If She Saw (A Kate Wise Mystery—Book 2)

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO

Kate spent the next hour or so tidying up the house, even though she had already done so before leaving to go shopping. It made her feel off to be so anxious to have Michelle coming to her house. Melissa had lived in this house during her high school years so when she came to visit (which wasn’t often enough in Kate’s opinion), Kate didn’t feel the need for the place to be spotless. So why was she so concerned about how it looked for a two-month-old?

Maybe it’s some odd kind of grandmother nesting, she thought while she scrubbed the sink in the powder room…a room she was well aware that her granddaughter would not even see, much less actually use.

As she rinsed the sink out, her doorbell rang. She was flooded with an excitement that she had not quite been ready for. She was smiling from ear to ear when she answered the door. Melissa stood on the other side, carrying Michelle in her car seat. The baby was fast asleep, a thick blanket tucked around her legs.

“Hey, Mom,” Melissa said as she stepped into the house. She took a quick look around and rolled her eyes. “How much did you clean today?”

“I plead the fifth,” Kate said as she gave her daughter a hug.

Melissa set the car seat down carefully on the floor and slowly unbuckled Michelle. She picked her up and handed her softly to Kate. It had been almost a full week since Kate had visited Melissa and Terry, but when she took Michelle into her arms, it felt like much longer.

“What do you and Terry have planned for tonight?” Kate asked.

“Not much, really,” Melissa said. “And that’s the beauty of it. We’re going to go out for dinner and drinks. Maybe some dancing. Also, we changed our minds about asking you to watch her overnight because we realized we’re not quite ready for that. The unbroken sleep is much needed, but I just can’t be away from her for that long.”

“Oh, I think I can understand that,” Kate said. “You guys go out and enjoy yourselves.”

Melissa shrugged the diaper bag from her shoulder and set it by the car seat. “Everything you need is in here. She’s going to want to eat again in about an hour and she’d going to fight sleep. Terry thinks it’s cute but I think it’s of the devil. If she gets gassy, there are gas drops in the back pocket and—”

“Lissa…we’ll be fine. I have raised a child, you know. She turned out pretty good, too.”

Melissa smiled and surprised Kate by giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll pick her up around eleven or so. Is that too late?”

“Nope, that’s perfect.”

Melissa gave one final look to her baby, a look that made Kate’s heart swell. She could remember being a mother and having that internal feeling of love fill her—a love than translated to the sheer will of doing anything and everything to ensure this human you’d created would be safe.

“If you need anything, call me,” Melissa said, though she was still looking at Michelle and not Kate.

“I will. Now go. Have fun.”

Melissa finally turned away and headed out the door. As she closed it, little Michelle stirred awake in Kate’s arms. She gave her grandmother a sleepy little smile and let out a tiny yawn.

“So what do we do now?” Kate asked.

The question was playfully directed at Michelle but she felt a weight behind it that made her wonder if she was simply voicing a rhetorical question to herself. Her daughter was grown up now, with a daughter of her own. Now here she was, nearing fifty-six and with her first grandchild in her arms. So…what do we do now?

She thought about that pull to return to work in any capacity and, for perhaps the first time, it felt small.

Smaller even than the little girl she now held in her arms.

***

By eight o’clock that night, Kate was wondering if Melissa and Terry had simply managed to create the most well-behaved baby in recorded history. Not once did Michelle cry or even get fussy. She was simply content to be held. After two hours in Kate’s arms, Michelle nodded off to sleep. Kate carefully placed Michelle on the center of her queen-sized bed and then stood at the doorway for a moment to watch her granddaughter sleep.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there when her phone buzzed from the kitchen table behind her. She had to tear her eyes away from Michelle but managed to get to the phone within a few seconds. The single buzz meant that it was a text rather than a call and she was not at all surprised to see that it was Melissa.

How’s she doing? Melissa asked.

Unable to resist, Kate smiled and responded: I limited her to just three beers. She went out with some guy on a motorcycle about an hour ago. I told her to be back by 11.

The response came quickly: Oh, you’re not funny at all.

The back-and-forth banter made her nearly as happy as the sleeping baby in her bedroom. After her father died, Melissa had become withdrawn—especially toward Kate. She’d blamed Kate’s work for her father’s death and even though she had come to understand that was not the case later on in life, there were times when Kate felt that Melissa still resented the time she had spent in the bureau after his death. Oddly enough, though, Melissa had shown some interest in pursuing a career in the FBI herself…despite a less-than-positive attitude about the events of the last year concerning her mother’s interrupted retirement.

Still smiling, Kate took her phone into the bedroom and snapped a quick picture of Michelle. She sent it to Melissa and then, after some thought, she also sent it to Allen, only his had the message: Partied out!

She found herself wishing he was there with her. She found herself feeling this quite often as of late. She was not naïve enough to think she loved him, but she could see herself falling in love with him if things kept going the way they were. She missed him when he wasn’t around and whenever he kissed her, it made her feel about twenty years younger.

She found herself smiling yet again when Allen responded with a picture of his own. It was a selfie of him with two younger men who looked exactly like him—his sons, presumably.

As she studied the picture, her phone rang in her hands. The name that appeared on the screen sent a flurry of excitement through her that she was unable to stop.

Deputy Director Vince Duran was calling her. This would have caused a stir of excitement regardless, but the fact that it was after eight o’clock on a Friday night set off alarm bells in her head—alarm bells that she enjoyed the sound of.

She took a moment, still staring at little Michelle, and then answered. “This is Kate Wise,” she said, keeping her excitement in check.

“Wise, it’s Duran. Is this a bad time?”

“It’s not the absolute best, but that’s okay,” she answered. “Is everything okay?”

“That depends. I’m calling to see if you’d be interested in taking on a case.”

“Are we talking a cold case like we’ve been discussing?”

“No. This one…well, it looks and feels like one you cracked rather quickly back in ninety-six. As it stands, we’ve got four bodies at two different sites in Whip Springs, Virginia. Looks like the murders occurred no more than two days apart. Right now, Virginia State Police are running the scene but I’ve spoken to them. If you want the case, it’s yours. But you’d have to move now.”

“I don’t think I can,” she said. “I’ve got a commitment I need to keep.” Looking at Michelle, this was easy to say. But nearly every nerve in her body fought against her newly acquired grandmother instincts.

“Well, listen to the specs anyway, would you? The murders are married couples, one in their early fifties, the other in their early sixties. The most recent were the fifty-somethings. Their daughter discovered their bodies when she came home from college earlier today. The murders occurred within thirty miles of one another, one in Whip Springs and the other one just outside of Roanoke.”

“Couples? Any link between them other than they were married?”

“Not yet. But all four bodies were cut up pretty badly. The killer is using a knife. Making it slow and methodical. As far as I’m concerned, it points to another couple going down within two days or so.”

“Yeah, it sounds like a serial in the making,” Kate said.

She thought back to the case in 1996 that Duran had mentioned. In the end, a crazed woman who had been working as a nanny had taken the lives of three couples within the span of just two days. It turned out that she had worked for all three of the couples within a ten-year period. Kate had apprehended the woman when she was on the way to kill a fourth couple and then, according to her testimony, herself.

Was she really going to say no to this? After the intense flashback she’d had today, could she truly pass up another opportunity at stopping a killer?

“How long do I have to think about it?” she asked.

“I’ll give you an hour. No more than that. I need someone on this now. And I thought you and DeMarco could work well on it. One hour, Wise…sooner if you can.”

Before she could give an OK or a thanks, Duran ended the call. He was typically warm and friendly, but when he did not get his way he could be very irritable.

As quietly as she could, she went to the bed and sat down on the edge. She watched Michelle sleeping, the gentle rise and fall of her chest so slow and methodical. She could clearly remember Melissa being this small and had no idea where the time had gone. And that was where her problem sprung from: she felt that she had missed so much of her life as a mother and wife because of her job but she felt a strong duty to it nonetheless. Especially when she knew that she could be out there right now, doing her part to bring a killer to justice.

What kind of a person would she be if she turned the offer down, leaving Duran to choose another agent who might not have the same skillsets as she did?

But what kind of grandmother and mother was she being if she had to call Melissa, telling her to come pick up her daughter early and end her night out because the FBI had come calling again?

Kate stared at Michelle for about five minutes, even lying down next to her and placing her hand on the baby’s chest just to feel her breathe. And seeing that little flicker of life, of a life that had not yet learned about the kinds of evil that existed in the world, made the decision much easier for Kate.

Frowning for the first time that day, Kate picked up the phone and called Melissa.

***

Once, when Melissa was sixteen, she’d snuck a boy into her room late at night when Kate and Michael were already asleep. Kate had stirred awake at some noise (which she later found out was likely someone’s knee hitting the wall in Melissa’s bedroom) and went up to investigate. When she opened her daughter’s door and found her topless with a boy in her bed, she had thrown him off the bed and screamed at him to get out.

The fury in Melissa’s eyes that night was dwarfed by what Kate saw in her daughter’s stare as she buckled Michelle into the car seat at 9:30—just a little over an hour after Duran had called her about the case in Roanoke.

“This is messed up, Mom,” she said.

“Lissa, I’m so sorry. But what the hell was I supposed to do?”

“Well, from what I understand, people actually stay retired once they’ve retired. Maybe try that!”

“It’s not that easy,” Kate argued.

“Oh, I know, Mom,” Melissa said. “It never was with you.”

“That’s not fair…”

“And don’t think I’m just pissed because you cut my one night to relax short. I don’t care about that. I’m not that selfish. Unlike some people. I’m pissed because your job—which you were supposed to be done with over a year ago, mind you—continues to win over your family. Even after everything…after Dad…”

“Lissa, let’s not do this.”

Melissa picked up the car seat with a softness that was not present in her voice or her body’s strained posture.

“I agree,” Melissa spat. “Let’s not.”

And with that, she walked out of the front door, slamming it behind her.

Kate reached out for the doorknob but stopped. What was she going to do? Was she going to continue this argument outside, in the yard? Besides, she knew Melissa well. After a few days, she’d cool down and would actually listen to Kate’s side of the story. She might even accept her mother’s apology.

Kate felt like a traitor as she picked up her cell phone. After she’d called Duran, he informed her that he’d planned on her showing up for the case anyway. As it stood, he had someone from the Virginia State Police lined up to meet with her and DeMarco at 4:30 in the morning down in Whip Springs. As for DeMarco, she had left DC half an hour ago with an agency car. She’d be at Kate’s house sometime around midnight. Kate realized she could have easily kept Michelle until the originally planned on eleven o’clock and avoided the confrontation with Melissa. But she couldn’t dwell on that now.

The suddenness of it all had taken Kate slightly off guard. Even though the last case she had taken had seemed to come out of nowhere, it had at least had some sort of stable structure to it. But it had been quite a while since she had been assigned a case at such an hour. It was daunting but she was also very excited—excited enough to be able to momentarily push Melissa’s anger toward her to the back of her mind.

Still, as she packed a bag while waiting for DeMarco to arrive, a stinging thought pierced her. And it’s that right there—your ability to push everything to the side for the sake of the job—that caused so much trouble between the two of you in the first place.

But that thought too was easily pushed to the side.