The Killing Times (An FBI Romance Thriller (book 1)) (58 page)

One that matched his tattoo.

“No, the raven didn’t tell me, Ethan,” Elizabeth answered, smiling, “I was looking out the door at the garden, and it occurred to me that I think I know how he drugged all the women, and what he used.” She walked around the counter, taking his hand and leading him to the couch. Picking up his tablet, she minimized a box and pulled up a list of plants and pointing at the one.

“Foxglove?” he asked. “
It was death by flower?”

“Digitalis comes from Foxglove,” she said, maximizing the picture of the flower and showing him.

It was amazing how something so beautiful, could be so deadly.

“Yes, I think he was using dried leaves to get the toxins into their bodies. Tox screens kept showing a drug, but nothing debilitating. Ever smoke in your life?”

He nodded and laughed. “I used to,” he said, watching her grin. “I did a great deal in my wild, misspent youth. Smoked, fought, and got into a shitload of trouble.”

“
Do you remember that nicotine rush? How you would get the dizziness, the lightheadedness, and then it would phase out?”

“Yes,” he answered.
Obviously, Elizabeth had some wild times too in her youth.

“I think he was rolling his own joints but
without cannabis, and instead using Foxglove,” she said, pointing at a list of side effects of the digitalis. “If they were drinking, partying and then smoking, they wouldn’t notice until it was too late.”

He read the list of side effects of ingesting the plant and thought about how her father had been poisoned with Digitalis.

“Furthermore, come with me.” She took his hand and led him back out to the garden. “We came back from the exhumation, and I came out here. I was beyond pissed that someone trampled through our garden. There were holes, and bare spots, and this morning it occurred to me, there were plants missing.  They were all the same kind too.”

“
Foxglove?”

“Yes, I think the killer was getting the drug from here.”

“But why from your yard?” Before she could answer, his phone rang. “Come back inside with me!” he demanded, leading her in, as he was unwilling to risk her outside. Checking the ID, he recognized it as the lab. “Hello?”

“
Agent Blackhawk, I’ve called four times. Do you want your tox reports, or not?” said the ME, Doctor Christopher Leonard.

“Send them over and if you can, break them down for me now too.
”

“
Absolutely, Agent. We isolated the food that killed the man. It seems he that ingested Witch’s Glove. It’s also called Dead Man’s Bells.”

Blackhawk
listened as he watched his wife, staring at him in anticipation. The name of that flower was tied into the investigation, and he knew it wasn’t a coincidence.

“He ingested a great deal of it.
The original ME didn’t test the food in his stomach for drugs. At TOD he had consumed a salad, and it looks like that’s how the killer snuck it in. The leaves wouldn’t have been noticeable.”

“Thank you,
Doctor. Please send it,” he said, ending the call.

“Well?”

“Your father ingested the poison. Ever hear of Witch’s Glove, or Dead Man’s Bells? Is that in your garden too?”

“I’ve never heard of it
, but I’m a novice at gardening. Abigale was the one that was the obsessed gardener,” she said, taking the tablet from his hand, and searching it.

Then the look on her face said it all.

“What?”

“Yeah
I have it in my garden, or should I say I had it. It’s another name for Foxglove.” She looked up. “The killer would lure them in with a promise of fun, smoke some good stuff, and then he would kill them. Then my father somehow consumed it. I need to see the tech photos of the day he died.”

He paused debating
on letting her see them, or just telling her what the lab discovered.

“Ethan,
I just need to see the one you showed me the other day. Just show me the one of his plate.”

He finally conceded.

Elizabeth blew up the picture of the leaves of the Foxglove, and did the same thing with the pictures he pulled up on his laptop. “Look at the salad! It has the same leaves in it,” she said, pointing.

He already knew that, but he knew she needed to work it through in her mind.
If he interrupted her processing she might get sidetracked, and he needed her focused right now.

Elizabeth started pacing
as her mind was racing a mile a minute.

Blackhawk knew where this was heading; she had the look he’d seen before. “What do you need?”

“I need the searches you did on my half-brother,” she said quietly. “George lived here too for quite a few years before my dad divorced his mother. The garden belonged to her. I have vivid memories as a teen of coming home, and Abigale had George working out in the flowers. She would spend hours tutoring him on all the different kinds of flowers and their meanings.”

She continued to pace.

“All the victims were drugged by Foxglove, but Sara. George could come here and no one would notice he was around.” She began to feel sick to her stomach that her own blood relative was possibly the killer.

Blackhawk could see all the pieces falling into place for her, the details were coming together into the final picture.

“My father had to have known his killer. Again, there were no signs of struggle and if the killer planted the food in the refrigerator, he’d have to know his habits and how to access the house. My dad wouldn’t think anything of having his son here with him or having him over to eat.”

“Connect it some more for m
e, baby.” Blackhawk knew she was putting it together and it was only a matter of time. This is why he was the profiler, and she was the one who connected the dots. It was just how her mind worked and his didn’t. Now they were in her area of expertise.

“The night we found the note that told us that my father was dead,” she looked into his eyes. “Did your tech team ever find out how the intruder entered?
I know there was never an investigation when my dad died, since his death was initially just a heart attack.”

“No, the
team checked all locks and windows, nothing was forcibly accessed.”

“My brother has a key to the house.
He had one when my father was still alive.”

“You never got the locks changed?”
Blackhawk didn’t like that idea at all. “That would explain why the best tech team couldn’t pull a single piece of evidence of a break in. The killer didn’t have to break in when he only had to walk in.”

“I
need to pull those searches apart and dig into them more.”

“I’ll grab them and meet you in your office,” he said. “And Lyzee?”

She turned. “Yes Ethan?”

“Good job,” he said, admiring her mind.
He sincerely hoped this wouldn’t be their last assignment together. As a team, they just clicked.

“It’s only a good job if I throw
him behind bars, and for now, it’s all speculation.”

“
We’re on our way to getting to the hard facts. Let’s build our case together,” he said.

“You're on, Cowboy.”

Elizabeth sat behind her desk with her hair piled on top of her head. She was staring at the information on where all the victims were when they were last seen. By drawing out by memory a picture of the general location and labeling everything, she was trying to build each victim’s last moments of life.

On the map she
sketched in the bowling alley, the arcade and ‘
The Barrel’
. She added where they found their cars and anything that would pinpoint a location as to where the killer may have been watching from.

“What did you find?” he asked, walking in with the printouts from his team’s search on her half-brother.

“Take a look.” Elizabeth passed him the paper that showed them the locations of the girls and where they were last seen. All the red dots were centered on one place, and she doubted it was a coincidence; it was her brother’s place.

The evidence was building.

“It gives us enough to bring him in to talk, it doesn’t give us enough to arrest him,” Blackhawk answered, looking up at her. Elizabeth Blackhawk was like a dog on a meaty bone, she was chewing down to the hard facts.

“He fits the profile. We’re
looking for a twenty-something male.”

“Okay, so age fits, sex fits and location is suspicious. I need more.”

“Wait, Doc said he found wood chips, right?”

“Yes, he found them on Sara’s body.”

“My brother does furniture restoration; pine wood is commonly used to repair furniture.”

“I think you're getting closer, Lyzee,” he rep
lied. “I think you’re on target. We need to get him into interview to see if he can be shaken up. Then we might get a search warrant to check his place. Where does he live?”

“
I have quite a few acres, and he has a house not far from here.”

“Again, that would make it convenient for him to spy on you here, and get back out of the woods before we can find him.”

“Add in his expertise with the flowers
, and I think we have enough for a search warrant. I remember getting them with less.”

“It can be done.” Blackhawk would use all the pull he could to find a judge
who would see the trail. “We need to get him into interview.”

“If we can pull him in, I can make him talk.”

Interviewing her own brother was going to be tricky, it fell back under the ‘
conflict of interest’
angle. A defense team would pull it to pieces. “Elizabeth,” he paused, unsure what to say.

“You won’t be able to interview him either then,” she answered not even looking up.
“He’s now your brother-in-law.”

Blackhawk was surprised she knew what he was thinking, but then again they always had that connection. “I won’t be. I’m
sending him back to Quantico.”

Elizabeth understood. Now she’d have to trust the man she married to get the victims justice.

“I do need you to get him to come to us,” he offered.

“I can call him
and see if he will pop in at the station, and then we can grab him there.”

Blackhawk nodded and spoke, “I wish we could call Beatrice, or one of the other workers
to confirm the times he was gone, but it’ll spook him. We’re going to have to get him in, and then do it. I’ll have the team ready to move, as soon as we have him.”

Elizabeth dialed his house phone
, and it was answered on the third ring by Abigale. Great that was just who she didn’t want to deal with today.

“Abig
ale, is George there? I need to speak to him.”

There was a pause.

“No, he’s out in the barn working on some furniture. He said he had to finish a table that he was selling today, and not to bother him.”

Elizabeth pondered
and then decided. “Okay, tell him to call me back when he gets a chance,” she said.

“What’s it pertaining to?”

“I need him to cater an event for the department,” she said, reaching for any excuse.

“I
’ll pass it on,” she answered icily.

“Thanks,” she hung up the phone.
Obviously the conversation they had regarding her manners was still fresh in Abigale’s mind. The woman knew how to hold a wicked grudge.

Elizabeth sat thinking and watching her husband, as if weighing the options.

“You have that look on your face again, Lyzee.”

“He’s in his workshop
working. I think we should go in quietly. We need to keep it low key and grab him, bringing him in together to finish this.”

Blackhawk weighed his options, if he told his wife he didn’t want her anyw
here dangerous it would get ugly, or she would do it anyway. He just trusted that she had been trained as well as he was, and if he were with her she would be safe. The raven crept back into his mind, and he forced it back out. “There has to be a few conditions.”

Elizabeth lifted a brow and stared at him. “
Yes?”

“You
’re in Kevlar.”

“Agreed
, but only if you do the same.” That was an easy one, but she knew he was lulling her with the minor first.

“
You don’t leave my side.” He ticked off the second one on his fingers.

“Fine, want to handcuff me to your
wrist?”

He gave her the look
and she laughed. “I think you’d like that idea, Elizabeth.”

“Look who’s mind is in the gutter now, Cowboy.
But to answer your question, I do. I hope that you make it part of the deal.” Elizabeth tried to distract him and lighten his mood.