by Blake Pierce
By four o’clock that afternoon, Kate had a pretty good picture of both Wendy and Alvin Fuller. DeMarco had even gone so far as to write some of their notes on the whiteboard Foster had brought in earlier. While they had a portrait of the Fullers, Kate knew that they’d have to go deeper to find anything worthwhile.
That’s why they now had bank statements, cell phone bills, and the contact information of their employers dating back to several years before they were even married. Even now, as Kate and DeMarco pored over all of the files they had gathered up in the last several hours, Barnes came into the room, carrying another small stack.
“We’ve officially managed to speak to all five people that Alvin Fuller has ever worked for, with the exception of the manager of the video rental place he worked at in college but that’s only because he died four years ago. They all said Alvin was perfectly fine, just a little on the quiet side.”
“Where did he go to college?” Kate asked.
“Oh, that’s right here,” DeMarco said, holding up one her sheets of paper. “VCU. He attended for two years before dropping out.”
“Any idea how Wendy and Alvin met, Sheriff?” Kate asked.
“No idea. They didn’t always live here. Came into town about fifteen years or so ago. Right when little Mercy was a baby.”
“Any idea why they moved here?”
“Not really. I knew they were from somewhere around the Roanoke area. I always figured it was easier for a family to get by on very little money out here. Alvin had a good job at the lumber mill out in Deerfield. Around here, it’s not a job to sneeze at, you know?”
“Do you know if he had that job since the first day? Maybe he moved here specifically for that job?”
“No, I asked that when I spoke to his boss. According to them, their records show that he applied for the job after coming to Deton. So if he moved here for a specific reason, it wasn’t that. And while I do love my town, it’s not really the sort of place people move to just for the hell of it, you know?”
“And his employer there said nothing was out of the ordinary, right?”
“Right. He was just as shocked as anyone.”
As Barnes stepped back out of the room, Kate reclined back in her seat a bit and landed on a particular thought. It didn’t seem important per se, but it did seem a little odd. She spoke out it out loud to DeMarco, hoping they could figure it out between them.
“So why would a married couple with a baby that wasn’t even one year old yet move to a place like this if there wasn’t already a steady job lined up?”
“That does seem weird,” DeMarco said. “Maybe they were trying to get away from something?”
“Maybe.” What she didn’t say out loud was: And if they were running from something, did it come all the way to Deton fifteen years later to catch up to them?
***
At some point, someone ordered pizza and someone else put on a pot of coffee. When Foster came into the room to offer them pizza, Kate looked to her watch and was surprised to find that it had somehow come to be 6:30. She stood up and stretched, realizing that she could indeed go for a few slices of pizza.
Another officer came in behind Foster and handed over a single sheet of paper. Kate took it and saw that it was one of the several documents she had asked for when this whole Fuller excavation had started. It was a copy of Wendy and Alvin Fuller’s marriage certificate. They’d been married twenty-one years ago, at an old vineyard-based colonial retreat in Waynesboro, Virginia.
“This is great,” Kate said, though it didn’t really tell them much of anything. “How are we looking on those medical records?”
“We have some, but they seem to be coming from all over the place. We’ve got some from, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, and the local doctor here in Deton. The office in Lynchburg has notes on their files that all records were requested to be transferred to a doctor’s office in Waynesboro due to a move. They haven’t sent us anything just yet.”
“Can you bring me the number? I’ll convince them to move a little faster.”
The officer smiled and gave a nod as he turned on his heel and left.
“You think medical records are even worth looking into?” DeMarco asked as they left the room in search of pizza.
“No idea,” Kate answered. “But if they were running from something, it might not necessarily be someone or some legal trouble. It could be sentimental or emotional reasons. Or medical reasons. I just don’t want to leave any stones unturned.”
They found the pizza in the bullpen area. While they were there, plating pizza and grabbing sodas that had also been brought in, Kate was able to catch up on the most up to date information about the case—information she was being told anyway but was constantly circulating through the building like some primitive form of social media.
She discovered that the canine unit had found nothing else of interest since coming across the windbreaker. They’d nearly gotten excited for a split second when one of the dogs had led them to a partial shape buried slightly in the foliage of the forest, but it had turned out to be a deer carcass.
She also learned that because of the heavy state involvement, the story was now on the news. Upon hearing this, Kate looked out the front doors and the picture window at the front of the building and saw without much surprise that there were numerous news vans out there.
As she and DeMarco made their way back to their makeshift office, the officer who had been tasked with collecting medical records stopped her. He handed her a slip of paper with two numbers on it.
“The first one is the direct line. It’s after hours, so you’ll be asked to press One and you can leave a message for emergencies. I already did that and so far, I have nothing. The second number is the one I was given for their records department.”
“Thanks,” Kate said, taking the slip of paper.
She reentered their workspace, placed her pizza on the table, and tried the first number. As the officer had told her, it went to a recorded message after just two rings. She waited patiently; she knew if it came down to it, she could call DC and have someone find the name and number of the primary physician and call them directly. But by the time all of that was taken care of, she felt she could probably get someone on the phone herself.
She left a message, very aware that DeMarco was sitting there listening to her. She wanted to really lay into it, the express the urgency in a way that might be borderline unprofessional, but she relented.
“This is Agent Kate Wise with the FBI,” she said. “I’m currently in Deton, Virginia, working on the Fuller case, which I’m sure by now someone at your office has seen on the news. I need access to the medical records you have on file for Wendy and Alvin Fuller. I’d like to keep it calm and cordial—just between us. But if I don’t get a call back very soon, I’m afraid I’ll have to expedite things by getting my director on your heels.”
She left her number and ended the call. DeMarco was grinning at her as she started on a slice of pizza. “I bet you’re absolutely horrifying when you’re actually mad.”
“Let’s hope you never have to see that,” Kate said.
They finished up their pizza and once again started to sift through all of the information that had come in so far. Officer Foster had even started collecting the names and numbers of any kids that went to Mercy’s school that might have come into contact with Alvin and Wendy. They were looking for any thread at all, no matter how stretched and vague, to lead them to their next clues.
It was 7:17 when Kate’s phone rang. She was digging through the police records of extended family (and coming up with basically nothing) when the ringing broke her concentration. In the back of her mind, she was hoping it would be Melissa, giving her an update on Michelle. Because of this nerve-inducing situation, Kate didn’t even bother looking at the number on the caller display.
“This is Agent Wise,” she answered.
“Hi, Agent Wise. This is Theresa McKinney, one of the head practitioners here at Waynesboro Fa
mily Medicine, returning your call.”
“Good to hear from you. What do we need to do to get those records?”
“Just standard practice. I’d need your badge number, the name of your direct supervisor, and the best way to get the records to you. Typically we’d need more details about the case as well but, as you said, it’s pretty much been all over the news.”
Kate gave her what she needed, rattling off her badge number and then her email address. McKinney was helpful enough but, perhaps because of her loyalty to her patients and her oath as a doctor, didn’t seem too happy about so willingly handing over such private information.
After the call, Kate had Sheriff Barnes bring her in a laptop so she wouldn’t have to look through medical records on her phone. Her eyesight was not at all what it once was and even for someone with perfect eyesight, looking through official documents on a phone screen was never an easy task.
Five minutes later, she had a laptop connected to the department’s network and printing out medical records for Alvin and Wendy Fuller as far back as twenty years ago. The volumes were slim; it appeared Alvin had only been to the doctor three times over the span of about five years and each visit had been something relatively minor: the flu, a sinus infection, and a sprained ankle.
Wendy Fuller’s file was a little thicker, though not by much. She tended to have a lot of migraines, from what Kate was seeing. Other than that, there wasn’t much of note.
Not until the last three pages. The final page listed a visit for a series of tests. It took Kate a while to dance around the medical jargon, but she was fairly certain these were tests that Wendy Fuller had asked to have done—not ones that had been suggested by an MD. They were mostly blood tests for something called FSH, but there was also a referral to see a specialist.
“DeMarco…there’s a medical abbreviation here…FSH. It sounds familiar but I can’t for the life of me pull it to memory.”
“FSH…isn’t that something to do with fertility?” She whipped out her phone like it was a magic wand and typed the abbreviation into Google. It took less than three seconds for her to get the result. “FSH. Follicle-stimulating hormone. It says here that FSH can help in preparing a woman’s eggs for release each month.”
Kate nodded as she flipped to the next page. This was a copy of a record from another doctor—presumably the specialist that Waynesboro Family Medicine had referred Wendy Fuller to. There was a lot of medical terminology that went over Kate’s head but there was a list of tests that told her quite a bit: hormone tests, ovulation testing, assorted fertility treatments…
“Look at this,” Kate said, slipping it over to DeMarco. “It looks like Wendy Fuller had concerns about her fertility. And if you check the date, it looks like all of these tests and treatments were recommended about a year before Mercy was born.”
“Seems like a happy story to me, then,” DeMarco said. “Whatever tests they felt Wendy needed obviously worked.”
“That was my first thought, too. But the math doesn’t work. Her first appointment was just a little over a year before Mercy was born. That would mean she had questions and concerns about fertility just three months before Mercy would have been conceived. And I don’t know that any sort of treatment would take after only two or three months.”
“That does seem weird, doesn’t it?”
Kate looked over the final page of the records. It was from Staunton Women’s Services, the finer print stating it was a form from the office of Dr. Beatrice Dudley, a reproductive endocrinologist. Kate had no idea what that title meant so, like DeMarco, she looked it up on her phone. Apparently, a reproductive endocrinologist was a fertility specialist who also served primarily, in most cases, as an OBGYN.
But that was where the trail stopped. There was nothing else following the visit to the specialist. Whatever the results were, they were not here in the files. Sure, the fact that the Fullers eventually had a daughter basically told the story, but the fact that the trail came to such an abrupt end seemed peculiar to Kate.
“I’ve worked with you enough to know that face,” DeMarco said. “You’re hatching a plan, aren’t you?”
“I am. How do you feel about taking a trip out to Waynesboro?”
“Tonight?”
Kate nodded, staring at Wendy Fuller’s medical files. “I think going back to the town they lived in before they had Mercy makes the most sense. We can visit the Women’s Services place in Staunton and maybe talk to some people that knew them when they lived there.”
“I could be up for a late-night road trip. Just let me grab a cup of coffee.”
“Grab me one, too, please,” she said.
As DeMarco left, Kate gathered up all of the records they had accumulated through the latter part of the day. As she started sorting them out into file folders, she couldn’t help but feel that there was some big answer buried in it all—and that it could very well be hidden somewhere in the Fullers’ old stomping grounds.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The drive between Deton and Staunton took less than an hour, so Kate and DeMarco were able to relocate without doing so in the middle of the night. They checked in to a Best Western shortly after nine, checked in with Duran back in DC, and found themselves sitting in a motel room with a recorded history of the last final twenty years or so of Wendy and Alvin Fuller printed out before them.
Just as Kate was beginning to go back through all of the medical records, fully prepared to Google each and every test that had been suggested for Wendy Fuller, her phone rang. When she saw Melissa’s name on the display, she felt like her heart was beating. It was one of those moments where she knew that the call would either bring news so relieving that it would make her feel like she was floating, or so bad that her world would probably never be the same again.
“Hey, Lissa,” she said as she answered the phone. “Do you know anything yet?”
“We just got home. Mom, they did so many tests…all day. But they couldn’t find anything to show that she definitively has cancer. There’s some blood work that needs to come back, but from what I understand, if what they saw today didn’t show anything, we can breathe easy.”
“But we’re not one hundred percent certain yet?”
“No. Not one hundred percent. We’ll get the results of the last batch of blood work tomorrow, and they want us to come in next week for a follow-up. But the doctor in charge of her case said that he’s not worried, based on what he saw today.”
“That’s great news.”
“It is. We’re um…well, we’re very thankful. It was scary as hell, but we know it could have been a lot worse.”
“Will you keep me posted if anything else pops up?”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll come by and visit when I get back in town. I have no idea when that will be, but—”
“It’s okay, Mom. We’re good. I just wanted to give you an update so you wouldn’t be worrying about us all night.”
“Thanks for the call. Let me know if you need anything.”
They hung up, leaving Kate to look at the mound of information on the Fullers. It was the first time since coming back from Jones Field when Kate wasn’t sure if she was in the right place. The “right place” right now felt like wherever Melissa and Michelle were.
“Everything okay?” DeMarco asked.
“Yeah. Just feeling like a guilty grandmother.”
“Any particular reason why?”
Kate sighed, fully prepared to keep it from DeMarco. It wouldn’t have been out of any sort of secretive reasons—but mainly because she didn’t want to hinder her partner with her own personal issues. But she then recalled the conversation they’d had the previous night, where DeMarco had opened up a bit about her own personal life.
“Melissa had a pretty bad scare today,” she answered. “With Michelle. Everything is okay now, but it was frightening for a while there.”
She went on to tell DeMarco about what Melissa had been through today�
�and in turn, what she had been dealing with in the background while they had been hunting down answers regarding the Fullers. It didn’t take long and she was surprised to find that it was easier to talk to DeMarco about it than she had originally thought.
“So you’ve had that weight on your shoulders all afternoon?” DeMarco asked.
“Yeah.”
DeMarco chuckled and said, “You’re a stronger woman than I am, that’s for sure.”
Kate took the compliment, but she doubted it was a true comment. She knew DeMarco had a mean streak inside of her. It was a streak she had seen glimpses of whenever the issue of child abuse of any kind had come up in their line of work.
It was an unspoken thing, but her sharing the news about Michelle seemed to put a bow on the night. Without saying as much, they both got ready for bed. And when Kate lay down in the darkness of the motel room, she said a little prayer for her granddaughter. Even at fifty-six, she was still not sure where she rested with the whole God-thing, but she assumed it never hurt to pray—to God, to the universe, or whatever might be out there listening.
And with that prayer said, she was able to fall asleep with only the weight of the Fuller case on her shoulders.
***
They started the following morning at the Staunton Women’s Services building. It was primarily what Kate had always referred to as the lady doctor. When she and DeMarco walked in, she spotted three visibly pregnant women right away. They skipped by the check-in windows and went straight to the last window on the right, where a sign above it read, simply: Information.
Kate subtly slid her badge and ID across the counter. “We were in contact with Waynesboro Family Medicine yesterday concerning a time-sensitive case,” she explained to the woman on the other side of the window. “They sent us records for a woman named Wendy Fuller. Her last medical record before she and her husband moved was a visit here, as a referral from her doctor. Who could we speak to in regards to those kinds of records?”
