Humpty Dumpty: The killer wants us to put him back together again (Book 1 of the Nursery Rhyme Murders Series) (2 page)

Glancing up into the cracked rearview mirror, Joshua winced away from the man staring back at him. But not before he caught a glimpse of bloodshot hazel eyes and a closely cropped, balding head of dark hair that was starting to show some signs of salt. The hair led down to stubble on his cheeks that was just slightly shorter than the hair on his head and had even more flecks of gray. Full lips were the only thing that softened the severe angles and shadows of that face.

He hated his reflection. There was a reason the mirror was cracked.

Even though he was parked in the shade, the temperature in the car had to be approaching 100 degrees. Sweat dripped down his face, over his chest, under his arms. Any sane person would have abandoned the car for some spot where at least a hint of a breeze might eventually touch them. But not Joshua.

Physical relief was reserved for those who deserved it.

A burst of pain swelled up in his chest, reaching a crescendo. Trying to swallow past it did nothing—it wasn’t physical. He had to do something. It was five o’clock. The bar where he worked would allow him to begin taking advantage of their arrangement starting at seven. It would take him an hour to get into Chelsea if he managed to catch the E train at 5:15. Otherwise it would be the F at 5:29. Maybe he should just leave now.

The needle on the gas gauge hovered right below the E. No chance it would get him to Manhattan and back again. Besides, parking was a bitch.

He checked his punch card. Just enough to get him there and back. Then he’d have to buy another. Joshua hoped he had enough cash for that. Maybe he should risk spending some time rummaging around and under the seats of his car. Some change might have slipped out of his hand at some point. It was always possible.

Peeling himself up from the seat, he determined he would leave the search for the next day. Right now he needed the quiet oblivion that only the hardest of liquors could offer him, and the thought of missing out on even a drop had his hands shaking in fear.

It
was
fear, wasn’t it?

The deodorant was lying in the well of the driver’s side of the backseat. Joshua had to push aside a couple of shirts and a pair of jeans to get to it. He pulled off the lid, shoved the stick under his shirt and added a layer of odor protection to the slick sweat he found there. He sniffed, and then added another layer to the outside of his shirt, rubbing it under his arms and across his chest. It was time to sneak into a truck stop for another shower. Or maybe this time he’d just spend some time at a public pool. Another riveting question to be answered tomorrow.
Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof
, right?

The LeSabre was locked up as best as he could. The rear passenger's-side door was broken, which was almost as effective as an actual lock. It worried him every night to leave his semi-mobile home, but what were his other options? Either it would be here when he came back or it wouldn’t. Either it would have been broken into or it wouldn’t.

Though it felt like he couldn’t sink any lower, Joshua knew that wasn’t true. Much as he hoped for a bottom, he understood that there was always a level that was farther down. At least that had been his experience to date.

He straightened his rumpled clothes, hoping the stares on the subway wouldn’t be too bad tonight. If he waited another hour, he’d bypass a lot of the rush hour crowd, but the thought of missing out on even one opportunity started him shaking again. He’d just have to deal with it.

Hey, it was what he did best.

* * *

Agent Sariah Cooper loved taking the train. Travel between DC and New York was one of those weird things. You could drive, but traffic was brutal. Flying seemed extravagant, and Sariah hated airports with a burning passion that bordered on psychosis.

But trains? Trains were perfection.

She sat in a section that was close to empty. It had started out much more full, but over the course of the last hour it had gradually thinned out, leaving Sariah on her own. A little strange, sure, but it suited her just fine.

Cooled and filtered air washed over her as she gazed out at the brown and shimmering landscape of one of the hottest summers on record on the East Coast. The soothing clackety-clack of the iron wheels on the rails was a constant background presence that spoke of a gentler time past. She’d spent a year abroad in Europe right after high school with the only real friend she’d had, Rachel, whose wealthy parents were trying to make up for past neglect with present extravagances. It hadn’t worked, but Sariah had been the happy beneficiary of the guilt of Rachel’s parents.

Swiping her hand across the screen of her tablet, Sariah stared at another crime scene photo, one of a severed hand. This one was from the last case up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The case that had finally convinced her boss, Special-Agent-in-Charge Nicholas Tanner, that the Humpty Dumpty Killer was active again.

Sariah worked in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, or BAU, a part of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime. The BAU used behavioral sciences to assist in criminal investigations throughout the US.

And just days ago, she’d been given the case of her life. The one that could make or break her career at the BAU. Humpty Dumpty.

A serial killer who had killed more than twenty men and women and then seemed to have disappeared into thin air, leaving nothing but pieces of the victims he’d killed, spread across the US. It was the stuff from which legends were born.

Problem was, when you went to resurrect a legend, people got cranky.

Working as a junior agent at the BAU, Sariah had been assigned to the most menial of tasks, one of which was to deal with all of the random body parts that turned up anywhere in the US. There were a surprising number, and each one ostensibly needed to be accounted for. In actual practice, there were as many cold cases when it came to body parts as there were with actual full-blown bodies, but there it was. That had been Sariah’s task for the last year and a half after coming out of Quantico.

That was also where she’d come across what she had started to think was Humpty Dumpty’s work. After 13 years of nothing from the prolific killer, several body parts matching Humpty’s MO began appearing. One could be dismissed. Two wouldn’t keep the scoffers from scoffing. But when she’d come across that hand up in Ann Arbor while working an unrelated case, Sariah not only became sure that Humpty Dumpty was active again, she was beginning to believe that he was taunting her.

And wonder of wonders, her boss had believed her.

Which made her much less popular with her fellow agents, most of whom thought she was bat-guano crazy, or worse, an ambitious climber. The fact that she hadn’t been popular to begin with was her own fault. She was smart, capable and not all that social. A lethal combination when it came to making friends.

A little boy, looking to be about five or six, groped his way up the aisle and happened to glance at the picture of the hand. He cocked his head as if he were trying to figure out what he was looking at, and then backed away, looking up into Sariah’s eyes. Turning around, without warning, he dashed away from her as fast as his chubby little legs could carry him, screaming bloody murder the entire length of the car.

Kids were annoying.

She swiped back to a previous file that was still open. An outdated picture of the man she was on her way to meet. The last address she had for former Agent Joshua Wright was one in Queens, but when she’d contacted the super, he’d told her that Joshua had moved out seven years ago. The only lead she had on the guy was his last place of employment. It seemed he worked at a dive bar in Chelsea. As a janitor.

How in the hell did that happen?

She’d read his file. Superb agent—worked on the Humpty Dumpty case thirteen years ago until the killer targeted his entire family. Took out his wife and three daughters before throwing them all in a wood chipper.

It was a horrific story, but it didn’t explain Wright’s fall from grace to Sariah’s complete satisfaction. A year or two, or even five or six, of going through the wringer and flat lining, she could understand. But the fact that it had been thirteen years and the guy was working cleaning up toilets in a crappy bar in Manhattan? It just didn’t track.

Her stream of thought was interrupted by an official presence at her elbow. A uniformed conductor cleared his throat.

“Excuse me.”

Sariah looked up. “Yes?”

The conductor looked to be in his mid-to-late 50s, with silver hair that had receded back from a high forehead. It was clear he was uncomfortable.

“I… ah, that is… we’ve had some complaints from some of the other passengers.” He gestured to Sariah’s tablet. “Something about you viewing material that was… er… inappropriate?”

And just like that, the empty car took on a new meaning. They had all vacated due to her, or at least due to her choice of study materials.

“I’m sorry. I’m going over case files for an investigation I’m heading. I didn’t mean to disturb anyone.”

“You’re heading an investigation?” the man asked. He seemed to be trying to keep disbelief out of his voice. He was not succeeding.

So many different reasons why he could be having a problem believing she was in charge. So many reasons Sariah could find to be offended. She was young, she was black, she was a woman. Or maybe there was just something about her that didn’t inspire confidence. Wasn’t like this was the first time she’d gotten this reaction. But with so many possibilities, it was hard to latch onto only one. So instead, she smiled.

“Yes. Crazy, isn’t it?”

“Oh, no… I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sariah reassured the man. “And I’ll make sure I keep the more disturbing pictures off my screen for now. I apologize for any trouble.”

“Thank you, Miss,” the conductor murmured as he moved off, down the aisle.

Sariah waited until he had left the car, and then opened the file back up. She’d be more careful from here on out, but right now there was no need. There was no one here, so there was no one to offend.

And she had work to do.

* * *

The suitcase was full to overflowing, and Officer Had Hadderly was trying to decide if it made more sense to jump up and down on it until he could close it, or to just grab two smaller bags. He was enough of a guy’s guy that taking two suitcases went against his grain, but it
was
his first trip to a big city. Cramming his clothes into the one bag was going to make everything come out wrinkled.

Who was he kidding? This was a no-brainer. Had trotted over to his closet and pulled out a duffel bag and a small rolling carry-on. This was his first time to Washington DC. Hell, it was pretty much his first time out of Ann Arbor, unless you counted that time he went to Detroit as a kid, or the aborted trip up to Niagara Falls with that one girl. What was her name? Marion? No, Madeline. Man she had been hot. Crazy as all nine hells, but hot. Too bad she had been allergic to cats.

Well, now that he had two bags instead of just the one, he could afford to pack a couple more shirts. Oh, and that pair of raw denim jeans he had just shrunk to fit. First time doing that, and the results had been
awesome
. Had had felt like such a hipster when he wore them out for the first time. You know, until he realized he was in Ann Arbor, and there were no hipsters anywhere to be found.

Five more minutes of last-second additions, and Had realized he was going to have to transfer everything in the carry-on back into the bigger suitcase. The big case and the duffel bag weren’t too much, were they? He just had no frame of reference here.

His cell phone rang. It was the theme to
Psycho
. His mama.

“Had, sweetie. Just checking to see if you wanted brisket or my pulled pork for dinner tomorrow night. I haven’t used my smoker in almost a week, and it’s getting a little lonely.”

Had sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “Mama, you know I’m not going to be here for dinner tomorrow.”

“What? Oh, that thing with the FBI? You still tryin’ to pretend it’s happenin’?” Lynda Hadderly had grown up in the South, and even after living in Michigan most of Had’s life, a pleasant Mississippi drawl dominated her speech.

“Come on, Mama. I told you, the BAU called me out to help. They arranged it with my boss and everything.”

His mother chuckled in her throat. “Baby, I know you’ve wanted to be an agent since you were tiny, but don’t you think this is takin’ the whole thing a bit far?”

Had placed two folded shirts next to each other on the bed. Which one would go with him? Gotta be the embroidered one. Never knew when you were going to have to hit a dance club. In the line of duty, of course. He placed it in his duffel bag, trying not to rise to his mother’s bait.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to just wait and see when I don’t show up to your house tomorrow.”

“Whatever you say, marshmallow,” his mama said, not paying any attention to him whatsoever. “I think I’m gonna get the brisket. That always was your favorite.” Her hanging up the phone acted as punctuation on the end of the statement of her doubt. He couldn’t blame her. It’s not like he’d been the most honest of kids, growing up.

It had only been two weeks ago that Had had gotten the most exciting news of his life. He’d been in the middle of what he’d
thought
was the coolest experience of his life, the Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary serial killer case.

It had been a bad enough case that they’d asked for the BAU to come out and get involved, and that was where Had had run into Agent Sariah Cooper. Coop. The Amazonian FBI agent of his dreams. Well, she would have been, if she were at all interested in him. Which she was not. At all.

Dammit.

At least now he wouldn’t have to ask for her stance on Latin dancing.

Regardless, the connection had been immediate, and when Coop had realized that one of the body parts they’d found belonged to the Humpty Dumpty case, she’d asked for his help on it. Had was still reeling from that conversation, four days after it had happened. He was going to DC. Well, to Quantico, Virginia, to be precise. The FBI Academy, where the Behavioral Analysis Unit was housed, to be even more specific. He was going to be working with the FBI.