by Blake Pierce
Kate did not have time to consider the thought much farther. She heard someone calling for her from behind as she made her way down the courthouse steps. She smiled when she realized how they were referring to her. Not as Ms. Wise.
“Agent Wise!”
She stopped and turned to see who would still refer to her as agent. She saw three people coming down the stairs to catch up with her. One of them looked vaguely familiar. Maybe one of the family members related to one of the Muellers.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m Paul Mueller,” the face she recognized said. “I’m Clark’s dad. Clark was…”
“Yes, I remember,” Kate said. And she did. Though when she thought of Clark Mueller, she saw the top of a head caved in with a rock and a small intestine hanging from a gash in his stomach.
“This is his best friend from college and his sister,” Paul Mueller said, gesturing to the other two.
A brief round of introductions were made. It was all rather surreal to Kate. It was the kind of situation she’d tried her best to avoid when she’d been an active agent. But now she felt she owed some of her attention to these people—people who had lost loved ones a very long time ago and had found some peace and solace because she had managed to find the person who had taken away a large part of their lives.
“We just wanted to thank you for staying involved in all of this when you didn’t have to,” Paul Mueller said. “If that monster had gotten parole…I don’t know what I would have done.”
“It’s my pleasure,” she said. “Retired agents do this sort of thing all of the time.”
“I’m sure they do,” Paul said. “But you were always the one person involved in the mess that seemed to genuinely care. You wanted to catch Ellis, sure. But you had a good heart. I remember one night where you humored my wife when she fought through tears for close to an hour to tell you a meaningless story about Clark falling out of a tree when he was seven years old. You entertained her while every other policeman and agent in the house avoided her like the plague. That has always meant the world to me.”
Kate, never the best at taking compliments, had no idea what to do with that. She decided to simply give him a warm smile. “As long as I’m alive, Patrick Ellis won’t get parole,” she said. “You have my word on that.”
Paul gave her a hug, as did the college friend and sister. They split off and everyone went their separate ways. Kate headed to her car, trying to shake the memories of the Mueller case out of her head. As she did, she realized there was something that had been said during the hearing that had stuck in her head like a splinter. Something about how it had turned out that Patrick Ellis had not randomly selected the Muellers…that he had known them.
She thought of Julie Hicks and couldn’t help but wonder.
The thought was still with her when she got into her car and headed home.
CHAPTER TEN
The last serious relationship Kate had ever been in had lasted three weeks. It had gone no farther than a single awkward kiss and a few dinners. After Michael had died, she had told herself she would never even date another man. But life had gotten lonely and she’d tried her best. She’d tried with four different men and each had failed. She’d been too hard on them, almost looking for some reason for it to fail. And if she could not find a reason, she made sure to drive them away.
It would be easier if she could tell herself she’d been pushing these men away subconsciously, but that had not been the case at all. No, she’d done it on purpose each and every time.
Because of that, Kate had gotten quite adept at eating alone. She didn’t mind it at all, not even the pitying stares of the younger couples who sometimes looked to her as a warning of their future. There was something almost liberating about eating alone and besides that, it was a great way to sort her thoughts. She’d often gone to coffee shops or martini bars when she’d been an agent when she needed time to think. She’d never liked the silence of an office, and trying to work quietly at home was unnerving. But in the midst of the noise of everyday people coming and going in restaurants, it was easier for Kate to gather up all of her thoughts. It always had been. It was one of the curious little quirks that Michael had enjoyed about her—or so he had always said.
Currently, she was eating fish tacos and cilantro-lime rice. A bottle of Dos Equis sat by the plate, half empty. She was sitting at a small table near the back of the restaurant as the dinner rush started to fill the place on this busy Thursday night. She was eating her tacos and thinking about the Meade/Hicks case. She wondered how possible it would be for her to get inside the house. She was pretty sure Tyler Hicks would entertain the idea but she also knew that such a request would be in bad taste right now. She figured she’d need to wait a few weeks. And if she had any hope of figuring out if the killer was still at large, she didn’t have that kind of time…especially when the cops thought they had their man.
And maybe they did. Who knew?
Her thoughts then turned to Michael. Ever since his murder, her thoughts had usually turned in his direction whenever she had trouble solving a case. Michael’s murderer had never been caught, despite her own best efforts and innumerable man hours put in by a handful of other agents. As far as Kate could tell—and as far as she knew even to this very day—Michael’s murder had been a random one. Maybe a mugging gone wrong or just some fucked up junkie wanting to feel the thrill of murder. There had simply not been enough evidence to suggest otherwise.
So his unsolvable murder usually popped into her head when it seemed that a case might be out of her grasp. This time, though—with Julie Hicks and her worried parents—Kate wasn’t sure if it was out of her grasp. She couldn’t help but wonder if she would have already cracked the case if she had the FBI’s resources at her disposal.
Or, she thought as she took a drink from her beer, maybe the cops are right. Maybe the guy Budd told me they got is the killer.
She doubted it, though. She’d heard nothing from Debbie or Chief Budd. Budd might not extend another courtesy to tell her that they were now one hundred percent sure and had officially booked the suspect, but she was certain Debbie would have. And since she had not heard anything now, ten hours after Budd’s call, she assumed that meant that their current suspect was not the slam dunk Budd had made him out to be.
She finished off her tacos and her beer. As she settled her check, she ran over a quick checklist of sorts in her head.
When can I see the crime scene for myself?
Where was Tyler visiting while on the road and why?
Did the cleaning lady even have reason to give the security code to someone else?
How reliable is the security system the Hicks had installed?
If she were still an active agent, these were the kinds of questions she would consider to be busy work. But as it was, it was all she had to go on for now. Until then, she could only wait for either Budd or Debbie to call her to confirm that they had indeed found Julie’s killer.
But with every minute that passed, Kate expected less and less that she was going to get such a call.
***
Kate walked back to her house, just six blocks away from the place where had enjoyed her beer and fish tacos. Night had just fully fallen and the temperature was perfect. Not too hot but not too chilly as summer did its best to hang in there while fall came in to bully it away. She figured maybe she’d wrap up the night with a glass or two of wine out on the porch, listening to the traffic and the faraway crickets that seemed to think there might still be some forest left around the edges of Richmond.
Yet when she reached her house, she saw that there was already someone on the porch. The agent in her grew alarmed right away but within a full second, she knew she had no need to worry. The man sitting in the rocking chair on her porch was a friend of hers. More than a friend, she supposed. Of the men she’d attempted to date since Michael had died, the one currently in her rocking chair had been the only one she had kissed…th
e only one who had spent the night at her home.
His name was Allen Goldman and as far as men went, he was a decent one. He was no Michael Wise, but no one was. Allen was one year older than Kate and also on the brink of retiring from a job in advertising. But he had his own little side business, doing niche advertising for independent publishing houses. He was always good to talk to, had entertaining stories, and Kate was pretty sure he’d treat her nice if she let him. Allen had gone through a divorce about twelve years ago and rarely spoke of his wife or the time he spent with her—which made Kate a little uneasy.
He got up from the rocking chair when Kate came up the stairs. He looked a little embarrassed but also glad to see her.
“Sit back down,” she said, waving him away. “How long have you been there?”
Allen looked at his watch and shrugged. “Maybe twenty minutes.”
“How long would you have stayed?”
“I figured half an hour. A full hour at most.”
She pulled over the empty decorative flower pot on the other side of the front door. She turned it upside down next to the rocking chair. Perching herself upon it, she sighed and took Allen’s hand. He seemed to appreciate the gesture.
“So what’s up, Allen?” she asked, a bit skeptical.
He had a thing for just dropping by. He did it because she had told them on their first date that she enjoyed the element of surprise in a man. The last time he had done it—about two months ago—he had ended up spending the night. They’d slept together and discussed why it was a bad idea the next morning. They’d had dinner a few times since then but nothing had ever really felt the same.
“I thought I’d come by to see how you were doing,” he said. “We hadn’t talked in about a week or so.”
“I’m good,” she said. “Just…it’s been a weird day. A weird week, actually.”
“You want to talk about it?”
She thought about it for a moment and found that she did want to talk about it. She surprised herself when she started telling him all about the funeral. More than that, she shared with him that Debbie Meade had asked her to do some digging. She ended her account with her trip to DC and the potential offer to start working on cold cases.
“You really miss it, don’t you?” he asked.
“Most of the time,” she said. “How did you know? Is it that obvious?”
He smiled and said, “It’s in the questions you ask. The way you talk to people. It spooked me on our first date but I quickly came to enjoy it.”
“Yeah, I was impressed it didn’t scare you off.”
“Speaking of dates,” he said, “I was hoping to take you on another one sometime.”
She almost made a joke about how he likely wanted more than just a date if he was showing up on her doorstep. Given what had happened the last time he’d showed up unannounced, it was easy to assume he was hoping to replicate those results.
“Maybe some other time,” she said. “This whole thing with Debbie’s daughter…and then the thought of maybe picking up some of my old work again…”
“Things are getting busy, huh?”
“Hopefully. There are lots of things about my past coming up these last few days. I even had to testify against this real creep in court. A guy I put away in the nineties. Seeing his face and reliving the case…it was like stepping through a doorway into the past. It was weird. But…I sort of liked it.”
“You know,” Allen said, “I don’t think I’d mind taking the back seat to your work.”
“That’s the problem,” she said, kissing him softly on the cheek. “You’re too good for that. You don’t deserve the back seat.”
He frowned and got up from the rocker again. This time, Kate did not tell him to sit back down. “So is that a no for now, or a no for the foreseeable future?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Let’s just say it’s for now and see what happens later?”
“That’s fair,” he said, headed for the stairs.
“And Allen…call next time?”
He gave her a smile and a wave, and then walked down onto the sidewalk.
Kate watched him disappear from sight, down the hill until he disappeared behind the curb and in the darkness of the night.
He’s a good guy, she thought. And she had no idea if she was speaking to herself or trying to convince Michael, wherever he might be.
Honestly, though, Michael would want her to date again. He’d want her to enjoy life to the fullest in his absence. So maybe it was just her. Maybe it was her once again trying to fill a hole in her life with work rather than the company of someone who cared about her.
It was another one of those things from that past that seemed as if it would just not go away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
He was watching her when she picked her twelve-year-old daughter up from cheerleading practice. A month ago, it would have been swim practice. But summer was on its way out, so the pool was old news. Now football was on the horizon, as were cheer pyramids and pompoms. Kids these days…had to be involved in something. And the idiot parents were more than happy to keep them appeased.
He was parked on the far end of the football field. He watched her, squinting his eyes, able to make out the bob in her ponytail as she got out of the car and spoke to one of the other moms as their daughters chattered by the backs of the cars. After a while they parted ways and she started the car again,
When she pointed the car back out to the road, he did the same. He was on the other end of the parking lot, nearly fifty yards away. He watched her get onto the road, allowed two other cars in front of him, and then he pulled out as well.
It wasn’t pursuit, not really. All the cars in the world could get between them and he’d know where she was going. It was Thursday. She and her daughter would stop by Subway on the way home. He wasn’t sure what sub she got but the wrappers he’d seen in her trash had some sort of red sauce on them. Maybe a meatball sub.
When he passed by the plaza with the Subway ten minutes later, he pulled into the other end of the plaza. He parked in an empty spot in front of an Aldi’s and watched the Subway until they came back out. The daughter was cute, but he wasn’t into kiddy stuff. He guessed maybe he could be but he figured he had enough issues as it was. The fact that he had been following her for the better part of three months was proof of that. He’d followed her and studied her and these were the things he knew about her.
Her name was Lacy Thurmond. She was thirty-five years old. She was married to a man who claimed he had to work late on Monday and Thursday nights. But he had followed the husband, too. The work the husband was doing was in a motel room twenty miles away from the house, having sex with a girl who might be early twenties at most. Lacy Thurmond had an obnoxious laugh, a pet cat, a twelve-year-old daughter, and she liked to read. She worked from home, doing some sort of editing jobs for a telecommunications firm. She had at least two glasses of white wine or a couple shots of tequila every night. She and her husband had sex twice a week (though he had it four times, twice with the younger girl in the motel) and one of those days was always Sunday. The sex was usually rough and she rarely climaxed. When she did, she was very quiet and had to be on top.
He knew this because he had watched them on several occasions. They did not have a security system and because their only bedroom window faced the backyard, he could snoop and spy as much as he liked. It also helped that there was a kink in the blinds in the bedroom that allowed him to see in just fine.
He thought about those blinds as he watched them leave the Subway and get back on the road. He thought about something as mundane as a set of blinds, how married couples at some point had to agree on them and install them. It was both sad and comforting to him at the same time.
He allowed five cars between them between the Subway and their home—a distance of three and a half miles. He was driving by their house when she pushed the garage opener in their car and the door started sneaking its way ope
n. He saw the empty space in the garage, the space her husband’s truck would fill sometime around ten o’clock. One time he had gotten in as early at nine forty-five but it was usually ten or a little after.
He checked his watch. That meant he had a little more than three hours. If he had to, he’d kill the husband, too. But that wasn’t what he wanted. He only wanted her.
But yeah, he’d kill the husband if there was no other choice.
But he really didn’t want to hurt the girl.
Even he had to draw the line somewhere.
***
Lacy rushed through helping Olivia with her homework. There were some nights where she allowed herself to be a half-assed mom. Tonight, she was more worried about getting to that first shot of tequila than she was her daughter’s homework. She’d had a miserable day at work and with the passing of each hour, she knew what the night was going to be like, making her feel stuck…making her feel like she couldn’t care less if the day ended or not.
Olivia finished her homework as Lacy did her best to straighten up the house. She did a load of laundry and paid a few bills online while Olivia sulked on the couch with her iPhone, playing around on Snapchat.
As the clock wound down to 8:30, the night went as it usually did. Olivia said a half-hearted goodnight and retired to her room. Lacy knew she wouldn’t go to sleep until around eleven, spending the rest of her time alone either drawing or reading. She was fine with this; she knew girls around the age of twelve or so started to distance themselves, spending lots of alone time in their rooms. Besides…Lacy counted herself lucky. She knew Olivia was a bookworm. She could be up there investigating porn or sexting some guy on her phone.
With Olivia in her room, Lacy allowed herself a few shots of tequila. It had never been her drink of choice but it was the drink that got her drunk the fastest. She’d been going to it a lot as of late, especially on Monday and Thursday nights. It helped her get through putting on a fake smile for her husband.
