1st Case - James Patterson
CHAPTER 1
Forensic Media Analysis Report
Case agent: William Keats, ASAC, FBI Field Office, Boston, MA
Evidence marker #43BX992
Media: iPhone 11, serial 0D45-34RR-8901-TS26, registered to victim, Gwen Petty
Recovered file: Unknown source mixed-media electronic message transcript. Source investigation pending.
I want to touch you. Your face, your skin, your thighs, your eyes. I want to feel you shiver as my hands explore every part of you.
I want to hear you. Your voice, whispering my name. Your breath in my ear. Your soft moan as I give you everything you want, and so much more.
I want to taste you. Your lips. Your kisses. Your beautiful flower, opening to my touch, my mouth, my tongue.
I want to take in the scent of you. I want to smell the perfume of your hair. The musk of your desire, bringing us closer, always closer.
More than anything, Gwen, I want to see you. Face to face. Body to body. I could pour my heart out with words forever, but words will never be enough.
It’s time we finally met, don’t you think?
Please say yes.
CHAPTER 2
THEY TOLD ME ahead of time to prepare myself for the dead bodies. But nobody told me how.
When I pulled up outside of 95 Geary Lane in Lincoln, all I knew was that a family of five had been killed and that I was supposed to report to Agent Keats for further instruction. Talk about jumping into the deep end, but hey, this was exactly the kind of assignment I’d been jonesing for. On paper, anyway. Real life, as it turns out, is a little more complicated than that.
“Can I help you?” a cop at the tape line on the sidewalk asked.
“I’m Angela Hoot,” I said.
“Good for you,” he said.
“Oh.” I’d forgotten to show him my new temporary credential. I held it up. “I’m with the FBI,” I said.
I could hardly believe the words coming out of my mouth. Me? With the FBI? Not something I ever saw coming, that was for sure. I certainly didn’t look the part, and I didn’t feel like I belonged there for a second.
Neither could the cop, apparently. He eyeballed me twice, once before he even looked at the ID, and once after. But that seemed to take care of it. He handed back my card, gave me an if-you-say-so kind of shrug, and lifted up the yellow tape to let me into the crime scene.
“Watch out for the smell,” he said. “It’s pretty bad in there.”
“Smell?” I said.
“You’ll see.”
It hit me on the porch steps, before I was even through the front door. I’d never been anywhere near a dead body, much less smelled one, but what else could that acrid nastiness be? A gag reflex pulsed in my throat. I switched to mouth breathing and fought the urge to run back to my safe little cubicle in Boston.
What was I doing here? I was a computer jockey, not some CSI wannabe.
Up until two hours ago, I’d been a lowly honors intern at the Bureau field office, focusing on cyberforensics. Clearly, I was here to look at some kind of digital evidence, but knowing that didn’t make it any less bizarre to walk into my first real crime scene.
The house was almost painfully ordinary, considering what I knew had gone down here just a few hours earlier. The living room was mostly empty. I saw all the expected furniture, the art on the walls, the fan of cooking magazines on a glass coffee table. Nothing at all looked out of place.
Most of the action was centered around the kitchen straight ahead. I’d noticed police officers stationed outside the house, but inside, it was all FBI. I saw blue ERT polo shirts for the Evidence Response Team, techs in white coveralls, and a handful of agents in business attire. Voices mingled in the air while I tried to get my bearings.
“No signs of a struggle,” someone said. “We’ve got some scuff marks here on the sill, and over by the table …”
“Looks like the back door was the point of entry. Must have shot this poor guy right through the window.”
“Yup.”
They all sounded like they were discussing the score of last night’s game, not a multiple homicide. It just added another dreamlike layer to the whole thing.
The lights were off in the kitchen, and one of the techs was using some kind of black light to illuminate spatters on the linoleum floor. It was blood, I realized, fluorescing in the dark. I could just make out a half empty glass of milk