If She Knew

Kate stepped inside and did as she was asked. She then took one of the three chairs that sat on the opposite side of Budd’s desk. The desk was occupied with more personal effects than work-related items: pictures of his family, an autographed baseball, a personalized coffee mug, and some kind of sentimental shell casing sitting in a plaque.

“Let me start off by saying that I am well aware of your track record,” Budd said. “More than one hundred arrests in your career. Top of your class in the academy. Gold and silver placement in eight consecutive kickboxing tournaments in addition to standard bureau training where you also kicked ass. Your name got around while you were running things and most of the people here in the Virginia State PD respect the hell out of you.”

“But?” Kate said. She didn’t say it in an attempt to be funny. She was simply letting him know that she was more than capable of being reprimanded…although she honestly didn’t think she deserved much of it.

“But despite all that, you have no right to go around assaulting people just because you think they might have been involved in the death of one of your friend’s daughters.”

“I didn’t visit him with intent to assault,” Kate said. “I visited him to ask some questions. When he got physical with me, I simply defended myself.”

“He told my men that you pitched him down the porch stairs and banged his head against the floor of the porch.”

“I can’t be blamed for being stronger than him, now can I?” she asked.

Budd looked closely at her, scrutinizing her. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to be funny, taking this lightly, or if this is really your everyday attitude.”

“Chief, I understand your position and how a retired fifty-five-year-old woman beating up someone that your men had questioned briefly and then released could cause you a headache. But please understand…I only visited Brian Neilbolt because my friend asked me to. And honestly, when I learned a bit more about him, I thought it might not be a bad idea.”

“So you just assumed my men didn’t do an adequate job?” Budd asked.

“I said no such thing.”

Budd rolled his eyes and sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to argue about it. Honestly, I would love nothing more than for you to leave my office in a few minutes and once we are done talking about this matter, it’s done. I need you to understand, though, that you crossed a line and if you happen to pull something like this again, I might just have to place you under arrest.”

There were several things Kate wanted to say in response. But she figured if Budd was willing to press all arguments down, so could she. She knew that he was well within his power to really bring the hammer down on her if he wanted, so she decided to be as civil as possible.

“I understand,” she replied.

Budd seemed to think about something for a moment before interlocking his hands together on the desk, as if trying to center himself. “And just so you know, we are certain that Brian Neilbolt did not kill Julie Hicks. We have him on security cameras outside of a bar on the night she was killed. He went in around ten and didn’t leave until after midnight. We then have a text message trail between him and a current fling that went on between one and three in the morning. He checks out. He’s not the guy.”

“He had bags and suitcases packed,” Kate pointed out. “Like he was trying to leave town in a hurry.”

“In the text thread, he and this fling of his discussed visiting Atlantic City. They were supposed to be leaving this afternoon.”

“I see.” Kate nodded. She did not feel embarrassed per se, but she did start to regret acting so aggressively on Neilbolt’s porch.

“There’s one more thing,” Budd said. “And again, you have to view things from my position on this. I had no choice but to contact your former supervisors at the FBI. It’s protocol. Surely you know that.”

She did know that but honestly had not thought about it. A slight yet gnawing irritation started to bloom in her guts.

“I know,” she said.

“I spoke with Assistant Director Duran. He wasn’t happy, and he wants to speak with you.”

Kate rolled her eyes and nodded. “Fine. I’ll give him a call and let him know it’s from your instruction.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Budd said. “They want to see you. In DC.”

And with that, the irritation she was feeling quickly morphed into something she hadn’t felt in a while: legitimate worry.

CHAPTER SIX

Following her meeting with Chief Budd, Kate made the appropriate calls to let her former supervisors know that she had received their request to visit them. She was not given any information over the phone and never actually spoke to anyone in power. That left her to leave a few rather rude messages with two unfortunate receptionists—an exercise that actually helped to relieve some of her stress.

She left Richmond the following morning at eight o’clock. She was curiously more excited than she was nervous. She figured it was kind of like a college graduate revisiting their campus after a brief time away. She’d missed the bureau terribly over the last year or so and was looking forward to being back in that environment…even if it was to be disciplined.

She distracted herself by listening to an obscure cinema-based podcast—a suggestion made by her daughter. Within five minutes of the podcast, the commentators had been drowned out and Kate was instead reflecting on the last few years of her life. For the most part, she was not a sentimental person but for some reason she had never understood, she tended to get nostalgic and reflective whenever she got on the road.

So instead of focusing on the podcast, she thought of her daughter—her pregnant daughter, due in about five weeks. The baby was to be a girl, named Michelle. The baby’s father was a good enough man but, by Kate’s estimation, had never quite been good enough for Melissa Wise. Melissa, called Lissa by Kate ever since she’d started to crawl, lived in Chesterfield, an area technically within Richmond but considered different by those who lived there. Kate had never told Melissa, but that was why she had moved back to Richmond. It had not been only because of her ties to the city due to her college experience, but because that was where her family was—where her first grandchild would live.

A grandchild, Kate often thought. How did Melissa get that old? Hell, for that matter, how did I get that old?

And when she thought of Melissa and the unborn Michelle, Kate typically turned her thoughts to her deceased husband. He’d been murdered six years ago, shot in the back of the head while walking their dog at night. His wallet and phone had been taken and she’d been called to ID the body less than two hours after he’d left the house with the dog.

The wound was still fresh most of the time but she hid it well. When she had retired from the bureau, she’d done so with about eight months left before official retirement age. But she had been unable to commit her full time, attention, and focus to her work after having finally scattered Michael’s ashes over an old derelict baseball diamond near his home in Falls Church.

Perhaps that was why she had spent the last year so depressed about leaving her job. She had left months before she’d legally had to. What might those months have offered her? What else could she have done with her career?

She’d always wondered about these things, but had never fallen on the side of regret. Michael had deserved at least a few months of her undivided attention. He actually deserved much more than that but she knew that even in the afterlife, there’s no way he would have expected her to ditch her work for too long. He would have known that it would have taken some work for her to properly grieve—and that work had meant literally working at the bureau for as long as she had been emotionally capable after his death.

She was relieved to find as she drew closer to DC that she was not feeling as if she was betraying Michael. She did personally believe that death was not the end; she didn’t know if that meant Heaven was real or if reincarnation was possible and quite frankly she was okay with not knowing. But she did know that wherever Michael might be, he’d be happy that she was heading back to DC—even if it was to be severely reprimanded.

If anything, he was probably having a laugh at her expense.

This made Kate smile in spite of herself. She cut the podcast off and focused on the road, her own thoughts, and how even if she’d screwed up, life somehow always ended up seeming cyclical in nature.

***

She didn’t get a rush of emotion when she stepped through the front doors and into the large lobby at the FBI headquarters. If anything, she was very aware that she felt she no longer belonged here—like a woman revisiting her old high school to find that the halls now made her feel sad rather than nostalgic.

The sense of familiarity helped, though. Despite feeling displaced, she also felt like she really hadn’t been away that long after all. She walked through the lobby, checked in at the front, and headed for the elevators as if she had been here just last week. Even the enclosed space of the elevator was comforting as it carried her up to Assistant Director Duran’s office.

When she stepped off the elevator and entered Duran’s waiting area, she saw the same receptionist who had been behind the same desk a little over a year ago. They had never really been on a first-name basis, but the receptionist got up from her desk and rushed to hug her.

“Kate! It’s so good to see you!”

Thankfully, the receptionist’s name came back to her just the right moment. “You, too, Dana,” Kate said.

“I didn’t think you’d do well with retirement,” Dana joked.

“Yeah, it’s sort of a big snore.”

“Well, go ahead and go on in,” Dana said. “He’s waiting for you.”

Kate knocked on the closed office door. She found that even the somewhat gruff response she got from the other side made her feel at ease.

“It’s open,” the voice of Assistant Director Vince Duran said.

Kate opened the door and stepped inside. She had been fully prepared to see Duran and had readied herself for it. What she had not been expecting, however, was the face of her old partner. Logan Nash smiled at her right away, getting up from one of the chairs in front of Duran’s desk.