It was 10:10 when she walked into the police station. The place was absolutely dead, the only movement coming from a bored-looking woman sitting behind a desk – what Mackenzie assumed served as dispatch at the Kingsville Police Department – and two officers talking animatedly about politics in a hallway behind the dispatch desk.
Despite the lackluster feel of the place, it was apparently very well run. The woman at the dispatch desk had already copied all of the records Sheriff Tate had mentioned and had them waiting in a file folder when Mackenzie arrived. Mackenzie thanked her and then asked for a motel recommendation in the area. As it turned out, Kingsville only had a single motel, less than two miles away from the police department.
Ten minutes later, Mackenzie was unlocking the door to her room at a Motel 6. She’d certainly stayed in worse places during her tenure with the bureau, but it wasn’t likely to get any glowing Yelp or Google reviews. She paid little attention to the lacking state of the room, setting the files down on the little table by the single bed and wasting no time in diving into them.
She took some notes of her own while she read through the files. The first and perhaps most alarming thing she discovered was that of the fourteen suicides that had occurred in the last three years, eleven of them had been from the Miller Moon Bridge. The other three included two gun-related suicides and a single hanging from an attic beam.
Mackenzie knew enough about small towns to understand the allure of a rural marker like the Miller Moon Bridge. The history and the overall neglected creepiness of it was appealing, especially to teens. And, as the records in front of her showed, six of the fourteen suicides had been under twenty-one years of age.
She pored over the records; while they weren’t as explicitly detailed as she would have liked, they were above par for what she had seen from most small-town police departments. She jotted down note after note, coming up with a comprehensive list of details to help her better get to the bottom of the multiple deaths that were linked to the Miller Moon Bridge. After an hour or so, she had enough to base a few rough opinions.
First, of the fourteen suicides, exactly half had left notes. The notes made it clear that they had made the decision to end their lives. Each record had a photocopy of the letter and all of them expressed regret of some form or another. They told loved ones they cherished them and expressed pains that they could not overcome.
The other seven could almost be looked at as typical suspected murder cases: bodies discovered out of nowhere, in rough shape. One of the suicides, a seventeen-year-old female, had shown evidence of recent sexual activity. When the DNA of her partner had been found on and in her body, he had provided evidence in the form of text messages that she had come to his house, they’d had sex, and then she’d left. And from the way it looked, she had launched herself off of the Miller Moon Bridge about three hours later.
The only case out of the fourteen that she could see that would have warranted any sort of closer look was the sad and unfortunate suicide of a sixteen-year-old male. When he had been discovered on those bloodied rocks beneath the bridge, there had been bruises on his chest and arms that did not line up with any of the injuries he had suffered from the fall itself. Within a few days, police had discovered that the boy had been routinely beaten by an alcoholic father who, sadly enough, attempted suicide three days after the discovery of his son’s body.
Mackenzie finished off the research session with the freshly put together file on Malory Thomas. Her case stood out a bit from the others because she had been nude. The report showed that her clothes had been found in a neat pile on the bridge. There had been so sign of abuse, recent sexual activity, or foul play. For some reason or another, it simply seemed that Malory Thomas had decided to take that leap in her birthday suit.
That seems odd, though, Mackenzie thought. Out of place, even. If you’re going to kill yourself, why would you want yourself exposed like that when your body is found?
She pondered it for a moment and then remembered the psychiatrist Sheriff Tate had mentioned. Of course, now that it was nearly midnight, it was too late to call.
Midnight, she thought. She looked to her phone, surprised that Ellington had not tried reaching out. She supposed he was playing it smart – not wanting to bother her until he thought she was in a good place. And honestly, she wasn’t sure what sort of place she was in. So he’d made a mistake in his life long before he knew her…why the hell should she be so upset about that?
She wasn’t sure. But she knew that she was…and in that moment, that was really all that mattered.
Before turning in for bed, she looked at the business card the woman at the station had placed in the file. It was the name, number, and email address of the local psychiatrist, Dr. Jan Haggerty. Wanting to be as prepared as possible, Mackenzie fired off an email, letting Dr. Haggerty know that she was in town, why she was there, and requesting a meeting as early as possible. Mackenzie figured if she had not heard from Haggerty by nine tomorrow morning, she’d go ahead and place a call.
Before turning out the lights, she thought about calling Ellington, just to check on him. She knew him well enough; he was probably having a pity party for himself, likely downing several beers with plans of passing out on the couch.
Thinking of him in that state made the decision much easier for her. She turned out the lights and, in the darkness, started to feel like she might be in a town that was darker than others. The kind of town that hid some ugly scars, forever in the dark not because of the rural setting but because of a certain blemish on a gravel road about six miles from where she currently rested her head. And although she did her best to clear her thoughts, she fell asleep with images of teenagers falling to their deaths from the top of Miller Moon Bridge.
She was stirred awake by the ringing of her cell phone. The bedside clock told her that it was 6:40 as she reached for it. She saw McGrath’s name on the display, had just enough time to wish it were Ellington instead, and then answered it.
“This is Agent White.”
“White, where are we on this case with Director Wilmoth’s nephew?”
“Well, right now it seems like a clear-cut suicide. If it plays out the way I think it will, I should be back in DC this afternoon.”
“No foul play at all?”
“Not that I can see. If you don’t mind my asking…is Director Wilmoth looking for foul play?”
“No. But let’s be real…a suicide in the family for a man of his position isn’t going to look good. He just wants the details before the public gets them.”
“Roger that.”
“White, did I wake you?” he asked gruffly.
“Of course not, sir.”
“Keep me in the loop on this,” he said and then ended the call.
A hell of a way to wake up, Mackenzie thought as she got out of bed. She went to the shower and when she was done, a towel wrapped around her, she walked out of the bathroom to the sound of her phone going off yet again.
She did not recognize the number, so she picked it up right away. With her hair still wet, she answered: “This is Agent White.”
“Agent White, this is Jan Haggerty,” said a somber-sounding voice. “I just finished reading your email.”
“Thanks for getting back to me so soon,” Mackenzie said. “I know it’s asking a lot for someone in your profession, but is there any way you and I could meet for a chat sometime today?”
“That’s not a problem at all,” Haggerty said. “My office is out of my home and my first appointment isn’t until nine thirty this morning. If you give me half an hour or so to prepare for my day, I can see you this morning. I’ll put on some coffee.”
“Sounds great,” Mackenzie said.
Haggerty gave Mackenzie her address and they ended the call. With half an hour to spare, Mackenzie decided she should do the grown-up thing and give Ellington a call. It would do neither of them any good to hide away from the issue at hand and just hope the other simply forgot about it or was able to sweep it under the rug.
When he answered the call, he sounded tired. Mackenzie assumed she had woken him up, which wasn’t all that surprising since he tended to sleep in on the days he had off. But she was pretty sure she also detected some hopefulness in his voice.
“Hey,” he said.
“Good morning,” she said. “How are you?”
“I don’t know,” he said almost right away. “Out of sorts would be the best way to describe it. But I’ll survive. The more I think about it, the more sure I am that this will all blow over. I’ll have a little blemish on my professional record, but as long as I can return back to work, I think I’ll manage. How about you? How’s your super-top-secret case?”
“Pretty much over, I think,” she said. When she had called him last night on her way to Kingsville, she had not shared too much information with him, just letting him know that it was not a case that would place her in any danger. She remained careful not to spill too much information now. It sometimes tended to happen among agents when a case was closed or close to being closed.
“Good,” he said. “Because I don’t like how things ended with us when you left. I don’t…well, I don’t know what I need to apologize for. But I still feel like I’ve done you a disservice in all of this.”
“It is what it is,” Mackenzie said, hating the sound of such a cliché coming out of her mouth. “I should be back by tonight. We can talk about it then.”
“Sounds good. Be careful.”
“You, too,” she said with a forced chuckle.
They ended the call and while she felt a bit better having spoken to him, she couldn’t deny the tension she still felt. She didn’t allow herself time to dwell on it, though. She headed out into Kingsville in search of a bite to eat to pass the time before heading to Dr. Haggerty’s house.
Dr. Haggerty lived alone in a two-story Colonial-style house. It sat in the center of a beautiful front yard. A thick group of elms and oaks in the backyard hovered behind the house like nature’s own form of drop shadow. Dr. Haggerty met Mackenzie at the front door with a smile and the scent of freshly brewed strong coffee right behind her. She looked to be in her late fifties, with a head of hair that was still managing to maintain most of its chestnut brown. Her eyes took Mackenzie in from behind a small set of glasses. When she invited Mackenzie inside, she gestured through the front door with rail-thin arms and a voice that was little more than a whisper.
“Thanks again for meeting with me,” Mackenzie said. “I know it was short notice.”
“No worries at all,” she said. “Between you and me, I hope we can come up with enough cause for me to have Sheriff Tate put a bug in the county’s ear to demolish that damn bridge.”
Haggerty poured Mackenzie a cup of coffee and the two women sat down at the small table in a quaint breakfast nook just off the kitchen. A window by the side of the table looked out to those oaks and elms in the backyard.
“I assume you’ve been informed about the news from yesterday afternoon?” Mackenzie asked.
“I have,” Haggerty said. “Kenny Skinner. Twenty-two years old, right?”
Mackenzie nodded as she sipped from her coffee. “And Malory Thomas several days before that. Now…can you tell me why you’ve been on the sheriff’s case about the bridge?”
“Well, Kingsville has very little to offer. And while no one living in a small town wants to admit it, there is never anything for a small town to offer teens and young adults. And when that happens, these morbid landmarks like the Miller Moon Bridge become iconic. If you look back at the town records, people were ending their lives on that bridge as early as 1956, when it was still in use. Young kids these days are exposed to so much negativity and self-esteem issues that something as iconic as that bridge can become so much more. Kids looking for a way out of the town go to the extremes and it’s no longer about escaping the town…it’s about escaping life.”
“So you think that the bridge gives suicidal kids an easy way out?”
“Not an easy way out,” Haggerty said. “It’s almost like a beacon for them. And those that have jumped off of the bridge before them have just led the way. That bridge isn’t even really a bridge anymore. It’s a suicide platform.”
“Last night, Sheriff Tate also said that you find it hard to believe that these suicides can’t all just be suicides. Can you elaborate on that?”
“Yes…and I believe I can use Kenny Skinner as an example. Kenny was a popular guy. Between you and me, he likely wasn’t going to amount to anything extraordinary. He’d probably be perfectly fine to ride out the rest of his life here, working at the Kingsville Tire and Tractor Supply. But he had a good life here, you know? From what I know, he was something of a ladies’ man and in a town like this – hell, in a county like this – that pretty much guarantees some fun weekends. I personally spoke with Kenny within the last month or so when I ran over a nail. He patched it up for me. He was polite, laughing, a well-mannered guy. I find it very hard to believe he killed himself in such a way. And if you go back through the list of people that have jumped off of that bridge in the last three years, there are at least one or two more that I find very fishy…people that I would have never pegged for suicide.”
“So you feel that there’s foul play involved?” Mackenzie asked.
Haggerty took a moment before she answered. “It’s a suspicion I have, but I would not be comfortable saying as much with absolute certainty.”
“And I assume this feeling is based on your professional opinion and not just someone saddened by so many suicides in your small hometown?” Mackenzie asked.
“That’s correct,” Haggerty said, but she seemed almost a little offended at the nature of the question.
“By any chance, did you ever see Kenny Skinner or Malory Thomas as clients?”
“No. And none of the other victims from as far back as 1996.”
“So you have met with at least one of the suicides from the bridge?”
“Yes, on one occasion. And with that one, I saw it coming. I did everything I could to convince the family that she needed help. But by the time I could even manage to get them to consider it, she jumped right off that bridge. You see…in this town, the Miller Moon Bridge is synonymous with suicide. And that’s why I’d really like for the county to tear it down.”
“Because you feel that it basically calls to anyone with suicidal thoughts?”
“Exactly.”
Mackenzie sensed that the conversation was basically over. And that was fine with her. She could tell straightaway that Dr. Haggerty was not the type to exaggerate something just to make sure her voice was heard. Although she had tried to downplay it out of a fear of being wrong, Mackenzie was pretty sure Haggerty strongly believed that at least a few of the cases weren’t suicides.
And that little bit of skepticism was all Mackenzie needed. If there was even the slightest chance that either of these last two bodies were murders and not suicides, she wanted to know for certain before heading back to DC.
She finished off her coffee, thanked Dr. Haggerty for her time, and then headed back outside. On the way to her car, she looked out to the forest that bordered most of Kingsville. She looked to the west, where the Miller Moon Bridge sat tucked away down a series of back roads and one gravel road that seemed to indicate all travelers were coming to the end of something.
As she thought about those bloodstained rocks at the bottom of the bridge, the comparison sent a small shiver through Mackenzie’s heart.
She pushed it away, starting the engine and pulling out her cell phone. If she was going to get a definitive answer on any of this, she needed to treat it as if it was murder case. And with that mindset, she supposed she needed to start speaking to the family members of the recently deceased.
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