Chapter Three: Case Unsolved
Boring. So very boring, I thought, looking over what had been tossed on my desk that morning. More cases; including a robbery and a break-in. I did not have the time for this, and new information on Tessa's murder was waning along with my superiors' interest. Without that note, which was lost to us, we had absolutely nothing. It was just out of reach; yet we tried to grab at it like Tantalus in the underworld.
Nothing was there. It was infuriating that I, one of the best agents at the FBI, could not solve what looked like a simple shooting at first. I knew that it was an obvious network, but why would a criminal network want someone like Tessa dead? Nothing in this made sense at all.
My phone rang, showing the number of one of the higher-ups in my building. I slid my finger across the screen and lifted it to my ear, dreading what was to come. It was exactly what I had suspected.
"The Tessa Lee case is being put on hold for now. Lack of evidence, lack of witnesses, no motive; it's a waste of time. Our best agents, including you, are working on it and we need you working on other things," the man said.
"Sir, I need to solve this case!" I protested, despite being a little bit relieved.
"I'm sorry, agent. We just cannot waste any more time or money on this case. I know you knew the victim, but there is nothing we can do now," he replied.
I growled. "Fine. I'll turn in the papers tomorrow; just let me clear up everything," I responded. The man thanked me and hung up. I hissed, more in frustration than annoyance, and tossed the phone onto my desk.
I didn't have a case, there was a British sniper running around the capital, and I was in the wrong country for this. Everything I needed to solve it would be practically at my fingers in England. I had to go; it was eating at me slowly.
That isn't why you want to go, whispered a small voice in the back of my mind. I ignored it. There was no use thinking about them when I had a murder to solve and a trip to arrange. I was sorting theories about the motive in my mind palace when my phone rang.
"You're on the right trail, Raven Queen," a male voice on the other end said silkily.
"Who is this?" I demanded, curious and a bit worried about who this man was and how he knew my name.
"I'd give it, oh, a month. Then you'll know exactly what it is that I am." There was a faint click and the line went dead.
I dropped the phone onto the surface of the desk and heavily sat back into my chair. That voice was unmistakable; I just had never heard it before. With an odd, lilting way of speaking and accents on certain syllables, it was so unusual that I knew if I ever heard it again I would recognize it. There was arrogance in that voice, and pride. And insanity. I had heard enough psychopaths to know what they sounded like.
Whoever he was, he knew about Tessa Lee's murder and all the details, along with my own private investigation. No one - no one- could get past the security that the FBI had; no one should have known about that case. I had heard a rumor that the higher-ups in my department were keeping it a secret, too, and if they wanted no one to know, no one would know. Even the police were kept in the dark about this one. Ironic, considering I had almost been forced to hand it to them on a silver platter.
What the man had said filtered back to me. Not who he was, but what. A person who had been able to infiltrate the top security in the FBI in a matter of days, and who had known my plans. Unbidden, a memory came back of a crime spree a few years ago, when I had just gotten out of Quantico and was still shifting departments. The only thing they had found was a note written in blood on the wall of the last killing and signed with the initials JM.
They had never found the perpetrator.
I had never gotten to work on a really big case like that, but this one was growing fast and far beyond my power. That voice lurking in the shadows of my brain screamed that something more was wrong, that there was something I was missing. Something vital. With a frustrated groan, I picked up a bullet sitting on my desk and threw it as hard as I could into the wall opposite. It hit and thudded off with a pathetically disappointing thump. I glared and leaned back in my chair.
My mind was a mess. I had no idea what would happen if I went to England, what I would find. Who I would have to face, what I would have to defeat within myself. I already knew my own capacity for evil, but the thought of fighting my own mind scared me.
There was a message on my phone when I checked it again, just before stepping into my car. It read COME AND GET ME. Nothing else. I knew who it was from, and I knew that this person was; a worthy adversary, a mirror of what I could have become if I had made a different choice. Someone so evil that children were told stories of him to get them to behave.
It was up to me to find that man and bring him to justice, or Tessa Lee and an untold number of others would never have closure. My only problem was how I was going to do it, and it started in a city that I had longed to wipe from my memory.