Before He Longs

“How much time do you have left on that?” she asked.

Ellington shrugged. “Three more days, it looks like.”

“You good here while I head out to speak to Claire Locke’s boyfriend?”

“I guess,” he said with a comical sigh. “Married life is coming up. Better get used to seeing me sitting in front of a screen all the time. Especially during football season.”

“That’s fine,” she said. “As long as you’re fine with me heading out and doing my own thing while you’re doing it.”

And to show him what she meant, she headed back out. She called over her shoulder: “Give me a few hours.”

“Sure thing. But don’t expect dinner to be ready when you get back.”

The banter between them made her incredibly happy that McGrath had allowed them to work this case together. Between the gloom and rain outside and her peculiar sadness toward Claire Locke, she didn’t know if she would have been able to properly handle this case on her own. But with Ellington here, she felt that she had a piece of home with her—somewhere to return in the event the case got too overwhelming.

She headed back outside. Night had fallen and although the rain had once again settled down to a lazy drizzle, Mackenzie couldn’t help but feel that it was an omen of sorts.

Chapter Seven

Mackenzie knew nothing about the boyfriend, as there was nothing about him in the notes. All she knew was that his name was Barry Channing and that he lived at 376 Rose Street, Apartment 7. When she knocked on the door of Apartment 7, it was answered by a woman who looked to be in her late fifties or so. She looked tired and saddened—and clearly not happy to have a visitor after nine o’clock on a rainy Sunday night.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked.

Mackenzie nearly double-checked the number on the door but instead stated, “I’m looking for Barry Channing.”

“I’m his mother. Who are you?”

Mackenzie showed her ID. “Mackenzie White, with the FBI. I was hoping to ask him some questions about Claire.”

“He’s really in no state to talk to anyone,” the mother said. “In fact, he—”

“My God, Mom,” a male voice said, coming toward the door. “I’m okay.”

The mother stepped aside, making room for her son to stand in the doorway. Barry Channing was rather tall and had close-cropped blond hair. Like his mother, he looked low on sleep and it was clear that he had been crying.

“You said you’re with the FBI?” Barry said.

“Yes. Do you have a few minutes?”

Barry looked at his mother with a small frown and then sighed. “Yes, I have some time. Come in, please.”

Barry led Mackenzie into the apartment, down a thin hallway, and into a generic-looking kitchen. His mother, meanwhile, sulked on further down the hallway and out of sight. As Barry settled into a chair at the kitchen table, Mackenzie heard a door close rather forcefully from somewhere else in the apartment.

“Sorry about that,” Barry said. “I’m starting to think my mother was closer to Claire than I was. And that’s saying a lot, seeing as how I purchased an engagement ring two weeks ago.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Mackenzie said.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot,” Barry said, looking at the tabletop. “It was unexpected and while I did cry like a baby when the police told me yesterday, I’m managing to keep it together. Mom came over to stay with me to help me get through the funeral and I’m thankful for her help, but she’s a little overprotective. Once she’s gone, I’ll probably let all the grief out, you know?”

“I’m going to ask what might seem like a dumb question,” Mackenzie said. “But do you know of anyone that might have any reason to do this to Claire?”

“No. The police asked the same thing. She didn’t have any enemies, you know? She and her mother didn’t get along, but it wasn’t nearly to the level that would cause this. Claire was a sort of private person, you know? No close friends or anything…just acquaintances. That sort of thing.”

“When did you see her last?” Mackenzie asked.

“Eight days ago. She came by here to see if I had anything I needed to put in her storage unit. We had a laugh over it. She didn’t know I had the ring. But we both knew we were going to get married. We started making plans for it. Her asking if I had anything to put in her unit was just another way of reinforcing it, you know?”

“After that day, how long passed before you started to get frightened? I don’t see where you filed a missing persons report or anything like that.”

“Well, I’m taking classes at the community college, getting my GPA up to get back to college and finally finish. It’s a huge workload and that’s on top of a job where I put in forty to forty-five hours a week. So there would be four or five days that would go by where Claire and I wouldn’t see one another. But after three days and no texts or calls, I did start to get worried. I went by her apartment to check on her and she didn’t answer. I thought about calling the police, but it seemed stupid. And really, deep in the back of my head, I wondered if she had just up and left me. That maybe the whole idea of getting married had scared her or something.”

“On that last time you saw her, did she seem okay? Was she acting out of the ordinary?”

“No, she was great. In a good mood.”

“By any chance, do you know what she was going to the storage unit to store?”

“Probably some of her textbooks from college. She’d been carrying them around in her trunk for a while.”

“Do you know how long she’d been renting that unit?”

“About six months. She was moving stuff from California and storing it. Again…we had this thing where we felt we were going to get married so instead of moving stuff straight into her apartment, she left some of it in the unit. It’s why she rented it at all, I think. I told her she didn’t need it but she kept saying how it would be so much easier when we moved in together.”

“I asked about Claire having any enemies…but how about you? Is there anyone that would do this to hurt you?”

Barry looked stunned, as if he had never considered such a thing. He shook his head slowly and she thought he might start weeping. “No. But I almost wish there was. It would help to make sense of this. Because I just don’t know anyone that would want Claire dead. She was just…she was very kind. The sweetest person you could ever meet.”

Mackenzie could tell that he was being sincere. She also knew that she was not going to get anything out of Barry Channing. She placed one of her business cards on the table and slid it over to him.

“If you think of anything at all, please call me,” she said.

He took the card and only nodded.

Mackenzie felt that she should say something else but it was one of those moments where it was clear that there was nothing more to say. She made her way to the door and as she closed it behind her she felt a pang of regret as she heard Barry Channing begin to cry.

The rain outside was little more than a mist now. As she walked back to her car, she called Ellington, hoping the rain would die out completely. She wasn’t quite sure why it was bothering her so much. It just did.

“This is Ellington,” he answered, never one to check his display before answering.

“You done with watching TV yet?”

“I am, actually,” he replied. “I’m working with Deputy Rising right now to cross off the people on the list that they’ve already spoken to. Anything new on your end?”

“No. But I want to go to the storage unit that the first body was found in. Can you get that information from Rising and meet me in front of the station in about twenty minutes? And see if someone can get the owner on the phone.”

“Can do. See you then.”

They ended the call and Mackenzie drove on, thinking of the grieving boyfriend she had left behind…thinking of Claire Locke, alone in the dark, starving and terrified in her last moments.