Blake Pierce - Kate Wise - 5 - If She Fled

by Blake Pierce

“Sorry,” he said. “I do tend to get a little talkative. I’ll get back to work.”

  She nodded and watched him go. When he was out of sight, she unlocked

  her phone and pulled up her recent texts. She pulled up the latest to David

  and started to type a new message. She started to pace, as she usually did

  when she got nervous about something. She tried to think of what to say, but

  never even got the chance to start properly. All she got out was: The guy…

  But she got no further.

  She felt something slip around her neck and then a very hard pressure against her spine. She didn’t even have time to cry out. Whatever was around

  her neck pulled tight and she could not breathe. Her neck felt as if it were

  being pinched by a giant and at once, she started to struggle.

  It did not last long, though.

  Meredith fought for less than thirty seconds before darkness started to

  envelop everything she saw. Her phone slipped from her hands, clattering on

  the floor, her text to her husband incomplete and undelivered.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Frankfield Inn’s bar had been surprisingly good the night before, not

  just for drinks but for the food. It was not, however, open for breakfast or

  lunch. That’s how Kate and DeMarco ended up at an IHOP the following

  morning, having an early breakfast after checking in to no results at the

  Frankfield PD. They pored over the case files as they sipped coffee and

  nibbled from massive breakfast plates that Kate knew would go mostly

  uneaten.

  “No way you look at this do Karen Hopkins and Marjorie Hix seem alike

  in any way other than their age,” DeMarco said. “Not in their professions, not

  their interests, not their contacts, nothing.”

  “Well, nothing except husbands that didn’t value them,” Kate pointed out.

  “And if there were no affairs that we know of, what does that leave?”

  “I think we may need to start looking into friends…even passing

  acquaintances. Someone has to know a link. Someone would have to know

  what sort of friends Hopkins and Hix had coming in and out of their homes.”

  “It’s that damned doorbell security system that’s tripping me up,”

  DeMarco said. “Whoever killed Marjorie Hix likely came in through the

  garage. The answer would be why.”

  “It could have been any number of reasons. Maybe it was someone who

  was actually in a car with Marjorie. They could have come back to her house

  together, Marjorie parked in the garage, and then they went into the house.”

  “You know, this would be much easier if these husbands took an interest

  in their wives,” DeMarco joked.

  Kate clung to the comment. She felt like, though it had been said in jest,

  there was something to it. Was there something there they were potentially

  missing? If the husbands did not keep up with their wives, what might those

  husbands be missing out on? Maybe it was more than just intimacy and

  attention. Maybe it was smaller things?

  “I wonder,” Kate said, “if there were smaller things in these women’s lives

  that the husbands didn’t even know about. If we dig very deep, could there be some small and seemingly inconsequential thing they shared in common?

  Something maybe linking them to the killer?”

  “It’s a great thought, but that takes us right back to finding someone who actually knew these women better than their husbands.”

  Kate realized that it did sort of create a very ragged circle with no end in

  sight. Still, she focused on that last comment, wondering if they had missed

  something smaller and almost invisible among the crime scenes. Something

  in the background that seemed of no consequence at first or even second

  glance.

  She was about to say this out loud when her phone rang. She dug it out of

  her pocket and saw that it was Melissa. She was flooded with that mix of

  anger, resentment, and sorrow. She nearly ignored it right away but then

  remembered how distracted she had been yesterday. If she did not take this

  call, she’d wonder about it all day.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, getting up from the table. “I have to take this.”

  DeMarco waved her away casually as she continued to read over the case

  notes. Kate made her way to the front doors, stepping outside onto the

  sidewalk in front of the restaurant as she answered the call.

  “Hey, Lissa.”

  “Mom…I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry to call, I really am, and I

  know I said some messed up things in that message yesterday but…”

  “Calm down,” Kate said. She worried that something else had happened

  between her and Terry. The protective mother in her wondered if Terry had

  left them or, even worse and more unimaginable, struck Melissa or Michelle.

  “Slow down and star over.”

  “Michelle is showing her symptoms again…when we had that cancer

  scare. Mom…what the hell do I do?”

  “What’s she doing?” Kate asked, trying to stay as calm as possible.

  “When she cries, she screams. And it’s exactly the same kind of screams

  as before, when I took her to the doctor and they saw those abnormalities.”

  “How long has she been doing it?”

  “Since yesterday afternoon. And Mom…God, I’m so sorry. I blamed you.

  I blamed you and Alan, thinking he had fed her something he shouldn’t

  and…”

  “Melissa, it’s okay. Look…that screaming was just one symptom,

  remember? What were some others?”

  “There was a fever, but the doctors weren’t even sure it was related.”

  “Melissa…when you picked her up from my house, was she fine?”

  “Yes. She got a little upset when I started yelling at Alan, though.”

  “You yelled at Alan?”

  “Mom, I was so pissed off. At you, at him, at myself…”

  “Okay, fine. Look…if it’s just screaming, treat it as if it were gas or colic.

  Honey, you can’t assume every little thing that goes wrong is going back to

  where we were a few months ago. The doctors cleared her. You know that.”

  “I know, but…”

  “Hasn’t she always been a little fussy after she stays with me for a long

  period of time? Remember…we talked about this? Your little one does not

  like change. It throws her off. This sounds to me like nothing more than

  colic.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Kate had no idea why, but this question angered her. Melissa sounded

  almost hysterical, paranoid, and nervous—wanting to ensure that her baby

  was fine. But at the same time, she also sounded hopeless and totally inept.

  “Swaddle her in a blanket and then lay her flat on her belly. But just for a

  while and do not leave her. Make sure her face is turned to the side and rub her on the back. Do that for a while and then roll her over. Do it a few times.

  If she’s still screaming after all of that and you need to just be sure, call the

  pediatrician.”

  “Mom, I don’t know. I think it’s more than gas and…”

  “You’ve thought this twice since the scare, Melissa. And what did it turn

  out being both times?”

  There was silence on the other end. Kate assumed the silence was the

  result of Melissa sneering on the other end. “The first time it was gas and the

  seco
nd time was mild reflux when we tried her on that new formula.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Mom, what if…”

  “Melissa, I love you. And I will always love you. But you are a mother

  now. You can’t come running to me with every problem. Especially when…”

  She’d nearly ended that statement with “especially when I’m working,”

  but managed to stop herself.

  But Melissa apparently knew how the statement was going to end. “Yeah,

  got it, Mom. Especially when…”

  “Melissa, I—”

  Her phone beeped at her as another call came in. She checked it and while

  she did not recognize the number, she did recognize the local area code.

  “Melissa, I have another call I have to take.”

  “Of course you do.”

  Melissa ended the call, the slight click sending a shiver through Kate. She

  inhaled deeply, let it out, and then answered the other call. “This is Agent

  Wise.”

  “Agent Wise, it’s Sheriff Bannerman. I need you and your partner to meet

  up with me as soon as possible.”

  Even before she asked the question that came out of her mouth, she knew

  what he would say. It was just a gut feeling she had, one that she had learned

  to trust early on in her career.

  “We’ve got another body…a third victim.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Victim number three, a twenty-four-year-old named Meredith Lowell,

  lived in a cute little two-story home about three miles outside of Frankfield.

  When Kate and DeMarco pulled into the U-shaped driveway, an ambulance

  was pulling out the other end. There was a single cop car in the driveway,

  unoccupied. Bannerman stood on the porch at the front door, watching as the

  agents parked and got out of the car.

  “What’s with the ambulance?” Kate asked.

  “The husband found the body. Came home from work early to surprise her

  and had a minor cardiac episode. He was in the back of the ambulance. He

  was wailing and crying as they put him in, poor guy.”

  “You the only officer on the scene?”

  “I’ve got more on the way. I wanted you two to have access to the scene

  before anyone else.”

  “Thanks for that,” Kate said as she and DeMarco joined him on the porch.

  Bannerman opened the door for them and they stepped inside.

  It was the smallest home they had been in but it was still quite nice. The

  living room sat off of a small hallway on one side of the house and

  everything else sat on the opposite side. About halfway down the hall, a den

  sat off to the right. In front of them at the exact center of the home was a

  large kitchen.

  The body of Meredith Lowell say on the floor, her head resting directly

  beside the dishwasher. Her eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling.

  Her blonde hair was tufted out around her head like a little halo. Right away,

  Kate could see the mark on her neck and knew this was not just a random

  murder. This was a third victim of the killer they were after.

  Kate knelt down by the body on one side while DeMarco dropped to the

  other side. She studied the marks on Meredith’s neck and saw right away that

  they were similar to the other victims. The marks on Meredith’s neck were

  essentially just one mark, with a few areas where the strangulation weapon

  had drifted a bit. The indentation from the weapon was the same width as the

  others and although the area was red and swollen, there were no areas that

  were cut into as there had been with Karen Hopkins. There appeared to be no

  other signs of attack; the killer had clearly come in with the intention of strangling her.

  “Did you manage to get anything out of the husband before he left?”

  “Very little. He wanted to help, but the medics were too concerned about

  his health. They’re going to let us know the moment he’s okay for visitors.

  What I did get out of him, though, was sort of telling. He left for work later

  than usual, with plans to get home early. But he actually managed to leave

  work much earlier than he expected. He had intended to come home and

  surprise his wife, planning to take her to lunch, a movie, and then dinner. A

  nice little day date.”

  “So he wasn’t gone long at all, right?”

  “He said he was gone perhaps three hours and fifteen minutes.”

  “I think that gives us definitive proof that the killer is being invited in,”

  Kate said. “Even if it was just someone who knew the family’s schedule well,

  there’s no way they could have known the husband was going to come back

  early.”

  “Could have just been luck,” Bannerman suggested.

  “This also breaks the connection we thought we had with the other

  victims,” DeMarco said. “This woman is young.”

  “Twenty-four, by the husband’s words,” Bannerman said. “The husband

  was older, though. Maybe forty, if I had to guess.”

  “Any kids?” Kate asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Bannerman said. “Not between the two of them, though

  this seems to be the husband’s second marriage. But if she’s this young and

  there are no kids here in the house right now, my guess would be no.”

  “You said you have units on the way?”

  “About five minutes away by now, I’d think.”

  “Coroner?”

  “Right behind my guys.”

  “Good. With this body so fresh, it should be easy for them to find out what

  was used to strangle her. And if we can figure that out and make sure it could

  be applicable to the other murders, that could be a huge help.”

  Kate got to her feet and started to slowly pace around the kitchen. She

  went to the back door, which led out to a cute little patio. No signs of a break-

  in, no signs of a struggle. Nothing. She then walked through the hallway and

  did a lap around the living room. From a quick first glance, nothing appeared

  to be missing or disturbed. She checked the front door and found it just as untouched as the back.

  She walked through the den, taking the same approach. She looked over

  the furniture, the family-related items. There was a piano in the center of the

  room, a small writing desk tucked away in the corner, a beautiful acoustic

  Gibson guitar on a stand in another corner. Nothing disturbed, nothing

  removed.

  Wait…but there’s something here. Some link…what am I missing?

  She could feel her intuition trying to bring something to the surface. She

  wanted to force it, but knew better. It would come soon enough. Still, she

  looked around the room one more time, trying to figure out what exactly was

  gnawing at her.

  By the time she returned to the kitchen, the first of Bannerman’s units

  showed up. And, as he had said, the coroner arrived directly behind them.

  There were three other officers in all, looking the place over and running

  through routine procedure—checking for prints and essentially running

  through the same checklists Kate had just run through. But really, with the

  husband on the way to the hospital and no one to question, their jobs were

  over within a few minutes.

  Kate and DeMarco stood by in the kitchen while the coroner snapped a

  few photos and examined the body. “Any idea what t
he killer used to strangle

  her?” DeMarco asked the coroner.

  The coroner, a hardened woman who looked to be in her forties, gave a

  lazy shrug. “Hard to tell. I don’t see any fibers or evidence of rope burn, so

  I’m going to rule out rope or twine right away. If I had to make a quick non-

  educated guess, I’d think it was some sort of craft string—maybe something

  plastic or made with a pliable sort of weak metal.”

  “Once you get her in, how long till you think you’d be able to give us a

  more accurate guess?”

  “I can make it the priority of the case and maybe have something in a few

  hours.”

  The coroner looked to the string-like indentation and shook her head. She

  snapped a few more pictures as Kate and DeMarco stepped backward, giving

  her room.

  “There were cuts on Karen Hopkins’s neck,” DeMarco said. “No cuts on

  Marjorie Hix, but a few abrasions. Maybe it’s a different material each time?”

  “That, or the killer is getting better at it and getting a better feel for how to do it.”

  “So he’s coming in, knowing exactly what he’s going to do and how he’s

  going to get it done,” DeMarco said. “And if he’s also being invited in, he

  has the convenience of taking his time, waiting for his moment.”

  “What the hell are we missing?” Kate asked. She was starting to feel

  frustrated, looking back toward the den and wondering what had nibbled at

  her there.

  “You know…so what if she’s younger?” DeMarco said. “She’s still a

  woman who was alone in a suburban house.”

  “Yes, but given the little we know about the husband, she wasn’t a

  neglected and lonely wife. He was coming home early from work to take her

  on a day date. I’d say that’s the exact opposite of the other two victims.”

  DeMarco nodded her understanding, looking back toward the kitchen

  where the coroner was wrapping up. As she was about to step back into the

  kitchen, her phone rang. She pulled her phone out, checked the display, and

  then looked oddly at Kate.

  “What?” Kate asked.

  “It’s Duran.” She waited a moment before answering and although it did

  seem like a very minor event, the weight of it was not missed by Kate. In the

  past, Duran had always called her to check up on a case or ask questions. She