Fatal Invasion

by Marie Force

  “No, thank you,” Freddie said. “This isn’t a social call, unfortunately.”

  “I’m sure you’re very busy at a time like this. I heard the vice president’s wife was investigating the case. Do you work with her?”

  “We do,” Freddie said. In the back of his mind, he could hear Sam’s voice telling him to take control of this interview—and do it now. “Mrs. Knoff, our investigation has found there was no love lost, for lack of a better way to put it, between you and Cleo Beauclair.”

  Emma’s mouth fell open and then snapped shut, her eyes flashing with what could only be called rage. “Who said that?”

  “We’ve heard it from multiple sources. Can you please describe your relationship with Mrs. Beauclair?”

  “I’m just...” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m stunned to hear that anyone would describe my relationship with Cleo as less than cordial.”

  Freddie wanted to groan with frustration. “I understand, but that is in fact how it was described to us. If you’re unable or unwilling to answer our questions here, we’d be happy to take you downtown for a formal interview.”

  “Are you saying I’m a suspect?”

  “I’m saying we have questions, and either you’re willing to answer them, or we’ll make you our guest at the city jail,” Freddie said. “Is that clear?”

  “Y-yes,” she said, the slight stammer a welcome hint of humility. “What do you want to know?”

  “How would you describe your relationship with Cleo Beauclair?” he asked. “And I’d advise you to be honest with us. There’s nothing we dislike more than people who waste our time.”

  “If I’m being honest,” she said, haltingly, “I’d have to say I didn’t like her very much.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Freddie thought, as he took notes. “And why was that?”

  “Who did she think she was coming into my school and trying to turn herself into volunteer of the year? I’m the PTO president. I decide who does what and when, not her. And what’s with her never leaving the building while her children were there? Who does that?”

  “She did,” Jeannie said. “And I guess I wonder why it would matter to you if she wasn’t asking you to do the same.”

  “It’s just not done,” Emma said, her glare frosty. “New mothers don’t come into the school and take over the volunteer positions. That’s not how it works.”

  “Most people would be thrilled to have the extra help,” Jeannie said.

  “I wasn’t,” she snapped back.

  “Were you angry enough to kill her?” Freddie asked.

  Emma’s face went completely white before it turned bright red, the entire cycle occurring within seconds. “Absolutely not! Ask anyone who knows me! I wouldn’t harm a fly!”

  “What the hell is going on here?” A good-looking man came into the room wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit and a frown on his face. He was the picture of success and good fortune, from his styled hair to his Italian shoes.

  “Oh, Cal,” she said, jumping up to hug him. “Thank goodness you’re here. These detectives had the gall to ask if I killed Cleo Beauclair. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “Are you accusing my wife of a crime?” he asked.

  “Not at this time.”

  “Then I’ll need you to leave my house. If you wish to speak to her again, you’ll do so only with an attorney present.”

  Without another word, Freddie and Jeannie stood and headed for the front door.

  Behind him, Freddie heard Emma say, “That’s it? They’re just going to leave after accusing me of murder?”

  “Shut up, Emma,” the husband said. “Just shut your mouth.”

  Freddie closed the door and took a deep breath of the fresh air.

  “Holy shit,” Jeannie muttered. “That was intense.”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to request an interview with her downtown just to give those people a dose of humility.”

  “Right there with you.”

  “It sure would be fun to make her twist in the wind.”

  “Yes,” Jeannie said, laughing. “It will be. And PS, Sam would’ve been proud of you back there. You were awesome.”

  “Oh thanks. She’s always in my head, for better or worse.”

  “I’d say it’s for better—most of the time anyway.”

  “Except until I want to unleash a string of profanity. Then it’s not so good.”

  “Such as shit, fuck, damn, hell?” Jeannie asked, referring to one of Sam’s favorite sayings.

  “Yes, that. Exactly that.” They got in Freddie’s car and started battling their way through late-day traffic on the way to Sam’s house.

  “Ugh, this traffic,” Jeannie said. “This is why people say things like shit, fuck, damn, hell.”

  Freddie laughed. “Seriously.”

  “Could I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s going on with Gonzo?”

  “I wish I knew. Whatever it is, it’s not good.”

  “Not good at all,” Jeannie said with a sigh.

  “Christina called me this morning and asked me to come by after work and pick up the bags she’d packed for him.”

  “Ahh, crap.”

  “That’s what I said too. I tried to talk to her, but she wasn’t having it.”

  “What do you suppose this means for Alex?” Jeannie asked.

  “I don’t know, but I really hope they aren’t going to end up fighting over him, because that would truly suck.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  * * *

  WHEN DR. ANDERSON came through on afternoon rounds, Gonzo demanded to be released from the room they’d taken him to after they’d admitted him. “I’m totally fine, and while I’m sitting on my ass in here, my life is falling apart.” When he’d had the room to himself, he’d gotten up to find his jacket in the closet and had taken a pill that had gone a long way toward calming his nerves and settling the relentless pain.

  He’d overdone it with the meds yesterday. That’s all it was. He wouldn’t do that again. He’d take just enough to keep the pain manageable but not so much that he blacked out or half killed himself looking for relief. As bad as he felt—and he felt pretty damned bad most of the time—he didn’t actually want to die. He wanted to watch Alex grow up and become a man. His son needed a father, and Gonzo was determined to be there for him.

  So he only took one pill when he really, really wanted two.

  Anderson checked Gonzo’s chart, listened to his heart and sat on the stool next to the bed to type notes into the computer. “I’m not going to lie to you, Sarge. I’m worried about you, and for the record, I don’t believe one word you said to me yesterday.” When Gonzo started to object, the doctor held up his hand to stop him. “As you well know, the opioid epidemic is out of control. We see it every day in here. I know what it looks like, and it looks just like this.”

  He gestured to Gonzo. “A professional guy who has his shit together until he suffers some sort of injury that requires pain meds. Suddenly, the pain meds are essential, and the perfectly healthy person can’t do without them. Couple that with the tragedy you suffered earlier this year, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.”

  “I’m not hooked on anything, Doc. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Maybe I do. But if you don’t mind giving me five more minutes of your time, let me tell you where it goes from here. Soon enough, whatever you’re taking isn’t going to be strong enough to feed the beast. That’s when you’ll turn to heroin.”

  Gonzo recoiled. “I would never touch that shit. Come on, Doc. I’m a cop, for Christ’s sake. I know what happens to people who get hooked on that crap. That’s not going to be me.”

  As if Gonzo hadn’t spoken, the doctor continued. “When heroin doesn�
�t do it for you anymore, that’s when you’ll go looking for fentanyl. And that shit... That shit makes heroin look like aspirin, and it will kill you. We’re losing people just like you to fentanyl every single day. If you think it can’t happen to you, think again. If you stay on the current path, it will happen to you. The best thing you can do for yourself is ask for whatever help you need. Get help. If you don’t want to end up dead, get help. I promise you this isn’t going to end well if you don’t stop it right now.”

  “I know all this,” Gonzo said, his teeth gritted. “I’ve had the training at work.”

  “And I haven’t even mentioned the career you’ve worked so hard for,” Anderson said, again as if Gonzo hadn’t spoken. “If you’re scoring heroin or fentanyl or anything else that’s not prescribed for you by a doctor, you’re risking your badge, and you damned well know that. You’ve had the training. You know better than most people that this is a path that ends in the morgue. Is that what you want for your kid? A father who OD’d and left him to fend for himself in this world? What about that really pretty girlfriend of yours? You think she’s going to be sitting on her ass at home waiting for you to get your shit together? A woman who looks like her, who takes care of your son the way she does—she’s not going to be on the market for long. You want some other guy raising your kid and loving your girl? That’s where this is heading, Tommy. That’s the only place this is heading—you dead and the two people you love best going on without you. But hey, if that’s what you want, far be it from me to get in your way.”

  Anderson scrawled his signature across the bottom of a piece of paper, took it off the clipboard and handed it to Gonzo. “Your walking papers.”

  Gonzo stared at the stark white paper as an image of Christina and Alex with another man—a nameless, faceless guy walking between the two of them, holding hands with them—appeared in vivid detail. The man wasn’t him. He’d been replaced. Someone else was raising Alex in the scenario he could see so clearly it made his heart ache with agony. They were in a park, and Alex was laughing and talking. To someone else. A stranger. A stranger who Alex would love because he’d be the only father the child would ever know. He wouldn’t remember his real father.

  In all the words that had been thrown his way in the last twenty-four hours, those were the ones that finally got his attention. The thought of Alex growing up without him, calling another man Dad. That was truly unbearable to him.

  “Tommy? You’re free to go.”

  “I...” His heart raced, and the pain lanced through him like a live wire, stealing the breath from his lungs. “I think I need help.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SHORTLY BEFORE FOUR, Hill, Green, Cruz and McBride arrived at Sam’s, bringing with them new reports from the ME and fire marshal. Hill remained outside on a call while Sam read through Lindsey’s report first, skimming through the gruesome details of torture and possible sexual assault of Cleo. In addition to Jameson’s missing teeth, he’d had broken fingers on both hands.

  “The fire marshal determined the fire was set in the living room and aided by an accelerant that was detected throughout the room,” Jeannie said. “As the victims were found in the middle of the room, the fire marshal concluded the accelerant—most likely gasoline—was placed in a wide circle around them.”

  “Whoever did this wanted them to know they were going to burn to death.”

  “That’s the fire marshal’s conclusion as well,” Jeannie said, her expression grim.

  “I don’t know about you guys,” Sam said fiercely, “but I want the motherfucker who did this to pay.”

  “Totally with you,” Cruz said, briefing Sam on the conversation with Emma Knoff. “I gotta say... These people were unreal. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to bring her in for a more formal interview downtown, if for no other reason than to instill some humility.”

  “Proceed,” Sam said. “Set it up for first thing in the morning.”

  Hill came in from outside. “We might have a significant break.”

  “Speak to me.”

  “We nabbed Duke Piedmont at Dulles,” he said of the airport located twenty-six miles west of Washington in Northern Virginia. “Our investigators can put him in the city the night of the murders.”

  “Holy shit,” Sam said, having to concede that sometimes the obvious suspect was actually guilty. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’re taking him to headquarters. I’m meeting our agents there in an hour. I assume you want to be there when we talk to him?”

  Sam felt torn in a thousand directions. “I do, but I can’t leave the kids. Not tonight. We’re going to tell them...”

  “I understand.”

  “Will you update me as soon as you can?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What do we do until we know for sure it was him?” Freddie asked.

  “We keep doing our thing and keep pulling the threads,” Sam said. “It’s not over until we’re one hundred percent sure.” After hearing about how the Beauclairs had died, Sam wanted vengeance as much as she wanted justice for their precious children. “What else have we got?”

  “I followed the money,” Green said, “and found that Jameson Beauclair continued to make plenty of it from his patented software long after APG shut down.”

  “How’s that possible if the company was defunct?” Freddie asked.

  “He still held the license for the software, which means other companies could produce it while he continued to profit.”

  “All this corporate shit gives me a headache,” Sam said. “So even though APG is defunct, the software isn’t?”

  “Right,” Green said. “The licensing agreements were very profitable.” He produced documentation that showed Beauclair’s earnings from the year before had topped three-hundred-million dollars.

  “Damn,” Sam said. “Where was this info when I was picking a career?”

  The others laughed. The much-needed moment of levity broke some of the tension that had hung over the group after they’d discussed how their victims had perished.

  “At least the kids will be set for money,” Sam said, perusing the staggering balance sheet Green had unearthed.

  “Small comfort,” Freddie said.

  “True.” To Green she said, “Where’d you get this anyway?”

  “He incorporated a new business in Delaware as Jameson Armstrong called JAE for Jameson Armstrong Enterprises, and the balance sheet was part of a required public filing with the Delaware secretary of state.”

  “He did a piss-poor job of hiding,” Sam said. “If Piedmont wanted to find him, it wouldn’t have taken much effort on his part.”

  “No, it really wouldn’t have,” Green said, “which leads me to wonder—why now? Why after all this time would Piedmont pick this week to make his move? JAE was incorporated more than eighteen months ago with Armstrong listed as the CEO and sole proprietor.”

  “You didn’t pick up anything new from a business standpoint?” Sam asked.

  “Three months ago, Forbes had a story about Armstrong rising from the ashes of APG to forge a new path for his revolutionary software. But again, that was months ago. If Piedmont was going to react to the news that Armstrong was continuing to profit from the software, why would he wait?”

  “Is it possible he hadn’t seen it before now?”

  “Possible but not probable,” Hill said. “The guy was a fugitive from federal law enforcement. I’d bet he stayed on top of anything and everything having to do with Armstrong, APG and the software.”

  “The thing I don’t understand at all,” Sam said, “is why they bothered to change their names and relocate if Jameson was going to continue to do business like nothing had happened?”

  “Our supposition,” Hill said, “is that they panicked when everything first went down with APG. Piedmont took off, threatening Arm
strong and his family on the way out of town. Armstrong and his wife were offered protection and they took it out of fear for their safety and that of their children. They didn’t think it all the way through to include the implications for his ability to continue to profit from his invention.”

  “Why did he need to continue to profit?” Sam asked. “Didn’t he make billions the first time around?”

  “The software was going to continue to exist in the market with or without his involvement,” Hill said. “He chose for it to be with his involvement.”

  “Even if that put him and his family in danger?” Sam asked.

  “Even if,” Hill said.

  “One more thing about the money,” Green said, handing Sam another printout. “This just popped up half an hour ago. Cleo withdrew one hundred thousand in cash from her bank the afternoon before the fire. I’ve put in a request for security footage from the branch where she made the transaction, and I’m waiting to hear back. Apparently, the request has to go through the bank’s corporate offices in New York.”

  Sam glanced at Hill and handed the printout to him. “Can you see what you can do to speed that up?” Sometimes things happened quicker when the FBI asked, not that Sam would ever admit to such a thing out loud.

  “Yep.” He was typing a text before she finished asking the question.

  “Let’s get over there and interview the people at the bank,” Sam said.

  “I’ll do that as soon as they open in the morning,” Green said.

  Shelby came out of the kitchen with Noah attached to her chest.

  Hill lit up at the sight of them. After he sent the text, he got up and went over to see them both.

  The baby let out a squeal of excitement when he spotted his daddy.

  “I’m going to check on Alden and Aubrey,” Shelby said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  “We’re glad you did,” Hill said, kissing Noah’s forehead before he rejoined the meeting.

  “Thank you, Shelby,” Sam said.

  “This is the report from Patrol about the accident Cleo was in on Friday.” Freddie handed over a printout of the report that had been sitting in her email for most of the day waiting for her to have a chance to review it.