Page 17

T he Ward house is surrounded by emergency vehicles and blocked off from the road with crime scene tape when I arrive. Curious neighbors stand on the opposite side of the street, watching over the shoulders of officers positioned to hold them back. I park behind one of the cars and pull out my shield so I can show it to the officer standing close to the crime scene tape.

“FBI,” I tell him.

He lifts the tape for me, and I duck beneath it, rushing toward the open front door.

“Detective Fuller?” I say to an officer who’s standing just inside the house.

“He’s in the kitchen,” he says.

I nod and move deeper into the house to get to the kitchen. I see the detective as soon as I get into the room.

“Agent Griffin,” he says, coming toward me.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Her husband was called away with a family emergency this morning, and when he came back, he found her.”

“Is the body still here?” I ask.

“Right over here.”

He leads me around a partial wall at the back of the room to a set of back steps leading up to the second floor. Sabrina Ward’s body is sprawled on the steps, blood soaking her head and the top of the bathrobe she’s wearing. One arm is stretched out above her, and I notice a gold bracelet with a capsule-shaped cage on it around her wrist.

“Looks like she was bludgeoned,” I say. “Was any weapon found?”

“No,” Detective Fuller says. “The scene is exactly the way he found it. We’re waiting for the crime scene photographer to arrive.”

I look around the room and see the stark black permanent marker on the walls just like in Gideon’s apartment. The words are written in the same careful block lettering:

May you be haunted by your choice forever

Was it worth it?

To the wicked give their due

“What about the rest of the house?” I ask.

“There are similar messages written on the walls in the living room and the bedroom. Her phone was found in the master bedroom. She missed a couple of calls from her husband. It looks like he was calling while the attack was happening,” Detective Fuller says.

“Where was he when this happened? You said there was some kind of family emergency?” I ask.

“His mother had a fire at her house,” the detective tells me. “A building on her property caught on fire early this morning, and she called him to help her handle it.”

“Where is he now?” I ask.

“He was transferred to the station,” he says.

“I’m going to go talk to him. Let me know if anything shows up when the scene is processed,” I say.

I take a final look at the body and feel a sick twinge in my belly. I sat with this woman just a couple of days ago right in her own living room. She talked to me about how she felt about the threats and the fear she went through when she thought someone was following her. I listened to her talk and watched her husband wrap his arm around her like he was trying to defend her from some unseen force she felt around her. Now she’s lying dead on the stairs, stretched across them like she was trying to escape her assailant but was taken down before she had the chance.

The officers have Ander in a room furnished with a couch and a table rather than in one of the interrogation rooms. He’s hunched in one corner of the couch, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee like what he’s just been through has taken away all his warmth and now he’s trying to draw it out of the mug. His head lifts when I walk into the room, and I see a flicker of something go across his eyes. The emotion is etched deeply into his face, making him look gray and sunken.

“Agent Griffin,” he says.

“Hi, Ander. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” he says.

“I know this is really difficult for you, but I need to talk to you about what happened,” I say.

He nods. “Go ahead.”

I pull a chair up closer to the couch and sit down, taking out my notepad and pen so I can jot down anything significant.

“First, is there anything I can get you? Are you hungry?” I ask.

He lets out a mirthless snort of laughter and shakes his head. “I don’t think I’m ever going to want to eat again.”

“I can understand that,” I tell him. “All right. Just tell me in your own words what happened this morning from the time you woke up.”

Ander draws in a breath, his eyes focused somewhere in front of him as if he’s looking back into the morning.

“We were asleep. It was still really early, and I heard my phone ringing. I never turn the ringer off or on silent or anything because of Tracy, so I thought maybe something was going on with her. But it was my mother calling. She said that her shed was on fire and needed me to come help her deal with it. She’s lived alone since Dad died, so I do a lot for her. She has anxiety about a lot of things and usually calls me if anything goes wrong or if she needs to do something that she’s not used to. Like anytime she has a repairman coming over or she has to get her internet fixed, she calls me to be there with her.

“She told me she had already called the fire department, she just wanted me there, so I told her I was on my way. Sabrina woke up while I was talking and offered to come with me, but I told her to stay home and get some more sleep. She’s been having a hard time sleeping for a few days, and it finally broke last night. I didn’t want her to have to get up so early and come with me when I knew there was nothing she was going to be able to do and it would be better if she just got to sleep some more. I didn’t think that the situation at my mother’s house was going to take up too much time, so I planned on going into the office after I was done. I told Sabrina I would come home before I went to work.”

“Did you tell Tracy what was going on?” I ask.

“I did. She is usually unavailable early in the morning anyway, it’s her devotional time, but I left her a message telling her what was going on and that I was going to get into work as soon as I could. I wanted to let her know as soon as possible so she would be able to arrange for a different guard to be with her if she had any appearances this morning,” Ander says.

“You don’t know her schedule?” I ask.

“Not day-to-day,” he tells me. “I know when there are big appearances and events, but I generally find out about local meetings and things first thing in the morning.”

“What did you find out when you got to your mother’s house?” I ask.

“The police and firefighters were obviously already there when I got there. They told me it looked like someone had purposely lit the building on fire and that there had been a rash of small arsons like that throughout the neighborhood and some surrounding areas over the last few months. They don’t know who’s doing it, but they say they wouldn’t be surprised if it was just some kids being mischievous, which sounds absurd to me. Egging a house is mischief. Lighting somebody’s building on fire is destruction.”

“I agree,” I say. “Was there much damage?”

“Yeah, the building is a total loss. Fortunately, the only things she had in there were gardening tools and some seasonal lawn stuff, so it wasn’t a lot of really sentimental things or anything. But it’s still really upsetting. Mom was in a really bad state over it, and I thought I was going to have to bring her to the emergency room because she was having such a hard time and said she felt like she was having a heart attack because of it. I called Sabrina to let her know what was going on, but she didn’t answer,” he says.

“Did you think that was strange?” I ask.

“Not at first. I thought she probably just went back to sleep. But the sound of the phone always wakes her up eventually, so I called her again. I felt bad waking her up, but I thought it was important that she knew what was going on. But she still didn’t answer. I kept calling. That’s when I started to worry. I just felt like something was wrong. I didn’t want to leave Mom until I knew she was going to be all right, but I was also getting really concerned. I ended up asking for paramedics to come and take her in to get looked at just to make sure that she wasn’t having a heart attack. I promised to meet her at the hospital and left to go check on Sabrina. When I got home, I noticed a window on the side of the house was open. I don’t remember opening it. Sabrina might have, but I can’t imagine her not closing it. I don’t know… I really don’t know.”

He puts the coffee down on the table and leans forward to bury his face in his hands.

“It’s all right,” I tell him. “You don’t need to know. Right now I just need you to keep telling me what happened.”

Ander wipes his eyes as he sits up and takes a breath to pull himself together.

“I went inside the house and called for Sabrina. She didn’t answer. Then I noticed the words written on the walls. I remembered hearing about messages on the walls in Gideon’s apartment, and I panicked. I ran upstairs to look for her, but she wasn’t there, and I ended up going down the back steps. That’s when I found her. I called the police, and…”

“All right,” I tell him, releasing him from the need to keep describing the disturbing scene. “Have you been able to contact the hospital and check on your mother?”

“No,” he says. “I’ve just been sitting in here.”

“Give me just a second,” I tell him.

I walk out of the room and call Detective Fuller.

“I just got Ander Ward’s statement. I’m going to release him so that he can go to the hospital and check on his mother. Have you found anything else?”

“Nothing,” he says. “There’s no evidence of the attack upstairs, so we think it all happened downstairs. She likely heard the killer come inside and went downstairs to find out what the sound was.”

“In her bathrobe?” I ask. “She wasn’t wearing anything else. If she thought someone she didn’t know was coming into the house, she wouldn’t have left her phone upstairs and gone down in nothing but her bathrobe. She didn’t hear them come in because they came in through an open window on the side of the house. Ander just told me about it.”

“Good to know,” he says.

“I’m going to talk to the firefighters after this. Get in touch with me if you find anything else,” I say.

I get off the phone and go back into the room with Ander.

“I forgot to tell you something,” he says. “I’m sorry, my mind is just not all with me right now.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“I got another threat yesterday. It was in the mailbox, but there was no stamp or anything. I think that someone just walked up and put it in there,” he says.

“What did the note say?”

“That I had to quit by the end of the day or I would be out of time,” he says. He shakes his head and puts his face in his hands again. “This is my fault. I caused this.”

“Ander,” I say, moving to sit down beside him and rest my hand on his back. “I know this is extremely hard. I understand. But you can’t let yourself think that way. We need to find out who did this to Sabrina. You said you think that the note was just put into your mailbox.”

“Yes,” he says. “I got it yesterday after work. I meant to call you about it this morning.”

“Do you have cameras on your house?” I ask. “Something that would show the mailbox?”

“I do. I put them up right after the first threats came to make Sabrina feel safer at home,” he says, sounding pained at the thought.

“After you go to the hospital to check on your mother, I need that footage,” I tell him.

“I’ll get it for you,” he says.

“Can I give you a ride to the hospital?” I ask.

“Please.”