by Blake Pierce
“Can we come in?” Kate asked.
“Is that really necessary?” Davey asked.
“It would make things much easier and we’d be out of your hair faster,” Kate said.
“Fine.”
Davey stepped to the side and allowed them inside. As they passed through the doorway, DeMarco wasted little time. “When was the last time you spoke with them?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Davey said. He sat down behind his computer desk and checked something on the screen. Kate assumed he was playing Fortnite, as Teddy had suggested. “Maybe a month or so. Aunt Bethany called to say hi. Just sort of checking in.”
Kate looked to DeMarco and gave her a look that she hoped communicated to “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
“Mr. Armstrong, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but Bethany and Scott are dead. They were killed in their home four or five days ago.”
Something similar to shock washed over Davey’s face but it didn’t stay there for very long. He looked at the floor for a moment and it was then that Kate was certain he would break into tears. But he did nothing of the sort. He looked back up at the agents, looking back and forth between the two of them.
“Do you know who did it yet?” Davey asked. “Have you caught them?”
“No,” DeMarco said. “That’s why we’re here. We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on why someone might want to kill them.”
“Oh,” he said, rather absently. He at least seemed to not care as much about the game behind him, but he also didn’t seem quite as upset as Kate had expected. He looked detached—almost as if he was thinking about something else entirely. “Yeah, I don’t know. They were good, you know? Good people. I can’t think of anyone that would want to kill them…”
“Davey, are you okay?” Kate asked.
He looked up at her then and when he did, she saw the fear in his eyes. He was scared and clearly uneasy. Kate knew that the human mind went through a ton of stages as it tried to accept monumental loss, but this seemed out of place.
“And you’re certain you hadn’t spoken to them recently?” Kate asked.
“I told you, it’s been weeks,” he said, snapping at her. “Look…I just need to go. I need to get out of here and…”
He got up and headed for the door. He moved in such a way that for a split second, Kate thought he was going to attack—perhaps pulling a gun out. But he only made a beeline for the front door, doing everything he could not to look at them.
DeMarco surprised Kate by jumping to her feet and moving with catlike guile. She made it to the door before Davey, blocking his way.
“Davey, we know this is some miserable news to digest, but we really need you to stay here with us for a bit longer. Just a few more questions and we can—”
Davey let out a gut-churning scream that was half anger and half desperation. He threw a hard shoulder into DeMarco, sending her back hard against the doorframe. Just as her head rebounded from the frame, Davey bounded through the door. Kate noted that he had not fully closed it when they entered, indicating that he had planned to make a run for it from the start.
Kate leaped to her feet and chased after him. DeMarco looked a little woozy, bracing herself against the wall to make sure she didn’t fall down. She took two huge strides after him as he slammed the door in her face from the outside. She blocked it with her forearm and pushed through it. She stepped out onto the porch just as Davey made it down the small flight of stairs.
Kate knew right away that she would not be able to match him in a footrace so she decided to take a chance to eliminate the race altogether. Rather than running after him, she took one big stride to the edge of the porch and launched herself forward. She knew right away that she had overestimated the distance; rather than take him in the back of the knees, she was going to end up slamming into his upper back.
She braced for the impact and felt a twinge of pain in her neck as they collided. Her full weight slammed into him from behind. He went down so quickly and so fast that as he fell, his legs nearly came up over his head in a half-flip. Kate managed to lock her right arm around his neck as they both fell, applying a rear-neck choke as they hit the ground, The air went out of her and the jarring pain that shot through her reminded her that she was well north of fifty years of age.
Still, the adrenaline was enough to help her roll on top of him, plant a knee in his back, and pull his arms behind him. She cuffed him with expert precision and was relieved when she heard DeMarco approaching from behind. With her help, they pulled Davey Armstrong to his feet. Kate hid a grimace when she saw that he had skinned up the side of his face in the fall. The fault was hers, though, as she could have been a bit gentler.
“Why’d you run?” DeMarco asked.
Davey said nothing. As they led him to the car, Kate hurried ahead. She popped open the trunk, hoping for a first-aid kit. She found one, plucked out the antibacterial wipes, and opened them. Before putting Davey in the back of the car, she wiped the blood away from the nasty scratch on his face. He winced at the sting but said nothing.
“Do you know why we’re taking you with us, David?” DeMarco asked.
“Because they’re dead,” he said. “And I guess you think I did it.”
As he scooted into the back seat, Kate and DeMarco shared an uneasy look over the roof of the car. “You okay?” DeMarco asked quietly.
Kate nodded, though it was hard to tell if she was hurt in any way. The adrenaline was still rushing through her. In that moment, she felt more than okay. She felt great.
“How about you?” Kate asked.
“My head hurts. He gave me a good whack. But I’m okay.”
“I should drive, then,” Kate said.
“I’ll call ahead to the station and let them know we’re coming with a…with a what? I guess he’s a suspect?”
“Seems that way,” Kate said as she got behind the wheel.
She recalled the fear she had seen in his eyes and the absolute berserker speed and fury in his escape and scream. It made no sense to her that he would be the killer but then again, why was he remaining silent? Why did he run?
With the last dregs of adrenaline coursing through her, Kate pondered these questions. In the back of the car, Davey Armstrong remained quiet, as if sitting on some dark secret.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kate was nursing another cup of coffee and waiting for her turn to speak with Davey Armstrong. She was sitting with DeMarco in the conference room that was serving as their temporary office, watching footage on a mounted television on the wall as the police chief sat down across the table from Davey in an adjacent holding cell. There was no formal interrogation room in the City of Roanoke Police Department, so Davey was currently in an informal holding cell.
From what Kate could tell, Davey was still not talking. She stared at his silent figure on the screen, trying to work it out in her head.
“You think it fits?” DeMarco asked.
“He has the history to suggest that there might be some sort of strain between him and the Langleys, but no. Those murders were grisly. If he killed them, I think he’d be more interested in talking. Letting us know why. Letting us know how.”
“What if he’s just staying quiet because he wants to see how much more we know?” DeMarco asked. “What if he’s killed more people and wants to know if we’ve discovered the bodies yet? The Nashes, for instance.”
It was a good thought and one worth running with. On the screen, the chief started to get to his feet, apparently tired of trying to get Davey to talk. As he started heading for the door and partially off of the screen, Kate’s cell phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number, with a Roanoke area code.
“Hello?” she said.
There was a man’s voice on the other end. He spoke to her for about thirty seconds before Kate said, “Okay. Thank you so much.”
She ended the call and started for the conference room door right away. “Come on,” she told D
eMarco. “We got him. Davey Armstrong is our killer after all.”
***
Kate sat across from Davey, on the same chair the Chief of Police had sat in moments ago. She looked at Davey through the bars of the holding cell. DeMarco sat beside her, deep in thought about the revelation that Kate had just told her.
“I’m going to give you one last chance to say something,” Kate said. “I just got a phone call that doesn’t tell the entire story, but it tells enough of the story. Enough to formally arrest you for murder. So you have five seconds to figure out something to say.”
Kate gave him the five seconds. She noticed DeMarco silently keeping count on her fingers as the seconds passed.
“Fine,” Kate said. “Earlier today, we spoke with Teddy King, your manager at Gino’s. He told us that on Tuesday afternoon, you were very late coming back from one of your deliveries. He just called me a few moments ago with the names and addresses you visited on that run. One of them was the home of Scott and Bethany Langley. And that just happens to be within the window of time in which they were killed. So…now do you have anything to say?”
He looked up at them with all the integrity of a trapped animal. He’d been caught and he knew it. He gave a lazy shrug and, for the first time since being told that his aunt and uncle had died, shed a tear.
“I lied before. I actually hadn’t spoken to them in months,” he said. “Maybe as much as a year. They weren’t exactly happy with me. They didn’t kick me out of their house, but strongly urged me to leave. So I enrolled in college, got a job and a place of my own. They’d try to stay in touch but I sort of froze them out.”
“Why did they ask you to leave?” DeMarco asked.
“This was almost ten years ago,” Davey said. “I’d started doing drugs. Just a little coke here and there. I wasn’t an addict. Not then…”
He trailed off here, sensing that he was either getting off the point or not ready to face a truth that was trying to surface.
“Was there an altercation of some kind when you stopped to deliver their pizzas?” Kate asked.
“No. I didn’t even knock on the door. I left the pizzas on the porch, beeped the horn on the car, and took off.”
Kate didn’t believe him. Not one bit. He was talking too fast, like someone saying the first thing that popped into their heads.
“When you deliver pizzas, do they have to sign anything?” Kate asked.
“No. Not unless they pay with a check.”
She could see the uncertainty in his eyes as he tried to calculate his next move. She could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he tried to anticipate every way out of this conversation—how to not get caught in a lie, how to answer each question in a way that wouldn’t nail him down.
“How did the Langleys pay?” DeMarco asked. “If you just ditched the pizzas and ran, they had to have paid in advance, right?”
“Yeah. I guess they did. With Gino’s, you can order online. We just started it a few months back. I guess they paid like that because the order didn’t say anything about having to collect payment.”
Kate considered all of this and made the decision to let it rest for now. Whether Davey realized it or not, he had just given them more than enough information. Based on everything he had just said, there would be more than enough to either catch him in a blatant lie or free him.
As for Kate, she was fully expecting a lie.
“Thanks, Mr. Armstrong,” she said. “We do need to check on a few things but if you’re telling the truth, you should be able to leave within a few hours.”
“Check what?” he asked. “How the hell am I a suspect here?”
Kate smirked, unable to hide it. “Because I’ve been doing this long enough to know when I’m being lied to.”
And with that, she left the room. She had expected Davey to voice some final truth as she left but he stayed silent. After a few seconds, DeMarco followed behind her, leaving Davey alone in the holding cell.
***
“Did you see his forearms?”
DeMarco asked the question almost half-heartedly. She was looking directly at the wall, as if looking at a diagram that had all of the answers to the case.
“No,” Kate said. “Should I have looked at them?”
DeMarco shrugged. “I almost missed it. But there were track marks. Faint, but there. If I didn’t have some history with it—a relative, not me, so don’t worry—I wouldn’t have even seen it.”
“Heroin?” Kate asked.
“Yeah, pretty sure,” DeMarco said.
“So maybe he’s in denial about it?” Kate suggested. “Maybe he was late from those deliveries because he was using. Maybe the thought of having to see the Langleys stressed him out.”
“Could be. Some users are so ashamed of their habit that they’ll keep it a secret at any cost. But still…I don’t think that warrants attacking an FBI agent in an effort to escape.”
“Agreed,” Kate said, looking at the TV monitor on the wall. Davey still sat there, slightly hunched forward and looking at the floor.
Kate wanted another crack at him—wanted to ask him about the drug use and if there was any connection to his using and the Langleys. Based on what she knew of the Langleys, she doubted there was a connection at all. But any chance to get him to talk about his aunt and uncle would either dig him deeper into the pit or give them just cause to release him.
Before she could start to formulate a line of questioning, though, her cell phone rang. When she saw that it was Duran, she cringed. She knew the man was like a magician at getting details in a quick and timely manner. She wondered if he had somehow found out about her too-rough handling of Davey Armstrong.
“It’s Duran,” she told DeMarco. She then answered: “This is Wise.”
“Where are we on the case?” Duran asked.
“We’ve got a man in custody right now,” Kate said. “I just finished questioning him.”
“You think it’s the guy?”
“I don’t know yet. He’s guilty of something. Drug use, most likely. But I’m not certain there would be enough to pin the murders on him.”
“Send me whatever notes you have, as well as the arrest report. I’ve got a research issue here in Washington that I could use your help on. One of your old cases that a few agents think might help put an end to a string of kidnappings and a suspected pedophile ring in the Baltimore area. You remember Frank Costello?”
“I do,” she said with a chill.
Costello had abducted and killed seven children in 1998, taking them from an area that sprawled between Washington, DC, and Louisville, Kentucky. It was one of the cases that she looked back on as her crowning achievement but, at the same time, an ultimate failure. When Costello had been booked, he claimed to have abducted three more kids and that he had not worked alone. He had never given up the locations of the other three children or the person he claimed to have been working with. That information went with him to the grave, as he killed himself by gnawing open one of his wrists in his cell three days after being caught.
“I’d like you to come meet with this team. So much of what they’ve come up with mirrors Costello’s movements and mannerisms. We can’t help but wonder if this latest string of kidnappings is the work of the man Costello says he was working with.”
“Yeah, I can be there.”
“Good. I thought about just Skyping, but these guys could use you there face to face. A great learning opportunity. So...sorry, Wise. I feel like maybe I overbooked you. If there’s more to that case there in Roanoke, do you think DeMarco could handle it on her own?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Good. Have her send me that info over and get back into town. If you could be here tomorrow, that would be ideal. You good with that?”
Kate looked over at Davey Armstrong on the monitor. If he was the killer, she and DeMarco had wrapped the case much faster than she had expected. If he wasn’t, Kate didn’t think he’d do much in helping
them locate the actual killer. But she also didn’t think she was in any kind of position to tell Duran no. If she wanted this little deal that they had worked out between them and the bureau, she had to resist any urge to push back.
“That should be fine,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
With that, Duran ended the call. Kate pocketed her phone as a thought occurred to her. The story about leaving the pizzas on the porch just seemed too weak. There should be some way to easily find out if it was the truth or not. Maybe a call to Teddy King. Certainly a customer that found their pizzas on their porch would call to complain, right?
“Did you say see you tomorrow?” DeMarco asked.
“Yeah. He wants me back in DC. There are some agents who apparently found ties to one of my cold cases about a pedophile ring. I told him I thought you’d be good here.”
“I appreciate that,” she said, her expression signifying that she meant it.
“Agent DeMarco, would you mind gathering up the police report and making sure a copy is sent to Director Duran as soon as possible? But first maybe we should figure out your car and housing situation.”
DeMarco nodded. She looked a little excited at the prospect of being left to run solo on this case but, at the same time, Kate thought she saw a smidge of disappointment.
“You okay?” Kate asked.
“Yeah. I ran cases by myself all the time when I was working violent crimes. And even if Davey Armstrong isn’t our man, there’s got to be a lead hiding on him or in one of his stories somewhere.”
“Maybe,” Kate said, but she really didn’t think that was going to turn out to be the case at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“You know,” Kate said as she drove DeMarco to the closest Holiday Inn, “you don’t need me to crack this. You’re capable of doing it on your own.”
“I know,” she said. “But if I’m being honest, I just don’t like the way Director Duran thinks he can just yank and pull you around like he wants. You went what…a month without him calling at all? And now he sends you out here to check out these murders and then expects you to shift gears and abandon the case at the drop of a hat?”