by Blake Pierce
“Nice metaphor,” DeMarco said with a chuckle.
They both watched as Mike pulled out of his parking spot. Neither of them
spoke, though Kate found herself reaching for her phone, still wanting to find
out if Melissa had left her a message…and just how upset she was.
Later, she told herself. Got to keep my priorities straight.
But that thought, like the potential waiting voice message, felt like a bomb
tucked away in some long forgotten place, ticking down and waiting to
explode.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Hix residence was about eleven miles away from the Hopkinses’
address. Located just outside of the Frankfield city limits, it was close enough
to the town to offer Bannerman and his crew authority over the case. Chicago
loomed just twenty minutes to the south, giving the section between
something of a gray area when it came to jurisdiction. The neighborhood was
a little less extravagant than the Hopkinses’, though not by much. The yards
were smaller, most of them separated from the next by towering elms and
oaks. In the falling rain, the trees made the houses and their yards look a little gothic as Kate and DeMarco pulled into the Hixes’ driveway.
DeMarco used they key Bannerman had given them to enter. From what
they had been told, the husband had moved just up the road to Chicago, to
stay with his brother directly after the funeral. There was no indication as to
when he might return.
However, not too long after Kate and DeMarco had allowed themselves
in, another car pulled into the driveway behind them. The agents waited at the
door to see who the visitor was. They watched as a middle-aged blonde
woman got out of a very nice Mercedes. Kate noted that the car had Realtor
plates.
“Hey there,” the woman—presumably a Realtor—said as she neared the
stairs. She was clearly confused. “Can I ask who you are?”
Kate flashed her badge, not being showy but also not wanting to beat
around the bush. “Agents Wise and DeMarco, FBI. You’re a Realtor, I take
it?”
“That’s right. Nadine Owen. I’m here to give the house a final
walkthrough before we put it on the market.”
“I wasn’t aware it was going on the market,” Kate said.
“We got the call yesterday morning. Mr. Hix won’t be returning. He’s got
a moving crew coming in tomorrow to start packing everything up. I’m doing
a checklist today to make sure the moving crew leaves it as is. Lord knows
it’ll be a hard enough sell as it is.”
“Why is that?” DeMarco asked.
Kate knew the answer, having been involved in several cases in the past
where a Realtor had come into play. “Realtors have to disclose when there has been a recent murder on a property,” Kate said.
“That’s right,” Nadine said. “And in this case, Mr. Hix is donating just
about everything he has. He was a mess when I spoke with him. He just
doesn’t want all of the reminders of his wife in whatever place he chooses as
his next home. It’s quite sad, actually.”
That’s pretty suspicious if you ask me, Kate thought.
“How long has Mr. Hix been in Chicago?” she asked.
“He left the day after the funeral…so I’d say three days, I believe.”
“If you don’t mind, we’d like to look the place over before you go about
your checklist,” Kate said.
“By all means.”
The three women entered the house. Kate found it in immaculate shape.
Again, it wasn’t quite as nice as the Hopkins home, but it was still more than
Kate would ever have been able to afford. It wasn’t just the house, either; all
of the furniture looked to be very expensive as well.
As they walked through, DeMarco trailed behind Kate, scrolling through
the electronic police reports. She read aloud the important parts as they did a
walkthrough of the house.
“Marjorie Hix was found dead in her bedroom, half in and half out of the
master bathroom,” she read. “She, too, was choked to death but there was no
blood or cuts as there were with Karen Hopkins. There was bruising around
her throat but no signs of hand imprints. It is believed she might have been
strangled with a belt or some sort of smooth rope.”
The downstairs was mostly an open floor plan, the living room and
kitchen separated only by one large column. The other area appeared to serve
as the living room, a small but expensive-looking television situated between
two bookshelves. An elegant-looking piano also helped to separate the areas.
Kate knew very little about pianos but was fairly certain this one was a baby
grand Steinway…and that it was likely valued at one year of her salary. It
was hard to imagine the husband simply donating such an item rather than
selling it. It sent a little red flag up in Kate’s brain.
A reading area and mini-office space sat to the far left, tucked in a corner
and looking out onto a spacious porch via a picture window. All in all, it
looked rather plain and idyllic.
“Remind me again what the reports say about evidence taken by the
police,” Kate said.
“The husband willingly handed over his own laptop, which was given
back pretty quickly,” DeMarco said, still reading from the reports. “He also
handed over Marjorie’s laptop and cell phone. There was a belt in the upstairs
closet that was taken in by forensics as a potential murder weapon, but it was
conclusively determined not to have been used.”
After a bit more looking downstairs, they walked up the stairs on the right
side of the floor plan, the stairs running parallel to the little office space. The upstairs consisted of a wide hall and four rooms: a bathroom, two guest
rooms, and a massive master suite. They went directly to the master suite and
stopped just inside the doorway, taking the place in.
The bed was unmade, but other than that the room was spotless. Kate
looked to the area in front of the bathroom and tried to picture a body there.
She knew the crime scene photos were in the case files and she was sure
she’d look at them later. For now, though, she was trying to picture the room
like a killer might—a killer who had likely been invited in for some reason or
another.
The room was situated in a way where someone coming out of the
bathroom would not immediately see someone coming into the room. If the
killer had managed to sneak into the room while Marjorie Hix had been in the
bathroom, he would have gone completely unseen.
“No clues of any kind in the bedroom, huh?” Kate asked.
“None listed in the report. Not even a single drop of blood. Nothing.”
Kate walked around the room and stopped at the window closest to the
bed. She had to draw the curtains back, but she saw that it looked out onto a
back yard with a wooded lot beyond. She then went into the bathroom. It, like
most everything else in the house, was large and boastful. She hunkered
down on her haunches and peered beneath the little thin spaces between the
bottoms of the counters under the sinks and the floor. Other than a few stray
dust bunnies, there was nothing.
“What’s the security system like?” Kat
e asked.
“Um,” DeMarco said as she scanned through the reports. “Apparently,
there’s no actual security system. But they do have one of those doorbell
cameras.”
“That’s perfect. Did the PD get access to it?”
“Yes. It says here that the husband gave Bannerman the passcode.
Apparently, it’s all accessible through the camera’s mobile app.”
“Any idea what the app is?”
“It doesn’t say. I’m sure Bannerman has it, though.”
“Hold that thought,” Kate said. She left the bedroom with DeMarco
trailing behind her, still scrolling through the records.
They found Nadine Owen checking over the living room walls, apparently
looking for preexisting scuff marks before the movers arrived. “Ms. Owen,”
Kate said. “Would you happen to know the name of the app the Hixes used
for their doorbell camera?”
“I do, actually,” she said. “When the husband called to list the house, he
gave me their passcode so I could go in and kill the account before someone
else moved in.”
“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 h
ad 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
opened the door never led to anything good.