As we pulled into the parking lot, Cassie was slow getting out of the van, her eyes fixed on the building where we’d all worked together, an odd look on her face.
“You all right?” Frank asked.
She nodded but said nothing at first, heading toward the overhang that led from the parking lot to the building.
“I just remembered the last time we were here,” she said. “I mean, all of us, together as a group. There was a press conference… Richie had gone to Texas, but the rest of us were here. Craig Poulton, too.”
My memory filled in the rest, and I began to walk more quickly, moving ahead of them. Cassie was recalling the day my mother had been attacked. Something uncharacteristic had happened to me that day. I went ballistic, punching holes in the walls in the break roomon the second floor. If not for the two days of investigation that followed, that would’ve been my last week at the FBI.
Cassie and Frank followed behind me, and we made it up to our old conference room. Shooter wore a black dress that stopped above her ankles, and a man in his twenties from Tech was confirming that her wire was working.
“Test, test, funeral test,” she said, leaning against the wall. Cassie high-fived her on the way in, and the kid from Tech gave Shooter a thumbs-up.
“Looking very nice, Joanne,” Frank said.
“She looks locked in,” Cassie corrected him.
Shooter gave Frank a hug. “I heard you were back, but I didn’t believe it.”
“He’s here,” I said, mimicking what Frank had said to me. “Not necessarily back.”
Frank crossed the room and put out his hand to Richie, who worked on his laptop at the table. “Rook,” he said.
“Agent Roberts.”
“When do you leave?” I asked Shooter.
“An hour. Funeral’s in Lucas Beach near Daytona. That’s where the aunt lives.” She turned to the rest of us. “A public safety announcement: Anyone takes a picture of me in a dress, and I shoot you. Maybe not today. I got a funeral to get to. But within the week.”
Cassie laughed, and I glanced around the room. Richie was taping up the photos of the missing women, and Shooter studied them as the tech guy left.
“Huh,” she said. “Their features. I didn’t notice before.”
“Didn’t notice what?” Richie asked.
“Their jawlines,” Shooter said. “They’re all a bit boxy. Their features… husky.”
I walked closer to Richie. “Any new developments?”
“There is, actually,” he said, and the others moved closer. “There’s a new agent trainee in the Miami office. He’s been slow, so I gave him a project. Looking around Hambis near Freddie’s trailer. Ring cams from neighbors. That sorta thing.”
Cassie glanced at Shooter, who smirked.
“Rookie’s got a rook of his own, huh?” Cassie said.
Richie ignored the comment and pulled up a photo. We crowded around his laptop and saw a wide shot of two cars, the front one Freddie’s, the back matching the vehicle we’d seen at the ATM.
“Freddie was aware of this car behind him, right?” Cassie asked.
“That time of night?” Richie said. “Middle of nowhere? He had to be.”
“Wherewasthis?” I asked.
“A mile from Freddie’s place. Call it fifteen or twenty minutes before Freddie’s estimated time of death.”
This all but confirmed that El Médico was the last person Freddie had seen alive.
“I don’t remember us asking this before,” Cassie said, “but why didn’t he take Freddie’s body with him? He buried all the other women.”
