Dear Liesel,
I was hoping to send better news, but I am back in the hospital. I’ve done a six-month voluntary. And the answer to your question is yes, I did try again, and yes, I failed, and yes, Dr. Freakazoid and Ratchet and the chattering whack-jobs are still here. Nothing has changed. Nothing ever changes. It’s the same bleak-as-shit hole in the ground smelly shitty nasty ward.
Don’t you wish you were here?
I know you’re disappointed in me. I’m sorry.
Love,
V
April 1995
Dear V,
I just received your letter, and I am so sorry to hear you’re back in. But, V, I could never be disappointed in you. I’m disappointed for you, of course, because I know how much you hate it in there. I completely understand. But remember, V, there is no shame in getting help. You deserve to find happiness, to have a life filled with joy. If being in the ward, being counseled by Freakazoid and Ratchet, eating healthy food–okay, stop laughing, I know we can’t exactly call mystery meat healthy, but it is regular food. You’ve always been too skinny. If these things will help you get better, that’s a good thing, right?
Seriously, take their advice, and let them help you. I’m pulling for you from afar! Hang in there–ha ha, some gallows humor for you– Don’t you dare!
Love,
Liesel
52
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
It’s late, second shift is well-underway, the detectives in the bullpen loud and raucous, waiting to be called out to a crime scene. Parks locks himself in the conference room and pulls the Armstrong files from their corrugated boxes. He needs to look deeper into the murder and kidnapping, get completely up to speed. He set Starr the task of coordinating with the CBI tech; she is more than capable of getting them organized and ready for the current investigation. The two of them are heading to Colorado tomorrow afternoon. Just enough time for him to get his head into this case.
Earlier, he’d swung by Gorman’s house, and Andrea allowed him to take Gorman’s personal files on the case with him. He hopes a deeper dive will reveal something he missed the first time around.
Parks knows there has to be a reason Gorman went to Colorado in the first place. It had to be more than a hunch that the young skier he was such a fan of looks like his cold-case victims. That is a leap even Parks has a hard time buying.
He starts at the beginning again, pulling out Gorman’s full facsimile of the original murder book, with duplicates of all the crime scene photos and Vivian Armstrong’s autopsy photos.
The facts are straightforward and somewhat lacking. Vivian Armstrong had the child two weeks early, at home, with a midwife from the University Hospital midwife program in attendance, called late in the labor process. The delivery was uneventful and relatively quick and, according to the midwife, Vivian was in fine spirits when she left. She worried about leaving the young mother alone, offered to call her husband, but Vivian insisted she wanted private time to bond with the baby and promised to be at her follow-up appointment the next day.
The call to 911 came from the husband. He returned to find the front door unlocked and Vivian Armstrong on the kitchen floor. She’d been dead for at least a day, maybe more. The baby was nowhere to be found.
A large kitchen knife was found on the floor next to the deceased woman, the only fingerprints smudged, though one was lifted that belonged to Vivian Armstrong herself—nothing surprising there, it was her kitchen, and clearly, her knife.
No forced entry. No video of the assailant entering or exiting the house. The suspect was a ghost.
Or the husband.
Parks shakes his head as he reads the reports. Zachary Armstrong was in Alabama when his wife was murdered, standing over the grave of his mother. There were three messages from him on the answering machine—all increasingly worried. He didn’t commit the act, on that, most of the professionals agree. Oh, there are a few speculative reports that the husband drove home, murdered his wife, then drove back for the funeral, but Gorman’s assessment: Armstrong was telling the truth. He passed a lie detector, was open and forthright, and was, by all accounts, utterly devastated. There were no strange money trails in his bank records, no indications he hired someone to kill his wife, but the forensic accountant couldn’t say that cash hadn’t been saved up over time and all the contacts made in person.
Parks reads the heavily redacted military reports on Armstrong’s shooting, gathering as much of the story as he can, gleaning from between the lines. Armstrong was meeting an informant who’d been providing solid information to him for several months. Without warning, instead of giving over the latest dispatches, the informant shot him. Armstrong was wearing Kevlar, but the shot came from the side, ricocheted inside the vest, and damn near killed him.
The Army patched up Armstrong and sent him home. A month later, Armstrong’s wife was killed. Had she been targeted to send a message? Something about this theory feels wrong. There is no evidence at all to point to a foreign national as a suspect. Nothing. No demands, no calls, nothing to suggest the child was kidnapped by someone who was planning revenge on the Armstrongs. The case went dead as a doornail within a few weeks, as soon as Vivian Armstrong’s tox screen came back negative for illegal substances.
He flips through the correspondence between husband and wife. There isn’t much—email and a few physical letters—but what is there is kind and loving, excitement about the new baby, lovey-dovey words. Nothing at all to set off alarm bells. The Armstrongs missed each other, cared for each other. Armstrong didn’t discuss his work, didn’t even release where he was. And she didn’t ask.
Typical military household, as far as Parks knows.
The autopsy report is much more interesting.
Vivian Armstrong died from heart failure caused by exsanguination from two stab wounds—one to her right cervical carotid artery, the other to her abdominal aorta. The neck wound was a three-inch slice, just deep enough to nick the artery; the stomach a full-on stab, the knife going so deep that it scraped the L3 vertebrae. It was then pulled straight out and tossed to the floor next to her. Based on the wound trajectory, the suspect was most likely right-handed. The victim bled out within four or five minutes. There was no indication Vivian Armstrong struggled or tried to drag herself to safety; the blood pool beneath her was undisturbed. The knife was identified as a Wüsthof Classic eight-inch chef’s knife, part of a set. The slot for the knife was empty in the butcher block. There was a handwritten note from Gorman—Confirmed set purchased in Germany at the PX and brought home by husband as gift.
Everything he sees points to a crime of convenience. Possibly even of passion. The suspect used the closest available weapon instead of bringing their own to the scene.
He flips the pages until he gets to the dictated autopsy report. There is an amendment to the original, and Gorman has highlighted a line. Parks reads it, confused. This is something he hasn’t known or seen before. He can’t remember anyone ever talking about it—granted, he didn’t work the original case, so there was no reason for him to know. But Gorman felt it important enough to highlight. After the fact?
Expanded toxicology panel finds nortriptyline in high doses. Liver test confirms.
Nortriptyline?
He looks it up. It’s listed as a tricyclic antidepressant marketed under the brand name Pamelor. He digs a little deeper, curious. Pregnancy class C.