If She Fled

“The app allows us to go back sixty days. Anything more than that and it all gets stored on the cloud.”

“Sixty days is more than enough. In fact, there are just two days I need you to check.”

“I assume one would be from eight days ago, right? The day she was killed?”

“Yes, please.”

“How exactly does this work?” DeMarco asked.

“There’s a sensor on the doorbell,” Nadine said. “When anyone comes up on the porch, it activates the camera. It then records until the person is either inside the house or has otherwise left the porch.”

“So there will only be a video entry on the day of her murder if someone walked up on the porch, correct?” Kate asked.

“That’s right. And…here we are. There are two videos from last Wednesday…the day she was killed.”

The three women hunched around Nadine’s phone, watching the somewhat grainy color playback from the app’s video feed. The first video was easy to dismiss right away. It was a UPS driver, placing a box on the front porch and then quickly walking away and returning to his truck. The box was not very large and was adorned with the Amazon logo on the side. Three seconds after the driver was gone, the camera cut off.

Nadine then pulled up the second video and pressed Play. A woman came up onto the porch and rang the doorbell. It was answered several seconds later. There was no audio, but it was clear the woman on the porch was conversing with whoever had answered the door—presumably Marjorie. This was made clear a few moments later when Marjorie stepped out onto the porch, chatted with the woman for about a minute, and headed back inside. The woman called something out over her shoulder as she went down the stairs, and then the video was done.

“Any idea who that woman is?” DeMarco asked Nadine.

“No, sorry. Now, you said there was some other date you needed to check out?”

“Yes. Exactly two weeks ago. Are there any entries there?”

Nadine did some scrolling and then stopped when the calendar stopped fourteen days ago. There were two entries that day as well. Nadine played the first one right away, without being asked to do so.

Instantly, Kate recognized the man who came up onto the porch, ringing the doorbell: Mike Wallace. He was wearing the same Hexco uniform they had seen him in less than an hour ago. After several seconds, the door was answered, he spoke to someone for about ten seconds, and was then invited inside.

Nadine looked to them both, as if to see if there was any reaction. When she saw that there was none, she tapped at the next entry—particularly at the time stamp. “This next one is only fourteen minutes later.”

She pressed play and they watched as the exact opposite of what they had just seen happened. Mike Wallace came out of the front door, back into the frame. He turned and spoke to someone at the door—again, presumably Marjorie Hix. The conversation lasted about twenty seconds and then Mike headed down the stairs. Before Mike’s exit had a chance to kill the feed, the little sensor picked up more movement. Marjorie Hix stepped out onto the porch with a watering can and set to watering a pot of lilacs on the porch rail.

While it didn’t prove much, the fact that there were no security videos of Mike Wallace on the day of her death was a pretty strong alibi.

“Anything else?” Nadine asked.

Kate and DeMarco shared a look and they both shook their heads simultaneously. Kate wasn’t sure if DeMarco was thinking the same thing she was or not, but she knew there was a good chance.

The security footage had basically ruled out Mike Wallace. But the husband…

“There’s a garage on the side of the property,” Kate said. “Looks like it’s on some sort of sublevel to the house, is that right?”

“It is. Would you like to see it?”

“No, that’s not necessary. But would you happen to know if that’s where Mr. Hix always parked?”

“I’m fairly certain, yes.”

“And I assume there’s a primary entrance into the house through that garage?”

“Of course.” She pointed to a door at the very back of the house, just off of the kitchen and inside a mudroom area. “Right there.”

So he would never even have to go past that doorbell sensor, Kate thought.

So while the videos had ruled out Mike Wallace, they had done nothing to help stave off her suspicions of the husband.

Kate looked back into the den—to the furniture, the knickknacks, and other expensive items. She found it hard to think that someone would just abandon it all.

“Would you happen to know where Mr. Hix is staying?”

And in that, Nadine continued to be very helpful.

CHAPTER SIX

It appeared as though Marjorie Hix’s husband—fifty-three-year-old Joseph Hix—had done much better for himself than his brother. Whereas Joseph Hix had managed a home in an affluent suburb and, according to the police reports, worked a job that had netted nearly four hundred thousand dollars the year before, his brother, Kyle, was living in a rather rundown apartment complex. It was located in an okay part of town, separate from a not-so-okay part of town by only a few blocks.

The apartment building had been constructed to look as if the open breezeways containing stairs separated little townhouses, but Kate had seen enough of these types of complexes to know that was not the case. The walked up two flights of the stairs and came to Kyle Hix’s apartment. Kate knocked on the door, not expecting an answer.

So when it was answered almost right away, she was surprised. Not only that, but it was answered in such a loud and abrasive way that she jumped back a bit, nearly going for her gun.

The man who answered the door looked out of his mind—exhausted, angry to have been disturbed, and squinting from the sunlight.

“Who’re you?” the man asked.

“Are you Joseph Hix?” Kate asked.

He grunted, as if he wasn’t too sure of this himself. It was also clear that he had no intention of answering. As she waited, Kate caught a whiff of alcohol—something strong. Whiskey, she thought.

DeMarco took out her ID first, then Kate followed suit. Kate let DeMarco take the lead, always trying to remain aware that part of her special arrangement with Duran and the bureau could also be a great training opportunity for DeMarco.

“Agents DeMarco and Wise,” DeMarco said. “We’re on location in Frankfield, looking into the murder of your wife.”

The man nodded and stepped away from the door. He swayed a bit when he did, making Kate wonder if that whiff of whiskey had been from a very recent drink—and here it was, not even two in the afternoon yet.

“Well, yeah…I’m Joseph. And I could have saved you the trip. I can tell you who killed her. Come on in…I’ll help you out.” He grinned, apparently amusing himself, and headed back inside.

“Whoa, hold on,” DeMarco said. “You can’t just make a statement like that. Do you for sure know who killed her?”

“I have no proof, but I have a damned good idea.”

“Maybe you let us be the judges of that,” Kate said. “What do you have?”

“I’ll show you.”

They followed him inside and Kate started to feel a bit uneasy. She wasn’t sure if Hix was in a perpetual state of grief and drunkenness or if he was a little off the rails—or both. But what she did know was men handled grief very differently. And the tired, I-don’t-give-a-shit look she had seen when he opened the door never led to anything good.

The apartment was modestly furnished but was limited in space. Hix led them directly to the kitchen, where he didn’t even bother trying to seem like a well-adjusted guy. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey that had been sitting on the counter and poured himself a tumbler. He shrugged to the agents and downed it in one gulp.