CHAPTER TEN
Riley guided their rental car to a stop in front of the Cady residence, a modest two-story house with cheerful yellow paint and white trim—the very picture of middle-class normalcy.
Yet, she knew, within these ordinary walls lived a woman who had once shared her life with their prime murder suspect.
“Nice place,” Ann Marie remarked, gathering her notebook from the car’s console. “Hard to imagine this connected to our case.”
Riley understood precisely what her younger colleague meant. After the opulence of Victoria Ashworth’s mansion and the Grand Regency Hotel, this slice of suburban tranquility seemed to exist in another universe entirely.
They followed the recently swept walkway past carefully maintained flower beds and approached the front door together.
Riley pressed the doorbell. For a moment, only silence answered them.
Then came the sound of approaching footsteps, and the door opened to reveal a man in his late thirties with kind eyes behind wire-framed glasses.
He wore a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, a tie loosened at the neck, and khaki pants—the usual uniform of an educator.
“Rodney Cady?” Riley asked, already reaching for her credentials.
The man’s expression shifted from polite inquiry to wariness. “Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m Special Agent Riley Paige with the FBI,” she said, displaying her badge. “This is my colleague, Special Agent Ann Marie Esmer. We’d like to speak with your wife, Rusty Cady, if she’s available.”
Rodney’s posture stiffened, his hand tightening on the doorframe. “May I ask what this is about?”
“It concerns an ongoing investigation,” Riley replied, keeping her tone professional but not unkind. “We have a few questions that might help with our case.”
“My wife has already answered enough questions from law enforcement over the years,” Rodney said, his voice carrying the kind of patience that Riley recognized from her own interactions with teachers.
“His parole officer was just here asking about him a few months ago. She told him everything she knows, which isn’t much. ”
“We understand,” Ann Marie put in, her voice taking on the gentle, reassuring quality that had proven so effective with traumatized witnesses. “But the situation has evolved, and we believe Mrs. Cady might be able to help us prevent further harm.”
Before Rodney could respond, a woman’s voice called from inside the house.
“Who is it, Rod?”
A moment later, Rusty Cady appeared behind her husband. She was a woman in her mid-thirties with copper-colored hair pulled back in a practical ponytail and eyes that held a wariness born of hard-earned experience. She wore jeans and a simple blouse, yet carried herself with a quiet dignity.
“FBI,” Rodney explained, glancing back at his wife. “They want to talk to you about Marcus.”
At the mention of her ex-husband’s name, something flickered in Rusty’s eyes—a complex emotion that Riley couldn’t immediately identify. Recognition, perhaps. Resignation.
“It’s okay,” Rusty said, placing a hand lightly on her husband’s arm. “Let them in.”
Rodney hesitated, protective instinct evident in the set of his shoulders. Then he stepped aside, allowing the agents to enter.
The home’s interior matched its exterior—comfortable, lived-in, decorated with the accumulated treasures of a shared life.
Family photos lined the walls of the entryway, none showing any trace of Marcus Dalton.
Riley noted the careful excision of that chapter from the visual narrative of Rusty’s life.
“Please, have a seat,” Rusty gestured toward the living room, where a sofa and two armchairs surrounded a coffee table scattered with what looked like graded papers.
Rodney quickly gathered those up, stacking them on a side table before taking a seat beside his wife on the sofa.
Riley and Ann Marie settled into the armchairs opposite them.
“Mrs. Cady,” Riley began, “we appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. I understand you’ve already spoken with your ex-husband’s parole officer.”
“Yes,” Rusty confirmed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “About three months ago. He said Marcus had missed his check-in and they were trying to locate him.”
“Our visit concerns something more serious than a parole violation,” Riley said, watching Rusty’s face carefully. “We’re investigating two homicides that occurred within the past seventy-two hours. We have reason to believe your ex-husband may be involved.”
The color drained from Rodney’s face. And Rusty’s expression subtly changed—as if she’d been quietly expecting and dreading this news for years.
“Who?” she asked simply.
“Margaret Thornfield and Victoria Ashworth,” Riley replied. “Both were found poisoned with arsenic-laced wine.”
Rodney’s hand moved to cover his wife’s. “Oh my God,” he breathed. “Rusty, that’s—these are the people who—”
“The woman who testified against him and one of the board members from the country club,” Rusty finished for him. “I remember their names.”
“You understand why we’re here, then,” Ann Marie said softly. “We need to find Marcus before anyone else gets hurt.”
Rodney suddenly straightened, alarm replacing his initial shock. “Wait—is Rusty in danger? Is he coming after her, too?”
Riley looked to Rusty and saw the face of a woman who had lived with this possibility for years, had processed it long before the FBI appeared at her door. But she also saw that Rusty’s demeanor had changed, her whole body tenser now.
“I don’t think so,” Rusty said, turning slightly to face her husband, but speaking with less conviction than before. “If Marcus is killing people connected to his conviction, I’m not on that list. I wasn’t involved in the trial.”
“But you divorced him while he was in prison,” Rodney insisted, the pitch of his voice rising. “You remarried. Surely that would make him—”
“Rod,” Rusty interrupted gently but firmly. “Marcus doesn’t care about me anymore. He never really did. What he cares about is his pride, his reputation. The people who publicly humiliated him by exposing what he’d done.”
Riley noted the careful way Rusty had constructed this explanation—truthful enough to be believable, yet shaped to calm her husband’s fears.
It spoke of years spent managing the aftermath of trauma, of learning to navigate a world where your past could arrive unannounced on your doorstep at any moment.
And yet Riley felt the woman struggling against a world of suppressed fear.
“Mrs. Cady is likely correct,” Riley confirmed. “The killings appear to be targeted at individuals directly connected to your ex-husband’s arrest and conviction. The methodology suggests careful planning, not spontaneous rage.”
This seemed to offer Rodney little comfort. He rose from the sofa, pacing to the window and back. “This is exactly what I was afraid of when that parole officer showed up. I told you we should have moved, changed our names—”
“Rodney,” Rusty’s voice was quiet but carried enough weight to halt her husband mid-sentence. “We’ve been through this.”
“But two people are dead!” Rodney’s voice cracked with strain. “People connected to him. And these agents are here because they think you know something that could help them find him. He might think so, too.”
“I already told the parole officer everything I know,” Rusty maintained, her jaw tightening. “Marcus and I haven’t spoken since the divorce was finalized. That was nearly three years ago.”
“They wouldn’t be here if they thought you had nothing to offer,” Rodney replied. He turned to Riley and Ann Marie. “My wife has answered all the questions she could. What more do you want from her?”
Riley could sense the conversation spiraling toward an impasse. Rodney’s protective instincts, while understandable, were becoming an obstacle to their investigation. She glanced at Ann Marie, a silent signal they both understood. The situation called for Ann Marie’s empathetic touch.
Ann Marie rose smoothly from her chair, crossing to where Rodney stood. “Mr. Cady, I understand your concern,” she said, her voice carrying that remarkable quality that made people feel truly heard. “You want to protect your wife from a painful past. That’s admirable.”
Rodney’s defensive posture eased slightly under Ann Marie’s sympathetic gaze.
“But right now, others may be at risk,” she continued. “Whatever insights Rusty might have—even small details she might not realize are significant—could help us prevent more deaths.”
Ann Marie gestured toward a desk visible through a doorway off the living room. “Perhaps you could give us a few minutes alone with your wife? I promise we’ll be brief, and she can end the conversation anytime she wishes.”
Riley watched, impressed despite having seen Ann Marie work her magic before.
The younger agent had an intuitive understanding of human psychology that rivaled Riley’s own, though it worked differently.
Where Riley’s talent lay in understanding killers, Ann Marie excelled at connecting with witnesses and survivors.
Rodney hesitated, looking to his wife for guidance.
Rusty told him, “It’s okay, Rod. Why don’t you go grade those algebra tests? I’ll be fine.”
After another moment’s hesitation, Rodney relented. “I’ll be right in there if you need me,” he said, pointing to the home office. He gathered the stack of papers from the side table and disappeared through the doorway, casting one last concerned glance over his shoulder.
Once they were alone, Ann Marie returned to her seat, leaning forward slightly. “Thank you, Mrs. Cady. We’ll try not to take too much of your time.”
She could see Rusty relax subtly now that her husband had left the room. “You can call me Rusty. And I appreciate you being gentle with Rod. He’s... protective.”
“That’s understandable,” Ann Marie replied. “May I lead the questioning, Agent Paige?”
Riley gestured for her to proceed, recognizing that Ann Marie had established a rapport with Rusty that might yield better results than her own more direct approach.
“Rusty,” Ann Marie began, “do you have any idea where Marcus might be now? Any place he mentioned during your marriage, somewhere he might feel safe or comfortable?”
Rusty shook her head. “No more than I told the parole officer. Marcus kept most of his life compartmentalized. He had friends I never met, places he went that I wasn’t allowed to ask about. That was part of the control. Keeping me separate, isolated.”
Riley felt a familiar disappointment—the sense of a potential lead dissolving into another dead end. If Rusty truly had no information about Marcus’s whereabouts, they were no closer to finding him than they had been before.
“When was the last time you had any contact with Marcus?” Ann Marie asked, her pen poised over her notebook.
“The divorce was finalized three years ago,” Rusty replied. “I filed as soon as he went to prison. He contested it initially, but eventually signed the papers. That was the last communication between us.”
“Can you tell us about your marriage?” Ann Marie asked gently. “What kind of man is Marcus Dalton?”
Rusty’s gaze drifted to the window, where the evening light was fading into dusk.
“Brilliant,” she said after a moment. “Absolutely brilliant. That’s what drew me to him initially.
He has this way of making you feel like you’re the only person in the world when he focuses his attention on you.
Like you’re special for having caught his interest.”
She absently twisted her wedding ring, as though to emphasize that her life had changed.
“But there’s a cruelty in him that he keeps hidden until you’re in too deep to leave easily. It starts small—criticism disguised as concern, jealousy presented as passion. By the time I realized what was happening, I was isolated from friends, family, anyone who might have helped me see clearly.”
Riley watched Rusty’s face, recognizing the narrative of coercive control that she’d encountered in countless domestic violence cases. The gradual erosion of self, the carefully constructed cage built not of bars but of fear and manipulation.
“His intelligence makes him dangerous,” Rusty continued. “He can plan ten steps ahead, anticipate how people will react, use their own psychology against them. And he’s patient. God, he’s patient. He can wait years for the right moment to act.”
A chill ran through Riley at these words. Patient. Calculating. The very qualities she’d expect in the killer who had waited for Victoria Ashworth in her wine cellar, who had methodically stalked Margaret Thornfield to her hotel room.
Ann Marie’s expression was compassionate but focused. “Thank you for sharing that, Rusty. I know it can’t be easy to revisit these memories.”
Riley began to mentally compose her last questions, assuming the interview was winding down.
They’d confirmed their suspicions about Marcus Dalton’s character, but had gained little practical information that might lead them to his current location.
Another dead end in a case that seemed increasingly urgent.
But then Ann Marie surprised her.
“But Rusty,” she said, her voice gentle but direct, “you’re not telling us everything you know.”