The Last Sister

by Elliot, Kendra

  Zander didn’t miss the faint hopeful note in her tone.

  “It wasn’t suicide,” Ava said. “The forensics lead us to believe he was murdered.”

  Emily went perfectly still. “How do you know for certain?” she finally asked.

  “You’ll have to trust us,” Ava said. “We can’t share that information right now.”

  Emily glanced at Zander. He gave a short nod to confirm Ava’s statement.

  She’s scared. With good reason.

  “What does that mean for me?” Emily bluntly asked. “Knowing that someone might want me dead has been on my brain for almost two days—I can’t get it out of my head. Now it’s confirmed.” She gripped her coat tightly in her lap, her knuckles white. But her chin was up and her gaze steady.

  “We don’t know what it means for you,” answered Ava.

  “That’s no help at all,” Emily stated.

  “It means be careful.” Zander finally opened his mouth. “Watch your surroundings. Stay with other people. Don’t take risks.”

  Annoyance flashed. “That’s the everyday norm in a woman’s life. And that didn’t help Lindsay.” Her voice cracked. “She was killed in her own fucking bed with her husband next to her.”

  Ava leaned in, catching Emily’s attention. “Awareness is your best defense. I’m sorry how shitty that answer is, but short of locking you up until we catch our killers, it’s the best I can tell you. This isn’t a movie or TV—we don’t have extra law enforcement to watch you twenty-four-seven, but we can ask county to frequently drive by your home and suggest they stop at the diner for meal breaks. Show a presence.”

  Rage simmered under Ava’s words. She hated their powerlessness as much as Zander did.

  “Stick around,” Zander said. “Either stay at the diner where people are present, or you can hang out here at the station.”

  “You should have told me to bring a book.” Emily looked from him to Ava, resignation heavy in her eyes. “Now. What did you want to talk to me about?”

  Ava slipped a thin folder out of her bag and flipped it open. “I want to go over what you saw at the Fitch home again. These are Zander’s notes from your interview that day.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You said you called Lindsay three times before going to her home,” Ava began.

  “And Sean once,” added Emily.

  “And when you got to the house, you rang the doorbell and then called Lindsay’s phone from the front porch because no one answered the door.”

  “Correct. Their cars were there, so I figured someone had to be home.”

  “That’s when you opened the door because it was unlocked.” Ava kept her attention lowered to Zander’s notes.

  “The unlocked door surprised me.”

  “You went right in?” Ava asked. “It didn’t take a minute to work up your nerve to enter?”

  Emily thought. “It took a few seconds. I didn’t like the idea of walking right in, so I called their names a few times as I opened the door a bit.”

  “What happened next?”

  “When I stepped in, I smelled the blood.” She glanced at Zander, and he kept his face impassive as he watched and listened.

  So far Emily’s body language and replies had appeared normal to him. No jitters, no touching her hair, no rubbing her nose. No little tension movements. In his previous encounters with her, he’d learned she wasn’t a mover. When she talked, she didn’t shift her weight or gesture with her hands or frequently touch her face or hair. She generally held still, and this conversation was consistent. Zander had observed and heard more anxiety when they discussed how she could keep herself safe.

  “I walked in and saw the blood trail that went from the bedroom to the kitchen and then out the back door. I checked the bedroom first—”

  “Was the bedroom light on?” Ava cut in.

  Emily paused. “It was.”

  “How long were you in the bedroom before you went into the backyard?”

  “Only a few moments.” Emily squeezed her eyes shut as if she could make her visual memories disappear. “I touched Lindsay’s neck for a pulse even though I knew she was dead.” She blew out a breath and opened her eyes. “I immediately followed the blood out back, hoping to find Sean still alive.”

  “Would you say you were in the bedroom less than a minute?”

  “Easily.”

  Unease crawled up Zander’s spine. Ava was systematically tracking the time between Emily’s phone call on the front porch and her call to 911.

  Where are the extra twenty minutes?

  “What did you do when you saw Sean?” Ava asked.

  “I went closer. I felt his wrist for a pulse.” Emily had shifted to an empty monotone, struggling to keep her emotions in check.

  “Did it take you a few minutes to work up the nerve to touch him?”

  Emily vehemently shook her head. “No. I knew waiting could mean the difference between life and death. I checked immediately. No pulse.”

  “And then?”

  “I called 911.”

  “Why didn’t you call 911 right after finding Lindsay?”

  Emily scratched near her temple. “I remember I had my phone out—I was about to, but I followed the blood instead.” She swallowed audibly. “She was dead—there was no urgency for an ambulance. No one could bring her back,” she whispered.

  “Sean was dead too,” Ava said in a kind voice. “But you called right after checking for a pulse?”

  “I did. An ambulance wasn’t needed, but the police were.”

  “From outside? Or did you go back in the house to call?”

  “Outside.”

  Ava shuffled through the papers on her lap, and Zander watched Emily out of the corner of his eye. Her shoulders sagged, and anguish was evident in her downturned mouth.

  He hoped to God Emily had a good explanation for the time inconsistencies. He shifted forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, wishing he could hide his tension behind a table. Ava was silent as she studied the next papers in her file, and the silence in the room grew heavy. Long periods of silence were meant to create unease for the interviewee, but Zander seemed to be the only uneasy one. He studied Ava, noting the lines on her forehead and the slight tightening of her lower lip. She was frustrated.

  Ava hopes for a good explanation too.

  And she had alleged that Zander’s emotions were affecting his work.

  Ava was also rooting for Emily.

  “Emily. I have a copy of your phone records for that day.” She handed a page to Emily, who accepted it with a stunned look.

  “Why didn’t you ask to see my phone if you had questions?”

  “This is more official.”

  “You mean it has calls that can’t be deleted,” Emily snapped. She angrily scanned the sheet, running a finger down the entries. “One, two, three calls to Lindsay, my call to Sean, and then one more to Lindsay’s phone. Exactly as I told you. What’s the issue here?”

  “The issue is the twenty minutes between your last call from the porch to Lindsay and the call to 911.”

  Emily froze and stared at the paper. She finally looked up, determination in her gaze. “I can explain.”

  “Please do.”

  Zander held his breath as he watched a war of guilt and frustration play out on Emily’s face.

  “After I found Sean, I sat on the back porch before calling—I didn’t realize I had sat for that long, though.” Emily rubbed at an eye. “Jeez—I must have really been out of it.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Ava.

  “Shock. Disbelief. Confusion. It took me a while to get myself together.”

  Ava cocked her head. “That doesn’t sound like you . . . I can see you’re levelheaded. You were the one who stopped the deputies from making a bigger mess at the scene and reported the mark on Sean’s forehead.”

  “Trust me. After finding Lindsay and Sean, I was anything but levelheaded.” Emily closed her eyes. “But I was also sho
ok up from something else I saw.”

  Zander’s breath caught. “Something else? What?”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have, but . . .” She buried her face in her hands. “I didn’t understand. It didn’t make any sense. It still doesn’t!”

  “Emily—” Ava started.

  “Give me a minute,” she said. Her chest moved as she took several deep breaths, her gaze scanning every corner of the room, avoiding Zander and Ava. “I found my father’s pocket watch in Lindsay’s backyard,” she said quietly.

  Now I don’t understand.

  Zander lifted a brow at Ava, who gave a minuscule shake of her head. “Emily,” he asked. “what does finding that watch mean to you? I don’t see the significance.”

  Other than that you shouldn’t have removed possible evidence from the scene.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered. Her eyes were haunted. “It disappeared the night he was killed. He had always kept it in his pocket, but it vanished when . . . And its loss added to my mother’s upset—it was a prized possession of his.”

  Zander’s mind spun. “How did it end up in the Fitches’ backyard?”

  Her hands lifted and fell to her lap, her eyes shiny with tears.

  “Zander.” Ava moved closer to him, her blue eyes warning. “She took evidence from a murder scene.”

  He no longer cared that Ava wanted to handle the interview.

  “I was completely shocked,” Emily added. “I’d stepped on it as I backed away from Sean. When I looked down, I knew what it was.”

  “Then what?” he asked as Ava frowned at him.

  “I picked it up and opened it, convinced I was seeing things. But it had his initials inside.” She blew out a breath. “I sat on the porch steps and just stared at it. I couldn’t think . . .”

  “You sat for nearly twenty minutes in a murder scene?” Ava’s vocal pitch rose. Emily gave no sign she noticed.

  “Until you said it, I had no idea I sat so long. I would have said a minute or two.” Emily pressed her eyes with her fingers. “It doesn’t make sense. How—”

  Ava opened her mouth, but Zander held up a finger. “Emily, what scenarios ran through your head to answer how the pocket watch got there?”

  She wouldn’t look at them. “I don’t know.”

  “Who could have left it there?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Frustrated, Zander sat back. Ava slowly shook her head as they stared at each other.

  Emily cleared her throat. “My aunts, I guess, my sister . . . my father’s killer . . . ,” she whispered, looking lost.

  “Madison could have left it?” Ava asked.

  “No. I meant Tara when I said ‘sister’—although I guess Madison could have found it somewhere.”

  “Why do you say Tara over Madison? Madison’s a good friend of Lindsay. It makes sense that she could have left something behind in Lindsay’s house, and you said Tara hasn’t been around in years.”

  “She was there.” Emily’s hands trembled.

  Zander kept his questions calm and steady, but inside he wanted to drag the answers out of her. “Who was where?”

  This watch could indicate who killed the Fitches.

  Emily finally met his gaze. “Tara was there the night my father was killed,” she whispered. “She told everyone—even the police—that she had spent the night at a friend’s. But I saw her with someone else just beyond the yard in the woods.” Her shoulders slumped. “Oh God. That’s the second thing I’ve hidden from the police.”

  He tried to pull her back to the present. “You think Tara has something to do with the pocket watch being at the Fitch home?”

  “I don’t know.” Emily stood and threw up her hands, pacing the small room. “I don’t know anything! Everything is a mess!”

  “Where is the pocket watch now?” Ava asked.

  “At the mansion.”

  “How about you and I go get it?”

  Zander started to say he’d come along, but a look from Ava stopped him.

  Am I still being too nice?

  “I’ll stay here and talk to the sheriff,” he said instead, not knowing if Greer was even in the building. It didn’t matter. He wanted to review everything that Emily had just told them and figure out the implication of the appearance of a watch that had been missing for decades.

  “Let’s go,” said Ava.

  24

  Outside, Emily drew deep breaths. Her nerves still quaked from the session, but there was a small sense of relief that she’d told someone she’d seen Tara at her father’s murder scene. Even if it made no sense to the FBI agents, it was good to have off her chest.

  The pocket watch.

  That was also a weight off her shoulders and conscience. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told the police about the watch. All she’d known was that she had been confused and afraid when she picked it up in the Fitch backyard. What was I afraid of?

  Afraid of suggesting one of her relatives had been involved in a double murder?

  The very idea that one of her family had been involved was ridiculous.

  Finding the watch that morning had opened a door to painful memories, overwhelming her. According to Ava’s cell phone report, she’d been overwhelmed for nearly twenty minutes.

  “I’ll drive,” Ava said as they strode through the county lot.

  “Actually, I’d like to.”

  Ava wrinkled her nose. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I’m feeling better, and I’d welcome the distraction of concentrating on the road,” Emily admitted. Anything to get her present thoughts out of her head.

  “Fine by me. I’ll make some calls while you drive.”

  Emily guided her Honda down the narrow two-lane road. Ava was on her phone, making calls and frowning at various emails. Emily’s earlier stress started to drain away. But the pocket watch kept pulling her attention.

  “I’m going to take Emily with me,” her father told her mother. “You’re too sick to look after her, and I don’t want to her to catch anything from Madison.”

  Ten-year-old Emily hid behind the door, crossing her fingers. Her mother was in bed, and Madison was sound asleep beside her. Her sister’s cheeks were flushed, and sweat plastered her hair to her forehead as she clutched a big empty bowl in her sleep. She had thrown up twice.

  “Emily will be fine here. She can watch TV,” her mother suggested.

  “No, she needs to get out of the house. She’s been stuck here all week while you’ve been sick.”

  “That isn’t a meeting for children.”

  “She’ll be quiet and read her book. I’m not concerned.”

  He won, so Emily accompanied her father on the long drive to Portland, ecstatic over the one-on-one time with him. He stopped for ice cream and told stupid jokes. They played the game where one of them told a story for thirty seconds and then the other person picked up the thread and continued for another thirty seconds. Emily timed the segments with his pocket watch, proud to hold the heirloom. Both ridiculously twisted the story, giving the other person the most bizarre lead-ins possible.

  The meeting was dull. Twenty men sat in a room and listened to a speaker drone on and on. Emily sat at the back and ignored them, her head buried in her book about a boy at a school for wizards. After it was over, her father spoke earnestly with a few other men.

  Hoping he was ready to leave, Emily approached and tucked herself under his arm. He held her against his side but kept talking. The men listened. Some frowning, some nodding. Some looked like soldiers because their hair was so short she saw skin. Several crossed their arms as they listened, and she studied their tattoos, fascinated by the colors and shapes. Bored, she dug out his pocket watch and played with the little hinged door, loving the feel of the smooth glass.

  She had felt the same smoothness that morning at the Fitches’.

  She shook the memory away and turned on the car’s music, seeking more diversions. The ocean app
eared on Ava’s side of the car, its gray water blending seamlessly with the misty gray of the sky. On a blue summer day, it would take her breath away. Today it was bleak and dismal, but she let it hold her attention, still needing a distraction, any distraction.

  “Who runs in this rain?” she muttered out loud, spotting a jogger ahead on the shoulder of the road. There wasn’t enough chocolate in Oregon to tempt her to do that.

  She listened to Ava’s phone conversation with her husband-to-be. Their dog had brought a squirrel into the house, and it had promptly disappeared. Ava’s choking laughter only added to his frustration, judging by the curses coming out of the phone.

  Emily stole quick glances to her right, absorbed by the glimpse into the agent’s real life.

  As they started to pass, Emily saw the jogger stop and raise his arm toward her car.

  Does he want a ride?

  A flash. A deafening crack. Ava’s window shattered and she shrieked.

  Bits of glass and warm blood hit Emily as she wrenched the steering wheel to the left and stomped on the brake. The car spun across the wet road, and Emily’s side of the vehicle slammed into two huge firs.

  Her head hit the door as white filled her vision.

  And then black.

  25

  “Mason?” Zander answered his cell, wondering why Ava’s fiancé would call him.

  “Where is Ava?” Mason yelled in his ear.

  “She left a few minutes ago. What hap—”

  “Call 911! Tell them she’s been in a car accident. I was on the phone with her when it happened, but I don’t know where she is! She’s not answering me, and I can’t pinpoint her phone’s location!”

  “Hang on.” Zander gestured at Sheriff Greer, who’d joined him a minute ago. “Call 911. There’s been a car accident somewhere between here and Bartonville. Emily just left five minutes ago. They can’t have driven far.”

  “I heard gunfire and then a crash!” Mason panted as if he were running.

  “Gunfire?” Zander repeated. Adrenaline raced through his veins as he looked at Greer, who was already on the phone. The sheriff’s eyebrows shot up, and he spoke rapidly into his phone. Zander darted out the door and jogged down the hallway.