Free The Love Killings by Robert Ellis Page B

hundred photographs taken at the crime scene. It seemed clear to him that Baylor had planned the night the same way a film director might stage a scene in a movie. There had to be an order to things. With Stratton as his target, Matt had no doubt that Baylor would have saved him for last. The medical examiner confirmed that Stratton wore a pacemaker and that the device shut down at 11:35 p.m., so it was a safe bet that everyone else would have been killed prior to Stratton’s death.
    Matt leafed through the photographs until he found a shot that included all five victims. Stratton was leaning against the wall between his two daughters. Their eyes appeared fixed on Stratton’s wife and son. They were Baylor’s audience—they had to be Baylor’s audience—which would mean that the two girls would have been murdered just before Stratton. That left Tammy Stratton and her son. One of them had to be the first to go.
    He flipped the page over, then glanced at his laptop just as Get Buzzed faded up from black. Brown entered the room, placing two cups of coffee on Matt’s desk and staring at the screen. They were opening the show with footage of Matt chasing Day down the street. It turned out that the man with the video camera had been running behind them the moment Matt hit the corner. As Matt watched, his stomach churning, he realized that they were maximizing the drama by leaving the announcer out and letting the sound from the street carry the moment. Every bounce the camera made amplified the emotional context. Matt glanced at Brown, then turned back to his laptop. He could see himself tackling the reporter onto the floor, jamming his gun into the innocent man’s mouth. Then Ryan Day, fearing for his life, began stammering. Worse still, the gossip reporter was asking Matt if M. Trevor Jones, the King of Wall Street, was his father.
    Matt stood up, pried the lid off one of the coffee cups, stirred a pack of sugar into the brew, and took a first sip. He couldn’t watch anymore. He knew what it looked like because he’d seen the same shot so many times in so many cities over the past couple of years.
    It came off like police brutality. The chase and takedown had occurred over a period of three or four minutes. But the clip had been cut down to include only the worst moments. Everything about it came off harsh and overdone.
    He took another sip of coffee, watching Brown get out of her coat and sit down in his seat with her eyes still glued to the screen. He felt his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. When he slid the lock open, he read the text message. It was from Wes Rogers, special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Philadelphia.
    We need to talk, the message said. Now.
    Rogers had included his address in the suburbs, and Matt committed it to memory. As he slipped his cell phone into his pocket, Brown gave him a look.
    “What’s going on?” she said.
    “Rogers. He wants to see me. Guess I’m toast.”
    She shook her head. “That’s not his style, Jones. If you were toast, he would have said so. Rogers doesn’t keep people waiting.”

CHAPTER 15
    Matt knew something was wrong the moment he saw the house number on the mailbox and gazed up the long drive. He pulled over and killed the lights and engine. When he fished through the glove box, he was glad the Crown Vic he’d been issued came equipped with a flashlight.
    But he didn’t switch it on. Not yet.
    Instead, he got out of the car and gazed at the silhouette of a large mansion on Fairfield Road. The windows were dark, and from where Matt stood on the frozen ground, all the exterior lights had been shut down as well. He noticed the wind finally, a hard wind whistling through the trees and knocking all the branches together.
    Matt dug his cell phone out of his pocket and double-checked Rogers’s text message. The house numbers matched, and so did the directions. He could see a school on the other side of Sugartown Road exactly where it was supposed