A Neighbor's Lie

by Blake Pierce

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It was nearly 6:30 by the time Chloe and Moulton arrived at the Denning residence yet again. As they got out of the car, Chloe felt her nerves start to build. She was going to be questioning this poor lady about her cheating husband again—about how he had been unfaithful to her in so many different ways.

  She knocked on the front door and within seconds could hear heavy footfalls coming toward the door. It was then opened just a crack. Slowly, Cecily Denning peered out with eyes that had clearly seen its share of weeping that night.

  “I know you’re trying to help,” she said through the door, “but I’m sort of tired of seeing both of you.”

  “I can understand that,” Chloe said. “But we have just a few more questions. And then maybe we can lay this case to rest and leave you and your husband alone.”

  Cecily sighed and then opened the door a bit more. “Yeah, you can come in. Just don’t refer to him as my husband again. If you do, I might snap.”

  Chloe winced at her choice of words, given her history. Wanting to keep the visit as brief as possible, Chloe started her line of questioning as soon as Cecily closed the door behind them.

  “I’m back in the bedroom, packing,” she said. “Make it quick, because I plan on being out of here just as soon as possible.”

  “Our director said you had called your mother to be with you,” Moulton said. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. But she’s useless. I’m driving to her place. She lives in DC. Doesn’t everyone live in DC these days?”

  “And your kids are no help?” Chloe asked

  “None. Just as useless as my mother.”

  “Mrs. De—I’m sorry…can I just call you Cecily?” Chloe asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  “Did you know that your husband was involved in a relationship with Kim Wielding?”

  “Of course I did,” she said in a half-yell. “I pretended not to just so I wouldn’t have to deal with it all but yes, I did. And I wouldn’t call it a relationship. It was just sex.”

  “How long did you know?”

  “A few months,” she said. She never looked at them as she spoke. They were in the bedroom now, an enormous room with a closet that was nearly as big as the living room in Kim Wielding’s apartment. Cecily went into this closet, retrieved a few shirts, and brought them back into the bedroom where she had s suitcase on the bed, already stuff with a few odds and ends.

  “And did you know she was pr—”

  “Pregnant?” she interrupted with a shrieking laugh. It sent a chill down Chloe’s spine and she wondered just how close Cecily Denning was to another panic attack—or something much worse.

  “Yes, pregnant.”

  “Yes,” Cecily said. There was a strange gleam in her eyes, as if she were enjoying some grand joke. “I knew because the little bitch came by here almost two weeks ago to speak with Gerald. Thankfully, Gerald was away. In fucking DC, of course. Tying to mend bridges and get some sort of a job back. She came to talk to him and when I told her he wasn’t here, she asked to come in to speak with me. She told me everything…all about the affair.” She said the word “affair” as if it were the punchline to a very bad joke.

  “She told you…just like that?” Moulton asked.

  “Yes. Said she felt guilty. That things had gotten out of hand. And then she told me she was pregnant. She cried the entire time. Real tears, no faking. I almost felt sorry for the little whore.”

  “And you knew about the affair before then?”

  “Yeah. For a few months.”

  She went into the closet again, this time coming back out with two pairs of shoes. She shoved one into the suitcase and left the other pair—a nice pair of heels—sitting by the suitcase.

  “Did you let her know you knew?” Chloe asked.

  “No. Look…I’m not stupid. I haven’t been sexually active with Gerald in a while. I loved him and all but when I had my…my episode a few years ago, I lost all interest in any form of a sex life. Gerald had to get his kicks elsewhere. And while it hurt…I understood.”

  “Do you know how they kept in touch?” Moulton asked.

  “Those cheap drugstore phones,” she said. “I knew. I found Gerald’s a few months ago. I used to read their texts. It was funny. It hurt, but it was still funny…trying to imagine Gerald trying to talk to a woman like that.”

  Chloe could sense the desperation and, she hated to think it, the edge of something very wrong with Cecily in that moment. Chloe did not think it was a panic attack that was coming on, but there was certainly something off about the woman.

  She then replayed the last few seconds in her head. A slow knot of worry started to churn in her stomach.

  I knew because the little bitch came by here…

  I almost felt sorry for the little whore.

  “Cecily, have you ever used one of those phones?”

  “Oh yeah. Pretty recently.”

  The woman was now speaking as if she was just passing time with a dear old friend. Moulton gave Chloe a strange look but she very faintly nodded her head.

  Oh my God, she thought.

  Slowly and deliberately, she started to reposition herself. She wanted to make sure her firearm was close to her hands.

  “Did you have Kim’s number?” Chloe asked.

  “No. But I did get it off of Gerald’s phone.” She had a thoughtful but worried look on her face. It seemed as if she realized that she had just said something she shouldn’t have.

  “And did you ever text her?” Moulton asked, the same realization now dawning on him as well.

  Cecily finally turned to face them. There was a smile on her face that looked a little maniacal. “Yes! I got that junk phone and I texted her the day after she came by here to tell Gerald that she was pregnant. Maybe said some rough stuff. Just to scare her, you know? But what choice did I have?”

  “So you convinced her not to tell him about the baby?” Chloe asked.

  “That’s right. When she was here, I begged her not to tell Gerald and she agreed, at least at first. We both agreed that there was no way he would ever get his life back if people found out and the news went public. The conversation didn’t end on the best terms, though. She was still undecided. Said she had to think about it. Stupid bitch…”

  Chloe saw something in Cecily’s eyes that alarmed her but also seemed to ease her into the next few moments. She saw something in Cecily Denning’s eyes that she could only describe as unhinged. Perhaps the panic attacks and other issues had led to some sort of mental instability. And if that was the case, Chloe felt that she was watching that instability slip in behind the controls of Cecily’s logic and reason.

  “Did you see Kim at all after that?” Chloe asked.

  Cecily slowly sat down on the bed, nodding. Chloe thought this was it. This was the moment Cecily would break. Chloe felt rather bad for being responsible for pushing her to whatever edge she was about to fall from.

  “I would drive by the Carvers’ residence almost every day after that,” she said. “If Kim’s car was there, I’d circle the block a few times, just thinking.”

  “Thinking about what?” Moulton asked. Chloe noticed that he had very slowly started to close the distance between himself and Cecily.

  “How my life would be if Gerald found out about Kim’s pregnancy. If the media found out. Everyone thinks I’m crazy, you know. Something like this would not only bury Gerald, but it would also add to that version of me.”

  “Mrs. Denning,” Chloe said. “Did you ever contact Kim after the confrontation here at your house?”

  Cecily smiled. It was as if she knew they were on to her and she was simply having a bit of fun now. “I did. Like I said, I contacted her on that secret little phone. She and Gerald had these throwaway phones they’d use to contact one another. They thought they were being so sneaky…”

  “We saw those texts,” Chloe said, realizing that Cecily was now repeating herself. She had already confirmed buying
the junk phone and sending the texts. She wondered what, exactly, was going on in the woman’s head.

  “Mrs. Denning, there are some things you said on those texts that don’t look good.”

  “I know. I wanted to scare her. Wanted her to think straight about it.”

  “But in the end, you took it into your own hands, didn’t you?” Moulton asked. He had managed to make it a few steps closer without being noticed. Chloe was impressed with how stealthy he was but also a little unnerved at how casually he had dropped the question.

  “My own hands,” Cecily said with a chuckle as she placed her high heels into her suitcase.

  In a flash, she was no longer shoving one of those heels into her suitcase. It was instead coming straight across in a hard arc through the air, gripped tightly in her right hand. By the time Moulton registered this—it was, after all, a rather ridiculous-looking sight—it was far too late. He let out a surprised little yelp and took a staggering step backward.

  The point of the heel struck him just below the temple. It drew blood right away, the shock of it forcing Moulton to his knees.

  Chloe rushed forward, her hand hovering over her sidearm but not drawing yet. After all, if she could not take down a woman as frail as Cecily Denning, she did not deserve to be an agent.

  As Chloe decided on the best hold to put Cecily in, Cecily reached back into her suitcase. As her hand landed on something, Chloe wrapped her right arm underneath Cecily’s left. As she pulled the woman’s meager weight toward her, she hooked her left arm around Cecily’s stomach. Chloe’s goal was to wrench her down in one hard jerking motion, hopefully onto the bed; going to the floor in this hold with any real force would likely dislocate Cecily’s shoulder or break her jaw.

  But Chloe never got the chance. Apparently, Cecily’s hand had landed on exactly what she had been looking for in her suitcase. Chloe’s vantage point did not allow her to see what sort of handgun Cecily had stowed away in the suitcase. All she saw was the gun in Cecily’s grip, blindly turned upside down and toward her face.

  Chloe ducked down, losing her grip, as the gun went off. Had she been a single second slower, the round would have torn directly into her forehead.

  She still had a slight grip on Cecily’s left arm. She tugged it hard, making the woman buckle and bend downward. Chloe then drove her shoulder hard into the back of Cecily’s knees. Cecily buckled hard and went sprawling forward with a cry. The gun went off again, this time pointed high and to the right. Glass shattered as Cecily rebounded from the edge of the bed.

  Chloe fought for a suitable hold as Cecily did her best to turn herself over, angling for another shot. Before she could manage to level the gun, though, Moulton was there. He had dived toward her, throwing a shoulder hard and high into her chest. As they went tumbling to the ground, he slid on the floor and managed to wrap Cecily’s head in a front headlock with his left arm while twisting her right arm with his own.

  Cecily cried out, dropping the gun as Moulton held her down on the ground. Chloe quickly kicked the gun away, slipped her handcuffs from her belt, and applied them as if she had done it hundreds of times. When she heard the click of the cuffs, she felt the adrenaline spiking through her. She was dizzy for a moment as the world swam, everything catching up to her at once. She shared a crazed glance with Moulton as he got to his feet, leaving Cecily on the floor. She wasn’t writhing or scrambling or trying to get to her feet anymore. She had accepted her defeat and just lay there, looking at Chloe.

  “I had to,” she said through a soft sob. “If she told anyone, it would be over. For me, for Gerald…for our life together. I couldn’t…”

  And then Cecily Denning broke. It was as if something inside of her literally shattered as she tried to get out her skewed justification in murdering Kim Wielding.

  The adrenaline quickly faded as Chloe heard the woman letting out gut-wrenching sobs. Maybe she was realizing for the first time exactly what she had done—not only killing a pregnant woman, but also firing a shot at an FBI agent.

  Chloe looked behind her and saw where the bullet had torn into the wall—the same bullet that had been about one second shy of tearing through her skull and into her brain. But the wails of Cecily Denning broke her attention and she felt that she had to look at the woman…not out of any sort of respect, but because even though she was a murderer, Chloe could not deny that the woman had been through a lot.

  “You okay?” Moulton asked quietly over Cecily’s sobs.

  Chloe only nodded, mainly because she did not trust herself to talk.

  In fact, she was trembling so badly that she wondered if she might be having some sort of panic attack of her own.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  Chloe was speaking with the bureau shrink when Cecily Denning spilled every single detail of the murder of Kim Wielding. The psychologist was asking how she had responded to the gunshot that had nearly taken her life. She was then asked if she had felt prepared for the assignment given that such a frail and unstable woman had nearly gotten the best of her.

  After being approved to return to the closing of the case, she was sent out of the little office and was asked to send Agent Moulton in next. She found him sitting in a small conference room across the hall from the interrogation room Cecily Denning was sitting in—the very same room her husband had sat in less than two hours before. Garcia and one of the agents who had taken in Gerald Denning were sitting with him, both drinking coffee.

  “You’re next,” Chloe told Moulton. “Be ready to feel totally inferior.”

  “Already there,” Moulton said sheepishly as he got to his feet.

  When he was gone, Chloe sat down and looked at Garcia. The coffee smelled good and even though it was nearing 8:00 in the morning, she found herself craving a strong cup.

  “Cecily Denning spent fifteen minutes telling us how she killed Kim Wielding,” Garcia said. “She waited for a time during the day where she knew the Carver kids would be in school. She walked right up to the porch, rang the doorbell, and hit her with a lead pipe that she’d found in her garage a few weeks ago. She said she thought about a gun—the same gun she had hiding in that suitcase—but wasn’t sure she’d be able to do it. She said the pipe felt more natural, like it was no big deal.”

  “Did she get to speak to Gerald?” Chloe asked.

  “God no. We’ll keep the two of them away from one another for as long as possible.”

  Chloe nodded, deciding that she was going to get some coffee anyway. “Where’s the coffee?” she asked.

  “Break room at the end of the hallway,” Garcia said. “But listen, Agent Fine…I want you to know that you did a great job. Moulton went through the scene detail by detail, and even Cecily Denning’s accounts made you seem like a superstar. I spoke with Director Johnson shortly after she confessed and he’s a very happy man. Fantastic work, Fine.”

  “Thanks.” She headed for the door but paused when a certain thought struck her. “When I was speaking to her in her house, there was a moment where it seemed like she wasn’t there anymore. She seemed unhinged. You could see it in her eyes. She wasn’t faking it; it was legitimate.”

  “Yeah,” Garcia said with a sigh. “I sensed some of that when we were talking to her.”

  “She’ll probably cop a plea based on some mental state or another, won’t she?”

  “That’s anyone’s guess,” Garcia said. “And certainly not anything for you to worry about. You did your job and you did it well.”

  Chloe left the room with a frown and started down the hallway to grab her cup of coffee. She gave the interrogation room door a fleeting glance as she passed by it.

  As she came to the break room, she was surprised to see Moulton there. He was placing a lid on a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He smiled at her guiltily and said, “Going to need this to deal with a shrink at this hour.”

  “Yeah, I’m going to need it just to process it all. Have fun in there.”

  “Oh, sure.” He passed her and start
ed out of the room, but paused and turned back to her. “Fine…there was something I wanted to ask you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Can we do something outside of this? The job, I mean? Dinner, maybe?”

  Her first instinct was to say yes, but something held her back. “I don’t know,” she said. “Can I think about it?”

  Smiling, he nodded and headed out. It was as if he had been fully expecting this answer. And honestly, she had no idea why she had not simply said yes. Maybe it was because his timing was terrible. She smiled at this as she watched him go.

  Chloe let out a little chuckle of disbelief as she went to the coffeepot. As she poured a cup, she tried to ignore the trembling in her hands and the slight ringing in her ears from Cecily’s gunshot, but they were both too strong to be ignored.

  They were almost as strong as the other thought that was finally able to surface to the back of her head now that this case was wrapped.

  She thought of what she had on her cell phone—the voice recording of Ruthanne’s entire confession.

  She had enough evidence to clear her father…to probably have him released within a month or so, barring paperwork and bureaucracy. But there was still one last thing she needed to do. And it scared the hell out of her.

  After taking a huge gulp of the coffee, she took out her cell phone and texted Danielle: We need to talk.

  ***

  She got home at ten that night, after filling out all of the appropriate paperwork. She had seen Moulton only once after he had met with the psychiatrist, but they had not gotten a chance to talk. Thankfully, it was Moulton’s invitation to dinner that was on her mind as she drifted to sleep rather than the brief yet deadly struggle with Cecily.

  She didn’t sleep well (maybe because of the late caffeine intake or maybe because her mind simply refused to shut off completely), so when her phone dinged at her early in the morning, she gave it an irritated snarl.