Yara Hughes: All-Seeing Detective

Chapter Six: A Break In The Case

I woke up the next morning to a loud, crass pop song playing on the clock radio that I had set the alarm on. The song wasn't anything I was familiar with, and from what I was hearing I could only describe it as "too much." I made a face and half-wiggled, half-stumbled over to the clock to turn it off. 6:15. Perfect. More gracefully this time, I got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and turned to where I'd left my suitcase last night to take out today's outfit. I changed, tidied up the room a bit, and made sure I had everything I needed for the day. By 6:50 I was walking out the door and taking the elevator downstairs to the breakfast lounge that I'd been told about last night as I checked in. I asked the woman taking room numbers if I could have a container for the food. She asked me to wait a moment and got one for me from the kitchen. I thanked her and went to the buffet, filling the container with eggs, potatoes, and toast. Then, I went to the coffee machine and filled a cup.

Cameron pulled his car up in front of the hotel at 7:15 sharp. I got in; but not before confusing the driver's side for the passenger's side again. When I got in the correct side Cameron was stifling a laugh.

"Cut me some slack," I groaned. "I'm jet lagged in a country with different automotive structures than what I'm used to."

"Sorry," he said. I could tell he wasn't. Frankly though, I didn't blame him. I couldn't count the amount of times I'd laughed at foreigners who had tried to get in on the driver's side while visiting London.

"Get any sleep?" Cameron asked as he drove back onto the freeway.

"I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow. So... enough."

"Good. We've got work to do."

We sped towards Headquarters and I got another look at semi-rural America. It was amazing how long one could drive before reaching another city; and this wasn't even one of the areas with the lowest population density. Clumps of trees lined the side of the freeway for miles. In the distance I could see mountains covered in more trees; their colors muted by the distance between me and them. I turned back to Cameron. "Your country is massive."

He grinned. "You've only seen a few miles of Virginia."

"My point exactly. How long does it take to fly to... the West Coast?"

"A flight from Dulles to LAX is about six hours."

I nearly dropped the container holding my breakfast. "Six?"

"Yeah, something like that. What's the longest flight by you?"

"London to Edinburgh is the furthest you can go via major airport in the UK."

"And?"

"90 minutes."

"Wow. The UK is tiny."

I nodded and went back to staring out the window. We drove for a few more minutes before pulling into the FBI parking lot. Once we were upstairs, Agent Jackson was right on our heels.

"Good thing you guys are here on time," He said, passing us and nearly running over several interns in the process. "We've got some updates to comb through."

Cameron and I exchanged a look and followed Agent Jackson to the roundtable. The other agents were all either in their seats or right behind us coming in. The team exchanged "good mornings" and Agent Jackson stood up to give us the news.

"So," He began. "Thanks to our wonderful technical analyst, our target pool has been narrowed down significantly." He raised a remote control and pressed a button before continuing. The screen behind him came to life. He then turned to face me. "Using the ingenious criteria given to us by our aid from the UK, our list of possible Senator-targets has been narrowed down to just ten."

The six other FBI agents looked stunned. I couldn't hide the pleasant smirk forming on my face.

"Okay," Agent Yates leaned forward in his seat. "How did you know that would work?"

My smile grew even bigger. "I just gave the situation a little more thought."

"This is nuts," Agent Gray said. "Obviously, she's some kind of psychic."

"Actually," Agent Jackson interjected. "The name 'Yara' does mean 'to see' in Arabic."

I shrugged. "My mom just thought it was pretty."

"Mhm," Agent Gray gave me a skeptical look. "That's why."

"Alrighty," Agent Jackson continued, pressing another button on the remote. The screen now showed ten headshots. "Here are our ten possible Senators. Any more criteria I should look for?"

I gave it a quick thought. "We should look into any threats that each of these Senators received around the times of the accidents and deaths. Our killer will have left one before and after; but the one after will be far more violent. Look for pairs like that with similar writing styles."

"Lucky for you I had those details pulled." Agent Jackson took a stack of files from a nearby table and began to pass them out; one to each of us except for Agent Wood and I, who each got two instead. "I figured you two can handle an extra file each." He said.

The team and I took the next few hours to read through the files. My first Senator was Jamie Perkins of California. One would think that such a big state would engineer the perfect target for this case; but no such event, nor the threats to match it and the criteria could be found. So I moved on. My next file was of senator Amelia Lerner of Connecticut. Her file was far more interesting. One of her promises on the campaign trail was to provide funding to the state's playgrounds, some of which desperately needed it for repairs and safety measures. When she was elected, she flaked on her promise; but for whatever reason the problem didn't escalate until...

"Oh god." I gasped.

The others turned to face me.

"What's up?" Cameron asked.

I caught them up on the Senator and what she'd promised. Their faces at the end told me they might know what I was about to tell them.

"The accident was last year." I said. "A piece of a playground structure broke and fell on a seven-year-old who was playing underneath it. He suffered a catastrophic head injury and died in the hospital the next day."

"Jesus," Agent Warner muttered.

"His mother had been an avid lover of playgrounds and a fierce advocate for giving them the necessary funds. She was a key player in getting Senator Lerner to promise the playgrounds their funding before... she died of thyroid cancer just before Lerner won the election."

"So the advocate is dead," Agent Yates mused. "What about the dad?"

"That's what I was getting to. When Senator Lerner broke her promise, the father went nuts. He sent her dozens of very strongly worded emails; some of which included equally strongly worded threats. And after the accident the threats got far worse. Here's the kicker: two months ago, after an email in which he said, 'you've stabbed me in the back,' the threats stopped abruptly. The Senator's office never reported it because the emails remained, well, emails. Senators get 'bad emails' all the time."

"But these were more than just 'bad emails.'" Agent Jackson objected.

"I'm not going to comment on the level of caution politicians decide to take," I replied. "The husband fits our profile: he feels betrayed by the Senator, suffered personal losses because of the betrayal, sent escalating threats which stopped just before the murders started, and is likely strong enough to subdue the victims. Also, this neglect of funding by the Senator was never publicized, and according to the file the child's death was only covered by a local newspaper."

"I'll have tech look into the husband," Agent Jackson offered.

"Thank you, Alex." Agent Wood said. "I'll notify the Senator's office and issue a protective detail. We need to end this before things escalate even more." He got up and began to walk towards the door, but then stopped and turned around. "Good work, folks. Go get lunch."