If She Knew

by Blake Pierce

“There are plenty more, but those are the only ones I know for sure. I figure they might be in danger if this guy is focusing on that group for some reason. And, like I said, they should be able to give you more information on Lacy than I can.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, getting to her feet.

  “Mr. Thurmond, we’ll check your alibi,” DeMarco said. “Assuming she’s cooperative, I don’t see why you shouldn’t be out of here soon.”

  Thurmond gave a nod of appreciation but his eyes again went down toward the table. He was more than just beaten and sad. He was ashamed.

  Kate gave him a sorrowful look and took up the pad with the information he had given them. Once they were back outside, DeMarco instantly made the call to Thurmond’s mistress while Kate sought out Chief Budd to request records on local citizens hoping to get the addresses to line up with the names of the other women Thurmond had given them.

  And just like that, Kate was on the hunt again after a year on the sidelines.

  CHAPER SIXTEEN

  The drive back over to Amber Hills took longer than usual, as Kate and DeMarco hit the grinding stream of five o’clock traffic. People were rushing home from work and ambitious students who participated in after-school activities packed buses that all seemed to stagger traffic.

  DeMarco took advantage of the situation, not letting the extended drive time sidetrack them.

  “I guess now is as good a time as any to let you know that I did a little schoolgirl somersaults when I was told I was coming down here to partner with you,” she said. “And somersaults are not something I do.”

  “That’s much better than running away in terror, I suppose,” Kate said.

  “No, I mean it. Even when I was still in the academy, I heard stories about you. And then when I started at the Violent Crimes Unit at the bureau, I looked through a lot of your old files for pointers on how to break down a scene. I mean… you were the only one to get anywhere on the Paulson murders in 2005. And let’s face it… getting out of that hostage situation alive in ’89…they should make a movie about that! How many men did you have to kill to get away?”

  “Agent DeMarco, that’s not a very professional question,” Kate said. But really, she didn’t mind it. After a year in retirement, she needed the reminder of what she had once been.

  What she still was.

  “Sorry,” DeMarco said. “I’m just honored to be working with you.”

  “That’s flattering,” Kate said. While she had received lots of praise throughout her career, this was different somehow. With DeMarco sitting right beside her in the car, it was more personal; she couldn’t just brush the words of affirmation off with a shrug. “So it seems you already know quite a bit about me. What can you tell me about yourself?”

  “Nothing worth noting. Grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. Wanted out as soon as I could. When I was in tenth grade, one of my best friends was raped, killed, and placed on her front porch afterwards. No one ever found who did it. That made me quickly change my future plans of being a veterinarian, instead wanting to do something in law enforcement.”

  “Any reason you started out at the bureau with the Violent Crimes Unit?”

  “No real reason on my part. It’s apparently what I leaned towards in terms of abilities. It seemed like a good fit for a while.”

  “Do you mind me asking what happened?” Kate asked.

  “I’m still not sure. This one case…it sort of just broke something in me. And it wasn’t the blood or the gore—and there was a lot of it. It was a triple homicide and suicide. A father killed his wife, his ten-year-old daughter, and his six-year-old son before killing himself. Something at the scene just triggered something in me. You start to wonder just what the hell is wrong with people, you know? And sometimes you think on that for so long that you start to hate all humans. It makes you not want to be around anyone.”

  Kate did understand it. She’d felt it herself a few times earlier in her career. Sadly, there was no way to bear it other than to outgrow it. “So this case…are you going to be able to handle it?”

  She cringed as the question came out. She noted DeMarco’s slightly annoyed look, a look the younger agent tried to catch before it showed. But it came through, and Kate took note to choose her words more carefully from here on out.

  “Yes,” she said. “I don’t think I would have been sent out here if that was even a question.”

  “Sorry,” Kate said. “Bad choice of words.”

  DeMarco simply shrugged and looked out the window as they inched closer toward Amber Hills. Kate remained quiet after her little blunder. If the silence would be broken, she’d wait for DeMarco to do it again. She remembered what it was like to be a younger agent, tasked with working alongside someone more seasoned. You were always overthinking everything, even the words you said.

  Kate felt for DeMarco, especially given that she had already opened up about such a personal part of her story. She wasn’t sure she could have done it. It made her think about the nightmare she’d had last night, her father leering out of the darkness with a dark secret shackled to him, linking him to the darkness.

  Kate quickly shook the thought away and focused on the traffic ahead that was, even then, just beginning to unclog.

  ***

  Kate had arranged to meet with one woman from the circle of friends that Peter Thurmond had mentioned. Yet when they arrived at their destination, she was pleasantly surprised that there were two of them there.

  The woman she’d planned to meet was Wendy Hudson. She lived just five houses down the street from Julie Hicks in a stunning two-story house that was one of the newer ones in the neighborhood. When Kate and DeMarco arrived, she answered the door holding a large glass of red wine. She was a striking woman, somewhere in her early to mid-thirties. It was apparent that she spent a lot of time at the gym and the tanning salon.

  She led Kate and DeMarco into her dining room, where another woman sat at a large oak table. She also held onto a glass of red wine. And from the way her eyes narrowed and she seemed to make a point of sitting up a little too straight, Kate guessed it was nowhere near her first of the afternoon.

  Wendy Hudson sat down next to the other woman and said, “This is Taylor Woodward. She and Lacy were best friends.”

  “Ever since middle school,” Taylor said.

  Kate guessed that on any other day, Taylor Woodward was just as pretty as Wendy Hudson. But the loss of her friend had apparently wrecked her. She looked tired, heartbroken, and about one more glass of wine away from being shit-faced drunk.

  Kate made her own introductions as she and DeMarco took seats at the table. Kate gave DeMarco a little nod, letting her take the lead.

  “We were wondering if there’s anyone who might have something against your group of friends,” DeMarco said. “We’ve got a killer not only striking the same neighborhood, but apparently the same circle of friends, too.”

  “I don’t think we have any enemies that would resort to killing,” Wendy said. “Look…we know how it looks. We’re housewives. And I know that a lot of people in the neighborhood look at us like those women that used to be on Desperate Housewives. We do all work, but it’s either very few hours or just things we do from home. Lacy had her editing gigs. She made about two grand a month. But still…most of her time was free and we all spent it together.”

  “What sort of things did you do together?” DeMarco asked.

  “Nothing exciting,” Taylor slurred. “Shopping. Julie, Lacy, and myself sometimes go to the pool just to lounge around. And, even though I’m married, I honestly just like the attention from the few dads that end up having to take their kids.”

  Yeah, she’s well on her way to being drunk, Kate thought.

  “You mentioned some of you having jobs with minuscule hours,” Kate said. “What other jobs besides Lacy’s editing job are we talking about?”

  “Well, Julie worked some part-time hours at this clean eating place,” Wendy said. “Making smoo
thies and stuff. Maybe twelve hours a week.”

  “And did she work with anyone that she ever crossed?” DeMarco asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Wendy said.

  “But you know,” Taylor said, “Lacy used to work for a small marketing firm. She was one of the supervisors. One of the reasons she quit was because she said it was a toxic work environment.”

  “How long ago was this?” Kate asked.

  “A year and a half, maybe,” Taylor said. She followed this with a large gulp of her wine, her eyes wandering as if she was calculating the passage of time in her head.

  “What was so toxic about it?” DeMarco asked.

  Taylor shrugged, looking blankly into her glass of wine. Wendy frowned at her friend and then looked at the agents. “She never went into great detail about it, but there was a man there that apparently had issues with taking orders from a woman that was much younger than him. He called her names, started rumors about her, even one that claimed she had sex with him in the bathroom at work.”

  “And that’s why she quit?”

  “No, she quit because when she tried to fire him, the owner of the company sided with the man. When she left, she went to the media. No one really believed the story, though. The owner was a well-respected guy.”

  “Did she ever have contact with the man or the owner afterwards?” DeMarco asked.

  “Not directly,” Wendy said.

  “But the asshole sent her dick pics a few times in the weeks after she left. Told her if he ever saw her again, he’d make the sex-in-the-bathroom thing much more than a rumor whether she liked it or not.”

  “And her husband never did anything about this?” DeMarco asked.

  “No,” Taylor said with a vicious laugh. “He was too busy fucking college girls on the side to care.”

  “Any chance you know the name of this man?” Kate asked.

  “Daniel Seal,” Taylor said, spitting the name out like venom.

  “She’s right,” Wendy said, as if making sure the agents took the tip seriously despite the fact that Taylor was heavily inebriated. “He’d be a good one to check out. He actually used to go to the very same pool that Taylor mentioned earlier. Sort of a skeevy guy. Made no attempt to hide the fact that he was checking women out.”

  Kate glanced over toward DeMarco, every bit as pretty as the two younger women sitting at the table. If they were right about this guy, she couldn’t wait to see how DeMarco handled him.

  It made her think, however briefly, of tossing Brian Neilbolt off of his porch. With a thin smile, she looked at DeMarco and just like that, the tension that they’d felt in the car for a moment was obliterated and they were on the same page without speaking a single word between them.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Kate had forgotten how spoiled the convenience of having the bureau’s resources at her fingertips could make her feel. With just a single phone call, she was able to get the address and criminal record for Daniel Seal within ten minutes. He lived downtown, a trip that took about twenty minutes now that the afternoon rush had cleared off of the highways. Daniel Seal lived on a row of townhouses in a well-to-do neighborhood, everything standing at an equal height, and even the cars parked perfectly in front of the buildings.

  As it turned out, they arrived just in time. As Kate and DeMarco were walking toward Seal’s townhouse, he came out of the front door. He was dressed in a pair of gym shorts and a dry-fit T-shirt. He carried a small gym bag in his left hand, the handle of a racquetball racquet sticking out of the zipper.

  “Excuse me,” Kate said as they approached him. “Are you Daniel Seal?”

  He looked both women up and down, saw the way they were dressed and the serious looks on their faces, and grew confused. “I am,” he said. “Who’s asking?”

  “Agent Kate Wise, FBI,” Kate said, flashing her ID and again relishing the familiar feel of the motion. “This is my partner, Agent DeMarco. We were hoping to ask you a few questions.”

  “Concerning what, exactly?” Daniel asked.

  “About Lacy Thurmond,” Kate said.

  “Ah Jesus, this again? Is she going to ever let the past go? Look, I’ve talked to cops and lawyers and all sort of people about the little tiff we had at work a while back and—”

  “Let me stop you right there before you put your foot in your mouth,” Kate said. “We’re here to ask you about your working relationship with her because she was killed last night. In her home, while her daughter was there.”

  The shock on his face was not of an emotional source, but of a stutter in his thoughts. He’d been so flustered about his past with her that the idea of her being murdered seemed to freeze his brain for a moment.

  “She was killed?” he asked.

  “Yes,” DeMarco said. “And from what we’ve been able to gather, you had something of a toxic relationship with her.”

  “Yeah, like almost two years ago,” Seal said. “You think because of all of that I killed her? You actually think I’m a suspect?”

  “That’s what we’d like to talk to you about,” Kate said.

  Daniel Seal vehemently shook his head. “No. Look, I’m sorry she was killed. Really, I am…she was good enough at heart, I guess. A bit of a bitch when she wanted to throw her power around as a supervisor, but a good enough person. But no…I’m not getting dragged into this. I’m not a killer. That’s ridiculous.”

  He started to step away from them, heading in a diagonal direction across the parking lot. Kate went to step in front of him to block his way but DeMarco was already there. She moved quick, so fast yet casual that Kate barely even saw her do it.

  “Where were you last night between nine and eleven?” DeMarco asked.

  “At a concert,” he said. “At the National. Jason Isbell was playing.”

  “You have proof of this?” Kate asked.

  Seal was getting frustrated and doing very little to hide it. He dropped his gym bag on the sidewalk and pulled out his cell phone. He scrolled through some of his photos until he came to a video. He pressed Play and showed it to them. The video was a shaky hand-shot video of a concert. The audience was more audible than Jason Isbell, though.

  “Still got the ticket stubs on my dresser if you need to see them,” he said as he stopped the video and shoved his cell phone back into the bag.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Kate said. She honestly hadn’t expected Daniel Seal to be the killer anyway but to have it proven in such a concrete way so quickly was aggravating.

  “We may call you later if her work history comes into question during the investigation,” DeMarco added.

  Furious, Seal picked up his bag and headed in the direction he had originally been walking. Kate watched him get into his car and slam the door. He hesitated for a while before cranking the car, perhaps letting the reality of what had just happened to him sink in.

  “He seemed genuinely shocked,” DeMarco said.

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “That was enough for me to know it wasn’t him. It’s hard to fake that sort of shock. He’s emotionally trying to hide the shock with being pissed at us.”

  Kate couldn’t help but smirk. DeMarco knew her stuff, that was for sure. She probably also knew that a solid tell when speaking to a killer was that there was usually a split second of recognition and pride in a killer’s face when confronted about their murders. Kate had seen not a single flicker of that from Daniel Seal.

  “You a night owl, Agent DeMarco?” Kate asked.

  “I happen to do my best thinking after the sun goes down.”

  “Same here,” Kate said.

  This was true, but it had been a while since she’d stayed up past eleven at night. On the few occasions she had in the last few months, it had been out of fear of having one of her nightmares.

  “What are you thinking?” DeMarco asked.

  “I’m thinking I’ll buy the first round of coffee on the way to speak to the coroner.”

  “You think the poli
ce missed something?”

  “Probably not,” Kate said. “But I do know that even when dead, people can tell stories. Sometimes it’s just harder to hear them talking. You have to really look hard to see what they’re trying to tell you.”

  DeMarco smiled at the thought. Again, nothing verbal was exchanged between them as they headed back for their car with the night wide open ahead of them.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Kate kept her word and paid for the first round of coffee just after seven thirty that evening. After visiting a drive-thru Starbucks, they headed for the morgue. This time it was Kate who made sure none of their time was passed in awkward silences. But instead of trying to pry more life details from DeMarco, she focused on the case at hand. She’d always relied on partners as a sounding board—a social way to think out loud and get real-time constructive feedback.

  “After the coroner, I want to go back to the house. The killer was there at night. He knocked on the door when it was dark. I wonder if he just walked right up to the door.”

  “With the Julie Hicks case, there was evidence that the security panel outside had been tampered with. Someone poured water on it from what they could tell.”

  “I read that, too,” Kate said. “So if it’s the same killer, that fact shows that he knew the house well. It also meant he was in the yard. He was bold. It was like he knew the property well.”

  “Maybe he does,” DeMarco offered. “Maybe he’s even a local to the neighborhood. Maybe he lives in Amber Hills and just had enough of the stay-at-home mom clique. There was this case I worked my second year on the Violent Crimes Unit about this guy who raped three women that all belonged to the same pool. The guy had no connection to them; he worked for the snack company that filled the vending machines at the pool. When we busted him, he said he did it because he couldn’t stand seeing them flaunt themselves around the pool. Said it drove him crazy and he just couldn’t stop himself.”

  “It’s a good direction to think down but seems like a bit of stretch at first glance,” Kate said. “I’m leaning towards the train of thought that it’s a killer who has chosen that particular neighborhood for some reason. Maybe for the same sort of reason your rapist did.”