Shooter and I pulled off U.S. 35 in our rented Hyundai Santa Fe, and my GPS told me I was 9.2 miles from the address Frank had supplied for Beverly Polis.
If our job today was going to be easy, it would start by speaking with Ms. Polis and having her admit that she knew where her husband had been for the last seven years. Then, if she could tell us about anyone else who had been asking this same question, we might have a good idea of what happened next. How something she said led a killer to her husband’s door.
I made the turn and glanced over. Shooter had been organizing her notes on the plane, and we hadn’t spoken much.
“So.” I steered around a curve on State Highway 121. “You’ve got a new partner.”
A mob of live oaks closed in around us, and the drive became more rural.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s gotta mean something, right?”
I knew this was a reference to the conversation we’d overheard in the elevator. I also understood the normal response to this news was not as casual as mine. It was anxiety.
“Did you talk to Frank?” she asked.
“Not yet.”
Shooter blew a gust of air toward her reddish-blond bangs. “They wouldn’t add a new guy if they’re shutting us down, right? It’s not logical.”
I considered whether half of the decisions the Bureau made could be called logical. Then I thought about my position on this case. Part of a lead’s job was keeping agents on task.
“No one’s shutting us down,” I said. “They wouldn’t have put us on this case if they were.”
“Exactly,” Shooter said, just as the GPS dinged.
I turned onto a gravel road and saw a series of bright orange strings, zigzagging their way north and south, each wrapped around the trunks of towering cedar elms. A sign read PRIVATE PROPERTY, but I kept going. After another minute, the road straightened, and we came to a clearing. I parked in front of a sprawling craftsman-style home.
A Black woman in her sixties had the door open to a screened-in porch. She was sweeping dust onto a set of steps that led down to the gravel.
As I put the car in park, I typed in the address of the house Ross Tignon had been found in two days ago. It was 3.2 miles from here.
“Good afternoon,” the woman said as Shooter and I stepped out of the rental.
She was tall and slender and wore what my mother would call a housedress. A one-piece in pale blue that began with a scoop neck and ended below her knees. Her hair was covered in a white scarf, but a handful of gray strands hung down over her forehead.
“Good afternoon. We’re looking for Beverly Polis,” I said, using the maiden name that Frank had provided.
“And your names?” the woman asked, her voice ringing with a tone of deference.
“I’m Joanne Harris,” Shooter said. “This is Gardner Camden.”
“Well, Ms. Harris and Mr. Camden,” the woman said, smiling gently, “Ms. Polis passed away a year ago. Is there something I can help you with?”
Dead?
I pulled out my badge. “We’re with the FBI, ma’am. We’re following up on an issue related to Ms. Polis’s husband, Ross Tignon.”
“I’m afraid he passed, too,” she said. “Well before his wife.”
“Do you mind if we come in and sit down?” Shooter asked. “We’ve been on our feet all morning.”
This was a line a lot of agents used to get a look inside a house.
“Not at all,” the woman said. Except she didn’t invite us in. Instead, she motioned at a pair of wrought-iron chairs by a wagon-wheel table on the screened-in porch. “Take a load off.”
“I don’t think we caught your name,” I said.
“Dolores Hadley,” the woman replied. “Most people just call me Doll.”
“Are you a family member, Ms. Hadley?” Shooter asked. “A relative of Beverly Polis?”
The woman blinked. Stared down at the dark skin of her arm. “Do I look like a relative of Beverly, Agent Harris?”
Shooter smiled, her hands palms out. “No ma’am,” she chuckled. “No, you don’t.”
“I’ve worked for the Polis family for thirty-one years,” Dolores said. “I raised Beverly’s sister’s and brother’s kids.”
I thought of how Frank had located Tignon’s wife. “Ms. Polis’s social security checks still come here,” I said. “Are you aware of that?”
“I’ve got a stack of them in the house,” she said. “I keep telling Mr. Alex to call the government and clear that up. He’s her brother.”
“Did Miss Polis live at this address before she died?” I asked.
“This was the Polis family summer home,” she said. “They grew up in Dallas. Stayed July and August here. But Beverly did spend her last few days on the property.”
Days? Was the old woman confused? I decided to back up, earlier in time. Much earlier.
“Mr. Tignon died in a fire in 2013,” I said. “You are aware of that?”
“Yes sir.”
“But that’s not when Miss Beverly came here?”
“No sir,” she said. “We didn’t see anything of Beverly until October sixteenth. A little over a year ago.”
Shooter glanced at me, then at Hadley. “You recall the specific date?” she asked.
“It was my seventy-fifth birthday, Agent Harris, and I’m an early riser. I received a call from a nurse. Beverly had a stroke, and the hospital listed Mr. Alex and this number as her emergency contact.”
“You went to a local hospital and retrieved Beverly?” Shooter confirmed. “After years of not knowing where she had been?”
Hadley nodded. “This was her home. You can always come home.”
Shooter shook her head just slightly, as if moved by the sentiment.
“Who checked her into the hospital?” I asked.
“A man, they said. He told them his name was Alex Polis. But it wasn’t our Mr. Alex.”
I sat back, feeling the warmth of the iron chair on my back. Ross Tignon had left his wife in a hospital in terminal condition, then had her family pick her up.
“You call the police?” I asked.
“We did,” she said. “And Mr. Alex raised a fuss. But what were we asking them, exactly? She was a grown woman, and she was finally home. Unfortunately, she had speech and hearing issues. Couldn’t walk.”
“What kind of condition was she in?” Shooter asked.
“Poor,” Ms. Hadley said. “Eight days later, Jesus took her.”
I glanced through the screen door at the property, which appeared to go on for miles. And I thought of the ruse played in New Mexico, with our suspect posing as a real estate investor.
“Is this property for sale, Ms. Hadley?” I pointed up the road. “We saw orange strings between those cedars on the way in.”
“Mr. Alex subdivided the land,” she said. “Twenty-two lots.”
“Do the interested parties drive up here to the house, or just look down the road?”
“Mr. Alex is looking for a developer, not individuals,” she said. “But yes, men come down the road, just like you two did.”
“Do you recall if any of these real estate men asked about Miss Polis?”
Ms. Hadley considered this. “There was one man,” she said slowly. “This time last week. Said he knew Beverly from when she was younger.”
“What did he look like?” Shooter asked.
Hadley shrugged. “White. Dark brown hair. Well-dressed.”
“Age?” I asked.
“Forties, maybe. Sometimes I don’t wear my glasses.”
I wondered if anyone else had seen this man. “So it’s just you that lives here now?”
“Mr. Alex asked me to stay. It keeps the property safe from vandalism.”
“You’re pretty deep in the woods,” Shooter said. “You good with a shotgun?”
“Good enough to lift it to the sky and scare off kids,” Hadley said. “Plus we got security cameras all over the place. Mr. Alex had ’em mounted up on the trees last year.” She dropped her chin then, her eyes studying us. “Now, I am old, but I am not unsophisticated. You two are from the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
“Yes ma’am,” Shooter said.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
I wanted to reveal what we knew about Tignon and get her reaction. But one didn’t usually trust civilians with too much information.
Still, I thought of Frank. How he’d told Fisher’s brother elements of the case, but at the same time, used those aspects to convince him not to speak to the media.
“What if I told you Ross Tignon did not die in that fire, Miss Hadley?” I said. “What if I told you he’d been living under a false name three miles from here?”
“Then I would get that address from you and drive over there directly.”
“He was murdered,” Shooter said, her green eyes focused on the old lady. “Three days ago.”
Hadley squinted at us, her forehead crisscrossed with lines.
“The family hired a private investigator,” she said finally. “A week after we took Miss Beverly home from that hospital. He found prescriptions in her name in a Dallas pharmacy. The pharmacist said she’d come in with a man.”
“Description?” Shooter asked.
“White and medium build.”
“No one suspected it was Ross?” I asked.
“The man had been burned to death,” Hadley said. “You hear of something like that…”
“Yeah,” I said, understanding.
Shooter pointed back to the land. “I’d like to see what’s on those cameras, ma’am. Can we get Mr. Alex’s contact information?”
Ms. Hadley went inside and came out a moment later with a piece of paper. In the trees, I heard starlings chirp. My phone dinged. Ross Tignon’s autopsy was ready at the Dallas office.
I stood up and thanked Ms. Hadley. Shooter advised her that it was safer if she did not repeat what we had told her about Tignon to anyone.
“Not to Mr. Alex either?”
“Well,” Shooter said, “do you care about his safety?”
That was how Frank would do it. Through implication.
“Of course,” Hadley said.
“Then I think you know the answer,” Shooter replied.
“All right,” Hadley said nervously. “I understand.”
“There’s something else,” I said. “When I told you about Ross being alive—your instinct was to get in your car and drive over there. Give him a piece of your mind.”
“I guess that wasn’t very Christian of me.”
“But you never suspected the fire was a fake? Even after you heard about the man in the pharmacy?”
“That’s right.” She nodded.
“The logic of that does not track, Dolores.”
“Sometimes,” she replied, “I observe things that don’t track.”
Her phrasing was odd.
“I am a young man,” I said. “But I am not unsophisticated.”
Dolores Hadley smiled. “The day after we took Beverly home, I came out onto the porch. We had her in a wheelchair right where you two were just sitting.” She hesitated a moment. “I smelled a man’s cologne in the air that day. A scent I recognized. Until now, I thought I was crazy … that I imagined it.”
We thanked Dolores Hadley and turned toward the steps leading down to the rental car.
“You seem like a very straightforward person, Mr. Camden,” she said.
Shooter chuckled, and we turned back.
“He can’t help it,” she said.
“I’m curious about one thing,” Hadley said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The accusations … what they said Mr. Tignon did. In Florida. Did he do those things?”
“Not alone,” I said.
“He had a partner?”
“Mrs. Tignon,” I said. “She lied. Covered for him. Then apparently found him again here in Texas. She lived with a serial killer most of her life.”
A tear moved down Hadley’s cheek, and I stopped talking. Shooter was glaring at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the woman. But Tignon was a bad man, and now I was lying. I wasn’t sorry.
I turned. There was an autopsy to get to.