Before He Preys

A hell of a way to wake up, Mackenzie thought as she got out of bed. She went to the shower and when she was done, a towel wrapped around her, she walked out of the bathroom to the sound of her phone going off yet again.

She did not recognize the number, so she picked it up right away. With her hair still wet, she answered: “This is Agent White.”

“Agent White, this is Jan Haggerty,” said a somber-sounding voice. “I just finished reading your email.”

“Thanks for getting back to me so soon,” Mackenzie said. “I know it’s asking a lot for someone in your profession, but is there any way you and I could meet for a chat sometime today?”

“That’s not a problem at all,” Haggerty said. “My office is out of my home and my first appointment isn’t until nine thirty this morning. If you give me half an hour or so to prepare for my day, I can see you this morning. I’ll put on some coffee.”

“Sounds great,” Mackenzie said.

Haggerty gave Mackenzie her address and they ended the call. With half an hour to spare, Mackenzie decided she should do the grown-up thing and give Ellington a call. It would do neither of them any good to hide away from the issue at hand and just hope the other simply forgot about it or was able to sweep it under the rug.

When he answered the call, he sounded tired. Mackenzie assumed she had woken him up, which wasn’t all that surprising since he tended to sleep in on the days he had off. But she was pretty sure she also detected some hopefulness in his voice.

“Hey,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said. “How are you?”

“I don’t know,” he said almost right away. “Out of sorts would be the best way to describe it. But I’ll survive. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that this will all blow over. I’ll have a little blemish on my professional record, but as long as I can return back to work, I think I’ll manage. How about you? How’s your super-top-secret case?”

“Pretty much over, I think,” she said. When she had called him last night on her way to Kingsville, she had not shared too much information with him, just letting him know that it was not a case that would place her in any danger. She remained careful not to spill too much information now. It sometimes tended to happen among agents when a case was closed or close to being closed.

“Good,” he said. “Because I don’t like how things ended with us when you left. I don’t…well, I don’t know what I need to apologize for. But I still feel like I’ve done you a disservice in all of this.”

“It is what it is,” Mackenzie said, hating the sound of such a cliché coming out of her mouth. “I should be back by tonight. We can talk about it then.”

“Sounds good. Be careful.”

“You, too,” she said with a forced chuckle.

They ended the call and while she felt a bit better having spoken to him, she couldn’t deny the tension she still felt. She didn’t allow herself time to dwell on it, though. She headed out into Kingsville in search of a bite to eat to pass the time before heading to Dr. Haggerty’s house.

***

Dr. Haggerty lived alone in a two-story Colonial-style house. It sat in the center of a beautiful front yard. A thick group of elms and oaks in the backyard hovered behind the house like nature’s own form of drop shadow. Dr. Haggerty met Mackenzie at the front door with a smile and the scent of freshly brewed strong coffee right behind her. She looked to be in her late fifties, with a head of hair that was still managing to maintain most of its chestnut brown. Her eyes took Mackenzie in from behind a small set of glasses. When she invited Mackenzie inside, she gestured through the front door with rail-thin arms and a voice that was little more than a whisper.

“Thanks again for meeting with me,” Mackenzie said. “I know it was short notice.”

“No worries at all,” she said. “Between you and me, I hope we can come up with enough cause for me to have Sheriff Tate put a bug in the county’s ear to demolish that damn bridge.”

Haggerty poured Mackenzie a cup of coffee and the two women sat down at the small table in a quaint breakfast nook just off the kitchen. A window by the side of the table looked out to those oaks and elms in the backyard.

“I assume you’ve been informed about the news from yesterday afternoon?” Mackenzie asked.

“I have,” Haggerty said. “Kenny Skinner. Twenty-two years old, right?”

Mackenzie nodded as she sipped from her coffee. “And Malory Thomas several days before that. Now…can you tell me why you’ve been on the sheriff’s case about the bridge?”

“Well, Kingsville has very little to offer. And while no one living in a small town wants to admit it, there is never anything for a small town to offer teens and young adults. And when that happens, these morbid landmarks like the Miller Moon Bridge become iconic. If you look back at the town records, people were ending their lives on that bridge as early as 1956, when it was still in use. Young kids these days are exposed to so much negativity and self-esteem issues that something as iconic as that bridge can become so much more. Kids looking for a way out of the town go to the extremes and it’s no longer about escaping the town…it’s about escaping life.”

“So you think that the bridge gives suicidal kids an easy way out?”

“Not an easy way out,” Haggerty said. “It’s almost like a beacon for them. And those that have jumped off of the bridge before them have just led the way. That bridge isn’t even really a bridge anymore. It’s a suicide platform.”

“Last night, Sheriff Tate also said that you find it hard to believe that these suicides can’t all just be suicides. Can you elaborate on that?”

“Yes…and I believe I can use Kenny Skinner as an example. Kenny was a popular guy. Between you and me, he likely wasn’t going to amount to anything extraordinary. He’d probably be perfectly fine to ride out the rest of his life here, working at the Kingsville Tire and Tractor Supply. But he had a good life here, you know? From what I know, he was something of a ladies’ man and in a town like this – hell, in a county like this – that pretty much guarantees some fun weekends. I personally spoke with Kenny within the last month or so when I ran over a nail. He patched it up for me. He was polite, laughing, a well-mannered guy. I find it very hard to believe he killed himself in such a way. And if you go back through the list of people that have jumped off of that bridge in the last three years, there are at least one or two more that I find very fishy…people that I would have never pegged for suicide.”

“So you feel that there’s foul play involved?” Mackenzie asked.

Haggerty took a moment before she answered. “It’s a suspicion I have, but I would not be comfortable saying as much with absolute certainty.”

“And I assume this feeling is based on your professional opinion and not just someone saddened by so many suicides in your small hometown?” Mackenzie asked.

“That’s correct,” Haggerty said, but she seemed almost a little offended at the nature of the question.

“By any chance, did you ever see Kenny Skinner or Malory Thomas as clients?”

“No. And none of the other victims from as far back as 1996.”

“So you have met with at least one of the suicides from the bridge?”

“Yes, on one occasion. And with that one, I saw it coming. I did everything I could to convince the family that she needed help. But by the time I could even manage to get them to consider it, she jumped right off that bridge. You see…in this town, the Miller Moon Bridge is synonymous with suicide. And that’s why I’d really like for the county to tear it down.”

“Because you feel that it basically calls to anyone with suicidal thoughts?”

“Exactly.”

Mackenzie sensed that the conversation was basically over. And that was fine with her. She could tell straightaway that Dr. Haggerty was not the type to exaggerate something just to make sure her voice was heard. Although she had tried to downplay it out of a fear of being wrong, Mackenzie was pretty sure Haggerty strongly believed that at least a few of the cases weren’t suicides.

And that little bit of skepticism was all Mackenzie needed. If there was even the slightest chance that either of these last two bodies were murders and not suicides, she wanted to know for certain before heading back to DC.

She finished off her coffee, thanked Dr. Haggerty for her time, and then headed back outside. On the way to her car, she looked out to the forest that bordered most of Kingsville. She looked to the west, where the Miller Moon Bridge sat tucked away down a series of back roads and one gravel road that seemed to indicate all travelers were coming to the end of something.

As she thought about those bloodstained rocks at the bottom of the bridge, the comparison sent a small shiver through Mackenzie’s heart.

She pushed it away, starting the engine and pulling out her cell phone. If she was going to get a definitive answer on any of this, she needed to treat it as if it was murder case. And with that mindset, she supposed she needed to start speaking to the family members of the recently deceased.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Before visiting the family of Kenny Skinner, Mackenzie called to get explicit permission from McGrath. His response had been short, clear, and to the point: I don’t care if you have to talk to someone on the fucking Little League baseball team, just get it figured out.

That confirmation pushed her toward the residence of Pam and Vincent Skinner. The way McGrath explained it, Pam Skinner was formerly Pam Wilmoth. An older sister to Deputy Director Wilmoth, she worked from home as a proposal specialist for an environmental agency. As for Vincent Skinner, he just happened to be the owner of Kingsville Tire and Tractor Supply, having provided a job for his son since Kenny was fifteen.

When Mackenzie knocked on the door, neither of the Skinners greeted her. Instead, it was the pastor of Kingsville Presbyterian Church. When Mackenzie showed him her ID and told him why she was there, he let her in and asked her to wait in the foyer. The Skinner family lived in a nice house on a corner lot in what she assumed would be considered Kingsville’s downtown area. She smelled something cooking, wafting down from a long hallway. Elsewhere in the house, she could hear the ringing of a cell phone. She also heard the muffled voice of the pastor, letting Pam and Vincent Skinner know that there was a lady from the FBI there to ask a few questions about Kenny.

It took a few minutes but Pam Skinner eventually came to meet her. The woman was red-faced from crying and looked as if she had not slept a wink the night before. “Are you Agent White?” she asked.