A Different Dawn (Nina Guerrera)

by Isabella Maldonado

  Impinging someone’s freedom to that degree, however, impeded their constitutional rights, and therefore, the legal standard to do so had a high bar. They would have to write an affidavit outlining the probable cause to arrest Forge and charge him with murder. Once that arduous task was completed, they would have to give testimony and convince a judge to sign the warrant. A separate affidavit and a search warrant would then be required to fully exercise the options Breck had in mind.

  “Everything we have is circumstantial,” Nina said. “There is nothing tying him directly to any crime scene.”

  They were in that catch-22 situation every law enforcement officer dreaded. They needed evidence to secure a warrant, but they needed a warrant to find the evidence.

  Breck switched tactics. “Speaking of accessing info, back when we thought Thomas Kirk was the unsub, we had theorized that he used the Rubric Realty database to locate victims since his company was involved in each home purchase, but what about Clay Forge? How has he been selecting target families?”

  An excellent question.

  Breck, still at her computer, pressed the issue further. “According to Forge’s LinkedIn profile, he’s been working for Jexton Security since he was eighteen.” She gestured toward the large monitor on the wall, where Forge’s driver’s license photo flipped to his LinkedIn picture when she clicked her mouse. “He’s worked his way up to Phoenix-branch Sales Director now.”

  “Sales,” Wade said. “Just as I thought. I’ll bet he’s damned good at it too.”

  “A nationwide company like Jexton would have a database that included sites around the country,” Nina said. “Forge could have started his initial research right from his office.”

  “That would explain how he defeated the alarm system at the Doyles’ house,” Breck said. “He has skill with electronics. He might have even figured out how to access existing alarm systems to monitor the people inside. He would know when they were home, who was there, and when they were asleep.”

  Kent reddened. “I’ve got an alarm system. I don’t like the idea of someone hacking into it to spy on me.”

  “I don’t like it either,” Buxton said. “But it could explain a lot about how these crimes were committed.”

  Nina had an alarm, too, but her backup system consisted of a nosy eighteen-year-old genius with major boundary issues living in the apartment next door who kept tabs on things. “Forge starts off installing alarms. Eventually, he realizes he can make more money selling them because he’s a natural salesman.”

  “Which brings up another point,” Breck said. “Now we’ll have to get subpoenas for Jexton’s files if we want to show Forge was accessing their database and potentially their monitoring systems.”

  “We aren’t even there yet,” Wade said. “I’d still like to approach Forge in a noncustodial interview setting to see if we can move the ball farther down the field before we go to a judge.”

  Buxton shook his head. “We’re coloring too close to the lines. A few minutes ago, I called Forge a suspect. He’s gone past a person of interest at this point. We’ll talk to him after we’ve got everything sewn up tight.”

  Buxton was playing it carefully. For an interview to be considered noncustodial, they would have to make it clear from the outset that he was free to leave at any time. It was a legal dance, and Buxton wanted to be sure they did not misstep. They would interview Forge after they laid paper on him.

  Buxton turned to Breck with an expectant look. “What else have you got on Forge’s personal history?”

  “He was divorced four years ago,” Breck said. “His ex-wife’s name is Gail Howe. She’s ten years younger than he is. She left him the house in Mesa and moved to Scottsdale. Looks like she remarried but Forge did not.”

  “I wonder what Ms. Howe has to say,” Wade said. “We’ll have to pay her a visit too.”

  “The assignment is yours,” Buxton said, then gestured toward Nina. “Take Agent Guerrera with you.” He looked at the others. “While they’re interviewing Mr. Forge’s ex-wife, the rest of us will look under the sofa cushions to see if we can find enough probable cause to write an affidavit. After you two get back, we’ll debrief, fill in the gaps in our profile, and put our best case together.”

  Nina picked up her bag and turned to Wade. “Interviewing someone who once shared a bed and a home with a ruthless serial killer should be . . . enlightening.”

  “I’ve done it many times before,” he said to her. “I’m always amazed but never surprised.”

  Chapter 42

  Thirty minutes later, Nina and Wade sat in Gail Howe’s sleek state-of-the-art kitchen. Gail, a tall blonde with the physique of a ballet dancer and the demeanor of a frightened rabbit, had ushered them inside the expansive midcentury-modern home she shared with her new husband of two years.

  After handing them each a bottle of French sparkling water from a chiller beneath the counter, she took an empty chair at the kitchen table. “It’s a good thing my husband isn’t home,” she said. “He gets upset anytime I mention Clay’s name.”

  “Upset?” Nina wondered if Gail had been unlucky in marriage more than once. “What do you mean?”

  “Not what you’re thinking.” Gail seemed to have read the concern in Nina’s tone. “He doesn’t hit me or anything like that. He just . . . well, I’ve told him stories about my time with Clay. Stories that weren’t so nice. I’ve been in therapy since the divorce.”

  Four years of therapy indicated Gail had a lot to deal with. “Would you be willing to share some of those stories with us?” Nina asked.

  Gail winced. “Not if it means I’ll have to testify against him or anything.”

  “Then he’s committed crimes that you’re aware of?” Nina said.

  “Oh, this is going all wrong.” Gail flapped her hands. “Look, why don’t you start by telling me what this is about?”

  Nina gave her the standard nonanswer. “His name came up as a person of interest in an investigation. We need some background information.”

  “Person of interest.” Gail grimaced. “I know what that means.”

  “Mrs. Howe—” Wade began.

  “Gail, please.”

  He started again. “Gail, whatever you can tell us about Clay would go a long way in helping us understand him.”

  She pursed her lips. “Good luck with that. It took me five years of marriage to truly understand him, and another full year to get away from him once I did.”

  “Let’s start with that,” Wade said. “How did you meet and how did you come to understand him?”

  “We met when one of my friends was buying a house. The real estate agent recommended Jexton Security for the alarm system.”

  “Was the real estate agent with Rubric Realty?” Nina asked.

  Gail tilted her head in thought. “Yes, he was. I went with my friend when she met the rep from the alarm company, which turned out to be Clay. This was ten years ago, before he climbed the corporate ladder.”

  She paused for a moment, but no one interrupted, letting the silence stretch. After half a minute, she sipped her water and went on.

  “Clay was handsome and charming. He said all the right things, was very attentive, and had a great sense of humor. We hit it off right away. Before I knew it, my friend had a house with a new alarm system, and I had a fiancé.”

  “How long did you date before you got engaged?” Wade asked.

  Nina figured he was trying to tell if it had been a whirlwind romance.

  “About a month, maybe less.” Gail lifted a shoulder. “Everyone liked him at first. My family thought he was nice. We got married a few months after our engagement and he found a great home for us in a lovely community in Mesa. I wanted to start a family, but he kept putting children off.”

  Wade leaned forward, intent. “What did he say about having a child?”

  “He said babies were a lot of trouble, and that he needed my help to get ahead in the company. He used to tell me we would start a fa
mily once he was in charge of a branch and had lots of people working for him.”

  Nina understood why Wade had asked the questions. Whatever he told his wife at the time, Forge undoubtedly didn’t want to compete with a baby for her affection.

  “I knew that would take a while,” Gail said. “I’m a lot younger than he is, but my biological clock was ticking. After I passed thirty, we began to have serious arguments about it.”

  “Did he ever get violent?” Nina asked gently.

  “Not physically, but he messed with my head.”

  “How so?” Nina prompted.

  “He would say something and then deny he said it,” Gail said. “Sometimes about important things, like our finances, and other times about stupid little things that didn’t matter, like the laundry.”

  When they continued to look at her, she blew out a sigh. “Okay, I’ll give you an example.”

  Nina waited while Gail took another sip of water, apparently summoning up the best representation of her relationship with her ex-husband.

  “One time he sent me to the store for milk and eggs,” Gail began. “I got a couple of other things and came home a half hour later with the groceries. He starts screaming at me about his beer. Says I forgot to buy his stupid beer. There is zero chance I forgot about it. I would never make that mistake. Well, he works himself into a rage and puts his fist through the drywall right next to my head. I apologized and rushed out to buy the beer.” Her voice dropped. “That’s also when I realized I needed to get the hell out of there.”

  “That’s very helpful,” Nina said, then pivoted to a subject she hoped would provide more fodder for a warrant. “What were his birthdays like?”

  She had worded the question carefully. If Gail described intimate dinners or giving him presents when he woke up in the morning, their case would be in serious jeopardy. On the other hand, if she indicated her husband was out of town on his leap year birthdays, that would add credibility to the idea that he traveled to various cities during the time frame in which the crimes were committed.

  “He acted real weird about his birthday,” Gail said. “He’s a leap day baby, you know.” When they nodded, she continued. “He was sensitive about it. Never wanted to celebrate with me. In fact, he was always out of town on business over his birthday. After a while I realized he only did that on his actual birthday, every four years—not on March first, which is when he normally celebrates on non-leap years.”

  Gail had corroborated a key element of the case they were building against Forge. Nina barely managed to keep herself from smiling. She knew damn well what Forge was doing every four years, but she wondered if Gail had any idea.

  “Where would he go?” Nina asked her.

  “No clue,” Gail said. “He just seemed anxious to get out of town. I think he did that on purpose so I couldn’t make a fuss on the actual day. I would have a cake and a present or something for him when he came home.”

  “Did he behave differently when he returned from his trips?” Wade asked.

  Gail tapped her chin with a slender finger. “A bit calmer, maybe. It’s hard to describe. He wasn’t quite as particular about things when he got back.”

  “Particular?” Wade said in a clear invitation for her to elaborate.

  “He would get all cranked up about the tiniest things. When he came home, the carpet had to be freshly vacuumed. But—get this—he insisted on lines in the carpet.”

  “Lines?” Nina asked.

  “You know, the marks a vacuum cleaner makes, stripes in the carpet. Kind of like when you cut the grass and there are stripes in the lawn? That’s what he wanted every single day. There could be no footprints, he wanted to see straight lines in the carpet.”

  Nina silently added control freak to her mental description of Forge.

  “The furniture had to be arranged precisely too,” Gail said, finally warming to the subject. “He would measure after I vacuumed to make sure every piece had been perfectly replaced so it was back where he’d left it. Every day I had to move the furniture to vacuum under it, then carefully replace it to line up in the room precisely. There had to be an even amount of space on each side.”

  Nina cut her eyes to Wade, who looked like he was literally and figuratively biting his tongue.

  “My therapist told me Clay was obsessive-compulsive,” Gail added.

  “Do you know if he had access to any property out of town?” Nina said, looking for information about places Forge might hide out if he decided to run. “Somewhere he might go to get away for a while?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. He only ever traveled for business, and he stayed in hotels when he did.”

  Nina came back around to her previous question. This time, she asked it directly. “Did you ever get the impression he was involved in anything criminal?”

  “Never.”

  Nina wanted to know if Gail had been aware of Forge’s background. “Did you ever meet any of his family?”

  “Both of his parents died in a car crash,” Gail said. “I felt so sorry for him. He didn’t have any other family in the area.”

  So this is how Forge had explained the lack of a family to his bride. Nina found it interesting that Gail never questioned it further. It seemed that Forge had her completely under his control.

  Nina changed the subject. “Could you draw us a layout of the house in Mesa?”

  “Sure, but I can’t help you when it comes to the basement.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was never allowed in the basement.”

  Nina dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You never got curious and took a peek?”

  “Are you kidding? Clay would have known, and there would have been hell to pay. He always knew what I was doing somehow.”

  Nina had a hunch that Forge’s seeming omniscience had more to do with electronic surveillance installed in his own home than anything else. She waited while Gail borrowed Wade’s notepad and sketched out the floor plan for the house she had once shared with Forge.

  Gail finished and handed the pad to Nina. “This is the best I can do. I’m no artist.”

  Nina assured her the drawing would be helpful as they thanked her and made their way to the front door.

  After providing her with a business card, Nina gave Gail’s hand an extra squeeze on her way out. “Call if you remember more details.”

  Gail tugged her closer and whispered, “I’m still not sure what this is all about, and I understand that you can’t tell me, but I will say this. I learned the hard way that behind Clay Forge’s perfect smile is a cold, calculating mind. I don’t think he ever loved me. I’m not sure he even knows what love is.”

  Nina repeated Gail’s words to Wade when they were in the SUV.

  “That woman has suffered a tremendous amount of abuse, and I doubt she told us everything that happened with her ex,” Wade said. “She still seems terrified of him.”

  “I’m glad she’s in therapy,” Nina said. “Because she’ll need it even more once this goes public and she learns she was married to a psycho killer.”

  Chapter 43

  Nina briefly took her eyes off the road to glance at Wade when she noticed him checking his phone. “Have you gotten any texts from Buxton? Did the surveillance team catch up to Forge?”

  “They detailed half the team to his office and the other half to his house,” Wade said. “According to the receptionist at Jexton Security’s front desk, Forge left less than two minutes after our phone call. Said he was heading out of town.” He gave his head a rueful shake. “We never had a chance of catching him at work.”

  The phone call to Jexton had been a losing gamble. “And his house?”

  “They’ve been sitting on the place, but Forge hasn’t shown up.”

  Nina passed a slow-moving truck. “So they’re confident he never went home?”

  “As much as they can be.”

  “This guy thinks ahead,” she said. “Do you think he has bolt-holes an
d fake identities set up in advance?”

  Wade gave the matter some thought. “His kind of planning takes place months in advance of his murders. He’s not good at improvising. Look what happened with Thomas Kirk.”

  “Forge made critical mistakes,” she agreed. “Which ultimately led us to his identity.”

  “I’d like to visit his neighborhood before we go back to the command center,” Wade said. “We won’t knock on his door or anything, but I can get a better sense of him from his living environment.”

  She didn’t think the boss would go for it. “Buxton will probably tell us to have the surveillance team upload photos and video to our server.”

  “I’ll handle Buxton. Nothing is like being in situ.”

  “Yeah, definitely use Latin.” Nina gave him a wry grin. “That should impress him.”

  Wade chuckled and pulled out his phone. Nina took the ramp for the 202 Red Mountain Freeway toward Mesa, anticipating Wade winning the argument.

  After a lot of back-and-forth with the boss, Wade disconnected. “We’re supposed to stay away from the plainclothes surveillance team so we don’t blow their cover. They’ll be one street over from the target location, parked in a blue sedan.”

  After driving in silence for a while, Nina caught Wade studying her.

  “How are you holding up, Guerrera?” he asked her gently.

  “What do you mean?”

  He didn’t dignify the question with a response, instead lifting a salt-and-pepper brow. Dr. Jeffrey Wade, psychologist, was making a house call. She thought about deflecting but decided maybe a sounding board wouldn’t be a bad thing.

  “Seeing my family was tough.” The words my family tasted foreign in her mouth. “I looked at Teresa’s face, and it was exactly like Maria’s. Like . . . my mother’s.”

  Wade said nothing.

  She pictured her father’s parents, their house dark and empty compared to Teresa’s. “And the Vega family, ay, dios mío, they are so grief-stricken.” She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Their whole house is like a mausoleum. I can’t imagine how terrible it’s been for them to lose both of their children so young.”