Chapter 20

If someone had asked Sawyer what was on his mind at this point, he could have given a lot of different answers. Many of them revolved around Bashir and the fact that Sawyer had probably torpedoed his best shot at a personal relationship with him. The idea of continuing to work together, of seeing him at crime scenes, of forcing himself to be cool and professional when all he wanted was to beg for forgiveness…that was a special kind of torture. To go from what they'd experienced together to distant acquaintances would be awful, and while it wasn't a completely foregone conclusion at this point, Sawyer couldn't see how he was going to salvage it. Because the thing was…

Someone at the morgue had to be the killer. They simply had to be. There was too much evidence that centered around their facility for the facts to be otherwise. It had to be someone with a level of authority that would give them access to crime scenes, case files, and the bodies themselves, which left out the secretarial and janitorial staff, but that was still a lot of people to comb through.

That was just what Sawyer was doing, though. He'd pulled personnel files on everyone who worked at the morgue, as well as everyone who had worked there over the past few years who still might have access. He couldn't afford to take anything for granted at this point, up to and including his own partner being a help instead of a hindrance.

That's not fair, he told himself as he sat through another reading of the top five files laid out on his desk. She was doing what she thought was best for the case. She just wants justice for Kurt.

But she could have done it without the accusations. She could have taken over the interview if she was so fucking concerned with Sawyer's ability to put his head before his heart. She didn't have to yell at him , and she definitely could have done more to help with Bashir.

That Nan felt guilty was clear from the way she'd been treating him in the days since that disastrous interview—bringing good coffee in the mornings, asking about how he slept, whether or not he'd heard from Bashir. Which he hadn't. That, coupled with no new bodies to derive clues from, had meant that Sawyer was obsessing over the cases they had to the point of forgetting to eat or sleep.

He needed to fix this. He needed to find the killer, to prove it was them beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that would be how he showed Bashir he was sorry for…well, not for telling the truth, because it looked like Tami was in a shit-ton of trouble whether she was a murderer or not, but for disrupting his life like he had.

Sawyer was going to fix it. He would find the truth, he'd catch the killer, and he'd explain everything to Bashir and then maybe…just maybe, Bashir would take him back.

Nobody's going to take you back looking the way you do.

Sawyer sighed. His internal nagging voice used to sound like his sister; now it sounded like Nan. You look like a raccoon who went on a trash bender, the voice went on. Clean up your desk, go home, and get some actual sleep instead of driving around after potential suspects. Are you insane? Because that's what insane people do.

Ha, no. That was what smart people did, and Sawyer was fucking smart, because it had already paid off.

He'd narrowed the field of suspects down from a pool of twenty to just four. Tami was still on the list, because she had to be, but there was so much that didn't resonate there. Sawyer was almost certain that, while Tami was involved, she wasn't the one doing the actual killing, if for no other reason than the sheer physical labor required would have been beyond her. Tami was a petite woman, and the largest of the victims had more than six inches and a hundred pounds on her. She could never have dragged Kurt up that trail, that was for certain.

Carlos Huerta was another suspect. He was smart enough to plan murders like this, Sawyer was certain of it, and he had the strength to do the physical labor involved. But Carlos, Sawyer had discovered over the couple of evenings he'd spent shadowing the guy, was a man of very strict routines. He did his job whenever it was required of him, including the emergency calls, but the rest of the time he spent in his favorite coffee shop or at home, playing on his computer. Coffee shop, home, home, coffee shop. He basically went back and forth between those two places, stopping occasionally for groceries or gas. That was it.

That didn't make it impossible that Carlos was behind the killings, of course, but it did make it less likely. Sawyer couldn't write him off, but his personal habits combined with footage from a YouTube channel that a friend of his posted of them doing an in-game raid together during one of the murders bumped him down to a second-tier suspect. That left two real potential masterminds.

Bashir and Boyce.

Of course, the very thought that Bashir was behind any of this was ludicrous. Apart from Sawyer being able to alibi him out for at least one murder, he just didn't have the mind for it. He was incredibly smart, yes, but there wasn't a sadistic bone in his body. This was a physician who worked with the dead because he had too much empathy for the living. Bashir was kind, understanding, charming, clever…he was great at his job, too. He was the whole reason they'd figured out these were murders in the beginning, in all honesty. Without his suspicions about the chainsaw "accident," Sawyer and Kurt might not have looked for more evidence to support the murder theory. So, no, there was no way he was the killer, despite the intricacy of the kills, Bashir's easy proximity to the bodies, and Tami's obsession with him.

Which left Doctor Boyce, and quite honestly, he was the one Sawyer would have picked from the outset if he'd been left with nothing but these personnel files and none of the actual evidence.

The man had the bedside manner of a sociopath and the interpersonal acumen of a sea urchin. He was prickly, unpleasant, and entitled. He wasn't well-liked at work, and he didn't seem to have much of a personal life outside regular trips to the country club. He was a social climber without the ability to be, well, social . But he was smart enough to become a pathologist. He was tall. Fairly fit, too. He could be the one behind it all…but Sawyer had zero evidence of that.

So go find some evidence.

Sawyer hid his yawn behind his hand as he stood up. He stared at the files spread out across his desk. He ought to put them away, but he was so fucking tired already…he stacked them into a pile and tucked them into a drawer instead. It was eight o'clock on a Friday; Boyce was probably at the country club by now. They had theme nights every Friday at the bar, which he seemed to attend religiously if the valet Sawyer had discreetly spoken to was any indicator. Sawyer would go and verify that Boyce's car was there, stay in the shadows long enough to watch him leave, and then follow at a safe distance to check into what he did next. If Sawyer was lucky, Boyce would go and attempt to commit a heinous crime that Sawyer could catch him in the middle of.

Now who's the sociopath?

Sawyer sighed and poured himself a final cup of coffee from the office percolator before turning off the machine and heading out. His heart didn't need this much caffeine, but his brain wasn't going to last the next few hours without it. He sipped it desultorily as he walked out to his car.

His phone pinged. Sawyer checked it eagerly, but—not Bashir. It was Jessica instead. She was either trying to bury the hatchet or bury it in Sawyer's back, but either way he didn't want to talk to her right now. Honestly, the only person he wanted to talk to was Bashir, but he'd already texted the man twice with zero effect. He wasn't going to persist and make him uncomfortable, especially when he had no new information to offer him. Speaking of…

Sawyer sighed but reluctantly sent a message to Nan letting her know his plan for the evening. He sent a quick text to Molly, too; she was trying to schedule a funeral for Kurt, but thanks to the open nature of the case, his body hadn't been released yet. She'd asked him earlier for an update on when she might be able to lay her husband to rest before she passed away herself, and Sawyer promised her he'd look into it asap.

Huh…it might be a good enough reason to go see Bashir in person. Surely he wouldn't turn him out of the morgue for checking on the body of his dead partner.

Wow, using Kurt as an excuse to get close to your crush. You're a terrible person.

Sawyer sighed and turned on the engine, then turned the music way up to drown out the recriminations flooding through his brain. It was like a script he'd memorized but couldn't let go of once the project was over.

You could have fixed it. You should have fixed it. You should have done better, been better—a better partner to Kurt, a better potential boyfriend to Bashir. Now you're driving off, alone, to legally stalk one of the worst people you know in the middle of the night, and if it feels like just the right level of Hell for you, it's because it probably is.

Sawyer turned up The Beastie Boys and sang along with no care for his awful pitch until he got close to the country club. There was a gate, but it was open, so he drove right through and made a few circuits of the parking lot until he spotted Boyce's bright red Porsche 911. A two-hundred-thousand-dollar car, it stood out even in the midst of all the other expensive rides. At least it verified that the guy was here.

Sawyer parked at the far side of the lot where he could keep an eye on the car without being too conspicuous and settled in to wait. Thirty minutes passed, and he ran out of coffee. An hour passed, and he was yawning again, eyes watering as he struggled to stay awake. Five days of evening stakeouts and early mornings meant about four hours of sleep each night, and it was catching up with him now.

If this was a television show, this is the moment when you'd get killed. Guard down, tired, sitting alone in the dark… Someone would have snuck into the back of your car, and they'd reach around the headrest with a garrote or a knife and cut your throat.

Sawyer watched the scene play out in his mind's eye. Mm, no, not a garrote, his headrest was too big to get around easily. A knife…or maybe shot through the back of the seat with a suppressed pistol. He pictured himself jerking with the force of the bullet, slumping down over his bloody steering wheel as he quietly gasped his last breaths with no one to appreciate them except his killer.

Ugh, he was going to freak himself out if he kept this up. Reluctantly, Sawyer checked the message from Jessica.

Chloe was fired from set today. I hope you're happy.

Shit. Sawyer pressed the heel of his palm to his forehead as hard as he could. Of course he wasn't happy that his niece had been kicked off one of her shows; he knew how tough it was to stay relevant in Hollywood. He also knew that giving his sister classified information so she could produce a show about active fucking cases was a bad idea.

I'm sorry to hear that , he texted back, then put his phone on silent. All he wanted at this point was to make it through the end of the night and fall into his bed. Screw going to work tomorrow; he'd tell Nan he was sick and stay at home for one goddamn day.

It took another hour for Boyce to appear, just as Sawyer was beginning to wonder if the pinches to his thigh were going to be enough to keep him going. He perked up when he heard the engine rev, as obnoxiously loud as the man himself. He let the bright red car pull out ahead of him, then headed down the inclined driveway to follow it.

Don't head straight home, for once. Make it worth my damn while .

Sawyer got his wish…kind of. The car didn't head in the direction of Boyce's gated community, which unfortunately Sawyer couldn't get access to without revealing his badge and the fact that he was looking into a community member. No good; he didn't want to get reported. This was unofficial surveillance for now, and if he spooked his best guess at the murder suspect into going quiet, he'd never be able to face Bashir. No, he needed information, he needed more data, he needed a fucking conviction. Then he could face Bashir again, with the air finally cleared between them, and…and…fuck.

Fuck, why was Boyce going so goddamn fast?

Sawyer picked up the pace, doing his best to keep the Porsche in sight while trying to keep from appearing as though he was tailing the car. It was easier said than done—this late, the only cars on the road were either being driven by people heading into or off of the nightshift somewhere, or people driving slow enough that they were almost certainly inebriated and trying to keep the police from pulling them over. None of them were speeding except for Boyce, and now Sawyer.

"Damn it," he muttered, wishing he could turn his lights on. That would make this all so much easier. Pulling the guy over for speeding wasn't the game plan, though. He followed him down the road that led east from the country club—the same road, come to think of it, that Mr. Upworth's farm was located on.

Another connection Sawyer hadn't considered before.

Adrenaline surged through him as the Porsche rounded a corner two hundred feet ahead of him, vanishing from sight. Oh no, he fucking didn't. Sawyer pushed down the gas pedal, making his reliable little Toyota whine as he forced it to a speed it wasn't equipped for. He took the corner too fast, nearly losing traction with the tires. The wheel wobbled for a moment under his hands before firming up again, and he exhaled hard.

It was fine. There was Boyce's car up ahead; he could make out its obnoxious, skinny taillights from here. This particular road was a straight shot all the way to the middle of town, except for a few bridge crossings and an irritating roundabout with turn-offs into two more rural neighborhoods. He'd be easier to follow once they were in town and he had lights and other cars to help slow this fucker down. Speaking of, Boyce was about to hit the roundabout. Sawyer watched with a sense of satisfaction as the lights swerved around the right side of the circular menace. Then—

Shit. Where were the lights?

Had Boyce cut his headlights in the middle of a turn?

His headache pounding in time with his pulse, Sawyer fought the urge to speed up and instead approached the roundabout at a speed that wouldn't send him flying off the road. He craned his neck left and right as he went around it, looking for any sign of the car.

Nothing. Fuck. Fuck , Boyce was either drunk or he knew he was being followed. It was the first time Sawyer had ever held out hope for a DUI.

He had a choice to make. He could either go straight, or he could turn into one of the neighborhoods and see if Boyce had parked somewhere in an effort to hide. Which way would he go, though? Which way made the most sense for him?

None of them did, if Sawyer was honest. They all led away from his house, not toward it, and he'd be stuck downtown, likely on camera, if he kept going straight. Boyce didn't seem the sort to like being on camera if he could help it .

Fine, so he was in one of the neighborhoods. But which one? Sawyer, for all that he'd lived here for a while now, hadn't learned this part of town very well. There were only a few suburban sections out here—the rest of it was still farmland, although the neighborhood on the east side butted up against the country club's golf course.

Huh. Boyce was a golfer. He'd probably had a chance to eye this neighborhood from the course before. That would increase his familiarity with it, and that meant a higher comfort level.

Eh, what the hell. It was worth a try. Sawyer turned into the east neighborhood and slowed to fifteen miles per hour as he drove down the central street, where a few nondescript cars were parked with no lights on. The street had three turn-offs, each one leading into a short road ending in a cul-de-sac. Honey Circle. Honey Lane. Honey Court. God, this place must be hell on GPS.

And no red Porsche. Fuck. Fuck , he'd gone one of the other ways. Sawyer had almost certainly lost him now, but at least he could try the other neighborhood before giving it up as lost.

He turned back onto Beehive Drive—wow, who had done the naming out here?—and went thirty feet before slamming on his brakes. Because there it was, just ahead of him on the other side of the road. The red Porsche. All the lights were off, and when he rolled his window down, all he heard was the sound of his own engine, nothing from the Porsche.

What the hell was going on? Had Boyce abandoned it for some reason? Why, though? He could have gotten away clean—there was no way Sawyer had missed this car on the drive down. All he'd seen here before was the beat-up old pickup and the hulking black SUV that —

Had moved. It was farther down the road than it had been before. Someone had moved it.

All the hairs on the back of Sawyer's forearms stood at attention. Screw this, he needed backup. He reached for his phone, bending slightly to grab it off the seat next to him.

Then he punched his foot down on the gas, making his car—and his phone—leap forward as he narrowly avoided getting the rear of his car smashed by that fucking SUV. It had raced forward from a standstill with no lights on, and only a vague sense of motion in Sawyer's peripheral vision and a healthy dose of paranoia had been enough to keep it from taking out his car.

His phone was on the floor now, too far away to grab. Sawyer had never wished so hard for Bluetooth in his life. He ignored it and kept his foot down, racing back toward the country road that would take him to town. He needed to get some space, but that wasn't happening—the SUV was already in pursuit, and it was moving a lot faster than he was. Sawyer turned as fast and tight at the roundabout as he could, then shifted into high gear once he was back on the straightaway. He needed to get space between them. There was no shoulder on this road, no good place for him to turn off. All he could do was run.

And running wasn't working. The SUV was catching up, fast. Sawyer tried to swerve back and forth, make himself harder to hit, but the driver just surged ahead and rammed the right side of his rear bumper. Sawyer heard the bumper crunch— ouch —but he was still moving. It wasn't fatal yet. He raced over a bridge that spanned an irrigation ditch from the nearby river, then took another hit to his car again, hard enough to knock his bumper clean off this time, if the awful noise and brief spray of sparks was anything to go by. Damn it, all right, one more bridge crossing coming up fast, this one over a pretty substantial river, and then he'd be in sight of downtown and—

BAM. BAM. BAM.

Each hit snapped Sawyer's neck forward, and the wheel began to wobble again as one of the back tires became unstable. Shit, he wasn't going to make it to town. He wasn't going to make it anywhere. He was going to get run off the road by a murderer and left as a grisly corpse for Bashir to have to examine, and—

No. Fuck that. Sawyer wasn't going to die tonight, and even if he was, he was not going to be turned into a serial killer's calling card. There was still a bridge coming up.

All he had to do was miss it.

He didn't let himself think. Just as the SUV surged ahead again, Sawyer jerked the wheel to the right and slammed on the brakes. His car slowed some as he started down the embankment ahead, but not enough. Just as the nose of his car hit the water, he saw a wheel bounce off toward the road.

Then he was upside down, and then…

Then he was in darkness.

The wheel meandered back along the road a ways, past the SUV that had skidded to a stop, finally rolling past a beat-up Ford Focus whose driver was confused when she saw it.

When she noticed damage at the edge of the bridge's guard rail, she slowed down to look at the water as she passed. A second later she stopped and smacked on the car's emergency lights, swearing as she fumbled for her phone.

The SUV was gone before she got there.