CHAPTER ONE
2051 Words
CHAPTER ONE
Chloe had heard many cautionary tales about trying to keep a very broad fence between her personal life and her career. As a federal agent, things tended to get very sticky when the two worlds collided. But honestly, she had been living with the constant collision of those two worlds ever since she had graduated from the academy—thanks to her father’s mental cat-and-mouse games.
She knew she spent far too much time speculating on her father and what he may or may not have done to her mother nearly eighteen years ago. Thanks to Danielle’s discovery of her mother’s journal, Chloe had been living the past few weeks in a haze of confusion. She now felt fairly confident that their father had killed their mother all those years ago. She had given him every benefit of the doubt up to this point—going so far as to try pinning her mother’s murder on a scapegoat, Ruthanne Carwile.
But now she had it written in her mother’s handwriting. Now she had more than enough evidence to truly feel her father was not only a killer—but that he had killed her mother.
It had hit her quite hard. While Chloe had done her best not to let it affect her work, it had consumed almost every free moment she had. She’d spent the first two weekends after the discovery dodging calls from everyone—from Danielle, from her partner, Agent Rhodes, and from her father.
All I have to do is make it public, she thought to herself time and time again. Just go public, take it to the bureau, and take him down. Wrap up this sordid chapter of my life and put the bastard back behind bars.
But that was risky. It could affect her own career. And, more than that, there was the little girl still defiant inside of her, a younger version of herself who insisted maybe there was something she was missing…that there was no way her father was really a murderer.
It was an internal fight that had her going into work with a hangover a few times. It had been just twenty days since she’d made the discovery in the journal. And even at work, though she remained professional and did not let her own personal demons interfere with her job, entries from the journal would pop up in her head.
He strangled me tonight… and he slapped me in the face. Before I knew what had happened, he pushed me against the wall and strangled me. He said if I ever disrespected him again, he’d kill me. He said he had something better lined up, some better woman and some better life…
The journal was on her coffee table. She left it there so she would always be reminded…and so she could not give herself the convenience of having it out of her sight. She kept it there as a reminder that she had been a fool—and that her father had been pulling the wool over her eyes for a very long time.
It was twenty days in, almost three whole weeks since she and Danielle had finally come together to the conclusion that their father had killed their mother, when Chloe considered just going to his apartment and killing him. It was a Saturday. She’d started drinking at eleven that morning, staring out of her apartment window as DC traffic trickled by beneath her.
She knew enough about how the system worked to make it look like a suicide. Or, if nothing else, she knew how to hide her tracks well. She could make sure he died without having anything traced back to her.
She had thought it out quite carefully. She had the stirring of a plan in her head, most of which was solid.
But that’s lunacy, isn’t it? she asked herself.
But then she thought of how thoroughly he’d had her fooled. She remembered how loyal she had been to him even when Danielle had tried warning her that their father was not the man she thought. And when all of that weighed on her brain, no…the idea of killing him did not seem so drastic after all.
She was daydreaming of pulling the trigger on her father and starting on her third beer of the day when a gentle knock sounded on her door. She cringed; her father had come by four times in the past twenty days but she had always stayed quiet on the other side. This knock was different, though—the heartbeat-like drumming pattern from the intro to “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails, one of Danielle’s favorite songs. It was the telltale knock they had agreed upon so that Chloe would know it was her sister on the other side of the door.
With a weary smile, Chloe answered the door. Danielle was waiting on the other side, in mid-beat. She lowered her hands and offered her sister a smile. It felt weird; Danielle was usually the gloomy one that Chloe tried to cheer up. It had been that way for most of their lives, especially ever since Danielle had discovered what absolute jerks boys can be.
“Not sleeping well?” Danielle asked as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“Not particularly,” Chloe said. “Want a beer?”
“What time is it?”
“Noon? Or close to it…”
“Just one,” Danielle said, eyeing her sister suspiciously.
Chloe was very much aware of how the roles had basically turned completely around for them. As she popped the top on a bottle and handed it to Danielle, she saw the concern in her sister’s face. Which was fine…it showed that Danielle had grown. It showed that in the face of what they had discovered together, she could stand on her own two feet without her sister there to support her like she’d usually done.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Chloe said.
“No, you don’t. I hate to say that I sort of like the Chloe that drinks before noon. I like this moody f**k-the-world Chloe. But I’d be a bad sister if I didn’t tell you that I’m worried about you. You don’t exactly have the personality to pull off the dark and brooding goth thing.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Chloe asked. “To tell me you’re worried about me?”
“Partly. But there’s something else. And I need you to bear with me for a second, okay?”
“Sure,” Chloe said as they settled down on the couch with their beers. She spotted her mother’s journal on the coffee table and her thoughts briefly went back to the sordid idea of killing her father. And it was then, with Danielle sitting across from her, that she knew she could never do it. She could fantasize and plan all she wanted, but she would never do it. She simply wasn’t that sort of person.
“So, a while back, I remember watching this show…sort of like one of those Unsolved Mysteries deals,” Danielle said.
“I hope this is going somewhere,” Chloe interrupted.
“It is. Anyway…it was about this woman who saved her brother’s life. See…they were identical twins. Born like five minutes apart or something like that. She’s cooking dinner for her family one night and gets this sharp twinge in her mind…sort of like someone speaking to her. She had the overwhelming idea that her brother was in trouble. It was so strong that she stopped what she was doing and called him. When he didn’t answer the phone, she called her brother’s girlfriend. The girlfriend went over to the brother’s house and found that someone had broken into his home and shot him. He was bleeding out when the girlfriend found him but she called nine-one-one and ended up saving his life. All based on this weird feeling his twin sister got.”
“Okay…”
Danielle rolled her eyes. Chloe could tell that she was thinking very hard about the next words to come out of her mouth. “I got something like that about forty minutes ago,” she said. “Not nearly as strong as that TV show made it sound, but it was there. It was strong enough. And it was…well, it was weird.”
“No one broke in,” Chloe said. “I haven’t been shot.”
“I can see that. But…I don’t know. I had the weird twin-feeling. I felt like I had to be over here. Sorry if it sounds dumb. But…well, is there anything I might have prevented by showing up?”
Chloe shook her head no. But she thought: Just stopping me from plotting out the murder of our father. She gave a soft little laugh and sipped from her beer.
“You’re not well,” Danielle said. She nodded to the beer bottle. “How many of those will I find in the trash, empty?”
“Two. And I’m sorry…but who are you to be concerned about someone’s drinking habits? I have a kettle to go with that pot.”
“Oh, I don’t care about the drinking. You self-medicate however you see fit. But I do know that self-medicating isn’t you. It never has been. You’re the logical one…the smart one. It’s because you’ve delved into my old strategies for coping that I’m here. That’s what has me worried.”
“I’m fine, Danielle.”
Danielle folded her arms and reclined back on the couch. If there had been any good-natured ribbing to the conversation, Chloe sensed it disappear in that simple gesture. Danielle’s gaze had an icy feel to it.
“So you mean to tell me that the last year or so, with you proclaiming Dad’s greatness to me…I just let that ride? You and I coming to a head several times for him, and you always going to bat for him. The way I see it, I deserve some honesty, Chloe. I’m not stupid. This bombshell with Dad has messed you up.”
“Of course it has.”
“So tell me what you’re thinking. Tell me what we do now. If I’m being totally honest, I don’t see why you haven’t turned him in yet. Isn’t the journal enough to convict him?”
“You don’t think I’ve thought of that?” Chloe asked, starting to get slightly angry. “And no…the journal isn’t enough. It could be enough to maybe reopen the case, but that’s about it. There’s no hard evidence…and the fact that there was already a trial and our father was put in prison and then let go makes it even harder. Throw Ruthanne Carwile’s recent conviction in there, and it becomes one huge mess.”
“So you’re saying he’s likely going to end up getting away with it?”
Chloe didn’t give an answer. She downed the rest of her beer and walked into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door to retrieve another but then stopped. Slowly, she closed it again and leaned against the small kitchen counter.
“I’m aware that this is mostly my fault,” Chloe said. It was hard to admit. The words tasted like acid in her mouth as they came out.
“I’m not here to blame you, Chloe.”
“I know. But it’s what you’re thinking. And I don’t blame you. Now that I’ve seen what’s in that journal and sort of…I don’t know…sort of have a feel for him…I’m thinking it, too. If I had listened to you before all of this started it would be different. Before Ruthanne, before landing my job at the bureau…”
“Don’t do that. Just…let’s look forward. Let’s figure out what we can do.”
“There’s nothing!”
Chloe surprised herself when she screamed the two words at her sister. But once they were out, she found it hard to reel them back in.
“Chloe, I—”
“I messed up. I failed you and Mom and myself. This is me now. I have to live with this and just…”
“But we can figure it out together, right? Look…I dig this role reversal and all, but I can’t stand to see you beating yourself up like this.”
“Not now. I can’t deal with it right now. I have to figure some things out.”
“Let me help, then.”
Chloe felt suffocated. She also felt another outburst coming on, but she clenched her fists and was able to stamp it down. “Danielle,” she said as slowly and as patiently as she could, “I appreciate the sentiment and I love you for being so concerned. But I need to handle this on my own for right now. The longer you pester and press in, the harder it’s going to be. So please…for right now…can you just leave?”
Chloe watched as something in Danielle’s expression shifted. It looked like disappointment. Or maybe it was something closer to sadness. Chloe couldn’t tell and, quite frankly, she didn’t care in that moment.
Danielle set her beer down on the coffee table—not yet even a quarter of the way empty—and got to her feet. “I want you to call me when you’re done being distant.”
“I’m not being distant.”
“I don’t know what you’re being,” Danielle said as she opened the door to leave. “But distant sounded better than a bitch.”
Before Chloe could say anything in response, Danielle made her exit, closing the door behind her.
Chloe wished Danielle would have slammed the door. At least then there would have been some sort of feeling left, some sign that Danielle was just as mad as Chloe was. But there was only the soft click of the door closing and nothing more.
Chloe sat in the silence that followed for the rest of the afternoon and all she had to show for it the next day were more empty beer bottles in the trash can.
- Writer
