“Count me in, too,” Frances said. “I only have enough clothes for a day or two, but I can do the wash.”
“Mackenzie, I don’t even know where to start,” Patricia said. “It’s been so long since I cared for a baby and…”
“It’s like riding a bike,” Frances assured her. “And little Kevin there is an angel. Not a problem at all.”
“And we’ll leave a schedule for you,” Mackenzie said.
“As well as the numbers for the doctor, fire department, and poison control,” Ellington quipped.
When no one laughed, he grimaced and slowly stepped out of the room. Kevin, sitting on the floor, provided the only response as he craned his neck to see where his daddy was going.
“Think you can handle it, kiddo?” Mackenzie asked, getting down on the floor with him.
His only response was his usual smile and his big bright eyes as he looked up at his mother and the two older women behind her.
CHAPTER FIVE
About halfway through their flight to Utah, Mackenzie was on her second cup of bitter airline coffee as her first signs of worry took root. She glanced out the window, the early morning light blooming over the horizon, and then to Ellington.
“Still feel good about it?” she asked him.
“I do. Why? You changing your mind?”
“No. I just know my mother. I mean, it’s obvious she’s changing her life for the better and I hope spending some time with Kevin only helps to super-charge those changes. But I know my mother. I know how stubborn she can be. I know how defensive she can be. I can’t help but wonder if our mothers together might turn into a WWE cage match.”
“As long as they keep Kevin alive, I’m fine with that. I’d put my money on your mom, by the way.”
She could tell that he was slightly worried, but was trying to be the strong husband that she could depend on. Throughout their marriage and the years of partnering together beforehand, he had learned when to take on that role and when to step back and let her be strong. He was getting very good at doing both and knowing which role to fill at the appropriate time. She sighed, looked back out the window, and held his hand.
“Hey, Mac? It really is okay. It’s going to be great. This is part of being a family, you know? In-laws, relatives, all of it.”
“I know. But today it’s my mom. Tomorrow, what if my sister wants to step up and be an aunt all of a sudden?”
“Then you have to let her. Or, at the very least, let her try.”
“Oh, but you haven’t met Stephanie…”
“And I hadn’t met your mother until yesterday. Yet here we are, in the sky while she and my mother are down below, taking care of our son. And if I can be honest…?”
“Please do.”
“I think you’re worried about it because you aren’t worried about it. You and I were both rocked by how natural it felt. Maybe we just need to go with it and focus on this case. Our mothers raised us and we turned out fine, after all.”
“Did we, though?” she asked with a smirk.
“Eh, good enough.”
Mackenzie continued to sip from her coffee and did exactly what Ellington had suggested, turning her thoughts away from the surprising result back home and toward the case.
***
They drove their rental car sixteen miles outside of Salt Lake City, on task to beat McGrath’s projection of a noon arrival by nearly an hour. The town where the woman without an identity had been murdered was a cute little place called Fellsburg. It was a slightly upscale town, likely the sort of town that thrived only because it was so close to Salt Lake City. Mackenzie imagined most of the population made that commute daily, working in the city and then coming back to their homes in one of the numerous neighborhoods in Fellsburg.
Following the file notes and instructions in the information McGrath had emailed to them, Ellington drove them to a subdivision called Plainsview. It looked like the two other subdivisions they had to pass to get there—two-story houses, cookie-cutouts of one another. Nice trimmed yards, security streetlights every one hundred feet or so.
But they didn’t have to venture far into Plainsview. Four houses after the entrance, there was a cop car parked on the side of the street. This was the officer who had arranged to meet with them when Mackenzie had called from the airport to announce their arrival. He was already getting out of his patrol car when Ellington pulled in behind him.
The three of them met between the cars, going through a round of introductions. The badge and pin he wore on his chest indicated he was Sheriff Burke.
“Agents,” Burke said. “Thanks for coming out. I’m Sheriff Declan Burke.”
Mackenzie and Ellington gave their names, shaking hands with him. Mackenzie guessed Burke to be about fifty or so. He had a thick beard that could use a trim and a hardened face. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses even though the morning was not bright at all.
“This is where the body was discovered?” Mackenzie asked.
“It is. Right there.” Burke pointed to a spot just slightly right of center.
“According to the report, there was nothing on her except a driver’s license, correct?”
“That, and a pair of sandals. They were wet from the little bit of rain we had gotten that day. She wasn’t wearing the sandals, though. At first, I thought the car knocked her out of them, but the MD pointed out that there were cuts and abrasions on her feet that indicated she took them off in the hopes of maybe running faster.”
“Any idea how far she had been running?” Ellington asked.
“We’re not really clear on that,” Burke said. “There’s a field about a mile and a half away from here that shows some signs of someone passing through that same night. But the growth of weeds and wild grass makes it impossible to tell for sure if it was this woman—or even a human being at all. Could have been a deer or something.”
“And no one around here saw anything?” Mackenzie asked. She looked down the street, to the slightly sloping road and the nice homes. There were plenty of streetlights. It was hard to believe no one had seen anything.
“My men and I questioned every homeowner on this street. We have one night owl who claims to have seen an old town car driving through the neighborhood with its lights off. But they didn’t get a plate number.”
“And what about the girl?” Ellington said. “No known identity at all?”
“None that we can find. The driver’s license was a fake. And a damned convincing one at that. We of course took her fingerprints and drew blood. None of them match to anyone in the system.”
“That makes no sense,” Ellington commented.
“And that’s why we called you guys out here,” Burke said. “You saw the pictures of the body at the scene, I assume?”
“Yes,” Mackenzie said. “Black duct tape over her mouth. The ME believes it was placed there postmortem.”
“That’s right. Checked the tape for prints and got nothing.”
Mackenzie had studied that strip of tape in the photographs for a while last night and on the plane this morning. She figured it could be symbolic, some way of the killer letting the woman know even in death that she needed to be quiet. But why? What did she have to say?