"We hadn't heard from her in two months." Jim Langly sat beside his wife's hospital bed, staring at his hands. "I-I assumed she was busy. You know, kids. They don't call when they get busy, especially if they're nurses."
He lifted his hands and Crews watched them shake before he dropped them into his lap.
"And then this. All of this. My family." He could see it in Jim's face, the weight that pulled him down. His daughter was dead, his wife was in a coma. He recounted every moment from when he woke to his wife's screams to the moment he arrived at the hospital. Reese leaned up against the door, her back against it as if she was trying to melt through it to the the other side.
"I think you should go," Jim said softly. "Go catch this-" The wave was ineffectual, half-hearted, and he choked back tears.
Crews rose.
"One more question," Reese said. "Did she have any identifying marks? Scars?"
"I wish I could say I saw something," he said. "But I didn't. I didn't see anything, hear anything. I- No. Not a scar on her body. No surgeries, no broken bones, either. Annette's very careful."
She nodded.
"We'll do everything we can." Reese's voice sounded from behind him. "We'll find who did this." The quiet conviction in her voice was fierce and it lasted all the way to the car. She sat in the driver's seat, motionless, her eyes slit.
"You're thinking about Kelly Marsden." Her fingers curled around the steering wheel and he could almost feet the tension radiating from her body. "You're thinking she can help." Reese punched out a text and got a triple beep in respsonse.
"Mancini is going to meet us there. In fact, she's been there for the last fifteen minutes," she said, flashing her phone at him. They shared a look and she let out a slow sigh. "The eyes bother me. Taking her eyes bothers me, okay?"
"Eyes are the windows to the soul, Reese." Her head bounced slightly as she fell back against the head rest. He reached to squeeze her elbow. "What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking this case means I'm gonna get two hours of sleep in the next week," she said, scowling as she started the car. "And I'm thinking Annette is on a list of women, Crews. Bet the one we're seeing is on that list, too."
Crews opened his mouth to respond, but his phone rang.
Bobby.
"We got a real big problem, Charlie," Bobby said, as Crews put him on speakerphone. "Kelly Marsden, your interview? She'd dead. That Fed that got sent? Pretty sure she was here too."
Reese pulled out of the parking spot and hit the lights, her expression grim.
"We're on our way. Bobby, you tell Mancini to stay put." Bobby started to say something and the phone was pulled away-Crews could hear it fumble.
"I saw him. I saw him, Detective." Her voice was high, half excited, half terrified. Kateri Mancini had seen their perp exiting a crime scene. "I should have been earlier. If I'd been a few minutes earlier-"
"Stay with Bobby," Crews said as Reese angled them around another corner, heading toward the Marsden house.
"You don't understand." Mancini's voice broke. "He took my gun and he let me see him."
"Give Bobby the phone back, Agent," Crews said very gently. Bobby said something he couldn't hear, but came back on the line as Reese blew through a red light. "Don't let her out of your sight."
"I got her. She's pretty shaken up. Blood all over her. I don't think she got hit, though." The wail of an ambulance drowned Bobby's voice out, but that was fine. Reese pulled up in front of two cop cars and the ambulance. Crews was out of the car almost before it had stopped, and shielded his face from the dying sun.
The FBI agent sat on Kelly Marsden's front steps, staring, her expression one of sheer concentration. He knew that look. It was the look of someone trying to memorize the details of one moment in time. He crouched next to her and she half turned her face toward him.
"He said he was making angels," she whispered.