A Neighbor's Lie

by Blake Pierce

  He shook his head. “I swear to you, I had no idea she was pregnant. She never told me.”

  Perhaps it was the pleading and desperate look in his eyes, but something within Chloe nearly believed him.

  “Hang tight, Mr. Denning.”

  With that, she followed Moulton out of the room. In the hallway, the room to the observation room opened. Garcia came out, nodding. “You did good, Fine. I didn’t think he’d give up that much information.”

  “It’s still not enough,” she said. “If he’s right about the text messages…”

  “Well, why don’t you go figure that out and get back here as soon as you can?”

  That was all the prodding she needed. She had been given two days to wrap this case up and here she was, barely at the end of the first one, finally feeling as if she was moving forward. With Moulton at her side, she rushed to the elevators. And when she once again passed by Cecily Denning, still sitting alone on that bench near the front of the building, her fragile-looking shape only pushed Chloe on even harder

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  One thing Gerald Denning had not lied about was where he kept his burner phone hidden. After Moulton had used an old-school electronic lock disabling device to pop the lock of the brand new Mercedes in the Denning’s garage, Chloe found the phone easily enough. She tossed the decoy scarf to the side and pulled the phone out of its hiding place between the seat and the center console.

  She punched in the code Denning had given them—1905—and the home screen popped up. Chloe had never used one of these cheap burner phone before but it was incredibly easy to learn her way around. There were no contacts stored in the phone. When she went to Call History, there was only one number, several calls coming in from the number and just as many going out.

  From there, she discovered the only text thread on the phone. She didn’t bother starting at the top. She simply scrolled up a bit and read enough to confirm that the messages were indeed between Kim Wielding and Gerald Denning. Because there were no contacts, it took her a while to make out which messages were coming from Denning. But once she figured it out, the conversations made far too much sense.

  For instance, one from about six weeks ago read:

  Alone tonight. You?

  Where?

  My apartment. Carvers don’t need me for a few days.

  Not sure. C is in a mood. Depressed.

  Oh. Maybe some other time?

  Maybe. Tomorrow?

  Sure. Can you be here in the morning? Find some interesting way to wake me up?

  Ha! Yes. I’m sure I’ll think of something.

  See you then.

  Chloe felt a stirring of anger within her. She couldn’t help but think of Cecily—mentioned as “C” in Denning’s texts. What sort of mental anguish was the woman going through as her husband texted back and forth with a younger woman? She thought of the lame excuses Denning had used about not getting his needs met and it only angered her more.

  “You okay?” Moulton asked. He had been reading the thread over her shoulder and he looked just as enraged as she was.

  “Getting a little pissed off,” she answered.

  She scrolled back down, looking for the conversations that might actually prove that Gerald was not guilty of murdering this woman he was sleeping with behind his ailing wife’s back.

  C will be at her specialist in Baltimore for 2 days next week. Want to come over?

  We can’t…not in your bed. I have SOME morals, you know.

  You do?

  Shut up!

  Doesn’t have to be the bed. There’s the shower. The guest bedroom.

  That’s true. The loveseat in the den has always looked comfy.

  We can give it a try.

  How soon can I come over?

  Friday afternoon. I’ll pick you up at your apartment.

  “My God, this guy is a legitimate creep,” Moulton said.

  Chloe nodded, forcing herself to keep scrolling. The thread went on and on forever. She caught glimpses of more provocative conversations and purposefully passed them by as quickly as she could. Finally, she came to a section of the text thread that seemed to give what they had been looking for. It was a text from Denning that got no answer. And there were several after that, a series of empty texts with no responses.

  Got some free time this evening. You at home or with the Carvers?

  You playing hard to get?

  Some other time, then. Let me know.

  Two days passed and he tried again.

  You mad at me or something? Everything okay?

  Did the Carvers find out about us? You still working for them?

  Starting to worry. Text back please. Or call or just come by. Miss you.

  Okay. I guess this means we’re done?

  “That last one was from one day after her murder,” Moulton said indicating the date above the message. “Doubtful he’d send a message about trying to hook up if he knew she was dead.”

  “Unless he’s just trying to make it look that way,” Chloe pointed out.

  She took the phone and pocketed it. She then closed the car door and walked out of the Dennings’ garage, out into the afternoon.

  “We need to find Kim’s phone,” Moulton said.

  “Yeah. And I think it would probably be at her apartment. If it was at the Carvers’ house, I’d think at least one of those last texts to her would have been responded to.”

  “Didn’t you and Rhodes already check her place?”

  “We did. But that was before we knew just how messed up Kim Wielding was. If she was serious about keeping something like this hidden, she might have gone to great lengths.”

  They walked quickly back to their car, Moulton taking the driver’s seat. As he pulled away from the curb and started out toward Kim Wielding’s apartment, Chloe couldn’t resist; she looked back through the text threads between Kim and Denning. It was quite bad in some parts, getting nearly pornographic. She wondered how a seemingly upstanding woman who was a loving and kind nanny could so easily morph into the woman who was sending these texts.

  It was sad and, as far as she was concerned, a little scary. But if she had learned anything within the last year—particularly with Ruthanne Carwile and her father—it was that when people felt they had to keep a secret, they would go to just about any lengths to keep it protected.

  ***

  It was 2:15 when they arrived at Kim’s apartment. Chloe retrieved the hide-a-key box from the hiding spot inside the decorative flower pot. She locked in the combination the Carvers had given her several days ago, popped the little box open, and got the key. When she unlocked the door this time, Chloe did not feel the sense of trespassing she had felt on their first visit to the apartment. Instead, she felt like they had walked into a tomb—a place that was going to reveal secrets about a woman’s hidden life after her death.

  It even seemed foreboding once Moulton cut the lights on. Now that she knew the kinds of things Kim Wielding had been capable of, Chloe felt nearly trapped in the house. She felt that if they didn’t come away with something, the case could very well be lost.

  Fortunately, they had a very easy way to start looking. She took Denning’s burner phone out of her pocket and called up the only number that had ever sent a text to the phone. Four seconds passed before the sound of a ringing phone could be heard from elsewhere in the apartment. From their place by the tiny foyer, the ringing seemed to be coming from directly ahead of them, very soft.

  They entered the living room and for a moment, Chloe thought the ringing was coming from the television. But as she neared the TV and the built-in bookshelves, she realized that the ringing—the phone now on its fourth ring—was coming from somewhere slightly to the right of the TV. Moulton had located it first, though; he was already walking toward the bookshelf. When he started pulling books away from the shelf, she had a moment of déjà vu as she recalled Agent Rhodes pointing out the Speech Writing Essentials book.

  “Bingo,�
�� he said, reaching to the back of the shelf where the phone had been hidden by several books. As he grabbed it, he added: “I wonder why she hid it when this is her own apartment.”

  “Maybe she had the Carver kids over here from time to time. Remember, she did let them use her iPad. Or maybe Denning had her paranoid. Someone that had messed up as bad as he had in his past would probably be doing just about anything to cover his ass in the midst of an affair.”

  Moulton sat down on the couch and found his way to the text threads. Unlike Denning, Chloe had saved a contact to her phone, though it was only labeled Jerry—which was, of course, a form of Gerald. Still, it would be enough to perhaps deter anyone nosy enough to actually look for and eventually find the phone.

  There were two separate threads on Kim’s phone. Moulton instantly opened up the one from “Jerry.” Right away, they saw the same conversations they had seen on Denning’s phone. Right down to his final text asking if she was okay or if they had been found out, it was exactly the same.

  “What was the other text thread?” Chloe asked.

  Moulton went to the second thread. This contact had not been saved. It was just as well because it wasn’t much of a conversation at all. It was two separate messages, sent back to back eight days ago. Kim had wisely not responded to them. The messages read:

  If you tell ANYONE, I’ll fucking kill you. ESPECIALLY Gerald.

  You made it easy for him didn’t you? Just call him up and open your legs you whore. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should kill yourself and spare your bastard child of having to live its life with a mother like you.

  “Well, it’s not Gerald Denning, that’s for sure,” Moulton said.

  “But it’s sure as hell motive. And I think if we can find out who owns this number, we’ll find the killer…or, at the very least, someone that can lead us to the killer.”

  “The question I have, though,” Moulton said, “is this: does Denning know about these texts?”

  It was a good question—one that helped Chloe feel the case was a coming to a close with even more assuredness.

  She smiled at him and said: “Let’s go ask him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  When they arrived back at headquarters, Chloe found Gerald Denning a nearly broken man. It was clear that he had been crying and his head was resting on the surface of the table, his eyes nearly closed completely. Chloe and Moulton watched him through the glass as Garcia filled them in on everything that had happened while they had been away.

  “His wife asked to speak to him. She asked for a divorce. It got pretty heated. He begged her to not give up on him but she left. Said she was going to go home and pack some bags.”

  “Did someone accompany her?” Chloe asked. “The poor woman has been through so much. And it’s on record that she tried to kill herself because of either panic attacks or having a lousy husband. Or both.”

  “No. But she called her mother,” Garcia said. “I watched her do it. Listened to the conversation. She’ll have a support system with her.”

  “What about their kids?” Chloe asked.

  “She didn’t go into great detail. The mother bitched about it, I think. From what I gather, they have two kids, both grown. One lives out West somewhere. The other, I don’t know where they live but I think they more or less removed themselves from the family when the scandal hit a few years back.”

  “Poor woman,” Moulton said, looking awkwardly to Denning on the other side of the glass.

  “What did the two of you find?” Garcia asked.

  Chloe handed him both of the phones. “He was right,” she said. “According to the texts we found, he either had no idea she had been killed or he staged the last few texts after her death. But we found two texts on Kim Wielding’s phone that indicate someone knew about the pregnancy.”

  “And,” Moulton added, “it was someone protective of Denning.”

  “Another mistress?” Garcia asked.

  “No idea,” Chloe said. “How long will it take us to track the number down?”

  “If the texts warrant it, I can know within five minutes.”

  Moulton pulled up the two threatening texts and showed them to Garcia. “I’d say these warrant it.”

  “Holy shit,” Garcia said. “Let me make a call. I’ll have it for you as quickly as I can.”

  “In the meantime, are we okay to go back in and speak with him?” Chloe asked.

  “If you think it’s necessary.”

  Chloe thought about it for a moment before nodding and heading back out into the hallway. Moulton followed her and stopped her before she opened the interrogation room door.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I think we can leave him alone until we find out who this other text is from. Unless it’s just a matter of rubbing his nose in it. And while I’m all for that, just remember that Garcia is watching.”

  There was part of Chloe that knew he was right. But a larger part of her knew that Moulton wasn’t haunted by the mistakes of a father who had ruined lives with the same sort of selfish actions. She supposed she could try to explain it to him, but he wouldn’t understand. And really, did she want to open up that box on him so soon in their partnership?

  “I’ll be good,” she said, trying to speak lightly to lighten the situation a bit.

  She went into the room, taking a small amount of pleasure in just how startled Denning seemed. She walked straight to the table as Moulton closed the door behind them. Denning looked up to them with hope in his bloodshot eyes.

  “Did you find the phone?” he asked.

  “We did.”

  “Thank God. Can I go home now? Cecily has it in her head that she wants to leave me.”

  “Of course you realize that any killer that could think at least one step ahead would keep sending texts after the murder. Just to try to throw off police.”

  “Oh my God,” Denning nearly screamed. “No…that’s not who I am. I did not do this!”

  “Mr. Denning, were you sleeping with anyone else?”

  “No, I—”

  “Maybe someone that even knew Kim Wielding. More than that…someone that might have known she was pregnant?”

  “No. Just Kim. I swear on my life.”

  “See, you’ve already lied to me once in the past, so I don’t know if I can believe that.”

  “Damn you! You found the phone! You know it wasn’t me! So what sort of sick pleasure are you getting out of this?”

  “The phone proves nothing,” she said.

  Chloe honestly didn’t know how to answer his question. And in that moment, she knew why she was doing this—why she was wanting so badly for the killer to be Denning. What she could not realistically take out on her father, she was trying to take out on Gerald Denning. In the back of her head, she could still hear Moulton’s warning: …Just remember that Garcia is watching.

  Chloe had to look away from Denning. She felt cheap. She also felt like she was exploiting this man’s weaknesses—and she was doing it to try to make herself feel better because she could not escape her own demons.

  She turned away from the table and headed back for the door. She briefly caught a glimpse of Moulton’s face as she reached for the door. He looked sad and a little uncomfortable, like he wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

  She left the interrogation room and stood in the hallway for a few seconds before Moulton came out behind her. Before she heard his voice, though, a thought occurred to her. Something she had seen today had chilled her and it came back in that moment like a strong wind, trying to push her in a certain direction. But before she could latch onto it, Moulton was there. He placed a hand on her shoulder and spoke softly. And God help her, as if she wasn’t dealing with enough, the desire to kiss him in that moment was like some physical weight pushing against the back of her head.

  “What’s going on, Fine?”

  The last name, she thought. Ouch.

  She fel
t the explanation coming to the tip of her tongue—everything about her father and how his sins and desires had ended her mother’s life and deeply affected her own. Hell, she’d even venture into Danielle territory, telling him about her weird relationship with her sister.

  But before any of it came out, another voice interrupted them. It was Garcia, rushing toward them as he came out of the observation room door.

  “We can’t get a match on the number that sent those texts,” he said. “It was apparently also a burner phone. My money is on Denning in there, trying to throw us off.”

  Chloe again recalled that image from earlier in the day…the image that had made her feel haunted in an odd way. And even before Garcia told them what he had discovered, Chloe knew.

  She saw the fragile figure standing in the distance, down a hallway shrouded in shadows. A figure like a ghost. Like someone who had forgotten what life was supposed to be.

  I have to talk to Cecily Denning, she thought. I think she knows more than she’s letting on. If Denning did indeed do this, she has to know. But she’s so used to her husband failing her…she probably knows that any other mistakes from him could ruin him—could ruin them.

  And besides, that poor woman could use someone to talk to right now.

  “I’d like to go speak with Cecily,” Chloe said. “Now that this is all out of the bag, I wonder if she might be a bit more forthcoming.”

  Garcia nodded, rubbing at his head. “Good idea. But guys…if it’s not Denning, then I don’t know that we have a case at all. That forty-eight hours will be gone before you know it.”

  Chloe was well aware of that as she headed back down the hall. She could literally feel every second slipping away from her and she’d be damned if she was going to let her time run out before wrapping this damned case.