Past Deeds

by Carolyn Arnold

  “Nadia doesn’t have anything for us on the VA-hospital front.” Paige slipped back into the booth across from me.

  “Well, we both knew that was a reach.” The way her face fell, I’d say she’d held out hope for a far more optimistic outcome than I had.

  Paige continued. “She said the number of military personnel discharged from service suffering from PTSD is at an all-time high. No way for her to narrow that down with what we have—which isn’t much. I think we need to let go of the VA hospitals and focus on the Mavises.”

  “The people whose credit card information was stolen?”

  “Yeah. I had Nadia do a quick check, and the Mavises are from Bridgeport, California and Wise’s widow said that they were from Walker, California. Turns out both towns are in Mono County and within half an hour of each other.”

  “Okay, but we don’t even know if California ties into our sniper. What you’ve mentioned could be nothing more than a coincidence. Bell said that the credit card itself wasn’t stolen, so our sniper never had to set foot in California.”

  “But the Wises were from there,” Paige stressed. “And I’m pretty sure our sniper was.”

  “Why? Because of some credit card information that could have been stolen from online or over the phone? And tell me this, why would the sniper use a card that might lead us to her?”

  Paige took a sip of her iced tea. “Well, it didn’t lead Bell to her.”

  “Burn.”

  She smiled. “Seriously, there are a couple of reasons the unsub would leave a trail. The sniper could get a rush from the chase, or they are trying to tell us something.”

  “But what?” My mind was trying to piece together a motive here but was falling short. Maybe we needed more background on the Mavises and Wise before anything coherent would stitch together. “Did you find out anything more about the transaction history on the Mavises’ card?” I’d cave a little to please Paige. She seemed excited about the California lead.

  “Uh-huh.” She leaned across the table. “I found out from Nadia the last charge before the fraud came to light was made at the Sunset Diner, and apparently the Mavises frequented the place. I think our sniper gained access to the Mavises’ credit card there.”

  Maybe I’d given her too much rope, because now it felt like she was reaching. “So the sniper worked there?”

  Paige sat back and hitched her shoulders. “It’s possible.”

  “If she held a job, then she’d have to be mentally stable. She might not have PTSD.”

  “Or she has lucid moments, when she’s perfectly fine. There may be times when she’s getting treatment and times when she’s not.”

  I bobbed my head side to side.

  “Anyway, before I forget to tell you, Jack called. I let him and Kelly know about my suspicions that this might link back to California, and he told me that Marsha Doyle’s body was found in her apartment.”

  “I wish I could say that surprises me. How was she killed?”

  Penelope shadowed the table, and stood there, motionless, holding our two salads and staring at me with her mouth slightly agape.

  I plastered on a smile. “We’re talking about this show we binge on Netflix.”

  Penelope set our food down in front of us and walked away without saying a word.

  “Oops,” I said to Paige.

  Paige was smiling and lifted up her fork. “Let’s hurry and eat up. We have work to do.”

  “I’m good with that.” I hated it when meals dragged on. As I ate, I thought about the killer we hunted. They might love the chase, but so did I. Even better was the catch.

  -

  Thirty-Five

  Arlington, Virginia

  Friday, October 25th, 2:15 PM Eastern Standard Time

  The victim was shot in the head with a handgun, execution style,” Herrera said, standing with Kelly and Jack over Marsha Doyle’s body, which was supine on the floor not too far inside her front door. Blood smears showed the body had been dragged farther into the apartment so the shooter could close it inside.

  “She answered her door and got a bullet to the head for her troubles,” Kelly lamented, though she’d seen far worse crime scenes than this one.

  CSIs were busy working over Marsha’s apartment and around her body. The medical examiner hadn’t arrived yet but had been called.

  “It would also seem that the shooter knew Marsha by sight,” Kelly reasoned. “There’s no indication of hesitation, just cold calculation. The sniper knew that Marsha had what they needed, and they didn’t hesitate to act and take it.”

  “I’d have to agree with that,” Herrera said. “So far, we haven’t found her keycard or her work ID. I have officers canvassing the building to see if anyone was seen hanging around. We don’t have a narrower window for time of death, but we know that she got off work at eleven Wednesday night, and the sniper was at the Colonial Hotel at six Thursday morning. The officers are working with that time frame.”

  Kelly turned to Jack. “Our unsub is very organized and acting faster. They’re becoming more comfortable with killing as they go along and are even willing to take out others to accomplish their end goal. There might be other victims we’re not yet aware of, too.” The latter was a disheartening thought, but if she was against a hired gun before, she truly was now. There was also the knowledge they had after talking to Jane Powell. Reid had known the woman—the sniper—staring at him. She turned to Jack. “Definitely not the work of a hired gun, and that woman Powell told us about…Reid knew about her, but how and from when and where? How far back do their paths intersect?”

  “What woman?” Herrera asked.

  Kelly filled the captain in on the mystery woman at Spencer’s. “Powell said the woman kept staring at Reid. I think she’s the one who snapped the photos of them together.” Kelly’s heart picked up some speed, and she met Jack’s gaze. “Even more than that, I think this woman is our killer.”

  “A female sniper?”

  “Why not,” Kelly fired back. “Women can do anything men can do.”

  Herrera held up his hands. “Not the way I meant it.”

  Kelly didn’t care how he meant it; she took it as she heard it. “Jack, we’ve discussed how the sniper could be personally motivated, and now she shows her face to her victim within hours of taking him out?”

  “Ballsy,” Herrera chimed in.

  Kelly disregarded Herrera’s male-macho terminology. “It was her way of letting Reid know he was going to pay for what he did, whatever that was.”

  “Hmm.” Jack patted his shirt pocket where he kept his cigarettes.

  “You don’t agree?” Kelly asked.

  Jack met her eyes. “I never said that. We definitely need to figure out how the sniper and the victims are connected. We figure our sniper has a military background, but none of the victims did.”

  “There has to be something they hold in common,” Kelly reasoned.

  “All the men were cheaters,” Herrera said.

  “I think there’s more to it.” Kelly’s mind went to the photos sent to the widows. “I think the reason our sniper has targeted these men is personal, but that’s not enough. She wants the widows to know the type of men their husbands were, too. So, what’s the grander message in that? We also need to figure out why a woman in her thirties—as Powell described the woman at the bar—is killing men in their fifties.” Her thoughts went dark. “Sexual abuse when she was younger?”

  Jack shook his head. “It’s more likely she’d take them out another way…in another spot on their bodies.”

  The way both men stiffened and shifted their posture told Kelly just the thought of being struck in “another spot” made them uncomfortable.

  “But if she was abused as a child, then how would Reid recognize her?” Herrera asked. “You said Powell told you he did.”

&n
bsp; “Right. So, if it is sexual abuse, she could have been a teenager. Looks don’t change so drastically that she’d be unrecognizable as an adult.”

  “Okay, here’s a question,” Herrera started. “How did a younger woman come to be in the company of four men twenty years or so older than she was?”

  “School? No, only one of them was a teacher.” Kelly snapped her fingers. “What about through her mother? She could have been single, had the four victims as boyfriends at different times?”

  “Wow, then she really knew how to pick ’em,” Herrera stated drily. “Though not unheard of for the cycle to repeat itself.”

  “The chances that all four men abused her…” Jack raised a skeptical brow.

  Maybe I took my theorizing too far.

  “Nadia conducted quick backgrounds on the victims, their places of birth—all different states—and dates of birth, but did she dig any deeper? And now that we’re thinking that the state of California could somehow tie into the investigation, can we place all the men there at some time?”

  “Call Nadia and have her dig deeper.”

  Kelly took out her phone and stepped into the hall. Nadia answered on the second ring, and Kelly asked her to take a hard look at the victims’ pasts for ties to California.

  “Wanna hold the line?”

  “I do.”

  Keys were clicked on Nadia’s end, and it felt like forever before Nadia’s voice came back on the line. “I didn’t notice this before, but we weren’t focused on California.”

  “What is it?”

  “All of them had addresses in towns that were within a short drive of Bridgeport. Do you think that could mean something?”

  “Can you put them there at the same time?”

  “Yeah.”

  Tingles ran down Kelly’s arms. “Then, yeah, I’d say it could mean something. When were they all living in the area?” Maybe their shooter had been there during the same time period.

  Nadia provided the year range.

  Kelly’s shoulders sagged. “That would make them all teenagers and young adults in their early twenties. College age. Any of them go to the same school?”

  “No, I would have noticed that before now.”

  So, how had they all come into contact—or had they? Maybe they only had to cross paths with the sniper. If they were in their teens and twenties, though, their sniper wouldn’t even have been born yet. What the hell? “What ages were the men when they left the state?”

  “Well, the three of them moved farther away from Bridgeport, to the north of the state—not close to each other—and at different ages. But they all left California in their thirties. Reid at thirty-three, Miller and Sherman thirty-five, and Wise thirty-seven.”

  That would put their suspected sniper in her teens, but there didn’t seem to be any geographical meeting point to facilitate an assault. “Okay, thanks, Nadia.”

  “Why do I get the feeling I didn’t help?”

  “No, you did.” Kelly hung up, headed back into Marsha’s apartment, and joined Jack. “Can we talk a minute?”

  They stepped into the hallway, where she updated him on her conversation with Nadia.

  “Okay.” Jack’s eyes shadowed. “It seems this all stems from something that happened in California.”

  “I’d say that emotions are certainly at play, too. A hired gun wouldn’t leave any type of trail.”

  “I’ll give you that.”

  “We figure she entered the military, specifically the Marines, given the type of gun used in the shootings. We’re running a little tight on leads, but what if she happened to enlist and be trained in the state of California.”

  “Are there any bases in the vicinity of Bridgeport?”

  Kelly brought out her phone and did a quick Google search. “There are thirty-two in the entire state…” She scrolled down and stopped when she got to the Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in Pickel Meadows. “Ah, Jack…there’s a training center right in Pickel Meadows. It’s only twenty-four minutes from Bridgeport.” She looked up from her phone when Jack didn’t say anything. “That’s where the Mavises are from—the couple whose credit card was stolen. This can’t be a coincidence.”

  “I’m aware. Tell me more about the training center,” he said.

  She scanned the article and gave Jack the highlights. “It was originally started to prep soldiers for the Korean War. Most of the troops trained there now are sent to help with peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan.” She slowly pried her gaze from her phone’s screen.

  Jack rubbed his jaw and walked a few steps. She’d never imagined Jack as a pacer, yet here he was.

  “Jack?” she prompted.

  He held up his index finger, stopping walking, turned to face her, then pulled out his phone. “Nadia, I need you to find out the names of any females sent to the military training base in Pickel Meadows, California, who were trained as snipers. Narrow the window between thirteen and twenty-two years ago.”

  Kelly did the quick math in her head. The mystery woman was estimated in her thirties. Accounting for an age range of thirty to thirty-nine, less seventeen—the earliest age anyone can join the Marines—that would put her enlistment between the years Jack had noted.

  “Call me back the minute you get anything.” Jack pocketed his phone and returned to Marsha’s apartment without another word to Kelly.

  She found that strange, but she also noticed the way his voice sounded like steel and the glazed-over look to his eyes when he’d made the request of Nadia. It was probably because he felt he was in some way turning on his own by pointing the finger at someone who had served. Kelly knew from her grandfather that the military was a brotherhood, and everyone had the other’s back. Whether Jack would admit it or not, Kelly suspected he was struggling with his sense of loyalty—but at the same time, she had no doubts that he’d take down a killer no matter their past service record.

  -

  Thirty-Six

  Undisclosed Location

  Friday, October 25th, 2:15 PM Local Time

  The sniper’s back was stiff, and her hips cracked when she put her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. The mattress in this hovel of a motel was hard as shit. It made her think of earlier days when sacrifices were not only demanded, but expected and par for the course. “Hardships build character,” her mother would sometimes say, but life had been one large hardship. One huge mistake, really. Some days she didn’t feel she had the right to exist. But maybe there was a reason for everything, and she was tasked to see that atonement was made for the wrongs committed. It was necessary to justify her actions to keep from teetering over the edge of sanity into the pit of insanity. She did the same when deployed. Told herself the ends justified the means, but it didn’t make the memories or the images less potent. It didn’t ease the burden she carried within herself, the heavy weight knowing that her actions had caused death. One thing she noticed everywhere she went was that people the world over were striving, striving, striving. Searching as if they’d lost something to be found, even if they’d never possessed it in the first place. But she had lost something. Correction: something had been taken away, and every day of her life had been about claiming back that which should have remained hers.

  She massaged her temple, the whiskey from last night drilling into her skull. Light was filtering in around the ratty curtains, and she squinted at the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was just after two.

  Her eyes drifted to the floor, to the bags that held her guns, and a wave of nausea had her gripping her stomach. She’d killed again. The next day was always worse than the moment, than the immediate aftermath. At that point, she was numb and unfeeling. With the dawn of a new day, overwhelming remorse often set in with the subtlety of a jackhammer. But she had to believe she had a reason for doing what she did. She, too, sought to find that which sh
e’d lost—even if it meant taking the lives of evil men to reset the scales of justice.

  She grabbed her water glass from the nightstand and took a sip as flashbacks to an earlier time took hold. Mother sitting in the window on a summer’s day, her eyes vacant as she looked out onto the street where the sniper played hopscotch with some neighbor kids. The sniper would wave and smile, but her mother never reacted. It was like Mother wasn’t looking at her, but rather through her. As if Mother was tangled in the webs of her past, apprehended by living nightmares that haunted her while she was awake.

  She tried talking to her mother in these moments, but she wasn’t sure if her words were sinking in. All Mother would do was nod, and the room felt empty, hollow, solemn, like the walls begged for reverent silence.

  She balled her hands into fists but released them, relaxing her hands in her lap. She took another sip of water and set the glass back on the table. Today was a new day, and it was time to get started, though finding motivation to go on was hard. Here she was safe, tucked away and secluded from the world, isolated.

  Someone knocked heavily on the door, and her instinct was to retreat. Maybe if she stayed quiet, her visitor would go away.

  Then she clued in; it was after two in the afternoon. She should have checked out hours ago.

  She started gathering her things. “I’m leaving,” she called out.

  “It’s the police,” were the words that returned.

  Fear lassoed her, and her chest remained expanded with her last breath. How did they find me? She’d been careful, taken necessary precautions.

  “Please come to the door. We have questions for you.”

  Questions?