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Arlington Police Station
Friday, October 25th, 12:30 PM Local Time
Kelly was able to get some sleep, but only because she’d been able to connect with her friend Brianna before tucking in. Brianna was a defense attorney who kept hours like a vampire and got by on five hours’ or less of slumber each night. Kelly had caught Brianna drinking a scotch at By the Drink, a play on the saying “by the book”—something lawyer types seemed to appreciate.
Brianna didn’t even need to ask how Kelly was; her astute nature aided her in life more than just in the courtroom. All it took was for Kelly to say, “Hi, how are you?” and Brianna had known something was up with her friend. Kelly went on to share how Jack was treating her, and how ridiculous and small she felt at times as a result.
“He’s just applying pressure, seeing if you have what it takes to stick it out.”
“I’m starting to wonder if I do.”
“Now who’s being ridiculous? You don’t know the meaning of giving up.”
Brianna would know that to be true. She’d seen Kelly’s struggle over the years as she tried to come to terms with the fact her mother didn’t want to be found.
“But you could have been a lawyer,” Brianna said in a singsong voice, as if practicing law was all rose petals.
Kelly had seriously considered that career path—briefly. After all, if her mother had had a better lawyer, she wouldn’t have served twenty-five years for a murder she’d made in self-defense. Then maybe everything would be different. But Kelly had decided to be more proactive in her line of work and chose a profession that made it possible to ensure charges were only levied against the guilty.
“I just don’t know if I’m cut out for—”
“You are.”
Two words, and they might as well have been jackhammered into concrete the way her friend had said them.
“Just give the job time. You’ve wanted to be FBI for how many years?”
“Oh, let’s not dwell on that.” She was thirty-three now, but some days, she felt much older. Her twenties felt lightyears behind her.
Brianna laughed her terrific laugh that made a person feel like they’d dipped into a cool spring on a warm day.
“Thanks.”
“Anytime, love.” With that, Brianna hung up, leaving Kelly feeling better, if not a bit conflicted. Maybe she’d just raised the idea of becoming an FBI agent to impractical standards.
But that pessimism belonged to hours ago, before she got some shut-eye and put in some hours at Arlington PD with Jack. She even managed to keep that enthusiasm when Jack returned from having a smoke break and walked back into the conference room with his phone in his hand and a scowl on his face. Her stomach sank.
“What is it? Paige and Bran—”
“They’re fine. Got a call from Bert Pryce, though. We’ve got to head over to the Reids’ place immediately.”
She jumped from her chair, then glanced at the coffee left in her mug and briefly wished it was in a to-go cup. “What’s happened?”
“Arlene Reid received a package on her doorstep,” Jack said as they hurried through the station hallways for the parking lot.
Kelly thought about the previous cases and drew a conclusion. “Did she receive pictures of her husband with another woman?”
He regarded her like she was clairvoyant. “That’s right, and from the description of the woman in the photo, it could be the woman from Spencer’s Sports Bar.”
Bert Pryce answered the door for Kelly and Jack.
“She’s not coping with this very well.” Bert led them toward the study where they’d last talked yesterday.
There was no sign of other family members milling about, and the driveway had been empty.
“Are you any closer to figuring out who killed Darrell? Not that I care personally, but…”
Sobs could be heard from behind the door to the den.
Bert knocked.
“Ah…come in.” There was a series of sniffles, and when Bert opened the door, Arlene was dabbing her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief, similar to the one from yesterday.
On the coffee table in front of her was a manila envelope and a spread of photographs.
“I can’t even bring myself to look at them, but at the same time, I can’t look away. I just can’t believe Darrell would do such a thing. Someone must have doctored these. He was a powerful man. He had enemies.”
Was Arlene really that obtuse to believe Darrell had been “husband of the year”? She had been with them at Wilson Place yesterday, when the clerk mentioned Darrell going there with a woman. Still, Kelly said, “We will have the authenticity of the photos examined.” She gestured toward them. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.” Arlene sighed.
Kelly gloved up, and she shuffled through them slowly, studying each one and holding them so Jack could see them, too. There was a total of three. One had been taken from the outside looking in at presumably Pryce’s condo and showed a couple having sex against the window. Reid’s face was easy enough to make out. Not too smart for a prosecutor to be so blatant; anyone could have seen him. The angle of the shot would indicate it was taken from somewhere higher than the tenth floor; it could have been taken from a higher level in the Colonial Hotel.
Another photo showed Reid and the woman outside a brick building, again it could be Wilson Place. They were sharing a passionate kiss and an intimate embrace. The third showed Reid and the woman nuzzled into a booth at a bar. The glass shelves and layout were familiar. Kelly pointed the photo out to Jack and would tell him back in the car, but this picture had been taken at Spencer’s Sports Bar, without a doubt in her mind.
Kelly slipped the photos into a plastic evidence bag when she finished, along with the envelope they’d been delivered in. She noted that the envelope was absent any markings from the postal service and had only a simple printed label that read ARLENE REID.
Arlene leaned into the arm of the couch and angled her body toward Kelly. “Do you think they were forged?”
Kelly could appreciate Arlene wanting to know, but at the same time, her refusal to entertain the evidence before her was either pathetic and naive on her part or a good act. “It’s not my realm of expertise,” was all Kelly said. But if she were to go by her gut, she’d say the photos were legit.
“Mrs. Reid, your father said these photos were at your door when you woke up,” Jack started. “Had anyone knocked?”
Arlene gripped at the hem of her sweater and shook her head. “I used to get the paper off the stoop in the morning for Darrell, but forgot today with everything that happened. And Dad just found it when he was going to step out for some groceries.” Her voice cracked, and she pinched her nose, sniffled, dropped her hand.
“And the envelope with the pictures was where exactly?” Jack inquired.
“Underneath the paper.”
“When does the paper normally get delivered?” Kelly was hoping to get some sort of a timeline as to when the mysterious messenger had been there. Though she imagined it would have been after the paper delivery.
“It was usually there when I’d check at seven. That’s all I really know.”
“It’s okay,” Kelly assured her, but it wasn’t, from her standpoint.
“We’re going to need to know where you were yesterday morning, Mrs. Reid,” Jack said coolly.
“I was here. I’m sure I told you that.”
“And you really had no idea that your husband was cheating on you?” Skepticism was deeply embedded in his tone.
“No, and I still don’t think he was.”
“Even with the evidence before you.” Jack gestured toward the bagged envelope and incriminating photographs.
“Who’s to say the pictures are even legit?” Arlene glanced hopefully at Kelly, but Kelly wasn’t about to come to the woman’s defense.
Kelly suspected Jack’s tolerance for this woman’s naivety had reached its threshold. It could be possible that Arlene was working with the sniper. But if the three previous murders were connected to her husband’s, had she been involved with them, too? It would seem unlikely.
“Why do you resist acknowledging even the possibility that your husband was unfaithful?” Jack pressured.
Arlene wet her lips. “The thought…it’s…it’s humiliating.”
Is that the real reason she refuses to acknowledge her husband’s affair?
Jack matched his gaze with Arlene’s. “You’d want to stop that embarrassment.”
Arlene glanced at her father with the desperateness of a drowning person eyeing a life raft. Kelly followed her gaze and realized that Bert hadn’t said a word since they came into the room.
“Did you hire someone to kill your husband, Mrs. Reid?” Jack put the question out there with the subtly of a jackhammer.
Arlene blanched, and Bert grimaced.
“How dare you accuse my daughter of such an outrageous thing? We’ve been nothing but forthcoming, and you—”
Arlene started to sob. Kelly and Jack waited her out for a few minutes.
“Arlene,” Kelly eventually said, approaching the woman with kindness.
Arlene blinked slowly. Her eyes had become marbles of pain. She kneaded the handkerchief in her hands. “Fine, yes, I knew about my husband’s affairs. I just didn’t want you to know.”
“Because it would give you motive,” Jack concluded.
Arlene didn’t give any impression Jack’s comment had affected her, and she instead put her attention on her father, who wouldn’t meet her gaze and busily picked at the edge of the chair’s arm. “Darrell and I have had our share of problems for years now. He was always so busy with his work, and I admired him for that—but it also got very lonely. I don’t have to work outside the home. Heck, I don’t even need to work around the home. I have everything, yet nothing.” She dabbed the handkerchief to her nose. “I was so lonely.”
Yet, just yesterday, she had told them that Darrell always had time for her. It was hard to believe anything she said.
Arlene carried on. “I had my own lovers. Darrell had his. Please, Daddy, I know how you must feel about this. Such a disappointment I must be.”
As Arlene spoke, Bert’s eyes filled with tears. By the time she’d finished, they were narrowed and full of indignation. “You have betrayed the sanctity of marriage.” He got up, walked to a bar cart in the corner of the room, and poured himself two fingers’ worth of an amber liquid from a crystal decanter into a rocks glass.
“If we look at your financial records, are we going to find proof you hired someone to take him out?” Jack asked.
“No.” Arlene gulped air, and her chest heaved. “I never killed him or had him killed; I swear to you.”
“The truth has a way of coming out.”
Arlene clenched her jaw. “Good. Then you’ll know I’m innocent!”
“It’s time for you to leave.” Bert kicked back the rest of his drink and slammed the glass on the cart.
As Kelly and Jack saw themselves out, they could hear Arlene’s pleas for her father to forgive her.
In the SUV, Kelly turned to Jack. “You really think she hired someone to kill her husband?”
“It seems to me you suggested a hired gun from the start.”
Jack’s retort soured in her gut. He was right, but her thinking had shifted. Besides, it would seem Reid’s case was connected to three others in which a hired hit couldn’t be proven. Then it dawned on her. “You don’t really think she paid someone to kill her husband, do you?”
“Nope.”
“You just wanted to elicit a reaction you could trust.”
Jack nodded. “And I wanted to get a feel for Bert Pryce.”
“Oh.”
“There’s no love spared between father- and son-in-law. That was obvious from our first meeting with Pryce.”
“Sure. Are we going to check into his background?”
“Absolutely.” Jack lit up a cigarette and drove them off.
Kelly glanced back at the stately Reid house. From the outside, it would appear the people living there had their lives put together, but Kelly’d had a closer look and knew better. But had one of them really commissioned the murder of Darrell Reid, husband, father, and son-in-law?