Блейк Пирс
If She Ran
CHAPTER FIVE
Olivia Tucker lived in a basic run-of-the-mill apartment in Jackson Heights. When Kate and DeMarco arrived, she was being visited by a local preacher. It was the preacher who answered the door, a tall black man who looked very somber and sad. He regarded the agents skeptically and sighed softly.
“Can I help you ladies?”
“We need to speak with Mrs. Tucker,” DeMarco said. “Who might you be?”
“I’m Leland Toombs, the pastor of her church. And who might you be?”
They went through the usual routine of showing their IDs and introducing themselves. Toombs took a tentative step back and gave them a disapproving look.
“You understand she is in a very distressed state, right?”
“Of course,” Kate said. “We’re trying to find her son’s killer and we are hoping she might be able to shed some light to help.”
“Who is that?” a shaky voice called from elsewhere in the apartment. A woman stepped into view from another room and started for the door.
“It’s the FBI,” Leland told her. “But Olivia, I’d suggest you take a moment to think about if you are ready to speak with them.”
Olivia Tucker came to the door looking an absolute mess. Her eyes were bloodshot and it looked like she was even having trouble walking. She looked at Kate and DeMarco and then placed a reassuring hand on Toombs’s shoulder.
“Yes, I think I need to,” she said. “Pastor Toombs, would you give me a moment?”
“I think maybe I should be here when they speak with you.”
She shook her head. “No. I appreciate it, but I need to do this part on my own.”
Toombs frowned and then looked at Kate and DeMarco. “Please be kind. She is not taking this well.” He then gave Olivia one final look and stepped out of the door while calling over his shoulder, “Please call me if you need anything, Olivia.”
Olivia watched him go and then slowly closed the door behind her. “Please, come on into the living room.”
Her voice was soft and ragged and she still walked as if her legs weren’t quite sure what they were doing.
“Did you know,” she said as they entered the living room, “that the cops called me and told me what had happened a full six hours after his body was found?”
“Why so long?” Kate asked.
“I suppose they assumed Missy would call and tell me. They told her first, of course. But it was later, after Missy had refused, that the police finally called.”
“Are you sure she refused?” DeMarco asked. “Given the nature of what happened, do you think she simply forgot?”
Olivia shrugged, but not as an I don’t know gesture. It was more of an I don’t care.
“Do you mean to tell me that you think Missy would have done something like that on purpose?” Kate asked.
“Honestly, I just don’t know. The woman is vindictive as hell. I wouldn’t put much of anything beyond her. She probably forgot so she wouldn’t have to speak to me or, God forbid, see me.”
“Want to tell us why you seem to dislike her so much?” DeMarco asked.
“Oh, I never liked her, not really. She was quite charming at first, when she was trying to earn my good graces. But the moment Jack put that engagement ring on her finger, she became some other person. Controlling. Manipulative. She has never appreciated the plush little life she has. She may have loved Jack deep down in some sick, twisted way—I don’t doubt that. But she never appreciated him.”
“Can you explain that a bit more?” Kate asked.
“She was always wanting something else—wanting more. And she made no secret of it. Everything she had, no matter what it was—kids, wealthy husband, beautiful house, you name it—it was never enough. Nothing Jack ever did was good enough for her.”
Kate noticed the look of absolute venom in Olivia’s face as she spoke. She believed every single word she was saying. But from the little bit of time Kate had spent with Missy Tucker, she found it all very hard to believe.
“Do you know if Jack felt this way about her?”
“God, no. He was so blinded by it all. By her and her little act.”
“So you’d comfortably rule out the idea of him being involved in an affair?”
Her look of shock was all the answer Kate needed. But Olivia had some choice words, too. “Given what I’ve been through the last few hours, how dare you ask such a stupid question? Are you trying to be insensitive and rude?”
“I ask only because that would at least give us somewhere to start looking. If he was involved in something like that, it would give us a series of leads to pursue. Because quite frankly, as of now, we have no witnesses and no suspects.”
“Suspects? Honey, I’ve already told you who did it. It was his hateful wife.”
Kate and DeMarco shared an uneasy glance. Whether Oliva Tucker’s statement was true or not, this case was going to get quite awkward before it was brought to a close.
Kate let the comment hang in the air for a moment before going on. When she did, she was sure to use her words carefully, choosing each one with great purpose.
“Are you sure you want to make such a bold statement?” Kate asked. “If you’re serious about that, I have to consider it a lead and start pursuing Missy Tucker as a potential suspect.”
“You do your job the way you want,” Olivia said. “But I know that woman. She wanted something different. She wanted out, but without the risk of losing everything in the process. Now you tell me some easier way to go about doing that than killing your husband.”
Throughout all of her career, Kate didn’t think she’d ever met anyone who was so blinded with hatred for someone else—in-laws, estranged siblings, and so on, she’d seen it all. But Olivia Tucker took things to a whole different level.
“I have to point out,” DeMarco said, “that a great deal of time on our trip out here was spent going over everything there was to know about both Jack and Missy. While we don’t have full reports by any means, there was more than enough to see that there was no marital discord strong enough to ping any legal issues.”
“That’s right,” Kate said. “Additionally, there were no financial troubles, no marks on her criminal record, nothing like that. You, on the other hand, do have a slight mark on your record. Do you want to tell me about the night Missy had to call the cops because you were trying to get into their home?”
“Jack was having a hard time at work. He’d had a panic attack. I called to check on him and to talk to my grandkids, but Missy wasn’t allowing it. She told me that Jack was too nice to say anything, but that I was part of the reason for his panic attack. She hung up on me when I called so I decided to go to their house. We had it out and she shoved me out the door, refusing to let me into the house. After that…well, I let my temper get the best of me and she called the police.”
“If we need to, we’ll look into that,” Kate said “But honestly, there is nothing we have seen and nothing in the records to indicate that Missy would have had any reason at all to kill her husband. There’s no motive that we can see.”
“Well, if you’re that convinced, why the hell are you even here to speak with me?”
“Honestly?” DeMarco said. “It’s because your name came up. One of Jack’s co-workers overheard him having a heated conversation with his wife about you. We checked your records just to cover our bases and found out about the police call.”
Olivia smiled the sort of smile often seen on tired villains in movies. “Well then, it seems you already have your mind made up about me.”
“That’s not the case at all. We just—”
“If you ladies don’t mind, I’m going to politely ask you to leave. I’d like to properly grieve my son.”
Kate knew that their time with Olivia Tucker was over; if she kept pressing, the woman would only shut down. Besides that, she had been useless for information—unless the vile feelings she had toward her daughter-in-law could be seen as truth. And Kate doubted there was anything to it.
“Thank you,” Kate said. “And we are truly sorry for your loss.”
Olivia nodded, got up, and walked out of the room. “I’m sure you remember where the door is,” she said, before disappearing elsewhere into the house.
Kate and DeMarco took their leave, no closer to a solid lead but having been thoroughly rattled by Olivia Tucker’s views on Missy.
“You think there’s a shred of truth to any of it?” DeMarco asked. She seemed to be coming out of her funk, apparently motivated by the case.
“I think in this moment, while she’s searching for answers to what happened, she thinks some of it is true. I think she’s taking little nuggets of fears she’s had over the years and amplifying them just to have some object to place her blame and rage on.”
DeMarco nodded as they got into the car. “Whatever it was, it was ugly.”
“And I think it rules her out of any foul play. We may want to keep an eye on Missy, though, just to keep her safe. Maybe even let local PD know how unhinged Olivia seems to be.”
“And then what?”
“And then we regroup. Possibly over a glass or two of wine back at the hotel.”
It sounded like a good idea but Kate continued to think of Missy Tucker and how her world was now very much an empty shell of what it had once been. Kate remembered all too well what it felt like to lose the man you loved, the man who knew you like a book he’d read millions of times. It was heartbreaking beyond words and drained the life out of you.
Revisiting that feeling in that moment, as she headed toward the hotel, made her more motivated that ever. It made her reach back into her memories to where details of the first case rested, back where the Nobilini case had started.
Her mind tried to latch onto a name—a name she knew well but that had faded into the deeper regions of her memory. It was a name she was reminded of earlier in the day, when they had met with Jack Tucker’s friends at the yacht club.
Cass Nobilini.
You know there are answers there, Kate thought.
There might be. And she’d go looking for them if it came to that.
But she really hoped it wouldn’t. She hoped she could make it the rest of her life never seeing Cass Nobilini again. But she also knew the chances of that were very slim—that she may, in fact, be seeing her sooner rather than later.
CHAPTER SIX
They settled in at the hotel’s bar just as the dinner rush started to pack the place out. While the prospect of a glass of wine was indeed promising, Kate found that she was a bit more excited about the burger she ordered. Usually when on a case, she’d somehow forget to eat lunch, leaving her ravenous at the end of the day. As she sank her mouth into the burger for the first bite, she saw DeMarco giving her a small smile. It was her first authentic smile of the day.
“What?” Kate asked through a mouthful of burger.
“Nothing,” DeMarco said, picking at her grilled chicken salad. “It’s reassuring to see a woman of your size and age eat like that.”
Swallowing down the bite, Kate nodded and said, “I was gifted with an amazing metabolism.”
“Oh, what a bitch.”
“It’s worth it to be able to eat like this.”
A brief silence passed between them, which was shattered by both of them laughing together at the exchange. It felt good to be able to lower her guard around DeMarco after the tense day they’d shared. DeMarco seemed to feel the same way, based on what she said after sipping from her glass of wine.
“Sorry I was so bitter all day. The whole thing of breaking news like that to a family…it’s hard. I mean, I know it’s hard, but it’s especially hard on me. I had this thing happen in my past that jarred me. I thought I was over it, but apparently, I’m not.”
“What happened?”
DeMarco took a moment, perhaps considering whether or not she wanted to delve into the story. With another large sip of wine, she decided to go ahead with it. She let out a sigh and began.
“I knew I was gay when I was fourteen. I had my first girlfriend when I was sixteen. When I was seventeen, my girlfriend Rose and I—she was nineteen—decided that we were going to go ahead and come out. We both had kept it a secret, particularly from our parents. So there we were—about to break the news. I was supposed to meet her at her house and we were going to tell her parents, who, I might add, assumed that Rose and I were just really good friends. I was always at her house and vice versa, you know? So I’m sitting there on her parents’ couch when I get a phone call. It’s from the police, telling me that Rose was in a car accident and that she had died right away, upon impact. I was called rather than her parents because they found her cell phone and saw that I took up about ninety percent of her call history.
“So I break down right away and her parents are sitting there, wondering what the hell happened—why I’m suddenly in tears, on my knees in the floor. And I had to tell them. I had to tell them what the policeman had just told me.” She paused here, poked at her salad a bit, and then added, “It was the absolute worst moment of my life.”
Kate found it hard to look at DeMarco; she was delivering the story not as an emotional part of it, but as if she were a robot, reciting back a series of events. Still, the tale was more than enough to explain DeMarco’s attitude the previous night when she, Kate, had volunteered them to break the bad news to Missy Tucker.
“If I’d known any of that, you know I wouldn’t have volunteered us,” Kate said.
“I know. And I knew it then. But my emotions strangled any reason or logic. Quite honestly, I just needed to sit and stew in it for a while. Sorry you caught the brunt of it.”
“Water under the bridge,” Kate said.
“Have you done that a lot in your career? Breaking news like that?”
“Oh yes. And it never gets easy. It becomes easier to detach yourself from it, but the act itself is never easy.”
The table fell into silence again. The waiter came by and refilled their wine as Kate continued to work on her burger.
“So how’s your man?” DeMarco asked. “Allen, right?”
“He’s doing good. He’s just about to the point in the relationship where he worries about me still being involved in the FBI. He’d prefer that I take a desk job. Or stay retired.”
“So it’s getting serious, huh?”
“It feels that way. And part of me is excited for it. But there’s a small part of me that feels like it would be a waste of time. He and I are both quickly approaching sixty. Starting a new relationship at that age feels…odd, I guess.” Sensing that DeMarco would latch onto the topic if she was allowed to do so, Kate quickly redirected the conversation.
“How about you? Has the love life picked up at all since the last time we had this awkward conversation?”
DeMarco shook her head and smiled. “No, but that’s by choice. I’m still enjoying the Land of One-Night Stands while I still can.”
“Does that make you happy?”
DeMarco seemed genuinely shocked by the question. “It sort of does. I don’t need the responsibilities and requirements that come with a relationship right now.”
Kate chuckled. She had never been in the Land of One-Night Stands. She’d met Michael while in college and married him a year and a half later. It had been the kind of relationship where she had started to understand that they would spend their lives together as soon as their first kiss.
“So where’s the next step in this case?” DeMarco asked.
“I’m thinking about revisiting the initial case rather than just using it as a reference. I’m wondering if there’s new information that might have come up within the Nobilini family. But…well, like your story about your girlfriend being killed while you sat on her parents’ sofa, it’s not territory that is easily ventured back into.”
“So more awkward visits and conversations tomorrow?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”
“Is there anything worth filling me in on before I step blindly into it?”
“Probably. But trust me…it would be better saved for the morning. Going into it right now is only going to keep us up late and screw with my sleep.”
“Oh. Those kinds of stories.”
“Exactly.”
They finished their current glasses of wine and paid their checks. On the way up to their rooms, Kate thought about the story DeMarco had just told—of that sad glimpse into her past. It made her very aware that she knew very little about her partner. If they were working in a normal relationship, seeing one another nearly every day rather than once or twice every few months, that would certainly be different. It made her wonder if she was doing her part to truly get to know DeMarco.
They parted ways at their rooms—Demarco’s directly across the hall from Kate’s—and Kate felt the need to say something. Anything, really, to let her know that she appreciated DeMarco’s willingness to open up.
“Again, I apologize about last night. It’s dawning on me that I don’t know you well enough to be making decisions like that for both of us.”
“It’s fine, really,” DeMarco said. “I should have told you about it last night.”
“We need to be intentional about getting to know one another. If we’re trusting each other with our lives, it’s kind of necessary. Maybe outside of work sometime.”
“Yeah, that would be nice.” DeMarco paused here as she opened her door. “You said you had some thinking to do…about the old case. The Nobilini case. Let me know if you need someone to ping ideas off of.”
“I’ll do that,” Kate said.
With that, they entered the rooms, ending the day between them. Kate kicked off her shoes and went directly to her laptop. As she booted it up, she called Director Duran. As she’d expected, he did not answer his phone but the line was then redirected to his assistant director, a woman named Nancy Saunders. Kate put in a request to have digital copies of the Nobilini files sent to her email as soon as possible. She knew that DeMarco had brought a few, but it was just the overview of the case. Kate felt the need to get back into the grittiness of the case, right down to the finer details. Saunders committed to getting it done, letting her know she’d have them by nine o’clock the following morning.
Cass Nobilini, Kate thought.
She’d thought of the woman almost right away, after Duran had told her about the possible connection. She’d thought of her again when she’d heard the wails and screeches of Missy Tucker as she grieved her murdered husband, and then again while talking to Jack Tucker’s friends.
Cass Nobilini, the mother of Frank Nobilini. The woman who had found it insulting and darkly improper for the media to latch onto the event of her son’s murder just because he had once worked closely with a few popular men in Congress as a financial advisor. Kate felt that she had been a fool to even pretend that this case was not going to lead her back to Cass Nobilini in some way.
It was that thought that remained with her for the remainder of the night, clinging to the forefront of her mind as she eventually lay down in bed and drifted off to sleep.
***
She could still see the crime scene in her head. The wear and tear of memory made it a little faded and rusty, but the haziness was stripped away whenever she dreamed about it. In her dreams, it was as clear as if she were watching television.
And she saw it that night, managing to fall asleep shortly after nine yet twitching and moaning slightly in her sleep as the midnight hour approached.
The scene: Frank Nobilini, killed in the alley and still holding his BMW keys. The case had eventually led her back to his home, a four-bedroom house in Ashton. She’d started in the garage, which had smelled faintly of lawn trimmings from a recent grass-cutting. She’d felt like she was in some haunted place, like Frank Nobilini’s spirit was there somewhere, waiting for her. Maybe in the empty space where his BMW was supposed to be but, at that time, had sat in a parking lot several blocks away from where his body had been found. The garage had been cold and like some weird tomb. It was one of the handful of scenes from her past that always came back vividly for reasons she had never understood.
There had been no clues of any kind at the house, no signs of why someone might want to kill him. One would think that maybe it was for his very nice car, but the keys had been in his hand. The house had been clean. Almost eerily so. No paperwork trails, nothing of note in the address books or the mail. Nothing.
In her dream, Kate was standing there, in the alley. She was touching the still-sticky smear of gore on side of the wall in the same experimental way a child might touch a stray drop of syrup on the kitchen table. She turned and looked behind her, wanting to look down the alleyway, but saw the interior of the Nobilinis’ garage instead. As if she had been invited inside, she walked to the wooden stairs that led to the door that would take her into the kitchen. She then moved in the way that only dreams allow, fluidly, almost being projected rather than moved by her legs. She somehow ended up in the bathroom, looking to the large tub/shower combo installed in the wall. It was filled with blood. Something was moving beneath the surface, causing little bubbles to rise to the top of the blood. When one would pop, it would send tiny droplets against the porcelain side of the wall.
She backed away, stepping through the bathroom doorway and into the hall. There, Frank Nobilini was walking toward her. Behind him, his wife, Jennifer, simply watched. She even gave Kate a harmless little wave as her dead husband lurched down the hallway. Frank walked very zombie-like, slowly and with an exaggerated gait.
“It’s okay,” someone said from behind her.
She turned and saw Cass Nobilini, Frank’s mother, sitting on the floor. She looked tired, defeated…as if she were waiting for an executioner’s blade.
“Cass…?”
“You were never going to solve it. It was over your head. But time…it has a way of changing things, doesn’t it?”
Kate turned back to Frank, still advancing. As he came by the bathroom door, Kate saw that some of the blood had come out of the tub and into the floor, seeping out into the hallway. When Frank stepped in it, it made a wet sucking sound.
Frank Nobilini smiled at her and raised his hand to her—slightly decayed and mottled. Kate slowly backed away, raising her own hands to her face, and let out a scream.
She woke up, feeling the scream lodged in her throat.
That damned house. She had never understood why it had rattled her in such a way. Maye because of Jennifer Nobilini’s screams and wails, laced with the picture-perfect house…it had all seemed surreal. Like something out of an artsy horror movie.
Kate sat up and slowly inched her way to the edge of the bed. She collected a few deep breaths and looked at the clock: 1:22. The only light in the room came from the numbers on the alarm clock and the faint glow of the security lights outside, barely shining in through the closed blinds.
She’d had dreams concerning Cass Nobilini and that first case before, but this one had been a doozy. Her heart was still hammering in her chest as she got out of bed and walked to the mini-fridge for a bottle of water. She sipped some down as she walked over to the bedside table where she had set her laptop up.
She flicked on the bedside lamp and logged into her email. She had only one new one, and that had come from Assistant Director Saunders. She’d tasked an agent with digging up the Nobilini files and they had been delivered to her shortly before midnight.
She knew that there was no way she’d return to a deep sleep, so she opened them up one by one, a bit uncomfortable by how natural it seemed and how familiar those old files felt. She looked through them briefly at first, in the same way someone visiting a somewhat familiar location might give the area a once-over before truly starting to study the place. When she came to the last of the twenty-six pages, she went back to the beginning. But before getting deep into it, she went to the little complimentary coffee maker and set a pot to brew. As it started to percolate, she made the bed, relocated the laptop to the small table against the far wall, and made herself a little workstation.
Within five minutes, she was reading each of the files line by line and sipping on a cup of very dark, very cheap coffee. The account of Frank Nobilini felt like an old friend, the sort of friend that only called with bad news. The case detailed every conversation she’d had with neighbors and friends in Ashton. As she read over them all, she was unsettled with how similar they all were to the conversations she’d recently had concerning Jack Tucker.
The only thing that had even remotely resembled anything of merit had come from twenty-two-year-old Alice Delgado, a nanny for a family in Ashton who had cared for two kids, ages eight and eleven. Alice had admitted to making sexual advances toward Frank Nobilini when they had crossed paths at a local park. Frank had responded with flattery and polite rejection. While that had been the extent of it, the news of Frank’s death had made Alice feel incredibly guilty—so guilty that she had contacted Jennifer Nobilini to confess. Jennifer, the caring and apparently flawless woman she was, had forgiven her almost right away.
Aside from that one detail, there had been nothing. Not in conversations, not at the crime scene, not in the Nobilinis’ home. And nothing in the criminal records for Frank or Jennifer—no history of criminal activities, no enemies to speak of…nothing.
Kate had remained on the case for six months, then took a step back, working on it only as a background project for another eight months before the case was totally given up on. It had not been the only unsolved case in her career, but it had been the only unclosed case with such a degree of strangeness to it.
As she read through, she did her best to apply Jack Tucker’s death to it. And the more she read and reacquainted herself with the case, the more certain she became that Jack’s murder was linked. It was either done by the exact same killer or a copycat.
It was 4:10 before she felt she had given the notes and files their proper attention. She stared at her second cup of coffee for a moment and then slowly picked up her cell phone. She placed a call to the twenty-four/seven resource line at the bureau. It was a bit slower than a direct call to Saunders or Duran during the day but it was better than nothing.
After giving her name and badge number, she was greeted by a voice that was far too warm and pleasant for a quarter after four in the morning.
“Agent Wise, how can we help you?”
“I need the current address and phone number for a woman that probably lives somewhere in New York. Cass Nobilini.”
“Okay, and is this going to be the best number to send that information to?”
“It is. Thanks.”
But even before she ended the call, Kate felt guilty as hell. There was a very large part of her that hoped Cass Nobilini had decided to move. If Kate could make it through this case without having to cross paths with Cass, she’d consider herself fortunate.
You know that won’t happen, Kate thought. You’re just not that lucky.
She got her answer twenty minutes later when she got a return call from the bureau. After giving the phone number for one Cass Nobilini, the address confirmed it.
“127 Harper Street. Ashton, New York.”
