“Call that number,” he told Faith. “See if you can get an address.”

  It took some coaxing, but when Faith promised not to divulge her source, the publisher’s representative provided the last known address for Callum Jennings.

  “Perfect,” Faith said, “Let’s go see what he has to say.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The address led to an old wood plank house about three miles from Sioux City in the small community of Hope Falls, a place that had no waterfall and no sign of hope among the dilapidated homes and abandoned businesses.

  Maybe they meant Falls to be a verb, Faith thought. Hope Disappears here.

  An old Ford Bronco was parked in a dirt driveway next to an even older Dodge Power Wagon. As they walked up the drive, Faith could see a bundle of canvas tarp in the back of the Power Wagon.

  She shared a look with Michael and knocked on the door. Turk stood just to her right, head low, tail switching back and forth.

  The door opened a crack, and a scratchy voice said, "Yes? What do you want?"

  “Callum Jennings?”

  “You’re here for Callum? Why? What did he do?”

  “I’m afraid I can only discuss that with Mr. Jennings,” Faith said. “Is he your son?”

  The older man wheezed laughter and opened the door wider, revealing a wrinkled, potbellied body and a long, gray beard. He wore a white wifebeater that was stained with what Faith hoped was coffee and grease and his beard and moustache were flecked with spittle. A sour odor of sweat and alcohol emanated from him, and Faith’s nostrils flared.

  “Callum’s my tenant. He’s renting my storm shelter.” His eyes narrowed suddenly. “And that’s perfectly legal. Constitution says I have a right to do what I want with my own property.”

  The Constitution did not say that, but Faith wasn’t here to prosecute zoning laws. She was far more interested in the fact that Mr. Jennings rented a storm shelter. “May we speak with Mr. Jennings?”

  The older man shifted his gaze between the two agents. “I ain’t responsible for what he done,” he said. “He lives here, but we ain’t friends. I don’t know what he gets up to.”

  “We’re not here for you, sir,” Faith assured him. “We have a confidential matter that we need to discuss with Mr. Jennings. Is he available?”

  “Well, he’s out back, but I can’t tell you if he’ll see you or not. Willingly, anyway.”

  “Can you take us to where he is?” Michael asked patiently.

  “Sure,” the old man said. He looked down at Turk and said, “That dog don’t bite, does he?”

  “Not unless he has to,” Faith replied.

  The old man nodded. "Had a Rottweiler once. Sweetest dog in the world if you were me. Didn't like anyone else, though. He ended up biting a neighbor kid real bad when he came over the fence trying to get his football back. Had to put him down. My name's Roger, by the way. People call me Jolly Roger."

  He grinned, and Faith had to admit that with his crazy beard and missing teeth, he looked an awful lot like a pirate. “It’s a pleasure to admit you, Roger,” she said. “I’m Special Agent Faith Bold. The dog is our K9 unit, Turk, and just behind him is my partner, Special Agent Michael Prince.”

  “Pleasure,” Roger said. “All right, come on in. I’ll take you out back.”

  He led the agents through the house. Turk snorted and shook his head, but Faith wasn’t sure if that was because he couldn’t smell the odor of whiskey and stale cigarettes or because he could.

  “You can't tell me what he done, can you?” Roger asked.

  “This is a private matter with Mr. Jennings,” Faith confirmed.

  He nodded. “All right. Hope it’s nothin’ too bad. Heard of a guy a while back who would lure women out to his car then knock ‘em out and take ‘em somewhere to torture ‘em to death. Crazy feller. Bundy, I think his name was."

  Faith and Michael shared a look but chose not to comment. Roger led them to a half-acre yard that sported patches of uneven grass and a few maples whose spreading branches indicated that pruning was not an activity Jolly Roger saw as necessary.

  In the shadow of one of these maples was the shelter entrance, a rusted corrugated steel box with an even more rusted door. Faith couldn’t imagine any storm that wouldn’t easily destroy this entrance, but she supposed it worked well enough for Callum’s purposes.

  “Thank you, Roger,” Faith said. “We’ll take it from here.” When the older man didn’t leave, Faith added, “you should go inside now.”

  Roger, clearly disappointed, muttered. “Oh, all right. Y’all holler if you need anything.”

  Faith watched until he stepped into the house and reluctantly closed his back door. Then the three of them approached the shelter.

  Faith pressed the doorbell and waited.

  “Coming!” a youthful voice called from downstairs.

  She heard heavy footsteps, and a moment later, the door opened. A young man—very young, probably not even twenty-five—with a crop of messy blonde hair and a thick-boned but soft pudgy build stared in wide-eyed shock at the two agents.

  “Callum Jennings?” Faith asked.

  “You guys are FBI?” he said. “Why are you here? I’m not a hacker or anything.”

  “But you are Callum Jennings?” Faith pressed.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you’re the man we want to see,” she said. “May we come inside?”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “We have a few questions to ask you right now,” Faith replied, deflecting the question.

  “Um… do I need a lawyer?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Do you think you need one?” Michael countered.

  He hesitated another moment before saying, "No. I mean, I didn't do anything wrong."

  “Then you won’t mind answering a few questions,” Faith insisted.

  He frowned but couldn’t come up with a good reason to refuse. “No, I guess not.”

  "Wonderful," Faith said. "So, may we come in?"

  He hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

  They followed him down a short flight of stairs into a cozy but reasonably well-appointed shelter set up like a studio apartment. There was a compact refrigerator/freezer, a microwave, a tv and a futon, but the centerpiece of the shelter was a desk with an overbuilt gaming desktop and a monitor nearly as large as his tv.

  “I do gaming when I’m not writing,” Callum explained.

  “I see,” Faith replied. “Are you any good?”

  He shrugged. “I mean, I’m not ranked or anything, but I do okay. Hey, do you guys want some soda or anything?”

  “We’re fine, thank you,” Michael replied.

  “You mind if I grab one?” he asked.

  “Go ahead,” Michael allowed. “It’s your house.

  “Sweet.”

  He shuffled to his refrigerator and grabbed a two-liter bottle of cola. He unscrewed the cap and drank a long draught directly from the bottle before recapping it and setting it back into the fridge.

  Good thing I declined the drink, Faith thought. Aloud, she asked, “Mr. Jennings, you recently published some blog posts on the most haunted places in the local area, correct?”

  “Yeah,” he said, eyes brightening. “What did you think? Were they good?”

  “Riveting,” Michael said drily. “I was particularly interested in the part where you said that Dr. Gemma Montgomery, Patrick Jeter and Kevin Malloy must have deserved to die and that was why the spirits killed them in those abandoned buildings.”

  Callum blinked in confusion. Then he realized. His face blanched and his eyes widened. “Oh God,” he said. “I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t kill them! I didn’t want them to die, I just… I wanted to sell the book.”

  “The book?”

  “It isn’t out yet. It’s going to include those articles, but yeah, I’m writing a book on haunted buildings in Iowa. Oh God, I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just for show, you know? So people get spooked.”

  “It’s definitely spooky,” Faith agreed. “To know that someone might actually endorse the brutal murders of three innocent people. It keeps me up at night for sure."

  “No!” he said. “I don’t endorse it! I…” he sighed. “Look, it’s all made up, okay? None of those buildings are actually haunted.”

  “You don’t say?” Michael deadpanned.

  "I mean, they're not even rumored to be haunted. They're just regular old buildings. I made up stories about vengeful ghosts so I could be published."

  “Well, I imagine that the fact that people actually died in those buildings will lend some credibility to your claims, won’t it?” Michael said.

  “No!” he said, shaking his head.

  "You don't think so?" Faith said, "I think it will. In fact, I think it will make the difference between a boring rehash of the same haunted house stories we all heard as children and an exciting account of the most mysterious deaths to hit Western Iowa in decades. Readers will eat it up, and the author will no doubt become very wealthy."

  “I didn’t kill anyone, okay?” Callum insisted, fear morphing into outrage. “I made up some stupid stories, that’s all. And yes, I did it to sell a book, but what do you want me to do? This is my life. This is my dream. I’d do anything to achieve it.”

  “Including murder?”

  "No!" he sighed. "Look, you need an alibi, right? Well, I can give you one. I was here. It doesn't matter what day I was here."

  “Every single day?” Michael asked.

  “Look at me,” Callum replied. “Do I look like I go outside? Do I look like I have an active social life?”

  “That lack of social life might be a problem,” Faith pointed out. “Can anyone confirm that you were here?”

  “Roger can,” Callum said. “I couldn’t have left the house even if I wanted to. I don’t even have a car.”

  “That Power Wagon isn’t yours?” Faith asked.

  "That Power Wagon won't even start," Callum replied with a slight contempt. "Neither will the Bronco. And no, they're not mine. They're Roger's, but Roger lives on a pension and gets all of his food delivered. He hasn’t left his house in longer than I have. We were both here, we’re both losers, but we’re both not murderers. Especially me.”

  “How do you get the photos of the abandoned buildings?” Michael asked.

  “I find them online. I just search abandoned buildings, Iowa, and they pop up. Sometimes, the photos have the location in the file, and sometimes, I do some digging and find it. All from the comfort, safety and legality of my chair.”

  “All right,” Faith said. “We’ll confirm with Roger. In the meantime, you should consider not writing articles justifying murder. It tends to make people like us suspicious.”

  “You got it,” he said, bobbing his head up and down in obvious relief. “No more murder stories. I’ll try… I don’t know, just basic hauntings, I guess. Maybe I'll just make up murders. I'm making up the hauntings anyway."

  Faith decided to let the conversation go. “I’m going to have Turk stay outside of the shelter,” she told Callum. “If you try to leave, we’re going to have some more questions for you, and we’ll have them in a far less comfortable setting. Do you understand?”

  “Crystal,” he said. “Um… he’s not going to hurt me, is he?”

  “You stay put and behave, and Turk will be as gentle as a kitten,” Faith promised.

  Turk cast her a fishy look at the word kitten and Faith corrected, “Puppy. Gentle as a puppy.”

  He nodded, then brightened suddenly. “You know, maybe you should focus on the locations.”

  “The locations?” Faith asked.

  “Yeah. Killers choose their victims, but they also choose their locations. If you’re not getting anywhere looking into the victims, maybe see if there’s a pattern with the locations. Those are just as important to killers as the victims. At least, that’s what my research suggests.”

  Michael and Faith glanced at each other. “We’ll look into it.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “Faith, you know I can’t talk to you about that.”

  “I know,” she said quickly. “I was just wondering if you had anything. I know you can’t share details.”

  “I can’t share anything at all,” Desrouleaux replied. “The Boss made it clear to us that information related to the case was not to be shared with anyone not directly working it. That means me and Chavez only.”

  "You can't even tell me if the man who killed our friend and your partner assaulted me and threatened my boyfriend and my partner is any closer to being caught? You can’t tell me that?”

  “Faith, don’t try to play the sympathy card on me,” Desrouleaux countered irritably. “And don’t you dare use Gordon’s memory as a bargaining chip. He deserves better than that.”

  “So wanting to see his murderer caught is what, disrespectful?” Now Faith was irritated. “For God’s sake, I just want to know if my loved ones and I are safe. What’s so wrong with that?”

  “Faith, I’ve been a detective for twenty years,” Desrouleaux replied. “You do want to know if you and your loved ones are safe. To which my answer is yes, to the best of my knowledge. But that’s not all you want. You want to be the one to bring him in.” He softened his voice. “I get it, Faith. He’s the ghost of the man who hurt you. You want to be the one to beat him so you don’t have to feel like—”

  “Thanks anyway,” Faith said, hanging up.

  She sighed and pressed her palms to her temples. Turk barked in concern and came closer, sniffing and concentrating hard to pinpoint whatever had threatened her. He whined plaintively when his nose remained useless.

  “Yep. You can’t smell, and I can’t hear,” she muttered. “Not what we need to, anyway.”

  The door opened and Michael entered with coffee and breakfast, a few muffins and apples from the hotel cafeteria. He glanced sourly at Faith. “Hard at work already, I see.”

  “I’m thinking,” she snapped. “Is that still allowed, or do I need to give you a play-by-play of what’s in my head?”

  “That would be nice,” he said, “then it would feel like we were partners.”

  “All right,” Faith replied cattily. “Hmm. I have no idea who killed our victims. I wonder who killed our victims? Hmm.”

  Michael sighed. “All right. I’m sorry. I’m just pissed off.”

  “I’m pissed off too, Michael,” Faith reminded him, “but it would be really nice if we could take a break from the whole, ‘Faith screws everything up,’ Schtick.”

  Michael’s lips thinned, but he nodded. “All right.”

  Faith nodded and sighed. “Thank you for the coffee.”

  “Yep.”

  They fell silent for just long enough to make things awkward. Then Michael said, "So, do you have any thoughts?”

  She lifted her hands and let them fall back onto her lap. “All of our suspects have fit into corners of the puzzle. The evidence makes it look like it might be them, but not that it definitely is. We need to find someone who fits the entire puzzle.”

  “The problem is that we don’t have the entire puzzle,” Michael said.

  “Exactly. We have these little pieces, and they seem to fit, then something shows up and makes it stop fitting entirely.” Faith got up and started pacing. “Why storm shelters and silos? Why those specific buildings?”

  “Convenience,” Michael replied. “Stealth. If you kill someone in an abandoned building miles from anyone and anything, then you increase your chances of getting away with it.”

  “But why those exact buildings? Why that storm shelter? Why those silos?”

  “Because they were abandoned?”

  “Michael, there are hundreds of abandoned buildings here,” Faith replied. “Why did our killer choose the ones he chose?”

  “Maybe he just hasn’t gotten around to the others yet,” Michael replied.

  “No, the buildings he chose are miles apart. There are dozens of abandoned buildings separating them. Why did he choose those exact buildings, miles apart, one a storm shelter and two old grain silos?”

  “Did you check to see if there’s a pattern to the locations like the Demon of Morgan County?”

  “I did, actually,” she said. “No luck there. The locations seem random so far.”

  The Demon of Morgan County would pick the wells where he would kill his victims in a cross pattern due to his religious beliefs. That allowed Faith and Michael to predict his next crime scene and catch him before he killed his final victim. Faith had checked the locations of this killer to see if a similar pattern would show up, but she hadn’t found any.

  “Are you sure it’s the location that matters?” Michael asked. “It seems more opportunistic than calculated to me.”

  “It’s the one angle we haven’t tried,” she replied. “We’ve checked the families and friends, they’re clean. We’ve followed up on the tornado survivor lead, and that went nowhere. We went for the haunted house angle, and that’s a dud too. I don’t know where else to look.”

  "We might be overthinking it," Michael said, "This could just be a garden-variety psychopath who got lucky enough to work in a place where it's easy to find victims and remote places to bury them."

  If that was the case, then this case could drag on for months and lead to many more deaths. Not to mention leave David and Ellie in real danger for far longer than Faith hoped. Hell, it was already too late. David was returning to Philadelphia. Ellie might agree to stay with her sister indefinitely, but odds are Franklin West could find her too. In fact, he might go there first.

  Faith’s phone buzzed, but any hope for a reprieve from dark thoughts was dashed when Brady Forster said, “Agent Bold, I’m sorry to bother you guys, but I thought you might want to know that we’ve received a missing persons report from Cedar Springs just south of Sioux City.”

  Faith’s heart sank. She put the phone on speaker and said, “A missing person?”

  “Yes. Name’s Shirley Brooks. Thirty-five years old. Her boyfriend said she didn’t come home last night. Normally we’d wait twenty-four hours before we take a missing persons report, but in light of recent events, I convinced my lieutenant to investigate this one early.”

 

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