Eleven (40 page)

The lady who walked toward us was lean and tall. She wore a black business suit with a red blouse. Her hair sprung like flames from her head, wild frizz, as if she had washed and blow-dried without any aid of hair products. Her green eyes were deep and hard to read. “I’m Amanda Knowles, and you are?”

We both held up our creds.

“The FBI?” Amanda glanced back to Maureen from the front counter, who smiled at her. “What could the FBI want with me?”

“We just have a few questions about a family friend.  Lance Bingham.”

Her arms went like they were going to cross, but instead she slipped both hands into her jacket pockets. The pockets were only deep enough to cover her fingers, her thumbs latched over the fabric. “Why would you think I’d have anything to say about him?”

“We understand he was a good friend—”

“Of my father’s. They were of the same age, both involved with the church.” Defensiveness sparked in her eyes.

“We’re not implying anything improper here,” I said.

“I would certainly hope not. Bingham was a good man.”

“Was or is?” Paige interjected.

“These days I wouldn’t have a clue. But he was a good friend years ago.”

There was something underlying this awkward conversation. Amanda knew something she preferred to keep a secret. At first Bingham was her father’s friend, and now she referred to him as a good friend as if implying he was one of hers. I also noticed how when the mention of an improper implication came up, it was Bingham she defended.

“Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”

“I don’t see why—”

“We’re looking into the murder of your mother as well as the other ten bodies found in ’86.” Paige fed her the relevant information and avoided disclosing the finding in Salt Lick.

Amanda’s eyes fixed on mine. Seconds later, she spoke, “We can go to the conference room in the library.”

She led us down some hallways and slid a security card through a reader to gain access to the library.

“Good day, Miss Knowles.” A young girl, with her hair tied back into a french braid, smiled at Amanda.

“Good day, Monica. How are your studies coming along? I’m not taking it easy on you just because you’re my best student.” Amanda winked at the girl but kept walking.

Inside the conference room, Amanda sat at the end of the table. Paige and I sat across from each other.

Amanda tapped the table with her index finger. “What is it you want to know about Mr. Bingham?”

I counted as she tapped her finger.
One, two, three…

“We want to know what kind of a person he was?”

“Why are you looking at him? He had nothing to do with any of this. Police never even considered him a suspect at the time. He is a decent man.”

Four, five, six…

“You still keep in contact with him?”

Seven, eight…

“I never said that. I just assume he is because he was.”

“You teach theology here?” Paige changed the direction of the conversation. “What is that exactly?”

“It educates minds to open up and explore the world around them, to assign meaning to the greater being of the universe. Really all of us do this in our ways, agents. You find your work to be the Lord’s—”

Paige shifted in her chair.

“This makes you uncomfortable?”

“I just don’t consider it the Lord’s work.”

“Au contraire. You bring the wicked to justice.” Amanda looked at me. “You are learning the way.”

This woman had almost an uncanny sense of perception. With her eyes on me, my skin tingled. I tried to discount it as paranoia.

Nine, ten…

“Let me show you two something.”

Eleven…

She tapped the table one last time before getting up. “It’s a little drive from here though. Is that all right?”

Amanda looked at me when she asked the question, and despite instinct telling me to say no, this woman knew something.

CHAPTER 39

We followed behind Amanda’s Kia for about thirty minutes. She led us north outside of the city to the east and pulled into the parking lot of a country church. Boards were on the windows, and a padlock secured an outside basement door.

I turned to Paige. “We should have called in and let Jack and Zach know where—”

Amanda rapped her knuckles on the driver side window. Paige put her window down a sliver.

“Don’t worry it’s a friend’s building. I know it doesn’t look like much, but Bingham brought me here all the time as a little girl. It used to be glorious at one time.” When Paige and I didn’t move, Amanda said, “It will only take a minute. Call it in if you like. I watch them cop shows.”

Paige reached over and put a hand on my forearm. I knew Amanda had noticed the action. I wondered if Amanda picked up on the underlying connection between us.

“All right we have a few minutes,” I said.

We got out of the car and followed Amanda to the basement door. She pulled a key out of her jacket and slipped it into the padlock.

“You said a friend’s place. Is it Bingham’s?” Paige asked the question, even though we knew Bingham didn’t show any properties registered in his name except the one in Salt Lick, Kentucky. Paige glanced at me as if to say,
we should have called in
.

And we should have, but we were wrapped up in a heated conversation about what last night meant and where it would go from here. For a good portion of the drive, we weren’t even speaking to each other.

Amanda smiled at us. “Not sure what that matters.” She pulled the lock off and swung the door open. “If you want to follow behind me.” She phrased it more as a directive than an invitation.

I wasn’t looking forward to descending into the basement of an abandoned church. With this case, the two married together too well—the isolated burials and the religious connotation.

“You said Bingham brought you here when you were young?” Paige took the stairs slowly with well-placed hands on the walls for balance.

A few steps down, my heart sped up and my breathing became labored. The smell of dirt filled the air transporting me straight to the burial chambers in Salt Lick.

Amanda opened another door at the base of the stairs and flicked on a light. “Lance also had a fond place in his heart for this place. He said this is where he really learned about God and became enlightened.”

I pulled my cell from its holder and brought up the messaging screen. Jack and Zachery needed to be notified of where we were. We were careless and stupid for not calling it in.

“Enlightened?” Paige pulled from Amanda’s statement.

“Yes. It’s when you know what God has planned for you. You realize where you fit in and what differences you can make in this world. In a sense, you were enlightened when you chose to become FBI as I mentioned a bit at the college.”

I had only a few more steps to text the words I needed to before it would have Amanda’s attention. I pushed a few keys but working in a hurry my thumb was too large for the small keys.

“What about you?” Amanda looked around Paige to me.

I quickly tucked the phone behind my back. “About me?”

“Why did you become an agent?”

“To make a difference.”

“You could do that being a police officer, a teacher, or many other things. That answer is very vague.” Amanda kept walking into the basement but faced us.

All I needed was a few seconds of her attention on Paige to finish the message and send it. “My father served his country.”

Paige glanced over a shoulder, her eyes saying,
I didn’t know that
.

“He was FBI?” Amanda asked.

“Navy.”

“Impressive. He knew that in order to bring peace, people must sometimes fight.”

“I guess so.”

“Still doesn’t answer about you.”

The conversation held the veneer of new friends getting to know each other over a drink. Yet the situation was much different and any interest was expressed to extract and manipulate.

With each step further into the cellar, the intensity in Amanda’s eyes deepened, and she watched our every move.

I would have to play along. “I like to travel. Speaking of which, have you ever been to Kentucky?”

Paige turned to face me, and the impact was so quick, I never saw Amanda lift the gun. Paige crumbled to the dirt floor of the basement.

My training kicked in. I went to draw my gun, but my cell was in my right hand. I hit what felt like the send button.

My God, I hoped it was the send button.

“Don’t even think about it.” Amanda glared at me from the other side of a gun I had no doubt was loaded. Her green eyes were clouded with rage.

I looked down at Paige wanting to see evidence of breathing, and with a raise of her shoulder it brought hope.

“Don’t worry about her. She’ll wake up. It was only the butt end of the gun. You’d only have to worry if I had used the other end.”

“What are you—”

“Hand me your cell phone and gun—now!”

I assessed my surroundings and my options. The basement was unfinished. Its walls were brick blocks and the floor was flattened dirt. On the wall to the right was a marker board with scribbling on it, none of which I could decipher. Beside it was a large golden cross and a poster of the coinherence symbol. There was an inset in the wall that I assumed led to another room. To the left of the space we were in, there was a coffin. My breathing froze for a few seconds.

Why was there a coffin here?

I tried to rationalize it was an old church, and maybe it was left behind.

I looked down at Paige and back up at Amanda. I knew what my next step would be. I tossed the phone.

With her attention on it flying toward her, she didn’t catch me drawing my gun. Amanda caught the phone and connected eyes with me. She rose her weapon and aimed it on Paige. “You put your gun down now or she dies. You have eleven seconds!”

Eleven.

My chest compressed. The height of the ceiling only hovered above my head a few inches. I didn’t want to become her eleventh victim, and I didn’t want Paige to either. I lifted my hands in surrender, realizing that if there ever was a time to turn to God now would be it. I watched Amanda as I bent down and laid the Glock on the dirt floor.

“Now step back ten feet.” Amanda waved her gun.

As I stepped back, I assessed her weight at approximately one hundred ten pounds, shy a hundred of mine. Her structure was petite and compact. I had spent time in the gym lifting weights, and boxing was a pastime for me. There was no doubt that in a physical altercation I would overpower her.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” Amanda smiled.

The facial expression brought me back to Bingham in prison, and how he smiled when there was no reason to, how he latched eyes with mine and tried to read my thoughts. His words slammed to the forefront,
repent and be forgiven, or don’t and be punished.
“Are you here to exact punishment on me?”

Amanda laughed loudly.

I watched as she picked up my gun, tucked it into the waist of her pants, and closed the distance between us. I studied the grip she had on her gun. She held it tight enough her knuckles were white.

“On Paige?”

Amanda kept moving toward me.

“Why did you break into my house?”

As she came closer, my breathing tightened, even though I knew the odds were in my favor if we were both unarmed, but in reality Amanda was. My mind replayed the crime scene in Salt Lick. The bodies and how they were mutilated, how they were tortured for days before having the final incision be the one that claimed their life.

“Only those who ask the right questions get them answered.”

“You’re a smart woman.”

“Flattery only works on the vain and simple-minded. I am neither.”

“You killed people.”

“Only those who deserved it.”

That was a confession, yet it made me sick to realize one normally confessed when they felt they would get away with it. “You’re going to kill me.”

“You are arrogant and cocky. You are proud. Scripture says pride comes before a crash. That too is a punishable sin. But there are greater sins, namely hypocrisy.”

I wouldn’t die without a fight. I studied her movements, but her eyes followed mine.

She stopped walking a few feet from me. Her eyes faltered from mine for only a fraction of a second. I moved forward and grabbed the barrel of her gun. She struggled to gain control of it, pulling back and to the side.

“Let go—”

A bullet whizzed by my head. It bit the upper tip of my ear. Adrenaline infused my bloodstream. My strength grew. I would kill her if that’s what it took. She fought back with the power of a man. She punched me in the left eye, and I hit her in the abdomen.

She wailed.

I thought I broke a rib with the blow, but it didn’t stop her fighting power. Instead, the pain seemed to have empowered her.

I tried to pull the gun from her grasp, but I had to be careful that a stray bullet didn’t get fired again and somehow wind up striking Paige.

Amanda gripped the gun tighter than before. I punched her in the face. She faltered backward. I mustered the strength and roundhouse-kicked her to the chest. The gun flew a few feet across the floor. She lost balance; her legs came out from under her.

I came at her as a predator to take its prey. But a receiving kick to the solar plexus held a blow substantive enough to propel me backward. I came at her again, my focus on reaching the gun, on winning this struggle.

I saw her hand reach into a pocket and come out, but it was too late to avert the result. Electric juice from a Taser shot into my chest.

My body slumped to the ground, my arms and legs paralyzed. My eyelids fell heavy.

“I never meant for this to happen.” Amanda struggled to her feet. I heard her movements. She went to where the gun had come to rest and picked it up.

I fought to open my eyes. The basement was a blurry haze.

I feared for my life and for Paige’s. I didn’t want to wake up to being tortured and disemboweled. Our deaths would result from our negligence not to notify Jack and Zachery of where we were. But hadn’t all the evidence so far pointed to a male unsub? Jack’s words came in waves of conscious thought,
we need to think outside of the regular parameters with this case.

I felt Amanda loop her arms under my shoulders and hoist me on an angle. She dragged me across the floor. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t fight against her. I couldn’t scream. She dragged me in bursts of strength, alternated with moments of catching her breath.

I willed my body to fight. No strength came.

“You will be fine.” Her words were calm.

My eyes willed to close, but I focused on keeping them open. She dragged me past Paige. It was too hard to focus. My thoughts were whirling and were not rational.

Amanda kept pulling on me, until she stopped. “You will rest peacefully in here and be out of the way.”