Ella nodded and turned to her laptop. “Alright. What if I ask Agent Balzano to look into agencies for us? No doubt there’ll be quite a few. He could check to see if any of these victims’ names appear in their records?”

  Mia sensed something there. Ella wasn’t usually quite so quick to involve others in their operation. Every other case, she’d charged in headfirst and tried to solo the thing.

  Then it hit her.

  “Admit it, Dark.”

  Ella looked up from her screen, her black glasses magnifying that deer-in-the-headlights stare. “Admit it?”

  “How many times have I told you? You can’t keep a secret from a profiler, least of all one you spend days at a time with.”

  Ella’s look didn’t falter. A blank expression stared back.

  “Come on. You were taken aback by him. I saw it a mile off. You’re familiar with the phrase ‘shitting on your own doorstep,’ aren’t you?” Mia said.

  Ella held up her palms. Rumbled. “He was a looker. That’s all I can say. He seemed like a lovely gentleman but I don’t know much about him. I just thought it might expedite the process.”

  “Sure you did. But leave that part to me. I’ll look into the prostitutes who operate in that area and I want you to check in with the victims’ family members pronto.”

  Now that Ella was getting more comfortable in the field, she needed as much interview experience as she could get. Despite chasing criminals and getting into life-and-death brawls, Mia always considered interviews the hardest part of the job. The physical wounds healed, but telling a parent their child was gone was something that stuck with you forever. The same went for lovers, partners, siblings.

  “That’s gonna be a tricky conversation,” Ella said. Mia noticed the subtle signs of worry in her body language. Whenever Ella became anxious, she jittered her leg and bit the skin on her lips.

  “Yes it will. I won’t lie about that. The family are already aware of the murder, but your conversation won’t be easy. Chances are they’ll be looking for someone to direct their frustration at. That’s where you come in.”

  “How would you phrase it? Would you tell the family outright that we suspect they were seeing a sex worker?” asked Ella.

  Mia didn’t quite know. That was another reason that interviews were the hardest part – there was no guidebook to how they should be conducted. Each one was different depending on the person’s relationship to the victim, their demeanor, their character, their predisposed opinions. You had to play every interview by ear.

  “You’ll have to judge it when you get there. Read the room. Feel the vibe. If you get the feeling there were some bumps in the relationship, skirt around the issue of infidelity.”

  “Alright,” Ella agreed. She looked towards the ceiling for a moment, like she was making mental notes. “This isn’t gonna be easy but I’ll do what I can.”

  The hesitation was clear but the rookie hadn’t backed down from a challenge yet. “You might have to put a little pressure on, but it’ll be for the best. The truth will always come out in the end, so don’t lie for the sake of sympathy.”

  Ella noted down the victims’ addresses and grabbed her jacket. “Wish me luck. I’ll do everything I can. Meet back here in a few hours?”

  “Let’s. These victims must have had some skeletons in the closet, so you just need to dig them up. Affairs, infidelity. If you get a sniff of anything like that then zone in on it.”

  Ella departed and made her way through the precinct. Mia watched her through the glass partitions, and even then Mia could sense Ella’s anxiety setting in. But Mia knew that once Ella got out there, all that worry would turn into a more positive emotion. After six months of working with the rookie, Mia was beginning to discover that she could read the girl pretty well.

  In this game, it was comforting to know that your partner couldn’t hide anything from you.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ella stood outside the red door of the small house in Catonsville, outside of Baltimore, and brushed herself down. She mentally rehearsed the questions she was going to ask the woman on the other side, but as she ran through an imaginary conversation, she had the sudden feeling she was being watched.

  It was nothing new, even in this alien city. This feeling had been coming and going for two weeks now, always thinking that if she turned around, there’d be a pair of eyes peering at her from somewhere. Through a gap in the curtains, from a car window, maybe standing brazenly in front of her like a hunter eyeing up prey.

  Through the whole journey to Baltimore, her impulse had been to bare all to Agent Ripley. The impulse had heightened by the time they’d got to the precinct, and would only get worse the more time they spent together. She felt like this secret was burning up her insides, and pretty soon she’d be completely engulfed. Worse still was the lack of control she had over her tormentor’s actions. Tobias obviously had people on the outside, and if he had eyes on her apartment back in Virginia, who knew exactly how far his authority stretched?

  Ella knocked on the door. Watched or not, she still had a job to do. The rehearsed lines vanished from her head as a red-eyed woman peered around the door. The face of tragedy, Ella thought. Recently soaked with tears but now bereft of all moisture, leaving just a mask of despair in place. The heartache came in waves before the woman had even said a word.

  “Hello, Mrs. Severn?” Ella asked.

  “Denise,” she said sharply.

  “Denise, I’m Agent Dark with the FBI. We’re working with Baltimore Police in relation to your husband’s murder. Would you be able to talk to me for five minutes?”

  Denise retreated into the house, leaving the door swaying in the wind. It was an act of disdain that simultaneously doubled as an invitation. Ella felt bad accepting it, but she reminded herself of what Mia said. Interviews with the bereaved were a necessary evil.

  Ella stepped through the darkened home, unsure which way to turn from the hallway. She turned to her right and, fortunately, guessed correctly. The lounge was a tight squeeze, decked in modern upholstery with a traditional archway leading towards the rear kitchen. The curtains were drawn, dressing the room in darkness. Denise collapsed onto the sofa and rested her head against the arm. Ella sat on a single chair adjacent to her.

  “Denise, please accept my sympathies regarding what…”

  “I don’t need your sympathies,” the woman interrupted without lifting her head. “Ask me what you need to and make it quick.”

  Denise curled up into the fetal position. Her lengthy blonde hair drooped across her face, skimming the plush grey carpet below. Ella couldn’t read her because she could barely see her. Out of instinct, Ella turned to her side, expecting to see her partner. But there was only a bookshelf stocked with DVDs, most still in their cellophane wrappers. The lack of Mia doubled her nervousness, bringing a new sense of vulnerability to the proceedings.

  But now wasn’t the time to feel sorry for herself. This poor woman had just lost her husband. At least one of them had to be strong.

  “Of course. I won’t keep you. What can you tell me about Daniel? What was he like? What did he do for fun? How was he as a husband?”

  “What? You want his life story?”

  Ella wasn’t sure how to respond. “No, just the basics will do. Just so I can get a picture of who he was.”

  “He worked the nine to five and did all his life. He liked baseball and shit music from the seventies. Sometimes he holed himself up in his office and played stupid video games all night. Any more questions?”

  Ella sensed a hint of venom but didn’t want to go in hard just yet. Ella recalled what she’d read about Daniel in the victim file. “You two have children, don’t you?”

  Denise buried her face into the sofa arm. The sobs came hard and heavily. She wiped her face with her arm and steadied her breathing.

  “Yes. Two kids. And they don’t know.”

  Ella wasn’t sure she heard Denise right. “They don’t know?”

  Denise shook her head violently. “They don’t know he’s gone. I have to tell them when they get home. I have to tell them their dad is dead.”

  “Oh my God. I’m so sorry,” said Ella. Her legs turned to slush and her fingertips went numb. She had to fight back her own tears. Sometime in the next few hours, two spritely young children would run into this house and expect to see two happy and loving parents. Instead, they’d get something that would live with them until the end of their days. Ella knew better than anyone the trauma of losing parents at a young age.

  Her dad had been taken from her twenty-four years ago, when Ella was just five years old. She’d found him dead in his bed, or at least, that’s what her memories told her, however accurate they might have been. A month ago, Ella had found old letters among her dad’s possessions, claiming to be from a woman named Samantha. From the contents, Ella gleaned they’d been lovers, but this woman was painfully absent from Ella’s own recollections. Ella had tracked this Samantha woman down, only to find out that she’d been married at the time of her intimacy with Ella’s dad. Samantha’s husband hadn’t taken kindly to it, and according to the woman, resorted to confrontation. Ella was currently in the process of tracking the man down, fearing he could be the man responsible for her childhood trauma

  But now wasn’t the time. She refocused, obscured the thoughts, and stood up.

  “Don’t come and sit near me,” Denise snapped and shot up in her seat. “Please don’t. I don’t want sympathy. I just want this nightmare to be over.”

  “And with your help, we can help catch the person who did this.” Ella decided to thrust in the needle and get it over with. “Was there anyone out there who might want to hurt Daniel? Any enemies? Anyone he’d wronged?”

  Denise looked at Ella like she was getting ready to fight. “Dan’s dead and you’re asking me questions like that? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Time for the cold truth. “It’s very strange how Daniel ended up dead, especially in the location where he was. For a number of reasons, it seems like Daniel was targeted. If he had any enemies, that would be a great starting point.”

  Denise’s stare didn’t deviate. “No one wanted to hurt him. He was the most loving husband and perfect father anyone could ask for. Understand? We lived a simple life. No drama.”

  Nothing to go on there, Ella thought. She recalled something Denise said a minute ago and decided to zone in on it. “You said Daniel locked himself away in his office for hours.”

  Denise pushed her hair off her face and gripped a clump of it in her fist. Ella got a good look at the woman for the first time. Attractive, tanned, very presentable, at least she would be under other circumstances.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “What do you think he did in there?”

  “Work. Games. I don’t know.”

  “Is that what he told you?” Ella asked. “Where did he tell you he was going on the night he died?”

  Denise’s intense stare fell by the wayside. Her expression dissolved into something else. Disbelief, maybe.

  “Poker,” Denise said. “A late night. He did it most Thursdays.”

  Now there was something. Who played poker at a rest stop? She didn’t want to jump right into accusations so she skirted around the issue a little.

  “Did he have to ride along the I-95 to get there?” she asked.

  Denise wiped away the tears with her fingertips. She pursed her lips together, like she was trying to keep herself from spewing out the wrong words.

  “No,” she said finally. “Nowhere near.”

  Ella grabbed the opportunity and ran with it. “What do you think he was doing along there? It’s quite a distance away from here.”

  “I know what you’re doing,” Denise said. “I know what you want me to say.”

  “Mrs. Severn, I just need to know the truth. I’m not here to judge. The more truthful you can be, the more chance we have of finding who did this.”

  “You want me to say he was visiting a hooker,” Denise snapped.

  The comment took Ella by surprise. She let it hang in the air, hoping that Denise might elaborate. She wondered if Denise had already come to the same conclusions she and Mia had.

  “Do you think that’s what happened?” Ella asked.

  Denise’s face turned the color of hell’s sky: burning red with whispers of fleshy white. She dug her fingers into the cushions beside her. “No! I don’t think! Something on the news mentioned a prostitute. Daniel would never do that. He wasn’t a cheater.”

  She spoke the words with conviction, but something told Ella that Denise was trying to convince herself of Daniel’s innocence as much as Ella. Her rage settled a little. Her grip on the pillows loosened. Ella really didn’t want to ask any more questions, because the last thing she wanted was to accelerate Denise’s anger again. The words would be hard to hear, but she needed to dig deeper. There was an answer somewhere in Denise, far below the surface, and she’d need to peel back layers of fury to get there.

  “Mrs. Severn, if Daniel was lying to you about his poker game, what else might he be lying to you about? I know something like that is hard to hear, and it may be unrelated to the case at all, but it’s an avenue we have to explore.”

  Then the anger returned, more ruthless than before. Denise jumped up out of her seat and shouted between heavy sobs.

  “My husband would never lie to me, you understand? Stop pretending like you know him. Get the fuck out of my house,” she screamed.

  Ella suddenly felt like a prize fool. There was no justifying this. She’d never had an interviewee react so explosively, and even though it was an inevitable occurrence in this line of work, it was still a bitter pill to swallow. But in front of her was a woman without a husband, with fatherless children, and now questions of deceit too. No matter what Ella felt, Denise had it unspeakably worse. For that, she could only be supportive.

  “I’m sorry,” Ella said, but Denise stormed into her kitchen. “We’ll find who did this. I promise.”

  Her comments hung between them like buoyant smog, but were ultimately ignored.

  Ella left the house feeling dizzy. There was a lump in her throat, one brought on by failure. She quickly remembered why she was so afraid of interviewing the bereaved, because she didn’t yet have the tact or abilities that Mia did. Mia’s was achieved through decades of practice, and Ella was still a long way from reaching that point. Maybe one day she could get there, but there’d be many more of these situations in her future. It was a fact she had to live with.

  ***

  Ella arrived back at the Baltimore precinct, eager to share her findings with Mia but reluctant to divulge the full details. It was a chilly April morning, much colder than the previous years. Ella thought it might be her current outlook lowering the temperature. A microcosm borne from guilt, maybe.

  “How’d it go?” Mia asked as soon as Ella opened the door. She was reading from a stack of papers with a pen lodged between her lips.

  “Up and down. The victim seems pretty nondescript to me, but there were a couple of things that stood out.”

  “Out with it.”

  Ella took a seat. “He lied about his whereabouts to his wife. He told her he was playing poker with his friends.”

  Mia grabbed her pen and threw it on the table. “So he’s a liar, and a bad one at that.”

  “You think?”

  “A good lie involves minimal people. His wife could just check in with the other poker players, of which I’m assuming there’d be many. That also means he doesn’t lie often, so this little rendezvous could be a one-off. That’s not good for us.”

  “She said he went to poker most Thursdays, so maybe not.”

  “Interesting. We’ll have to take a look into that. Anything else?”

  “He used to spend most of his time locked in his office. His wife didn’t know exactly what he did in there, so it might be worth checking his computer.”

  A glimmer of satisfaction shone in Mia’s eyes. A sign of good progress, Ella thought. “Top work. We’ll have to get a warrant for that and that could take about twenty-four hours. I’ll get the boys on it.”

  Ella thought of Denise Severn, sitting at home, no doubt still suffering the crippling hopelessness that follows tragedy. Any minute now, her children would return home from school and discover their dad had gone for good. The thought overwhelmed the feeling of progression to the point Ella felt lightheaded. “It’s probably a good thing it will take a day. The woman wasn’t exactly thrilled to see me. She kicked me out of her house.”

  Mia laughed. “I don’t blame her. Going in there and asking if her dead husband was seeing hookers? Why do you think I sent you alone?”

  Ella conceded defeat. “Yup. I don’t blame her either. And thanks for that.”

  “Experience is the best teacher, I keep telling you this. Anyway, I’ve hit a wall, which means it’s lunch time.”

  For a number of reasons, Ella wasn’t hungry. She also knew that if she and Mia got together outside of the work environment, the guilt would push her into revealing things she shouldn’t. The words Tobias Campbell lingered on her tongue, and she feared that they might spew out, consciously or unconsciously. There was also the possibility of her being watched by some invisible force while she was out in the open.

  “I don’t fancy anything myself. You go, I’ll stay here.”

  Mia stood up and tied her red locks into a tight bun. “Alright. I’ve got the PD running down leads of all the known prostitutes in the area. They’re pretty familiar with them already, apparently. Don’t ask me why. I have a feeling some of them have seen a few on a personal level but I’m not here to judge.”

  “I’ll do some digging while I’m here.”

  “We need to focus on the ones who’ve been busted for more than just prostitution. Violence, scamming, stealing. You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Understood. See you soon.”

  Ella was suddenly alone with just her thoughts for company. She took a moment to order them, but even in a neat arrangement, they weighed her down like an invisible anchor. She wanted to know what Tobias was thinking. She wanted to spill to her partner. She wanted to call home and tell her roommate to lookout for any strange presence in their complex. Lastly, there was the issue of her father’s lover and the new suspect she’d uncovered in his death.

 

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