Блейк Пирс
Tinted Windows
CHAPTER FIVE
Jenny Bjurman had clearly been crying, but it did very little to ding the woman’s obvious beauty. She was short-statured and had the sort of body Chloe figured most women would kill for. That body was evident in the T-shirt and yoga pants she was wearing when she invited them into her home. It seemed like an off choice of attire given the circumstances, but she also figured this might be the sort of clothes Jenny Bjurman wore around the house when she had nothing to do. Given the woman’s appearance, it made Chloe wonder how attractive her husband had been.
“We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us,” Chloe said. “We understand the police gave already talked to you.”
“It’s quite all right,” Jenny said, sitting down at her kitchen table and sipping on a cup of tea. “I’ll talk to anyone that can help. I’m at a loss for words…for thoughts, for…anything, really.”
“Forgive us if we repeat questions the cops already asked,” Rhodes said. “But can you think of anyone at all that might have wanted to see your husband dead?”
“That’s just the thing,” Jenny said. “Everyone loved him. I know how trite that sounds, but so far as I know, it’s true. I can’t think of a single enemy he might have had.”
“Anyone from work?” Chloe asked. “From Fulbright Fitness, maybe?”
“It’s doubtful,” she said. “He usually told me about most of what went on at work. Besides, all of his classes at Fulbright are contracted through the owners, not Viktor. Any grievances would go to Fulbright Fitness management.”
“You say everyone loved him. Can I assume he was a social sort of man?”
“Yes, very much so. Any new business that opened, or any sort of gala or formal event, he was there. He was also always willing to help anyone. He was the kind of person who would give the shirt off his back if it was necessary.”
“What about the in-home clients he saw?” Rhodes asked. “Did you know any of them?”
“I know most of them, yes. Viktor was always sure to let me know when he took on a new client because they were almost always female. He was very open and up front about that. He wanted to make sure I knew when he was going to be in a woman’s home. Their husbands were there most of the time, so it was no big deal.”
“Do you have a list of his clients?”
“I don’t, but we have a shared contacts list on our phones. But I think the cops had already worked with the people over at Fulbright Fitness to get a list of his in-home clients.”
“All the same, if you could provide the names and numbers for us, that would be helpful,” Chloe said.
“Of course,” Jenny said. As she grabbed her phone from beside her cup of tea, she started to weep softly. She stared at her home screen image, one of her and a man Chloe assumed was her husband. She punched in her code and started sifting through her contacts.
She gave them the names and numbers of Viktor’s clients one by one. Her voice cracked a bit more each time as she read through the remains of her husband’s life. Chloe, meanwhile, started to connect a few dots in her head as she and Rhodes copied down the list. Nearly every in-home client Viktor Bjurman had was female. And if he looked anything like his wife, she was pretty sure he was having to work extra hard to remain faithful.
She kept that tucked away in the back of her head as Jenny Bjurman continued to list out the clients. After seven of them, Jenny had to stop. She shoved the phone away with a violent motion and then crumpled onto the kitchen table, where she let out a wail of grief.
Chloe slowly picked the phone up from the floor and placed it back on the table. When she did, she got a good look at the picture on the home screen and found that Viktor Bjurman was indeed a good-looking man. He and Jenny made a breathtaking couple. And though she hated to go there so quickly, Chloe wondered how a man that handsome was able to go in and out of women’s homes without pissing off at least a few husbands.
***
Once Jenny had been able to talk coherently again, she looked at Viktor’s schedule and figured out that the last client he had seen before he died was a woman named Theresa Diaz. She lived on Primrose Street, a little less than half a mile away from the Bjurman residence.
It was just after noon when Rhodes pulled the car in front of the Diaz residence. It was a pretty little home with flowerbeds all along the edges of the house. The two-car garage was open, revealing a single SUV parked inside. The agents stepped out and Rhodes rang the front doorbell. It took a few moments, but it was finally answered by a pretty blonde woman. In a way, it was almost like déjà vu. While she bore at least some resemblance to Jenny Bjurman, there were noticeable differences. One thing the two women did have in common was that they had both been crying—only Theresa Diaz had done her best to make it appear as if she hadn’t.
“Hello?” she asked in a quizzical voice.
“Mrs. Diaz, we’re Agents Fine and Rhodes with the FBI,” Chloe said. “We were hoping to ask you some questions about Viktor Bjurman. I assume you’ve heard the news?”
“I have. And yes, come on in.”
Theresa led them into her home, a small yet beautifully decorated house. Soft music was coming from somewhere within the house—a soft ballad-like song that Chloe remembered from several years ago. Theresa led them into what served as the living room. Chloe appreciated that there was no television and all the chairs were pointed at one another, indicating the Diaz family was more focused on conversation than bingeing whatever new show everyone was talking about.
“When did you last see Mr. Bjurman?” Rhodes asked.
“Yesterday evening. He came over for a Pilates and core training session.”
“When did he leave?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t remember the exact time, but the session ended at seven. He’s usually out the door promptly after the session. So I’d say no later than seven-oh-five or so.”
“Please forgive me asking this,” Chloe said, “but was your husband present during the session?”
“No.” She paused for a moment, as if trying to decide if she should be insulted by what Chloe might be suggesting. In the end, she shrugged it off and went on as well as she could. “He’s on business right now. He’s not due back for another three days. But my husband has met Viktor and there is nothing to even think about there.”
She was not being defiant or mean-spirited. Her tone was quite polite, in fact. Still, Chloe noted that the woman had definitely been crying recently.
“Did you know Mr. Bjurman outside of your professional relationship?” Rhodes asked. “That is, would you consider the two of you friends?”
“Sure. We laughed together and joked around. He would even stay over for a glass of wine every now and then after the sessions, but only when Mike—my husband—was home.”
Chloe considered her next question carefully. Theresa Diaz had made a point to mention her husband several times in the last twenty seconds or so. She had also done her polite best to shut down any implication that there may have been an affair. So Chloe knew it was a touchy subject for some reason or another. This also made her know that if she pressed on toward that subject, Theresa was going to send them packing.
“How long had you been a client of Mr. Bjurman’s?” Chloe asked.
“About a year or so. He was very good…”
She stopped here, composed herself a bit, and shook her head. “Sorry. It’s all very sudden. I mean…I just saw him last night.”
“That’s okay,” Rhodes said. “Given your working relationship with him, can you think of anyone who might have had something against him?”
“That’s just the thing,” Theresa said. “I never saw him have a cross word with anyone. For that matter, I never heard anyone say anything bad about him.”
“What was your husband’s opinion of him?” Rhodes asked. Chloe cringed a bit, wondering if this would be the question that got them kicked out. But no, Theresa took it in stride or simply didn’t see the subtlety of Rhodes’s question.
“Mike got along fine with him. Now, full disclosure here, he did not like the idea of a male trainer coming into the house while he’s not here. But once Mike got to meet Viktor, all of that changed. I can’t stress enough how charming of a man he was. Everyone loved him. It makes absolutely no sense why anyone would kill him.”
“Would you happen to know if he had any clients in the town of Colin?” Chloe asked.
“I’m not sure. His wife might be able to get that information.”
Brave for her to mention Bjurman’s wife, Chloe thought. There’s almost certainly some degree of an affair or, at the very least, attraction here.
“Did Mr. Bjurman seem at all distressed or uncomfortable during last night’s session?” Chloe asked.
“No. Or, if he was, he hid it very well. I just…I don’t understand…”
So far, this seemed to be the running theme. And it was further proof that they weren’t going to get anything worthwhile out of Theresa Diaz. She knew the next logical step was to visit the town of Colin to see what they could find out about the murder of Steven Fielding. But by doing that, Chloe felt that they’d be leaving a cold trail to the murder of Bjurman because with every moment that passed, she was becoming more and more certain the murders were not connected.
“I just don’t understand,” Theresa said again, her voice wavering and close to tears.
That makes two of us, Chloe thought.
CHAPTER SIX
“So they were definitely screwing, right?”
The question was a blunt one, yet the sort of thing Chloe had fully expected Rhodes to ask once they got back into the car.
“That’s the feeling I got,” Chloe said. “You noticed she had been crying, right?”
“Yeah, the redness and slight puffiness around her eyes. The little tremor and creak in her voice.”
“So it’s clear why she’d not want to confess to the affair,” Chloe said. “Especially if what she said about her husband meeting Bjurman is true. Makes sense she’d want to cover her ass. If the man she was sleeping with on the side is all of a sudden dead, it makes the task of hiding the affair that much easier.”
“Still, I think we should check out the story about her husband being away on business,” Rhodes said. “We could probably get our new friends Anderson and Benson to hunt that information down.”
“You think the killer could have been the husband?” Chloe asked.
“Probably not. But seeing as how the murders so far seem to be unconnected, we need to check every box, I suppose.”
Chloe nodded. She liked it when she and Rhodes were so perfectly in sync. Their partnership had certainly started off rocky, so it was good to be reminded of just how far they had come every now and then.
“Hey, Fine?”
“Yeah?”
“What really happened out there in Texas?”
Chloe felt those thoughts of their in-sync partnership come to a screeching halt. She resented that Rhodes was going there—with or without Johnson’s guidance—but did not want to show that it angered her. She knew that would make it appear she had something to hide.
“Do you want the story with or without all of the family drama that comes attached with it?”
Rhodes grinned. “Without. I know how you hate dredging that shit up.”
Chloe hesitated for a moment, unsure of how to proceed. If Rhodes was playing a part, she was playing it well.
“Dad and Danielle got into some sort of skirmish at his apartment. I don’t even know what it was fully about because Danielle won’t give me all the details. But in the end, I just think Dad snapped and…”
“Yeah?”
“Rhodes, I hope you don’t take this personally, but I don’t really feel like talking about it. Not right now. It’s going to mess with my head and keep me from focusing on the case. You can understand that, right?”
“Of course.”
Chloe couldn’t tell if there was disappointment in her face and voice or not. She hated to think that Rhodes might actually be spying on her, tasked to report anything she learned to Johnson and those above him. But for right now, she had to be incredibly careful of every word that came out of her mouth.
Yet the silence that then fell between them indicated that Rhodes had not been expecting to be shut down in such a way. The moment sat thick between them as Rhodes guided the car into Colin.
It was so thick that when Chloe’s cell phone rang, she jumped a bit. Hoping Rhodes hadn’t seen her reaction, she answered the call quickly.
“This is Agent Fine.”
“Agent Fine, it’s Deputy Anderson,” came Anderson’s singsong voice. “Thought you should know that we just got notified that an officer in Colin just arrested a man. They’re pretty sure it’s Steven Fielding’s killer.”
“Any possible connection to Bjurman?” Chloe asked.
“We don’t know yet. But I told them I’d let you know. They’re literally just now processing him. He should be ready for questioning as soon as you get to the department.”
Chloe gave her thanks and ended the call. “That was Anderson. Looks like the Colin PD got the killer.”
“Both victims?”
“No one knows yet.”
“Well then, let’s find out,” Rhodes said, sinking her foot down harder on the gas.
***
The Colin Police Department was easily the smallest Chloe had ever stepped foot into. The front lobby was perfectly square, containing a small waiting area, the minuscule bullpen, and a small snack area. The place smelled of aerosol spray and strong coffee. It did seem to be in good shape, though, everything in its right place, and a sense of order to it all. Several seconds after Chloe and Rhodes made their entrance, they were met by a small but muscular man who looked to be in a very big hurry. He was dressed in his uniform blues, the shirt of which was partially sticking to him due to the sweat that was clearly visible along the chest. The tag above his left breast read Cooper.
“You the agents?” he asked.
“That’s us,” Rhodes said. “Agents Rhodes and Fine.”
“Fantastic,” Cooper said. “Come on back.”
He led them through the small bullpen and to a hallway that extended into the rather cramped back half of the building. He didn’t bother taking them into an office, but to the far back of the building where there was an honest-to-God holding cell situated by a single room—which Chloe assumed was where they had stored the suspect.
“Here’s what we’ve got,” Cooper said. “We got a call about an hour ago from Rock and Sam’s, a local bar just up the road. The bartender, Sam, is a good friend of mine, so I can vouch for his story. He said this guy came in, a guy he’s seen before named Carol Hughes. He comes in for lunch all the time. Hughes ordered his usual and when he reached out to grab his beer, Sam said he noticed the watch on the guy’s wrist. It was a fancy one, one that sort of didn’t really seem like it would be seen on this guy. Not only that, but Sam had seen the exact same watch a few times in the past—on the wrist of Steven Fielding.”
“Really?” Rhodes asked. “He thinks he saw the same watch on some other guy’s wrist?”
“Well, it’s a pretty unique watch. It’s gold—not sure if it’s real gold or not—and it has the Tennessee Volunteers logo on the face. Sam said he distinctly remembers seeing that logo on the watch when Steven wore it several weeks back, talking shit about college football. So when he saw it on Hughes’s wrist, he then remembered how he’d heard Steven had been murdered in some sort of messed up burglary just a few days ago. He discreetly called us. I answered the call myself and went down to the bar to pick the guy up. He just about pissed his pants when he saw the law in the bar. Put up a fight, but never admitted anything.”
“That does seem pretty cut and dry,” Chloe said.
“If you need to see the watch, it’s just now been bagged up and is in evidence. Dusted it for prints and it looks like there are two sets on it. I’d bet my house on them belonging to Fielding and our suspect.”
“That’s not necessary,” Chloe said. “I think speaking to the suspect will be enough.”
“Help yourself. And let me know if you need anything.”
With that, Cooper unlocked the door to the single room by the holding cell. As Chloe had suspected, it was what served as an interrogation room. There was the cliché table near the center of the room, to which Carol Hughes’s right wrist had been handcuffed. When Chloe and Rhodes entered the room, he looked like he might jump straight out of the chair.
He was a very plain-looking man. He was in need of a haircut, as his sideburns were bushy and his brow was covered by a mess of sweaty hair. He looked up at them with wide eyes and then a confused look dawned on his face. Chloe was beginning to wonder if she and Rhodes had been paired up to experiment with a line of thought that suspects would often find themselves baffled that two petite women had been sent in. She wondered if such befuddlement might be disarming to criminals. If the bureau was looking for evidence that this was the case, Hughes would have been a great study.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked.
Chloe showed her badge and ID as she approached the table. There was no chair on her side, so she and Rhodes simply stood. They stood by the table, making sure Hughes felt closed in and trapped.
“What was your relationship with Steven Fielding?” Chloe asked.
“None. I’d seen him at the bar. Seemed like he might have some money.”
“Seems pretty stupid to wear a watch you stole from his home. Especially after you killed him. Wouldn’t you agree?”
A flash of anger crossed Hughes’s face, but it was temporary. Apparently, the anger had been quickly drowned out by the realization of just how much trouble he was in.
“I didn’t meant to do it,” he said.
“To do what?” Rhodes asked.
Hughes struggled with something for a moment. Chloe had seen it before; even when presented with their guilt and knowing full well that they had been caught, it was often very hard for humans to admit that they had crossed that mortal line.
“Look, I know it was wrong, but I just needed some extra cash, you know? I lost my job three months ago and bills…man, they just keep adding up. And my woman, she won’t…she won’t even think about marrying me until I’m stable…”
“So burglary seemed like the appropriate answer?” Rhodes asked.
Chloe had been thinking the same thing, but she had never seen the point in antagonizing a suspect. It usually just caused the suspect to delay things a bit more. Honestly, in the case of Hughes, she had also been biting back a comment about how if he had been out of work for the past three months, it probably wasn’t the best idea to keep frequenting bars.
“Walk us through what happened,” Chloe said.
“I’d been following him for a few days, getting to know his schedule. I didn’t think he’d be home. I was going to get in, get out, and that would be that.” He paused here for a moment and at first, Chloe thought he might start crying. But what she had seen as fear slowly dissolved into terror. Hughes was realizing the gravity of what he had done and it was finally starting to sink in, to drag him down.
“But when I came in through the front door, he was right there, on the couch. I had a crowbar in my hand because I was expecting to have to break into the house. When he came at me and we started fighting, I just…I lost it. I was surprised and scared and I just…I started hitting him with the crowbar. And I couldn’t stop…I couldn’t…”
“What did cause you to stop?” Rhodes asked.
“I heard the garage door opening. I guess it was his wife coming home. I had that part down, too. I wanted to be in and out before she got there, you know? I never wanted to hurt or kill anyone…but I heard that garage door and I stopped. I saw what I had done and…”
He stopped here, still unable to bring himself to say it.
“Go on,” Chloe prodded.
“I knew he was dead and I felt like I had to take something. I saw the watch, though it was gold. Grabbed his wallet out of his pocket and took the cash inside. Eighty-two bucks.”
“And you left?” Chloe asked. “Right out the door?”
Hughes nodded. “I could even hear the garage door coming back down. I must have missed his wife by no more than thirty seconds.”
“You knew he was dead when he left?” Rhodes asked.
“Not for sure.” He was trembling now, the links on the cuffs rattling against the bar he was handcuffed to. “But the way his head looked…and all the blood, I figured there was no way he was still alive. Or if he wasn’t dead then…he would be soon…”
“Mr. Hughes, do you know a man named Viktor Bjurman?”
The question seemed to jar him, perhaps because it was seemingly unrelated to his own actions. After thinking about it for a moment, he shook his head. “No. No, I can’t say that I do.”
“Have you been to Pine Point anytime in the past week or so?” Chloe asked.
“Yes. There’s a little health food store there. I get my vitamins from them. That was…last Friday, I think.”
Chloe stepped away from the table. She eyed Hughes, considering the story and his answers. Even a poor liar could concoct a story like that. But it took a true sociopath to be able to get down the little details like trembling and having their expression soaked in genuine fear. Based on her experience and her gut instincts, she knew he was telling the truth—and he was terrified of what the consequences might be. The fact that he had even offered up a small personal detail like the vitamins sealed the deal for her.
And given that, she was quite confident that this was not the man who killed Viktor Bjurman. Which meant the deaths were not linked at all. Sure, it felt rather good to be right, but it was equally frustrating as they were now back to square one on Bjurman’s murder.
“Mr. Hughes, we’re going to have the local PD work with you to draw up a timeline of where you’ve been and the things you’ve done over the course of the moment you inadvertently killed Mr. Fielding and the moment you were arrested. If you do it well enough, the bureau won’t have to get involved. Do you understand?”
He nodded, still looking like a confused kid in math class. “I just don’t understand how all of this happened. I don’t…”
“Anything else, Agent Rhodes?” Chloe asked.
“Nothing.”
The agents left Hughes where he sat, with a scared and now quite confused look on his face. As soon as they were back out in the hallway, Cooper came rushing back down the hall toward them. There was another officer with him now and they both looked just as confused as Hughes had when they’d walked out.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
“No,” Chloe said. “You and your men have done some great work. He’s your guy for sure, just not the one we were looking for. If you could find out where he’s been the last few days so we can rule him out as Viktor Bjurman’s murderer, that would be great.”
“Yeah…I didn’t think he did that one, too,” Cooper said. “As shaky and terrified as he is, I don’t even see him being capable of doing what he did to Fielding. I mean, Christ…did you see the pictures?”
Not wanting to sway the officers one way or the other, Chloe only nodded. She handed Cooper her business card and said, “Please, once you get some sort of timeline down, would you mind giving us a call?”
“Of course,” Cooper said, though it was clear he had not yet wrapped his head around why they were already leaving.
“Thank you for your time,” Rhodes said as they passed by him and back toward the front of the building.
Chloe hated that they left in a borderline rude fashion, but there had truly been no point in them sticking around. Chloe racked her brain as they headed back for their car, trying to think of even the smallest thing they could do to one hundred percent verify that Carol Hughes had not killed Bjurman—even though any law enforcement agent worth his salt would be able to tell by just spending two minutes alone with the guy.
“Good for the Colin PD,” Rhodes said as she got behind the wheel. “I doubt these guys ever really get that kind of action.”
“Yeah, good for them,” Chloe said. Then she added: “You saw it, too, right? He was terrified of what he had done…almost like he still didn’t even believe it.”
“Yeah, I saw it. Not exactly the way you’d expect a man that has brutally killed two men to react to being questioned by federal agents.”
“Still, we should try to find an alibi. See what Cooper and his men come up with.”
“Agreed,” Rhodes said. “But what do we do until then?”
Chloe thought about it for a moment and finally gave a shrug. “Lunch?”
It was admitting defeat without actually admitting defeat. Chloe hated to think of a killer being brought to justice as a defeat but the seemingly cut-and-dry case of Carol Hughes did put something of a damper on the Bjurman case. Chloe knew that without any link between Bjurman and Fielding, she and Rhodes would be called off the case, leaving Bjurman’s death as an unsolved murder to be handled by local law enforcement.
And it was that fear that revealed something else to her: the fact that she was so hard pressed to keep this case because she was not ready to return to the drama waiting for her with Danielle back home.
***
Lunch consisted of a greasy yet delicious pizza at a local pizza joint, and side salads. They ate in relative silence, certain that Johnson or one of his underlings would be calling any minute now to tell them to come on in. Rhodes had called bureau headquarters after leaving the Colin PD to update the case and even in that, things had felt rather final. Chloe had no doubt that their visit to Pine Point was already coming to an end.
“Anything still pricking you the wrong way?” Rhodes asked.
“Why do you ask?”
Rhodes shrugged and wiped her hands on a napkin that had already accumulated a lot of the grease from their margherita pizza. “You look bothered….like you’ve lost something.”
“Maybe a little,” Chloe admitted. “I have no doubt that Hughes did not kill Bjurman. But the whole Bjurman thing…something about Theresa Diaz seems off to me. Even if she had come out and admitted to sleeping with Bjurman—which I’m pretty certain of, by the way—I think there might still be something to her…something she might be hiding.”
“If they were sleeping together, maybe it was more than an affair,” Rhodes suggested. “Maybe they were in love?”
“Possibly.”
They fell into silence again, mulling it over. About a quarter of the pizza remained, though both agents had had their fill.
Chloe felt a slight shift inside of her as returning home became more and more of a possibility. While she was indeed happy to be away from all of the Danielle drama—even if only an hour and a half removed—she was still very much worried about how her sister was going to react when (more than likely if, Chloe figured) the FBI contacted her. The entire ordeal created a boiling knot of worry within her, so she did her best to push it to the side.
When Rhodes’s phone rang while they were waiting for the check, they both jumped a bit. They both figured it would be Johnson, and Chloe did her best not to feel slighted that he had opted to contact Rhodes over her.
Chloe listened closely, trying to act as if she really wasn’t all that interested in what was being said. But in listening to Rhodes’s side of the very brief call, Chloe heard all she needed to. When Rhodes ended the call, the expression on her face confirmed it. It was an expression of mild irritation and a faded sort of relief.
“He wants us to check in with the Colin PD before we leave, and then come on home,” Rhodes said. “And if you ask me, that should put us back in DC at the perfect time to go grab a few drinks before calling it a day.”
They settled up the bill and headed back to the Colin Police Department. On their way back into Colin, they drove directly past the curb where Viktor Bjurman had been murdered. With no patrol cars or crime scene tape to section the area off, it looked like any normal corner on any city in America. Something about that unnerved Chloe, knowing there were answers on that corner that may never be found—answers that, as of now, would forever remain out of Chloe’s reach.
