Chapter Three
The prison required an appointment to visit an inmate, so I called on my way down. One of the advantages of my mother having
been the Maricopa County Attorney, and my brother a cop for twelve years, was that we had a good relationship with the prison
staff, so getting a last-minute visit scheduled wasn’t a problem.
iced coffee at Starbucks, grabbed a table, and opened my laptop to dig into the Swanson family.
Tess was faster at pulling backgrounds, but after years of working solo, I knew what I was doing.
My heart ached for the two kids left behind. I prayed they had a strong extended family to help them survive this tragedy.
I kept circling back to my conversation with Liz Swanson. Was my date with Cal the reason I didn’t push harder to meet last
night? I couldn’t say for sure, but I needed to figure that out. I had never let a relationship interfere with my job.
If Cal hadn’t been sitting at my kitchen table, would I have driven up to North Peoria and confronted Liz earlier?
Face-to-face, I could be very persuasive.
I would have learned what information she’d been holding back.
Maybe even get her to spill the name of the patient who had his file erased.
More details on the other patient she’d alluded to where a year had been missing from the chart.
What did they have in common? And mostly: Why would someone erase medical information?
She knew something unusual had happened, and because she was a nurse she would see things in the data that I might not understand.
She wanted to tell me everything she knew or suspected, otherwise she wouldn’t have called. My questions may have joggled
her memory.
If I had forced myself on her last night, Liz and her husband might still be alive.
Maybe.
Dammit.
First thing I did was check for information about the double homicide on the local news websites. There were few details.
Two Confirmed Dead in Shooting
Peoria, Arizona. A married couple were shot and killed in their vehicle outside their home in North Peoria at approximately
6:50 this morning, Peoria PD Sergeant Xavier Mendoza confirmed. Identities are being withheld until next of kin have been
notified.
There is no apparent motive to the shooting, and police are asking residents of the Willow Glen subdivision for help. If you
saw or heard anything between six and seven this morning on or near the 3200 block of Birch Glen Circle, please contact the
Peoria Police Department. A press conference is scheduled for this afternoon.
I checked the Peoria PD website; the press conference hadn’t happened yet. Phoenix PD often live streamed their press conferences. I didn’t know if Peoria did, but I should be able to view it later if I miss it.
I dug deeper into Liz’s background than I had this morning. She was forty-four, a nurse for twenty years, and a mother of
two. A University of Arizona grad—like both of my parents. My dad followed the Wildcats religiously and stayed active with
the alumni. He was always warm toward fellow U of A grads. That connection alone would’ve put Liz on his radar, and I could
see how they might be friendly.
She’d worked the last nine years at the VA medical center, after a stint in trauma care at HonorHealth, one of Arizona’s major
hospital networks. Though she hadn’t served in the military, her father had retired as a one-star general. He’d died eighteen
months ago in Virginia, where he’d lived with his second wife. Liz was an only child. I found little on her mother, only that
she lived in Florida and hadn’t remarried.
Her husband, Josh Swanson, was forty-five. They’d been married twenty-two years. He was a corporate lawyer for a major bank—U
of A undergrad, Arizona State University Law. Josh was from Phoenix. Liz had been born in Virginia but moved often with her
Army dad before landing at U of A, where I assumed she met Josh. They bought their 3,000-square-foot home when it was built
ten years ago. Their sons were now seventeen and sixteen.
Josh kept a low social media profile, rarely posting himself, but showing up often in Liz’s feed: sports shots of their kids,
family vacations. They lived modestly but comfortably: suburban home, two older but reliable cars, and they appeared to co-own
a cabin in Flagstaff with Josh’s three siblings. Mike, his brother who was tagged in many of the family photos, was the one
I’d seen this morning sprinting to the Swanson house.
They looked like a typical middle-class family. No red flags.
Now they were dead, leaving two kids behind.
Did her killer know she’d contacted me? How would they?
It didn’t add up. If what she saw was random, something she stumbled across during her shift, why would it make her a target
and how would anyone know what she’d seen?
She could have mentioned it to someone. A colleague? The attending physician? Could accessing the file alone have raised alarms?
What about the second file with a missing year? Who was it and had that file also been deleted?
Dad would have answers. He had remained silent about why he killed Dr. Klein. Without a motive, I didn’t accept his confession.
He was in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Dad had confessed and it was an off-limits subject. He made it clear, Mom
made it clear.
But today, I wouldn’t let him stay silent.
Unless you were a lawyer meeting with your client, all prisoner visits were in the community room.
It was Tuesday, so the visitors’ area wasn’t crowded. Weekends were packed, which was why I rarely visited Dad then. Mom came
every Sunday without fail, but I usually chose a weekday.
My heart fluttered and sank when Dad walked in. He was tall and lean. He’d never been heavy, but the weight loss since his
incarceration was noticeable, though not alarming. Dark blond hair liberally threaded with gray, green eyes lighting up when
they found mine. He smiled. And dammit, even with everything on my mind, I smiled back.
I’ve always felt closer to my dad than to Mom.
Jack said it was because Mom and I were “too much alike,” but it was more than that.
Dad was my hero—firm but fair, quiet but kind, principled yet compassionate.
He worked hard, showed up for everything, loved us without question.
He adored Mom and showed us what a strong marriage looked like.
He taught us what it meant to be an Angelhart: to give back, to love family, to stand tall.
So I would stand for him.
That he hadn’t stood for himself three and a half years ago, that he’d taken the fall and confessed to a murder he couldn’t
be guilty of, still tore me apart. Seeing him in a prison uniform broke me every time. Yet here he was, smiling, eyes bright
because I was here.
And I was about to gut him with the truth. Not to hurt, but to save him. It was time to stop hiding, stop lying. Time for
the truth. Time to let his family stand for him, like he always had for us.
“Margo,” he said as I hugged him. Physical contact wasn’t allowed, but brief touches were usually overlooked.
We sat across from each other.
“You doing okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “Rafe came with your mother Sunday, which was nice. And Jack and Tess visited Friday. Why didn’t you tell
me about your new boyfriend?”
I hesitated. “It’s new . . .”
“He’s in the DEA?”
“Yeah.” I wasn’t ready to talk about my love life, but he seemed eager for information and I didn’t want to disappoint. “Cal
Rafferty,” I said. “We met on that case I told you about in September, the high school honor student who died?”
He nodded. “I remember.”
“We like each other. It’s new. But he’s a good guy. He cooks. In fact, he made me pasta and homemade gelato last night. Can
you believe that?”
“Impressive,” Dad said. “You deserve it.”
Dad might have been the only one in my family who hadn’t been all in when I dated Rick Devlin. I asked, “Why didn’t you think
Rick and I would work?”
He tilted his head, looked at me strangely, as if surprised by the question. Which I suppose he should be because I don’t think I ever asked for his approval on any man I dated, even though I always wanted it.
“Rick is a good man,” he said. “But you were both holding back. Rick, because of his daughter. She came first, as she should.
And you also held back because of his daughter.”
“I love Samantha.” I had been willing, wanting, to be her stepmom. I felt closer to her than any other young person, even
my own nephew Austin. And Sam had confided in me that she had never felt close to her mother, who’d divorced Rick and moved
to Europe when Sam was six.
“Of course you do. But if a relationship is going to work, especially a second marriage, you have to be partners in everything,
including raising children, even if you’re not the biological parent. Rick couldn’t accept that, and you held back because
you knew it.”
I opened my mouth then closed it. He was right. “I’ve only been seeing Cal two months. I’ll see how it goes.”
“Good. Let me know what he cooks for you next,” Dad said with a wide grin.
Now or never. How to start?
“Dad, I need to talk to you about something.”
“I figured, since this visit was sudden.”
Rip the Band-Aid off. “One of your former nurses, Liz Swanson, called me last night.”
Dad tensed. Subtle, but defensive. I straightened my spine, and my resolve.
“She noticed a year missing in one of her patient records. She remembered he was one of your patients, and he’d also been
a patient of Dr. Klein. When she checked later, his entire file was gone.”
“Margo, I told you I will not talk about this. Anything else, but—”
I interrupted. “She was murdered this morning. Not ten minutes before we were supposed to meet.”
He visibly recoiled, either at the news or my bluntness.
“Dad, I know you didn’t kill Dr. Klein. Now’s the time to tell the truth.”
His eyes watered, but he held back the tears. He shook his head. “Leave it alone,” he whispered. “Please.”
I slammed my fist on the metal table. Both guards looked over at us. Dad was surprised. I was usually slow to anger. But when
I snapped, I was fierce.
“No.” My voice remained quiet but firm.
We stared at each other. I loved my dad more than anyone. He was my rock, my compass, my mentor. We argued on occasion, sure,
sometimes even a bit heated, but always with love and respect.
Until he told us he’d killed Devin Klein and was turning himself in.
I knew he was lying then. Now I saw the pain and fear in his eyes before his gaze dropped and his hands clasped tightly in
front of him.
“Margo, leave it. You have to.”
“Why? You’re already in prison. Tell me what happened, and I’ll fix it. No more secrets, no more lies. Tell me the truth.”
“I love you, Margo,” he said. “Ava was in a car accident when she was five months pregnant with you.”
“I know—”
He shook his head slightly, and I stopped talking. Maybe this was his way of sharing information? Giving me a clue? Helping
with his own defense, a defense he never gave after Klein was killed?
“Ava started spotting. Your mom—so strong, so smart—was terrified of losing you. She cried, and you know your mom, she’s not a crier.
” He gave me a wistful smile. “She had to limit all activities for the remainder of her pregnancy. Not complete bed rest, but she couldn’t pick up Tess or Jack, couldn’t cook or clean or do much of anything physically.
When you arrived a month early, you weren’t breathing.
I was there, in the room, but you weren’t, not completely.
My heart stopped beating, your mother was begging the doctor to give her the baby, she wanted to hold you.
Then the doctor cleared your lungs, and you screamed.
The happiest sound I’ve ever heard. You were there.
One minute, nothing, complete emptiness .
. . the next, pure joy. I held you, just for a moment, before handing you to your
mother. You stared at me, as if imprinting my face on your memory. So alert, so small, so fierce. I felt closer to you than
your siblings. I love them, but after that moment, when my greatest fear turned to my greatest joy, I knew family comes before
everything.”
I waited—for more, for a clue, anything that told me where to look for answers.
He stood, and my heart sank. His whole body took on an aura of defeat. I wanted to shake the truth out of him.
“Dad—”
“I beg you, Margo. Leave it.”
And he walked away.
I sat there long after he was taken back to his cell, practically shell-shocked.
I only had one option left.
Mom.