CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marcus rubbed exhaustion from his eyes. At this point, it would probably be better for him to just give up and go to sleep, but he wasn’t ready to do that yet. He wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Not until he had something, some thread to pull that didn’t unravel the moment he tugged.
In front of him, the desktop monitor of the office he was using had a list of DMV and tax records for the Smith family of Wilmington, Delaware.
Personal information such as social security and license numbers were redacted, but his FBI clearance allowed him access to addresses and employment and education records.
On his laptop was the same information only about Daniel Avery this time.
On his phone were the case files Darnell had obtained.
Marcus was going through all three of these pieces of information with a fine-toothed comb, looking for something that would connect the two and therefore their three victims.
He was weary. That was the right word, too. Weary. He was physically and mentally exhausted, and he was also bored and impatient. Every definition of weary applied to him and knowing that there was no end in sight yet only exacerbated that weariness.
Sitting still didn’t help. This was Kate’s wheelhouse.
She was the one who endlessly pored over details, looking for the little nuggets of gold buried in the Earth.
He was the guy who beat feet, looking for clues, finding witnesses, putting himself in the shoes of their victims and their killers.
Being cooped up in an office was driving him insane.
But he had nowhere to go right now, and a brisk walk in the night air of Philadelphia wouldn’t do anything to help the case.
So here he was, sifting through dirt, hoping to find a little nugget that would tell him where the mother lode might be.
A knock sounded at the door. Kate. She carried two cups of coffee and offered him one. He chuckled and motioned for her to join him.
She set one cup on the desk in front of him and leaned against the other side, nursing her own cup of coffee.
Marcus started to get up to offer her the chair, but the way her hips turned when she leaned against the desk was achingly beautiful, and when she crossed her legs, the fabric of her pants moved over her thighs so well it made his jaw slack.
So, he stayed where he was. Which made him a piece of shit, but that had already been established.
Kate smiled, and Marcus wished he had the courage to ask if that wry smile meant she knew what he was thinking. Instead, she said, “I need you to know that I’m not obsessing.”
Marcus chuckled. That was one way to shatter the illusion. “Okay.”
“I mean it. I do need to understand why Cox is obsessed with me, and I need to know what his connection with my father is, but I’m not going to put myself in danger again. I learned my lesson the last time.”
Marcus sipped his coffee to give himself time to think of a good response. He couldn’t, so he went with his original response. “What does it matter, Kate?” Kate’s eyes flashed, and Marcus said, “No, please, before you jump down my throat, listen.
“Your father’s dead. Cox is a serial killer.
Whatever their past, it doesn’t change the present.
Nothing you do is going to bring your father back.
Nothing Cox does is going to make him any deader.
Cox is obsessed with you; I’ll grant you that, but whether he’s obsessed with you or not, he’s a killer, and he needs to be brought to justice.
It doesn’t really matter who brings him in.
” Or kills him. “It could be you; it could be me, it could be Bob the Pool Cleaner. What matters is that he can’t kill people anymore. ”
“And finding out the reason for his obsession with me could help us find him.”
Marcus sighed. “We’ve found him because he told us where to look.”
“He told me where to look.”
Marcus frowned. This was the big weakness in his argument, the big hole in the assertion that Kate needed to step back from this.
Cox wasn’t just obsessed with Kate. He was communicating with her, and as long as he was communicating with her, she remained the best chance they had at finding and stopping him.
They needed another way. Maybe that connection Darnell talked about between Cox and his victims. Maybe it would be something in Kate’s father’s past that held the key to understanding Cox’s twisted motives. Something, anything that didn’t rely on Kate being involved.
This was killing her, and Marcus had a front-row seat watching the woman he loved waste away and lose everything that made her who she was to some crazed psychopath and possible sexual deviant who decided he liked Kate’s freckles enough to need to see the light die in her eyes.
Kate’s fingertips moved over his cheeks, soft and delicate, like the first flakes of snow. “Hey. I’m okay. Really.”
Marcus lifted his eyes to hers. But you’re not.
You’re barely holding on. I’ve lived with you for a month and seen every waking moment consumed by this man.
You barely talk to your mother, you barely talk to me, you’re lying to your therapist, and you’re not even eating or showering unless you’re afraid someone will catch you showing what your real state of mind is.
You’re dying right in front of me, and all I can do is watch it happen.
He turned back to his computers. Her fingers fell away and broke his heart anew. He nodded at the screens. “I can’t find any record of the Smiths prior to their move to Delaware in 1991. It’s like they appeared out of nowhere.”
The lightbulb clicked for both of them at the same moment. They shared a wide-eyed look, then Marcus wheeled to his laptop. This time, instead of focusing on Daniel Avery’s criminal record, he looked up personal details.
A birth record came up, confirming that Daniel Avery was born at St. Mary’s Hospital of Philadelphia to Georgia and Theodore Avery on July 13, 1969. He looked at the desktop computer where two driver license images revealed the weathered, haunted images of Georgia and Theodore Smith.
Kate and Marcus shared another look.
“Search for Nora Avery,” Kate said. “See if anything pops up.”
Marcus entered the name into the search. Two hundred nineteen results populated. He filtered the results to the Philadelphia area, narrowing it down to sixty-four birth records between 1900 and the present day.
Nora Smith was fourteen in 1994 when Donna Frick launched her crusade to ruin the Smith family’s life. He narrowed the year range to 1992 to 1996, allowing a margin of error in case her date of birth was changed when the family changed their names.
That yielded three results. The first two were duds, but the final result was a birth certificate for Nora Avery, daughter of Georgia and Theodore Avery on May 7th, 1980.
Kate and Marcus looked at each other. Kate’s eyes were bright with excitement.
“That’s it,” she said. “Nora Avery is Nora Smith.”
Marcus did the math in his head. “She would have been eleven when Daniel was convicted of murder. He would have died in prison the summer she moved to Delaware.”
“That’s when she suffered cruelty at Donna Frick’s hand.”
“Her whole family suffered cruelty,” Marcus said, “and I’m willing to bet they had a hard time of it in Philly after the murder conviction, too.”
“So, they leave Philly, change their names, and start over. Only somehow Donna Frick knows who they are and attacks them constantly until she drives them out of Wilmington. After that…”
“Let’s find out.”
They kept working throughout the night, downing coffee steadily. The records were scattered and buried deeply, but slowly, they painted a picture of the life of the Avery family after Daniel’s murder.
The Wilmington events were repeated over and over throughout their lives.
They’d change their names, move to a different town, and eventually, people would find out who they really were.
They moved four times during Nora’s high school tenure.
Nora Smith became Nora Jones became Nora Jackson became Nora Montgomery.
Finally, Nora Montgomery graduated from Norwalk High School in California and joined the Peace Corps. She disappeared after that. There was a record of her return to the United States a year later, but after that, nothing.
“She probably changed her name again,” Kate mused. “Left her parents behind and tried to wash her hands completely of that life.”
Indeed, there was no record of Nora’s presence at either funeral of Georgia Montgomery, deceased April 20th, 2024, or Theodore Montgomery, deceased May 16th, 2026.
Kate and Marcus looked at each other. Only a few months later, Cox broke out of prison. He spent over two months murdering people who broke the eighth commandment with the help of a currently incarcerated accomplice.
And maybe he had discovered Nora, fragile, broken, alone, bitter at the destruction of her family that she was helpless to stop.
Maybe he had offered her guidance, comfort, purpose.
He had fueled the rage burning in her heart and set her on a mission to kill the people she believed responsible for her brother’s wrongful conviction, the event that started her family on their path to destruction.
That was Cox’s specialty after all: finding people who were hurting and twisting that hurt to his advantage.
Now all that remained was to find her before she lashed out in her anger and took another innocent life on his behalf.