“Common,” I said.
“And easy to get off the street,” Kelly added.
Oh, it’s so good to be working side by side with Miss Show-off again, I thought sarcastically. Actually, she wasn’t that bad. Some people were just put on the planet to test our patience and maybe expand us as human beings…maybe.
“We have no way of knowing where the gun came from,” Jack said. “But more of note—and we just found out—is that the handgun was used in two murders a couple of days ago in a Baltimore motel.”
I almost swallowed my coffee the wrong way. “Do we know of any connection to our sniper?”
Jack shook his head. “But it appears that either Michelle or Frank was behind the deaths. Now, Forensics found a bullet casing in Marsha Doyle’s apartment that had rolled under a table next to the door. Prints on it came back a match to Frank.”
I sat back, surprised. “He loaded the gun used to shoot Doyle.”
“I think it’s possible he pulled the trigger,” Jack said grimly. “A tenant told one of Herrera’s canvassing officers that they saw a man outside the building a couple of times, usually in the evening, about the time Doyle would be returning from work.”
“Did they provide a description?” Paige asked.
“They did, and it lines up with Frank’s build and coloring. I’m having Herrera send officers back with a photo spread to see if they can positively ID Frank Evans.”
“Frank Evans killed Marsha Doyle,” I said. “Possibly the two in the motel.”
“So it would seem.”
I glanced at Kelly, back to Jack, thankful that the two of them were fine. They’d approached Frank as an innocent initially, as the next potential target. Little had they known going in.
Jack continued. “The weapon itself hasn’t been recovered. No sign of the Glock in Frank’s apartment. It’s possible Michelle has it in her possession, but it’s also just as possible that the weapon was discarded. Regardless, we all take precautions with Michelle tonight. We’d be fools to think she won’t be armed. There haven’t been other leads from a forensic standpoint, but Kelly and I got in touch with Jane Powell, Reid’s mistress. She said she never received a note about Reid.”
“Either that was something Michelle did with Wise’s mistress and no one else or the other notes were lost,” I said.
“Without tracking all the other mistresses, we have no way to know if it was a pattern typical for Michelle or not, but I’m not worried about that at this time. We just need to get her into custody.” Jack flipped to another report. “A search of Frank’s apartment did turn up something. Nothing definitive to support a conspiracy between him and Michelle, but browser history on his computer indicates he cyberstalked Wise, Miller, Sherman, and Reid over the years. He even had sites bookmarked.”
“One cocky son of a bitch,” I said and earned a glare from Jack for my language. “Sorry.” I gave it a few seconds and said, “Okay, so we probably have a witness to put him outside Doyle’s building, and his fingerprint was on the casing from the bullet used to kill her. We have him connected to one murder anyhow.”
“Yeah, the one he denied knowing anything about,” Kelly said. “The man’s sick himself, if you didn’t guess that already. The last thirty years of his life have been about Estella’s rape. That’s a long time to plot revenge.”
“Some things stick with you,” Paige said somberly, and I had the feeling her mind was back on California and further back to the rape of her friend.
“You think he was planning this for that long?” I asked, skeptical.
“There’s a lot of history on his computer to indicate that’s possible,” Jack said.
“Is there any other forensic evidence to hang Frank?” Paige asked.
Jack shook his head. “That’s all on that front, but we heard from the sheriff’s office in Bridgeport, California. Deputies collected an empty envelope that came from Ancestry Labs in Michelle’s car. They specialize in DNA testing. I have Nadia following up there to see if she can get any details.”
I’d try not to get my hopes up too high. “Speaking of Frank, he’s in holding?”
“Yes, and we need to come up with a plan of attack for tonight.” Jack filled us in on the meet tonight at the Regency. “I’ve already alerted the FBI director, and he’s authorized agents to come to assist from Quantico. They’re going to pose as customers and workers at the bar.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
If Jack was the type to roll his eyes, he would have right then; I could feel it.
“We’re going to get a script for Frank to stick to. Any deviation, and we move in, and the entire thing is put to an end.” Jack’s body stiffened. “Any deviation. Got it?” He looked over his team, and we all nodded.
-
Fifty-Four
The Regency, Baltimore, Maryland
Sunday, October 27th, 10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time
By the time ten thirty came around, we’d been through so much preparation, it almost felt like it should be later than it was. Then again, that might be the jet lag talking. Either way, time was up.
Paige and I were seated at a table to the left of Frank’s, under the guise of a date, and Jack and Kelly were on the other side. Other agents were positioned throughout the Regency.
An agent from Quantico was tending bar, and two others were posing as servers. Out front, undercover agents were keeping civilians from entering the bar as discreetly as possible.
At ten thirty-five, the front door opened, and Michelle Evans walked in. I found myself holding my breath. She was right there, and I just wanted to move in, but Jack wanted to see if we could get a confession from her through Frank. The more evidence, the better, when it came to getting convictions.
Michelle wandered through the restaurant, and I was careful to watch but not appear as if I was. She was just as I’d expected from pictures I’d seen of her: pretty, trim, blonde, but there was certainly something off about how slowly she was walking and how she was diligently checking out her surroundings. Something she’d probably learned from being a Marine. Her gaze swept over everyone, but I had no doubt she was cataloging us all, trying to assess us.
But if I did say so myself, we were all looking the parts we were playing. Paige’s hair was backcombed and frizzy, and she was wearing jeans and a matching jacket. Her gray T-shirt had a hole in it with some band’s name scrawled across the front, tour dates on the back. I was done up much the same, but I had a knock-off leather coat, which I had hanging on the back of my chair. Both of us had pints of beer in front of us, along with two empties. We hadn’t been drinking on the job, of course, but it was made to look like we had enjoyed some beer already and that the staff was slow to clear the tables, which would fit with the feel of the place. It could definitely benefit from a thorough cleaning. My Dr. Martens stuck to the tile floor. Even the tabletops were tacky—that took me right back to the Lucky Pub.
Michelle spotted Frank and sat across from him. She didn’t take off the thigh-length trench coat she wore, but she undid it. She didn’t say a word.
“Michelle, you made it,” Frank said. We could hear him through earpieces, as we had the music playing at a loud volume that was regular for the joint and he was recording the conversation, which we could hear live. “You did it? The prosecutor, that was you, Shelly?”
“Yes.” Michelle was smiling; it traveled in her single-word response.
Frank held out a hand for Michelle’s, and slowly she raised hers and extended it across the table. “I’m so proud of you,” he said.
“Thank you.” Michelle was quiet, shy, tentative like a little girl talking to her father.
“You took care of all of it. You cleared your mother’s name.”
Michelle stiffened and withdrew her arm. “Mother never needed her name cleared.” Heat coated her tone, and it made the
skin tighten on the back of my neck. I glanced quickly at Jack, starting to get a bad feeling.
Frank didn’t seem fazed. “What did you do with the rifle?”
“Just what you told me to do. It’s at the bottom of the Patapsco River.”
“And the leftover ammunition?”
“With it.” Michelle shifted her position, slowly, and her demeanor was calm.
“You did a good thing, Shelly, killing those men.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“You did. Now we can be a family again, Shelly. A family,” Frank cooed, using her pet name so much that it made me cringe.
Michelle flashed a brief, insincere smile that disappeared faster than it formed. She shuffled her feet in slow, precise movements and looked my direction. I laughed and took a sip of beer as if Paige and I were having an engaging conversation, but my mind was on the fact something was off about her.
Images of the interstate map found in Michelle’s apartment flashed in my mind. The asterisks noted at each stop she intended to make along the way. The ones marking her targets. We had thought at one point that Frank was a target, but we’d become distracted by the fact he was an accomplice. Her friend Karen told us Michelle had forgiven her father, but what if she hadn’t? We’d pegged Michelle for the patsy, but maybe she wasn’t as naive as we thought.
“We need to abort now,” I said for the benefit of the comm, trying not to jump up and put an end to it myself.
“We let it play out a bit longer,” came Jack’s reply.
“What do you mean you’re not sure, Shelly?” Frank said. “I love—”
Michelle reached inside her coat, and I bolted to my feet.
I was too slow. She’d pulled a gun and squeezed the trigger.
Blood was draining from Frank’s forehead as his head hit the table.
She put the gun on the table in front of her and laughed when she saw us and raised her hands in the air. “Thank you. Thank you,” she repeated with a wide smile.
I glanced at Paige. Guess there’s a first for everything.
Paige collected the gun—not a Glock G19—but a Sig Sauer P938, an easy acquisition off the street.
Jack cuffed Michelle and started to read her the Miranda rights. “You have the right to—”
“He used me!” she snarled and spit on Frank’s lifeless body. “He turned his back on my mother. On me. That man doesn’t know love. I shouldn’t even exist.”
Jack hauled her to her feet and finished off the Miranda rights.
Michelle then said, “Prison will be a better place for me. At least my mother will know peace now. She was an angel on earth, and now she watches over me.” She blew a kiss toward the ceiling, then started to sob, her body racking fiercely under the pressure of years of emotional turmoil finally giving birth.
-
Fifty-Five
FBI Office, Quantico, Virginia
Three days later, 9:50 AM Eastern Standard Time
Jack would probably be in meetings with the director of the FBI for the foreseeable future. While the director had given his approval for the operation, its traumatic ending necessitated some explanation. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to Jack, and I was feeling the weight of that burden on my shoulders. After all, I had been the one to suggest a meet between Frank and Michelle. My mind kept going around and around, trying to untangle it all. Even looking back, given what I’d known then, I probably would have suggested it all over again—that is, without knowing the outcome. We should have just moved on her when she walked in the door, but we’d blindly wanted to go for the confession, for the solid proof. If only we’d known just how much she wanted for this all to end, to see her mission through. It pained me to admit how right on the mark Kelly had been about her leaving breadcrumbs for us to follow. But things were always clearer looking backward. The calls between Frank and Michelle had become shorter and shorter. There was already a wedge growing between them. We’d failed to discern the meaning.
Jack had assigned me with the task of interviewing Michelle Evans, and I had yet to meet such an interesting—and conflicted—person. I’d sat down with her after we brought her in from the Regency to the Baltimore police station. Michelle was sitting in the interview room, shoulders and chin high when I entered.
“Frank Evans was the devil.” Michelle speaks with such clarity and definitiveness.
“He was also your father.” Ancestry Labs had confirmed such to Nadia. Michelle had sent a sample of her hair and Frank’s for comparison.
“That’s just DNA.” She traces a finger in a circle on the table. “I’ll only be my mother’s daughter.”
I let a few seconds pass in silence, then proceed to remove crime scene photos of Wise, Miller, Sherman, Reid, Marsha Doyle, and the two victims from the Baltimore motel. I set out each one slowly and facing her.
Michelle’s gaze goes to each one as I lay it down, and she touches the corners for every one but Doyle’s. She stops all movement, sitting there still and pale, like she’d been struck.
“Ms. Evans—”
“Please call me Ms. Foster, my mother’s maiden name.”
“Who killed her?” I gesture to Doyle’s photo, and Michelle pushes it toward me.
“The devil killed her.” She sniffles and refuses eye contact.
She’d led us to the location of the Glock G19 that had been used to murder Doyle and the M40 that she’d used for sniping. She claimed both had been bought off the street months ago.
I lift the picture of Doyle. “Did you and your father work together to kill the maid?”
“No!” she screams.
“What about them?” I point to the motel victims.
“Check the handgun for prints! You won’t find mine on it.”
I straighten, slowly. Herrera’s officers who went back to Marsha Doyle’s building found a witness who was able to positively ID Frank Evans as hanging around the building. I tend to believe that he pulled the trigger on Doyle. I’m not sure where I stand on the motel victims yet. Neither Frank or Michelle can be placed at the motel, but management wasn’t exactly being cooperative with us or the police.
I put a photo of Frank on the table.
Michelle snatches it and crumples it into a ball. “I hate that man.” Tears fall down her cheeks, but otherwise, she doesn’t look to be crying. “He put me up to all of this. He put it into my head that they needed to pay for what they did to my mother. My mother was nothing but good and sweet and kind.” She throws the photo, and it just misses the side of my head. “She believed in forgiveness. Frank was evil, a coward. He left us to fend for ourselves. Mom was devastated. I…I…”
“You what?” I say kindly.
“I grew up, joined the Marines, and tried to find him.”
“You wanted to know why he’d left.”
“I did.” A sickly-sweet admission carries on a honeycomb voice. “I sought—no, hungered for—his approval.”
“Did you ask him why he left when you saw him at your mother’s funeral?”
Michelle bites on her bottom lip and nods.
“And what did he tell you, Ms. Foster?”
Her eyes glisten at the name, and a brief smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “He told me it was the fault of these men.” She spits on the photos of her victims. “He said their actions set all the heartbreak into motion for our family, and it was time to hurt them.”
“But you sent hurtful photos to some of their widows,” I say. “Why hurt them?”
“I sent them to all of the women.” She meets my gaze.
So, some must not have mentioned them or received them for one reason or another.
“You had to know the pictures would hurt the women.” I still wish for an answer as to why she’d sent them.
“I thought that by knowing what kind of men th
eir husbands were, I might ease their grief.”
I nod, stuffing down any remnants of my personal guilt into a dark, dark place inside of me.
She looks down at the photos of all the victims again, and I see both sorrow and satisfaction sweep across her face when her gaze touches the four who raped her mother. “It’s over now,” she says and closes her eyes.
“Brandon?” Kelly’s bark pulled me out of my recollection. From the way she was staring at me with her brows arched, she must have been trying to get my attention for a while.
“Yeah?”
“You okay over there?” She was sitting at her desk, what used to be Zach’s desk, near mine.
“I’m good.” If I said fine, she’d jump all over that and try to profile me. “Guess I don’t need to ask how your first case was.” The best way to shift the attention from oneself was to quickly direct it elsewhere.
“Not really.” She took a deep breath. “I keep thinking I should have known this was going to happen.”
I wasn’t about to admit the same thing. Call it a matter of pride. “Sometimes things go sideways.”
She met my eyes, and I realized how ridiculous that was to say.
“Do you think Jack’s going to be all right?” she asked.
“I sure hope so.”
Paige walked toward us, holding a coffee. “How was that for your first case with the BAU?”
Kelly looked from Paige to me. “We were just talking about that.”
“I bet it was nothing like working with the Miami PD,” Paige said.
“Not even close. I was just telling Brandon that I wished there was some way we could have known she was going to shoot him and stopped it. If we had, Frank would be still alive, and Jack wouldn’t be fighting on our behalf with the director.”
“You don’t need to worry about Jack.” Paige took a sip of her coffee. “You never have to worry about Jack.”
Past Deeds Page 30