36
At one on the dot, the doorbell chimes. Zack practically falls over Kat trying to get to the door. The dog has decided today is the day to start barking at strangers and parks herself dead center in the foyer.
“What is wrong with you? Move.”
She looks right at him, gives a final bark as if saying screw you, buddy, I’ll bark if I want, then falls silent and sits on her haunches, elegant nose in the air.
He opens the door to a tall, dark-haired man with a thick mustache and a much smaller woman, reddish hair pulled back in a ponytail. They are both in plainclothes, though their weapons are visible on their hips. Ever the military man, even eighteen years removed, Zack identifies them by the butt, Glock 27s, and glances at their ankles, where he can see the slight bulge of ankle holsters. Four weapons, fifty-two rounds loaded between them. Bet the ranch they both have pepper spray on their belts, too. Knives, maybe. Extra magazines. On the surface, they look so benign, but he knows both are lethal.
Satisfied with his assessment, he grabs Kat’s collar and gestures for them to come in.
“Mr. Armstrong, I’m Sergeant Parks, and this is Detective Brianna Starr.”
“Nice to meet you. Stay still for a moment. Kat doesn’t like weapons. She spent some time as a puppy training to uncover them. Don’t worry if she growls, she sees it as doing her job.”
Zack releases the dog’s collar and Kat begins her inventory, professionally sniffing the strangers up and down, uttering short barks at waist and ankle.
“She’s beautiful,” the detective says, careful not to move. The cop’s voice is low and smoky, not what he expects from someone so small. “What is she?”
“A Belgian Malinois. It’s a herding breed.”
“She was a working dog?”
“No, she failed out. Too happy.”
“But a dog named Cat? That seems almost cruel.”
He laughs. “Kat with a K. Short for Katerina.”
“Ah.”
Kat finishes her sweep, sits back, satisfied, tongue lolling. Zack pats her on the head, says, “Good job, sweet girl,” then leads them to the living room.
“Can I get you anything?”
“We’re fine, thanks,” Parks replies.
They all sit, and silence stretches between them. Finally, Zack opens his hands expectantly. “You wanted to get updated?”
“Right.” Parks smooths two fingers over his mustache, a nervous gesture that puts Zack on alert. “I took a pass through the files last night, and then I asked Detective Starr to pull everything together and get up to speed. I don’t want you to get your hopes up, sir, but we wanted to give things another once-over, and I’d like to assign Detective Starr to investigate. She’s had great successes with cold cases, and since there have been so many technological updates recently, she and I agree it would be wise to take fresh DNA samples and get them into the system. It’s been a while, and I have to tell you when I looked last night, I didn’t see a profile for you in CODIS. Your wife, yes, but not you.”
Zack’s entire body goes tense. “You want my DNA again? I was cleared.”
“Nothing to worry about, sir,” Starr says. “If I’m going to reopen a case, it’s standard protocol for me to update all the files, and in this case, since you’re not in the system, I’d like to get fresh DNA input. You never know what might show up.”
“What, like my missing daughter is some kind of teenage criminal mastermind, and you want to see if you can find her through the system?”
She shakes her head, fighting back a smile. “Not at all, Mr. Armstrong. There’s nothing villainous here. Your DNA isn’t attached to the file anymore. Things get lost over time. It happens. It’s a long shot we’ll find a match, but I’d like to get you back into play, just in case. Okay?”
Zack crosses his arms. “Continue.”
“After I update your DNA, I’m going to update CODIS—the Combined DNA Index—and put the information into ViCAP—that’s our Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. These programs will look for DNA matches and any cases that are similar. I will go into deep specifics—weapon used, placement of the body, the missing infant, anything and everything I can add to the case to see if there’s a chance the suspect in your wife’s murder has committed another crime in the intervening years. I might even put the age progression of your daughter into the FBI’s NGI facial recognition database, just for kicks.”
“Back up a second. You’re reopening the case?”
“Not exactly. I’m going to do some legwork and see if anything pops. If it does, then we’ll reopen the case. Fair enough?”
“Yes. Quite fair.”
“Good. Now. Can you run me through the whole story? I’d like to hear everything, start to finish.”
“The file—”
She smiles. Her teeth are pretty. The smile makes her look sweet and innocent, and he knows she isn’t. Not by a long shot. Not after what she’s seen.
“Files are what they are. I’d like to hear your point of view, verbally, instead of reading and watching the old tapes.”
“Looking for inconsistencies in my answers and body language?”
“Of course. But it’s better for me to understand the case from your perspective. Helps keep me from making assumptions. I know it’s been a long time, but I bet you have a lot of insight to share.”
She is a cool customer, he’ll give her that. He looks at Parks, who nods encouragingly.
“Unfortunately, there’s not much to tell. I was in lower Alabama. My mom was dying—late-stage breast cancer. Vivian wasn’t due for a couple of weeks. Even though I wanted to stay close to home, she encouraged me to go down, be with my mom. She was adamant. So I went and had a chance to say goodbye, and we buried my mom the same day Vivian was murdered.”
He recites these facts with as little emotion as possible, though inside his gut is churning. He wasn’t expecting to reopen all his wounds this afternoon.
“And you were injured in the line of duty, yes? That’s why you were home in the first place?”
“I had a meet go sideways, and was shot. They sent me home to recover. I jumped at the chance to get back stateside before the baby was born.”
“According to your statement, your wife didn’t call you when she went into premature labor, nor after she had the baby. Why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. She wanted a home birth, was working with University Hospital’s midwife program. They delivered Violet at home with no issue, left her there with a planned follow-up OB appointment that she didn’t show for.
“Trust me when I say I regret not getting in the car and driving home immediately when I couldn’t reach her, but I had my hands full with my mom. It wasn’t unusual for my wife not to answer. When I was overseas, I caught her only about half the time. After several missed calls, though, I finally got scared and headed home. And as we all know, after she had the baby, someone broke in and stabbed her twice, once in the stomach, once in the neck. The baby was taken. Whoever did it wore gloves, there were no fingerprints or outside DNA found, other than the midwife, who was cleared right away. And me, of course.”
“You found her.”
“I did. The following day. She’d been dead for a while.” He looks off into the distance, out the windows, over the city. The dog sets her head on his knee. He pets her ears absently.
“I’ve seen the photos. It was bad,” Starr says, not unsympathetically.
Bad. The understatement of the century. “Yes, it was.”
“Do you have any ideas who could be responsible?”
“No. There was a thought that I got too close to discovering something in an operation, and they needed to warn me off.”
“So the suspect or suspects were sending a message. But you left the Army after this incident?”
“I did. I resigned my commission and went back to school. Finished my Ph.D., landed a tenure-track position at Vanderbilt. I got lucky. They don’t hand them out like jelly beans.” He didn’t need to add—and with some people thinking I was a murderer...