Chapter 21

Monday, March 15

11:30 a.m.

"I want every inch of this room processed in the next hour, Reed." Director Livingstone's heels had started wearing through old brown carpeting with each pass across the compact hotel suite. Quiet waves of anger followed her every step. "Find me something that tells us who's targeting these victims."

"This doesn't make sense. Schmidt's luggage, passport, Scotland Yard credentials—it's all still sitting here." Leigh flipped through Gresham Schmidt's British passport left on the beaten dresser with nothing but an empty gum wrapper in the top drawer. None of the toiletry seals had been broken in the bathroom. Not even a drop of water sticking to the bottom of the shower surround. A king-size bed that looked as though it'd never been slept in took up the most space, blocking the team from moving freely. A griminess she couldn't see but felt with every cell in her body closed in. The blackout drapes had been closed and held on to odors of a cleaning agent. Recent from the potency. The desk, too. The Fireside Inn was known for its cozy woodwork, cabin feel with dark paint on feature walls and fireplaces in every room, but Leigh had never felt so cold as she did right then. "It's like he walked out of this room and left his entire life behind. Why?"

"Place has been cleaned. I'm not finding any prints, and if I stay too close to these curtains, I'm going to pass out from the fumes." Chandler Reed let that statement gain tension between the four of them. He didn't have to fill in what the rest of them were thinking. This resembled Michelle Cross's home. A professional. Someone who knew exactly where forensic evidence might hide and how to get rid of it. "Either the maid service employs a crime scene clean-up crew, or someone went out of their way to destroy any forensic trace Gresham Schmidt was here."

Leigh wasn't sure any of them wanted to acknowledge what Chandler meant.

"Then why leave his belongings?" Two possibilities took hold. Either Gresham Schmidt had left them behind or someone else had, but Leigh couldn't jump to any conclusions until they figured out what the hell was going on here. "Schmidt has never investigated a case in the US. He doesn't have any real connection to this town or the people in it. What was he doing here?"

Leigh pressed her thumb into the most recent page stamped in the passport. There was a photo there, wedged in the crease. Old. Bent at one corner, fraying along the opposite side. It'd lived in the leather wallet for some time, but it was a familiar face staring down at and hugging the boy—around nine or ten—in the photo that pooled dread at the base of her spine. A boy she recognized better than she recognized herself in the mirror. "I think we can safely assume Schmidt was, in fact, investigating my brother's case."

She handed off the passport to the director.

Livingstone's expression didn't even tic. Guarded as though she lived her life expecting the people around her lied on a daily basis and nothing could knock her off-balance. "The stamp confirms Gresham Schmidt arrived in the States five days before his body was left for us to find in the orchard." She flipped the photo over. "Joel and Troy, 2003."

The energy in the room quieted. Boucher's shoulders deflated while the rest of them tried to hold it together. "Shit. How did Schmidt get ahold of one of your family photos?"

"I don't know." Pieces of the massive puzzle they'd all taken on shifted a bit closer to fitting. Gresham Schmidt's legacy wasn't just in his impeccable record or case closure for Scotland Yard. Not even the miraculous serial case he'd somehow closed after a year of dead ends. He'd started investigating Troy's death—without resources, without cause, without personal benefit. He'd taken on Leigh's murder investigation as his own and was one of three who'd paid the price in the end. "All we can confirm is both Gresham Schmidt and Michelle Cross were looking into a twenty-year-old murder case. And it stands to reason Dr. Jennings found something integral to the investigation to make her a target."

Boucher scrubbed a hand through his hair, the circles under his eyes much darker than this morning. "This shit just keeps getting weirder and weirder."

Leigh didn't have an argument.

"How would Schmidt have even learned about the Brody case?" Chandler Reed's attention slipped to her, and she couldn't help but feel the weight of the entire room on her chest. "Local homicides are rarely—if ever—newsworthy on an international level."

"That's for me to find out." Livingstone handed back the passport. "I understand what we've learned about Gresham Schmidt is bright and shiny and looks like a promising lead, but the goal hasn't changed. We have three victims. Our focus has to remain on them. Agen' Brody, I want you in Concord. Given your history with police there, you'll take the lead in following up with Dr. Jennings's coworkers in the medical examiner's office. I want statements from her neighbors and to make sure her apartment is processed according to protocol. I'll let the captain know you're on your way. Boucher, you'll go with her. There's a good chance Schmidt reached out to someone in the ME's office if he was working the original investigation. Find out what Gresham Schmidt was doing in between the days he landed stateside and was killed and get back to me. Reed, I trust you can do your job without my standing over your shoulder. Seems I have a few calls to make."

The director carved one last path through the ugly carpet on her way out.

Leigh couldn't help but connect the dots her gut didn't want to consider. That whoever'd tried to get her to leave the past in the past had first tried to make his point clear through another investigator getting too close. She skimmed her thumb across the photo tucked into Schmidt's passport. It was too late to verify where it'd come from now. Everything, including her family photo albums, had most likely been destroyed in the fire, but given the damage done to the house before her return, it wasn't hard to imagine someone getting their hands on the photograph without her knowledge. "Someone must've brought my brother's case to Gresham Schmidt's attention. Maybe they thought he was the best option for solving cold cases given his case history, but that doesn't explain why they believed police didn't have the right suspect."

"What about Michelle Cross?" Chandler asked. "We already know she had another suspect in mind. Only she didn't possess the access, the knowledge, or the clout a former detective would have to get the information she needed for her book."

"It's possible." She didn't have evidence. She had nothing more than instinct and experience, and the pressure to prove it gripped her by the throat.

"As much as I want to jump on board with your little theory, Brody, we can't ask a dead woman if she consulted a burned-out detective on a twenty-year-old case. We have to look at the evidence and victims we have now without our personal biases. You should know that better than any one of us seeing as how you couldn't convince anyone your daddy was innocent all those years ago," Boucher said. "If Dr. Jennings found a lead during the Cross autopsy that made her a target, Livingstone would've been the one she called. Unless the dear old director isn't telling us everything."

He was right. They had to focus on the here and now. What they had in front of them. Not wishful thinking. She was letting her personal feelings impact the investigation, but the idea Livingstone was keeping information from the team didn't feel right. None of this did. The weight of Chandler's gaze struck her as sharp as an invisible needle in her chest. This entire case had spun out of her control in a matter of days to the point she wasn't sure which way was up.

And it all tied back to her brother's and Derek Garrison's murders two decades ago.

There had to be a reason for that, but that reason refused to slow down enough to let her catch on. "Okay. Then, as of right now, we assume Gresham Schmidt was looking into the case from twenty years ago. That's the connection between the first two victims. We need to put out an all-points-bulletin and present Schmidt's photo to public. Someone has to have seen him over the past few days. Until then, there's something I need to do back at the station before we leave for Concord."

"Now, how did I know you were going to say that?" Boucher collected his keys. "I'll drive. You look like you're about to pass out."

"Funny. I was about to say the same thing about you." It wasn't the blisters along her shins that threatened to take her down. It was the headache spreading with each step as they headed for the heavy door that'd been propped open when they'd arrived. She'd been able to ignore the pain until now. That was one of the advantages of surviving what she had since the night she'd found that body in the crawl space of her parents' closet. Her ability to compartmentalize almost anything was the only thing keeping her from losing it, but she couldn't physically keep going much longer without a meal, a shower, and a full eight hours of sleep.

"Agent Brody," Chandler Reed said from behind. "A minute?"

The humor playing at the corners of Boucher's mouth told her exactly what he thought the federal investigator wanted. The lieutenant lowered his voice. "Let him down easy, Brody. I'll meet you outside." He headed down the long hall carpeted in a geometric pattern that threatened to trigger vertigo.

"How are the legs?" Chandler rounded the foot of the bed, closing the distance between them. She'd never gotten this close to him, and it hit her how much… bigger he was than she was. Stronger. Not just in stature, but in wanting to help and care for others. To the point he'd forgo following Director Livingstone's hour deadline for the chance to check in on Leigh.

"Medium-rare. Thanks for asking." She didn't know what else to say to him, didn't really know how to talk to him. Then again, they were strangers. Each positioned on a separate track heading in the same direction. Their paths didn't cross or give them reason to interact, and that was how it was supposed to be. He'd broken the rules by asking her to stay.

They were so different, the two of them. She craved isolation while being alone was possibly the worst scenario Chandler Reed could find himself in. It was evidenced in the way he'd tried to forge a personal relationship between them. Not just in this room but after the fire while the EMTs were treating her burns, when he'd tracked her down after Chris Ellingson had led her away from the scene. Her heart hurt for him, but that kind of need to be wanted and loved had burned out in her a long time ago. And she had a job to do.

Leigh hiked a thumb over her shoulder as the silence pressed in around them. "I should go. From what I've learned, Boucher isn't the type of person who likes to wait in a freezing car."

"Have you opened the box?" Chandler reached out but didn't make contact. He wouldn't. Not without her permission, and it was then she understood, given the scars he tried to hide, he didn't like to be touched either. She'd have to remember that. "The one Chris Ellingson gave you."

"No." So much had happened between that night and now, she'd almost forgotten about it altogether. The gift was meant to mess with her mind, to claim her focus, and Leigh wasn't going to let that happen. Chris Ellingson had consumed her every thought for two decades. He didn't get to demand anything from her now. "I'm not sure I want to confirm what's inside, but I'll let you know if I need you to take a look at it."

Chandler nodded. "Be careful out there."

She left it at that. Her slacks rubbed against her shins as she exited the hotel room and descended the stairs at the end of the hall. She shoved through the back door of the hotel into the parking lot. Exhaust clouded at the back of Boucher's patrol vehicle as she got inside.

"So how'd he take it?" Boucher put the car in Drive, swinging the hood toward Main Street once she'd buckled.

She wasn't going to have this conversation with him. "Just take me back to the station."

Frost clung to low-maintenance desert plants lining the front of the hotel and whitewashed the landscape ahead of them. The picturesque scene she'd memorized her last day in town at seventeen years old had faded, leaving nothing but bare trees, emptiness, and so much death. She wanted the present to line up with her memory. Fireworks in Colburn Park, Christmas lights strung from every business and home, kids running through sprinklers and blowing bubbles on their front yards. But there was no going back. Murder had tainted everything and left nothing but anger, fear, and grief behind.

"That bad, huh?" The lieutenant navigated them back to the station. Boucher fanned one palm over the steering wheel to turn onto Poverty Lane. "You need some people skills, Brody. Studying all those serial killers is turning you into a damn zombie."

"I'll try to remember that." She wouldn't. She'd tried people skills. All she'd gotten in return was pity. "What did you say to her?"

"Who?" He angled into the parking lot and shoved the car into Park.

"Director Livingstone. At the park after Dr. Jennings's body was discovered. There has to be a reason you think she's keeping information from the team." The interaction hadn't meant much at the time, but with Schmidt's confirmed connection and an obvious spiraling reaction from Livingstone, Boucher could be the best person to get a read on the BAU director's motives. "You both stepped away from the scene. Neither of you looked happy by the time you were finished."

A sharp exhale cut through the tension coming from the driver's side. "I asked her out to coffee. We made plans. She never showed up. Next time I saw her was standing over Jennings's body, and yeah, I wasn't happy. It was…"

"It was the first time since your divorce," she said. "I'm sorry."

"Nah." Boucher pulled the patrol vehicle into the station's lot, cut the engine, and shouldered onto the pavement. "Hell, I probably saved myself the hassle."

That was one way to see a silver lining. She didn't bother waiting for Boucher to take the lead this time. What once stood as a blockade to getting the answers she needed, the station had become nothing more than a carefully constructed pile of brick and metal and tile. The scraps of familiarity she'd believed had helped forge her into the agent and woman she was outside of Lebanon had started shedding. There was something new taking hold. A combination of her old life mixed with the new. No matter how many times she'd tried to exorcise this town from her blood, it'd been part of her from the beginning. She couldn't change the past, but she could stop letting it affect her as often. Having a partner—and a team—who had her back helped.

Leigh crossed the threshold barring civilians from the bowels of the station and ticked off each room by its nameplate until she came to Evidence. "We need to review everything Lebanon PD gathered during the murder investigation twenty years ago. Every witness statement, forensic report, crime scene photo—all of it. If all three victims were trying to prove my father was innocent, this is the place to start."

"The first three hundred times wasn't enough for you?" Boucher inserted his key into the doorknob and twisted, shoving the door open. "Not sure how much more water you're going to get out of that rock."

"Didn't take you for a Bible scholar, Boucher. Your upbringing is showing." Leigh had memorized the case number too many times to count. She ran her fingers along the heavy-duty steel shelves stacked with paper boxes holding clues and answers for hundreds of crimes. With this small of an evidence room, she bet multiple cases had been packed into each box. Each case number had been written in legible black Sharpie, most four to a box, but there was a hole where the container she wanted should've been. "Did one of your guys check the evidence out?"

Boucher reviewed the sign-out sheet hanging from a nail just inside the door. "Not according to the clipboard. No record of the box being logged out." He handed off the clipboard. "No signature either."

Leigh scanned the page to be sure, but the surrounding ink seemed to darken right in front of her. There was only one reason not to leave a signature on this page. "Someone stole the evidence."