by Lauren Carr
The woman didn’t wait around. She hurried toward the exit as fast as she could go.
Once the elevator was empty, Murphy held the door open for Jessica and Gnarly and then pressed the button that would take them to the fourth floor, where he then led them through a maze of corridors before they found the office he was looking for.
Murphy opened the door and held it open so that Jessica and Gnarly could step inside what turned out to be a cozy reception area with an equally small office on the other side of it. The reception desk was empty.
Murphy passed Jessica and Gnarly and stepped into the next office, where a man with a gray goatee and moustache clad in a blue button-down shirt and slacks looked at them with curiosity from behind his desk. Murphy extended his hand to him. “Are you Bruce Hardy, also known as Benjamin Frost?”
The man rose from his desk. “Murphy Thornton?” After Murphy confirmed his identity, Bruce clasped his hand. “You obviously have some juice. It isn’t every day you get a call from the director of national intelligence.” He looked Murphy up and down, taking note of his casual appearance in jeans and a polo shirt. He sniffed. “Are you working undercover?”
Deciding it would take too long to explain, Murphy said, “Sort of. We have a few questions for you about your last assignment in Iraq—when you were working deep undercover near the Syrian border.”
Clearing his throat, Bruce reached for a tissue from the corner of his desk. “Sure. Whatever you need.” Blowing his nose, he gestured for them to sit down in his small office.
When Jessica and Gnarly stepped in, Bruce’s eyes grew big at the sight of Gnarly. “That’s—” He sneezed. Then he coughed. Gasping for breath, he pointed at the dog. Tucking his tail between his legs, Gnarly tried to back away from the man whose face was turning red before their eyes.
“What?” Jessica said, confused.
“Allergic!” Bruce waved his arms for them to leave.
After gathering up the dog’s leash, Jessica took Gnarly through the reception area and out of the office, allowing the door to slam behind them. Out in the corridor, Jessica said, “Well, it’s plain to see that he didn’t kill Belle. He would have died of shock before getting within ten feet of her with you in the same tent.”
Inside the office, Murphy rushed to get Bruce a drink of water from the water cooler and handed the paper cup to him. By the time he returned to the agent’s desk, Bruce was using an emergency inhaler to regain control of his breathing.
“I’m sorry,” Murphy said while waiting for the agent to catch his breath. “I didn’t know.”
“Well, I don’t exactly advertise it,” Bruce said. “Outside, I usually do okay. But not in closed spaces with no place for the dander to go except for up my nose.” With a chuckle, he sighed.
“Then I guess it’s safe to say that you didn’t spend a lot of time in Belle Perkins’ tent while on that mission in Iraq.”
“Belle who?” Bruce wiped his swollen and watering eyes with the tissue.
“Gnarly’s handler?” Murphy jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door through which Jessica had left with Gnarly. “That was her dog. Sergeant Major Gnarly.”
“That was the dog that saved my life?” Bruce sat up in his seat. “At one point during that last battle before I got out of there, I was trying to get to one of the men who had been shot so that I could help him. Just as I got to him, I saw an Iraqi standing not fifteen feet from me. He had climbed up onto the roof of a truck and had his rifle aimed right at me. That dog”—he pointed at the door—“came out of nowhere. He jumped from the ground up onto the hood of the truck and then up onto the roof. In midair, he got both the rifle and the guy’s arm in his jaw, and he took that bastard all the way down off that roof and onto the ground. I got out of there as fast as I could crawl.” He cocked his head at Murphy. “Why are you asking about his handler and her tent?”
Murphy gazed at him. “First, tell me about what happened after that ambush that killed four soldiers. The official report from the unit says you went missing.”
“Of course it does,” Bruce said. “I was undercover. No one knew I was CIA. Not even the CO of the unit. As far as they were all concerned, I was Benjamin Frost, a contractor with the Army Corps of Engineers. None of them had any idea of what I was really doing there. But somehow my cover had been blown. When the unit was first attacked, we figured that the terrorist cell had just gotten lucky. They’d happened upon us. But then they kept following us. They would know where we were within one day of our moving. When those four soldiers were killed, I knew I was the real target. As long as I was around, I would be putting every one of those soldiers in danger. So that night, as soon as it was dark, I packed up only what I needed and got out of there.”
“In the middle of the desert?”
“I had no idea who had blown my cover,” Bruce said. “That cell was getting intel from someone—not from anyone in the camp, though. The only person I regularly communicated with who knew that I was with the agency was my handler, who was stationed in Afghanistan. He drank a lot. Maybe, I thought, he had somehow blown my cover. So I cut off communication with him and went underground on my own. It took me five days of traveling through that desert dressed like a refugee to get to the American embassy in Israel.”
“Was it your handler who blew your cover?”
“He swore he hadn’t, and the agency could find no proof that he had,” Bruce said. “They decided that I had to have blown it somehow.” He glanced around the office. “That’s why you find me here now. It turns out that my cover had been so widely blown that I can’t go out in the field anymore. I am now deskbound.” He paused. “What is this about?” he asked again.
“The night you took off from the base camp,” Murphy said, “Gnarly’s handler, First Sergeant Belle Perkins, was murdered.”
“That sweet young woman?” Bruce swallowed. “I had no idea.”
“As far as the army was concerned, you’d been captured by the Iraqi terrorists and most likely executed,” Murphy said. “The way I found out that you had survived was through the intelligence community. Did you have any sort of relationship with her?”
Bruce gestured to the door through which the dog had recently left. “As you can tell, I didn’t. She found out rather quickly that I was allergic to her dog, so she kept her distance. We would exchange pleasantries but always outside, and she would keep her distance. She was understanding like that.”
The agent let out a deep breath. “The only time I got near her was that day—after that dog had saved my life by killing that terrorist who’d had me in his sight. I was walking across the camp, and I saw her outside her tent. Gnarly was lying down on the ground, and she was kneeling next to him, giving him a belly rub. I had to thank him—even though I was so allergic. So I went up to them and told her what he had done. My eyes were getting red, but I owed it to him and wanted him to know how much I appreciated it. I rubbed his tummy, and my throat was closing up. Then my hand went across his ribs and down his back, and I saw that he was bleeding. He’d gotten hurt. His hip had been grazed by a shot. She said that she was going to stitch him up. I asked her how he would handle that. She laughed and said that she’d have to give him a sedative to put him to sleep while she did it but that he would be good as new the next morning. That beautiful, smart, and courageous dog got hurt protecting me.”
He sucked in a deep breath. “That was when I made the decision to get out of there before anyone else got hurt.” He cocked his head at Murphy. “And now you say she died. How was she killed?”
“Strangled. Could she have known you were agency?”
“If she did, she never let on,” Bruce said.
“Did you see her have any disagreements with anyone in her unit?”
Bruce Hardy fell silent. His face was filled with deep thought as he stared up at the ceiling. He kept his eyes on the c
eiling even while he wiped his nose one last time. “There was another woman in the unit, and Perkins didn’t get along with her. Rather, the two of them did not get along. You would think that the only two women would form some sort of friendship, but that wasn’t the case with those two. I don’t remember her name, but she was very butch, and Perkins was more—well, you get the idea. If I recall, Perkins was married. Wasn’t she?”
“Yes, she was,” Murphy said. “She had a young daughter.”
“I’m so sorry,” Bruce said with a soft voice before abruptly sitting up in his seat. “I just remembered—that last day, after the ambush, there was definite tension between Perkins and the commanding officer.” He snapped his fingers, trying to recall what had happened. “What was his name? Holmes? No.” He pointed at Murphy. “Watson! The CO for their unit. I remember hearing them arguing on our way back.”
“Do you remember what it was about?”
“She claimed that it was his bad call that had gotten four of their people killed,” Bruce said. “He reminded her that he was the CO, and she wasn’t. She was really hot about it, though. I thought they were going to get into a physical altercation. The dog was barking. It ended when he had to order her to stand down and to get control of her dog, or he would shoot him. She backed off real fast after that.”
“But if Watson was an officer and she was enlisted, there really wasn’t much that she could’ve done about a bad call.”
“It was apparent that I was the target of those attacks,” Bruce said. “The agency confirmed through intelligence channels that my cover had been blown, and the attacks stopped after I got out of there.”
“Maybe somehow Perkins figured out that you were agency, and she was hot because your presence put the unit in danger.”
“How would she have known? The CO didn’t even know.”
“The fact is that your cover got blown,” Murphy said. “The Iraqi terrorists knew who you were, what unit you were with, and where they could find you. Someone was communicating with them. You said it wasn’t your handler. The only other ones who knew your movements were the soldiers in that unit, and someone in that unit killed Belle Perkins.”
“You’re thinking she was killed because she identified a traitor inside the unit.”
“And the traitor killed her.”
“What are you doing here?” David asked upon entering the police station and finding Mac sitting next to an empty desk.
Like two peas in a pod, Mac and Archie were sitting with their heads close together and going over information on the screen of her laptop while he made notes on a computer tablet.
“We’re suffering from empty-nest syndrome.” Archie had her finger on her screen and was pointing to something that she wanted Mac to type into his tablet.
“The house is too quiet without Gnarly there,” Mac said.
“I’ve noticed that Gnarly hasn’t dropped out of the race.” David crossed the squad room to see what they were working on, at which point Archie snapped the laptop shut.
“Deniability.” She winked at him.
Mac sat back in his seat. “Gnarly’s staying in the race. When you mess with my dog, you mess with me. I’m going to wipe the floor with both of Gnarly’s opponents.”
“One of whom is dead,” David said. “I don’t think there’s anything more you could do to hurt her. What’s your excuse for Gnarly’s absence?”
“Didn’t you see Bernie and Hap’s press announcement?” Archie asked.
Carrying a tablet, Bogie stepped out of his office. “You should have seen it, Chief. It was awesome.”
“I needed to get a couple of hours of sleep.” David took the tablet that Bogie was handing to him. “I was up all night.”
“So were all of us,” Bogie said with a yawn.
“Go home, and get some beauty sleep, Bogie.” David looked his deputy chief up and down. “You could use it.”
Bogie gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. “I can still turn you over my knee, kid.”
“Well, Mac wrote a brilliant press release,” Archie said with a grin. “I can see that he did inherit some of his mother’s imagination.”
“I simply told the truth…with some embellishments,” Mac said with a wave of his hand. “Gnarly’s on a secret mission for God.”
For a long, silent moment, David wondered whether he should believe Mac. He searched Archie’s and Bogie’s expressions. Archie broke first. “Smartass,” David said.
“You started it.” A broad smile filled Mac’s face. “We simply said that he went away for a few days to meet with the leaders of his campaign committee to plan how to best proceed during the rest of his campaign for mayor.”
“Smooth,” David said.
“I lifted it word for word from a press release sent out by one of the presidential candidates after his long connection with organized crime got leaked.”
David peered at the image on the tablet that Bogie had handed to him. It was of the front of the Braxtons’ mansion from the security gate and up to the front door. “Is this the security recording?”
“Just came in. They sent it to both us and the sheriff’s office.”
“Did the security cameras pick up anything from the night of the shooting?” David asked.
Bogie was shaking his head before David even finished the question. “I asked the security company already. The cameras were shut off when the alarm system was turned off after the shot. The camera positioned at the rear of the house, focused on the back door didn’t pick up anyone going out that back door.”
“Really?” David asked while looking over at Mac. “Yet, our witnesses say the shooter went out that door and ran across the backyard and into the woods.”
“If they’re telling the truth,” Archie said, “the shooter may have left through that door after the system and camera was turned off.”
“Why have a security system and cameras if you’re going to turn them off while the shooter is still in the house?” Mac asked.
“I said if they’re telling the truth,” Archie said.
“Since they’re in politics, then it’s highly unlikely that they are telling the truth.” Bogie gestured for Mac to join David in watching the security recording from the night of Nancy Braxton’s murder. The deputy chief pressed the “play” button on the touch screen.
The time on the recording was 11:57 p.m.
The front door flew open, and Nancy Braxton ran out. Her bright-white pajamas shone in the porch light and the lights illuminating the driveway. She wore no bathrobe or slippers. Agitated, she spun around on the porch, lost her footing, and tumbled down the steps. Looking over her shoulder several times, she ran down the driveway and out of the range of the camera.
The recording stopped and then restarted at 12:04 a.m., when Erin Devereux, clad in her nightgown and bathrobe, ran outside and looked around. Apparently calling for someone, she stepped down off of the porch and searched the woods surrounding the house.
“She’s looking for her,” Mac said. “So they knew Nancy was missing at four minutes after twelve—seven minutes after she ran out of the house.”
Erin Devereux went back inside. Minutes later, she returned with Hugh Vance. Both of them were carrying flashlights, which they then used to search the grounds. Then Hugh climbed into his car and drove off. Erin Devereux went back into the house.
The time on the recording read 12:55 a.m. when Hugh Vance’s car returned. Slowly, he climbed out of the car and returned to the house. The recording stopped at that point.
“Why didn’t they report her missing?” Archie asked.
“What was the time of death?” Mac asked them.
“Between twelve thirty and one o’clock,” David said.
“Hugh Vance returned to the house at five minutes to one,” Mac said. “Their estate is about five minutes from the murder
scene. He could have found her, killed her, and then went back home and gone to bed.”
Scratching his head, he asked David to replay the recording. When it reached the point where Nancy Braxton raced out of the range of the camera, Mac told him to pause the frame. “Look at how she came flying out of that house. She was scared to death of something.”
Getting his point, Archie said, “She didn’t leave quietly.”
“There were two other people in that house,” Mac said. “Why didn’t they hear her screaming bloody murder? It took her assistant seven minutes to go looking for her. Yeah, it’s a big house, but still—”
“Better question is, why didn’t Nancy Braxton go running to either of them for help?” Archie said.
Recalling his conversation with Dallas, David said, “Because she thought they were out to get her?”
“Were they?” Mac asked.
“Paranoia,” David said. “I just thought it was part of Nancy’s hyper-self-esteem, but Dallas did some research, and based on the outlandish lie Nancy told last night—”
“About her little trip to Somalia?” Bogie asked with a chuckle.
“Face it,” David said. “Nancy Braxton told some lies that were really out there more than once during this campaign.”
“She was always a liar,” Bogie said. “And she was good at it, too. When your father and I were investigating the Sandy Burr case, ol’ Pat said that that woman had absolutely no regard for the truth. That she’d say whatever she had to say to get what she wanted.”
“Which was to be queen.” David hitched a leg over the corner of one of the squad-room desks. “That is—was—Nancy Braxton’s ultimate goal. She believed it was her destiny because she was so superior to us peasants. We all dismissed that as a flaw in her personality. I mean, we’ve all met narcissists—especially here in Spencer, where overachievers spend their holidays. But suppose it was something more than just a simple personality flaw with Nancy Braxton. Suppose those outlandish lies were actually a symptom of something worse.”