LITMIR.BIZ

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      CHAPTER TWO

      Jonas Casey was an alpha male who ate nails for breakfast and probably bungee-jumped off the Space Needle. The FBI special agent was in his early forties, with a slim waist, thick brown hair, and hooded eyes that barely betrayed what he was thinking. As good as Kendall was about reading people, Jonas Casey was a blank slate.

      Until he spoke, of course.

      “Look, we’re treating this as a kidnapping case,” he said, when he appeared in Kendall’s office. “Jurisdiction, ours.”

      “No ransom,” she said. “No kidnapping.”

      “Come on, Detective. Let’s apply a little common sense here, all right? There’s very little to suggest that Janie Thomas went with Brenda Nevins willingly. And before you chime in, yes, there is the video. Yes, they took Thomas’s car. Yes, they might have had a history of some kind of an affair, but we really don’t know the depths of it. Too early in the investigation.”

      Kendall felt her throat tighten. She studied his face, looking for a shred of humanity in his puffed-up “I’m FBI” countenance.

      “We have three dead people. Would you agree that we have a murder investigation at work here? Along with a missing person? And somewhere on that list is the kidnapping case.”

      “Agreed,” he said. “You have your murders. We don’t do murder. But we do own kidnapping, and we’re not going away until we find Brenda Nevins. You agree that we’re pretty good at finding people?”

      “Yes,” she answered. “You never found Jimmy Hoffa.”

      He ignored her jab.

      “And we have more tools and technology at our disposal? Wouldn’t you agree that’s the case, Detective?”

      “I’ve never said it wasn’t. The point I’m trying to make is that this is Kitsap County’s case and we’re leading it.”

      The special agent shook a Tic Tac into his hand and then popped it into his mouth. “You’re right and wrong at the same time. We’re leading the task force and, yes, the homicides are yours.”

      After SA Casey left to talk with the sheriff, Kendall called Birdy to vent.

      “The man is an ass,” she said.

      “What man?”

      “SA Casey.”

      “Don’t know him, but not surprised. Those FBI guys can be that way,” Birdy said.

      “He’s a total glory seeker, coming into our county to tell us that we don’t know what we’re doing and that he’s here to save the day.”

      “Sounds about right, Kendall. I know the type. You just have to play along. They bore easily and from what I can tell, they spend most of their time looking at their pension portfolio and counting the days until they can get out of the bureau. No one likes it there.”

      * * *

      Janie Thomas’s photograph stared from its place on the corner of Kendall Stark’s desk. Like all too many, it was a part of a file that waited for the wheels of justice to turn.

      It showed Janie when she first took the position of running the prison. She wore a navy-blue pantsuit and a powder-blue blouse. Her smile was a wide grin, the kind that appeared authentic instead of practiced for the camera. Looking at the picture reminded Kendall of the memorial service held a week after Janie’s body was recovered. If there had been a more confused, sadder service, the homicide detective could not quite think of one. Janie’s family—her husband, her son, and her two sisters from Spokane—sat in the front row facing the minister as he talked about the power of love and how Janie cared about every single person in the room.

      Of course he’d say that. Yet it wasn’t a completely true statement. Funerals are rife with exaggerations and lies.

      Behind Erwin was the woman he’d been seeing behind his dead wife’s back.

      Janie’s son, Joe, looked down at his phone the entire time. Kendall figured it was a distraction that he needed in order to get through the ordeal. The two sisters offered up the kind of body language—turned away, stiff in the way they perched on the pews—that indicated that they blamed Erwin for pushing Janie away and into the arms of a monster. Kendall studied the row of those closest to Janie Thomas and concluded that the death of the prison superintendent didn’t bring the grieving family together; it merely exacerbated the problems they’d all been dealing with.

      It was a cop-out to consider Janie Thomas a complete victim. After all, she chose to be with Brenda. No one forced her to drop everything and everyone in her world to find solace, excitement, and even love. No one deserved such a fate as Janie’s, but there were probably only a small handful of people at that church service who didn’t allow it to cross their minds.

      What was she thinking? Why would she throw everything away for the attention of a sociopath like Brenda Nevins?

      Kendall had an answer. She’d seen it time and again in cases she’d worked on at the county and had certainly read about in the annals of the FBI’s famed Behavioral Science Unit. Brenda was a predator and a very good one. The greatest skill a predator possessed was the ability to find the weaknesses of his or her targets. Brenda had clearly seen something in Janie that she could use to get inside the prison superintendent’s head, turn her into what she needed, and then, in the ultimate act of betrayal, end her life when she was no longer useful.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Brenda Nevins looked into the tiny lens of the laptop’s camera. She tilted her head in the light, trying to find the most flattering position. For her, it was all about finding the right angle. A little lift of her head and a very slight tilt made her look a few pounds lighter. She wasn’t fat, of course. God no. She had the best body a good diet, prison exercise, and a skillful surgeon could create.

      She fiddled with the top of her blouse, opening an extra button to show Dr. Fournier’s handiwork. She thought back to the day she’d transformed herself with the insurance money. She’d picked Dr. Fournier out of dozens of well-known cosmetic surgeons. He was based in Orange County, California, but that wasn’t a problem. Not only did she have the money, Brenda liked the idea of achieving physical perfection with the help of a man who’d likely worked on film stars. His assistant, Merle, led her into his overly chilled white marble and stainless-steel consultation office. A Twin Peaks TV show poster hung in a prominent location by the door. The art was meant to be sardonic, but Brenda saw it as further proof that her breasts were about to be placed into some very capable hands. He probably worked on one of those television stars. She couldn’t remember any of their names, but they were famous.

      That’s all that mattered.

      Dr. Fournier was in his fifties, though he was using all the tricks at his disposal to hang on to a younger appearance. He had a waxy-smooth complexion and eyes that indicated a recent lift. He wore his hair longish for a man of his age. Worse, a slight kink along the lower run of his wavy hair indicated he wore it in a small ponytail. Though thankfully not on the day they’d met. No matter what she said to him, his facial expressions vacillated somewhere along the spectrum between surprised and slightly astonished.

      “I want all eyes on me,” she said.

      “You don’t need larger breasts for that,” the doctor said. “You’re near perfection now.”

      Near had been the operative word. Near wouldn’t do it. Not even close. She’d done everything she could to get out of the almost grave-deep rut she’d been in. She’d done the unthinkable. And she was glad to have done it.

      “I like to improve myself,” she said. “Near perfection indicates there’s room for improvement.”

      “All right. Did my assistant Lee help you with the sizers?”

      “Yes, she did.” Brenda

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