CHAPTER SEVEN
Darnell called Kate and Marcus before dawn that morning. Kate had endured a fitful night, not quite suffering the repeated dream she had of Cox entering her room and strangling her to death but constantly hearing his whispers in her ear.
Darnell’s call woke her, followed immediately by a rancid smell that first made Kate think he was calling to alert her to some emergency in the hotel’s water or ventilation system.
Then she remembered that Darnell wasn’t staying in their hotel. She blinked, sat up, and realized that the smell was her. Once again, she’d soaked her bed through with sweat. The effort she’d put into cleaning herself up yesterday was utterly wasted.
She lifted a shaking hand to her forehead, still damp, and sighed heavily. Right back where she’d started from. All of the progress she’d made getting past the psychological torture Cox had put her through erased.
Marcus answered Kate’s phone when he saw Kate wasn’t going to. “Yeah.” He listened for a moment. Then his eyes widened. “Yeah? Awesome! Kate! He’s got a lead for us!” He listened another moment, and his smile faded a little. “Correction, not a lead. A motive.”
“That’s still progress,” Kate replied. Her voice, thankfully, betrayed none of the lingering fear of her night terrors.
She got out of bed and rushed to the bathroom, got halfway there, and realized she hadn’t brought a change of clothes with her. Cheeks burning, she returned to her bag, grabbed it, and headed back, ignoring Marcus’s concerned frown.
She toweled herself off and put deodorant on after she dressed. It helped a little bit. Maybe with the smells of Philadelphia’s field office competing and a fresh cup of coffee to focus on, Marcus would forget about the smell of Kate’s own special brand of saltwater.
She stepped out of the restroom and found him half-dressed. He was wearing boxers and an undershirt, but his slacks and button-down rested on the bed. She stopped, and her throat closed as her eyes traveled along his physique.
She’d seen him in states of undress before. Hell, she’d seen him wearing nothing but a towel before. When you were partners in the FBI, you learned to not be shy.
But knowing how close they’d come to being more than just professional partners made the sight of him tantalizing. She hated it. On top of everything else, she now had to deal with a flareup of her attraction to him.
“I’ll drive,” Marcus suggested.
“Yeah, good idea.”
They made the drive in silence. Marcus’s lips were pressed together, his shoulders tight as he fought not to say everything she knew he wanted to say. As for Kate, she was too busy looking everywhere but at her partner to wonder what her lips and shoulders looked like.
God damn it, Kate. You two were getting along again, too. You were working well together. You were almost friends again without any of the awkwardness.
“You can keep looking if you want, but you won’t find anyone.”
Kate blinked. “What?”
“Anyone sexier than me. You can keep looking, but you won’t find anyone.”
Kate looked at him now. His lips were crooked in a small smile, and his eyes danced. She loved him so much she could have cried.
Instead, she shoved him lightly. “Screw you.”
The car swerved as Marcus corrected. “Hey! Watch it! I know I’m dazzling, but I look a lot prettier not spread across the highway.”
She rolled her eyes and gave him a finger. “You’re stupid.” She turned away again, this time to hide the smile that spread across her face.
And just like that, her nightmares, the morning awkwardness, her worries about what might have been: all of it was gone. Marcus had proven once more to be a good partner and an awesome friend. Now they could both focus on the job.
Darnell met them in his office. Steaming mugs of coffee and a box of donuts rested on the desk, and two folding chairs taken from a briefing room sat on either side of his.
He greeted them in his stoic, basso voice, but his eyes gleamed as he showed them what he’d dug up on Daniel Avery and Gerald Mace. Kate skimmed the notes and lifted her eyebrow. “Wow. That would do it.”
“Withholding exculpatory evidence and preventing the acquittal of a man who ended up murdered in prison on a forty-stint?” Marcus said. “Yeah, I’d say that’s motive for murder.”
“Did Avery have any family?” Kate asked.
“None living here. They moved away decades ago. I’m having some grunts dig into it to ensure none of them hopped over to Philly for a working vacation, but so far nothing’s come up.”
“What about friends?”
Darnell chuckled bitterly. “Nearly as I can tell, the only friends Avery ever had jumped ship the moment they were caught robbing that jewelry store.”
“It doesn’t have to be someone personally involved with the case,” Marcus said. He glanced at Kate. “I know you were working off that assumption, but past commandment killers haven’t been addressing personal wrongs.”
“Some have,” Kate reminded him. “But you’re right. We might not be looking for a loved one. Have we confirmed that it’s document tampering? Just playing devil’s advocate here, but could it be that the defense really did miss the deadline?”
“Does it matter?” Marcus asked. “I mean, video evidence places Avery outside the store at the time of the shooting. If he’s not there when the shooting happens, then he’s probably not the killer. I could see this being a mistrial, but not a conviction. Not with something like this.”
“It was a different time in ’91,” Darnell said.
“You’ve got an upstanding white business owner brutally murdered during a robbery perpetrated by three young Black men.
You’ve got two perpetrators gone, likely never to be found, and one man with a gun, blood and GSR on his sleeve, and a bad attitude when he gets arrested. Police needed an example.”
Marcus scowled. “Shit. So, the police just propped him up because they had him, and evidence be damned.”
“Racism is a stain that never wipes clean,” Darnell said.
Kate shook her head. People found so many stupid reasons to kill other people. How the hell had the human race survived as long as it had?
“Your report said there was a witness accused of providing false testimony,” Kate said.
“Yes. The witness claimed to see Daniel shoot the victim, stand over him, say something that sounded like, ‘Yeah, bitch!’ and shoot him again.”
Marcus scoffed. “Good ol’ eyewitnesses. Perfectly reliable evidence.”
“Do we have a name?” Kate asked.
Darnell sighed. “I’m arguing back and forth with the court on that one. My contact there balked when I asked, and the court is understandably reluctant to release the witness’s name for fear that they’ll be targeted for retaliation.”
“So, release it to us,” Marcus said. “It’s not like we’re going to post a picture of their address on social media.”
“I told them that, but it’s in bureaucratic hell right now,” Darnell said.
“What about newspapers?” Kate asked.
“Witness statements were all given under condition of anonymity, and thirty years later, no one has whatever notes they scribbled during press interviews.”
Kate crossed her arms and tapped her finger on her bicep. “We need that witness’s name. The court is right to be concerned about retaliation. This killer murdered Gerald Mace for bearing false witness, and if the Daniel Avery case is the specific motive, then that witness is next on the list.”
“I told them that, too,” Darnell said. “It’s still in bureaucratic hell.”
“Well, keep on them until it’s out of—”
Kate was interrupted when Darnell’s phone rang. He frowned when he saw the number. “Excuse me.”
He answered the phone and listened for about twenty seconds. His shoulders slumped, and his eyes smoldered with the resigned frustration of a veteran law enforcement officer receiving bad news they expected but still hoped they wouldn’t receive.
“I understand. Thank you.” He hung up and looked at Kate and Marcus. “We have another victim. Wilmington, Delaware. Detective says her mouth was sewn shut, too.”
Kate’s chin dropped to her chest. Marcus lifted his hands and put them on the back of his head, both agents venting their frustration with silent demonstration.
“Guess we found our witness,” Marcus grumbled.
“Wilmington is less than an hour away,” Darnell replied. “I’ll drive.”
The sun rose as the three agents left the Philadelphia Field Office, bathing them in orange and gold and softening the chill of the winter morning.
No boon waited on their horizon today, though. The end of their rainbow led only to death.