‘I said, got it?’ He jammed the object even harder against her ear.
She forced her eyes open and nodded.
He pulled her gag down and in so doing, leaned his foot hard on to her diaphragm, making her convulse as her stomach muscles tensed. He looked at her like she was a specimen in a dish and then tut-tutted her. ‘Jayne Hall. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize my MO the second you came to the freeway in LA.’
She actually felt her eyes darting around in their sockets as she took in the implications of his words. She tried to produce some saliva and swallow. ‘How did you know I was there?’
‘I was watching you. And I must say, for an “expert”, you didn’t put two and two together at all because I haven’t changed my cuts since Kigali.’
Jesus. He really did kill that woman in Rwanda. ‘I didn’t know about Kigali.’
Gene cocked his head. ‘You surprise me. I was sure Gerrit would have sent you the crime scene photos. It was such an unusual crime for Rwanda at the time. Quite evolved compared to all the other killing.’
Jayne couldn’t hide her disgust.
He rolled his eyes. ‘You’ve always been too soft, Jayne. I listened to you talking to your so-called clients—’
She felt her cheeks flush. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Why don’t you just tell them that if their daughter’s missing, she’s already dead?’
‘You’re the one who bugged my phone?’
‘You shouldn’t give them false hope like you do.’
‘Was it you? Why did you come and see me? I don’t understand.’ Jayne knew she sounded needy and plaintive but couldn’t help her tone. Details from the past two weeks were jostling for position in her mind.
‘I wanted to know what you knew.’ He gestured with the object clasped in his hand and Jayne was finally sure: it was a grenade. Small, dusty, lethal. ‘I needed to know how much time I had before I had to go to ground. And everything I heard put me at ease. You suck at your job as bad as Houston does. And I would’ve left you alone, given how incompetent you are, but then you told Houston about me. Now you have to pay for that.’
Jayne felt a frisson of fear. What was he talking about? ‘I–I didn’t tell him anything.’
‘You were never a good liar, Jayne. I saw you at my mother’s house. You were there today, leading Houston right in.’
‘But I wasn’t! He found you and your house himself!’ She was almost shouting over the noise of the open faucet.
‘Spare me. He’s an agent. He can’t find his own asshole without help.’
He suddenly sounded petulant and Jayne saw a way in. Gene wasn’t crazy, or maybe he was, but there was some logic behind it. She tried to push down her fear and changed her tack, her sole focus keeping Gene talking long enough for the FBI driver to arrive and end this before Gene did something even worse. She didn’t know what time it was, but the airport pick-up had to be any minute now.
‘You’ve got some issue, don’t you?’ She was trying to sound conversational, as though she wasn’t lying on the floor trussed up in twine and duct tape, but her underlying fear was making her shiver and her voice was uneven and trembly. ‘Some kind of grudge against agents. What, did you apply and they wouldn’t take you? Too old, were you?’
She wasn’t ready when he lunged at her and slapped her face, his hand open, the rubber of the surgical glove burning her skin. Tears stung her eyes but she knew she’d hit a nerve. She didn’t let the topic go. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Shut up!’ He was clenching and unclenching the hand he’d slapped her with.
‘So you applied.’ Jayne pressed on. ‘And you didn’t make it – for whatever reason. Though I’m surprised they didn’t take you, what with your postgraduate degree, obvious intelligence, previous Bureau history, plus you’re active and athletic.’ She was almost gagging on her words but her voice was getting stronger. ‘I would have thought you were perfect agent material. You know you’re good, right? No matter what they say.’
She watched the compliment take its effect. Gene’s back straightened perceptibly, his mouth relaxed.
She went further. ‘You were already a Bureau employee in the lab. Why was it so important to become an agent?’
He didn’t respond initially but when he did, his eyes were fixed on the grenade. ‘I wanted to stay in Rwanda another year but the Bureau said extensions were only open to agents.’
Jayne hadn’t expected this and couldn’t immediately think of a follow-up question. ‘So?’
His eyes bore into her. ‘If you hadn’t noticed, not a single one of those “special” agents can investigate their way out of a paper bag. Not only does the Bureau prevent me from carrying on my work in Rwanda, but, two years later, they decide to send a team to Kosovo for the UN and what happens? They send that stupid piece of shit rookie in my place. My place.’
Jayne frowned. ‘What rookie?’
Gene rolled his eyes at her like she wasn’t keeping up. ‘Houston,’ he sneered. ‘There I was, with all my forensic experience as well as a previous UN mission – I even advised them on who to get for the team – and who gets passed over? Me. And who goes? Scott Houston. I don’t think so. No, uh-unh, the Bureau was only going to fuck me over like that one time. I resigned immediately, deprived them of my talents, and I’ve been making sure they know what a mistake they made on Houston ever since. I’ve taken my time but I’ll see that dirtbag stripped of every accolade he’s received. I’ve shown he can’t even solve a couple of homicides, that he’s a fantasist who sees serial killers around every corner. He can’t even close a couple of local missing person cases, for Chrissakes!’
Jayne heard that familiar, superior tone, now applied to Scott like he was a target. To her knowledge, Scott didn’t even know Gene. She stared at him, struggling to understand how she had missed the signs that he was a sociopathic killer in the time she’d been side by side with him in the graves. She was suddenly assaulted with the images from the photographs they’d seen in the briefing room. The technicolor of Rwanda bleached out by midday sun, the rich soil wetted anew with fresh blood, and then she remembered further back. Gene at The Cadillac, dancing out of rhythm with a young woman who followed him back to the bar, her suggestive smile fading when he didn’t buy her a cold drink despite the crush of heat and noise and twirling disco-ball light. That young woman had been dancing with death and hadn’t even known it. Not only that, the rest of them hadn’t seen it and so hadn’t protected her.
Jayne was mortified to feel tears springing to her eyes unbidden as she said, ‘So you murdered that girl in Kigali? And in a place that had just survived a genocide?’ Her voice trembled audibly.
He fed off her display of emotion. ‘But even you understand why it was the ideal place to do it: what was one more dead body in Rwanda? People were too busy with eight hundred thousand other corpses to pay attention.’
‘But . . . but you were a forensic scientist. You were supposed to be helping people, not victimizing them. Why, for God’s sake, did you kill that woman?’
He shook his head. ‘Still such an idealist, aren’t you, Jayne? Let me tell you the truth about these victims you put on such a high pedestal. The cases we got at the Bureau were all about stupidity. The vics were stupid to get themselves into a situation where they were killed and the killers were stupid enough to leave behind trace. After a few months of scraping dried shit out of people’s underwear after they’d voided their bowels, I knew the world was a better place without people like them but I had no intention of being caught getting rid of ’em.’