Page 32 of Killer Clone

Heads shifted toward the door. Ander pushed out of his seat first. Soon, everyone was crowding into Mac’s office, where she sat smugly in her chair, arms folded behind her head.

Stella took a spot beside the door. Slade’s arrival pushed her farther into the room. “What did you get?”

“Sooo…” Mac seemed intent on drawing out this moment of victory.

Between Slade and Mac, Stella was going to smack someone. “Sooo what? Spit it out already.”

Mac grinned, still holding on to her winning moment. “I’m trying to identify a mortician with a record or a connection to the victim or a…a love of spilling blood.”

“A classic problem,” Hagen quipped.

Slade shot him a quelling look.

“Initially, I produced a list of almost four hundred morticians registered in the state of Nashville. I checked the records and locations, ruling out those who died without de-registering and building lists of possibles, maybes, and unlikelies. My list shrank to fifty, a step forward, but still far too many. Then I remembered the path of least resistance was always a numbers game, so I went back to the footage by the alley.”

Stella was definitely going to whack her friend if she didn’t spit it out. “And?”

Mac’s smile grew bigger as she lowered her arms and tapped on the keyboard. “I checked the traffic cameras near the site where the body was found on Friday evening. There aren’t any cameras in the alley, as you know, but some cars turned into the alley, one of which was this Nissan Sentra.”

“And…”

Mac turned the monitor. On the screen was a green Nissan Sentra, its license plate clear in the frame. “This is the car registered to?—”

“Otto Walker,” Stella finished for her.

The air went out of Mac’s sails. “How’d you…?”

Slade tossed a folder onto her desk. “Tell us what you know, Mac.”

“The car belongs to a guy named Otto Walker.” She shot Stella the stink eye. “The picture was taken around the corner from the alley at 9:27 that evening.”

Slade opened his file folder and showed Mac and the team what he had. Otto seemed to be a good-looking man in his early twenties. “Otto Walker, twenty-four years old. A mortician. Three years ago, he was locked up for six months on an assault charge. And four years before that, he was sent to a youth detention center for animal cruelty.”

“You’re kidding.” Mac jotted down a note. “What did he do?”

“The report was pretty light on details. Looks like he was torturing a squirrel.”

“Jeez, what a sicko.”

Slade looked ready to burst. “And what’ve you got for me?”

Mac held out a piece of paper. “This is where he works, and here’s his home address.”

Slade took the note and inspected it. He passed the paper with Otto Walker’s information to Anja, who stood next to him. “Call his workplace. See if he’s there. Time for a chat.”

Anja glanced at Mac’s writing. She pulled out her phone. “Where’d he study?”

Mac zoomed her fingers over her keyboard. “Hapton College. Never heard of it.”

“That’s because you don’t want to handle dead bodies.”

Mac inclined her head in agreement, and Anja dialed.

“Good morning. I’m calling from Hapton College.”

Anja’s voice had changed. Gone was the new FBI agent, uncertain about her new workplace and keen to make an impression. In her place was a college administrator, older and used to ignoring excuses from students.

“We’re following up on our former students. Otto Walker said he was employed at your funeral home. We’re presenting him with an award, but the information we have on file seems to be outdated.”

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