by Leslie Wolfe
The Watson Girl
A Novel
Leslie Wolfe
Contents
Cold-Blooded Beginning
Back to Work
A Letter
Reflections: First Kill
Death Row
Methodology
Discrepancies
Dinner Talk
The Interview
Reflections: Memories
Direction
Reunion
Argument
Sensitive Ego
Reflections: What I Want
Questions
Family Lunch
Autopsy Findings
Reflections: The Art of Choosing
The Chameleon
A Request
Session
The Maze
Reflections: Frustration
Rework
Lies
Hannah
Early Morning Coffee
Reflections: Self-Control
The Profiler
The Profile
Reflections: Analysis
Dinner Plans
Reflections: Blown Cover
Change of Plans
A History of Crime
Reflections: Lady Luck
Outcomes
Reflections: The Dive
A Few Surprises
Consequences
Two Phone Calls
Media
Trapped
Reflections: A Glossy Feather
Roadblocks
A Visit
Reflections: A Sensible Plan
At the Morgue
At Home
Emergency Calls
Arguments
Encounter
Deductive Reasoning
Thank You!
Connect with Me!
Preview: Executive
Cold-Blooded Beginning
Fifteen Years Ago
He knocked on the door with the barrel of his gun, then screwed on a silencer while waiting for someone to welcome him in. He checked the surroundings one more time. In the heavy dusk, shadows were long, and sounds were too few to disturb the suburban peacefulness. A dog barked in the neighborhood somewhere, and sounds of remote highway traffic were so distant he could barely register them.
The two-story house had warmly illuminated windows on both floors, with white sheers that made the soft lights shimmer, and gave the massive, Colonial Revival home a fairy-tale look. The distant sound of a cartoon made it all the way to the dimly lit porch. He recognized the guttural voice of Daffy Duck.
Only one car was parked on the wide, three-car garage driveway, the silver minivan Rachel Watson liked to use while performing the functions of modern-day motherhood, with one or more of her three children loaded in the back seats. Allen Watson’s car was nowhere in sight. But Watson always garaged his Benz, careful not to get a speck of dust on the custom paint that must have set him back a small fortune.
Even if he couldn’t see his car, he knew Watson was home.
He knew it because he didn’t leave anything to chance. He’d waited patiently in his own car, parked discreetly around the corner and almost entirely hidden by the generous foliage of a thriving palmetto. He kept his eyes glued to the street, watching, stalking his target. Now he was ready.
He heard footsteps approaching the door, and he tightened the grip on his gun, hidden behind his back. The door swung open, and Allen Watson stepped quietly to the side, a tentative smile on his lips, and a hint of an intrigued frown creasing his brow. He waved him in and he obliged, his gun firmly in hand. Watson closed the door, then looked at him inquisitively.
“What are y—” Watson’s question faltered mid-word, as he registered the weapon in the now-visible hand and froze, taking wavering steps back until he hit the wall behind him. Watson’s eyes, rounded in surprise, drilled into his, while words failed to come out of his gaping mouth.
“No… No…” he finally managed in a hoarse voice, weak and choked.
He hesitated a little and took his time to raise the gun higher, aiming for Allen’s chest from only a few feet away. Then the sound of tiny feet pattering on the hardwood upstairs preceded a high-pitched voice, resounding loudly above their heads.
“Who is it, Daddy?”
He looked up briefly and saw two of Watson’s kids staring down at them, dressed in colorful pajamas, their hands gripping the newels supporting the balcony handrail above the main living room.
“No…” Watson whispered. “Please…”
He couldn’t delay anymore.
He pulled the trigger twice, in rapid sequence, and Watson fell to the ground in a motionless heap, as the terrified shrieks of the two children pierced his ears. He lunged up the stairs, climbing three steps at a time, then ran toward the bedrooms. Within a few leaps, he caught up with the two screaming children. Then silence engulfed the home once more, as he searched the house room by room, looking for the third kid.
Soon he was finished upstairs, and ready to go back downstairs, when a knock on the front door made him freeze mid-step. He pulled back, closer to the wall, and held his breath. Worried, he checked the windows next to the main door, only partly covered by curtains, then he shifted his gaze to Watson’s body, collapsed just a few feet from that door.
The visitor might see his body through the open curtains. All he had to do is want to peek inside, and lean to the side a little. Damn!
The knocks repeated, a little louder and longer this time, followed by the doorbell chime. Then he heard a man’s voice, suppressed by the massive door.
“Hey, it’s Ben from next door. I have your cordless drill.” The man stopped talking, knocked a couple of times more, then continued, “I’ll leave it here, on the porch. Thanks!”
The unwanted visitor went away, his footsteps loud and heavy, but almost undistinguishable against the sounds of the cartoon on TV. He breathed slowly, calm, calculated.
A moment later, he made his way downstairs cautiously, looking for Rachel Watson. He listened intently, and somewhere beyond Daffy Duck’s nasal voice, he heard clattering noises coming from the kitchen. A hint of a smile stretched the corner of his lip and curled it upward as he headed there with silent, feline steps.
He didn’t know how long everything had taken, but it was time to go. The sound of sirens in the distance brought an urgency to his departure, and he left the home quietly and hurriedly, after checking the undisturbed, peaceful surroundings once more, paying thorough attention to every detail. The home across the street had its main floor flooded with light, with all the curtains pulled aside, allowing the light to overflow into the street. The family there was on display while they went about their business. He frowned. People should be more concerned with their privacy.
He decided to sneak behind Rachel’s minivan and screen the surroundings once more, before heading back to his car. He crouched a little, and within a few steps, he was hidden behind the minivan, careful not to touch it. He looked at nearby homes and listened for any sounds that didn’t belong. His frown deepened with the nearing sound of police sirens, but then he looked up and froze, feeling his blood turn to ice.
On the back window of the minivan was a decal, the stick-figure caricatures of a happy family, showing a man, a woman, a boy, two girls, and a cat, all exhibiting anatomically impossible smiles.
He had a big problem. He was fairly sure he’d killed two boys and one girl.
He crouched closer to the ground and groaned, rubbing the deepening frown on his forehead furiously, as if that friction would solve any problems or hold any answers.
“Think, think!” he whisper
ed angrily.
There was no way Rachel Watson had made a mistake when she’d ordered the decal for her car. Everything else matched, including the cat, whose threatening, phosphorescent eyes had followed his moves from the top of the kitchen cupboard as he’d dealt with Rachel. He’d let the cat live; it wasn’t worth a bullet, because cats can’t talk.
But this? This made no sense, he kept thinking, his eyes glued to the decal. It clearly depicted two girls about the same age, because the respective stick figures were identical, down to the double pigtails with bows. The boy figure was a little larger than the girls’ size. What was Rachel doing? Replacing the damn stickers every year? Probably. And sure as hell, she didn’t make mistakes about the constituents of her family.
Then, what was going on there? He’d found a girl in one of the bedrooms, playing with some Legos by herself on the floor. She could have been five or six, or about there. Then the two other kids were a tad older, maybe seven or eight, but not more.
Both were boys.
Something was terribly wrong.
He listened some more, trying to pinpoint the location of the approaching police cars. Had someone called the police on him? He was sure the gunshots had been quiet enough, but maybe someone had seen the flickers of light through the windows. Maybe the neighbor returning the cordless drill had seen Watson’s body through the open curtains. Maybe.
But maybe there was still time to set things right.
He stared for a second at the back of his hand, slightly trembling in the dim light of dusk, then he decided to do what he had to do. He sneaked back inside the house, closing the door gently, quietly. Then he started searching it, moving quickly, room by room, gun held tightly in his sweating hand.
Back to Work
Present Day
Special Agent Tess Winnett leaned forward, closer to the mirror, studying the circles under her eyes with a critical, disappointed glare. Unforgiving and dark-hued, the subject of her disdain circled her eyes generously, tinting her eyelids and making the blue of her irises appear hollow and lifeless. She looked pale and her face drawn, her skin taut and almost translucent against the high cheekbones.
Makeup wouldn’t hurt. Too bad she wasn’t into that stuff.
It was her first day back at the office, after taking three endless weeks to recuperate after injuries suffered in the line of duty. A dislocated shoulder. Torn ligaments. A couple of broken ribs that still stabbed her side with every breath. But she was back, unwilling to spend another single day bored out of her mind, counting the hours, and pacing the floor between the 300 channels of crap television and the stack of novels she just didn’t have the patience for.
It wasn’t the physical injuries she thought to be the source of her pallor; it was the monsters that lurked inside, in the deepest recesses of her weary brain. The memories she wanted gone forever, but which refused to fade, the raw memories of that one terrible night, more than ten years before, when her life took an abrupt turn for the nightmare. A night when she was the powerless victim fighting for her life, not the fearless FBI agent she had become.
Those wounds were still painful, still making her go through life in a constant state of hypervigilance, although her assailant couldn’t hurt her anymore. Those wounds hurt much worse than a bunch of cracked ribs could ever hurt.
Focused on her physical fitness and most likely oblivious to the rest of her baggage, her doctor had prescribed six weeks off, with the last two spent in daily physiotherapy sessions, strength building, and mobility exercises. She had pleaded and threatened, but he’d already spoken with her supervisor, FBI Special Agent in Charge, or SAC Pearson, as she liked to shorten his title, advising him she couldn’t return to duty for medical reasons. When she’d heard that, she’d flipped, turning on the doctor with the full force of her irrational anger, and accused him of everything she could think of, from violating patient confidentiality to simply being an inconsiderate, selfish, cover-your-ass kind of jerk, the type who shouldn’t be allowed to wear a doctor’s badge at any time in his life.
That didn’t get her too far. The doctor scoffed hearing about patient confidentiality violations, and reassured her he’d only shared the six weeks’ rest order with SAC Pearson, and none of the details. Yet, miraculously, later that same day, he agreed to let her off with three weeks, if she were to perform only light duties, as in sitting behind a desk and doing paperwork.
Hell, no.
But at least she could set foot inside the federal building again; the FBI had restored her credentials. The rest was up to her, right? A crooked smile appeared shyly in that bathroom mirror, then extended to a full-blown grin, engulfing her eyes and making her dark circles almost disappear.
She was back. That was all that mattered.
“Welcome back, Winnett,” a woman greeted in passing, then slammed the door of the last stall behind her.
Tess jumped out of her skin. She hadn’t heard the woman come into the bathroom; she just heard the voice behind her, too damn close when she thought she was alone and safe. Her heart raced and her hands shook a little. She focused for a few seconds on her breathing. In. Out. In. Out.
“Thanks,” she finally replied, a little hesitant, then let out a long breath, steadying herself some more.
Was she really ready to be back? She’d better be. Wake the hell up, Winnett.
She stared at herself a little more, building confidence for the meeting with SAC Pearson. She’d come in that morning to find a sticky note on her desk, with a quick message, “See me first thing.” The message was signed by Pearson, his scribbled name evolving from block letters to a pseudo-signature, overall illegible. But she knew who it was, anyway.
SAC Pearson. Ugh. Her boss, who’d put her on notice a few times already, and who wasn’t going to take any more crap from her. A man who’d completed twelve years of service as a profiler with an enviable case record, a case record only she exceeded. He scored 98 percent; she scored 100 percent. Tiny difference, great meaning. She was sure the two percentage points were front and central on her boss’s mind, at least some of the time. But, most of all, Pearson was an experienced profiler who would take one look at those black circles under her eyes and send her packing, out for three more weeks of going nuts in her apartment.
She pursed her lips, considering her options, then cleared her throat quietly.
“Hey, Colston, would you happen to have any makeup on you?”
“Uh-huh, here you go,” the woman replied, offering her purse under the stall door. “Knock yourself out.”
“Thanks,” she replied.
She took the offered purse and put it on the counter, but hesitated a little before unzipping it. She struggled invading someone’s privacy like that, despite being invited to. How different other people were. How… unsuspicious, and trusting, and open. Calm. Caring. Unassuming. As she unzipped the purse, she felt a pang of envy. She just wished she could be like that, like everyone else out there who shared, trusted, and let their guard down every now and then.
Colston’s purse held a treasure trove of makeup items, and she stared, puzzled at the pile of little objects, unsure what to use.
“This is what you’ll need,” Colston said, picking up a concealer from the pile. Her hand dripped water into the open purse, but she didn’t seem to care.
Tess’s breath caught, but she swallowed and managed to thank her. How come she hadn’t heard Colston flush, or seen her wash her hands? She’d definitely washed them, seeing as she was now drying them thoroughly with a paper towel. What kind of field agent lets people creep up on them like that? She needed to get a grip.
She hid her frown and applied the concealer quickly, with her finger, and smiled with gratitude.
“I’d also put on a little bit of blush. You’re too pale. Here, let me,” Colston offered, and quickly touched up Tess’s cheeks with a thick brush, bringing color to her alabaster skin. “Perfect, there you go. Much better.”
They walked out of the
restroom together, but then parted ways, as Tess swung by her desk to grab her notepad before heading toward Pearson’s office.
There he was, sitting at his desk, with his completely bald head lowered, as he read through the pages of a dossier, flipping through it impatiently and pressing his lips together, a definite sign of annoyance. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, which meant he was going to be in the office for at least a few hours.
She knocked on the doorjamb and waited silently. He waved her in, without lifting his eyes from the pile of paperwork. She stood and let her eyes wander on the few items adorning Pearson’s office. Behind him, taking a shelf in a half-empty bookcase, a cluster of three framed pictures showcased Pearson’s family. His wife, a little overweight, was a warm, affectionate woman who held his hand with confidence in a family picture that included their two children.
The other two images were college graduation portraits of his sons, the professional type that higher-end colleges offer on the day of the ceremony. Both boys had their mother’s kindness in their eyes; they were younger, milder versions of their father. She wondered if the harshness in Pearson’s features was genetic or acquired. She studied the two vertical ridges that flanked his puckered lips, the permanent frown lines on his tall forehead, and the tension in his jaw. Probably his nature.
Finally, Pearson looked up and frowned a little deeper.
“Sit down, Winnett.”
She obliged.
“So, you’re back. Early.”
“Sir.”
“Welcome back. Are you up for it?”
“Thank you, sir. Yes, I am.”
He rubbed his forehead and pinched the bridge of his nose where glasses had left reddish marks on his skin. Then he leaned back in his chair, deep in his thoughts.
“I have a few things for you,” he finally said. The tone of his voice didn’t promise anything good.
She nodded, but didn’t say a word. She shifted in her chair nervously, but then willed herself to sit still.
“First, there’s the issue of your latest case. There will be a formal review of that entire development. It’s scheduled to start in two weeks.”
