by Blake Pierce
“You mean talk to her? Is this about that attempted hack last month?” Wade asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. “She’s probably in her office. She wasn’t in bed when I woke up. You want me to go get her?”
Ryan glanced over at Jessie and she nodded slightly. She wanted him to deliver the news so she could focus exclusively on Wade’s reaction.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Wade, but your wife was found dead this morning.”
The man stared at Ryan as if he’d spoken in a foreign language.
“Wait, what?” he finally asked.
“Ellen Wade was found dead in a ravine near Mile High Muscle.”
Jessie studied Gerard Wade. The eyes were no longer bleary. He was fully alert. There wasn’t grief on his face, just perplexed shock. Of course, there wasn’t any standard reaction to getting news like this, so Jessie wasn’t inclined to draw too many conclusions. But if he felt guilty about something, it wasn’t discernible from his expression.
“That’s not true,” he muttered slowly.
“I’m afraid it is true Mr. Wade,” she told him. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Okay,” he muttered, though he didn’t move.
Garrett took the initiative and led them all to the living room. Once they sat down, Jessie launched in. The rawness of the moment was a double-edged sword, making it painful to discuss what happened but also allowing for more truthful responses.
“Mr. Wade,” she said gently, “I apologize in advance but we need to ask you some questions which may be quite difficult to hear. Please don’t take offense. It’s just that we’re trying to get to the bottom of this and every minute is crucial.”
“Why?” he asked. “What happened?”
“Ellen was murdered,” Jessie said evenly. “It appears she was killed last night while leaving the gym. Her car was still there this morning.”
“No,” he protested, “that can’t be right. I was texting with her as she was leaving. I can show you. I even told Cal he had to go because she’d be home soon.”
“Who’s Cal, Mr. Wade?” she asked.
“Cal Blackwood—he’s my neighbor, lives two doors down. We were watching the Ducks’ hockey game. It went into overtime but I said he had to leave anyway because Ellie gets pissed when he’s here late.”
“What time did Cal leave?” Ryan asked casually, as if he wasn’t fishing for an alibi.
“A few minutes after Ellie texted that she’d be home soon. I can check the time on my phone.”
“That message was sent at 10:49,” Jessie said. After checking Ellen’s phone, she’d committed much of the text data to memory already.
“Okay,” Wade said. “In that case, Cal probably left five minutes after that. It doesn’t take long for her drive home so he would have left quick. Wait, how did you know the time?”
“We have her phone, Mr. Wade,” Jessie told him, deciding it was time to get more aggressive. “We’ve looked at all the texts, including the one where you demanded an update from her after she’d just given you one.”
“That was just to make sure she wasn’t close when Cal was still here. She never even got back to me. Wait, are you saying she didn’t reply because she was dead?”
His voice rose unexpectedly. It seemed that after a long stretch of just not getting it, he was finally starting to comprehend that his wife had been murdered. Part of her wanted to let him process it. But she set that part aside. She needed answers before the kids woke up, while he was still vulnerable.
“Mr. Wade, I know this is a lot to take in,” Jessie said with what she hoped was firm empathy. “But right now, you need to answer our questions. Are you saying Cal can confirm your whereabouts last night?”
“Yes,” he said before adding. “Are you checking my alibi?”
“I am. We’re just trying to eliminate you as a suspect as fast as possible. Would you consent to providing your phone to us?”
“Why?” he asked.
“So we can verify your location last night using its GPS data,” Ryan explained. “We can get a court order if we need to but that takes time. You giving it to us now allow us to move much faster. We can eliminate you quicker. It’s also a show of goodwill. It indicates that you have nothing to hide.”
“Should I do that, Garrett?’ Wade asked turning to Deputy Hicks.
“That’s not my decision to make, Gerard,” Garrett said. “But if I was in your shoes, and I hadn’t done anything wrong, I’d do whatever I could to help the authorities solve this fast. And eliminating you as a suspect lets them move on to the next steps.”
“Okay,” Wade said. “It’s in the bedroom by the bed. I’ll go get it.”
Jessie shook her head at Garrett. She didn’t want the guy touching the phone again until they looked at it.
“That’s okay,” Garrett said softly, “I’ll get it. I know where your bedroom is.”
Once he left, Jessie took advantage of the deputy’s absence to pursue another line of questioning.
“Gerard,” she said, using his first name for the first time in the hopes of creating a conspiratorial bond between them, “I didn’t want to ask this in front of Garrett but I need to know: were you and Ellie having problems?”
To her surprise, his eyes suddenly welled up with tears. He nodded.
“Yeah,” he choked out. “Things have been pretty rocky lately. I work really hard and I have a long commute but she doesn’t get it. She thinks that I should dive into ‘family man’ mode the minute I get back home. And then she goes off to the gym or to do website maintenance for a client. Plus, she was always talking about how she had to help out people in her special business group. It never ended. We’ve argued a lot the last few months. No one said it but to be honest, I think we’re on the verge of separating.”
“Why didn’t you call anyone when she didn’t come home last night?” Ryan asked, not letting the guy get comfortable in his self-pity. Wade shrugged.
“I had a bit to drink and I guess I just crashed before she got home. It happens sometimes. I slept right through the night until I heard you knocking. She wasn’t in bed so I figured she was in her office or making breakfast. I didn’t know anything was wrong until you told me.”
“Daddy?”
They all turned around to see a little girl with blonde hair who looked to be about six standing at the far end of the room. She was wearing footy pajamas and holding a stuffed giraffe. The sight of her made Jessie’s heart crack a little. The girl was around the same age as Jessie when her own father murdered her mother in front of her and left her to die in a freezing cabin next to the body. The similarities were unsettling.
“Hey sweetie,” he said, rushing over to her and scooping her up. “Did daddy and his friends wake you up?”
“No,” she said, her arms wrapped around her father but her eyes fixed on Jessie and Ryan. “I had to go potty and heard you when I came out of my room. Who are they?”
She pointed accusingly at them. Her father seemed at a loss for words. Just then, Garrett came out of the hall behind her.
“Hi Estie,” he said warmly. “Do you remember me?”
“You’re Deputy G-Man!” she said excitedly. “You talked to my class at school.”
“That’s right,” he said, sounding as if his being here was the most natural thing in the world. “And I had such a fun time that I thought I’d come say hi again. If your daddy says that it’s okay, I might even be willing to take you and Geoff to school this morning.”
“But Mommy always does that,” she said suspiciously.
“I know,” Garrett replied casually. “But she can’t do it today and your daddy is super busy. Do you want to ride to school in a police car?”
Her misgivings disappeared immediately. She broke into a smile and nodded vigorously.
“Then why don’t you go get ready. We’ll whip up some breakfast for you and your brother and then I’ll be your chauffeur for the morning. Sound good?”
<
br /> “Yes,” she said, wriggling happily in her dad’s arms. He put her down and she darted back down the hall. Garrett watched her go then turned to Wade.
“I thought you could use some time to wrap your head around this,” he said as he walked over to Ryan and handed him Wade’s cell phone. “We may be able to keep Ellie’s identity as the victim quiet for a few more hours. That’ll give you a chance to work this through for yourself and get things in order before explaining it to the kids. It will also give them a little extra time to enjoy being children before everything crashes down around them. I’d suggest you pick them up before lunch though. By then, word will have spread.”
“Okay,” Wade said, though he didn’t seem to have gotten all of that. Garrett looked over at Jessie and Ryan to make sure he’d acted properly. Both nodded that he had.
“Is it okay if Wade takes a shower and gets dressed now?” he asked. “I can make the kids some breakfast, drop them off at school, and then have him meet me at the station to give a formal statement.”
“That sounds good,” Ryan said. “We’ll leave you to it while we follow up on some other leads.”
They let themselves out and were halfway down the driveway to the car when Jessie finally spoke.
“Exactly what leads were you thinking we should follow up on?” she asked. “I think that between Wade’s hockey buddy alibi and his phone GPS, we both doubt he’s going to end up being our guy.”
“I agree. That’s why I was actually hoping you might have a suggestion,” he replied, sounding as defeated as she felt.
She didn’t have any that she was immediately excited about. But considering they had only hours before the case was taken from them and their true identities were potentially revealed, she decided to grasp at the most obvious straw.
“We do know of one connection among all three of these women: they were each members of the Wildpines Business Association. And we know that the husband of the woman who started the group doesn’t want us accessing their website’s chat forum. I say we start there.”
She could tell he thought it was a long shot too, but considering that he didn’t have any better ideas, he wisely kept his mouth shut.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The more Jessie studied the WBA website, the more frustrated she got. They were getting nowhere.
She and Ryan were sitting at the breakfast table in Rich McClane’s cabin, both with laptops open. Hannah was in her room, passing the time by watching episodes of The Office on her phone. She had asked if she could go to the Elevated Grounds coffeehouse again later to meet with her new friends and Jessie had agreed. After what felt like hours but was really only forty-five minutes, she looked up from her computer screen.
“This is a waste of time,” she said. “Until we get the DNA on that strand of hair or the warrant allowing us to look at the website’s chat section, we’re just blindly throwing darts. There’s no way to know the relationships among these people just from reviewing their websites.”
“I’ve been going back through articles in the local paper, The Wildpines Gazette, hoping to uncover something juicy,” Ryan said.
“And?”
“Nothing much. It’s a weekly paper funded by the very businesses it covers. Not surprisingly, most of the articles are fawning. Even the ones that hint at problems are intentionally bland. Maybe the WBA shouldn’t be our focus. After all, all the victims are attractive women of similar ages. Maybe the killer just goes for that type.”
“I don’t think so,” Jessie said, surprised at her own certainty. “I can’t explain why but I’m sure this business group is the key to these murders. This is a small town but there have to be dozens of women in their thirties nearby. Why these three? Two were blonde and one was a brunette. Only one has kids. Each of them was married but since Sarah Ripley wasn’t even a local, people might not even know she had a husband. The one thing we know for sure that all these women have in common is that they’re female small business owners of a certain age. I wouldn’t be surprised if the killer is somehow using the site to select his victims. Maybe they all wronged him or her in some way.”
“But how could we ever know that?” Ryan asked. “Even Garrett, with all his local knowledge, isn’t going to be privy to the internal battles of an insular business-centric group.”
Jessie sat thinking quietly for a moment. Ryan was right. Garret wouldn’t be of much use on this. They might have better luck randomly talking to WBA members in the hopes that one of them revealed some long-simmering dispute unknown to the general public. She scanned the alphabetical list of businesses on the list in the hope that one might jump out at her. She got to the end and sighed. None were obvious contenders. It was a crapshoot.
She stood up to stretch and to give Ryan a kiss on the cheek. As she did, she glanced at his screen, which still had The Wildpines Gazette site up. She glanced back at her own screen, which had the last few alphabetical member business listings. Then it clicked for her.
“I know who we should talk to,” she said.
“Who’s that?”
“Someone we should have already considered after what you said earlier. How about a business owner who is a member of the WBA, uses Ellen Wade’s website design services and covers the Wildpines business community, even in a toadying manner. Who’s the Editor-In-Chief of The Wildpines Gazette?”
Ryan clicked on the masthead link.
“Her name’s Lorraine Porter,” he said, looking up expectantly. Jessie smiled back.
“Let’s go say hi.”
*
For an ostensible journalist, Lorraine Porter didn’t come across as especially curious. In fact, Jessie thought she seemed allergic to probing questions.
Porter’s uneasiness was exacerbated by her physical discomfort. A large woman in her late forties with graying hair and weathered skin that suggested she’d lived most of her life in the harsh mountain weather, she shifted back and forth in her rolling chair. Her constant movement was making Jessie borderline seasick.
“Let’s try this again—” she said before Porter interrupted.
“I don’t understand what the big deal is,” the woman said, her already loud voice booming through the tiny Gazette newsroom. Her office was walled off from the rest of the three-person staff but it was clear the others could hear every word. “Unless you think the WBA is a secret front for a drug cartel or something, I’m not sure what you’re driving at.”
Jessie had to be careful how she proceeded. She and Ryan were hamstrung by twin concerns. They didn’t want to get too specific about why they were asking these questions. It seemed unwise to come out and say they were investigating three murders when only Clarice Kipling’s death—and not the manner of it—was public knowledge.
Equally unwise would be pushing too hard, which might compromise their false identities. The last thing they needed was for Porter’s reportorial instincts to kick in because she was curious about why two out-of-town investigators were looking into a local business group. So she tried to play the classified card.
“Ms. Porter, we’re not at liberty to reveal the nature of our investigation at this time. But if you’re forthcoming with us, we might be able to return the favor, perhaps with an exclusive down the line.”
“That’s a lovely offer, Ms. Barnes,” Porter said, lowering her voice for the first time. “But here’s the truth. We are a hyper-local paper. We cover lost hikers, forest fire outbreaks, and local school sports. When it comes to Wildpines shops, unless there was a break-in or someone goes out of business, we’re essentially a press release machine. We’re here to promote the town, not denigrate it. We’re certainly not looking to treat the inner workings of a local business association like it’s the Watergate scandal. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a standard local organization, nothing more.”
“Really?” Ryan pressed. “Wasn’t the person who started it brutally murdered four nights ago?” He managed to give the impression that he genuinely didn�
�t know the answer to that.
“Why do you assume that had something to do with the WBA?” Porter asked, her eyes narrowing. “Does this have anything to do with the body that was found by the Brightside Market this morning? Or the mysterious unpleasantness up on Rockview Drive on Tuesday night that I can’t get Garrett Hicks to tell me anything about?”
Jessie felt her chest tighten suddenly. These were questions they didn’t need Porter asking when they only had hours left before the whole world knew about the murders. Right now, they still had the advantage of relative freedom to move about and pursue leads. If the local newspaper editor started poking around, they wouldn’t even have that.
“I thought the Gazette was just a press release machine,” she shot back, hoping to distract the woman by baiting her. “Are you suddenly finding your journalistic integrity?”
“I—,” Porter started to say. But Jessie sensed she had her on the defensive and plowed ahead.
“What about the chat forum on the WBA website? Are you on it?”
“No,” Porter admitted, her face turning pink. “The forum is members only. You have to be invited and I wasn’t.”
“That doesn’t bother you?” Jessie pressed, happy to have moved the conversation away from unidentified murder victims. “Don’t you wonder what benefits they get from being in the members-only chat forum that you don’t?”
“It never occurred to me,” Porter said unconvincingly.
“Seriously?” Ryan asked incredulously. “I’m sorry but I have to ask: what does this group actually do? I mean, you already have a chamber of commerce. How does the WBA benefit members in any way the chamber doesn’t?”
“I’m not sure that it does, Mr. Hosea,” Porter replied, seeming to have found her bearings again. “But that’s not really the point. The Gazette—which means me—wants to be supportive of local businesses. The WBA may not do much. I guess it’s more of a mutual admiration society. But what’s wrong with that? Besides, if I had joined, people in town would ask why. I don’t need that. I really don’t think it’s much more complicated than that.”