call Kathy my mom. I haven’t been stable in years. Let’s roll.” Jensen slid out of the car before he could second-guess himself.

After a few seconds, Bo climbed out of the passenger seat. “The door to the main lobby is likely locked, so we’ll need to pick it.”

“Got it,” Jensen proclaimed, walking out ahead of Bo. At the door, he pulled a little leather case from his pocket and squatted down. He had the lock picked in record time — Jamal would be proud. Once he stood up, Bo flicked the hem of his shirt out of the way just enough to grab his pocket knife, the backs of his fingers grazing Jensen’s abdomen.

Okay. He clearly was not hiding his crush on Bo very well because that was very much not something you did to a straight guy who didn’t have a crush on you. Right? That or Bo just liked stealing Jensen’s shit. Given their track record thus far, that was admittedly a possibility too.

Bo flipped open the pocket knife and cut through the CONDEMNED sticker on the door. He held the knife back out to Jensen, who closed it and clipped it back onto his belt. The door creaked and groaned as Bo pushed it open, dropping out of the frame a bit as it went. Bo tilted his head back a little, pulling the door back and forth. Jensen followed his gaze, landing on the hinge at the top of the door that wasn’t quite screwed all the way in anymore.

Bo let out a breath and stepped inside. Jensen followed. He pushed the door back up into the frame, launching them into darkness. Jensen swallowed roughly. Jesus. How many times had Jamal made him train in the dark? Prepare for unknown attacks in the dark? Overcome his fear of the dark?

But now, standing in the lobby of an abandoned apartment building, he felt all his training unravel. What the hell was all that training worth if he couldn’t even move his damn hand to get his light? “Th-there’s a flashlight on my belt. I-I’m sure you’ve seen that too.”

“I have,” Bo said, his voice soft. He reached around Jensen’s back, hand patting his hip twice before landing on the flashlight. He clicked it on and held it out to Jensen. “If you can’t—”

“I can,” Jensen assured, snatching the light from his hand.

Bo’s expression only further softened. He grabbed Jensen’s arm. “But if you can’t, there’s no shame in that. If you need to leave, you can. If we need to leave, we can. I can come back alone or we can try again tomorrow, when the sun’s up. There’s nothing wrong with needing time or space. Okay?”

Jensen couldn’t help but look down at Bo’s hand, where his fingers were still gently wrapped around his bicep. His eyes flickered back to Bo’s face. “Okay.”

Bo offered a smile and gave his arm a squeeze. “Come. We’ll have to take the stairs.”

“A-are you sure you can handle that? We can wait until tomorrow, till you have a fresh dose of your pain meds.”

Bo shook his head, already on his way to the staircase. “I’ll be fine.”

Jensen hurried after him. He couldn’t help Bo’s pain, but he could at least illuminate the stairs for him. On the sixth floor, Bo stilled in the doorway, a hand pressed to the frame. “Do you need to sit? I-I can go break into an apartment and get you a chair.”

Bo chuckled, shaking his head. “No, I’ll be all right. I just want to make it to your mother’s apartment. If I need to sit, I can sit there. Okay?”

“Okay.” Jensen cleared his throat, turning as he shone his light down the hall. “Do you… know what apartment it is?”

“Six o’ eight.”

“Can I help you at all? Like, umm, give you an arm for support or something?”

Bo tilted his head back to smile up at him. “I’m okay. I have the wall.”

“Okay,” Jensen whispered. Still, he didn’t venture very far from Bo as they made their way to the fourth door on the left. Like the main door to the building, the apartment door had a sticker on it too, preventing anyone from opening it without tampering with the sticker. This one, however, had CORONER’S SEAL written in bolded letters. “What does… what does that mean?”

“Umm,” Bo cleared his throat, “someone died inside and… no one can enter without proof that they’re next of kin. Next of kin has legal claim to the victim’s property inside the apartment.”

“So they never found anyone? Not… not a sister or her parents? No one?”

“Not that came to the apartment.”

“What does that mean?”

“The, uh, file indicated that the police spoke to her mother.”

Jensen turned, wincing as his light shone right in Bo’s face. “Sorry,” he whispered, turning the beam toward the wall. “They found her mom?”

“Yes.”

“What’d she say?”

“The… the file doesn’t have transcripts from the interviews in it, just notes the officers and detectives wrote.”

“What do their notes say she said?”

“It isn’t relevant to finding who murdered your mother,” Bo said. “Are you… going to pick the lock?”

“If I wanted to work with someone who would hide shit from me, I would’ve asked Jamal for help. Or Kathy. But I asked you.”

Bo let out a breath. “She said your mom was a… homewrecker and that you were a bastard affair child, and in no world would she lay claim to you.” He cleared his throat, rocking back on his heels. “So, umm… Yeah. That, umm, that’s what the notes say she said.”

“I was practically a baby,” Jensen whispered. “H-how is it my fault that…? How? How am I a bastard she wants nothing to do with for something I didn’t do?”

“I know it’s easier said than done, but it’s better to try not to focus on why some people believe the things they believe. Why they are the way they are. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to rationalize it. Many people get stuck in their ways. And your maternal grandmother was one of them.”

“Their ways?” Jensen asked. “Their ways of abandoning babies when their moms are beheaded?”

Bo cleared his throat again. “I don’t… I don’t know what kind of answers you want me to give, Jensen. I-I’ve tried honesty and I’ve tried not giving you information that isn’t directly related to your mother’s death and I’ve tried softening the blow. I don’t know what you want. Just… just tell me what kind of answers you want. Please.”

Jensen closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t have the best… role models.”

Bo chuckled. “I know. You respond much in the way Kathy always has when I answer a question.”

“Yeah. I bet.” Jensen cleared his throat, forcing his eyes open. “I’ll be better about it. I promise. We can have, like, a code word or something for when I’m being an asshole.”

“A code word,” Bo echoed. “Sure. Let’s say that’s a reliable option. What kind of code word?”

“I dunno. Like, ‘hey, you’re being an asshole again’. Something like that.”

Bo snorted. “That would be a code phrase, and the whole point of a code is that it doesn’t say exactly what it means.”

“Gah, we’ll work on it.”

“Deal.” Bo nodded toward the door. “So?”

“Yeah. Here.” Jensen handed his flashlight over to Bo and squatted down, pulling his lockpick kit from his pocket again. Picking the lock for the main door had felt like just another task from Jamal, just another thing he trained for. Picking the lock to his mom’s apartment felt… distinctly different. He had spent the first few years of his life in there, happily oblivious to what the future held for him. For her.

Life had been a hell of a lot simpler back then.

With the final pin pushed into place, Jensen unlocked the door and rose to his feet. He took a step back as he tucked the small kit back into his pocket. “You, uh… you go ahead and open it.”

“Of course,” Bo said, his voice soft. He twisted the door knob and pushed the door open. Jensen was almost surprised that it didn’t creak ominously. It simply… opened. Bo stepped inside and Jensen followed, closing the door behind him. Bo held the flashlight out to him. “I’d like to request you stay here so I can take a look around first, check on the, umm… state of things. If that’s all right.”

“You mean seeing if her blood’s still all over the floor?” Jensen asked. Bo offered a nearly timid smile rather than a verbal response. “Yeah, I figured. I’ll… I’ll stay.” He grabbed the light. “You got a—?”

“I have my phone. I know what it’s like to hate the dark. You hold onto that one, and I’ll hold onto mine. I’ll be right back.” Bo pulled his cell phone from his pocket and tapped the flashlight on. Finding the kitchen was relatively easy. He knew what to expect on the floor, given the dead woman’s family affairs. But that didn’t make seeing the tiny hand-shaped voids in the long-since dried blood any easier.

How long had a toddler-aged Jensen sat next to his mom’s body, hands in her blood?

The little handprints led away from the rest of the blood pool, under the table. The notes in the case file indicated Jensen had been under there during the murder too. It was horrifically brutal, the whole damn thing. There was no way in hell Jensen had stayed silent the whole entire time the killer murdered his mother, beheaded her. No way in hell. But the killer had left him alive anyway. Some kind of code of conduct? It was okay to cleave a woman to death and behead her in front of her toddler, but killing the kid afterward somehow crossed the line?

It was impossible to know what truly went on in the minds of people like the man who killed Jensen’s mother, people like the killer the LAPD was after now. There would always be guesses and assumptions and probabilities, but the only person who would ever truly know was the killer themselves, and the liklihood they’d sit down and spill out their truth without any lies spilling into the mix was rather low. Bo never exactly held his breath for that.

“Mister Austen?”

“Bo. Mister Austen is my father.” Bo walked out of the kitchen and back to the entryway. “I need to sit for a moment. I think we should do that somewhere that isn’t the kitchen.”

“Yeah,” Jensen whispered. “So it was never…?”

Bo shook his head. “It normally isn’t, not unless the family or landlord pays for a biohazard crime scene clean-up. The shape most of these places — crime scenes — are left in is… Well, it’s not great.”

Jensen nodded, but he seemed a little further away than usual. Bo figured that was only reasonable. “I, umm, I think the bedroom is just past the kitchen there.”

“Excellent.” Bo walked alongside Jensen, using himself as some sort of wall between the man’s flashlight and the kitchen. In the small apartment, there weren’t many walls dividing each living section. If Jensen so much as turned his head and light at the same time, he’d be staring at the blood-stained wooden floor in the kitchen, the small dining table he’d spent days hiding under all those years ago. If Bo could prevent that direct visual contact, he would. Being in the same apartment was more than enough.

The kitchen, living room, and bedroom were all essentially one massive room, with only the bathroom and the small laundry room having actual walls. A long curtain rod stretched from the exterior wall to the short wall near the bedroom closet, and several long window curtains had been hung from it, acting as a partition between the bedroom and the living room. One of the curtains was pulled away from the others, tucked behind a small hook on the wall.

There were two beds aligned against the middle of the wall — a twin and a toddler, side-by-side. Bo sat down on the twin bed, and Jensen sat down beside him. Shining his light toward the nightstand, Bo grabbed the dusty photo frame leaned against the small bedside lamp. After wiping the glass with his shirt, he held it out to Jensen. “I can only assume that’s your mother and you.”

“Wow,” Jensen whispered, grabbing the corner of the frame with shaky fingers. “I-I don’t even remember what she looked like. O-or sounded like. She’s…”

“Beautiful,” Bo said, his voice soft.

Jensen nodded. Her eyes were the same emerald green he saw every morning in the mirror. Her skin was paler than his, her face painted with far more freckles than his own. Her hair was some sort of brownish-red. A beautiful, soft brown in some places and an auburn-red in the spots the sunlight in the photo touched.

She wore an off-white sweater in the photo, Jensen hiked up on her hip. They both looked so damn happy. Oblivious. Jensen’s little head resting on her shoulder. His chubby little toddler fingers wrapped around the collar of her sweater. Absolutely oblivious.

“You were probably two or three in this photo here. It looks like your freckles were beginning to come in,” Bo said. “You were very cute.”

“Were?” Jensen asked. “So I’m not cute now? Rude.”

“Oh, I definitely never said that.”

For the first time in his life, Jensen was thankful for the dark. Today, it hid the flush of his cheeks from the cute blonde seated beside him. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Bo grabbed Jensen’s free hand and placed it on the other side of the frame. “Do you mind if I go through the nightstand drawer?”

“That’s what you’re here for. I mean… right? Looking at stuff?”

“Yes, but it’s still your mother’s drawer. It seems polite to ask.”

“Go for it.”

Bo pulled open the drawer, shining his phone’s light inside. An small, empty notepad. A couple pens, a pencil. An MP3 player and a pair of cheap headphones. An uncashed check. Bo picked up the check. “Do you know a Luca Gutiérrez?”

“No. Should I?”

Bo handed over the check. “This is dated the day before your mother was murdered.”

“Six hundred bucks. The fuck for?”

“The… the memo line says ‘Jensen’. I… I think it’s child support.”

“The check with my dad’s name on it was right here in the damn drawer and no one found it?” Jensen asked.

“Well, the check I think has your dad’s name on it. Kathy usually did the picking around crime scenes. Sometimes with an analyst, sometimes not.”

“Because it allowed her to hide evidence if she deemed it… important?”

“Yes.”

Jensen stared down at the check, at the half-cursive words and numbers scrawled across it. “I want to ask Kathy about it. About him.”

“I would try to steer you away from that decision.”

“You could come with.”

Bo snorted, a hand moving to his abdomen. “In no world is that a good idea.”

“I’m gonna do it with or without you.”

Bo sighed. “How about you sleep on it and see how you feel after a couple hours of rest?”

“Sleep on it where? My dark, empty apartment?”

“I’m staying at David’s. I can… ask if you’d be welcome, as well.”

Jensen’s brow furrowed as he turned to look at Bo. “You’d do that”

Bo lifted his shoulders. “I know what it’s like to not want to be left alone in a dark room that doesn’t feel like home anymore.” He patted Jensen’s shoulder. “I’ll see what David has to say.”

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Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Twenty

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