Free Last Words by Mariah Stewart Page A

door.”
    After Lisa and Duncan had gone to check in with the neighbors, and the ME’s van had pulled out of the driveway, Hal turned to Beck and asked, “Did you leave the Jeep unlocked?”
    “I must have.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We haven’t had any break-ins in so long—cars or homes—I just never really worried about it.”
    He tried to remember what was on his mind when he parked the vehicle the day before. He’d gone to the press conference in Ballard, then drove home. He’d parked in the driveway, then saw a neighbor who’d waved and crossed the street to tell him she’d been a friend of the Preston family for over thirty years and how devastated she was to hear about Colleen. Beck had tried to be sympathetic while at the same time avoiding adding any fuel to the fire of panic that he sensed would soon be spreading throughout St. Dennis if it wasn’t checked. He’d received a call from Garland reminding him about his five o’clock appointment, and decided to walk to the station. It had not occurred to him to check to see if he’d locked the Jeep.
    “Why do you suppose he did that, left her in your Jeep?” Hal asked.
    “His way of giving me the finger, I guess.” Beck stood with his hands in his pockets, watching his Jeep being hooked up to a tow truck. As evidence, it had to be taken down to the station where it would be impounded in the small garage behind the municipal building. “Which makes me think he’s close enough to have watched the local news last night.”
    “That’s a start.” Hal nodded. “More than you knew yesterday.”
    “And it tells me he’s damned clever. Clever enough to not leave a trace of himself, to wash away anything that might have clung to the plastic.”
    “Wonder what he’d have done if the Jeep had been locked?”
    Beck pointed to his house. “There’s a porch out front as well as out back. He could have left it at either. If he was determined to leave that package for me, there were plenty of other ways he could have done it.”
    “So what are you going to do now?” Hal asked.
    “First, I’m going to stop in and see Mayor Pratt. Then, I’m going to do exactly what I told Warren Daley to do. I’m calling the FBI.”
    “You sure you want to do that? I’ve worked with some pretty damned annoying agents over the years. And you know, once you open that door and invite them in, they take over, and there’s no getting rid of them. I got stuck one time for two months with the most obnoxious SOB I’d ever met. Wouldn’t go away until the case was closed.” Hal shook his head, remembering. “Alphonse Edmonds. He was not only obnoxious, he was mean-spirited. And ugly, now that I think about it.”
    “All I care about is cleaning up this mess as quickly as possible. This guy has taken me on, and I will use any weapon I can get my hands on to fight him. If the best weapon is the FBI, then fine. Bring it on. I don’t care how obnoxious, mean, or ugly their agents are. I just want this bastard and I want him before he finds another victim.”
    Beck paused, then looked at Hal.
    “Unless he already has…”
             
    The sun was dipping low in the sky as FBI Special Agent Mia Shields crossed over the Potomac River via the Governor Nice Memorial Bridge, leaving Virginia behind her. Once on the Maryland side, she headed toward Calvert’s Ford, one of the small communities on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay that, sadly, lacked a true beach.
    The tobacco fields were just hitting their growth stride on either side of the two-lane road. The tobacco barns were landmarks she’d come to depend on for finding her turn off the main road. She’d been living in Maryland for almost three months, but had been working a job just over the Potomac for the past four weeks, and was still finding her way around. Once she hit the tobacco farm, though, she knew she was on the right road, and knew there were only two more turns before she’d be