“Did he give the name of the company?”

  “Benson Trucking. He said he’s pretty sure the same driver had been out to both sites—the condo site and the hospital. Sort of a quiet guy…gets there, does his job, and then leaves. But Thompson didn’t know his name, so we called up Hutchinson and he got it for us. The driver’s name is Kent Benson, and the company is basically just him and his brother. They sort of sublet their business to smaller gravel and dirt quarries outside of the city. So we ran the name through the database and we did get a hit. The guy has a record.”

  Before Hunt had even finished the statement, Jack had swiveled back around to the laptop and started typing the name in. As the result popped up, Hunt continued on.

  “It’s not much. Petty larceny fifteen years ago and, a little more recently, an ex-girlfriend took a restraining order out against him.”

  “When did you learn about this?” Rachel asked. She was actually a bit peeved that he seemed to have been sitting on this and was talking about it rather nonchalantly. The restraining order in particular made her think there might be something to this.

  “We literally put it all together as I was pouring these coffees. No one has acted on it yet; I wanted to give you two the first crack at it.”

  “Well, I won’t say it sounds promising,” Jack said as he typed Kent Benson’s address into his phone. “But it’s all we’ve got for right now. Thanks, Hunt. Maybe pick two guys to serve as backup, just in case it gets screwy.”

  “Sure thing,” Hunt said, heading out of the office.

  Rachel got to her feet, a bit amazed at how quickly the weariness of very little sleep slid right off of her. She and Jack left the office with Hunt leading the way. They split up near the front of the building, Hunt veering off to find two officers to be on stand-by should the agents need them.

  As they pressed through the doors and stepped out into the pre-dawn darkness, Rachel forced herself to take a quick physical check. Other than being tired, she thought she was doing fine. There might have been the slightest bit of pounding in the back of her head, but she felt comfortable in chalking that up to lack of sleep.

  Jack took the driver’s seat, giving her the quickest of looks. Months ago, the decision over who would drive was something of a joke to them, something to argue about. But ever since her tumor had caused a traffic accident several weeks ago, it had no longer been a discussion She got the feeling that Jack was starting to feel almost guilty about it. Regardless, he drove with some urgency as the sun started to paint the darkness with the first faint colors of morning.

  Fifteen minutes later, they found out that the Benson Trucking business was apparently operated out of Benson’s home. The house was a bit older, a basic brick-style that Rachel thought had a sort of 1960s feel to it. There was an old garage tucked to the right and slightly behind it, cushioned by a small grove of woodland that hid the yard away from the four-lane highway that stretched out beyond.

  “That garage bay looks pretty big,” she pointed out as Jack parked in the driveway. He’d pulled in beside a beat-up Ford truck. “You think a dump truck would fit in there?”

  “It would clear the entrance for sure,” Jack agreed.

  Jack parked and they got out, stepping into the first true light of dawn. Rachel wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she got the feeling that no one was home. There were no lights on in the house and everything was eerily quiet. As an agent, she’d come to expect people that worked in construction or hauling industries to be out and about in the early hours. Sure, the Ford pickup indicated someone might be home, but it was just a sense that she got.

  The porch was cement and ran along the entire first floor exterior, covered by a slanted, shingled roof. As Jack knocked on the door, Rachel peered at the two windows to the right. Again, there appeared to be no lights on inside. When no one came to the door after thirty seconds or so, Jack knocked again. As he waited, Rachel left the porch and walked along the side yard to the garage.

  She approached the closed accordion-style door and saw that there were two rectangular windows along its length. Not glass, for sure, as they would shatter when the door was rolled up, so probably plexiglass or pure plastic. She had to stand on the tips of her toes to bring her eyes level with the closest one. She peered inside and, though the window was tinted and the inside of the garage was dark, she saw that it was empty.

  She stepped away just in time to see Jack walking across the yard toward her. “Anything in there?”

  “If it is where he keeps the dump truck, it’s not there,” she said.

  “And if he’s something of a freelancer, there’s no way to know for sure where he might be.”

  “There can’t be but so many rock and dirt quarries in the area. A few calls to see if he’s reported to any of them is all we’d need. They’d likely know where Benson could be headed this morning.”

  “Maybe,” Jack said as they headed back to the car. “Why don’t you start on that route, and I’ll see if I can get Hutchinson on the phone. If he works with the guy in any capacity, maybe he knows some of the other locations Benson would be delivering to.”

  They sat together in the car and did exactly that. It was an odd feeling to have gone from a stirring of excitement to sitting in the car, watching the sun come up over a complete stranger’s house and making a series of phone calls. As it turned out, though, they didn’t have to waste much time on the phone. By the time Rachel was in the process of placing her second call, Hutchinson had come through for them.

  Jack shifted into reverse and started backing out of Kent Benson’s driveway. “Hutchinson is pretty sure where Benson would be headed. There’s a construction site about two miles away from the hospital. Apparently, an old grocery store was gutted and stripped and is now being remodeled into a retirement home. Hutchinson said he knows the guy in charge of the project—says the initial work for what will soon be the parking lot started yesterday. He knows Benson is supplying the gravel and dirt…and that if he is headed over there today, it would be first thing in the morning.”

  The momentary lapse of excitement came to an end as Jack headed back out to the four-lane highway. And with the sun now properly spilling daylight across the pavement, Rachel was willing to give herself a bit of hope that Kent Benson might be the man they were looking for.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The construction site sat along the western ridge of a large parking lot that also contained an Italian restaurant and a small day spa. Both of those businesses were separated from the construction mess by a temporary wall that looked to be made out of some sort of white plywood that stood up on black, metal rails. As they pulled in behind this wall, Rachel took note of the two different vehicles that were already present at the site.

  A large, flat-bed truck, and a dump truck. Once they stepped out and walked around the wall, she could see more of the dump truck—specifically that a tattered logo was on the driver’s side door, reading: Benson Trucking.

  As they stepped into the broken foundation that would be the new parking lot for the retirement home, Rachel saw that there were two men standing behind the dump truck. One was waving in a strange sort of gesture, something that seemed to say keep coming back. Meanwhile, the dump truck did just that, rolling back slowly as the tailgate started to tilt upward.

  They waited for the job to be done. The tailgate lifted as the bucket was pitched up at a ninety-degree angle. As the gravel started to pour out in a controlled way through the slit in the tailgate, the driver—presumably Kent Benson—pulled the truck forward. After about thirty yards or so, he closed it all down, tilted the bucket back the right way, and backed up to cover more ground.

  The process took about five minutes in total and during the entire time, neither of the men or the driver had noticed the two FBI agents standing at the edge of the site. But when the dump truck pulled off to the opposite edge of the freshly graveled ground, the two men noticed them right away. They were both dressed in basic work attire—long sleeved shirts and jeans, with work boots. One of the men was already wearing a vest of some kind, a sizable toolbelt attached to the bottom. The other man, the one without the toolbelt, came walking over in their direction.

  “Something I can help you folks with?” he asked.

  Rachel showed her ID, mainly because the man made no attempt to hide the fact that he was ogling her a bit. “Agents Gift and Rivers with the FBI,” she said. “We actually need to speak with Mr. Benson. I assume he’s in the truck, yes?”

  “He is,” the man said. He took a step closer and lowered his voice, this time making a point to look at Jack. “Is it something I need to worry about?”

  “No, not at all,” Jack said. “But beyond that, we can’t tell you anything.”

  As the man nodded and Jack and Rachel walked away, she wasn’t so sure that Jack was right, Maybe the man did have something to worry about. This was, after all, a construction site—the third they’d stepped foot on. And so far, every construction site they’d visited had turned up a body. Regardless of what the verdict on Kent Benson was, she couldn’t help but wonder if there might be a third body buried somewhere beneath their feet on this site.

  They’d come to within ten feet or so of the dump truck when the driver’s side door opened up. A man of about fifty stepped down from the seat and onto the ground. He was dressed in a t-shirt bearing the Benson logo, and a trucker cap. He barely saw Rachel and Jack at first, his attention already headed for the two men that had been directing him. But seconds after he spotted them, his attention was drawn right back to them, as if he knew they didn’t quite belong there.

  “Are you Kent Benson?” Jack asked.

  He regarded them with a strange expression, maybe a little startled, but he nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

  Rachel still had her ID out, so she showed it to him, giving the same introduction she’d given the other man.

  “Oh,” he said. “Out here? What for? What can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Benson, we need to ask you some questions in regard to a pair of bodies that have recently been discovered in the area,” Rachel said.

  “Bodies? Like, dead bodies?”

  “Yes. Both were buried in wooden boxes at construction sites. Both of the sites they were found at were sites you’d delivered gravel to.”

  The idea of what she was getting at slowly started to sink in; she could see it on his face. There was something like fear there, but it was mostly muddied by absolute confusion. “And you need to ask me about them…because why?”

  “Because you’re the only person that has had access to both of those sites that we haven’t spoken to yet.”

  “What two sites are you talking about specifically?” Benson asked.

  “They’re both sites Michael Hutchinson and his crew have been working on,” Jack said. “The condo complex job and the addition to the hospital.”

  “And you’ve spoken to him?”

  “Him and his crew,” Rachel said. “But one of the workers pointed out that you were at both of those sites. That, and given that you have a record, we can’t just—”

  “Are you kidding me?” Benson interjected.

  “No, we’re not,” Rachel said. “There are two bodies, disposed of in a strange way, and one of the last people we’re able to question with access to the sites has a criminal record. So we can either ask you the questions right here, right now, or we can take you to the local PD.”

  “I’m fine to talk here,” he said. “The feds showing up to talk to me in front of one of my clients isn’t doing me any favors, so you’ve already screwed that up.”

  “First,” Jack said, “you seem almost irritated that we brought up your record. Why is that?”

  “Because I made some mistakes and things like this prove that even when you put the work in to change, it doesn’t matter. Those old scars will follow you around forever.”

  “Restraining orders are hard to live down,” Rachel said. “Want to tell us about it?”

  “Sure,” Benson said, clearly agitated. “Not really, but I’m sensing it won’t matter. I was dating a woman for about a year or so and found out she was cheating on me. I didn’t handle it well. I got obsessed and stalked her and the guy for a bit. She served me the restraining order, I went away to Atlanta for a few weeks, and came back better. The end. What else?”

  Ignoring his barbed comments, Rachel said, “With these bodies, we have no clear timeframe of when they were killed. We’re guessing no more than a month for the oldest one. If we asked you to try to come up with a timeline of how you’ve spent your time over the past four weeks, would you be able to do it?”

  He smirked, the sort of expression that made Rachel think he had an answer at the ready. “Yeah, that should be easy enough. I wake up at about five every morning and go to work. I usually don’t work longer than six or seven hours so that I can go back home take a shower, and then get over to my father’s house. I stay with him until he goes to bed and then go home. That’s if I haven’t spent the night at his place.”

  “Your father?” Jack asked with a skeptical tone.

  “Yes, my father. He’s suffering from early onset dementia and some kidney issues. We don’t have the money to hire in-home care, so he just gets me. And I just have to hope something terrible doesn’t happen to him while I’m working. And if you need proof of any of that, I have to keep a log of when he takes his meds. I do it on an electronic system the docs are having me use. And we do have a nurse’s assistant that stops by twice a week. Just to check in, not to stay with him. Because it’s all we can afford.”

  With each word he spoke, Rachel could see more and more of his innocence. He’d just dropped at least two different threads they’d be able to easily investigate. And while she knew personal reactions and expression could never be accurately used as proof of anything, she saw the anger and pain in his face as he explained it all. She saw sadness, too; it had shown through strongest of all during the time he’d repeated how they were unable to afford proper in-home care for his father.

  “How long have you been caring for your father in this way?” Rachel asked.

  “Nearly three months now. I should have been doing it longer but…well, I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten before it was a little too late.”

  “Mr. Benson, thank you for your time,” Rachel said. “I hope you understand that we need the name of the nurse as well as the doctor that has you using the electronic medicine record.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got both their cards, if that helps.”

  “It does.”

  Benson dug into his pocket for his wallet and as he fished out the cards, Jack seemed to also feel the regret and sadness coming off of Benson. “One other thing…we need to ask that you not leave the city for at least several days. We’ve asked it of Hutchinson and all of his men, too.”

  “My father needs me,” Benson said, shoving the business cards out to them. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

  Jack gave a cursory nod, one that almost seemed sympathetic, before turning and walking away.

  “Thank you,” Rachel said. “And I’m sorry to hear about your father. I hope everything works out.”

  She surprised herself by saying these things. She’d always done her best not to get emotional or try to get at all personal or overly sympathetic with suspects. But it was harder than usual. Maybe it was because of the experience her own father had gone through less than a week ago. Maye it was the loss of Peter or the overall trauma of Alex Lynch being on the loose.

  Whatever it was, Kent Benson nodded his thanks and headed back to his truck. Rachel walked back in her own direction and tried to tell herself it was only her imagination that the ache in the back of her head seemed to be getting more intense.

  Back in the car, she looked out over the torn-up ground, thinking. “I wonder how many construction sites are active at any given time in Alexandria,” she said. “And I wonder if there’s any way to find out.”

  “Why? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that if the Alexandria Police Department has access to ground penetrating radar, it might be worth looking over every active construction site that still has exposed ground. Starting with this one.”

  And without even inviting the conversation, she grabbed her phone and called Chief Hunt.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Emily had left her husband three years ago or, rather, had kicked his cheating ass out of her house three years ago, but every now and then, she did miss him. She hated to admit it, but it was the truth. Those moments were usually first thing in the morning when she woke up and wanted the comfort of another body in the bed. She felt it this morning as her alarm blared at her, reminding her that she had to go to work.

  She grimaced and grunted as she slapped the alarm off and, for a moment, simply stared at the empty side of the bed. She’d had a few other men sleep there in the time since the divorce, but none of them had lasted. She was beginning to think that if she was ever going to move on and finally allow herself to step outside of the ruins of her failed marriage, she was going to have to leave the house. But she loved this house and if she was forced to sell it just to move on…well, that meant he won, right?

  It was something that crossed her mind at least once a month. Apparently, this morning was going to be that instance. As she started her day by staggering into the kitchen in her undies and a t-shirt, she set the coffee. She then grabbed the orange juice from the fridge, took a swig straight from the bottle, and put it back.

  She then took out the waffle maker, the little miniature one she’d been making her special gluten-free waffles in. She plugged it in and while she waited for it to warm up, she made her way into the main bathroom along the hallway. She splashed some cold water in her face and looked at herself in the mirror Thirty-nine and looking like fifty…not what she was striving for. But she knew that with a good twenty minutes in front of the mirror, she could fix that. Well, that and coffee.