by Blake Pierce
“Have you killed it yet?”
“No.” Nadine seemed to understand where this was all headed. A look of brief excitement crossed her face as she pulled out her cell phone. “I can log in under his account if you need to check it.”
“That would be great,” Kate said.
Nadine sat down at one of the barstools along the kitchen counter and opened up the app. Kate and DeMarco watched as Nadine logged in under the Hix account. Within a few seconds, the address of the Hix home popped up. Nadine clicked on it and a page with a calendar appeared on the screen.
“The app allows us to go back sixty days. Anything more than that and it all gets stored on the cloud.”
“Sixty days is more than enough. In fact, there are just two days I need you to check.”
“I assume one would be from eight days ago, right? The day she was killed?”
“Yes, please.”
“How exactly does this work?” DeMarco asked.
“There’s a sensor on the doorbell,” Nadine said. “When anyone comes up on the porch, it activates the camera. It then records until the person is either inside the house or has otherwise left the porch.”
“So there will only be a video entry on the day of her murder if someone walked up on the porch, correct?” Kate asked.
“That’s right. And…here we are. There are two videos from last Wednesday…the day she was killed.”
The three women hunched around Nadine’s phone, watching the somewhat grainy color playback from the app’s video feed. The first video was easy to dismiss right away. It was a UPS driver, placing a box on the front porch and then quickly walking away and returning to his truck. The box was not very large and was adorned with the Amazon logo on the side. Three seconds after the driver was gone, the camera cut off.
Nadine then pulled up the second video and pressed Play. A woman came up onto the porch and rang the doorbell. It was answered several seconds later. There was no audio, but it was clear the woman on the porch was conversing with whoever had answered the door—presumably Marjorie. This was made clear a few moments later when Marjorie stepped out onto the porch, chatted with the woman for about a minute, and headed back inside. The woman called something out over her shoulder as she went down the stairs, and then the video was done.
“Any idea who that woman is?” DeMarco asked Nadine.
“No, sorry. Now, you said there was some other date you needed to check out?”
“Yes. Exactly two weeks ago. Are there any entries there?”
Nadine did some scrolling and then stopped when the calendar stopped fourteen days ago. There were two entries that day as well. Nadine played the first one right away, without being asked to do so.
Instantly, Kate recognized the man who came up onto the porch, ringing the doorbell: Mike Wallace. He was wearing the same Hexco uniform they had seen him in less than an hour ago. After several seconds, the door was answered, he spoke to someone for about ten seconds, and was then invited inside.
Nadine looked to them both, as if to see if there was any reaction. When she saw that there was none, she tapped at the next entry—particularly at the time stamp. “This next one is only fourteen minutes later.”
She pressed play and they watched as the exact opposite of what they had just seen happened. Mike Wallace came out of the front door, back into the frame. He turned and spoke to someone at the door—again, presumably Marjorie Hix. The conversation lasted about twenty seconds and then Mike headed down the stairs. Before Mike’s exit had a chance to kill the feed, the little sensor picked up more movement. Marjorie Hix stepped out onto the porch with a watering can and set to watering a pot of lilacs on the porch rail.
While it didn’t prove much, the fact that there were no security videos of Mike Wallace on the day of her death was a pretty strong alibi.
“Anything else?” Nadine asked.
Kate and DeMarco shared a look and they both shook their heads simultaneously. Kate wasn’t sure if DeMarco was thinking the same thing she was or not, but she knew there was a good chance.
The security footage had basically ruled out Mike Wallace. But the husband…
“There’s a garage on the side of the property,” Kate said. “Looks like it’s on some sort of sublevel to the house, is that right?”
“It is. Would you like to see it?”
“No, that’s not necessary. But would you happen to know if that’s where Mr. Hix always parked?”
“I’m fairly certain, yes.”
“And I assume there’s a primary entrance into the house through that garage?”
“Of course.” She pointed to a door at the very back of the house, just off of the kitchen and inside a mudroom area. “Right there.”
So he would never even have to go past that doorbell sensor, Kate thought.
So while the videos had ruled out Mike Wallace, they had done nothing to help stave off her suspicions of the husband.
Kate looked back into the den—to the furniture, the knickknacks, and other expensive items. She found it hard to think that someone would just abandon it all.
“Would you happen to know where Mr. Hix is staying?”
And in that, Nadine continued to be very helpful.
CHAPTER SIX
It appeared as though Marjorie Hix’s husband—fifty-three-year-old Joseph Hix—had done much better for himself than his brother. Whereas Joseph Hix had managed a home in an affluent suburb and, according to the police reports, worked a job that had netted nearly four hundred thousand dollars the year before, his brother, Kyle, was living in a rather rundown apartment complex. It was located in an okay part of town, separate from a not-so-okay part of town by only a few blocks.
The apartment building had been constructed to look as if the open breezeways containing stairs separated little townhouses, but Kate had seen enough of these types of complexes to know that was not the case. The walked up two flights of the stairs and came to Kyle Hix’s apartment. Kate knocked on the door, not expecting an answer.
So when it was answered almost right away, she was surprised. Not only that, but it was answered in such a loud and abrasive way that she jumped back a bit, nearly going for her gun.
The man who answered the door looked out of his mind—exhausted, angry to have been disturbed, and squinting from the sunlight.
“Who’re you?” the man asked.
“Are you Joseph Hix?” Kate asked.
He grunted, as if he wasn’t too sure of this himself. It was also clear that he had no intention of answering. As she waited, Kate caught a whiff of alcohol—something strong. Whiskey, she thought.
DeMarco took out her ID first, then Kate followed suit. Kate let DeMarco take the lead, always trying to remain aware that part of her special arrangement with Duran and the bureau could also be a great training opportunity for DeMarco.
“Agents DeMarco and Wise,” DeMarco said. “We’re on location in Frankfield, looking into the murder of your wife.”
The man nodded and stepped away from the door. He swayed a bit when he did, making Kate wonder if that whiff of whiskey had been from a very recent drink—and here it was, not even two in the afternoon yet.
“Well, yeah…I’m Joseph. And I could have saved you the trip. I can tell you who killed her. Come on in…I’ll help you out.” He grinned, apparently amusing himself, and headed back inside.
“Whoa, hold on,” DeMarco said. “You can’t just make a statement like that. Do you for sure know who killed her?”
“I have no proof, but I have a damned good idea.”
“Maybe you let us be the judges of that,” Kate said. “What do you have?”
“I’ll show you.”
They followed him inside and Kate started to feel a bit uneasy. She wasn’t sure if Hix was in a perpetual state of grief and drunkenness or if he was a little off the rails—or both. But what she did know was men handled grief very differently. And the tired, I-don’t-give-a-shit look she had seen when he opene
d the door never led to anything good.
The apartment was modestly furnished but was limited in space. Hix led them directly to the kitchen, where he didn’t even bother trying to seem like a well-adjusted guy. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey that had been sitting on the counter and poured himself a tumbler. He shrugged to the agents and downed it in one gulp.
“It doesn’t bring her back,” he said with a grimace, “but it makes it hurt a hell of a lot less.”
“This is your brother’s place, right?” Kate asked.
“Yeah. It’s a shithole, but Kyle…he’s all I got now.”
“Mr. Hix, would you be willing to answer some questions for us?”
“Yeah. But like I said, I can tell you who killed her. I told the cops, too…but you see how far that got me.”
Kate didn’t want to take his bait, not wanting to let a grief-stricken and drunk man lead them down a rabbit hole that would likely go nowhere. Apparently, DeMarco felt the same because when she asked her next question, she did her best to veer the conversation elsewhere.
“You work as a proposal specialist, right?” DeMarco asked. “Something with telecom?”
“Yes. They’ve given me two months…like it’s a favor. I work sixty hours almost every week and stay in France for them at least two months total out of every year.”
“Did it strain your marriage?” Kate asked.
Hix nodded and pulled the bottle back to him. He looked at it longingly, desperate for another shot. She could see him considering it.
“Of course it did. She was unhappy most of the time, I guess. She acted like she was happy when I was actually around and never got too confrontational when I was away so much. At the risk of sounding like a bastard, she enjoyed the money. She always joked about it, but there was a whole lot of truth to it, you know? And there seemed to be a lot more joking after our son was gone.”
“Gone?”
“Yeah…as soon as he left for college, things seemed to get a little more tense.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Nine or ten years. Don’t get me wrong…we loved each other very much. I don’t know how that woman loved me as much as she did, but…”
He decided to go ahead and take that other shot. He did it as if he were set on a mechanical spring, going through the actions like someone with far too much practice.
“We always talked about taking trips after he was gone. Rome, Sydney, Madrid…those were the big ones. But I think she knew they’d never happen; it would take too much commitment on my part.”
Listening to him talk, Kate was reminded of the call she had ignored from Melissa. It made her feel bad, as she wondered if the issues Melissa and Terry had been having were similar. Of course, neither of them made enough money to promise trips to one another, but an absentee spouse was an absentee spouse no matter how you cut it. Inexplicably, she felt the need to speak with Melissa quite badly in that moment.
But DeMarco, getting very adept at questioning potential suspects, kept the ball rolling quickly and efficiently.
“Were you at work when Marjorie was murdered?”
“I was. I was actually on a flight back from Seattle. I’d been there on business for three days. I landed at O’Hare and got a barrage of missed calls and texts from the police before I even got off of the plane.”
“You claim to know who did it,” DeMarco went on. “Did you think you knew even then?”
“More or less, yes. But now, almost a week afterwards without a single suspect, I become more and more certain.”
“And who might you have in mind as the suspect?”
“A guy named Andrew Bauer.”
“And why do you think he did it?”
“Because he’s always had a thing for Marjorie…ever since they graduated college and found out they were living less than ten minutes away from one another. The guy is a sleazebag. I know it might sound pretentious and judgmental, but I don’t care—the guy is single and living in a neighborhood that is predominantly married couples with children. And he’s at home for days on end, sort of just stalking around the neighborhood and befriending all of the lonely women who have men that work long hours.”
“And how do you know this?”
“It’s pretty common knowledge. Andrew is a pilot. He works a few days, he’s home a few days. I’m not the only man in the neighborhood that had to have a word with him.”
“What sort of word?” Kate asked
“About a year ago, I came home and found him standing in my yard while Marjorie was pulling weeds in her flowerbed. He had this evil grin on his face. I don’t know how to explain it. He’s just slimy.”
“How does that equate to him potentially killing your wife?” DeMarco asked.
“I suspected an affair. I had ever since that day. Marjorie denied it, of course, but there were small signs. She’d wash the sheets a lot more than usual. She’d start sort of trash talking Andrew a little too much—and it came out of nowhere, like she was trying to cover something up.”
“Did you ever confront her on it?”
“Almost. We had an argument about four months ago when she wasn’t…well, when she wasn’t active in the bedroom. We’d never had that problem but whenever I would try to start something spontaneous, she’d shoot me down. And that had never been like her.”
“Did you ever confront him about it?”
“No. But damn, I wish I had.”
“So you think…what?” Kate asked.
“I think he got pissed at her because she wouldn’t leave me for him.”
“With all due respect,” DeMarco said, “that’s a very large stretch.”
“I’m well aware of that. But at the same time, there is such a thing as a husband’s intuition—though women don’t like to hear it, no offense. I just had a feeling about him. And it’s stronger now.”
DeMarco nodded and Kate watched as Hix took yet another shot of whiskey. “Well, Mr. Hix, we’ll look into him. We can’t accuse him of something like you are suggesting. But we can question him because, based on this moment you saw him in your yard, he seemed to have been at least friendly with your wife.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Hix said, and then took the shot. He came around the counter of the little kitchen counter, having to hold on to it to keep from wobbling. “And by the way, it wasn’t just Marjorie. He moved to our neighborhood several years ago because he had been caught having an affair with another man’s wife, somewhere here in town, in Chicago.”
Kate and DeMarco started back for the front door. Hix stumbled slowly after them, doing his best to seem hospitable in an apartment that was not his own. Kate paused at the door as DeMarco opened it. She turned back to Hix, who was visibly swaying on his feet.
“Mr. Hix…is there someone we can call for you?” she asked. “I’m sure you know there are all sorts of support groups to help you with this.”
“And I intend to go to one, eventually,” he said. “But I have to have closure first. Until that bastard is brought down, I can’t…it’ll just be me, my brother, and bottle after bottle.”
“We’ll try to wrap this up as quickly as possible, then.”
She tore her eyes away from him, the sight of his blurred eyes and hopeless expression far beyond haunting. She’d seen many men grieving before but she had always personally mourned for those who turned to substance abuse as a way to cope.
He waved them away half-heartedly as they walked out onto the porch. Kate turned to get one more look at him, hoping maybe there might be some sense of hope on his face before they left, but Hix had already shut the door behind them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I just want to make sure we’re on the same page before we go speak to this Andrew Bauer guy,” DeMarco said.
“Okay,” Kate said. “What are your thoughts?”
“I think Hix was just trying to pin the murder on someone so he’d have some hope of closure.”
“We think the same thing,
then. Although I won’t completely discount the speculation about the affair. And that’s really the only reason I think we need to speak with him.”
They’d placed a call to Bannerman upon leaving Chicago on their way back to Frankfield. After he gave them the address for Andrew Bauer, DeMarco had called the airport, found out which airline Bauer flew for, then requested his schedule. It had all taken less than fifteen minutes; by the time they were entering Frankfield, they had confirmation that Bauer was not on duty for another two days.
They found themselves heading back into the neighborhood where Marjorie Hix had been murdered. It almost felt like coming full circle as they passed the Hix home—the very same home they’d been in less than two hours ago.
Andrew Bauer’s home was three blocks farther down and to the right. It was one of the smaller homes in the neighborhood but the yard looked immaculately cared for. In fact, as Kate pulled their car to the curb in front of the home, they saw a man standing in front of the house, hard at work. From what Kate could tell, he was laying down paver stones to separate the yard from the flowerbeds and other landscaping. He was tearing up what looked like old wooden planks and replacing them with the stones. The man was dressed in gym shorts and a tank top. He was perhaps fifty years old but had a toned body the tank top did little to hide. His shoulders were massive and the sweat from the tank top clung to his well-defined torso.
“See?” DeMarco said. “Moments like this, I’m very glad I like women. Men like that…they can’t be anything but trouble, right?”
Kate smirked as she opened the car door. Yes, this man—presumably Andrew Bauer—was incredibly good-looking. But such a facade had stopped having any effect on her years ago.
They approached Bauer, striding up the sidewalk. Bauer was in the middle of laying down a paver stone, looking up at them as he set it in place.
“Mr. Andrew Bauer?” Kate said.
“Yeah,” he said with a grunt. “That’s me. Can I help you?”