Violated

by Arnold, Carolyn

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  Chapter 25

  BART KELMAN HAD BEEN MALONE’S SUPERVISOR at Synergies where he worked in customer service. After Jack and I had explained who we were and why we were at his house, he stepped to the side of the door.

  “You can come in, but I don’t know what I could say that would be any different from what I said six years ago.”

  Kelman’s house was a modest, beige brick bungalow with white metal shutters screwed in place next to the front windows. The picture window also had a gold-and-white metal awning. Inside, as expected based on the outside, was aged. The linoleum in the entry was made up of shades of brown and laid out in a tiled pattern.

  “Here, this way.” Kelman was in his early fifties and mostly bald, except for some greasy strands he combed over, clearly indicating he was in denial of his hair loss. The result only made his baldness stand out more. He gestured to the left, behind a half wall and spindles that separated the entry from the living room. Two oversized sofas filled the room, along with a coffee table old enough that Kelman may have grown up with it.

  I sat at the end of one couch and Jack joined me. Kelman sat on the other sofa.

  “Kyle Malone,” he said. “I still can’t believe something like that happened to someone I know—knew.”

  “You still have a hard time thinking of him as being gone?” I asked.

  “Not sure it’s so much that. It was just so sudden.” He met my gaze. “Here one day, gone the next.”

  I dipped my head in acknowledgment. “We know he reported to you at Synergies.”

  “Happy to be finished with that place, I tell ya.”

  “You no longer work there?”

  “You betcha I don’t. I didn’t leave soon enough, though. I don’t even care that I’m currently unemployed. Time’s too precious to waste, and I’ve wasted enough already. Not sure how much you know about Synergies, but it’s a call center for Fortune 500 companies. The one here is the customer service hub for five states.”

  “Sounds like that could be a lot of pressure.” I was exaggerating this, of course, to establish rapport.

  “You can say that again. They have policies for policies.” Kelman rolled his eyes. “Management is made up of a bunch of bumbling idiots.”

  “Tell us about Kyle Malone,” Jack said.

  “Well, he came down from Duluth—that’s the one in Minnesota—when he was twenty-one. But you probably know all this. He was a terrific employee. Always on time and never in a hurry to punch the clock and leave. He’d often sacrifice personal time without asking for compensation. Good thing, too, because they are not good about overtime. They really are a bunch of dicks.” Kelman eyed Jack as he leaned forward, set his elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands between his legs. “They demand too much from their employees, and I got sick of the way they treated me.”

  “And you’d rather be unemployed?” Jack’s tone was confrontational.

  “I’d rather be happy,” Kelman countered.

  Jack shrugged. “It’s hard to be happy when you don’t have money for food.”

  “I’ve never lacked.”

  “It’s only been, what?”

  “Two months,” Kelman told him.

  “Give it time,” Jack said. “You made a decision based on emotion, and it will bite you in the ass.”

  I glanced at Jack. This little sideshow wasn’t about Bart Kelman. This was about Paige.

  “Spoken like a man who’s lived it.”

  “Ahem.” I cleared my throat and both men faced me. “Mr. Kelman, please tell us more about Kyle. Did he have any problems with anyone at work?” There was no mention of any issues in the police reports, but the case was also cold as far as the locals were concerned, so every avenue needed to be explored—or in this case, revisited.

  Kelman shook his head. “Not that I was aware of, as I told the police back when he was murdered. It still seems so odd to know someone who was murdered.”

  Kelman seemed awfully caught up in that fact…

  “So Mr. Malone got along fine with all his fellow employees?” I asked.

  Kelman bobbed his head from side to side. “I’d say so.”

  “Why do you say it like that?” Jack imitated Kelman’s head bob.

  “As I said, Synergies puts a lot of pressure on its employees. There are quality reports and conversion reports. There are reports for the reports. And every one of them is reviewed with a fine-toothed comb after each shift. Of course, this is done by upper management, and they have no real hands-on experience handling customers. They might listen to some of the calls. You know the drill: ‘Your call may be recorded for quality assurance’?”

  I nodded and wondered where Kelman was headed with all this.

  “But they still didn’t really understand what it was like to be on the line,” Kelman continued. “People don’t call in because they are happy with the product they purchased.”

  I had originally been thinking of it from the standpoint of the killer being someone in Malone’s daily life—a coworker, a friend—but what if it wasn’t as obvious as that?

  “Did any of these callers get out of line with Mr. Malone?” I asked.

  Kelman snorted a laugh. “All the time, but Kyle wasn’t special in that regard. Everyone was shit on—a lot. I mean, some of the products we represented sold for thousands of dollars, and many times we had to tell customers that there was nothing we could do. Calls were escalated to management all the time.”

  “And these were recorded?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  There might not have been a strong basis for it, but my gut told me we had to get ahold of the company’s records and see if anyone spoke with Malone multiple times. For now, I’d stab at things from another direction. “You said he got along well with people. So no one had a problem with his sexuality? I only ask because this can still elicit reactions in certain people.” I knew that we weren’t leaning toward this being a hate crime, but it was best to cover all the bases.

  “You’re alluding to the fact that he was gay?” Kelman shook his head. “Nope. Well, not that I’m aware of anyway.”

  “And you’re sure that no one had an issue?” Jack asked.

  Kelman perched on the edge of the sofa cushion. “You’re saying people should have an issue?”

  “I’m saying that people are not as open-minded as they might like others to believe,” Jack said.

  The two men held eye contact for a few seconds until Kelman broke the gaze. “No one had an issue with his sexual preference. Now, if that will be all, I have things to do.” He hopped off the couch and crossed his arms.

  Jack wasn’t far behind and was to the door before I stood up. Kelman was still standing in front of where he had been sitting. I walked over to him and shook his hand.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  “Sure. But I’m not sure how much help I was.” Kelman slid his gaze toward where Jack had been standing, but he’d already stepped outside.

  I pressed my lips together and went to catch up to Jack. I wasn’t used to him practically running from a house.

  He was in the car by the time I got outside and climbed into the passenger seat. He pulled out a cigarette, put the window down, and lit up. After a deep drag and exhale, he said, “That was a waste of time.”

  “I disagree.”

  He slowly turned to face me. “How do you figure?” Another puff on the cigarette.

  I put my window down, too, hoping to stave off lung cancer from secondhand smoke for at least a couple more years.

  “At first, I was thinking maybe one of Malone’s coworkers killed him, but police really did exhaust their efforts in that regard. Now I have a new theory.”

  Another inhale. Exhale. No response to what I had said.

  I went on anyway. “When people called
in to Synergies, they were already angry, upset over their products. What if someone had spoken to Malone repeatedly, getting more unhappy—”

  “To the level of violence we’re talking about? So…what? The product is out of warranty? Let’s rape a guy, chop his penis off, and—”

  I held up my hand and looked out the window. We were still sitting in Kelman’s driveway, and I wished we would leave. But it was apparent Jack needed his fix before that would happen.

  “As I said, it’s a theory. But hear me out. And before you say it, yes, I know it’s an extreme stretch to think someone would go that far.”

  “You know how much I love wild notions,” Jack said dryly.

  “Maybe it wasn’t even someone who called in a lot. Maybe it was someone who already had a connection to Malone. They could have had a past beef with him, figured out where he was working, where he lived.”

  Jack tapped the ash from his cigarette and took another drag.

  “I think it’s quite possible our unsub might have latched on to Malone through the call center. Maybe it’s a leap, but it’s a possibility I feel we should explore. And if we feel the connection to Malone was a personal one for the unsub, we still have to figure out how Hall fits in.” I paused, thinking about the stark difference between the two killers.

  “So this theory assumes the killer lost track of Malone in the first place?” Jack took another drag.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Is that a good hmm or a bad hmm?”

  He said nothing.

  I clenched my hands into fists, frustrated and impatient. “Come on, speak.”

  Jack faced me, his jaw rigid, his eyes sharp.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have…told you what to do.” I had a temper and was prone to speaking without thinking. But I don’t remember ever being so demanding with Jack before.

  He ignored my apology and kept postulating. “You could be onto something, but you might not be.”

  I straightened. “So can I have Nadia look into Malone’s callers who were escalated to management?”

  Jack nodded and flicked the cigarette butt out the window. “Have her do it, but only after she’s looked into everything else.”

  I dialed Nadia and made the request, but I picked up on the fact that she wasn’t her regular happy self. Now I had an even stronger feeling she’d been involved in Paige finding Ferris Hall. As far as I could guess, she had and was deeply regretting her contribution. I didn’t blame her. If she had helped lead Paige to California, her professionalism was called into question. My take on it, of course, would be different from Jack’s. What I saw was loyalty and friendship. Likely what Jack saw was a foolish act motivated by emotion. Either way, we were all in this together now, and we had no choice but to see it through.

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  Chapter 26

  “I CAN’T GET OVER THAT MAN,” Paige said about Roy Nichols. She and Zach were down the hallway from his apartment. “I mean, it’s one thing to have an opinion, but it’s another when that way of thinking lets him believe Malone reaped what he sowed.”

  Zach’s phone rang, and he looked at the screen. “It’s Jack.” He motioned for her to follow him to the stairwell. Once they were tucked away there, he answered. “You’re on speaker, Jack.”

  “First, what have you got?”

  Zach filled him in on the bar Malone had supposedly frequented, and Jack told them about Brandon’s suspicions that the killer could be someone who called into Synergies and spoke to Malone.

  “Where are you guys?” Jack asked.

  “We’re still at Malone’s building. We were going to talk to a few more people who lived here at the time of Malone’s murder,” Zach responded.

  “Sounds good. Brandon and I will go that bar. What was it called again?”

  “Wild Horse,” Zach said. “It’s a honky-tonk.”

  “Oh Lord.” With that, Jack hung up.

  Paige chuckled. “He sounds thrilled.” Her mind went back to the building manager. “We didn’t tell Mr. Nichols we’d be speaking to his tenants.”

  “He doesn’t own the place. Besides, it’s not his business what we do.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’d have a different opinion.”

  Zach smiled at her. “Isn’t that too bad.” A few seconds later, he added, “We’ll start with Betty Holt, apartment three-oh-two.”

  “Malone was apartment three-oh-three, right?”

  Zach nodded. “She was living across from Malone at the time.”

  “I don’t know if I could stay.”

  “I hear ya.”

  “And we’ve seen some pretty nasty shit.” With her statement, the crime scene photos from Malone’s and Ferris’s murders flashed in her mind again. Too clearly. And while she had made the brave claim about seeing nasty shit, it was quite possible that severed penises topped the list. What kind of animal would do something like that, especially while the men were alive?

  Her phone rang and she checked the caller ID: SAM. Maybe she should have talked to him before she left the hotel, but there was a lot to do.

  Zach pointed to her cell. “Are you going to get that?”

  “Not right now.” She swiped the call to voice mail and muted the ringer. Now wasn’t the time for the conversation they needed to have.

  Based on the way Zach’s gaze fell to her phone and then back to her eyes, she gathered he knew it was Sam. But he said nothing as he turned and headed up the stairs.

  She followed, thankful that he didn’t comment. She’d learned a lot about Zach in the last couple of months, and she liked what she saw. He respected her personal space, even after learning about her relationship with Brandon.

  “It makes me wonder how Wild Horse was overlooked the first time,” she said, eager to get back into the investigation.

  “Maybe Nichols didn’t think of it. He had just witnessed something awful. I didn’t see Malone’s crime scene in the flesh and even I’ll never forget it.”

  They reached the third level and entered the hallway.

  “Well, you never forget anything, Zach.”

  “True.”

  Paige smiled at him, and they stopped outside of Holt’s apartment.

  Zach knocked.

  Footsteps approached and on just the other side of the door, the floorboards creaked. “Who is it?” a female voice called out.

  “FBI. We need to—” Zach paused as the chain was slid across.

  The door opened to a trim, yet shapely, brunette in her late thirties with the face of a cosmetics model. She was wearing yoga pants and a tank top. She gripped her ankle and stretched her leg up behind her. “What do you want?”

  “Are you Betty Holt?” Paige asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “We’d like to talk to you about Kyle Malone.”

  She switched legs. “Kyle? Wow, he was killed a long time ago.”

  “Six years,” Paige specified. “Can we come in?”

  She let out a deep breath and lowered her leg. “Sure, why not…”

  Her apartment was furnished with the brush of IKEA—simple and affordable. The space was open concept and led directly into the living room. A small closet next to the door and floor mat was all that served as the foyer. The couch was only ten feet from the door. Betty didn’t offer them a place to sit.

  “What can you tell us about Kyle?” Paige asked.

  Betty’s eyes drifted over Paige but returned to Zach. “He was murdered.”

  Paige tried not to roll her eyes. “We know that much, but do you know if anyone had an issue with him?”

  Betty’s face screwed up in seeming confusion. “I gave my statement to the detectives when this first happened. I’m not sure I can tell you anything new.”

  Zach stepped closer to the woman. “Ms. Holt, the case—”


  Betty fluttered her lashes at Zach. “You can call me Betty.”

  “All right, Betty,” Zach began. “Mr. Malone’s murder now has the interest of the FBI, and we’re revisiting witness accounts.”

  “Witness?” Betty crossed her arms. “I’m hardly a witness. I never saw anything. I only heard things.”

  Heard things? Was Betty alluding to word of mouth about what had happened to Malone, or had she had heard yelling, a struggle?

  “Heard? Can you clarify that?” Paige asked.

  Betty wrested her eyes from Zach. “Heard? That means to hear…”

  “Was it just gossip, or did you hear something during the time of the actual murder?”

  “Oh, no. I never heard anything during— God, no. I would have said something.”

  Zach was watching her and resumed the lead. “Malone was apparently quite popular.”

  “Yeah, with men mostly.”

  “Mostly?” Zach pressed.

  “I’d guess so, but sometimes it was really hard to tell. Kyle dressed in drag occasionally, but he was definitely the guy in his relationships. Whether that meant front door or back… I’m not even sure it mattered to Kyle.”

  Zach gave Paige a quick glance. She wondered if he was thinking what she was. What if the curly-haired woman who had been seen with Ferris at the motel had actually been a man in drag?

  Betty wagged her finger. “Actually, now that I’m thinking about this again… There was one man who really looked like a woman. She…he… I never know what to call them. Anyway, we’ll say they had a trim figure, long legs. They looked better in a short skirt than I do. But that one was definitely a man.” Betty rubbed her throat. “Adam’s apple.”

  “What about her hair?” Zach asked.

  “If I remember right, it was long and curly.”

  Paige’s heart bumped off-rhythm. “Had you seen her before?”