Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1) (11 page)

“I know why the room felt off to you, and I know you haven’t quite put your finger on why it is exactly. If you’re willing to put in the elbow grease, I’ll be happy to tell you.”

Santos furrowed his brow for a moment before nodding. “My shift ends in an hour anyway. Why did it feel off?”

“His clothes,” Arthur said before heading back towards the motel room. “Call me when you find the cat,” he called out over his shoulder.

K
atie was writing
in her journal when her iPhone chirped. She closed the journal cover and looked at it for a moment. Katie had covered the entire front of her journal with the small sayings that came on Yogi tea bags. Statements like:
By listening, you comfort another person.
As well as:
Dignity and tranquility last forever.
Katie’s personal favorite was:
Experience is wisdom
. Katie had put them on her journal originally to be ironic and had gotten a laugh with her high school girlfriends about it, but secretly (she would never admit it to anyone, let alone write it in her journal), Katie liked a lot of the statements, and they served as reminders of how she wanted to act with the world around her.

The text was from Gideon asking if she wanted to come over and hang out.

Katie glanced across the room. Tiffany was out, since she had a date with some guy she had met at the pool, and Katie didn’t really have anything else to do for the evening.

She waited a few minutes before responding and telling him she would be over.

G
ideon lived
a few blocks from campus, on the second floor of an apartment complex. There was a buzzer for his door, and Katie discovered that his last name was Sitwell.

He buzzed her right up and met her at the elevator door. Gideon smiled and greeted the redheaded teen with a warm hug.

H
is apartment was truly gorgeous
. Hardwood floors, everything had a very modern feel and at the same time it was somewhat minimalistic. In the living room there was a comfy couch and a large flat screen TV in one corner. The night had been cool and Katie had been wearing her standard green coat, which Gideon took from her at the door and set it on his coat rack. Katie was impressed. He may be close to her age, but it appeared for a college student Gideon had his act together. That and he clearly came from some money.

Katie also smelled something. Popcorn, butter, and salt.

“Nice apartment,” Katie said, moving about the living room.

“Thanks,” Gideon said, moving into the kitchen.

Katie noticed a lot of pictures on the wall, some of a very pretty older woman and others of seemingly random people. There was one of Gideon when he was clearly much younger, standing with a nice looking woman and a man who looked similar to Gideon.

“Is this your family?” Katie asked pointing at the photos.

Gideon returned from the kitchen with a big bowl of popcorn and set it on the kitchen table, which was right past the entranceway and basically started the living room. The kitchen opened up to the right, and between the opening and the living room was the mouth of the hallway and led to what Katie presumed was the bathroom and bedroom.

“That’s my uncle and his wife. The woman you see a lot of is my mother.”

“Nice pictures.”

“Thanks. I took them. Well, the ones of my mom and the others anyway. I guess a timer took the one of the three of us. Now, the real question is, do you like popcorn?”

Katie gave Gideon a grim look and moved over the bowl of hot carbs. She grabbed a handful and popped them in her mouth. “I don’t like popcorn, I love it,” she said covering her mouth as she spoke.

I
t was later
, and the movie was halfway through. The popcorn was gone, as was the bottle of Malbec that Gideon had pulled out. They were curled up on the couch and Katie could feel it, the electricity in the air, the tension between both of them.

“Did you not have a dad around?” Katie asked, her eyes wide and looking up at Gideon. God, he was so damned adorable.

His eyes didn’t meet hers, nor look towards the TV. Instead they found the hardwood floor. “He died. Killed himself.”

“Jesus. Gideon. I’m … I’m so sorry,” Katie said, squeezing his arm.

He smiled weakly and looked down at her, his deep brown eyes meeting her blue ones. “Thanks. It was a long time ago.”

Katie nodded, getting it, more than he understood that she did. Neither one of them looked away from the other. The movie was still going in the background, but they weren’t paying attention to it at all. Katie’s head moved up, and Gideon’s moved down to meet hers.

L
ater
, and he had carried Katie easily, her legs wrapped around him as they moved towards the bedroom. His breath was hot on her neck, and Katie felt her heart beating fast, racing as her toes dug into his very tight and very nice ass.

T
he bed was soft
, his abs were hard, and his mouth moved with a relaxed and playful sense of expertise that had been lacking with the Greek god. It was surprisingly similar to Tiffany. Katie’s legs began to twitch as his mouth moved down, and she got a good grip on his hair and squeezed it, even as she started to arch her back.

A
fterwards they lay
next to each other, sweaty and happy, Katie’s legs curled between his.

“I hope you enjoyed the movie as much as I did,” Gideon said.

Katie glanced over at him and started to giggle. Gideon shut her up by kissing her again. Katie opened her mouth and started to kiss him back.

A
rthur Bell entered
Margaret Ruben's office and took a seat, even though she wasn’t in her office.

Ruben came back a minute later, carrying a blue coffee mug that read FBI in white letters.

He went to stand, but she waved at him dismissively.

“Sit, dumbass. I have presents.”

Ruben reached into her top desk drawer and pulled out two click pens that read FBI conference 2012 on them, and tossed them to her old partner.

Arthur caught both pens with his left hand. He looked at them for a moment and stuffed them in his pocket.

“You know I would never write with these.”

“’Thank you’ is the usual response.”

“And we both find usual to be utterly boring.”

Ruben sighed. “Ain’t that the truth.”

She studied him for a moment from across the desk and clasped her hands together, her fingertips touching as her elbows rested on her desk. Time for business.

“So what is this that you are reopening the investigation?"

"What do you mean?"

Ruben leaned back in her chair and took a sip of her coffee.

"Don't play coy with me, you know what I mean."

"There is mounting evidence that there is someone still out there. This was after all why I was brought in on the investigation after all, correct? The similarities to Martin's MO?"

"For the murders of Tori Watson and Maria Rivas. With Seaborn offing himself, this case is all wrapped up for us with a nice tidy bow. Your closed cases rate remains annoyingly high for everyone else. But that’s good for us. It lets us get to keep doing what we do best within this lovely overcrowded bureaucracy. It allows us to remain a relatively autonomous unit.”

“It’s not over.”

“What is it?”

“You’re going to love this.”

Ruben did not look like she was loving any of it. “I’m sure I am. Spill the beans, genius.”

“There are several things wrong with the this nice little present of a crime scene. You’ve looked at the case files, I’m guessing you’ve spotted them.”

Ruben leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Arthur knew it meant Ruben was recalling the case files. Margaret Ruben didn’t have a photographic memory, but she was close to having one. She could read things over and almost always recite the document with near precision accuracy. In their cases it had come in very handy on multiple occasions. The reason it wasn’t truly identical memory was that she made mistakes occasionally. Like a photo that was smudged with an inked thumbprint.

“He was right handed.”

“Yes and he shot himself with his left hand.”

“Not out of the realm of possibility.”

“Yet odd. What else?”

“The notebook.”

“Enough foreplay. Go through it.” Ruben said and opened her eyes.

“It feels wrong for two reasons. It was clearly written all in one go and yes, I sent it to the lab last night to confirm that. The second reason is he used the wrong pen.”

“The wrong pen?”

He nodded. “He likes nice pens, like I do. I checked his apartment. He only has fountain pens, there’s not a ballpoint or rollerball anywhere in there. So why is he writing his very special kill diary with a cheap pen?”

“Okay, what else?”

“His pants are folded the wrong way. They’re folded like Tori Watson’s pants were folded, but if you check his clothes drawer his pants are all folded to the left, not the right like his pants in the bathroom were. There’s also his cat. He loved that cat more than anybody; all his exes talk about it. So why did he chop off the cat’s head and throw the body in a cheap plastic garbage bag on 4
^th
and Division?”

He held up his BlackBerry and showed Ruben the picture officer Santos had sent him. Ruben winced. She had a Siamese and a German Shepard that strangely got along.

“Jesus.”

“Whoever killed that cat and Tori Watson and Maria Rivas enjoyed the killing. I’m not saying Seaborn was a good guy. He clearly was a grade A piece of shit. But he enjoyed hurting woman, not killing them. There’s a difference and we both know it. He also doesn’t strike me as the type of guy to feel bad about it, let alone anything else.”

“Anything else?”

“Don’t forget the money. He took out fifty grand in cash and was found with three hundred. Where’s the money? He didn’t spend it on hookers and blow, we would know since all the prostitutes and drug dealers like us better than a serial killer.”

“So you want me to keep this case going because of a dead cat, a fountain pen, and some pants folded the wrong way?”

Arthur spread his hands and shrugged.

“You’ve got two weeks to give me something more.”

“You don’t usually give me deadlines like that.”

Ruben yawned. Arthur thought she looked tired, and not just from a lack of sleep. “I don’t want this to keep going. We have enough to close the doors here. We don’t need him, or any shadow of him running around free. I pray that it was just some asshole who tried to act like Snow and had a change of heart. I would think you of all people would understand that.”

Arthur stood up and adjusted his tie. “Thing is though, Martin wouldn’t have picked someone to help that would have been so easily swayed by guilt. This isn’t over.”

Ruben looked at her old friend for a long moment and sighed.

"Look, I can sympathize with you. The problem is we are both bits of relics from the past these days. It's not like the Wild West days of the eighties and nineties when we had a decent budget and could kinda do whatever the fuck we wanted to. The conference was as utterly boring as it was expected to be, but there was a suggestive message that I did not miss. Serial killers and delinquents aren't sexy anymore, Arthur. White Collar is sexier than us. But you wanna know what’s really sexy? It's terrorism, surveillance, and freedom. That's what gets the budget now. All we are getting is more and more budget cuts. That doesn't mean the guys back at home base aren't just as in love with you as they always have been, but they’re worried. They want you out of the field and teaching, like a respectable agent. Especially after…" She trailed off, as she always did when she approached that particular subject.

"After Catherine."

"Right."

They fell into a silence for a moment. She was more uncomfortable than he was.

"Look, the bottom line is we need to keep closure rates high, and your name was on that case because it looked good. Seaborn offing himself wraps it up and hands us closure with a neat little bow. Gives the family of the victims some cathartic closure. Everyone goes home happy and you guys only had to work one week of long nights."

Arthur nodded. He understood where she was coming from. If Ruben didn't know him so well she would have relaxed a little, thinking he had been convinced of the point she was trying to make.

Of course the problem being was that she did know him, and Hell would have frozen over before he actually bought what she was selling.

"I get what you're saying, but there's only one problem with that. I just want to know who wrapped it all up and handed it to us with a bow. That's what I'm worried about. And it won't be so neat if that present unravels in front of us. Closure rate won't go up then, and I'm sure there will be less paperwork for you if IA has to step in."

Just the name Internal Affairs made Ruben cringe. The man who headed up the department was Gary Smith, who in the distant past she had had a brief fling with. Ruben had thought things had ended amicably, but the last time Smith had been brought in (for a agent shooting that had been cleared and deemed justified), he had acted like he was going to pin the shooting on her. He was also rumored to have begun thinking of political ambitions, which usually meant he would be willing, if not eager, to sell out anyone within the agency to appear to be non-partisan. Ruben was sure that he would continue in that ladder climbing tradition, if she knew anything about him, which of course she did.

"Arthur, I appreciate your concerns but really, it's time for you to drop it. You got your two weeks, and that’s it. Shut it down, write your last reports, etcetera, etcetera."

"Understood, boss."

Both of them understood what that actually meant. It meant Arthur had two weeks to finish the case officially, and afterwards he would be perfectly happy doing the rest of the investigation work off the reservation.

That’s what worried Ruben.