Winter's Web

by Mary Stone

  The young man nodded. “Yes.”

  “Go take a shower and change your clothes. Fast. Make sure you put on something that’ll cover the wound on your wrist. When the cops get here, all you need to say to them is that you had gone to your room for something, and you don’t know what happened. That’s all I need you to say. Absolutely nothing more than that. Do you understand me…” Nathaniel’s voice broke, “son?”

  Another nod. “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good.” Nathaniel gestured to the stairwell. “Now, go get it done.”

  Without another word of acknowledgement, Cameron turned and sprinted up the stairs.

  Nathaniel didn’t have time to contemplate how much of his son’s story was true, if any of it was true, or if all of it was true.

  He had a son to protect. A reputation to protect.

  He knew what he needed to do.

  As he approached the fallen girl, he raised the forty-five and took aim at the side of the door. Even if he presented the police with a story of self-defense, they’d likely still test his hand and his clothes for gunshot residue. If the tests came back negative, their curiosity would be piqued.

  And right now, the last thing Nathaniel needed was a cop’s curiosity.

  With a quiet sigh, he squeezed the trigger. Splinters exploded from the heavy door, but even the powerful round from the handgun didn’t pierce through the barrier. It didn’t matter. All that mattered now was that, when they tested him for gunshot residue, the results would be positive.

  He pressed a small lever on the weapon’s frame to release the magazine, and then he pulled back the slide to release the chambered round. As he set the handgun atop the end table where he had initially hidden the weapon, he handled the forty-five with the same tender care he would give to a newborn kitten.

  Once the weapon, the loose round, and the magazine were arranged neatly on the smooth driftwood, he headed to the kitchen.

  From the same coffee canister his son had mentioned, he retrieved a wad of twenties. The canister had started out as a secret hiding spot for his fund to buy Katrina birthday gifts, but once she died, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to get rid of the stash. Each year, he added more to it just like he had when she was alive. He wasn’t sure the value of the wad of money, but it was at least several thousand dollars.

  For how long he stood with his vacant stare fixed on the cash, he wasn’t sure.

  The money was never meant to be used to cover up a young girl’s death. He should have been able to use it to buy his wife jewelry or home improvement supplies.

  Blinking away the sudden blur in his eyes, he closed the pantry door. “I’m sorry, Kat,” he murmured.

  He almost lost his nerve when he saw the way the girl had crumpled to the floor. The dark crimson pool beneath her had started to thicken and coagulate. This wasn’t the first body he’d seen—after all, he’d been a defense lawyer before he was a judge.

  But this was the freshest body he’d ever seen. All those before now had been on a silver table in the basement of the medical examiner’s office.

  I wonder what Dan Nguyen will think about this.

  The thought was inane. Stupid. Pointless.

  As he tucked the cash into the young woman’s back pocket, he swallowed the sting of bile and stared at the butcher knife lying on the tiled floor. Without pausing to give himself time to hesitate, Nathaniel took out a handkerchief and used the snowy white cloth to pick the knife up by the handle.

  He cursed as he dragged the blade along his forearm once, and then a second time, and gritted his teeth before stabbing the tip into his bicep. Hands trembling violently now, he carefully replaced the weapon in the young woman’s hand.

  Gritting his teeth against the sudden, searing pain, he rose to stand. From a back pocket, he produced his cell phone to dial 911.

  He needed to do this. He had to do this. There was no other choice.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, his face raised to the heavens as he spoke to his dead wife. “This is my fault. I’ll fix it, I promise.”

  Entering the three digits, he made the call.

  He was the reason that girl was dead, and he would pay whatever price the state saw fit.

  Plus, maybe in prison, he’d finally find some peace.

  25

  At first, Aiden thought the buzz on the nightstand by his head was an alarm. He opened his eyes a slit, and he wondered why his alarm had gone off before the sun had even crested the horizon.

  Blinking against the harsh light of the screen, he mentally shook the cobwebs from his brain. No, that wasn’t his alarm. It was a few minutes before five in the morning.

  He was receiving a phone call.

  With a quiet groan, he plucked the device from its resting spot on the wireless charger and squinted at the screen. His early morning caller was none other than Detective Jordan Ramsey of the Richmond City Police.

  Swiping the answer key, he raised the phone to his ear. “This is SSA Parrish.” His voice was thick with sleep, but at five in the morning, he wasn’t worried about how the tired slur made him appear.

  “Parrish, hey,” the man replied. “This is Detective Ramsey. Sorry to wake you up, but we just got an urgent request to pass one of our homicide cases over to the bureau. Well, we aren’t technically sure if it’s a homicide yet.”

  He had to suppress another groan. “Then why is it being passed to the bureau? And why are you calling me instead of Max Osbourne?”

  The detective ignored the second question. “The victim is Peyton Hoesch. She’s the only daughter of a decorated agent in the DEA. You might’ve heard of her, Agent Maryann Hoesch?”

  “Maryann Hoesch?” Aiden sat up in bed, his mind working at full speed now. “As in, the Maryann Hoesch who ran point on the takedown of the De Luca family in D.C.?”

  “Yeah, that Maryann Hoesch.”

  Aiden slid out of bed and paced to the window. “Does Maryann know her daughter is dead?”

  The detective cleared his throat. “Yeah. She…she asked me to call you specifically. Well, not you-you. But an SSA or above. You just happen to be my contact.”

  “Jesus,” Aiden breathed. “Okay. I’ll head into the office. I’ll be there in about an hour. I’ll call you when I’m there.”

  “Roger that. Talk to you soon.”

  After he returned his phone to the nightstand, he shifted to face the woman in his bed. Her back was to him, and the meager city lights outlined the shape of her body beneath the sheets. As he reached out to run his hand along the curve of her hips, she groaned softly.

  The faint scent of citrus still lingered on her even after the lengthy night they’d spent together in this bed. Her bed, not his.

  Before he could be tempted to crawl back under the sheets for another round, he said, “I’ve got to go.”

  Fabric rustled as she moved to lay on her back and smiled sleepily at him. “I had fun.”

  Pulling on his pants, he returned her smile. “Me too.”

  In the dim light, her honey-brown eyes were darker, and her dark brown hair looked almost ebony. He was ashamed of how badly he wished they’d been the hair and eye color of another.

  “Goodbye, Aiden,” she murmured.

  He grabbed his jacket, trying to remember her name. “Bye, Hannah.” At least he thought that was right. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  26

  By the time Noah reached the Arkwell residence, Peyton Hoesch’s body had already been taken to the medical examiner’s office. Glancing around the foyer, he took a drink of the seasonal latte he had stopped to order on his way to the scene.

  They had all been called in to the FBI office bright and early that morning, and since Caroline was safe and Ryan O’Connelly’s undercover effort had yielded little and less, they’d been tasked with the investigation of Peyton Hoesch’s death.

  The homeowner, a state supreme court judge named Nathaniel Arkwell, claimed that Peyton had been caught stealing from him, and
that she’d become violent when he confronted her.

  Noah turned his attention to a man with dark blonde hair brushed straight back from his forehead. The first rays of daylight that filtered in through the foyer windows caught the gold badge around his neck.

  With a slight smile—the best Noah could manage at six-thirty in the morning—he inclined his latte in the detective’s direction like it was a glass of beer.

  “Morning, Detective Ramsey.” He followed the greeting with another long swig.

  “Morning, Agent Dalton,” the man greeted. From the inside of his black suit jacket, he produced a small pad of paper and a pen. “Well, let’s take a walk through the scene then, shall we?”

  Swallowing the gulp of coffee, Noah nodded. “Yeah. Even this early in the morning, I have enough wit to gather that this is where Peyton was shot?” He gestured to the dark stain on the tile just in front of the wooden door.

  With the pen, Detective Ramsey pointed to the dried blood. “That’s right. Based on a preliminary look at the spatter, she was standing in front of the door when she was shot. We’ll know for sure once the ME gets a chance to look at her, but right now, it looks like she was shot in the back.”

  Noah lifted an eyebrow. “In the back? Didn’t Arkwell say he killed her in self-defense?”

  The detective spread his hands. “That’s his story, Agent. Don’t shoot the messenger. We’re on the same team.”

  As he glanced down to the blood and then back to Detective Ramsey, Noah slowly shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. Why’d he say he shot her in the back?”

  “He claims she used that knife right there. Or, I should say, the knife that was right there. We already photographed it and bagged it up as evidence. It’s on the way to your lab, if it’s not there already. But he claims that she came after him with a butcher knife when he confronted her about stealing a wad of cash out of a secret stash in a coffee canister.”

  Noah wrinkled his nose. “A coffee canister?”

  Detective Ramsey scratched the side of his face with the pen as he looked to his notepad. “Yeah, there’s something here that feels a little off to me too. I asked Arkwell how she’d know it was there, and he went on a spiel about how thieves know all the good hiding spots, and they know where to look for valuables. Some people hide cash in the freezer, some people stash it in empty boxes of cereal, and some stuff it in a canister in the back of their pantry.”

  With a glance to the dried blood stain, Noah nodded. “That makes a weird sort of sense, I suppose. If she was about to leave the house, then why’d he shoot her?”

  The detective returned the pad of paper to his pocket. “According to him, he was still afraid for his life at that point. He said that she was coming after him again and turned just before he pulled the trigger. Virginia’s got a version of the Stand Your Ground law, or the Castle Doctrine. Under that, it’s still likely to be treated as a self-defense case.”

  Noah circled the blood stain and glanced over to the short hall that led to the dining room and then the kitchen. “How tall is Peyton Hoesch? How much does she weigh?”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the detective pull out the notepad. “Little over five foot, somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred pounds.”

  “What about Nathaniel Arkwell?”

  “Little shorter than you, about one-ninety. It looked like he was in decent shape.”

  “So, Arkwell’s trying to tell us that a six-foot something grown-ass man in good physical shape was scared that a petite, five-foot tall, twenty-some-year-old girl was going to kill him?” He paused to gesture to the edge of the hall where Ramsey stood. “He was standing right about where you are, and he was afraid that, even though he was holding a semiautomatic handgun, the petite twenty-something was going to kill him? He was so scared that he pulled the trigger from a good ten to fifteen feet away? At the end of that hallway there?”

  Detective Ramsey pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah, like I said, I see where you’re coming from. But, just to play devil’s advocate, remember that Arkwell’s a judge. He has to deal with death threats all the time, and he’s got to be on guard more often than not. He might have thought she was high on PCP or meth or something. I’m sure he’s seen plenty of violent crimes committed by meth heads in his career.”

  Noah nodded. “Right, I suppose that makes sense. We’ve got to remember that we’re not dealing with just an average civilian. Have y’all dusted for prints yet?”

  The man pointed down a hallway. “The CSU is still here, but they’re in the garage right now. Arkwell says that’s where the confrontation started. What are you thinking you’ll find by dusting for prints?”

  “Arkwell said she was stealing some cash out of a canister in the pantry, so let’s start there. Dust to see if she even touched the pantry, or the coffee can. Who else was in the house when it happened?”

  “Just the son. Arkwell said he was upstairs in his room. Hoesch was over to work on a group project with his son, and the son went to grab something. According to Arkwell’s statement, that’s when Peyton Hoesch decided to start snooping through their pantry. He was watching television, but when he went into the kitchen to grab himself another beer, she was digging around in the pantry with a wad of cash in her back pocket.” Detective Ramsey gestured in the direction of the kitchen.

  With a quick nod, Noah started off down the short hall, Detective Ramsey close behind.

  “Arkwell says he asked her what the hell she was doing, and that’s when she bolted. She tried to run out through the garage, but as soon as she realized the door was locked with a keypad, she kicked him in the nuts and went through the kitchen. That’s when she picked up the butcher knife.”

  Noah’s eyes drifted to the wooden knife block, and he swallowed yet another disbelieving snort.

  This case just got weirder and weirder.

  As he paused to stand in front of the granite island, Detective Ramsey leaned against the counter.

  “I’m not saying I think the guy’s lying, not necessarily, anyway,” Noah said. “But the whole reason I’m here is because Peyton Hoesch is Maryann Hoesch’s daughter. The same Maryann Hoesch who headed up the task force to take down the De Lucas in D.C. I’m just having a real hard time believing that her kid would be sneaking around a rich judge’s house looking for hidden cash, you follow me?”

  Detective Ramsey nodded. “I follow you. Okay, but suppose that Peyton is a good kid, and suppose that Arkwell is lying. Why? The guy’s a judge, he’s got to know what’ll happen if we find out.”

  Noah glanced to the knife block and shook his head. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Honestly, Detective, we live in a fucked up world. Might be that Arkwell has a predilection for girls quite a bit younger than himself, and when she turned him down, he decided to shut her up for good.”

  The detective’s mouth turned down in a look of distaste. “That’s one explanation for it.”

  “It’s just a theory, but I know for sure that something here stinks. Something about this whole situation doesn’t sit right with me, and I’m willing to bet that the rest of the bureau will feel the same way when I bring this back to them.” He tapped his finger against the paper sleeve of the cup.

  He understood why the bureau had issued an all-hands notice for the murder of a fellow federal agent’s daughter, but until now, he’d assumed that the statement of a judge would be a reliable account of the events that had transpired the night before. Now, however, he had more questions than answers.

  The story itself read like testimony from a drunk witness, not a state supreme court judge.

  After another swig of coffee, Noah nodded at the detective. “Thanks for the walk-through. Like I said, have the CSU dust the pantry and garage for prints. And, for the time being, leave the crime scene tape up. I know that Arkwell claims this was self-defense, but for right now, you and your people treat this like the scene of a homicide.”

  Detective Ramsey’s expre
ssion turned grim. “Roger that. We’ll send everything to the FBI lab, and I’ll let you know if we get word of anything new on our end.”

  “Much appreciated. Take care.” With a lift of his hand, he turned to make his way back outside.

  Now, it was time for him to figure out whether or not Peyton Hoesch was the degenerate thief that Arkwell made her out to be.

  And if she wasn’t, then they’d have a brand-new heap of shit to add to the investigation into Caroline Peter’s stalker.

  A heap of shit with a judge on top.

  27

  Leaning back in the rickety chair, Winter crossed both arms over her chest. There were no silver bracelets around Nathaniel Arkwell’s wrists. As of now, the man was merely in the interview room for routine questioning in a self-defense case. He wasn’t even under arrest, and so far, he’d been cooperative.

  To her side, Bobby stifled a yawn with one hand. She knew her fellow agent well enough to realize a strategic gesture when she saw one.

  Nathaniel Arkwell’s light brown eyes shifted over to Bobby, though his expression changed little. “Something wrong, Agent Weyrick?”

  With a pleasant smile, Bobby shook his head.

  Ever since his arrival at the field office, Nathaniel Arkwell had been unusually keen on using their names in his dialogue. The oddity was so striking that Winter wondered if he’d been implanted with a subdermal recording device, or if he was a cyborg altogether.

  Feigning hesitance, Winter raised a hand. “I’ve got something, Mr. Arkwell. I was wondering if you could tell me what exactly it was about this five-foot-two, one-hundred-pound college student that made you fear for your life. No disrespect intended. I’m just trying to make sure we get a deep understanding of what happened. Maryann Hoesch has been a DEA agent for more than twenty years, and she wants answers. You’re a veteran of the armed forces, aren’t you?”

  Jaw clenched, the man nodded. “I am. United States Navy, five years.”