Page 24

I sigh and run my fingers back through my hair as I turn back to Carla.

“I’m sorry you’re having to deal with all this while you’re already facing such a hard situation,” I tell her.

“I appreciate you standing up for me,” she says. “I’m not exactly in a position right now to do it for myself.”

The doors open, and Officer Massengill comes inside.

“Agent Griffin, I wanted to let you know we decided to release both men on their own recognizance. It sounds like this was a mutual combat situation. Ander admits to being the aggressor, but he says he felt provoked, and Mr. Pauley admits to fighting back. They’ve both agreed to leave the premises without further incident,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say.

He walks back out of the hospital, and I see Ander heading into the parking lot. Part of me is shocked by his actions, but at the same time, I know he is under a tremendous amount of pressure. He has only just faced the murder of his wife and made the decision to return to work immediately. Whether he thinks it was the right choice for his coping or not, it obviously pushed him past his own control. Lashing out at the protestor was his way of reacting to the intense emotions and turmoil he’s going through.

Turning back to Carla, I see her wrap her arms around herself and sway slightly on her feet. She’s clearly exhausted.

“What did the doctor say?” I ask her.

“Um,” she runs her hand over her face and back over her hair. “He said Marshall likely has internal injuries as well as that his head was hit several times.” Her phone rings in her pocket, but she ignores it. “They are going to run some additional tests to see the extent of the damage, but right now they have him sedated and are admitting him. They don’t know how long he’s going to have to be here.”

Her phone rings again, and she pulls it out of her pocket, looks at the screen, then shoves it away without answering.

“You really should go home and get some rest,” I tell her. “You’re running on pure adrenaline right now, and it’s going to run out soon enough. Marshall is in good hands, and they will take care of him. You need to take care of yourself.”

“I don’t want to leave him.”

“I know you don’t, but you can’t just keep going endlessly after what you’ve been through. Go home, and get some sleep. Everything will seem clearer in the morning, and you’ll be able to come back and get some more answers,” I say.

“I guess you’re right,” she says.

“Do you want me to drive you home?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No. They wouldn’t let me ride in the ambulance with him because they needed to work on him, so I have my car. But thank you. I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know what else I find out.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll walk out with you.”

She goes to the registration desk to tell the nurse that she’s leaving and makes sure they have her contact information so they can get in touch with her if anything changes with Marshall. We walk out into the now-quiet night, and I escort her directly to her car.

“Thank you again,” she says.

“I’m glad you called me,” I say.

“So am I. I don’t know what I would have done without you here with me tonight.”

“Get some sleep,” I tell her, and she climbs into her car.

I wait until she is pulling away before I cross the lot to where I parked. As I’m approaching, I notice something tucked under my windshield wiper. I take the paper out and unfold it.

Back off the case or you’re next

I resist the urge to ball up the note. Instead, I fold it again and head right back inside the hospital. The nurse looks up at me from the desk, and I see her eyes flicker to the doors like she thinks that something else has happened.

“Yes?” she asks.

“I need to speak to someone in security,” I tell her. “It’s extremely important.”

It takes a while of me pacing through the waiting room again for a uniformed security officer to come meet me. His no-nonsense face expresses no emotion as he approaches me.

“Dan Wilder,” he introduces without reaching out to shake my hand.

“Agent Emma Griffin,” I tell him.

“What can I do for you, Agent?” he asks.

“I need to know if there are security cameras covering the parking lot,” I tell him.

“There are cameras,” he says. “They don’t cover the entirety of the lot, but most of it. Why?”

I show him the paper I found under my windshield.

“I found this when I went out to my car. It is very significant to the case I am currently investigating. One of the victims is currently in this hospital. I need to see if the security cameras picked up who left this on my windshield.”

“Come with me,” he says.

We go to the security office, and I sit in a stiff-backed chair while he pulls up the footage from the time that I’ve been in the hospital. I go to his side and lean forward slightly to look at the screen. Images from several cameras fill it in little boxes, creating an almost dizzying black-and-white array.

“I’m parked in front of the emergency room entrance,” I tell him, letting him narrow down the options for the cameras. Scanning the screen, I locate the row where I’m parked, but immediately, I notice that only half of my rental car is visible. I point it out. “Right there. Is there another angle that might have gotten more of the car?”

“Just this one,” he says, switching to a different camera shot.

I can see part of the vehicle’s front now, and we scroll forward until I see a quick movement near the car.

“Stop,” I say. “Can you play that again?”

He goes backward a few seconds and plays the footage at regular speed. The movement is at the top corner of the screen, but it clearly looks like someone approaching the car. There’s not enough of the figure to get any identifying features, which leaves me frustrated. This person keeps slipping right between my fingers, and it’s infuriating.

“Thanks,” I tell the guard.

“Sorry I couldn’t be more help,” he says.

I leave the hospital not at all dissuaded by the note. Rather than going back to Bellamy and Eric’s house, I head for the police station. I’m not surprised when I find Detective Fuller there. He’s changed clothes, which tells me he either managed to make it home for a little while today or he crashed on a couch somewhere and he keeps a change of clothes at the office the way I’ve known a lot of detectives do. It’s much the same as the duffel bag of emergency essentials I keep stashed in my trunk just in case I find myself needing to stay at an investigation longer than I thought.

“I heard about Marshall Powell,” he says when he sees me.

“I just came from the hospital,” I say.

“How is he?” the detective asks.

“He’s alive. But that’s about the extent of what I can say about him. He was put under sedation, and they are running tests to see just how seriously he was injured. He was bludgeoned, just like Sabrina. But he managed to get away just before going unconscious,” I tell him. “This needs to be investigated as part of the larger case.”

“It is,” he assures me. “That’s why I’m here. I was finally home trying to relax, and they called me to tell me another of Ellis’s employees had been attacked. At least I managed to get a clean shirt.”

“Does wonders,” I say.

“Yes, it does,” he says with a slight laugh.

“What have you found out so far?” I ask. “I had a chance to talk to two of the responding officers at the hospital, but they didn’t have much information. It seemed like they went to the hospital at the same time as Carla, so they were only able to tell me about the call to dispatch.”

“That’s about as far as we’ve gotten so far,” he says. “A canvass of the neighbors didn’t get us anything but some footage from a doorbell camera of a figure in dark clothes approaching the house and going around to the back. It’s too far away to be able to see any details about the person. That’s what we’re working with right now.”

“Not a lot,” I say.

“Not really,” he agrees.

“Did anything come through with that fingerprint from the car?” I ask.

“It didn’t match anything in the database,” he says.

“All right,” I say, disappointed but not surprised. “Just give me a call if anything comes through.”

“Go get some sleep,” he says.

“Doubtful,” I call behind me as I walk out and head back to my car.

It’s not that I’m not tired. It’s been a long day and an even longer night already. It’s that I know there’s more I need to do before I can even consider laying my head down to rest.

I get in the car and call Ander. It’s late, but I highly doubt he would have already been able to get back to the house and sleep after the incident at the hospital.

“Hello?” he answers in a grumbling voice.

“Ander, this is Agent Griffin,” I tell him.

“If you’re calling about what happened at the hospital…”

“I’m not,” I say, cutting him off. “That is what it is. I’m calling because I have a question for you. Gideon’s computer had an unfinished email to Tracy Ellis about something going on in the company. There aren’t any details, but it’s obvious he knew something about a colleague and was going to expose it to her. I asked Tracy about it, and she told me that those kinds of reports are commonplace within the company.”

“They are,” Ander confirms. “It’s part of proving your dedication to the ministry. And if Tracy finds out that you knew something was happening and didn’t bring it to her attention, there can be consequences.”

“Have you made any kind of report like that recently?” I ask.

“No,” he tells me without hesitation. “I haven’t turned anyone in for anything in a couple of years. I don’t have the opportunity to interact with the other people in the company very much, so I don’t get any information like that.”

“So it isn’t a matter of staying out of people’s business, it’s just that you don’t personally know about these things,” I say.

“If that’s how you want to see it,” he says. “But either way, I can’t think of anyone whom I could have possibly offended enough to make them willing to kill my wife. Or anything I could have done. Other than just continuing to work for Tracy.”

“Have you considered quitting now?” I ask.

“Of course I have. Being stubborn and keeping this job cost me my wife. I have started looking for something else, but I can’t just quit. It’s not like Sabrina and I had a ton of savings that I can live off of.”

“I understand,” I say. “Do you know anything about the email that Gideon was sending?”

“No, he didn’t talk to me about anything like that,” Ander says.

“All right, thank you. Try to get some rest.”

“That’s not going to be easy. If Marshall dies…”

“He’s alive, Ander. I know he went through a lot, but he’s alive. We just need to keep focusing on finding out who is responsible.”

I end the call with a knot in my chest. Something is off about everything that happened tonight. I feel unsettled as I pull out of the parking space to start back to the house. I’ve barely gotten on the road when my phone rings again. I put it on speaker so I can answer it while driving.

“Agent Griffin,” I say.

“It’s Carla.” Her voice is a tight whisper, but it sounds almost as panicked as when she called me earlier. “There’s someone in my house.”