Past Deeds

by Carolyn Arnold

  “And the envelope with the pictures was where exactly?” Jack inquired.

  “Underneath the paper.”

  “When does the paper normally get delivered?” Kelly was hoping to get some sort of a timeline as to when the mysterious messenger had been there. Though she imagined it would have been after the paper delivery.

  “It was usually there when I’d check at seven. That’s all I really know.”

  “It’s okay,” Kelly assured her, but it wasn’t, from her standpoint.

  “We’re going to need to know where you were yesterday morning, Mrs. Reid,” Jack said coolly.

  “I was here. I’m sure I told you that.”

  “And you really had no idea that your husband was cheating on you?” Skepticism was deeply embedded in his tone.

  “No, and I still don’t think he was.”

  “Even with the evidence before you.” Jack gestured toward the bagged envelope and incriminating photographs.

  “Who’s to say the pictures are even legit?” Arlene glanced hopefully at Kelly, but Kelly wasn’t about to come to the woman’s defense.

  Kelly suspected Jack’s tolerance for this woman’s naivety had reached its threshold. It could be possible that Arlene was working with the sniper. But if the three previous murders were connected to her husband’s, had she been involved with them, too? It would seem unlikely.

  “Why do you resist acknowledging even the possibility that your husband was unfaithful?” Jack pressured.

  Arlene wet her lips. “The thought…it’s…it’s humiliating.”

  Is that the real reason she refuses to acknowledge her husband’s affair?

  Jack matched his gaze with Arlene’s. “You’d want to stop that embarrassment.”

  Arlene glanced at her father with the desperateness of a drowning person eyeing a life raft. Kelly followed her gaze and realized that Bert hadn’t said a word since they came into the room.

  “Did you hire someone to kill your husband, Mrs. Reid?” Jack put the question out there with the subtly of a jackhammer.

  Arlene blanched, and Bert grimaced.

  “How dare you accuse my daughter of such an outrageous thing? We’ve been nothing but forthcoming, and you—”

  Arlene started to sob. Kelly and Jack waited her out for a few minutes.

  “Arlene,” Kelly eventually said, approaching the woman with kindness.

  Arlene blinked slowly. Her eyes had become marbles of pain. She kneaded the handkerchief in her hands. “Fine, yes, I knew about my husband’s affairs. I just didn’t want you to know.”

  “Because it would give you motive,” Jack concluded.

  Arlene didn’t give any impression Jack’s comment had affected her, and she instead put her attention on her father, who wouldn’t meet her gaze and busily picked at the edge of the chair’s arm. “Darrell and I have had our share of problems for years now. He was always so busy with his work, and I admired him for that—but it also got very lonely. I don’t have to work outside the home. Heck, I don’t even need to work around the home. I have everything, yet nothing.” She dabbed the handkerchief to her nose. “I was so lonely.”

  Yet, just yesterday, she had told them that Darrell always had time for her. It was hard to believe anything she said.

  Arlene carried on. “I had my own lovers. Darrell had his. Please, Daddy, I know how you must feel about this. Such a disappointment I must be.”

  As Arlene spoke, Bert’s eyes filled with tears. By the time she’d finished, they were narrowed and full of indignation. “You have betrayed the sanctity of marriage.” He got up, walked to a bar cart in the corner of the room, and poured himself two fingers’ worth of an amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a rocks glass.

  “If we look at your financial records, are we going to find proof you hired someone to take him out?” Jack asked.

  “No.” Arlene gulped air, and her chest heaved. “I never killed him or had him killed; I swear to you.”

  “The truth has a way of coming out.”

  Arlene clenched her jaw. “Good. Then you’ll know I’m innocent!”

  “It’s time for you to leave.” Bert kicked back the rest of his drink and slammed the glass on the cart.

  As Kelly and Jack saw themselves out, they could hear Arlene’s pleas for her father to forgive her.

  In the SUV, Kelly turned to Jack. “You really think she hired someone to kill her husband?”

  “It seems to me you suggested a hired gun from the start.”

  Jack’s retort soured in her gut. He was right, but her thinking had shifted. Besides, it would seem Reid’s case was connected to three others in which a hired hit couldn’t be proven. Then it dawned on her. “You don’t really think she paid someone to kill her husband, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “You just wanted to elicit a reaction you could trust.”

  Jack nodded. “And I wanted to get a feel for Bert Pryce.”

  “Oh.”

  “There’s no love spared between father- and son-in-law. That was obvious from our first meeting with Pryce.”

  “Sure. Are we going to check into his background?”

  “Absolutely.” Jack lit up a cigarette and drove them off.

  Kelly glanced back at the stately Reid house. From the outside, it would appear the people living there had their lives put together, but Kelly’d had a closer look and knew better. But had one of them really commissioned the murder of Darrell Reid, husband, father, and son-in-law?

  -

  Thirty

  Albuquerque Police Station

  Friday, October 25th, 11:00 AM Mountain Standard Time

  I’d thought I was miserable before Paige pulled rank. Now, I was downright crabby. We were waiting in a conference room—Paige seated at a table, me looking out a window—at the Albuquerque police station to speak with Sergeant Bell. He’d been the lead investigator on the Wise case. I was hopeful that having a third party around would serve as a buffer for all the unsettled energy. We’d already organized the forwarding of the compromising photos collected from Sonia Wise through the proper channels to Nadia in Quantico. We kept snapshots of the less racy ones on our phones, in case we needed to show the woman’s face around.

  “Agents.” A man’s voice cut through the room, and I turned toward the door.

  The man was in his fifties and gave off the vibe of someone you wouldn’t want to challenge, much like Jack. His life experience had hardened his appearance and was etched in his eyes and in the lines on his face. He wore a button-up shirt, tie, and slacks.

  “Sergeant Bell, I presume?” I walked over to him and held out a hand. “I’m FBI Special Agent Brandon Fisher.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Bell took my hand and looked past me to Paige, who introduced herself and shot me a glare for not doing so for her. The sergeant closed the door, then shook her hand. “I understand you’re here about the Wise case,” he said, tugging on the waist of his pants and taking a seat next to Paige.

  “We are,” Paige confirmed. “Our analyst has gathered as much information on the case as she could via the database, but sometimes, there are things it can’t tell us.”

  “Everything should be in the file.” He pointed to the closed folder in front of Paige, referring to the investigation records as a whole.

  Paige left the folder untouched. “I’m more interested in your feelings about the case. For example, what was your impression of the widow? How did she seem to you in the aftermath of her husband’s death?”

  “Well, I wish I could say I was one of those people who remembered everything, but the shooting was six months ago. I’ve worked a lot of cases since then.”

  “Probably some not quite as memorable,” I said.

  Bell grimaced and said nothing.

  For some reason, Bell was o
n the defense. I dropped into a chair across from him. “We’re not here to step on any toes or find fault with how the investigation was handled. We’ve found ourselves in a situation. You might have heard there was a shooting in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday morning.” I paused to give Bell a chance to respond, but he simply kept staring at me. I went on. “A prosecutor was killed. Male. The only victim. Just like in the case of Robert Wise six months ago, here in Albuquerque.”

  Bell adjusted his tie. “Let me see if I’m understanding what you’re saying without actually coming out and saying it. You think the person who killed Wise also killed your prosecutor.”

  “And two other men in the last three months,” Paige interjected.

  “An active serial killer?”

  “That’s the way we’re leaning, with a possibility that person may also be a hired gun.” I prepared for backlash. Many law enforcement types considered the conclusion of a “serial killer” just hype.

  “Nothing about the Wise shooting indicated that. Why blow it up and make it something it isn’t? It wasn’t anything more than an isolated incident.”

  “We agree that taken on its own, Wise’s shooting didn’t indicate an active threat,” I assured him. “But now we have three other murders. Trust me when I say we’re not here to point blame or accuse the Albuquerque PD—” best to widen the scope and keep it less personal “—for any of the subsequent shootings.”

  Bell’s shoulders slumped. He might have been defensive before; now it seemed he fought with his conscience.

  “No one could have seen the other murders coming,” I said. “And even if you had, finding the shooter would have been a huge challenge.”

  “Try impossible, because I did all I could,” Bell shot back.

  “I don’t doubt it.” This guy had a more volatile temper than I did.

  Bell’s jaw clenched, and his gaze met mine briefly before he looked off into the distance. “She was upset…Wise’s widow. I’m mean, rightfully. She and her husband were working to set their marriage right. Turning it around.”

  Suddenly, his memory is back!

  “Was she open with you about her husband’s affairs?” Paige asked.

  “I believe you’ll find that in the file,” Bell said brashly. “But she never cried, which I found strange. They’d been married for twenty-two years. You’d think she’d be able to shed a tear for her dearly departed.”

  Except he was a cheating son of a bitch, and so am I! My internal judgment came so quickly, so harshly, it stole my breath.

  “We paid Mrs. Wise a visit this morning before coming here,” Paige admitted, earning Bell’s steely gaze.

  “I would have appreciated a heads-up.”

  “We don’t have to clear anything past you, Sergeant,” Paige said. “As we told you, we believe the same person who killed Wise has killed at least three others. Each time there’s a sniping, there’s only one victim. All of them are married, all of them with marital problems.”

  “The husbands were disloyal,” I stamped out.

  “You’re telling me that some person’s out there knocking off adulterous men? They’d have their work cut out for them,” Bell scoffed, looking at me. His expression was one of man-to-man, as if cheating should be accepted as something guys just did—or was I grasping to feel excused for my actions?

  “We don’t know the killer’s motivation yet, though what you stated is possible,” Paige said.

  “In at least three cases, the widows received photographs of their husbands in compromising situations with other women,” I offered, earning Bell’s gaze. Jack had reached us before our meeting here and told us about the photos sent to Arlene Reid.

  “Mrs. Wise didn’t receive such pictures.” He started with confidence, but it melted away the longer he peered into my eyes. “She did?”

  I nodded. “But after the interest in solving the case had died down.”

  “She wasn’t really motivated after receiving the pictures, either,” Paige contributed. “Doesn’t even care if her husband’s killer is found. Went so far as to say if we caught his killer, she’d thank them.”

  “Wow. Okay, here’s the thing, though. You brought up the possibility of a hit man, which I couldn’t find evidence to support, but answer this: why would a hit man send the type of pictures you described? They’d send pictures of the dead body to prove they finished the job.”

  I faced Paige; it was starting to sink in that we were after a serial killer acting on his or her own agenda. “Can you excuse us?” I said to Bell and motioned for Paige to follow me to the hall. “Bell’s right, and it was under our nose. A hired gun wouldn’t have any reason to send compromising photos of the husbands.”

  “Unless it wasn’t the wives who hired the hit, and whoever did wanted to ease their grief by letting them know the type of men their husbands were.”

  I stared at her blankly. “That’s the exact opposite of what you thought yesterday when you said the wives may have been sent the photos to hurt them.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “Okay, so let’s say our killer is acting on their own initiative. Then what does the sniper stand to gain from sending the pictures? And why snipe the targets?” Paige paced, circled back.

  “We figure the sniper is probably military, someone given the proper training with a rifle,” I said. “He or she is using this method to kill, so it makes sense to say sniping is something they’re comfortable with doing.”

  “Maybe they’re a sharpshooter, someone who ranked high in their qualifications. But where do we even begin in tracking them down?”

  “Well, it’s almost like our killer is locked into the mindset of a sniper. They could be someone who served in an active war zone and had to kill people.”

  “Sure. I’m still missing how we narrow that down,” Paige said.

  “They—” I stopped short for a second. “I just realized we haven’t decided whether our sniper is a man or a woman. I thought we were going with a woman.”

  “I don’t know. Not attaching to either, just remaining objective. Anyway, focus…there’s less time between the murders. Maybe they’re battling with their own mind?”

  “Yeah. Why not? And assuming the sniper saw an active war zone, they could be diagnosed with PTSD,” I said. “Still hard to narrow down, I’m sure. There have to be hundreds or thousands who might meet that criteria.”

  Paige frowned, and I was with her. I hated that the very people who protected our freedoms so often returned damaged, everything they had before, gone—including their health.

  “Except I’d say she probably left the service in the last year or even closer to the time she killed Robert Wise. If she does have posttraumatic stress disorder and was discharged earlier than that, I think we’d be looking at more victims,” I said.

  Paige shrugged. “Maybe we just don’t know about them.”

  I nodded at the solemn thought.

  “I think we should let Jack and Kelly know what we’re thinking,” she said.

  “Including what Bell pointed out?”

  “Yeah, but I say we leave him out of it.”

  I smiled.

  “And our thoughts on the killer’s mental state, possible health,” she added.

  “I agree.” I pulled out my phone, feeling like we were finally making headway with this case.

  -

  Thirty-One

  Arlington, Virginia

  Friday, October 25th, 1:15 PM Eastern Standard Time

  Kelly glanced over at Jack behind the wheel of the SUV. They’d just left the Reids’ house and were driving down the street. She assumed they were headed back to Quantico to log the photos into evidence, but she wasn’t positive what their next step would be after that. She was about to ask Jack when his phone rang. He answered, and the caller’s voice came over the car’s speakers.

&nbs
p; “Captain Herrera here. Forensics got a hit on fingerprints lifted from a wineglass in Pryce’s condo. We now know who our mystery woman is. Sending a picture now.”

  The message icon showed on the vehicle’s display. Jack pulled to the curb, brought up the image on his phone, and held it for Kelly to see.

  She’d seen that picture before—in the photos with Darrell Reid. “She’s a familiar face.”

  “You think so, too?” Herrera sounded surprised, which piqued Kelly’s curiosity.

  The captain wouldn’t have seen the compromising pictures yet and might not even know about them. “Where did you see her before?”

  “I was going to ask the same of you.”

  “Arlene Reid received some photographs of her husband with this woman,” Jack said. “Your turn.”

  There was a smoldering silence on the other end.

  “Captain?” Jack prompted.

  A few more seconds passed before Herrera spoke. It was evident the captain wasn’t too impressed with Jack’s failure to communicate again. “Remember I mentioned a woman with chest pains yesterday, the one taken to the hospital? Well, that’s her.”

  “They’d probably just left Pryce’s condo,” Jack reasoned.

  Kelly wondered why she hadn’t come forward about knowing and being with Reid. Surely, she had to have heard he’d been the one killed unless— “She okay? Did something serious happen to her?” A heart attack, Kelly was screaming in her mind, remembering the horror when her grandfather had his.

  “No, she was checked at the hospital and released within an hour.”

  “Did she mention Reid in her statement to your officers?” Jack asked.

  “Like I said, there wasn’t much conversation.”

  Jack looked over at Kelly, and if there was one face that said unimpressed, she was seeing it: brow furrowed, eyes darkened, mouth set in a scowl.

  “What’s her name?” Jack prompted.

  “Jane Powell, thirty-five,” Herrera said. “Police brought her in for solicitation a couple years ago.”