“She’s all muscle,” Sloane said with a slight smile. “I can beat Kara in virtually every drill, but I’m a Marine. Still, I have to work to win. If I slack off, drop my guard even for a second, she’ll find a weakness and exploit it.”
She spoke with pride, not arrogance. Michael had watched the friendly competition between Sloane and Kara at the gym. Sloane had more training, better form, longer endurance, and at least six inches on Kara. Kara had tenacity, quick feet, and street smarts. He was glad that they were friends, because the tension between Catherine and Kara, until a few months ago, had been difficult. Sloane and Kara seemed to have hit it off from the beginning.
“But you’re right,” Sloane continued, “a woman could roll them into the cart, then right the cart with core strength andleverage. Still, a woman... I know women can kill, but these crimes seem particularly brutal for a woman to be party to. And with Reid in jail, if she was the submissive, would she take the initiative to go ahead and kidnap two people who she would now know are cops?”
“These people are all crazy to me.”
“Don’t let Catherine hear you say that.”
“I don’t get it,” Michael said. “I really don’t.” He cleared his throat, trying not to be emotional. He needed to be the strong one on the team. Catherine was wringing her hands over her botched profile. Jim was convinced he had missed something in the physical evidence so was going through everything a third, fourth, fifth time. Ryder was sullen, worried, and blaming himself because it was his idea that Matt and Kara stay behind for R & R. Sloane was acting like an investigator, calm, methodically working through the crime, asking valid questions. She cared about the team, but she was new. She hadn’t been with them from the beginning.
Maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe Michael was too emotional, too close. And the more emotional he felt, the harder he worked to bury his fears.
A moment later, Michael said, “Two people work together to kidnap couples, torture, kill, and dump the bodies in the ocean, but not so far offshore that they never turn up. In fact, they drop them close enough so that theywillshow up sooner rather than later. Once, I think it’s personal. Twice, I think it’s a psychopath. Three times? It’s a game.”
“A game,” Sloane repeated with interest. “Maybe.”
Michael was certain. But he wasn’t a shrink, and he didn’t understand most of the psychology that went behind twisted crimes like this. “Reid enjoyed himself during the interview,” he said. “No concern that he was going to spend any real time in jail. He’s clean-cut, no record, no debt, nice-looking, everyone likes him, and yet he kills people.”
“There’s always a reason,” Sloane said.
Michael grunted. No reason would make sense to him, not for this level of violence.
Matt and Kara were smart, he told himself. They would find a way out. They’d get help. Call. Draw attention to themselves so that Michael and the team could rescue them. He had to focus on that, otherwise his concern for his friends and colleagues would cloud his judgment.
“I don’t think the female partner is submissive,” Sloane said after a couple minutes of silence.
“Does it matter?”
“I think so,” she said. “If she was submissive, I think Reid would have raped his victims.”
“Is that something Catherine said?”
“No, at least not to me,” Sloane said. “It’s not sexual violence they are interested in. It’s physical control they want. Kidnapping. Restraining. Torturing. The women seem to have been tortured more than the men—”
“Which can be sexual,” Michael said.
“Yes, but were the women tortured to manipulate their husbands? To force them to act? Or were they targeted simply because they’re women? Some of the injuries don’t make sense. The second male victim fell to his death, but his wife survived for several more days. Her wounds had even begun to heal—how does that happen? Did Reid hurt her, let her recover, then hurt her again?”
“If there’s any trace evidence that could help us find Matt and Kara, Jim will catch it,” Michael said. Though the truth was, Jim had already reviewed the autopsy reports and found nothing the medical examiner hadn’t already noted.
An hour and twenty minutes later, they stopped down the street from Franklin Graves’s office in a classy brick townhouse off North Main. The structure had two townhouses, one for Franklin Graves, attorney-at-law, the other divided into twooffices—one a family therapist, the other insurance. “He owns the building,” Sloane said, looking at her phone. “Ryder just sent me the basics. Bought it six years ago when he opened his practice in Jacksonville—Ryder is still working on finding out where he was before then, because he handles mostly civil cases now. Divorced with a daughter—the ex and the kid now live in Texas—and Graves remarried six years ago to Lily Warren and adopted the woman’s then-five-year-old son.”
Michael watched from across the street as Graves parked around back. From this angle he could see the parked car, but not the rear entrance of the building.
“Why come here?” he wondered out loud.
“To go over the case? Graves didn’t spend more than five minutes with Reid before they went into the hearing.” Sloane scrolled through her messages. “He employs a legal secretary, who’s been with him since he moved here.”
“Why would Reid callthisguy?” Michael asked. “He hasn’t done criminal defense, at least in the last six years. Could Reid have been a client back then?”
“There’s no sign that Reid lived in Florida until nine months ago,” Sloane said. “We’ve documented most of his residential history from when he graduated from high school until now. Maybe Reid called a lawyer who referred Graves.”
“Who doesn’t do criminal law?” Michael shook his head. It was odd that Reid would hire a lawyer more than an hour away in Jacksonville, who hadn’t worked a similar case in years—if ever.
“Get comfortable,” Michael said. “We’re going to be here for a while.”
14
