Humpty Dumpty: The killer wants us to put him back together again (Book 1 of the Nursery Rhyme Murders Series) (13 page)

“It was my understandin’ that this was a federal case,” the captain shot back. “I ain’t got the manpower to be helping the feds putter around looking for body parts that ain’t gonna be there.”

“And it was my understanding that we were all on the same side, Captain,” Agent Cooper replied, her face blank.

“That was before you showed up and started messin’ with my people, screwin’ up our timetable, makin’ things difficult.”

“And what, exactly, made things more difficult, Captain?” Coop’s tone had sharpened, honed down to a laser point. Had found it scary… and kinda hot. It really was too bad that she didn’t seem to have any interest in math. Or Latin dance. Or animals. “Was it the fact that I’m younger than you? Or that I’m a woman? Or that I’m Black?”

“Now look here, missy, I’m not—” he started.

“You will address me as Agent Cooper,” she snapped, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Call me ‘missy’ again, and I’ll report you for harassment.”

Much as he hated to do so, Had stepped between the two and held up his hands. “Captain, if we can do all the legwork ourselves, are you okay with us talking to your personnel? You know, as long as we aren’t bugging them.”

Captain Blake took a small pace back, sizing Had up as he did so. “Well… I can’t see how that’d be too much of a problem, son. But make sure you aren’t keeping them from what they’re supposed to be doing.”

“Absolutely, sir. We’ll stay out of everyone’s way as much as possible.”

The captain grunted, waving them off with his hand. “See that you do.”

As they walked away, Coop leaned in and whispered, “Thanks. Things could’ve gotten bad fast if you hadn’t stepped in. I shouldn’t have lost my cool like that.”

“You kidding?” Had answered back. “The guy’s an ass. Watching you take him down would’ve been one of the greatest pleasures of my life.”

“Then what—?”

“I just figured we might have to keep working with the guy. Hate to see Humpty stay out there because of a dickwad like that.”

Agent Cooper gave him a long look. “You’re a good guy, Had. And a good cop.”

The compliment heated up Had’s ears. But what surprised him even more was the look Joshua was giving him.

He might have been crazy, but Had could’ve sworn it looked an awful lot like respect. Grudging respect, but respect just the same.

Had did what he could to keep his feet from floating off the ground.

* * *

Sariah looked out over the crime scene and sighed. A children’s playground should have children in it, playing and laughing. Not crime scene tape. And not random disembodied hands.

The local police had gone over the scene with a fine-toothed comb, looking for the rest of the body that they’d been positive must have been there. It made searching for new clues difficult. There were pictures, of course, but it was a challenge to know whether or not things had been disturbed. The investigators would have no idea what they were looking for, seeing as how they didn’t know the specific case.

“According to the crime scene photos, this is where the hand was found,” she said, pointing to an area in the sand that was marked off. “Any ideas, Joshua?”

The former agent squinted against the sun, looking for all the world like this was the last place on earth he wanted to be. Pulling out one of the bottles of alcohol from the hotel, he held it up for her to see.

“I’m just here for the free booze.”

That sounded about right. She reached down to scratch at the monitor around her ankle. Man, it itched. Maybe taking it for him had been a bad idea. Joshua watched her motion, winked, and tipped the bottle toward her like he was clinking glasses for a toast.

Had peered down into the depression in the sand where the hand had been. “Burying the hand in a playground? Guy’s sick.”

“Yeah, most serial killers are,” Joshua muttered back, moving toward the shade of the playground structure. He paused, tilting his head back to down his tiny bottle. Hell. Maybe it was time to just buy him the real stuff. Sariah could only guess what the minibar charges were going to end up being.

Joshua stopped before he got to the slides. He peered around, looking over and under the structure, his face pulled into a frown. Well, a deeper frown than he wore most of the time.

Sariah called out to him. “See something?”

“No… Yeah. Maybe.”

“Care to share?”

Joshua passed a hand across his face, pulling at the skin. “I dunno. There’s something… weird about this crime scene.”

“You mean other than the fact that it’s in a playground?” Had chimed in.

“Yeah. Well, actually, no. That’s part of it.” The former agent seemed distracted, seeing, but not quite seeing his surroundings. “Every other time, Humpty would bury the parts somewhere a little less... I dunno… traffic-y.”

Sariah thought about that for a moment. The last one, up in Ann Arbor, had been in a garden. Not private, but with much less traffic than this place. The part had been buried farther down in the ground, as well.

And every other scene was similar. A public, but unused area. A campsite down towards Stone Mountain, but one that didn’t have potable water. A trail up in the Smokies. An area off the freeway, underneath an overpass. All public, and all easy to access, but nothing along these lines.

“You’re right,” she concurred. “There is a significant difference between this site and the others. But what do you think it means?”

“No clue.” Joshua stood, his gaze distant.

“Hey, guys. Taking about weird…” Had spoke up. “Did that hand seem strange to anyone else?”

Joshua came out of his stupor. “It was a hand not attached to a body. Of course it seemed strange.”

“No, I mean…” Had seemed to be groping for words. “The way it was curled up and stuff. Like it was holding something.”

“That’s true.” Sariah thought back. Were any of the other parts off in any way? “It seems like all of the other pieces presented with normal alignment.”

“That’s just rigor,” Joshua retorted.

“Yeah, okay, but rigor sets in because the hand was in that position, right?” Had asked. “I mean, it couldn’t have frozen that way just because.”

“What would he have been holding?” Sariah asked.

Joshua had that far-away look again. “Not holding… pointing.”

“Pointing?”

“Let me see the picture of how the hand was found.” He trotted over to Sariah, reaching for her tablet. He swiped through the photos, his sun-slash-booze headache gone from all appearances.

“We can’t know if the girl turned it around after she unearthed it,” Sariah cautioned.

“It was a hand without a body,” he spoke without taking his attention away from the screen. “She’s a girl. She wouldn’t have touched it after it came to the surface.”

He peered at the tablet, turning it this way and that to orient it to the environment. Then he took off, pacing his way toward the playground structure.

“This way. Look around.”

“For what?” she asked.

“Anything weird.”

That was specific. But she looked anyway. Something had taken over Joshua. It was like he wasn’t even the same person he’d been just a few minutes ago. He bent over, searching under the slides, looking at the surface of the plastic playground.

“Guys,” Had called out from several yards off to the side. He was gazing at something there, three feet off the ground, against the side of one of the ladders leading up to the top of the structure. “You need to see this.”

Sariah moved over to his side, Joshua right behind her. Looking where Had was pointing, it took a moment for her to see it. There were scratches dug into the surface of the plastic. Scratches that spelled out something.

Joshua cursed and stumbled backward, sand churning up beneath his feet as he fell down. He crabbed his way farther back, doing all that he seemed to be able to do to get as far away as possible.

Turning back to the scratches, Sariah picked out what they said. And now she understood the former agent’s panicked response. When the meaning of the engraved phrase entered her consciousness, it was hard even for her to remain calm. It was a message from the killer. A message directed at a member of their team… a former BAU agent who had made it his mission to take the criminal down.

Welcome back, Joshua. It’s been a long time.

* * *

Had wasn’t sure what he should do. After Joshua’s initial reaction, he had shut down. He hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t moved. Even his blinking was slowed down to the point it almost wasn’t happening. And Had didn’t blame him. Not for a moment.

They had placed him in the shade, away from the engraved message. No need to keep that one fresh in his mind. And now, Had and Sariah were mapping out plans for the next few hours and days.

The convention had ended, so more rooms at the hotel had opened up. They’d be able to put Joshua in a room on his own, to let him recuperate. But there were other considerations… things that needed to get done. And having Joshua almost comatose was not on the agenda.

“We need to map out the places each of the body parts was found, see if there’s some kind of link,” Coop was saying.

Had nodded, thinking of the ways in which he could help. But his mind kept going back to the etchings on the surface of that play structure. How would Had react if he’d gone through the same thing? His mind drew a blank. There was no way for him to get even a small part of what must be going on in Joshua’s mind.

“Had. Had.
Had
.” Agent Cooper’s voice broke through his reverie.

“Sorry. I just—”

“I get it. I feel bad for him, too. But we’ve got to figure out how to handle things without him for the next little while. Anybody’s guess how long he’ll stay like that.”

“Like what?” came a voice from behind them. It was Joshua.

“Joshua, hey… how are you?” Had asked.

“What, that?” Joshua shrugged, pointing back at the message. “It’ll take more than that to keep me from free liquor. Speaking of which… let’s get back to the hotel.”

“Um… all right…” Agent Cooper responded, nonplussed.

“Look, bitching and crying about it isn’t going to help any. Let’s just… get out of here, okay?”

“Okay,” Coop agreed. She seemed almost as troubled by Joshua’s quick recovery as she had been about his reaction. Had felt the same. There was something too glib… too easy… about the way he was brushing off the experience now.

But, regardless, maybe there was something here they could use. “The fact that the killer knew you were back on the job should mean something, right?”

Sariah was nodding, but Joshua cut off the line of reasoning with a slash of his hand. “All it says is that the killer knew I’d be called in on this. And anyone who knew the history of the case could have figured that out.”

Had could see where that might be true, but it still bothered him. Something about this spoke of a more intimate connection. But without any additional clues, it was a moot point. Information. They just needed more information.

He would just have to see what he could do about that.

* * *

Sariah started awake and glanced at the bedside clock. 1:43 am. What the hell had woken her up?

The answer came a moment later, when the knock on her door was repeated. It was an insistent banging, one with purpose. Not the polite knock that Had might make if he needed to talk to her, but wasn’t sure if she was awake.

Joshua.

Grabbing a robe to throw on over her t-shirt and boxers, she moved toward the door. Looking through the peephole, Sariah was surprised to see the figure of a policeman standing there. Was this part of the harassment from earlier, coming back to haunt her in the wee hours of the morning?

Opening up for the officer, she caught sight of another uniformed cop off to the side, propping up a figure who was leaning against the wall, his close-cropped hair and beard identifying him as the former BAU agent.

He was drunk off his ass.

A thought passed through her mind. If eight drinks hadn’t seemed to affect him the night before, how much must he have drunk tonight?

“Agent Cooper?” the officer asked her.

“Yes.”

“We responded to a call for a drunk and disorderly at a nearby bar. When we got there, this man was trying to put everyone in the bar under arrest. He kept raving about severed hands and wood chippers and brain splatter. It was upsetting the patrons.”

“I can only imagine.”

“Yeah. That stuff might fly in D.C., but this is Charleston. We don’t go in for that kind of sick talk.” The cop glanced over at the inert form propped against the wall. “He also tried to attack several of the other patrons, but was drunk enough that he didn’t do any real damage.”

“I see.”

“One more thing. The identification he had on him wasn’t his. It belonged to a…” The officer held up a wallet and pulled out the driver’s license. “Kyle Hadderly?”

Shit
. “That’s one of the other members of my team. I can get it back to him.” She took the billfold the officer held out to her.

“We started to take him in, but he kept insisting that he was working with the FBI and that you’d vouch for him. I’d heard around the precinct that you guys were here working a case, so…”

“Thank you, Officer. I appreciate you taking the time to help figure this out.”

The officer smiled at her. “No problem, ma’am.”

“But there
is
a problem.”

“Ma’am?”

“I have no idea who this man is.”

The officer goggled at her. “But—”

“Sorry for your troubles, but I think you’re just going to have to take him in.” Sariah gave the man a significant look.

It took a moment, but the policeman caught on. “I see. You want us to throw him in the drunk tank?”

“Yes. I think that would be an excellent idea.” She started to turn around, then had another thought. “Maybe don’t process him. I might recognize him tomorrow morning.”

“Gotcha. Will do, ma’am.” With that, the two cops escorted Joshua down the hall.

Allowing the door to shut behind her, Sariah pulled her robe off and climbed back into bed. Their flight didn’t leave tomorrow until around 12. More than enough time to get Joshua back after he slept off his bender in a cell.