A Neighbor's Lie

by Blake Pierce

  Looking over the case files, Chloe suddenly couldn’t stand to be sitting still at her cubicle. She went to the elevators and took a trip down to the basement level, where records spanning back as far as 1937 were tucked away in folders and old filing cabinets. As she walked along the aisles, there was something comforting about it all. Sure, having everything digital was convenient and foolproof, but there was something simple and beautiful about having hard copies of so many files and records neatly tucked away in tangible form.

  She knew where the original files from her father’s arrest were because she’d been down here months before as she and Danielle had holed up and pulled Ruthanne Carwile out into the light. She found the filing cabinet she needed within three minutes and pulled it open. The smell of old papers and neglect wafted up at her, as warm and familiar as an old library.

  She pulled out the single folder on her father’s arrest and the murder of her mother. She knew the only reason the file was even in the hands of the bureau was because of the child endangerment aspects the case had brought up. Although a federal agent had not touched the case until a week or so after her mother’s funeral, even that slight involvement had been enough for a file to be created for the case.

  She took the file with her back to the elevator and took it to her cubicle. Protocol told her than she needed to sign the file out but she didn’t see the need. She’d only look at it for a while and return it. Besides, she didn’t want to create an actual paper trail that would back up the fact that she could still not let go of the case—of her mother’s death her father’s seemingly wrongful arrest.

  It wasn’t exactly wrongful now, was it? she thought to herself. He willingly went to jail so that Ruthanne would not be convicted. Seems pretty fucking thought out and willing to me.

  Of course, there was nothing in the file that surprised her. She knew it all by heart, the original report doing everything but saying that her father was out-and-out guilty. The picture had painted itself, even before Ruthanne Carwile had really come into the picture at all.

  So there was one version of the story accepted as truth before Danielle and I uncovered he truth—about Ruthanne and the affair with Dad. That had been a little twist to the story…a story that looked cut and dried from the start.

  So where was that twist in Kim Wielding’s story? There had to be one. The link to Mike Dillinger just made no sense. Not unless Kim had a dark side, no more immune to the lures and secrets of suburban life than anyone else in the Carvers’ neighborhood.

  She then remembered Collin and Andrew Dorsett mentioning that Kim had complained about a possible UTI. She wondered how much manpower would have to go into checking with doctors within a twenty-mile radius of the Carver residence for any doctors that Kim might have gone to. She pulled up an email and fired off the request to Assistant Director Garcia. It felt like a Hail Mary, but it was better than nothing.

  As she returned her attention to the Kim Wielding case, the day rolled by slowly. She got confirmation from Garcia that he’d set someone to the task of checking with doctors in the Bethesda, Maryland area to see if Kim Wielding had set up any appointments within the past six weeks. It felt like very slow progress but it also made Chloe feel that she was doing her job with at least some degree of success.

  As the day came to an end, Chloe started to dread going home to her apartment. She knew she’d have to buckle down and unpack everything else—to actually get her life started and in order. But feeling so stuck at a dead end on the Wielding case made the mere thought of unpacking and setting up unbearable.

  She thought of Rhodes, stuck in a hospital bed and probably salivating over a chance like the one Chloe currently had. It made Chloe feel guilty, like she was not fully appreciating the fact that she was currently living her dream. It just so happened that this dream of hers had started with a case that seemed to have no leads or clues at all.

  While thinking of Rhodes, Chloe’s phone rang. She saw that it was Moulton and answered it quickly.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” Moulton said. “I saw where you made a request to see if Kim ever made a doctor’s appointment.”

  “Yeah. It’s a shot in the dark, but one worth taking.”

  “You think if it was a urinary tract infection, it might have been caused by having sex? Maybe with someone other than Bill Carver?”

  “I’m starting to wonder about that exact thing, although UTIs have several different causes,” she admitted. “The fact that she was involved with Mike Dillinger in any sort of capacity is just mind-boggling. Makes me think she might have had some secrets we need to uncover.”

  “You want to see if we can start uncovering them over a drink or two this evening?”

  The idea was certainly tempting, but Chloe knew that drinks with Moulton would only cloud her mind.

  “Thanks for the invite, but I’m going to pass. I think I’m going to swing by the hospital and check in on Rhodes.”

  “A much more noble cause than getting buzzed over a case handing us our collective asses,” Moulton joked. “Let her know I said hello.”

  “Will do. See you tomorrow.”

  She gathered up her things, sticking her files and laptop into her bag, and headed out. She had been working there long enough to know most of the faces, making very brief chitchat with some of the people she passed as others also made the five-o’clock journey to the parking garage. As she took the elevator down, she felt like she was forgetting something. It was a little itch at the back of her head, not too dissimilar to the feeling one gets when they think they might have left a light on at home before leaving for the day.

  It was so fleeting that she had managed to ignore it completely by the time she got to her car. She spotted Moulton getting into his car and she couldn’t help but wonder if he had decided to simply go on home once she had turned down his invite for a drink. The thought made her smile; it actually made her feel like a crush-stricken school girl. And she hated that.

  She pulled out of her parking spot and headed to the hospital. Her thoughts were so preoccupied with Moulton and visiting Rhodes that the little itch of forgetfulness she had felt moments before was obliterated, not even a blip on her radar.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When Chloe entered Rhodes’s hospital room, her old agent looked cranky and irritated. Yet when she set her eyes on Chloe, the thinnest of smiles spread across her face. She used the bedside remote to cut off the television, which had been showing an afternoon talk show.

  “I heard Mike Dillinger was booked on sex crimes,” Rhodes said, skipping the niceties.

  “He was,” Chloe said. She sat down in the visitor’s chair against the wall, surprised at how natural it felt to be here with Rhodes. “He has nothing to do with the death of Kim Wielding, but he apparently had an ongoing list of deviant behaviors that he’s managed to keep mostly hidden for several years.”

  “So we can count that as a success then,” Rhodes said. “No killer, but we did bust a scumbag anyway.”

  Chloe smiled, surprised that she had not yet seen that silver lining among her feelings of failure. “What’s the latest from the doctors?”

  “Barring an unforeseen complication, I should be able to get out of here within two days. I’m getting headaches, but they say that’s common for the amount of blood that I lost.” She looked down to her hands, folded in her lap, and cleared her throat. “Which leads me to once again thanking you for saving my life.”

  “No need to thank me. I was acting on pure adrenaline. I think about using Dillinger’s shirt as a tourniquet and I can’t even recall when I got the idea. I was thinking without thinking, if that makes sense.”

  “Perfect sense. How about the case? Any breaks?”

  “None. Which is ridiculous because in a neighborhood like that, a woman who messed around with someone like Dillinger should have tons of rumors circulating about her, right?”

  “Maybe she just hid her secrets really well,” Rhodes sa
id. “Some women are pretty good at that.”

  “And it’s so much easier to keep those secrets when you’re dead,” Chloe said.

  “Have you started looking at the case with the assumption that Kim Wielding was keeping secrets?”

  “No.”

  “Not to poke fun at you, but that’s the Evidence Response Team in you. You’re too concerned with looking for evidence that’s probably not even there. For Violent Crimes, you have to assume the worst about people—sometimes even the victims. More often than not, there’s a reason for violent crimes against people, no matter how skewed it might be.”

  “Yeah, but when the darkest thing in a woman’s life is a relationship with someone like Mike Dillinger…”

  “Then it seems like that would be a damned good place to start.”

  “We started there,” Chloe pointed out. “His alibi on the night she was killed is airtight.”

  “But maybe he knows some of her secrets.”

  Chloe had considered it before but it was an idea that had lost its traction after Mike Dillinger had been arrested for other crimes following his interrogation about Kim Wielding.

  She spent the next few minutes filling Rhodes in, right down to how Garcia had tasked someone with looking into potential doctors’ visits in the weeks leading up to her death concerning a possible urinary tract infection.

  “You ever had a UTI?” Rhodes asked.

  “Once. It was miserable.”

  “You know how ladies tend to get them, right?”

  “Sex.”

  “Exactly. Not always, but often. And really, is it so hard to believe that if a woman like Kim Wielding would sleep with the father of the family she worked for as well as a douchebag like Mike Dillinger, she might be venturing elsewhere for sex?”

  It seemed so simple, like such an easy connection to make. Especially when she applied Rhodes’s filter to it: assume people are not good from the start. Assume everyone is keeping secrets. But even if they did discover the doctor who treated Kim’s UTI, where would that lead them? Probably nowhere.

  “Let me tell you,” Rhodes said. “If this case is not wrapped up by the time I get out of here and get back to work, you’re never going to hear the end of it from me.”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Chloe said.

  “They teamed you up with Moulton, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah. He’s pretty sharp but there’s this sort of relaxed quality to him that I think keeps him from being too attached to the cases.”

  “He’s also fun to look at,” Rhodes added. “Any tension there?”

  “Um, no,” Chloe said, hoping the red wasn’t showing in her cheeks.

  Rhodes cast her a look that indicated she wasn’t so sure. “So…a potential UTI. That’s the only lead?”

  “For right now, yeah.”

  But Chloe’s mind was starting to adapt to what Rhodes had suggested. What if Kim’s darker secrets spread beyond Mike Dillinger and a few heated and spur-of-the-moment romps with Bill Carver? What else could she have been hiding?

  And where might she have hidden those secrets?

  Again, her thoughts went back to Mike Dillinger. At the start of the case, he seemed to stick out like a sore thumb, something that did not quite fit with Kim’s life.

  But as the case wore on, he didn’t seem so out of place at all.

  She wondered who else might have known about her relationship with Dillinger. The killer, perhaps?

  And if so, how might they work toward ensuring Dillinger was eyed for the crime?

  “You just had a thought, didn’t you?” Rhodes asked with a smile.

  “I did. A good one, I think.”

  “Care to share?”

  Chloe got to her feet, throwing on her jacket. “I think I know where to look for Kim Wielding’s car.”

  ***

  On the way to Mike Dillinger’s apartment building, Chloe called up Bill Carver. When he answered and she identified herself, he did not sound very pleased.

  “Can I help you?” he asked with just an edge of irritation.

  “I have a hunch about where to find Kim’s car. Would you happen to have a spare key?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  She decided to keep the crude comments to herself and instead asked: “Is Sandra there? Maybe she has a key?”

  “No. She’s spending some time with her sister in Alexandria in light of all that has happened.”

  Chloe shrugged to herself as she drove. Really, it was no big deal. She could request to have a police unit come by to pop the locks if need be. She thanked Bill for his time and then continued on to Dillinger’s place.

  She quickly ran a circuit of the block around the apartment building but did not find a license plate matching Kim Wielding’s. She checked the two surrounding blocks and found nothing as well.

  On the third street over from Dillinger’s apartment, Chloe found it. Kim’s car was parked in a public lot, out in plain sight. It was the kind of discovery that made her feel stupid for not having been able to find it before now. But she had not been alone. Two full days had passed without anyone else having located the car, either.

  With no available parking spots, Chloe parked on the side of the street and walked through the lot to Kim’s car. She was not at all surprised when she found it locked. She also noticed one of the tires was flat and wondered if that was the reason she hadn’t driven to the Carvers’ on the day she was killed. She spent the next half hour living through one of the few monotonous parts of her job. She placed a call to the local PD for police assistance to unlock the car. While she waited, she called Garcia to fill him on her discovery. She also called Moulton, who seemed a little too excited.

  “How the hell did no one see it?” he asked.

  “It’s literally out in plain sight,” she said. “Easily overlooked, I guess.”

  “What’s it look like inside?”

  “Just about as clean as her room at the Carvers’ and her apartment. I’m honestly not expecting to find too much.”

  “So no need for me to come out?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll call if anything changes.”

  She ended the call just as a police cruiser pulled up behind her car. She watched as the policeman popped the lock and smiled at her. It was the sort of smile that seemed to say, “See how easy that was?”

  She thanked him as she opened up the driver’s side door. The policeman stayed there but hung back, as was protocol, to make sure everything was okay.

  In the floorboard of the passenger side there was a long-sleeved hoodie. In the back, there were two paperback books and a pen on the seat. Feeling that this had been a waste of time—for both her and the policeman who was still watching—she popped open the glove compartment. She found an old iPhone charger, a few loose coins, and miscellaneous odds and ends such as paper clips, the vehicle’s registration, and a drawing of what looked like a dog that had been signed by Madeline Carver.

  Yet as Chloe dug through all of this, she saw something in the back of the glove compartment. Tucked away in the corner, partially hidden behind an old Chick-fil-A ranch packet, was a small plastic bag that had been balled up. Chloe pulled it out and found it folded into several sections, tied down with a rubber band. She pried the band off, unfolded the plastic bag, and found a very small amount of cocaine. It wasn’t a lot at all, maybe just enough for Kim to grab a quick hit at the end of the day—or at the start of the day, for that matter.

  She had no evidence bags on her (she was sure Rhodes would have, though, she thought with a smile) so she pocketed the bag. She then searched the rest of the glove compartment but found nothing else of interest.

  The last places she checked were the little catch-all compartments along the bottoms of the doors. The driver’s side was the only one that had caught anything. There wasn’t much in it, just a few scattered things along the bottom. There were two balled up tissues, a crumpled Post-it note, and a few scraps of paper. She sifted the papers out
onto the floor and straightened them out.

  The Post-it read: New PTA Time: 7:30. Tuesdays.

  Chloe put it back in the little catch-all compartment and went to the other scraps of paper. One of them was just as innocent. It read: Fieldtrip to Apple Orchard, $7 due next Wednesday.

  But it was the last little scrap of paper that caught Chloe’s attention. It wasn’t a scrap of paper at all, but a receipt. It had come from Walgreens nine days ago. Three items had been purchased, paid for with cash: an Almond Joy candy bar, a box of Benadryl gel caps, and a First Response pregnancy test.

  Chloe stared at the receipt in shock for a moment, as if it had practically handed her an answer and she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it just yet.

  It wasn’t a urinary tract infection causing her to run to the bathroom so much, Chloe realized. She was pregnant. Or at least thought she was. And with even the threat of an unwanted pregnancy…

  Well, that created motive for a father who wanted to keep an affair secret.

  Chloe grabbed the receipt and closed the car door.

  “All good?” the policeman said.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  But she was barely aware of saying anything at all. She was thinking of Bill Carver. And while it was an obvious jump to make, she had to remind herself of his alibi. There was ample proof that he had not been in Maryland when Kim had been killed.

  So who then?

  Chloe tucked the Walgreens receipt into her pocket and headed quickly for her car, thinking that if luck was on her side, there might be a way that she could find out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  She dialed up Agent Moulton as she sped her car toward the coroner’s office. The fact that they were holding on to the body because of lack of any leads was going to turn out to be extremely helpful. Of course, she had no idea how much longer they could hold the body. No more than another day or so, surely.