Chapter Nine
Brooke finger-combed her hair. It was a disaster after making out in the car with Roman. Good Lord, she was turning into a wanton woman. What on earth had come over her?
She dabbed on lip balm using the mirrored panels of the elevator to check her blurry reflection. She hardly recognized the image staring back—it certainly wasn’t her usual coiffed and well-heeled self.
“You look fine,” Roman said, but he had a weird grin on his face, like he’d just hit the jackpot.
She was the one still tingling from their make-out session. If it hadn’t been for their already delayed work day, and the fact that the front seat of his vehicle wasn’t ideal for a full-on sexual encounter, he might have actually hit the pot of gold. As it was, he’d still managed to practically bring her to orgasm just from some heavy petting combined with those wicked lips of his.
She adjusted her bra. “I look like a woman who just spent half an hour getting felt-up in the front seat of a car.”
“Exactly.”
She smacked him and opened the package of mascara she’d bought at the store. One swipe of each eye and she dropped it into her bag just as the elevator dinged and opened on the fifth floor of the towers.
Security guard Sue was waiting. Her eagle-eyed gaze swept over Brooke, then Roman, then came back to Brooke. “You all right, sugar? You look a little flushed.”
Roman snickered and it was all Brooke could do not to smack his arm again. “It was a rough night, but I’m fine, thank you.”
Sue winked at her and handed her a black plastic ID badge. “This was delivered earlier.”
Brooke flipped the top up and saw her picture and the official Department of Homeland Security emblem on it above her name. Sue handed her a lanyard. “Welcome to the team, Dr. Heaton.”
Brooke clipped the ID to the lanyard and slipped it around her neck. “Thank you.”
Sue eyed the box of pastries Roman had picked up for the team. “It’s a little late for breakfast, but if those are from Sweet Annie’s, I’ll take one for my dessert after lunch.”
Roman opened the lid and let Sue pick her favorite. She licked frosting off her fingertips as she waved them through the checkpoint. “He’s a keeper,” she said sotto voce to Brooke.
He just might be.
As they entered, a hooray went up from the team the moment Polly shouted “Annie’s!” Everyone descended on them, vying for a pastry. Brooke smiled at their antics.
“I love you, boss,” Polly said.
“Me too,” Nadia echoed.
“Dr. Heaton.” It was Cooper Harris. He leaned against the conference table, ankles crossed, a blue file folder in his hands. “Good to see you’re all right after the other night.”
Brooke loved Cooper. Not in a romantic kind of way—which was good, since he was engaged and expecting a baby any moment—but as a big brother. He could be gruff and demanding with his team, but he’d always been kind to her. “Agent Harris. We didn’t get to speak the other night at the bar shootout. What are you doing here?”
He was over six foot, with a broad chest and tanned complexion. His coffee-colored hair showed lighter, sun-kissed streaks from hours of surfing and running on the beach. “Crashing the party. I couldn’t let Walsh have all the fun with this serial killer.”
“You need coffee?” Roman asked Cooper, sliding the pastry box onto the table. He motioned at the others seated there—Thomas Mann and two people Brooke didn’t know. “Sweet Annie’s if any of you are interested.”
“I never turn down anything from Annie’s,” Thomas said. Another surfer, Thomas had the matching light hair and tanned skin.
“I could use a refill,” Cooper said to Roman.
Roman brought over cups for him and Brooke and a twin version of the glass carafe he had at home. Someone—probably Polly—had just made a fresh pot.
Polly, Nadia, and Winslow took their seats at the conference table, chowing down on the pastries.
“Dr. Heaton, this is Mitch Holden,” Cooper said, pointing to the man across from Thomas. “He helps out the team when we need him. Next to him is his wife, Dr. Emma Collins.”
Mitch stood, his longish sandy-colored hair and intense eyes giving Brooke the impression he’d seen some nasty stuff in his lifetime. He shook her hand and nodded. “We sort of met you in passing last Christmas.”
She’d been on her way to Dr. Collin’s ranch outside of Bakersfield to consult on a case involving famous actor, Chris Goodsman, when things had come to a head between Agent Holden and Goodsman, and Collins had landed in the hospital.
Brooke nodded at the psychologist. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you, Dr. Collins. I’m glad everything worked out okay for you and Agent Holden.”
“Call me Emma.” She beamed like a woman in love. Her hair was pulled back in a braid and she wore dark framed glasses. “We were very lucky.”
Emma declined the coffee Roman offered her. She had a cup of tea, the tiny tag indicating it was a ginger chamomile blend.
Cooper pulled out his chair and sat, dropping the folder onto the table. “Ronni and Nelson are busy and I figured you could use all the hands-on help you could get after last night.”
“You told them?” Brooke asked Roman.
“We have two cases, instead of one,” he said. “Your stalker and The Reverend. They could be one and the same, but with the escalation of the mass suicides and your stalker’s possible involvement, we need to work the case from multiple angles. I thought it wise to pull in the SCVC Taskforce and my boss, Quinn Kuprin, and Director Dupé agreed.”
Thomas swallowed a sip of coffee and nodded. “Many undocumented immigrants end up in gangs in order to survive. I have contacts inside three of the major Southern California gangs and a couple CIs who might be able to give us a lead.”
“As you know, Brooke, violent crime is our thing,” Cooper added. “And this asshole is leaving a trail of bodies wherever he goes. Holden and Mann can work Mann’s leads, see if they can get any more on where other undocumented groups are holding religious services. Roman and I can visit all the local missions, ask more questions, and see if we can figure out who this guy is. Emma can stay here and help with profiling and figuring out our killer’s next move.”
Brooke had been able to forget about The Reverend for a while that morning. It had been nice to revel in the safety of Roman’s world, even when she was shooting a gun.
Now hers came crashing back.
This was Roman’s too, but a different side of it. She was no longer here just because of her expertise—the case was personal now.
For the next twenty minutes, the DTT brought the SCVC Taskforce up to speed. They had plenty of evidence from each crime scene, as well as speculation about the killer. They revisited the idea that it was more than one man participating in the crimes, and if that theory proved true, there could be up to 12 of them.
Roman picked out a tart with cream cheese and strawberries and set it on a paper plate in front of Brooke while he answered questions from Thomas and Mitch. “Eat,” he murmured in her ear.
Her stomach growled in response, even though they were talking about murder and mass suicides. Her breakfast was long gone and she didn’t know when they’d get lunch.
She took a bite and the flavors exploded on her tongue. She gobbled down another bite and nearly moaned from the way the soft texture of the crust combined with the sweetness of the fruit and cream cheese. The group was right—this Annie gal knew her pastries.
But was it just her or did everything taste better today?
The coffee, too, was delicious, although a touch milder than the strong stuff Roman had made at breakfast.
For the next hour or so, the two groups batted around ideas about the multiple killer theory and how to pick up the trail. Brooke listened closely, trying not to stare at Roman the way Emma did Mitch.
“You’ve been on campus for a few days doing lectures, correct?” Thomas asked Brooke.
She nodded. “I hit the religious studies, anthropology, and criminal justice departments.”
Roman fiddled with his now empty coffee cup. “Did you notice anyone out of place at your lectures? Any non-student, older males?”
Had she? She scanned over the past few days, but nothing stood out. “I don’t think so. The criminal justice lecture that you popped into the other day was the largest and there wasn’t anyone there over the age of twenty-five outside you, me, and the professor.”
“Still, I’d like to get a list of all the people who attended the lectures, and you should talk to the professors again, see if they noticed anyone outside the norm.”
Brooke went to the desk Polly had set up for her and started calling while the rest of the group continued to review the dates, locations, victims, type of poison, and the sigils. A couple phone calls later, Brooke had left messages for the three professors she’d lectured for. She returned to the group as Roman added entries to the timeline on the white board, and the group began reviewing different styles of knives that might have been used to do the carving.
Winslow put up copies of the sigils on the smart board. “Here are the three corresponding to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. There are similarities in design and the ME believes they were all drawn with a small, sharp-tipped knife.”
“Like a pocket knife?” Mitch asked.
Roman added that to the board. “Or a scalpel, perhaps?”
A few more possibilities were thrown out, but Brooke was focused on the sigil designs.
Getting up from her chair, she went to the smart board where the digital photos were lined up. “Can you overlay all three of these pictures into one?” she asked Win.
“Sure.”
As he typed on his laptop, Brooke pointed at the individual sigils. “You can see that they share the same root—this line here.”
The main line was vertical, like a tree trunk, and each had a different line connected to it underneath some scrolling lines and dashes.
A new image appeared of the three sigils merged into one. Win had made each a different color so it was easy to see where they overlapped. Brooke used her finger to outline the center root. Then she picked up one of the markers and drew the sigil that haunted her dreams next to the projected one on screen. “This sigil was on a notecard left in my rental car last night. The same sigil carved into the forehead of my childhood friend twenty years ago.”
She used a different color marker to highlight the main line. “It has the same root.”
Mitch tapped his pen on the table. “Can you overlay that on the others?” he asked Win.
“I scanned the notecard before sending it off for prints,” Win said. “Give me a second to project it.”
More typing and then the scanned image appeared. On the smart board, it moved over the top of the merged images and dropped down.
Thomas, who’d had his long legs kicked up on a nearby chair, sat forward. “Whoa. Does anyone see what I see?”
“A swastika,” Nadia said. “Not a traditional one, but sort of a 3D version.”
Brooke took a step back, adjusting her view, and yep, there it was. A partial hooked cross that most people identified with Nazi Germany, only in this case, the lines were connecting on different faces of a cube. “This is actually an antahkarana.”
“What’s that?” Roman and Cooper both asked at the same time.
“A symbol used in Reiki—an eastern energy medicine for healing. The antahkarana is a cube, so that’s why these lines appear to be 3D and the sigils look like they’re connected by the center line.”
She pointed to one of the hooked lines. “If this were actually 3D and you turned it, you would see the lines continue to branch off. Fill in all the lines and you have a cube. The extraneous scrolling lines and dashes are extra. They don’t connect to this main sigil.”
“So those are more of the individual signatures—what makes them unique,” Emma theorized, “and there are more lines to come, because the other apostles have yet to add their sigils.”
Brooke nodded. “The hooked cross motif is an ancient pagan symbol seen as far back as Neolithic Eurasia. Most cultures consider it sacred, denoting life, good fortune, and well being. Hitler stole it, his followers adopted it, and the rest is history as they say.”
Emma made a note. “It continues to stand for the Aryan Nation and its subgroups.”
“Correct.” Brooke leaned against the smart board. “At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, famous archeologist Heinrich Schliemann linked the hooked cross he found on some German pottery to a similar design at a site in ancient Troy. Many Germans saw it as a symbol of their ancestors and took up the symbol for luck. Soon it became one of Aryan identity. Those who favor a racially pure state continue to use it.”
Roman sighed heavily. “Which fits with our killer’s end game to take out nonwhite immigrants.”
“He and his followers have bastardized the swastika once again,” Brooke added.
“Any sharpening of those images from the video on campus last night?” Roman called over to Shane.
The hacker, still at his desk, jerked out his earbuds. “Yeah. I’ll bring them up. Also, I tried tracking Dr. Heaton’s laptop digitally, but there’s no signal from it at all. The guy who stole it hasn’t turned it on.”
Well, that was one thing she could be grateful for.
Two new pictures appeared on the smart board, both from the campus video.
“I’m still running the guy’s biometrics through the TrackREC system,” Shane added. “It’ll take time.”
“Is that Emit Petit’s system?” Cooper asked.
Roman nodded. “I can’t figure out who’s smarter, Emit or Bianca.”
“Beatrice,” Thomas said. “Remember, she changed her name?”
“Right.” Roman saw Brooke staring at him with curiosity and he shrugged. “Top secret stuff you don’t need to worry about. The important thing is that the best minds in the country are helping us.”
Brooke eyed the masked man in the shot taken at her car. The still photo was from when he’d looked around, probably checking to make sure he was alone before he broke the window.
His eyes were the only thing clearly visible and her breath caught, her mind searching, searching, searching for any memory of those eyes.
Could it the same man as her childhood attacker?
The easy answer was yes, but serial killers were crafty, smart. They liked to play games and misdirection was one of their favorites. There would be no easy answer to her questions or this case.
The second photo was at the corner of the building. The reflection of light coming from the man’s upper chest caught her eye again. She moved in closer, breath still caught in her chest, pushing a manic bubble up into her throat.
Oh no.
The barest of outlines showed in the shadow around the reflection.
A cross.
A gold cross.
Her body froze. She heard Roman say her name, but he sounded muffled, far away. Her body, her mind, was back in the trunk, back in Aleisha’s room.
The man had opened the lid and stared down at her, his eyes nearly black in the shadows. He reached into the trunk, started to move the clothes.
He’s going to find me!
Goosebumps ran over her skin. She wanted to yell, scream, reach out and hit him, but she was frozen. Completely and utterly unable to move or cry out at all. Moonlight caught on the chain around his neck.
Brooke saw a gold cross hanging from the chain.
“Brooke!”
Roman was there beside her, shaking her gently. She blinked at him, trying to get her knees to lock and her mind to come back to the present.
Her gaze traveled once more to the photo on the smart board. Her attacker stared back at her from behind a mask.
“It’s him,” she muttered. “It’s definitely him.”
“How can you be sure?” Roman asked Brooke.
She pointed at the reflection in the second photo. “That’s a gold cross. The light is reflecting off it.”
“A lot of people wear those.” Win squinted at the photo. “Is there something specific about that one that matches your perp from twenty years ago?”
Brooke nodded. “I remember it.”
She hadn’t mentioned that before. “Just now when you saw that picture?” Roman asked.
Her face was as pale as the smart board. “The guy looked up at a sound in the hall and moonlight reflected on his cross, just like this.”
A memory from the childhood attacker? Progress! “Anything else?”
She licked her lips and then shook her head. “No, but I’m sure it’s the same one.”
“How?” Thomas asked. “Like Win said, a lot of people wear those things.”
“This one has an eye in the center.” Her finger trembled slightly as she pointed to the photo. “It’s inlaid with a tiny diamond. That’s what caused the camera flare.”
Roman moved closer. “Like an evil eye or something?”
“An all-knowing eye,” Emma said. “Like on US paper bills.”
Brooke snapped her fingers. “Exactly.”
She continued to study the photo, but Roman could see a change come over her. A stiffness. Was she remembering more?
Roman touched her back and she flinched. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She ran a hand over her eyes. “Just a little tired.”
“Everybody take a break,” Roman said, keeping his attention tuned in on Brooke. “Stretch your legs, grab some lunch, whatever. We’ll regroup in thirty.”
Her fingers trembled slightly as he took her hand. “There will be twelve total,” she muttered. “It’s a cube, so six sides, with each new killer adding his mark to one side. There will be twelve sigils in all, The Reverend and eleven of his followers.”
Her worried eyes met his. “There’ve been three mass suicides so far. There will be nine more, Roman. Nine!”
Jesus. She seemed so sure. He glanced back at Harris and Harris nodded, agreeing with her logic.
“Come on.” He drew Brooke away from the board. “Let’s get you some water.”
“I don’t have time for water. I need to figure out how to stop this bastard.”
“Brooke, we’re doing all we can.” He guided her away from the others and down the hall. Bright sun came through the floor-to-ceiling window at the end. “We’ll hit the streets this afternoon.”
Inside his office, he led her to the couch, grabbed a bottle of water from his mini fridge, and tugged her down beside him. Even her lips were a pale version of their normal pink. He opened the plastic lid. “Drink.”
She did, and then handed the bottle back to him. “I never recalled that cross before. Do you think Emma can help me remember more?”
“Can’t hurt to try. The question is, are you ready to remember what happened that night?”
“Of course I am.”
He was no shrink, but he knew she felt safe with him. Getting her to talk about the situation surrounding that night might prime her for Dr. Collins to dig deeper. “Why was your house in foreclosure?”
A perplexed look crossed her face. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He acted nonchalant. “Just curious. You mentioned your mom was passed out that night when you checked on her. Alcoholism?”
A bob of her head. “My dad left when I was nine, on my birthday, in fact. There was another woman.” She looked down at her fingers in her lap, twisted them together. “Mom drank heavily after he left. Things fell apart. She was sick a lot, couldn’t keep a job.”
“What happened after that night? Where did you guys go?”
“Nowhere initially. Due to what happened, some people from church put together a fund and paid the bank some of the back mortgage Mom owed on the house. The police didn’t want us to go far until the investigation was over. My dad showed up, talked to her about custody, and a lot of secrets came out. I probably would have been better off with him, but I couldn’t leave Mom. She needed help and I was the only one she had left.”
“Secrets?”
Her focus darted to the left, landing on his weights. “I heard them arguing. They thought I was asleep. Mom kept saying the bad man had finally come for me. She was drunk again. Dad told her to shut up, that she was delirious, and that the bad man story was a sham to play on their sympathies and keep them quiet about…”
Bad man? Was that some reference to the killer? Was it someone Brooke’s mother had known? Or was her father correct, and the woman had been drunk and making it up?
Brooke’s fingers entangled themselves again, twisting and wrenching so hard, Roman feared she’d dislocate her knuckles.
He reached out, took her hands in his and held them. “Brooke, it’s okay. Breathe. Do you know who this bad man was? Why your mom was scared of him?”
Her chest hitched. She blinked several times as if holding tears at bay. “It had something to do with my…my adoption.”
She was adopted? There’d been nothing in her file about that. “You never mentioned you were adopted.”
She pulled her hands out of his and launched herself off the couch. A turn around the open space of the room and she stopped at his Everlast Powercore bag. “I don’t know much about it myself. Didn’t believe it even when I heard them talking about it that night, and yet, so many things made more sense after that. Like the fact, I don’t actually favor either of them. And there are no pictures of my mother pregnant with me or of me in the hospital after I was born.”
Her fingers stroked the bag that he had punched and kicked out his frustrations on many times. “Apparently it was a private adoption, very off the books, probably illegal. The woman, my birth mother, was an American living in Paris who traveled a lot. She got pregnant, didn’t want me, and arranged for me to be adopted back here. I don’t know who did the paperwork, but it was good enough not to show up on your background check, so that says a lot, doesn’t it? For all intents and purposes, I was born to Krissy and Everett Heaton here in America.”
For the most part, that was true. He had a few sources, though, that knew things even Homeland didn’t. “Did your parents ever admit to it?”
“My father went back to his new family, my mother lived in a hazy world of alcohol and fear, and I was too scared to ask. I was years older when I finally confronted them. My dad told me that I misunderstood their argument that night. My mother claimed she didn’t remember anything and that she’d said a lot of things that weren’t true, trying to keep my dad from taking me away from her. They both lied, of course. There was too much detail, too much conviction in my mother’s voice that night. I overheard her say my birth mother feared for her life and the life of her child and that’s why she had to get me out of the country. Out of Europe. The bad man would get us both if she didn’t. That’s why the adoption had to be so hush-hush. No one could know about me.”
“Who do you think this bad man was—is? The Reverend?”
She faced him, her arms hugging herself. “No clue. Nothing else happened to me after that night, and believe me, I kept my eyes peeled for the ‘bad man.’ I stopped making friends, stayed vigilant in case he tried to hurt my mom. Nothing happened. After I got older, I chose to believe my adopted parents, that Mom had made up the whole thing. The killer went after the Dunkirks that night, not me. Maybe it was just wrong place, wrong time. But I had a DNA test done several years ago. My biological parents came from Spain and Russia, with a little Romanian and Greek thrown in for good measure. The Heatons are French-Canadian and British. Everett had dusky skin and dark hair. Growing up, I thought I got my coloring from him. Once Mom’s mind started going wonky with the Alzheimer’s, she told bits and pieces of the same story to me, but she never knew the woman’s real name and the man who’d provided the papers disappeared right after he delivered me, apparently. I never know, though, how much she’s actually remembering and how much is delusion. She and Everett couldn’t have children and she said once that it was like an angel had handpicked them to be my parents.”
Roman sat back, wanting to go to her but understanding that she needed space. She was sorting through a lot of crap. “Do you think The Reverend could be this bad man your mom talked about?”
“If he wants me, why is he killing other people?”
That was the question of the hour.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Brooke added, affirming Roman’s thoughts. “I feel like this could be all tied together, but I have no idea how.”
“You said some people from the church put together a fund to stave off the bank after the Dunkirks were murdered. Your attacker wore a cross. Do you think he might have belonged to this church group?”
The slightest spark of hope lit her eyes. “Do you think it’s possible?”
“Anything’s possible.” And they now had a new lead to check out. “We can get the names of the members from back then, start checking into all the men who might fit the profile Nadia came up with. See if any of them currently live in this area.”
She flew back over to the couch and sat, throwing her arms around him. “I’ve never told anyone about my adoption or the bad man. I was always too scared. Thank you.”
He hugged her back, a welcome relief at having her in his arms coursing through his system. Secrets sucked. He knew what it was like to keep them buried. “You did good today, Brooke.”
Laying her head on his shoulder, she sighed audibly. “I’ve held that secret for so long, I had no idea what it would be like to let it out.”
Roman held her close, stroking her hair, wondering if he’d ever be able to let his own horrible secret out.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Yeah,” Roman called out, turning to see Cooper stick his head in.
The SCVC Taskforce leader held up his cell. “Sorry, man, but I have to bail. Celina’s water just broke.”