Killer Instinct
Page 43

“It’s not just for you, Dean.” Agent Sterling had been remarkably quiet this whole time. “It’s for us, too—Briggs and me. He wants us to know that we’re playing his game.” Her lips pulled back, halfway between a grimace and a hard-edged smile. “He wants us to know that he’s winning.”
She pressed her lips together, then bared her teeth. “We should have seen it.” The words that Agent Sterling had been holding back this entire conversation burst out of her mouth. “I should have seen it. The first murder showed all the hallmarks of an organized killer—the planning, the lack of physical evidence, the supplies the UNSUB brought to the scene. But there were things that didn’t fit. The use of the car antenna to strangle the girl. The fact that the UNSUB attacked from behind. Dumping the body in a public location. That’s impulsiveness, deviation from a set plan, and signs of self-confidence issues.” Sterling blew out a long breath, willing her temper to dispel. “Organized. Disorganized. When a crime scene has the hallmarks of both, you’re either dealing with an inexperienced UNSUB who’s refining his technique—or you’re dealing with two UNSUBs.”
Dean let out a breath of his own. “A dominant, who makes the plans, and a subordinate, who helps carry it out.”
Agent Sterling had put the UNSUB’s age between twenty-three and twenty-eight, but she’d worked those numbers out based on the assumption that the UNSUB was acting alone. Factoring Redding into the equation changed things. It was still a safe bet that our UNSUB idolized Redding, that he longed for power and authority and control. The lack of a father figure in the UNSUB’s adolescent years was still probably right on target. But if that was the role Redding was playing for the UNSUB, what was Dean’s father looking to get out of it?
The same thing Locke wanted from me.
Suddenly, I was back at the safe house. Dean was lying unconscious on the floor. Michael had been shot. And Locke wanted—desperately, madly—for me to take the knife. She’d wanted me to be like her. She’d wanted me to be hers. At least she’d seen me as a person. To Daniel Redding, Dean was a thing. A marvelous creation, purely his, body and soul.
Maybe Redding was looking to re-create that with our UNSUB. Or maybe this whole case had just been a way to remind his wayward son who was in charge, to force Dean to come and see him, face-to-face.
“We should adjust the lower end of the age range for our UNSUB.” I sounded calm, the way I always did when this part of my brain took over, converting even the most horrifying and personal situations into a puzzle to be solved. “To seventeen.”
I didn’t explain my reasoning, but I saw the second that the meaning behind those words registered to Dean. He was seventeen.
Briggs stared at me for a few seconds. “What are you thinking?”
He could have told me that this wasn’t our UNSUB. He hadn’t. I waited for Agent Sterling to object. She didn’t.
This was the heat of the battle. We weren’t dealing with a copycat. We were dealing with the man who had held Agent Sterling captive, tortured her. Redding was playing mind games with her from behind bars.
He was playing with Dean.
I didn’t dwell on it, or think about how Agent Sterling would feel about all this a day from now, or a week, or a month. I turned back to Agent Briggs and answered his question.
“Our UNSUB and Redding aren’t partners,” I said. “Men like Daniel Redding don’t have partners. They don’t think they have equals.” I searched for the right word. “The person we’re looking for isn’t a partner,” I said finally. “It’s an apprentice.”
The next morning, Agent Briggs brought Lia a DVD. “Recordings of every meeting we’ve had with Redding since this case started,” he told her. “They’re all yours.”
Lia snatched the DVDs before Briggs could rethink the offer. Beside him, Sterling cleared her throat. “You don’t have to do this,” she said. “The director has approved your involvement on this case, but you’re allowed to say no.”
“You don’t want us to.” Michael took in the way she was standing, the look on her face. “You hate that you’re even asking, but you hope to God we say yes.”
“I’m in.” Lia cut Michael off before he could read the agent any further. “So is Cassie, and so is Sloane.”
Sloane and I didn’t contradict her.
“I don’t have anything better to do,” Michael offered. His tone was casual, but his eyes were glittering with the same emotion I’d seen in him when he’d pulled Dean off of Christopher Simms. No one played games with the few people in this world he cared about.
“Lia, Michael, and Cassie, you’ll be in the media room, going over these interviews with a fine-tooth comb.” Briggs issued orders curtly and efficiently. “Redding thinks he has the advantage here. That changes today.”
Agent Sterling focused her attention on Dean. “If you’re up for it,” she said, her voice quieter than it had been when she’d spoken to the rest of us, “Briggs is going to see your father.”
Dean didn’t say anything. He just pulled on a lightweight coat over his battered white T-shirt and turned toward the door.
Sterling turned to Briggs. “I guess that means he’s up for it.”
Asking Dean to do this had hurt her, but doing nothing, doing anything less than everything she could to put an end to this would have hurt her more. Agent Sterling wasn’t wearing makeup. Her shirt wasn’t tucked in. There was an energy to her, a raw determination that told me that I was looking at the Veronica Sterling that Dean had known.
The one who reminded Agent Sterling of me.
“You okay here?” Briggs asked her.
“You know me.” Sterling smiled—all lips, no teeth. “I always land on my feet.”
Briggs watched her for a beat, then followed Dean to the door.
“What about me?” Sloane called after him.
Agent Sterling was the one who answered. “How are you with geography?”
Sloane disappeared to the basement with a handful of maps to work up a geographical profile of Redding’s partner. The rest of us sequestered ourselves away in the media room. Michael and I sat at opposite ends of the couch. Lia popped the DVD Briggs had given her into the player and plopped down between us, one leg pulled to her chest and the other stretched out. Agent Sterling took up a spot in the doorway, watching us watch the DVD as it began to play.
Daniel Redding was seated on one side of a long table. His hands were cuffed together and chained to the table, but from his posture, you’d have thought he was at a job interview. A door to his left opened and Agent Briggs came in, carrying a thin file. He sat down opposite Redding.
“Agent Briggs.” There was something musical about the monster’s voice, but it was his eyes that drew your attention: dark, soulful eyes, with the faintest hint of wrinkles at the corners. “To what do I owe this most inestimable pleasure?”
“We need to talk.” Briggs was all business. He didn’t rush the words. He didn’t drag them out. “I understand that you’ve been getting an unusual amount of mail as of late.”
Redding smiled. The expression looked self-effacing, almost boyish. “I’m an unusual man.”
“The prison screens and catalogs your mail, but they don’t keep copies of the letters.”
“Rather sloppy of them,” Redding opined. His hands were folded on the table. He leaned forward, just a fraction of an inch. “One can never be too careful about one’s…records.”
Something in the way he said records made me think that he was really talking about something else—something targeted to get under Agent Briggs’s skin.
Did Redding keep records of the women he’d killed?
Briggs didn’t rise to the bait. “Have you received any letters you would classify as fan mail?” he asked, his voice taking on a slight mocking tone, like Daniel Redding was a member of some long-forgotten boy band and not a restless predator locked in a cage.
“Why, Agent Briggs, I do believe you need something.” Redding feigned surprise, but the hum of pleasure in his voice was real. “Now, why would a man like you be interested in the letters received by a man like me? Why would you want to know that women write to tell me that they love me, that every day, my legacy lives on, that the lonely and the heartsick and the deliciously, darkly lost sheep of this world pour their souls into ink on the page, begging me, beckoning me toward them, so desperate are they for a shepherd.”