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Baltimore, Maryland
Saturday, October 26th, 12:30 PM Local Time
Kelly stood next to Jack as he banged on Frank’s door—a little loud for any time of day. But given how heavily Frank had been into the drink last night, he might still be passed out. So far, it was like rousing the dead. They’d buzzed his apartment, but there’d been no response, and Jack had gotten them into the building by way of calling another tenant.
Like rousing the dead. Her thought repeated, and she feared Paige and Brandon might have been right about Frank Evans being target number five. What if Michelle had already gotten to him?
Kelly raised her hand to knock, and the door swung open.
Frank was massaging his forehead. “You again? What do you want? I told you I don’t know anything.” He was peering at them with half-mast eyes.
Kelly’s impression last night had been that Frank was an alcoholic who sought regular comfort in a bottle, but for him to be feeling the effects of overindulgence this much, it wasn’t a habit for him. The state of his place would indicate he’d probably been drinking for a few days or so, though. What had caused him to turn to the bottle? Did it have something to do with one of his old buddies recently turning up dead? But he had acted like the shooting in Arlington was no big deal—or was that what he wanted them to believe?
“Here, we brought you this.” Kelly extended a take-out cup of coffee, which had been her idea, and Jack had agreed to it. If they were going to get Frank to talk, they had to come as allies.
Frank took the coffee. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
“It’s just black. Figured if you like cream and sugar, you’d have that here,” Kelly said.
“Black is fine.” He slurped from the small hole in the lid and stepped back to let them into the apartment.
The place still looked like a hurricane had run through—not that Frank would have been in the mood to clean after they’d left last night.
Frank went into the living area and gathered the take-out containers from the sofa and stacked them onto the coffee table. “What is it you’d like to talk about today? Come on, sit.” He pointed to the recently cleared cushions, and Kelly and Jack sat down.
Frank grabbed a dining chair from around a small table and plopped down on it. He let out an involuntary groan as he did so. “Paying the piper today,” he said. “Sure, ain’t like drinking back in my younger years. Everything hurts this morning.”
“Did you know the man who was shot in Arlington, Virginia, a couple days ago?” Jack asked, obviously unmoved by Frank’s complaints about his self-inflicted joint problems.
Frank slurped his coffee. “I heard it was some prosecutor.”
“We’re pretty sure you can do better than that,” Jack said firmly.
Frank took another gulp of coffee and ripped into a coughing fit. He tapped fingers against his throat, then held one up for them to wait. Eventually, he said, “I’m an engineer. He was a prosecutor. Where would our paths have crossed?”
Kelly shifted on the lumpy sofa cushion and kept her eye on Frank. They’d come here thinking he might be his daughter’s next target, but that didn’t explain why he was acting so strangely and hiding his association with Darrell Reid.
“Does Bridgeport, California, sound familiar?” Jack asked.
“Sure, I lived there for a bit, but—”
“It’s better for you and us if you just tell us the truth,” Kelly jumped in, playing good cop.
Frank met her gaze. “Fine, I might have known Darrell at one time in my life, but that’s ancient history.”
“What about Robert Wise?”
Frank turned his attention to Jack. “Yeah, I know him. What about him?”
“He was shot. Albuquerque, New Mexico, six months ago.”
Frank wiped his forehead that glistened with sweat. “I had no idea.”
“You have television and internet, I assume,” Jack said.
“Sure, but—”
“What about Gregory Miller. Do you know him?” Jack had Frank under rapid fire.
So much for presenting ourselves as allies.
Frank closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Used to.”
“He was shot in Arkansas three months ago.” Jack leaned forward. “And Dennis Sherman? Know him?”
“Yes. Again.” Frank set his coffee cup on the floor. “If you think I killed any of these men, think again. I can provide you with alibis. Call my work, and they’ll tell you I haven’t taken any vacation time in the last year. Not even any sick days.”
“Kelly pulled out her phone and brought up the photo that Paige had found. She held her screen for Frank to see. How do you know these men?”
He glared at her. “If you knew I knew them, then why did you…” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “We met in an after-school program.”
“What kind of program?” Kelly asked.
“It was really more like summer school. None of us were doing that great in our classes, so our parents had us taking courses during the summer to boost our grades.”
Colleges and universities would show on their backgrounds, but it’s not likely extra course credits would. That’s why Nadia hadn’t been able to link the men. Kelly also thought of the variety of occupations among the five men. “None of you ended up in the same field. What did you study in the summer?”
“Math. None of us were really great with the subject.”
“That must have changed.” She remembered clearly that Robert Wise became a plumber; Gregory Miller a teacher; Dennis Sherman an electrician; Darrell Reid a prosecutor; and Frank Evans an engineer. “Did you stay in touch over the years?”
Frank shook his head. “Ancient history. I got married, went off to serve. They moved on.” He grabbed the coffee cup, pressed his scowl to the lid, and took a long sip.
“Did the five of you have a falling out?”
“You could say that.” A pulse started tapping in his cheek. Something bad had happened. Something that led to four men’s murders?
“Tell us what it was,” Jack demanded.
Frank clenched his jaw and shook his head. “No, I have a right to my privacy, Agent. And I hardly believe whatever us kids squabbled about has anything to do with why they are dead.”
Squabbled? Frank was failing at downplaying the significance of what had happened. “Your friends were murdered,” Kelly said, earning Frank’s gaze. “And you were hardly kids. You were in—what?—your early twenties in this picture?”
Frank rolled his shoulders. “I don’t even remember when it was taken or where,” he snuffed out, cavalier, but his body language was betraying him. The subject of his former friends had struck a nerve. “Where did you get that photo?”
“It was found in an apartment Michelle kept in Bridgeport,” Kelly delivered, and Frank went white and bristled.
“You—you were in her apartment? Why?”
Kelly noted that he didn’t ask how Michelle had come into possession of the photo. “As we told you last night, Mr. Evans, your daughter is of interest to the FBI.”
“And as I told you, she’s not my daughter.”
Kelly cocked her head. That was his original stance last night, but then he’d gone on to talk about her as if she was, so which was it? And why the confusion? “You might want to start talking to us, Mr. Evans, because we believe your daughter plans on killing you next.”
“She what?” Frank spat. “She wants to…kill me?”
Kelly felt Jack watching her, but she wasn’t going to look at him. Maybe she’d gone too far laying out how it was, but they had to shake Frank into talking, and there was only so long they could dance around ‘she’s of interest to the FBI.’
Frank looked from her to Jack.
“Do you know why your daughter would want you dead?” he asked.
Frank hugged his cup with both hands, and his body shook. His eyes were full of tears; his face a mask of panic. “I might.”