Nowhere Pure, page 3
Newbury finished typing and pushed his chair back, taking a quick swallow from his mug—coffee, presumably—before clearing his throat and facing the agents.
“Alright,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Down to brass tacks. What do you two know about nuclear silos?”
The question took Cole completely off guard. She glanced at Callaway, puzzled. “Nuclear silos?”
“Abandoned ones,” Newbury added with a touch of impatience. “Are you familiar with them?”
“I know there are a few in the area,” Callaway said.
Cole had a memory of somewhere she had gone with her father and siblings as a kid: a strange door standing alone in the desert. There had been a “FOR SALE” sign by the road, and Dad had joked about buying the silo so they could all live down there and be safe when World War III came.
“I’ve visited one,” Cole said. “Didn’t go down it, though.”
“Well,” Newbury said, “there are two teenage girls who probably wish they’d shown the same restraint.” He moved his mouse, and the monitor to Callaway’s left sprang to life, revealing a schematic of a nuclear silo.
“Apparently, it was some kind of dare that brought them down there,” Newbury went on. “The two girls approached the door—” he circled the door with the mouse pointer, “—and found it unlocked. They went down, teased one another a little bit, and finally found more than they’d bargained for.” The mouse circled the floor of the launch room.
“Let me guess,” Callaway said. “A body.”
“Bingo. Hanging from chains like a Halloween ornament.”
Newbury tapped a key, and the screen changed to a picture of a knotted rope hanging from a network of chains. The light from the camera had briefly lit the room, giving Cole an impression of a cavernous space eroded by rust, with platforms running up the sides.
The sight sent a chill through Cole’s body. That place would have been scary enough even without a dangling corpse.
“Have we identified the victim yet?” she asked.
Newbury nodded and cycled to the next picture, which showed a young woman looking up from her desk and smiling, her hair tied up in an elegant braid and a string of pearls gleaming around her neck.
“Nicole Beck,” the Bureau chief said. “Twenty-seven, single. Admissions counselor over at Cibola College. According to her roommate, Beck usually worked till six and got home around seven or seven-thirty, but last night, she never showed.”
“That was my alma mater,” Callaway said thoughtfully.
“Have we confirmed that she left work at her usual time?” Cole asked.
Newbury nodded. “Local PD conducted interviews earlier this morning, and according to the reports, Beck’s coworkers didn’t notice anything amiss. She seemed ‘happy’ and ‘herself,’ neither of which provides much insight into what might have happened.”
Cole rubbed her mouth thoughtfully as she stared into Beck’s eyes. She was a beautiful young woman, and there was a light in her smile that seemed to suggest she was ready to live life for all it was worth. So, who would have wanted to harm her? A bitter ex? An unstable student she had counseled, maybe someone who had taken too keen an interest in her?
Something else occurred to Cole. “What else is going on? Why does local PD need our help?”
Newbury smiled, looking pleased at her intuition. “Let me introduce you to Jesse Vega,” he said, cycling to the next picture. “Forty-seven; stay-at-home dad; father of three, twin boys and a girl. He was found dead up by Belton nine months ago.”
“Let me guess,” Callaway said. “His body was in a nuclear silo.”
Newbury nodded. “Right again.”
“Hanged?” Cole asked.
“Choked to death but not hanged. He must’ve had eighty or so pounds on Beck, which could explain why the killer wasn’t quite as eager to hoist him in the air.”
Cole fell silent, pondering this information. Newbury picked up a manila folder and tossed it across the desk toward the two agents.
“Everything is in there,” he said. “The body’s been removed, but otherwise, you should have a pristine crime scene. Once this matter came to my attention, I asked the police chief to instruct his people to be very careful not to touch anything. They did a walkthrough of the silo, just to make sure nobody had set up camp in one of the rooms, but otherwise, they were hands-off.”
Now, Cole understood Callaway’s comment about dark places. She didn’t have a fear of the dark, but her first investigation had involved pursuing a killer through lightless, cramped mining tunnels, and now, she couldn’t help feeling a bit unsettled whenever she found herself in a similar environment.
She picked up the manila folder and glanced at Callaway. “We’ll get on it right away,” she said to Newbury.
The Bureau chief nodded. “There’s no one else I’d rather trust with this case than you two.”
“Aww, shucks,” Callaway said, feigning embarrassment. “You’re gonna make me blush.”
Newbury leaned forward, his face suddenly earnest. “I know the killer took nine months between the two murders, so you might be tempted to think you’ve got nine months before he strikes again.” A warning look came into the chief’s eyes as he shook his head. “But you’d be making one dangerous assumption.”
“What’s that?” Cole asked, uncertain where he was going.
“That these are his only two kills. For all we know, he never took a break.”
CHAPTER THREE
“See anything?” Cole asked, slowing down as she scanned the edge of the highway, searching for the entrance to the nuclear silo. A truck came up behind them, going twenty or thirty miles above the speed limit, and blared its horn in passing.
“Nothing so far,” Callaway said. “But the GPS says we’re at the right place.”
Cole slowed even further, not wishing to miss the silo. Then she noticed a dirt turnaround that butted up against a galvanized steel gate. The gate stood open, tied back against the fence with a loop of barbed wire, and the red earth showed the overlapping tracks of several vehicles.
“I think this is it,” she said, taking the turn. The Jeep swayed gently beneath them as the tires left the smooth asphalt and began navigating the uneven desert terrain. A rattler curled up in the middle of the path stood its ground for a few seconds, then raced off to the side, darting into a hole at the base of one of the fence posts.
Ahead of them, several police cruisers were parked beside a concrete structure that popped out of the ground almost like the entrance to a bulkhead. A knot of officers was gathered in a tight circle beside one of the vehicles, talking and mopping sweat from their faces. Nearby, a massive grate cut a grid into the desert floor, a chunk of metal missing so that it looked as if it were a black eye peering up from the depths of the earth.
“I saw one of these for sale once,” Cole said. “Can’t imagine who’d want to live underground like this, though.”
Callaway grunted. “Doomsday preppers. People who think a nuclear apocalypse is just on the horizon.”
Cole stopped beside one of the cruisers and shifted into park. “Something gives me the impression you’re not the doom-and-gloom type.”
Callaway shrugged one shoulder. “Oh, I’m sure it could happen. Lord knows we have enough enemies around the world. But to tell you the truth, I’d rather die young in blissful ignorance than grow old in fear.”
Listening to him, Cole couldn’t help but admire his perspective. Some might see it as foolish, a head-in-the-sand approach, but Cole appreciated where he was coming from. Life was full of circumstances outside one’s control, and she wasn’t about to base her life around the worst-case scenario, either.
Callaway opened his door. Cole was about to do the same, but then she remembered their interaction earlier at HQ, and what Kain had said about her trying to find her sister.
“Hold on,” she said.
Callaway looked at her, his eyebrows raised.
“You’re not going to ask me if I’m investigating my sister’s disappearance?” she asked.
Callaway stared out the windshield, growing thoughtful. “Well,” he said slowly, “the way I see it, that ain’t any of my business. If you need backup to take someone down, you know where to find me. But otherwise …” He shrugged. “What you share is up to you.”
Cole nodded, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Thanks, Callaway. I appreciate it.”
He tipped his hat at her and climbed out of the Jeep. Cole was about to do the same when she noticed a missed call on her phone. It was from her brother, Greg.
I’ll call him back later, she decided. Sometime when I’m not up to my neck in a murder investigation.
As she exited the Jeep, the silo door opened, and a trim, broad-shouldered police officer stepped out. She gave the agents a small, unsmiling wave as she moved toward them.
“You must be the Feds I was told to expect,” she said. “I’m Officer Landry.”
“Agent Cole,” Cole said, offering her hand. “This is Agent Callaway.”
Landry shook their hands, then gestured for them to follow her into the silo. As she stepped through the doorway, she picked up a large flashlight—the kind that could easily double as a club—and clicked it on.
“There’s no electricity,” she explained, “so watch your step. It’s a long way down.”
The stairwell smelled of mold and decay, and the graffiti on the walls seemed to shout at them with garish colors: here a grinning mouth with slits for eyes, there a jumble of profanity so forced that it seemed almost comical.
Still, Cole couldn’t suppress the shudder that ran through her as she descended, and she was keenly aware of how far she was removing herself from the sunlit world above.
“Your people did a walkthrough of the whole complex?” Callaway asked Landry.
“That’s right,” she said, kicking a crumpled Styrofoam cup out of the way. “Scoured it top to bottom and believe me that took some time.”
“Find anything interesting?” Cole asked.
Landry grunted. “Interesting? Sure. A dead coyote, a lunchbox that looks like it time-traveled straight from the fifties, a patch of rust that one of the guys claims is shaped just like the face of the Virgin Mary, but anything that has to do with the vic or the perp?” She shook her head. “Nothing concrete.”
The report did not particularly surprise Cole, since Newbury probably would have known if the officers had found anything. Still, it was disappointing. She just hoped that she and Callaway might discover a few details the officers had missed.
“I couldn’t help noticing everyone else was topside,” Callaway said.
Landry laughed softly. “Oh, they did their jobs, helped with the body, and searched the silo. But they weren’t going to stay down here a second longer than required. Can’t really blame them, I guess. Hard to walk around in here without feeling like I’m in a snuff film.”
The stairs ended, depositing them in a narrow tunnel. Cole took several calming breaths as she fought off a growing sense of claustrophobia.
You’ve got this, she told herself. You’re safe. Just pay attention to what’s going on around you, and you’ll be fine.
After a short distance, the tunnel deposited them in a large, round chamber, clearly the place where the nuclear missile had once been housed. Platforms ran up the sides, probably for working on the missile. The whole area reminded Cole of playing Metroid, a two-dimensional, action-adventure Nintendo game, back when she was a kid. Much of the game had involved ascending narrow shafts and leaping from one platform to the next while dodging the game’s titular enemies.
“She was hanging right here,” Landry said, her voice subdued as she gestured at a thick chain suspended overhead. “We had to cut the rope to get her down, so it’s in an evidence bag in the back of my cruiser.”
Cole nodded, staring at the chain and imagining what it must have been like for the two teenage girls to stumble across the body. The whole thing could have come straight out of a horror movie.
Landry took a quick breath and looked at the two agents. “You want me to stick around in case you have any further questions?”
Cole shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. We can take it from here.”
“Go get some sunlight,” Callaway said to the police officer. “And I’d recommend a stiff drink as soon as you’re off-duty.”
Landry grunted. “Not a bad idea.”
“Thanks again,” Cole said.
Cole watched as Landry returned to the tunnel, the beam of the officer’s flashlight sweeping across the floor. Then she glanced at Callaway. “Well, what do you think?”
He was frowning at the chains and brushing his knuckles against his jaw, as he so often did. “I think,” he said slowly, “we have a very clever place to hide a body. If those girls hadn’t gone looking for trouble, it could have been months—hell, maybe years—before anyone came down here.”
Cole nodded, but something about what Callaway had just said troubled her. “There’s only one problem. If the killer’s whole purpose in bringing his victim here was to hide the body, why hang her? Why not leave her in some dark corner, far from prying eyes? Maybe cover her with, say, an old blanket, just to be extra cautious?”
Callaway's gaze grew thoughtful. Then he shrugged. “Alright, then. Maybe he did want the body to be discovered. Could be conflicted about it—part of him wants to hide the crime so he can get away with it, while the other part wants people to know what he’s capable of.”
Cole knew her partner had a point. Many serial killers behaved in such a way, carefully covering their tracks one moment and then deliberately tipping off the investigators the next. It was a good thing, too, because without this desire to be seen and feared, not as many killers would be caught.
As Cole pondered Callaway’s theory, she moved her flashlight across the ground, searching the room for anything the police might have missed. A thick layer of dust covered the floor, revealing the overlapping footprints of numerous shoes and boots. If the killer’s prints had been here at one time, Cole realized with a sinking feeling, they had probably been destroyed by now.
So much for the officers’ concern for preserving the crime scene, she thought. Even as the idea entered her mind, however, she knew this was unfair. Those officers had worked hard to scour the silo, and besides that, there was no guarantee there had been any footprints to destroy. The killer might have already covered his tracks.
“What’s on your mind, boss?” Callaway asked.
Cole was about to answer when she noticed a small door set in the wall. Patches of rust covered the door, providing the perfect camouflage—and based on the fact that no footprints led to the door, Cole had a feeling the officers hadn’t noticed it. The dust looked like it had been swept aside, as if someone had been cleaning.
Or covering their tracks.
Callaway followed Cole’s gaze. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “What’s that, a utility closet? That door must be mighty strong to withstand the blast from the missile launch.”
“Let’s just hope it’s not locked,” Cole said, moving forward. “We’d have better luck breaking into Fort Knox.”
Cole’s heart beat a little faster as she and Callaway approached the door. Donning a pair of vinyl gloves, she grabbed the thick, metal handle and pulled. The door was incredibly heavy, but it swung open nonetheless, uttering a high-pitched creak that caused both agents to wince.
The room on the other side of the door was small and lined with metal shelves, all of which were empty. The floor, too, was empty, without a single item anywhere to clarify the room’s purpose.
Cole’s heart sank.
“Well, that’s disappointing,” Callaway said, sighing. “And here I was, hoping to find the killer’s diary, packed with the details of his crimes.”
Cole squatted and studied the floor. The room had been swept at some point; the dust was piled unceremoniously in a little heap against one wall. Moving to the opposite wall, she turned in a slow circle, searching for anything that might indicate whether the killer had entered the room. As she shone the light along the shelf, a black shape dove to the floor, brushing past her legs before scurrying through a hole in the concrete.
Cole flinched to the side, her hand instinctively going to her holster.
“Easy, partner,” Callaway said with a laugh. “No need to be firing your weapon in here, not unless you want to catch a ricochet.”
“Did you see the size of that thing?” Cole asked, raising her eyebrows. She shook her head in amazement, her attention returning to the shelf …
And that was when she noticed the little brown crumbs surrounded by rat droppings. She bent closer, examining the crumbs.
“Careful,” Callaway warned. “Rodent feces carry all kinds of things. Might not want to get too close.”
“Granola,” Cole said, lifting one of the brown crumbs. She could distinctly see the oat attached to the side of it. Intrigued, she turned her attention back to the shelf, drawn to a series of small, circular rings.
“Look at this,” she said, her gaze as intent as that of an owl swooping down on a field mouse. “Moisture rings. There must have been something on the bottom of the cup—coffee, maybe—and—”
“And it left a mark,” Callaway said, nodding as he joined her. Cole looked at him, and she could tell from the glow in his eyes that he too understood the significance of this discovery.
“Someone’s been coming down here,” she said softly. “Not just visiting, not just doing a little exploring, but bringing food and something to drink.”
Staring at the floor, she imagined a sleeping bag spread out along the wall. But who would want to camp down here, on a cold, concrete floor in a lightless vault?
“Strange place to go camping,” Callaway said, voicing Cole’s thoughts.
As Cole considered the possibilities, a new realization settled upon her.
“I don’t think he was camping here,” she said, her voice firm with conviction. “I think he was calling this place home.”
