by Leslie Wolfe
“She should be fine in a couple of days, with plenty of rest. She’s lightly sedated now, but you can see her if you’d like. The baby is fine too,” he added with a smile.
Both Mrs. Welsh and the boyfriend frowned at the news and exchanged accusing gazes. Tess found their confused silence a good moment to intervene.
“Tess Winnett, FBI,” she announced herself.
“What baby?” Carol Welsh asked, completely ignoring Tess, and staring at Laura’s boyfriend with the look of a grizzly bear.
“Have no idea,” the boyfriend replied coldly, raising his hands in the air. “Why don’t you ask her. She didn’t bother to tell me about it either.”
Tess watched the exchange in disbelief. They’d just learned Laura was pregnant, and not a trace of joy was on either of their faces. She turned to the doctor.
“May I see her? I need to speak with Laura immediately.”
“Sure,” the doctor replied, and gestured toward Laura’s room.
“You’re not seeing anyone,” Mrs. Welsh snapped.
She was tall and distinguished, the kind of distinction a life of plenty lends most women. She was accustomed to people doing as she wanted; Tess heard that in the cutting tone of her voice.
“Excuse me?” Tess reacted, turning toward her. She started to show her badge again, but Carol Welsh swatted the air like she was repelling an insect.
“I know who you are,” she said coldly, “but that doesn’t change a thing. You’re not bothering my daughter.”
“Since Laura is an adult, I have the right to interview her in private, by law, if her doctor agrees, and he just did,” Tess replied with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Any effort to stop or further delay me will be an obstruction of justice, followed by your prompt arrest.”
She turned and headed toward Laura’s room, leaving behind a perplexed Mrs. Welsh. Once inside Laura’s room, she closed the door behind her and let a quiet sigh escape. Carol Welsh was nothing more than a concerned mother, still shocked after hearing her daughter had been in a car crash, feeling and acting protective. She should have gone easier on her.
She looked at the bed and almost didn’t recognize Laura. She looked pale and incredibly thin. The appearance of fear in her eyes had subsided somewhat, but wasn’t completely gone. Whatever monsters Laura was hiding had come to life. Probably she felt safer here, on a hospital floor, surrounded by good people.
“Hello, Laura,” Tess said gently, “I’m Special Agent Tess Winnett with the FBI.”
“Yes, I remember you,” she said, then licked her dry, pale lips. “I didn’t know the FBI bothered with car crashes,” she continued, a flicker of fear glinting in her eyes.
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” Tess asked.
“I was coming home on the Interstate, when the steering wheel suddenly got stuck. It moved hard, at first, and it took me a lot of effort to turn it, for a second or so, but then it froze completely and I couldn’t stop… I didn’t have time. I hit the guardrail and flipped over a few times, they told me.”
“I see,” Tess replied, waiting patiently for Laura to continue.
“I was lucky,” she said, smiling faintly. “Just another mile farther, and I would have dropped from much higher, at the interchange. It was just an accident,” she concluded, giving Tess a sheepish look. “Am I in big trouble?”
“Laura, you’re an engineer,” Tess said.
“Almost,” she replied with a shy smile, then cringed in pain. She touched her head with a trembling, thin hand.
“Then it’s time to think for yourself,” Tess continued. “I want to put you in protective custody.”
“Why?” Laura asked, her voice sounding desperate, almost like a cry.
Tess forced a breath of air into her lungs.
“Because it’s possible that The Family Man didn’t kill your parents and siblings. It’s possible someone else did.”
Laura stared at Tess with blue eyes that rapidly welled up. She let out a long, shuddering breath that quickly turned to sobs.
“You lied to me,” she said between sobs. “You were in my home, looked me in my face, and lied to me.”
She turned on her side, facing the wall and blocking Tess out. Tess stood there speechless, unable to think of a single thing she could say to make those frail shoulders stop their almost convulsive shaking.
Outside in the hallway, Tess pulled out her phone and called Michowsky. “Gary, I want Laura’s car taken apart piece by piece. It was tampered with. I want to know when, how, and by whom. Oh, and post a uniform at Laura’s hospital room, will you?”
Then she headed toward the exit, but felt someone grab her sleeve.
“Protective custody?” Carol Welsh yelled in her face, holding on to her sleeve with a lot of strength. “I can’t let you do that!”
Tess stopped in place and stiffened.
“How would you like to be charged with assault of a federal officer?”
Mrs. Welsh released her sleeve like it suddenly burned her hand.
“I still can’t let you do that,” she said, somewhat subdued, pleading. “Please… We’ll watch over her. We’ve done it before; we’ll do anything you want, but don’t put our daughter through that again.” Tess saw nothing but worry and despair in the tearful eyes of Mrs. Welsh.
“It’s what’s best for her, all things considered,” Tess replied. “You obviously couldn’t protect her from this,” she added, gesturing vaguely toward Laura’s room.
“But how can you be sure? Why are you telling her that… that horrible man isn’t her family’s killer?”
“Sorry, I can’t discuss the details of an ongoing investigation,” Tess replied dryly.
“Now you suddenly can’t discuss it, Agent Winnett? Well, I won’t let you put my daughter in jail, that’s for sure. I’ll have my lawyer give your boss a call.”
“Suit yourself,” Tess replied, then turned and left, breathing heavily and failing to subdue her anger. Preoccupied, she failed to notice the nurse who stood right next to them in the hallway, with her back against the wall, listening to their entire conversation.
On the way to her car, treading quickly on the endless hallways, Tess couldn’t keep her mind from going over her exchange of words with Mrs. Welsh. She seemed a genuinely concerned parent, yet she refused protective custody for her adoptive daughter? In what scenario did that make sense?
Eventually, she just shrugged the whole thing off, thinking it must have been the need for control, typical for people of power, that motivated Mrs. Welsh to refuse protective custody for Laura so vehemently. That, plus the notoriously bad rap that protective custody had.
43
Two Phone Calls
It wasn’t seven yet when Tess grabbed her phone and dialed Pearson’s number. He couldn’t complain about the early hour; after all, he’d said next time she should call.
He picked up after three long rings, but he didn’t sound asleep.
“What’s up, Winnett?”
“Sir, I’m filing a warrant for Laura Watson’s protective custody.”
“Winnett, didn’t we agree—”
“We did, sir,” she cut him off, “but her car was tampered with. I don’t think we can wait any longer.”
“Do you have a suspect list narrowed down or any new evidence?”
“Um, not yet, sir, but we have a few leads we’re following through.”
He let a long breath escape his lungs, and Tess could visualize him shaking his head, tired of fighting her, dreading the PR nightmare that would surely ensue.
“All right, Winnett, go ahead with it, and try to keep it as quiet as possible.”
“Um, sir, there could be a call coming your way this morning. Carol Welsh is not happy with the protective custody scenario. She mentioned a lawyer.”
“Winnett, didn’t we talk about complaints? You promised me you’re going to do your job without having me pick up the pieces every time. Part of your job is negotiating, persuading, talking wit
h the families.”
“Sir, I’m sorry,” she blurted without thinking, “but I can’t kiss ass and do my job at the same time.”
“Watch it, Winnett,” Pearson snapped. He was clearly pissed. “Why don’t you come by the office first thing? You probably need help with this case.”
He hung up the second he finished what he had to say, leaving her no option but to comply. That was typical of Pearson, especially when she managed to make him mad. She cringed in anticipation of their meeting and decided to stop by Starbucks beforehand. She needed all the help she could get.
The drive to the Miami FBI headquarters wasn’t a long one, and she normally enjoyed the morning air and the time she had to herself to organize her thoughts and plan her day. That morning though, all kinds of contradicting thoughts raced through her head, as she tried to figure out how, if ever, she was going to catch The Chameleon.
The phone disrupted her thoughts, and she picked up via her car’s phone system.
“Hey, Winnett, hope we didn’t wake you,” Fradella’s cheerful voice greeted her.
“I’m in my car… what’s up?”
“We’ve got a surprise for you this morning, Doc and I do. We hit jackpot with that hair. It matches the Townsend hair DNA.”
“What? You’re not making much sense, Todd. Slow down, start over.”
“Remember the black hair strand Doc sent for DNA analysis, the one from the Watson crime scene? The hair that was originally excluded?”
“Yeah, it came back male, unknown, unrelated.”
“This morning, the result from the Townsend hair analysis came back from the DNA lab. It’s the same guy.”
“Wait, you’re saying the same man left hairs behind at both the Watson and the Townsend crime scenes?” She wanted to jump up and down.
“Exactly,” Fradella confirmed.
“If that hair belongs to Bradley Welsh, no way he can justify it being at the Townsends,” she added.
“Bradley Welsh still doesn’t make sense,” Michowsky intervened on the call. “If we get a warrant, I guarantee you it’ll come back as no match. Then we have nothing; just a confirmed correlation between the Watson and Townsend cases we already had.”
She didn’t reply; just mulled over her own thoughts.
“Gary, how sure are you of Bradley Welsh’s alibi? Tell me again.”
“Sheesh, Tess, what the hell,” he grunted. “I know how to check a goddamned alibi.”
“Just humor me, please,” she insisted.
“Um, he took all his corporate staff and their spouses to a dinner. More than 130 people in total. His wife too. They reserved an entire restaurant, that sort of thing. Open bar, open menu. They had beaten the sales goals for the year, or something like that; it was an employee appreciation dinner. He went there with his wife about 4:30PM and didn’t leave until almost midnight.”
“You spoke with people? He was actually there, the whole time?”
“Yes, I spoke with people, what the hell,” he reacted.
“How about video? The restaurant’s security tapes?”
“It was fifteen years ago. It was back in the day when not everything was on video all the time. There was no video.”
“How far was the restaurant from the Watson’s residence?”
“I’d say about ten minutes or so.”
“What if he snuck out? Disappeared for a half hour or so, got the job done, then came back?”
“You’re reaching, Winnett,” Gary replied. “Here we go again; I’ll explain it one more time. He would have known Laura existed. He would have killed her. The kid would have recognized him. He wouldn’t have raised her as his own daughter. There’s nothing here; admit it. We still got nothing.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said, “but I still want that warrant processed, the one for Welsh’s DNA.”
“Gladly, so we can end this goddamn senseless conversation, all right?”
“Gary,” she asked, after a few seconds of thinking, “why didn’t the Watsons attend the appreciation dinner?”
Silence took over the call, and the system amplified the background noises in the Sheriff’s Office conference room.
“No idea,” Gary finally replied.
“Um, is Doc there?”
“Good morning, Tess,” Doc said, joining the conference call.
“Ah, good morning, Doc. Hey, can you please make sure there wasn’t any excluded evidence, or any other hair strand in any of the other cases we’re looking at? The Meyers, but also all the nine cases lined up on the case board?”
“I’ve done that already, and we have nothing. No DNA evidence in any of those cases.”
“Thanks, guys. Great work, by the way,” she added, then hung up.
She pulled into the FBI parking lot as her phone chimed with an alert. Immediately, her phone rang, and Fradella greeted her again.
“Have you seen it?”
“No, not yet, what’s up?”
“The missing persons alert. A young girl, fits The Chameleon’s type. Monica Delgado. She vanished last night from Fort Lauderdale. She never made it back from grocery shopping.”
“Who’s working it?”
“Broward County.”
“Tell them we’re taking over. Why do we hear about it so late?”
“You know the drill, twenty-four hours waiting period for any missing persons. They actually put it in the system early, because of our alert.”
“Send the details to me.”
Tess cut the engine and accessed her email. The alert had a photo attached. She opened it, and she felt her blood freeze in her veins. Monica Delgado could have been Laura Watson’s twin sister.
44
Media
Tess arrived on the FBI floor before eight, coffee in hand, getting ready for a long, unpleasant conversation with her boss. She’d hoped for a few minutes of reprieve, to log onto DIVS and see all the details regarding Monica Delgado’s disappearance, but SAC Pearson was already in his office.
She rushed over and knocked twice on the opened door. He invited her in without a word. He didn’t look happy; his face was all scrunched up and two vertical, deep ridges flanked his tense mouth.
“Winnett,” he said, “take a seat.”
She obeyed without a word.
“Guess who called me already. Bradley Welsh, with one of the most expensive attorneys that money can buy in Miami on the call with him.”
“Oh,” she reacted, and locked eyes with him. “So early?”
“Yeah. Dispatch put them through to my cell; they claimed it was an emergency.”
Tess bit her lip and refrained from asking Pearson how that call went. By the looks of it, not well, and he was going to share the details anyway.
“I’ll spare you the endless list of legal threats. In conclusion, if the girl refuses protective custody, there’s nothing we can do. They’ll fight the warrant and they’ll win, and that’s even if we manage to get a judge to sign it in the first place.”
“But she’ll die!” Tess exclaimed, springing from her chair. “He tried already and narrowly failed. It was a matter of luck and of Laura’s reactions. She was quick enough to sense that her steering was shot, and she’d already started braking when she hit the guardrail. He’ll come after her again, and this time, he won’t fail.”
Pearson waved the argument away, then loosened his tie with an angry, rushed gesture, as if he couldn’t breathe. “There’s nothing you can do, Winnett. She’s not testifying; she’s not a gang member. I don’t think anyone will sign that warrant anyway. Everything we have is speculation. And if you do convince a judge to sign it, we’re on notice by the Welsh family attorney to notify them immediately. They’ll fight it. I don’t know why, but they will. They made that abundantly clear.”
“That’s exactly it, sir,” she said, leaning over his desk. “Why are they fighting it in the first place?”
“That question, if it has an answer to begin with, is yours to answer, Winnett.
Do you have a suspect list narrowed down? Do you have any evidence? Anything?”
“We found matching DNA at the scenes of both the Watson and Townsend cases. No match in CODIS though, and nothing to match it against. I want to go after Bradley Welsh for a sample.”
“There’s nothing, absolutely nothing to justify that! He’s rock solid, with a confirmed alibi, a clean record, and nearly fifteen years of being that girl’s parent! Have you lost your mind? The judge will throw that warrant in your face, Winnett.”
“A girl went missing last night; she looks just like Laura Watson, and I believe—”
“Could be coincidental; could be nothing.”
“Then I have nothing, and if that’s the case, I’ll arrest Laura as soon as the hospital releases her. It will buy us more time.”
“On what charges?” Pearson asked angrily. It was his turn to stand abruptly, and now the two of them were in each other’s faces, with just a narrow desk between them.
“Obstruction,” she replied. “I can hold her for twenty-four hours, and that could mean she gets to live for one more day.”
“Listen to me, Winnett, because I’m about to give you an order. You’ll do no such thing; do you understand me? You’ll—”
Pearson’s desk phone rang, and he picked up, irritably, on speaker. It was the front desk.
“What?”
“Sorry, sir, but we have a crowd of reporters downstairs asking for you and Agent Winnett, by name.”
“All right, I’ll be there shortly,” he replied, somewhat subdued. “What the hell did you do this time, Winnett?”
She repressed a shuddered sigh, feeling adrenaline rush through her body. Her already tense relationship with her boss didn’t need any more tension.
“Nothing, I—”
“Come with me,” he said, then led the way to the elevators. “Keep it short, and watch what you’re saying.”
He didn’t say a word during the elevator ride down; he didn’t even look at her. When the doors opened, they saw the press gathered in the visitors’ lobby.
