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.