Before He Longs. Блейк Пирс

files.”

      Mackenzie was nodding, but her eyes had fallen on something else. She walked to the far corner, where three of the plastic storage bins had been stacked on top of one another. Tucked exactly in the corner, so far back that she had missed it during her initial inspection, was a doll. It was an older doll, its hair matted and little smudges of dirt on its cheeks. It looked like something that might have been stolen from the set of a cheesy horror movie.

      “Creepy,” Ellington said, tracing her gaze.

      “And oddly out of place,” Mackenzie said.

      She picked the doll up, careful to keep her hands in one position on the back of it, just in case it might be some sort of clue. Sure, at first glance it seemed like just a random object in someone’s storage bin—perhaps something thrown in at the last minute, as an afterthought.

      But everything else in this unit is meticulously stacked and organized. This doll stands out. And not only that, it’s almost as if it were meant to stand out.

      “I think we need to bag it up,” she said. “Why is this one object not boxed up and put away? This place is eerily neat. Why leave this out?”

      “You think the killer placed it there?” Ellington asked. But before the question was fully out of his mouth, she could tell that he was considering it as a very real possibility as well.

      “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think I want to go take another look at Claire Locke’s unit again. And I also want to see how quickly we can get a full case file for the murders in Oregon that you worked on…back in the early days.” She said the last bit with a smile, never missing an opportunity to tease him for being seven years older than she was.

      Ellington turned back to Underwood. He was hanging out by the door, pretending not to eavesdrop. “I don’t suppose you ever spoke with Ms. Newcomb outside of renting her the unit, did you?”

      “Afraid not,” Underwood said. “I try to be friendly and hospitable to everyone but there’s just so many of them, you know?” He then eyed the doll Mackenzie still held and frowned. “Told you…lots of weird shit in these units.”

      Mackenzie didn’t doubt it. But this particular weird item seemed sorely out of place. And she fully intended to find out what it meant.

      Chapter Nine

      Due to the late hour, Quinn Tuck had understandably been pissed off when Mackenzie had called. Still, he told them how to get into the complex and where the spare set of keys were. It was just before midnight when Mackenzie and Ellington opened up Claire Locke’s storage unit again. Mackenzie couldn’t help but feel that they were running in circles—not a feeling that was especially encouraging so early in the case—but she also felt that this was the right move.

      With the doll from Elizabeth Newcomb’s unit in mind, Mackenzie stepped back into the unit. Perhaps it was just being aware of the late hour, but the place seemed a bit more foreboding this time around. The bins and boxes stacked in the back weren’t quite as perfect as the ones in Elizabeth Newcomb’s unit, but they were still tidy.

      “A little sad, isn’t it?” Ellington said.

      “What’s that?”

      “These things…these bins and boxes. Chances are no one who cares about what’s inside of them will ever open them.”

      It was a sad thought, one that Mackenzie tried to push to the back of her mind. She walked to the back of the unit, feeling almost like an intruder. She and Ellington both checked over the contents for any dolls or other disturbances, but found nothing. It then occurred to Mackenzie that she was expecting to find something as obvious as a doll. Maybe there was something different, something smaller…

      Or maybe there’s no connection here at all, she thought.

      “You see this?” Ellington asked.

      He was kneeling next to the right wall. He nodded toward the corner of the unit, in a thin space between the wall and a stack of cardboard boxes. Mackenzie dropped down to her knees as well and saw what Ellington had spied.

      It was a miniature teapot—not miniature as in a small teapot, but more like a playset teapot that little girls might use for an imagined tea time.

      She crawled forward and picked it up off the floor. She was rather surprised to find that it was made not of plastic, but of a ceramic material. It felt just like a real teapot, only it was no bigger than six inches tall. She could set the entirety of the thing in her hand.

      “If you ask me,” Ellington said, “there’s no way that was set there by accident or by someone just tired of packing shit into the unit.”

      “And it didn’t just fall out of a box,” Mackenzie added. “It’s ceramic. If it had fallen from a box, it would have shattered on the floor.”

      “So what the hell does it mean?”

      Mackenzie had no answer. They both looked to the little teapot, quite pretty but also dingy—just like the doll in Elizabeth Newcomb’s unit. And despite its small size, Mackenzie felt that it represented something much larger.

***

      It was 1:05 when they finally checked into a motel. Mackenzie was tired but also invigorated by the puzzle that the doll and the little teapot offered. Once in the room, she took a quick moment to change out of her work clothes and into a T-shirt and gym shorts. She powered up her laptop as Ellington changed into more comfortable clothes as well. She logged into her email and saw that McGrath had assigned someone to send them every single file they had on the Salem, Oregon, storage unit murders from eight years ago.

      “What are you doing?” Ellington asked as he stepped up beside her. “It’s late and tomorrow is going to be a long day.”

      Ignoring him, she asked: “Was there nothing in the Oregon cases that pointed to any of this? To a doll, a teapot…anything like that?”

      “I honestly don’t recall. Like McGrath said, I just ran cleanup. I questioned a few witnesses, tidied up reports and paperwork. If there was anything like that, it didn’t stand out. I’m not ready to say the cases are linked. Yes, they are eerily similar, but not identical. Still…it might not hurt to eventually look into it. Maybe meet with the PD in Salem to see if anyone closer to the case remembers anything like that.”

      Mackenzie trusted his word but couldn’t help but scan through several of the files before giving in to the need to sleep. She felt Ellington rest a hand on her shoulder and then felt his face next to hers.

      “Am I being lazy if I turn in?”

      “No. Am I being over-obsessive if I don’t?”

      “No. You’re just being very dedicated to your job.” He kissed her on the cheek and then fell into the room’s single bed.

      It was tempting to join him—not for any extracurricular activities, but to just enjoy some sleep before the frantic pace tomorrow would be sure to bring. But she felt that she had to find at least a few more potential pieces to the puzzle, even if they were buried in a case from eight years ago.

      From a cursory glance, there was nothing to be found. There had been five people killed, all found in storage units. One of the units had contained more than ten thousand dollars’ worth of valuable baseball cards and another had contained a macabre collection of medieval weaponry. Seven people had been questioned in regards to the deaths but none had ever been convicted. The theory the police and the FBI had worked with was that the killer was abducting his victims and then forcing them to open up their storage units. Based on the original reports, it did not appear as if the killer was stealing anything from the units, although it was obviously next to impossible to be certain of this.

      From what Mackenzie could see, there were no peculiar items left behind at the scenes. The files contained pictures of the crime scenes and of the five victims, three of the storage units had been in a messy state, having not seen an obsessively organized touch like that of Elizabeth Newcomb.

      Two of the crime scene images were strikingly clear. One was from the scene of the second victim,