-

Forty-Nine

Bridgeport, California

Saturday, October 26th, 10:40 AM Pacific Standard Time

Jack’s call had Paige and me sitting in stunned silence for a few minutes. “A conspiracy between father and daughter,” I said. “Never saw that coming.”

“Me neither.”

“But how does that coincide with the asterisk on Michelle’s map?”

Paige looked over at me in the passenger seat. “Could just be where she plans on ending up.”

“She marked the victim’s locations with asterisks.” I wasn’t so sure that Frank Evans was in the clear—just yet.

“Could represent destinations to her,” Paige reasoned.

“Still. Arlington to Baltimore isn’t that far. An hour and a half?” I latched eyes with Paige. “If they’re working together, Frank could be hiding Michelle.” I called Jack on speaker and pointed out the possibility.

Before the call ended, Jack told us, “Smart thinking.”

Paige pulled out of the diner’s parking lot, headed in the direction of Michelle’s apartment building, and about ten minutes later, we were standing in the hall outside apartment 101.

“Agents.” Dan Player smiled at us when he opened his door. “I thought you were finished here. I got Michelle’s key back. Do you need it again?”

Paige shook her head. “We have a follow-up question for you.”

“Certainly.” Player stepped back into his apartment.

We entered and stayed just inside the door.

“You told us that a man came here with Michelle.” I pulled up a photo spread on my phone of Wise, Miller, Sherman, Reid, and Evans. “Do any of these men look familiar to you?”

“Just a second.” Player padded to a nearby living area and grabbed a pair of readers off a coffee table, put them on. “All right.” He took my phone and studied the screen. “Yeah, him.” Player pointed at Frank Evans. “He’s definitely who was here with Michelle.”

I glanced at Paige. So much for not seeing his daughter in years!

“You both look surprised,” Player said.

Yes and no… “We are a bit,” I admitted. “When was it you saw him again?”

“Say, around the time of her mother’s funeral.”

“Thank you, Mr. Player,” Paige said.

“That all now? Or do you think you’ll need back in her place?”

“We’ll keep you posted,” she said.

Paige and I smiled at him and saw ourselves out.

In the parking lot, we talked in the privacy of the SUV.

“Frank Evans lied. He was probably at the funeral, which means the Gilberts probably lied to us, too. But now we have someone who places him with Michelle around the time we figure she was triggered,” Paige said.

“So he comes back to conscript her, as it were, to kill the four men who’d raped Estella.”

“Could be. Maybe he just wanted to see Michelle and make amends, but it became something else?”

“Sounds like a conspiracy to commit murder times four.”

“You could say times five, including the maid,” Paige corrected.

“And if he knew about the funeral, he could have also been keeping tabs on his four ol’ buddies all this time.”

“And fed that information to Michelle so she’d know where to find them. I was wondering how she knew where they all were.”

“Did Frank openly discuss the murders with Michelle, or did she take the mission on herself? Did he give her the photo of the men so she knew who they were? For her to see with her own eyes how they’d all been buddy-buddy to her father’s face and had committed such a horrible evil behind his back?”

“Well, the visual would have amped up hatred in Michelle.”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “I really think Frank sent his daughter on a killing mission. Otherwise, why cover up the fact he was here and that he saw Michelle? He told Jack and Kelly he hadn’t seen her in years.”

“He didn’t want us to know he was here, that’s for sure.”

A blond, twentysomething woman was running across the parking lot toward us and waving.

Paige lowered her window.

“Are you the FBI?” she asked, panting.

“We are. Agents Dawson and Fisher.”

Paige and I got out of the vehicle.

“You’re looking for Michelle Evans?” The woman squinted in the late morning sun.

“We are,” Paige said. “What’s your name?”

“Karen Ross.” She attempted a smile, but the expression didn’t give full birth.

“Do you know Michelle and where she might be?” I leaned against the SUV but quickly righted myself. The sun had heated the black paint to boiling.

“We were friends.”

“Were?” I asked.

“When she left, she told me she might not be coming back.”

Paige lifted her sunglasses onto her forehead. “Do you know where she went?”

“She didn’t tell me.”

“Tell us what you do know about Michelle,” Paige encouraged.

“Just that she was a nice woman, if not a little strange, but who isn’t around here?” A nervous little chortle. “Should I be worried about her now that the FBI is looking for her?”

“We believe she might have gotten herself mixed up in something, but we’re doing what we can to find her,” I said, my mind stuck on the part about Michelle not having plans to return. What is her endgame? “Her car’s here, so did she leave with someone?” I asked.

“She took a taxi. I don’t know to where.”

I nodded.

“Poor Michelle was never the same after her mom died,” Karen volunteered.

“She took it hard?” Paige asked conversationally.

“Sure did. She didn’t want to talk as much. We used to have coffee in the back. There’s a small green space with some picnic tables next to the lot. Anyway, she kept telling me she wasn’t feeling well. I don’t think her time in Afghanistan helped her either.”

“War zones rarely do.” I probably said that a little drier than intended. “Did she ever say anything to you about her father?”

“She was very tight-lipped about him, but he showed up here, ya know, and to her momma’s funeral.” Karen kicked the toe of her shoe into the gravel of the parking lot.

It never got less disgusting to think that Frank had taken advantage of Michelle at her most vulnerable moment—whether he’d originally planned to do the killings himself or not.

“How did Michelle handle his return?” Paige asked.

“She was an utter mess. Like I said, she didn’t want to talk about him much. If it had been me, and my daddy had shown up all these years later, I’d have slammed the door in his face.”

I nodded. We already had Player’s testimony that he’d seen Frank Evans—and more than once. It was evident that Michelle hadn’t sent her old man packing.

“Michelle was a gentle soul. She told me that she owed it to her father to forgive him,” Karen said, as if pulling from my mind. “She said people do things they don’t mean to sometimes.”

For this extension of forgiveness, father and daughter had to have found a common ground, and that was looking to be the murder of four men who’d wronged the woman they’d both loved.

“Did you believe her when she told you that?” I asked.

Karen met my eyes and took a deep breath. “I think so. She seemed sincere.”

“Thank you for speaking with us.” Paige handed Karen her card. We got Karen’s information, too. “If you think of anything else, call me.”

“I will.”

Paige and I returned to the SUV and headed out. I didn’t even know where we were going, and I wasn’t sure Paige did, either.

“Michelle forgave her father,” Paige began. “It hardly sounds like she plans to kill him.”

“I agree. Maybe the asterisks are more to mark destinations, after all. But why not take the map with her then?”

“She has a reason, but you know what else all this means?” Paige blinked slowly. “Both father and daughter were working as a team. We’ve got to share what we’ve found out with Jack about Frank being here.”

We were quiet for a moment, working through the tangled mess.

“Frank Evans obviously lied,” I said, slicing into the silence between us. “He told Jack he hadn’t seen his daughter in nearly thirty years, but somehow he got down here for Estella’s funeral—which was another lie, because he said he didn’t go to it.”

“And by the sounds of it, he was in Bridgeport for a bit,” Paige added. “Yeah, we’ve got to update Jack. The sooner, the better.”