If She Feared (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 6)

by Blake Pierce

  “Ah, Jesus,” Dewalt said. “I figured this was going to happen.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?” DeMarco asked.

  “I know about the murders. I figured someone would come to talk to me sooner rather than later.”

  “Can we come in?” Kate asked.

  “Actually, no,” he said. “We’re about to have dinner and I’d much rather my daughter not hear about what has been happening in my properties in Estes.”

  He stepped out onto the large front step and glared at them. He crossed his arms and it almost seemed as if he were trying to crowd their space. Yeah, Kate thought. He’s used to just pushing women around. Not just women, probably.

  “Like I said, we’re about to have dinner. My wife is nearly done. You’ve got five minutes.”

  Kate wanted very badly to let him know that if it took more than five minutes, they could get that extra time out of him. And it would likely include a few police cars pulling up in front of his fancy-ass house. But she didn’t see the point in making the situation more strained than it had to be.

  “It seems as if you already know why we’re here,” Kate said. “The properties at 157 Hammermill and 1806 Leander Drive. You know about the murders?”

  “Yes. The real estate companies told me about them.”

  “So you knew that your properties were the only link between them?” DeMarco asked.

  “Link? How’s that a link? I own a bunch of properties. It’s not all that coincidental that two random murders occurred in two of them.”

  “In most cases, I’d agree with you,” Kate said. “But being that you own both of those properties, it’s you that is the link. It’s not even one single real estate company; the properties, as you know, are listed by two different companies.”

  “Now hold on,” Dewalt said. He did not sound nervous or defensive, but irate. “It sounds like you’re trying to shove a square into a circular hole. You can’t just place me in the middle of your investigation because I own both of those properties. Not only is that a huge stretch, but it makes it seem—to me, at least—that you don’t have any idea how to find any answers without throwing wild accusations around carelessly.”

  “That’s not what we’re doing,” Kate said. “We wanted to know if there was anything about the properties or the agents that you could share with us.”

  “All I know for sure is that because of these murders, the houses are going to be harder to sell.”

  “That’s very compassionate of you,” DeMarco said.

  “Well, I’m not a policeman or an FBI agent. My compassion would do nothing. It certainly wouldn’t help you find a killer, and it sure as hell isn’t going to sell my properties.”

  “Did you ever have interactions with either of the deceased agents?” Kate asked. This was something of a small trap. She wanted to see how much he had asked, or how much he had been told.

  “Yes, I knew Tamara Bateman quite well. She and I have worked together on a few of my lake properties. I was quite upset to hear what had happened to her. I was especially upset because the last…wait, this is none of your concern.”

  “It is, actually,” DeMarco said. She stepped forward and crossed her arms as well, almost as if she were mocking him. “Look, Mr. Dewalt. You’ve got this gorgeous house, a nice family, tons of properties out on the lake, and I don’t doubt there are many people within a fifty-mile radius or so that think you’re King Turd of Shit Mountain. Good for you. But that means nothing in the face of the federal government. So either drop the attitude, or we can make this whole thing very long and drawn out. You follow me?”

  Kate had to bite at the inside of her bottom lip not to smile at this. DeMarco was a small-statured woman, but when she broke out the bitchy side of her persona, she was like an entirely different person. While it did not make Dewalt flinch in the slightest, his tone was a bit softer when he spoke again.

  “Yes, I follow you,” he said, basically hissing the words. “And I don’t appreciate being threatened.”

  “Those were not threats. If you fail to answer our questions accurately, we can indeed make this hard for you.”

  “Fine. I’ll answer.”

  “Good. Now…what were you saying about Ms. Bateman?”

  “I was saying that the last time I spoke with Tamara, it did not go so well. The house she was killed in—the one on Hammermill Street—we argued back and forth on the pricing. She said I was asking Pebble Row money for it and I just wasn’t going to get it. We had a pretty stern argument right there in the Lakeside Realty offices.”

  “Do you recall how long ago that was?” Kate asked.

  “Two days before she was killed.”

  “And when was the last time you had stepped foot in the house on Hammermill Street?” DeMarco asked.

  “The day I purchased it from the builder. It was a few years old and some of the changes I wanted made to it…I was being told they could not be made without severe structural damage. I’d say that was about six weeks ago.”

  “Mr. Dewalt, what about Bea Faraday?” Kate asked. “Did you know her?”

  “Not personally. I had seen her face and name on a few real estate ads around Estes and surrounding areas, but no…I did not know her personally. I don’t know that I even ever met her. I did speak to her on the phone several times.”

  “Did you—” Kate began.

  The ringing of DeMarco’s phone interrupted her. She glanced at it quickly, seemed to consider whether or not to answer it, and then stepped away from Kate and Dewalt. As DeMarco took the call, Kate went on with her questions.

  “Have you ever had issues with squatters in your properties?” Kate asked.

  “No, not squatters. There was one time a year or so ago where some kids shacked up in one of my rental properties over the course of a week or so in the winter but that was it. Cops checked it out and said they thought some sort of big party took place. I’m sure there have been other instances of it, but if so, no one was ever caught. Why do you ask?”

  Before she could answer, DeMarco spoke her name.

  “Kate, we have to roll. There’s been a third murder back in Estes.”

  “How recent?” Kate asked.

  “Very.” DeMarco leaned in a bit, making sure Dewalt could not hear her. “Armstrong says there’s blood everywhere.”

  With nothing more than a muttered thank you and a wave goodbye, Kate and DeMarco turned away from Dewalt and headed back to their car. Kate noticed that Dewalt was still standing by his front door, as if confused, while they pulled away from his house and pointed the car back toward Estes.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Kate pulled the car in front of the house Armstrong had given them the address for, she saw two cops and a man dressed in a button-down shirt and jeans standing on the front porch steps. One of the cops was Armstrong. Kate was pretty sure the other was the young man Armstrong had called Jimmy.

  The house looked to be relatively new, located expertly on the side of a cul-de-sac that, like the house, looked unblemished. The street was Magnolia Street, a name that seemed almost too perfect and innocent as far as Kate was concerned. Kate wasn’t sure why, exactly, but the idea of murder and blood in a place this fresh and vivid felt weird and almost obscene.

  They approached Armstrong, Jimmy, and the other man. The man looked a bit dazed, looking blankly at Armstrong.

  “Agents,” Armstrong said, “this is Travis Fields. He’s the supervisor for a small lighting company out of Estes. He came in a little less than an hour ago to take measurements for a space in the kitchen for recessed lights and found the victim.”

  “It’s bad,” was all he said. “Never seen anything like that.”

  “Have you been inside?” Kate asked Armstrong.

  She nodded, nibbling at the corner of a frown. “Yeah. And he’s not exaggerating. It’s pretty bad. I knew the victim, though not well. A young Asian woman named Dhayna Tsui.”

  Kate was anxious to go in but couldn�
��t leave Travis Fields so soon after the discovery. “Did you see anyone else in the area when you arrived?” she asked.

  “Just a kid over there in the yard,” Fields said, nodding to a big white house two yards over, at the very edge of where the cul-de-sac started to become a circle. “Scribbling on his sidewalk with chalk. If there was anyone else out here, I didn’t see them.”

  “Did you examine the house once you found the body or did you come right outside?”

  Fields let out a nervous chuckle here, one that sounded a little close to the edge of madness for Kate’s liking. “I sort of froze, you know? Staring at her. My brain just sort of locked up before it started screaming at me to call the police. I’d say it took five or six seconds before I hauled ass back out here. Went to my truck right there,” he said, nodding to the black work truck parked on the edge of the street. “Damn near started crying before I was able to finally call the police.”

  “Was this the first time you’d been inside the house?”

  “No. When it was originally built three years ago, I did all of the lighting.”

  “That was the last time you’d been inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much time would you say passed between your discovery of the body and placing the call?” DeMarco asked.

  “Maybe two minutes. Probably less.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Fields,” Kate said. “Would you mind hanging around just a bit longer while we check the place over? And Sheriff Armstrong…see if you can find out who the previous owner is.”

  “Well hell, I know that myself,” Fields said. “It’s one of Governor Moore’s houses. He’s been trying to sell it for about six weeks.”

  “As in the governor of the state?” Kate asked.

  “Yeah. From what I hear, he’s been trying to sell it privately for a few months but it just wouldn’t go for the price he was looking for. So he hired Crest Realty to try to move it for him.”

  Two homes belonging to a wealthy local and now one belonging to the governor of the state of Delaware, Kate thought. This might be much deeper than just random murders in nice homes…

  With an uneasy feeling building in her stomach, Kate walked up the sidewalk and to the front door. As she reached for the doorknob, she saw that it hadn’t been closed all the way. And in the small crack between the door and the frame, she could already see blood on the floor. A lot of it.

  She pushed the door open, DeMarco falling in right beside her. They stepped in one right behind the other and froze in place almost at the exact same time.

  “My God,” DeMarco said.

  Kate only nodded in agreement. What they were looking at was indeed quite grisly, but she was both blessed and cursed to have endured a career that had offered up much worse.

  Dhayna Tsui had gotten an almost identical treatment as Tamara Bateman. She had been strung up from the stairs, hanging from the very top. The rope was tied around the thick wood rail, her body dangling in the air directly against the side of the wall beneath the stairs. The entire left side of her face was a sheet of blood. The top portion of her head looked misshapen, a clear indication of a massive skull fracture.

  Blood had run down onto her light blue shirt, most of it soaking in to make a very large dark red stain that was nearly black. More if it ran down her arm, dripping from her fingers where it either smeared along the walls or dropped down to the floor like red rain. It reminded Kate of what Mary Seibert had said about the Bea Faraday scene: “…that’s the thing that keeps me from sleeping at night. It’s not the poor woman’s face or even the gross scene itself; it’s the sound that fresh blood made when it splattered on the floor—that dripping sound.”

  The gruesome sight of Dhayna Tsui was so bad that it took Kate roughly five seconds to notice the other abnormal thing sticking out in plain sight. Above them, a large light fixture hung from the ceiling. It was not quite a chandelier but a modern, industrial-looking light with four large arms holding light globes. One of the arms was broken, its metallic arm dangling only by the cord that ran to the light itself. Also, the base of the light was slightly jarred from the ceiling. It sat crooked, slightly bent and hanging down just enough to be noticeable.

  “What do you think of that?” Kate asked, nodding up to the light.

  “Not sure. Wasn’t the electrician here for lights? Maybe he was going to fix that.”

  “He said he was here for checking on space for recessed lights. I think he would have mentioned needing to fix something like that.”

  “Maybe the killer got overzealous,” DeMarco suggested. “Wanted to see if he could recreate the Bea Faraday scene.”

  “There’s no way he could have made that toss,” Kate said. She pointed from the light to the stairs, where Dhayna hung. “That’s at least ten feet. Maybe twelve. I think he tried to hang her from the light but she was too heavy, or his force on the rope was too much.”

  They both looked directly in front of them. There was a large pool of blood, still wet and smeared, to support this. Kate walked to the stairs and climbed them with caution and respect. She reached the body and examined the rope. It was wrapped around the rail several times. She could not measure it without unraveling it, which she did not want to do as that was a chore for forensics, but she felt positive it would have been long enough to throw one end up over the light. Then, with the other end tied around Dhayna’s throat, the killer would have pulled, trying to get her in the air.

  But the arm on the chandelier had broken. Of course it had. Anyone with common sense would have suspected it would happen. She wondered if that meant the killer wasn’t the brightest of individuals or if he had just gotten caught up in the heat of the kill. She knew that some killers tended to go into a fugue state when carrying out their acts.

  “The blood trail stretches around the stairs,” DeMarco pointed out.

  She was inching toward the large entrance on the left side of the stairs. Kate joined her, walking through a large living space and then into an equally large kitchen. A trail of blood worked its way through it all, as if her body had been dragged from the kitchen to the stairs. There was a considerable amount of blood on the kitchen floor. A huge pool of it sat two feet away from the kitchen counter. There were splatter marks on the counter itself, and even a few on the far wall, over the sink.

  “He struck her with something hard,” Kate said, taking in the scene. “And he put some considerable strength behind it.”

  “I’ll make a note for the coroner to come up with some ideas of what the weapon might have been,” DeMarco said. “If we compare it to the condition of the other two victims, we could maybe get an idea of what weapon the killer is using.”

  “That could be a smoking gun, actually,” Kate said, liking the idea. “The state of Dhayna Tsui’s head is fairly similar to what we saw on Tamara Bateman.”

  “Wise, this guy is a maniac. We have to find him.”

  It was an obvious statement, but that made it no less true. All murders were obviously bad. But when done with this degree of violence, it made the whole matter seem all the more urgent. It also usually indicated that the killer had no real schedule or agenda. He’d kill again if given the chance, and it could be very soon.

  “Agents?”

  The voice was soft and respectful—that of Sheriff Armstrong, coming from the front door. Kate and DeMarco returned to the front of the house, where Armstrong had stepped inside but seemed to be doing everything she could to not look directly at the body hanging in front of them.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but I had to call the State Police on this one. Something like this happens in one of the governor’s homes—especially one he’s trying to sell—and we have to let him know. He’s already called me. I just got off the phone with him. He’s nervous as hell.”

  “Nervous about what?”

  “He’s nervous what the story is going to look like. A woman murdered in a home he had been trying to get rid of for almost two months. It will raise questions…
dumb ones, but the kind that make great headlines. He wouldn’t admit to it, but I’m assuming he has some money tied up in questionable real estate ventures. And this is the last thing he needs. I know it’s all shitty politics, but still…that’s where we are right now.”

  Oh, I’m used to politics, Kate thought. But honestly, she couldn’t care less what sort of nervousness the governor might be feeling. She was more worried about the family and friends of Dhayna Tsui. She was even more worried about the other real estate agents in Estes and the surrounding areas.

  “Sheriff, I know it’s not going to make you a popular woman,” Kate said, “but as of this moment, I think it’s for the best if we put a freeze on all real estate showings and transactions.”

  “I was thinking the same thing but…well, it seems drastic. And right now, coming off of the summer, I’m going to get a hell of a lot of pushback.”

  “Let them push, then,” Kate said. “And if they have any major complaints, you can send them to me.”

  It sounded overly tough, but she didn’t care. Looking up at the misshapen and bloody face of Dhayna Tsui, she felt the need to do or say just about anything to feel some semblance of hope and control.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Forensics came and went, Armstrong notified Dhayna’s family, and night settled down on the coast. Kate discovered she had been correct; there had been more than enough rope to attempt throwing it over the arms of the light fixture and attempting to hang Dhayna that way. Once a ladder had been brought in and the light was looked over, rope fibers had been found on the iron material of the light, proving Kate’s theory.

  Kate and DeMarco looked the house over for any signs of a squatter but found none. They even canvassed the neighborhood with the help of Armstrong and a few of her officers, but no one had seen anyone or anything suspicious in the neighborhood all afternoon.

  With no answers in sight and the only hope coming in the assurances from forensics and the coroner that something would eventually turn up, Kate and DeMarco checked into a hotel. It was the same hotel DeMarco had stayed at the night before. It was close enough to the lake that they could hear the buzzing of boat engines just outside the building, but could not see the water.