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Thirty

Albuquerque Police Station

Friday, October 25th, 11:00 AM Mountain Standard Time

I’d thought I was miserable before Paige pulled rank. Now, I was downright crabby. We were waiting in a conference room—Paige seated at a table, me looking out a window—at the Albuquerque police station to speak with Sergeant Bell. He’d been the lead investigator on the Wise case. I was hopeful that having a third party around would serve as a buffer for all the unsettled energy. We’d already organized the forwarding of the compromising photos collected from Sonia Wise through the proper channels to Nadia in Quantico. We kept snapshots of the less racy ones on our phones, in case we needed to show the woman’s face around.

“Agents.” A man’s voice cut through the room, and I turned toward the door.

The man was in his fifties and gave off the vibe of someone you wouldn’t want to challenge, much like Jack. His life experience had hardened his appearance and was etched in his eyes and in the lines on his face. He wore a button-up shirt, tie, and slacks.

“Sergeant Bell, I presume?” I walked over to him and held out a hand. “I’m FBI Special Agent Brandon Fisher.”

“Nice to meet you.” Bell took my hand and looked past me to Paige, who introduced herself and shot me a glare for not doing so for her. The sergeant closed the door, then shook her hand. “I understand you’re here about the Wise case,” he said, tugging on the waist of his pants and taking a seat next to Paige.

“We are,” Paige confirmed. “Our analyst has gathered as much information on the case as she could via the database, but sometimes, there are things it can’t tell us.”

“Everything should be in the file.” He pointed to the closed folder in front of Paige, referring to the investigation records as a whole.

Paige left the folder untouched. “I’m more interested in your feelings about the case. For example, what was your impression of the widow? How did she seem to you in the aftermath of her husband’s death?”

“Well, I wish I could say I was one of those people who remembered everything, but the shooting was six months ago. I’ve worked a lot of cases since then.”

“Probably some not quite as memorable,” I said.

Bell grimaced and said nothing.

For some reason, Bell was on the defense. I dropped into a chair across from him. “We’re not here to step on any toes or find fault with how the investigation was handled. We’ve found ourselves in a situation. You might have heard there was a shooting in Arlington, Virginia, yesterday morning.” I paused to give Bell a chance to respond, but he simply kept staring at me. I went on. “A prosecutor was killed. Male. The only victim. Just like in the case of Robert Wise six months ago, here in Albuquerque.”

Bell adjusted his tie. “Let me see if I’m understanding what you’re saying without actually coming out and saying it. You think the person who killed Wise also killed your prosecutor.”

“And two other men in the last three months,” Paige interjected.

“An active serial killer?”

“That’s the way we’re leaning, with a possibility that person may also be a hired gun.” I prepared for backlash. Many law enforcement types considered the conclusion of a “serial killer” just hype.

“Nothing about the Wise shooting indicated that. Why blow it up and make it something it isn’t? It wasn’t anything more than an isolated incident.”

“We agree that taken on its own, Wise’s shooting didn’t indicate an active threat,” I assured him. “But now we have three other murders. Trust me when I say we’re not here to point blame or accuse the Albuquerque PD—” best to widen the scope and keep it less personal “—for any of the subsequent shootings.”

Bell’s shoulders slumped. He might have been defensive before; now it seemed he fought with his conscience.

“No one could have seen the other murders coming,” I said. “And even if you had, finding the shooter would have been a huge challenge.”

“Try impossible, because I did all I could,” Bell shot back.

“I don’t doubt it.” This guy had a more volatile temper than I did.

Bell’s jaw clenched, and his gaze met mine briefly before he looked off into the distance. “She was upset…Wise’s widow. I’m mean, rightfully. She and her husband were working to set their marriage right. Turning it around.”

Suddenly, his memory is back!

“Was she open with you about her husband’s affairs?” Paige asked.

“I believe you’ll find that in the file,” Bell said brashly. “But she never cried, which I found strange. They’d been married for twenty-two years. You’d think she’d be able to shed a tear for her dearly departed.”

Except he was a cheating son of a bitch, and so am I! My internal judgment came so quickly, so harshly, it stole my breath.

“We paid Mrs. Wise a visit this morning before coming here,” Paige admitted, earning Bell’s steely gaze.

“I would have appreciated a heads-up.”

“We don’t have to clear anything past you, Sergeant,” Paige said. “As we told you, we believe the same person who killed Wise has killed at least three others. Each time there’s a sniping, there’s only one victim. All of them are married, all of them with marital problems.”

“The husbands were disloyal,” I stamped out.

“You’re telling me that some person’s out there knocking off adulterous men? They’d have their work cut out for them,” Bell scoffed, looking at me. His expression was one of man-to-man, as if cheating should be accepted as something guys just did—or was I grasping to feel excused for my actions?

“We don’t know the killer’s motivation yet, though what you stated is possible,” Paige said.

“In at least three cases, the widows received photographs of their husbands in compromising situations with other women,” I offered, earning Bell’s gaze. Jack had reached us before our meeting here and told us about the photos sent to Arlene Reid.

“Mrs. Wise didn’t receive such pictures.” He started with confidence, but it melted away the longer he peered into my eyes. “She did?”

I nodded. “But after the interest in solving the case had died down.”

“She wasn’t really motivated after receiving the pictures, either,” Paige contributed. “Doesn’t even care if her husband’s killer is found. Went so far as to say if we caught his killer, she’d thank them.”

“Wow. Okay, here’s the thing, though. You brought up the possibility of a hit man, which I couldn’t find evidence to support, but answer this: why would a hit man send the type of pictures you described? They’d send pictures of the dead body to prove they finished the job.”

I faced Paige; it was starting to sink in that we were after a serial killer acting on his or her own agenda. “Can you excuse us?” I said to Bell and motioned for Paige to follow me to the hall. “Bell’s right, and it was under our nose. A hired gun wouldn’t have any reason to send compromising photos of the husbands.”

“Unless it wasn’t the wives who hired the hit, and whoever did wanted to ease their grief by letting them know the type of men their husbands were.”

I stared at her blankly. “That’s the exact opposite of what you thought yesterday when you said the wives may have been sent the photos to hurt them.”

“I know.” She sighed. “Okay, so let’s say our killer is acting on their own initiative. Then what does the sniper stand to gain from sending the pictures? And why snipe the targets?” Paige paced, circled back.

“We figure the sniper is probably military, someone given the proper training with a rifle,” I said. “He or she is using this method to kill, so it makes sense to say sniping is something they’re comfortable with doing.”

“Maybe they’re a sharpshooter, someone who ranked high in their qualifications. But where do we even begin in tracking them down?”

“Well, it’s almost like our killer is locked into the mindset of a sniper. They could be someone who served in an active war zone and had to kill people.”

“Sure. I’m still missing how we narrow that down,” Paige said.

“They—” I stopped short for a second. “I just realized we haven’t decided whether our sniper is a man or a woman. I thought we were going with a woman.”

“I don’t know. Not attaching to either, just remaining objective. Anyway, focus…there’s less time between the murders. Maybe they’re battling with their own mind?”

“Yeah. Why not? And assuming the sniper saw an active war zone, they could be diagnosed with PTSD,” I said. “Still hard to narrow down, I’m sure. There have to be hundreds or thousands who might meet that criteria.”

Paige frowned, and I was with her. I hated that the very people who protected our freedoms so often returned damaged, everything they had before, gone—including their health.

“Except I’d say she probably left the service in the last year or even closer to the time she killed Robert Wise. If she does have posttraumatic stress disorder and was discharged earlier than that, I think we’d be looking at more victims,” I said.

Paige shrugged. “Maybe we just don’t know about them.”

I nodded at the solemn thought.

“I think we should let Jack and Kelly know what we’re thinking,” she said.

“Including what Bell pointed out?”

“Yeah, but I say we leave him out of it.”

I smiled.

“And our thoughts on the killer’s mental state, possible health,” she added.

“I agree.” I pulled out my phone, feeling like we were finally making headway with this case.