Before He Longs. Блейк Пирс

White. I’m supposed to meet with Detective Hall.”

      “Oh yes,” the receptionist said. “Let me just get him up here for you.”

      The receptionist paged another office in the building through her phone and, after a few moments, said, “Your visitor is here.”

      “Thanks,” Mackenzie said after she hung up.

      “Sure. Where are you driving in from, if you don’t mind my asking.”

      “Flew out of DC yesterday, to Seattle.”

      The receptionist tried to smile at this, but she was apparently adding things up in her head and deciding that something bad must have happened. Instead of trying to continue with chitchat, she turned back to cleaning her desk.

      Before she had scrubbed a handful of times, a plainclothes detective came walking toward the little galley area where the receptionist was cleaning. He seemed a little surprised by the sight of Mackenzie but did his best to hide it. He was an older man, floating somewhere between fifty and fifty-five at Mackenzie’s guess. He wore one of those little driver caps that some men look goofy in, but he pulled it off quite well.

      “Agent White?” he asked.

      “Pleased to meet you,” she said, offering his hand when he stuck it out for a shake. “Nice to meet you, Detective Hall.”

      “You may change your mind about that soon enough,” he said. “I’ll level with you: this case haunts me. It damn near made me quit my job. So I’ll help in any way I can, but I’d really rather not dwell on it.”

      “Of course,” she said. “Do you mind if we speak in private somewhere?”

      “How about in my car?” Hall said. “I’ll tell you what I can on the way out to the first storage complex. It’s about fifteen minutes away.”

      “That sounds good,” she said.

      Apparently, Hall wasn’t one for formalities. He gave her a curt little nod and started heading for the front door without another word. Mackenzie followed him and started to feel some sort of odd dread creeping up on her.

      This case haunts me, he had said.

      Based on the look of unease in his eyes as he had turned toward the door, Mackenzie didn’t doubt him one bit.

***

      “He’s doing it again, right?”

      The question was out of Hall’s mouth before they were even out of the parking lot. He had a look of certainty on his face, as if he had been expecting to hear such news for a very long time now.

      “He is,” she answered. “Or so it seems. In Seattle. What makes you sure enough to ask a question like that?”

      “The way he went about killing them…just leaving them there to be found or rot…it doesn’t make sense that he’d just stop. I think we got close to getting him, I really do. I think that’s why he stopped when he did. But I’ve always felt that he’d pop up somewhere else and start again.”