Malpractice - 4. Chapter 4

The day after that disturbing phone call, Remmington Montague headed straight for the forensics lab at the New Jersey field office he worked out of. His brother, Jason, was the leading expert on trace analysis and also worked with the DNA lab. The whole way to the office from his apartment, Remi was trying to figure out how to break it to his younger brother that the serial killer they were hunting had their mother. His older brother, Nicholas was the Medical Examiner at the same field office. He, too, was respected as an expert in his field. Remi wasn’t sure who it would be harder to break the news to.

He’d broken news like this to many families and loved ones in the past. Their reactions had ranged from fear, to anger, to disbelief and denial, to a determination to find the missing person that sometimes became a detriment to the case and more than once put themselves in danger. This time, though, it was personal. With their father having been killed in the line of duty some twenty years ago, their mother was all Remmington, Jason and their eldest brother Nicholas had left. She was the glue that held their family together, and Remi was not about to let it fall apart.

As Remi got into the car his father had left him, a cherry red 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500 convertible with black racing stripes, he found himself going through a gambit of emotions. He was angry with the killer for having the audacity to make this personal; he was angry with himself for not having seen it coming and protecting his mother; he was scared he may lose her; most of all, he was more motivated than he’d been in the five years since this case began to catch the creepy, sadistic little bastard and bring him to justice. Now his motivation had changed from a feeling of deep disgust to a quest for revenge. Now Remi had to push all that aside and prepare to break the news to Jason and Nicholas.

Pulling up to the FBI building in Trenton, Remi did a quick scan of the vehicles in the parking garage as he drove up to his parking space in the section reserved for the B.A.U. team. Both of his brothers were already there. He saw Nick’s Harley Davidson in the M.E.’s spot on the ground floor of the parking structure, and Jason’s Ford Explorer Hybrid on the third floor, level with the CSI lab. Remmington couldn’t decide if it would be better to break the news to them at work in a controlled environment, or at dinner in a public place, or maybe invite them over to his place for poker night and tell them then.

The one person Remi knew he couldn’t tell that Burris had his mother was Alexa’s father, the Director of the F.B.I. Director Maguire had been visiting the New Jersey office when the last body was pulled out of the Hudson 6 months ago. He was originally taking victims once a year as far as the F.B.I. knew. Now there were 2 victims in 6 months. Burris was escalating.