by Blake Pierce
were indeed in the house she had spied from Karen Hopkins’s office window.
“Mrs. Patterson, clear something up for me, please,” Kate said. “When we
were in the Hopkins home, I looked out Karen’s window and saw a house
right across the right edge of their back yard. It was yours, right?”
“Yes, it is,” Mrs. Patterson said with a smile.
“You said you know the Hopkinses a bit. Could you elaborate?”
“Sure! Karen would ask me questions about her little garden from time to
time. She has one right there outside her office window, you know. She
didn’t grow much in it, just herbs used for cooking: basil, rosemary, some
cilantro. I’ve always had something of a green thumb. Everyone in the
neighborhood knows it and they usually come to me for advice. I have my
own garden in the back, if you’d like to see it.”
“No, thank you,” DeMarco said politely. “We’re sort of against the clock
here. We just need you to tell us what you know about the Hopkinses. Did
they seem happy when you saw them together?”
“I suppose. I don’t know Gerald all that well. But from time to time, I’d
catch them sitting out on their back porch. Fairly recently, I’ve seen them
holding hands out there. It was quite nice to see. Their kids are all grown and
moved out, I suppose you know. I liked to imagine they were talking about
their retirement plans, making travel plans and whatnot.”
“Did you ever suspect they were having issues of any kind?” Kate asked.
“No. I never heard anything or saw anything that would suggest such a
thing. As far as I know, they were just a standard couple. But I guess any
couple could have potential issues after the kids are out of the house. It’s not
uncommon, you know.”
“Did you see either of them within the past week or so?”
“Yes. I saw Karen out in her little garden, snipping at something. This
would have been about four or five days ago. I can’t be sure. I turned
seventy-four this year and my mind is sort of like soup sometimes.”
“Did you speak with her at all?”
“No. But there is something I thought about yesterday…something I
didn’t necessarily forget about but never really bothered to think twice about.
And honestly…I don’t even know what day this happened, so…”
“When what happened?” DeMarco asked.
“Well, I’m quite sure it was Tuesday…the day Karen was murdered from
what I understand. I’m quite certain I saw someone walking around in their
back yard. A man. A man that was not Gerald Hopkins.”
“Did it appear as if this man was trying to break in?” Kate asked.
“No. He looked like he belonged there, if that makes sense. He was
walking around like he had been invited, you know? He was wearing some
sort of suit or uniform. There was a little badge or patch right here.” She tapped the area above her left breast to indicate where she was talking about.
“Did you get a good look at the patch?”
“No. All I can tell you is that it was mostly white and looked sort of like a
star shape. But that could be wrong…my sight is about as good as my
memory these days.”
“But in terms of communicating with either of the Hopkinses, you say
there was nothing over the past week?”
“No. The last time I spoke with Karen was when she came over to ask for
my recipe for a pineapple upside down cake. And that’s been nearly three
weeks ago, I believe.”
Kate racked her brain, trying to think of any other avenues Mrs. Patterson
may be able to help them open up, but came up with nothing. Besides, they
had this man in a uniform to check out, so it was not like they would be
leaving empty-handed.
“Mrs. Patterson, thank you so much for your time. If you do happen to
think of anything else, feel free to call the local police. They can get a
message to us.”
“I feel like I do need to ask…but with the FBI involved, can I assume the
murder from earlier is connected? It’s been what…about a week or so ago? I
think her name was Marjorie Hix.”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Kate said. “Did you happen to know
Marjorie Hix?”
“No. I’d never even heard the name, honestly, until one of my friends told
me about what had happened.”
Kate nodded and headed out of the room. “Again, thank you for your
time.”
DeMarco joined her and they headed back outside, where the rain was
coming down steadily, despite the sun still shining through.
Kate nearly took her phone out to see if Melissa had left a voice message,
but decided against it. All it would do would be to give her one more thing to
stress out over. And if she didn’t learn to separate her personal life from her
bureau life, she may as well hand her gun and badge back in now.
She hated herself for it a bit, but she pushed Melissa out of her mind for
the moment as they headed back for the car.
In the back of her head, a little ghost voice spoke up, haunting the halls of
her mind. Remember what happened when you pushed her aside earlier in your career? It took a long time to repair that damage. You really want to go
through all that again?
No, she didn’t. And perhaps that was why she found herself fighting off
tears as DeMarco pulled out of Mrs. Patterson’s driveway.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sheriff Bannerman was back at the police station when Kate and DeMarco
arrived. He waved them back into his office, Kate noticing a shuffling hitch
to his steps as they followed him. He held the door open for both of them and
then closed it behind him.
“Any luck?” he asked.
“We spoke to a Mrs. Patterson, the woman who lives in the house that you
can see from the window in Karen Hopkins’s office,” Kate said. “She says
she recalls someone in the back yard on the day Karen was killed.”
“She says she thinks it was that day,” DeMarco added.
“Sheriff, can you think of any companies around the area that have a logo
that is star-shaped and mostly white in color? The employees may be wearing
dark-colored suits.”
Bannerman considered this for a minute and then started to nod slowly. He
typed something into the laptop on his desk, made a few clicks with the touch
pad, and then turned the screen to them. He had typed Hexco Internet
Providers into a Google search and pulled up the first image.
“There’s this,” he said. “This is the only one that comes to mind straight
away.”
Kate and DeMarco both studied the logo closely. It was an almost
identical match to what Mrs. Patterson had described. It was indeed in a star
shape, only the back arm was stretched and slightly curved. A small trail of
lines followed the star, the center one containing the word Hexco.
With speed like that of a gunslinger, DeMarco pulled out her phone and
instantly started dialing the number beneath the logo. “Let’s see if there was a
service call of some kind to the Hopkins residence on Tuesday.”
She sat down, waiting for the phone to start ringing. As she did,
Bannerman turned the laptop back around and closed the lid. In a soft
voice,
as to not interrupt DeMarco as someone answered the phone, he looked at
Kate and asked: “You got any initial thoughts?”
“I think we’ve got a killer that has a certain type of victim he’s targeting.
Both Karen Hopkins and Marjorie Hix were in their mid-fifties, at home
alone. The assumption is that the killer knew the husbands would not be
there. And I also assume he had studied the houses, as there was no sign of forced entry. So…our killer has a definite type, and he does his homework.
Other than that…I’m at a dead end.”
“I can try to add to that,” Bannerman said. “There were no signs of
struggle, either. So the killer knew how to get into the houses without
tripping security and then was also able to strike without the victims
knowing. It makes me think the victims invited the killer in. That they knew
him.”
Kate had assumed the same thing but decided to let Bannerman get it all
out. She rather enjoyed hearing him speak. His older age made him sound
very wise and she greatly appreciated his experience. She usually felt as if
working closely with anyone from the local police force could be a
hindrance, but she was already starting to like Bannerman.
As she nodded her agreement, DeMarco ended her call. “I got
confirmation that Hexco Internet did indeed send a tech out to the Hopkins
residence on Tuesday. The woman I spoke with said there had been reports of
spotty internet service all over the neighborhood around that time, starting
Monday night. There were about a dozen other similar calls for maintenance
that day.”
“Well, it’s a huge jump to make, but being a tech for an internet company
during interrupted service would grant pretty easy access into just about any
house,” Kate said.
“Well, it’s not too big of a jump, actually,” DeMarco said. “I also asked if
there had been any Hexco techs sent to the Hix residence lately. Turns out,
there was a request put in by Joseph Hix two weeks ago. And according to
their records, the same technician replied to both calls.”
“Sounds like a suspect to me,” Kate said.
“I agree,” Bannerman said. “You should know, though, that Hexco is a
relatively new provider around Frankfield. A small company. I’d be surprised
if they have more than three or four technicians. It might not be such a huge
deal that the same tech was at both addresses.”
“Still, I’d like to talk to that tech,” Kate said. “Did you get a name?”
“I did. The operator I spoke to has sent out a page for him to call me right
away.”
“In the meantime, I’d like to visit the Hix residence,” Kate said. “I know
the reports indicate that the scene was essentially clean, but I’d like to see it
for myself.”
“I’ve got the key in the case files,” Bannerman said. “You can—”
He was interrupted by the ringing of DeMarco’s phone. She answered it
right away and when Kate heard her formally introduce herself, Kate knew it
was the Hexco tech. Kate listened in, so she already knew the details before
DeMarco spoke them out loud.
“We’re meeting with him in fifteen minutes,” DeMarco said. “He seems
very willing to meet, but sounded a little scared, too.”
As Kate opened the door, Bannerman got to his feet. “Need anything from
me?”
Kate thought about it and then, with a bit of hope in her voice, said:
“Maybe just get a room ready for interrogation.”
***
The technician’s name was Mike Wallace, a twenty-six-year-old who
looked very nervous when Kate and DeMarco met him at the little coffee
shop three miles away from the Frankfield PD. He looked back and forth
between the agents in a way that reminded Kate of those weird geckos that
could move their eyes in such a way as to look in two directions at once.
He had a tablet with him, covered with a scarred leather case. The Hexco
logo stood out in embossed trim on the front of it.
“Mike, for now this is just standard procedure and you have absolutely
nothing to worry about,” Kate said. “At present, it seems that you are just
having a bit of bad luck and circumstance.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, in the course of the last two weeks, you have been assigned to
homes where two women have been killed. The most recent was this past
Tuesday.”
“I visited a lot of houses Tuesday. There was a pretty bad service
interruption in two different neighborhoods.”
“You have your service calls on that tablet, right?” DeMarco asked,
nodding to the device he carried.
“Yes, I do.”
“Can you pull up the entry for the Hopkins residence on Tuesday?”
“Sure,” he said. He tapped a few different places, scrolled a bit, and then
scanned the page with his finger. As he did, Kate noted a slight tremor in his hands. He was clearly nervous; the trick was to find out if he was scared
because he was hiding something or if he was simply nervous being in the
presence of a pair of FBI agents.
“Right here,” he said, sliding the tablet over to them. “I arrived at ten
forty-two a.m. and was gone at ten forty-six.”
“That seems very fast,” Kate said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had any sort of
utility fixed so fast. What was the nature of the outage?”
“There was a bigger one out closer to Chicago. In order to fix that one, we
had to downgrade some service in other places. Frankfield never quite came
back up the way it was supposed to. It was an easy fix, though. For all but
one of those calls on Tuesday morning, it was just a manual reset at the
install boxes at each house.”
“And it only took five minutes?” Kate asked.
“Really, each reset only takes about two or three minutes. For each stop,
Hexco requires me to start the clock on each visit. Once the timer starts, I
have to log the visit and then walk to the box. The reset itself only takes
about two minutes. After the reset, I hook a test device up to the box to make
sure it’s working. That takes about thirty seconds. Then I walk back to the
truck, enter in a status report, and log out.”
He was fidgeting and still trembling the slightest bit. He seemed to notice
this and attempted to stop the tremors in his hands by clasping them together
on the tabletop.
“So all of that was done at the Hopkins residence between ten forty-two
and ten forty-six?” Kate asked.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Did you interact with Karen Hopkins during the visit?”
“No. Hexco sent out a mass text and email notice that techs were being
sent out. Whenever that’s done and the fix doesn’t get billed to the customer,
we aren’t required to meet with them to get a signature. I doubt she even
knew I was there.”
It all checked out, but Kate did the math in her head. Four minutes was
more than enough time to get into the house and strangle someone. Of course,
the fact that his report showed where the reset and test had been conducted
and logged in knocked that four minutes down to practically nothing.
“Can you
find an entry for the Hix residence two weeks ago?” Kate asked.
“Yeah. You got a first name?”
“Marjorie, or maybe her husband, Joseph,” DeMarco said.
Mike went through his routine again and had the results within twenty
seconds. Again, he slid the tablet over to them. As they scanned the
information, he did his best to explain it.
“Right there…exactly two weeks ago. This was a response to a complaint
about the speed of their service. They’d called to get their speed and data
upgraded but it never took. It sometimes happens when done remotely, on the
phone. I went over there and did it myself.”
“According to this, it took about fifteen minutes,” Kate said.
“Yeah, the little device I use to test the strength of the signal was giving
me a hard time. If you want, I can show you the request I put in to Hexco to
get a new one.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Kate said. “I see here that Marjorie Hix signed
for the service. Did you go inside her house?”
“Yes ma’am. I needed to check her modem. I recommended they get a
new one, because the one they had was a little outdated.”
For a third time, Kate noted a nervous trembling in his hands. It was too
evident to ignore at this point.
“Was her husband home?” she asked, not letting him see that she was
noticing his nervousness.
“I don’t think so.”
Kate looked over the report one more time. Based on the reports and his
story, everything seemed to check out. But it seemed too damned
coincidental to her. She eyed Mike for a moment, looking for some crack in
his façade, but saw none.
“Thanks very much, Mike,” she finally said. “We’re done here. I don’t
want to keep you from your work any longer. Thanks for your help.”
“Absolutely,” Mike said, taking the tablet back. “I hope you catch the
guy.”
“Yeah,” DeMarco said. “Same here.”
The three of them left the coffee shop together, Mike giving an awkward
wave as he got behind the wheel of the Hexco service truck.
“He seems to check out,” DeMarco said as they got back into the car.
“Yeah, he does. But the coincidence factor…”
“Yeah, it kind of nags at you, doesn’t it?”
“Well, that and the fact that he was shaking like a whore in church…”
