Before the call ended, Jack told us, “Smart thinking.”
Paige pulled out of the diner’s parking lot, headed in the direction of Michelle’s apartment building, and about ten minutes later, we were standing in the hall outside apartment 101.
“Agents.” Dan Player smiled at us when he opened his door. “I thought you were finished here. I got Michelle’s key back. Do you need it again?”
Paige shook her head. “We have a follow-up question for you.”
“Certainly.” Player stepped back into his apartment.
We entered and stayed just inside the door.
“You told us that a man came here with Michelle.” I pulled up a photo spread on my phone of Wise, Miller, Sherman, Reid, and Evans. “Do any of these men look familiar to you?”
“Just a second.” Player padded to a nearby living area and grabbed a pair of readers off a coffee table, put them on. “All right.” He took my phone and studied the screen. “Yeah, him.” Player pointed at Frank Evans. “He’s definitely who was here with Michelle.”
I glanced at Paige. So much for not seeing his daughter in years!
“You both look surprised,” Player said.
Yes and no… “We are a bit,” I admitted. “When was it you saw him again?”
“Say, around the time of her mother’s funeral.”
“Thank you, Mr. Player,” Paige said.
“That all now? Or do you think you’ll need back in her place?”
“We’ll keep you posted,” she said.
Paige and I smiled at him and saw ourselves out.
In the parking lot, we talked in the privacy of the SUV.
“Frank Evans lied. He was probably at the funeral, which means the Gilberts probably lied to us, too. But now we have someone who places him with Michelle around the time we figure she was triggered,” Paige said.
“So he comes back to conscript her, as it were, to kill the four men who’d raped Estella.”
“Could be. Maybe he just wanted to see Michelle and make amends, but it became something else?”
“Sounds like a conspiracy to commit murder times four.”
“You could say times five, including the maid,” Paige corrected.
“And if he knew about the funeral, he could have also been keeping tabs on his four ol’ buddies all this time.”
“And fed that information to Michelle so she’d know where to find them. I was wondering how she knew where they all were.”
“Did Frank openly discuss the murders with Michelle, or did she take the mission on herself? Did he give her the photo of the men so she knew who they were? For her to see with her own eyes how they’d all been buddy-buddy to her father’s face and had committed such a horrible evil behind his back?”
“Well, the visual would have amped up hatred in Michelle.”
“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “I really think Frank sent his daughter on a killing mission. Otherwise, why cover up the fact he was here and that he saw Michelle? He told Jack and Kelly he hadn’t seen her in years.”
“He didn’t want us to know he was here, that’s for sure.”
A blond, twentysomething woman was running across the parking lot toward us and waving.
Paige lowered her window.
“Are you the FBI?” she asked, panting.
“We are. Agents Dawson and Fisher.”
Paige and I got out of the vehicle.
“You’re looking for Michelle Evans?” The woman squinted in the late morning sun.
“We are,” Paige said. “What’s your name?”
“Karen Ross.” She attempted a smile, but the expression didn’t give full birth.
“Do you know Michelle and where she might be?” I leaned against the SUV but quickly righted myself. The sun had heated the black paint to boiling.
“We were friends.”
“Were?” I asked.
“When she left, she told me she might not be coming back.”
Paige lifted her sunglasses onto her forehead. “Do you know where she went?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“Tell us what you do know about Michelle,” Paige encouraged.
“Just that she was a nice woman, if not a little strange, but who isn’t around here?” A nervous little chortle. “Should I be worried about her now that the FBI is looking for her?”
“We believe she might have gotten herself mixed up in something, but we’re doing what we can to find her,” I said, my mind stuck on the part about Michelle not having plans to return. What is her endgame? “Her car’s here, so did she leave with someone?” I asked.
“She took a taxi. I don’t know to where.”
I nodded.
“Poor Michelle was never the same after her mom died,” Karen volunteered.
“She took it hard?” Paige asked conversationally.
“Sure did. She didn’t want to talk as much. We used to have coffee in the back. There’s a small green space with some picnic tables next to the lot. Anyway, she kept telling me she wasn’t feeling well. I don’t think her time in Afghanistan helped her either.”
“War zones rarely do.” I probably said that a little drier than intended. “Did she ever say anything to you about her father?”
“She was very tight-lipped about him, but he showed up here, ya know, and to her momma’s funeral.” Karen kicked the toe of her shoe into the gravel of the parking lot.
It never got less disgusting to think that Frank had taken advantage of Michelle at her most vulnerable moment—whether he’d originally planned to do the killings himself or not.
“How did Michelle handle his return?” Paige asked.
“She was an utter mess. Like I said, she didn’t want to talk about him much. If it had been me, and my daddy had shown up all these years later, I’d have slammed the door in his face.”
I nodded. We already had Player’s testimony that he’d seen Frank Evans—and more than once. It was evident that Michelle hadn’t sent her old man packing.
“Michelle was a gentle soul. She told me that she owed it to her father to forgive him,” Karen said, as if pulling from my mind. “She said people do things they don’t mean to sometimes.”
For this extension of forgiveness, father and daughter had to have found a common ground, and that was looking to be the murder of four men who’d wronged the woman they’d both loved.
“Did you believe her when she told you that?” I asked.
Karen met my eyes and took a deep breath. “I think so. She seemed sincere.”
“Thank you for speaking with us.” Paige handed Karen her card. We got Karen’s information, too. “If you think of anything else, call me.”
“I will.”
Paige and I returned to the SUV and headed out. I didn’t even know where we were going, and I wasn’t sure Paige did, either.
“Michelle forgave her father,” Paige began. “It hardly sounds like she plans to kill him.”
“I agree. Maybe the asterisks are more to mark destinations, after all. But why not take the map with her then?”
“She has a reason, but you know what else all this means?” Paige blinked slowly. “Both father and daughter were working as a team. We’ve got to share what we’ve found out with Jack about Frank being here.”
We were quiet for a moment, working through the tangled mess.
“Frank Evans obviously lied,” I said, slicing into the silence between us. “He told Jack he hadn’t seen his daughter in nearly thirty years, but somehow he got down here for Estella’s funeral—which was another lie, because he said he didn’t go to it.”
“And by the sounds of it, he was in Bridgeport for a bit,” Paige added. “Yeah, we’ve got to update Jack. The sooner, the better.”
-
Fifty
&
nbsp; Baltimore, Maryland
Saturday, October 25th, 1:45 PM Eastern Standard Time
As Kelly and Jack headed back to Frank’s apartment, she took a deep breath, preparing herself to play nice and to be on the offensive—especially after Paige and Brandon’s call. Not to mention that Frank had already shown them his moods were temperamental and fluctuated rather easily. And if he was hiding Michelle, things could turn ugly fast.
Jack knocked on Frank’s door, and Frank called out from inside, “Go away.”
“We have news about Michelle,” Jack shouted back.
A bald-faced lie, but it might sway him to—
The door swung open, and Frank was standing there with a shot of whiskey in his hand. He kicked it back. “What about her?”
Jack brushed past him, and so did Kelly. At least for the moment, it didn’t seem that Frank was any sort of threat to them—to his liver, possibly. They’d certainly touched a nerve to drive him to drink again. Guilty consciences were often loud, and booze could drown out the voices.
Frank slammed his door shut and stood there, back to the wall. “What happened to Michelle?”
“Let’s sit down, Mr. Evans.” Jack spoke with calm authority, and Frank did as he was asked, resuming his place on the dining chair again. Jack and Kelly sat back on the couch.
“What is it?” Frank’s hand was shaking as he met Kelly’s eyes. “She killed them, didn’t she?”
“When was it you said you last saw her?” Kelly asked, disregarding his question.
“I told you. The day I left, almost thirty years ago.” Frank averted his gaze.
“That’s right.” Kelly said it apologetically, as if she’d had a lapse in memory. “And Estella? Did you attend her funeral?”
Frank clenched his jaw. “I told you I didn’t.”
“We both know that’s not true,” she countered. The plan before had been to return as allies, not adversaries, but that was before they knew he’d lied to them, before it would seem all had been forgiven between daughter and father as they found common purpose.
Frank paled. “I’m telling you the truth.”
“You’re still sticking with that?” she volleyed back. “Who are you protecting?”
Jack got off the couch and started for the hall in the apartment that would lead to a bedroom or two and the bathroom.
Frank sprung from his chair. “Hey, wait, where do you think you’re—”
“Just using the washroom, if that’s all right.” Jack studied him, and Frank backed down.
“You could have just asked.”
The guy’s more than a little twitchy.
Frank returned to his chair and regarded Kelly. “I didn’t tell you about going to the funeral because I didn’t think you’d understand. I left Estella, broke her heart. We were childhood sweethearts, got married before we even finished college. And I turned my back on her—and none of it was her fault.” Frank’s eyes welled up with tears, but Kelly wasn’t sure she was buying his act.
Jack returned and shook his head subtly for Kelly’s benefit; Frank didn’t notice. But it told her that Jack hadn’t found Michelle in the apartment. It didn’t mean Frank wasn’t keeping her somewhere else, though.
Frank glanced at Jack but resumed talking to Kelly. “I had no right to be there, but when I saw Shelly… She looked just like her mother. I was hurled into the past, only this time, I swear to God, it hurt even more.”
Kelly noted how Michelle had become “Shelly,” indicating a closeness he seemed so intent on hiding. “Did Michelle recognize you?”
“No. I mean, why would she?”
“Was that when you showed her that picture of you and your old buddies outside the Sunset Diner?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
Kelly had thought before it would be odd for Estella to hold on to a picture that showed the faces of her rapists, but it was just as strange for Frank to keep it—unless he’d harbored it for ill intent. “Did you give her the photo to keep?” Kelly treaded delicately.
“I did, but I made a copy of it for myself,” he said, adding the latter part seemingly as an afterthought.
Strange… But if Kelly confronted him on why he’d held on to it—or asked to see it—he’d certainly become defensive and stop talking to them.
“Did you tell Michelle what they did to her mother?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t have to. She knew.”
Kelly leaned forward. “Estella told her?”
“She told me that in Estella’s last days, she’d babble, almost incoherently, and it slipped out that she might not be mine. Between that and other things she’d said, Shelly figured it out.”
“She figured out the men in the photo you showed her were the men who raped her mother?” Kelly would side in favor of Estella coming out and telling Michelle, rather than her just “figuring it out.”
“You say you held on to the picture of them,” Jack started. “Did you keep tabs on them? It seems they were never far from your mind.”
Frank licked his lips and grimaced.
“Did you know where these men were living?” Jack raised his voice with this question, and it was almost a bellow in the small apartment.
Frank crossed his arms. “I’d like a lawyer before I say anymore.”
“Fine by me.” Jack stood to his feet. “You’ll be coming with us.”
Kelly guided Frank from the chair and put him in cuffs. As she did so, she could only imagine the sadness her grandfather would have felt with her bringing in a former Marine. But good service only took a bad man so far.
-
Fifty-One
Bridgeport, California
Saturday, October 26th, 11:01 AM Pacific Standard Time
Paige and I went back to the inn we were staying at in Bridgeport and were on a conference call with Jack and Kelly. We had considered going to visiting the Mavises to see if they could shed more light on the Evans family, but Jack had us proceeding otherwise—and for good reason. Nadia had come through with some findings on Frank Evans, and it would appear that he was lying about a lot of things.
“His phone records show that he received a call from a pay phone in Bridgeport two weeks after the mother’s funeral. The conversation lasted fifteen minutes,” Nadia said.
“Michelle called him, but for what?” I asked, knowing, unless we were suddenly mind readers, we’d have to get Frank to tell us.
“Really, it’s just an assumption that Michelle was the one to make the call,” Kelly pointed out.
I shook my head, not that she could see. We were doing this meeting via telephone. The Wi-Fi in the hotel was spotty at best. The closest FBI field office was in San Francisco, the better part of a five-hour drive away. “I think it’s a good assumption. And to talk on a pay phone tells me the conversation was probably something Michelle didn’t want traced.”
“Like they were conspiring to commit murder,” Kelly finished.
“Exactly like that.”
“Well, the guy’s lawyered up, so I’d say he has something to hide,” Jack updated us.
Nadia continued. “I was able to confirm that Frank Evans did fly out to California at the time of his wife’s funeral.”
“He lied about taking time off from his job, too,” Paige said.
“Seems like.”
Jack and Kelly would have had their hands full with Frank and not had time to speak with Frank’s employer to confirm what he’d originally told them.
“Now, I’ve got more for you,” Nadia said. “Several calls were made to Frank Evans along the stretch of I-40/I-81/I-66. Each phone call got shorter and shorter. And all the calls were made using pay phones. There were also calls from the cities where the shootings took place, and they were placed two days afterward.”
“It’s like Michelle was reporting in,
telling her father that the murders had been done.” As I said the words, a chill ran down my spine. “What slime, using his daughter to do the killing.”
“But Frank’s not even sure Michelle is his daughter,” Kelly said. “And, really, she could be any one of the men’s who raped her mother.”
“Maybe that made it easier for Frank to use Michelle the way he has?” Paige tossed out.
“He’s certainly not father of the year, or human being of the year, for that matter,” Kelly seethed.
“Not that it helps, but there’s no question that Frank Evans is aiding his daughter.” Nadia’s voice cut into the room. “There was another charge from the same airline Frank took to fly to California, and when I followed that up, I was told that it was for a flight to Albuquerque for one passenger—”
“Let me guess, Michelle Evans,” I interrupted.
“Yes, Brandon.” Nadia didn’t sound happy that I’d cut her off. “It had her landing there seven months ago. From there, there’s another charge that was made at Auto Rentals in Albuquerque. I called and found out that a Honda Accord was rented, and it was just returned to a depot in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday.”
“Wow, she kept the same car all this time. That’s ballsy,” I commented.
“No, I think it’s more breadcrumbs,” Kelly said.
“Breadcrumbs?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve thought it before, but I almost think Michelle wants to be caught.”
Kelly’s theory sat out there.
“If that’s the case, I want to grant her wish,” I said. “Arlington, you said… But the map Paige and I found indicates her last destination is Baltimore, Maryland. Why ditch the car?”
“She is done with the killing.” Kelly sounded confident.
“We need to figure out how she’s getting from Arlington to Baltimore and how she’s paying for it,” Jack stated.
“It has to be cash,” Nadia began. “As I said, nothing new is popping up on credit cards—Frank’s or Michelle’s.”
“Where’s the breadcrumb now?” I mumbled.
“I said ‘breadcrumb,’ not homing beacon,” Kelly retorted.
Past Deeds Page 28
