Searching (PAVAD- FBI Romantic Suspense Book 18) Page 15

  Hell, he could say he had taken his cue from Seth Lorcan. Wouldn’t that be the shit?

  First thing he had to do was get Eugene Lytel the information he needed to proceed.

  Todd didn’t know what would happen with that information after that. And he didn’t give a damn. As long as his interests were met, he didn’t give a damn about anybody in PAVAD at all.

  To meet those interests, he had to keep himself from pissing off the ones who had put him there in the first place.

  Knocking that cocky smirk of Seth Lorcan’s face would piss them off now.

  They had plans for PAVAD.

  Plans Todd aimed to see happen.

  First, he had to deal with Max Jones.

  Easier said than done, though.

  Max was a mean son-of-a-bitch beneath that jock-nerd exterior. Todd didn’t know exactly how he was going to get around the guy.

  He’d seen the man in a fistfight during a case four years ago when Jones had been sent to Texas. The man had decimated four stoned-out meth heads. Without breaking a sweat.

  Jones hadn’t even been pissed when he’d done it. He’d just used those oversized fists of his to do it. While Jaclyn stood back and watched quietly. Holding her boyfriend’s coat.

  No. Todd hadn’t been stupid enough to hit on Max’s lady after that.

  But Jaclyn wasn’t Max’s lady now. There were perks to being in St. Louis. Todd was going to enjoy them.

  39

  The ME was finished with the preliminaries on Rachel. Someone from team two would have to go down there.

  Talk to the ME personally.

  Jac stood. It was going to be her. She had to find a way to do something. Instead of just sitting around worrying while combing the Sturvins’ social media and email accounts. Anyone on the teams could do that.

  She needed to be out there, hunting the information that would them find Livy and Ava.

  “That’s what Knight was doing in Masterson, though,” Miranda said, picking up a previous conversation. Miranda brought up Agent Allan Knight often—probably more than the other woman realized. “Trying to determine if he wanted to be a part of the cold-case team. So it’s happened before. I can’t see anyone choosing Barnes as a PAVAD agent—not after what happened with Kyra. Definitely not as a CCU team leader.”

  “That’s different. Knight’s a thousand times the agent Barnes is. That’s the last way I would describe Todd Barnes.” He was the prototypical screwup, the definition of sloppy. It was a miracle he’d lasted this long in the bureau at all. That he was even periphery involved with this case gave her knots in her stomach.

  Jac had also heard he had connections in Washington. Strong ones. With people she didn’t want to remember at all.

  “You’re telling me. Watch yourself on this one. It doesn’t quite ring true. And I’ve heard rumblings from friends back at Quantico and in California that PAVAD has angered a few people lately. Within the bureau. And in Washington,” Miranda said as she walked alongside Jac. She hadn’t asked where they were going; she’d just followed.

  Rather like Jac had known she would.

  She suspected Miranda was keeping an eye on her for this one. Miranda could be a bit overprotective of her friends at times. All it would have taken was one word that Jac might struggle on this case to have Miranda going into high alert. Probably from the years she’d spent taking care of her younger sisters and cousins. It was almost a part of Miranda’s DNA.

  “Not all that surprising. Kyra said that conference in Texas eight months ago made it clear there is a lot of internal jealousy going on inside the bureau. Which means backstabbing and machinations. I’m glad I’m not Ed Dennis right now.” She opened the glass doors to the rear entrance to the forensic lab. Then scanned her badge to get through the security door. They had doubled security on the entire PAVAD building, especially the evidence department, after someone had attacked PAVAD a few years ago.

  The PAVAD building, while secure, was not infallible. That was a hard lesson they’d had to learn. A few times, now.

  Every move someone made in the building was tracked now, it seemed.

  She took in a deep breath as familiar sounds and scents assailed her.

  This was the best way to find the Sturvin girls. Logically, she knew that.

  “Still with four hundred positions to keep filled in this building, we’ll occasionally end up with a lemon,” Miranda said. “Or someone nobody wants around. I can’t think of anyone who fits that description more than Todd Barnes.”

  “No kidding,” Jac said as they started down the hall toward the blood-and-biologicals lab. “He asked me out. I’d rather not relive that experience.”

  She resisted the urge to shudder. The guy was a total creep. The way he had looked at her had made her stomach turn. Then…and now.

  “Oh, how romantic. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “You’d been sent out with Mal’s team. I don’t think we saw each other after that for over a month. I tried to scrub the incident from my mind.”

  “So Barnesy has a crush on Jac. How did that go over well with your guard dog?”

  “I never told Max. I knew...that he’d go all stupid protective. He’s not too fond of Barnes either.”

  Understatement.

  “We’ll just ignore Barnes while we find those little girls,” Miranda said. “Max is not fond of any man who gets too close to you. Told you so before.”

  “Let’s just find the girls and the killer, and then we’ll get rid of Barnes somehow.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  She’d printed a photo off her own phone of Rachel and her daughters taken at Emery’s party. That photo rested in her back pocket.

  It would stay there, until the moment she had them safe.

  Livy liked Disney princesses. Ava loved dogs. They loved each other, too.

  Jac’s arms almost ached when she thought about them. She’d held Ava until the little girl had fallen asleep on her shoulder. While Rachel had helped arrange snacks in Max’s kitchen.

  It had been normal. Beautiful. Jac had freely admitted to Rachel that holding little ones was a joy she rarely got to experience in her job. Not in happy moments, anyway. Rachel…had somehow understood what Jac hadn’t been able to say that day.

  Those little girls deserved to be safe. She was praying with all her might that they were, that for whatever reason, they’d been with someone else—far, far from the home they shared with their parents.

  She just had to keep herself focused. No matter what.

  “How well does Max know the Sturvins?”

  “He…I think he considered Rachel a friend, too. She was helping with Emery’s party. They’ve handled field trips together. Casual, not really friends, but not not friendly, either. Secondary social group. That sort of thing. He…Livy, the older girl, is one of Emery’s friends from school, from basketball, too.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yes. Rachel…she was nice. Sweet. She reminded me a bit of your cousin Dusty. She was the one who was going to meet us at my house Saturday to help us plan the landscaping around the walkway.”

  “I…hell, Jacs,” Miranda said, pausing just outside the door to blood-and-biologicals. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you knew her that well.”

  “I think…I didn’t know her well. But I would have liked to. I liked her when we did things together at the school. And it was nice to have someone to talk about things other than crime scenes and profiles with. I’m trying not to think about that. I need to find her daughters first. Make certain they are ok. That’s what she would have wanted more than anything. She was a wonderful mother. Her every thought was for those girls, it seemed. She’d want me to find them. Protect them.”

  “And you will. We will. We stick together, remember that?” Miranda hugged her one-armed quickly. “It’s one of the things we’re good at.”

  40

  The forensics lab had a feel, an aura, all its own.

  Jac h
ad once considered going into forensics. She had, in a way. Computer forensics.

  Thanks to her stepfather forcing her to learn how to handle a weapon before she’d been out of grade school, she had excellent marksmanship skills.

  Not to mention her experience in computer forensic analysis. That had been another lifelong passion of hers. Cyber law had drawn her toward law school. That had led her to the bureau. Everything combined had drawn the attention of Ed Dennis one day at Quantico when he’d been head-hunting for St. Louis. They hadn’t known it at the time, but he’d been recruiting for PAVAD years ahead of its inception.

  He’d snagged Miranda that day, too.

  She loved fieldwork. Except when it came to dealing with victims. That was one area where Max outshone her by a mile.

  Max.

  She was worried about him, too.

  Little girls in jeopardy would always be hot-button cases for him.

  At one time, that would have been the exact type of cases on which she would take the lead. So that he didn’t have to.

  She would take the lead on this one, or share it with him, for Rachel.

  It was something she just knew they both needed to do.

  She wanted to be in the field searching, but with Max out there, it was time they divided and conquered. He’d handle the legwork. She’d handle the organization.

  That had been their strategy too many times for her to think about. It was second nature now. Even if every instinct was urging her to get out there and find Livy and Ava herself, that it was her job to do just that. “It’ll be personal for him. It’s kids. Little girls who have been in his home, been with his daughter. It won’t get more personal than that for him.”

  “Being a single parent, it’s understandable. I know seeing what was done to Edith Lindsay burned me, hurt me, intrinsically. Because of my grandmother. Just like two little girls, sisters in trouble, is no doubt haunting you. It is what it is. We don’t end up in this kind of a job without a good reason. We all have triggers. But we’ve been trained to know our own triggers—and how to work through them. Max will be ok, Jac. We’ll both make sure of it.”

  She, Max, and Miranda had been together since the very early days. Before PAVAD they’d been a part of the St. Louis field office. Then they’d worked briefly for Ana McLaughlin in the CHILDS division of PAVAD, then they’d transferred to the Child Exploitation Prevention Division.

  They’d found they worked very, very well together.

  She pulled in a deep breath. Pathology was waiting.

  The pathology lab was down the hall and down a flight of stairs in the annex. Jac led the way, not saying another word.

  The morgue was filled with ghosts of previous cases. It always would be.

  She’d always hated going down to the medical examiner’s office. But today…she was going to oversee every aspect of Rachel’s case that she could.

  For Rachel.

  The dead always passed through the morgue presided over by Jules Brockman.

  Jac had always liked Jules. Jules had a snarky sense of humor and a brain that went a million miles a minute. They’d worked together in PAVAD’s early years, when there were far fewer members of the Complex Crimes Unit.

  It had been four years and four months ago when PAVAD had taken its first official case.

  Jac had worked the periphery of that first case. Jules came around a year later or so. The older woman had always struck Jac as being no-nonsense, practical, and down-to-earth. And she knew what she was doing.

  Rachel would have the very best.

  “How are you feeling?” Jac asked. She’d heard through the grapevine that Jules was pregnant again. Her husband, Malachi, had been one of Jac’s early team leaders. Jules had struggled with her last pregnancy, too, from what Jac remembered. Malachi had been a nervous wreck.

  There was a mother on Jules’s table now. One who had two children who would never see her again. Jac could never take that lightly. “I’m here about Rachel Sturvin.”

  “We suspected that someone would be down soon. I recognize her, of course. I just spoke with her about supervising Ruthie’s field trip three days ago. She was organizing the chaperones,” Jules said in a tight voice that spoke volumes. “I had to decline, but promised to take the next one, if I can.”

  “I know. She…hit me up, too. I couldn’t say no. Is there anything you can tell us?”

  “There’s not much to tell, Jac. It was a simple bludgeon job. Blunt force trauma. Here, here, and here. Any of those three blows would have been fatal. We estimate there was another twenty-six strikes. But she didn’t feel them. She was already gone. She…there wasn’t a lot of time for her to feel pain, to know what was going on. Let’s do this so you can get out there.”

  Jac tried not to flinch when Jules pulled back the sheet.

  Jac was never fully prepared for this part. The cold stare of dead was seared into her soul. This was far worse.

  This…this was the first time Jac had ever seen anyone she knew on the autopsy table.

  She would never forget this moment. Rachel was right there.

  Jac fought back a panic attack. This…she was going to find who had done this. For Rachel. For those little girls. No matter what. She had to. She had to—so they couldn’t do this again to someone else.

  She pulled her professionalism around her shoulders like a cloak. Like body armor. She could do this. She had to.

  “How many blows were before death?” Miranda asked.

  “The majority were after. I’d say he killed her rather early on. Or she killed her. Can’t rule anything out at this point. The majority of the blows were postmortem.” Jules pointed out several more of significance. Her words were grim, and there was pain in her eyes.

  Pain Jac understood.

  Jules’s daughter and Rachel’s sat next to each other every single day at Brynlock. Ruthie, Jules’s daughter, had told Jac that herself so proudly at the party.

  “It seems like overkill,” Jac said. “Unnecessary. Rage.”

  “That’s for you guys and girls figure out,” Jules said. “But it does seem quite a bit excessive.”

  “Personal,” Jac said, looking up. “It was most likely personal.”

  Jules nodded, replacing the sheet over the victim respectfully. “Now, I’m not a psychologist, of course. But I live with one. It seems to me she most likely knew her killer. There were no defensive wounds. None. So I’m suspecting that the first blow was probably the fatal one. Or incapacitated her enough so that she couldn’t fight back. Dear heaven, I hope so. So she had to let someone close enough to her to do that. Rachel didn’t have a clue what was about to happen to her. She never would have imagined. She…has there been any word on the girls yet?”

  Jac shook her head. “Max is overseeing the search now.”

  “Let me know when they are found. The school called a few minutes ago. They’ve dismissed early. Some of the older children have learned what has happened.”

  “Someone she knew was in the house that late at night. Someone she trusted,” Jac looked at the other women. “Who could she have angered so much that they would do this to her?”

  Jules just shook her head, obvious tears in her eyes. “I don’t know. But find them, Jaclyn. Please. Just find those little girls before something happens to them next. I…can’t stand the thought of those children on my table. Livy has been to my house; I’ve held her in my arms when a bee stung her.”

  “I’m going to find them, Jules. I promise.”

  There were too many people counting on her for her to fail now.

  41

  It took a moment for Jac to pull herself back together. Miranda stood with her in the hall outside the morgue, her good hand on Jac’s shoulder. Miranda didn’t force her to talk.

  Jac appreciated that. She didn’t know if she could.

  Jules’s fear and grief had been too much of an echo of her own.

  Finally, Jac pulled in a breath, promising herself that would be t
he last time she fell apart. She wasn’t doing those girls any good by wasting time like this. She and Miranda had one more stop to make before they would be able to head back out to the crime scene.

  Forensics.

  The blood-and-bios supervisor, Kelly, caught them just inside the door.

  “I have preliminary results for you. I know this case is high priority. The director called me in from comp time himself. When I heard who it was…and the connection to Brynlock, I…”

  Jac followed Kelly to the larger blood-and-pathogens lab near the back. Kelly’s office was off to the side behind a reinforced door. An explosive-resistant material created by Lucas Tech surrounded the entire lab. PAVAD learned from past mistakes.

  “The blood samples matched Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. Sturvin. But we have a third sample that is also female.” Kelly pulled the reports up on a large monitor, then motioned to files she’d already prepared. “I’ve circled the location on the house schematics.”

  Miranda took the file report. “You’re sure it’s a woman?”

  “DNA shows female. I’m running more in-depth tests on the sample now, to see if we can get something to match. But, yes, definitely a woman. Well, a female. No way to tell how old. But the sample does not show familial to Rachel Sturvin. So it’s not one of her daughters. These samples were taken near Mrs. Lindsay. Whatever happened, happened in that general location. Rain had the samples mixing, but we’ve isolated two separate samples now. The only blood samples we found in the hall belong to Mrs. Sturvin, so far. But we’re only a quarter of the way through them. Of course, we’re eliminating reference samples from the husband and the children now. Toothbrushes were collected at the scene.”

  Jac stared at the diagrams of the scene, where each sample had been taken. An additional victim explained the sheer amount of blood.

  Everyone had thought it seemed like a lot of blood, but with it being a drizzly, rainy morning, Jac had just thought it had been slightly diluted.