Next Door

“Your high school friend isn’t the only one in Pinecrest, right?” she asked. “Your sister lives around here too, if I remember correctly.”

“Yes, she does.”

She spoke the answer firmly but without being rude. Sally Brennan had never made any secrets about her distaste for Danielle—even though they had only ever crossed paths twice. Sally had the misfortune of being one of those clichéd bored housewives who lived for scandal and gossip. So when she found that Chloe had a sister with a rocky and dark past, she’d been both appalled and intrigued.

“Let’s not dwell there, Mom,” Steven said.

Chloe wished this made her feel defended but if anything, it made her feel slighted. Usually when the topic of Danielle came up, Steven ended up siding with his mother. He did have the good sense to know when to shut up but his mother usually did not.

“Will she be the maid of honor?” Sally asked.

“Yes.”

Sally didn’t roll her eyes at the comment, but her facial expression showed her feelings about it.

“She is my sister,” Chloe said. “So yes, I have asked her to be my maid of honor.”

“Yes, it makes sense,” Sally said, “but I always thought the maid of honor should be chosen carefully. It’s a big honor and responsibility.”

Chloe had to grip the edge of the table to keep from coming back with a hard-edged reply. Noticing her tension, Steven did his best to salvage the situation. “Mom, give it a rest,” he said. “Danielle will do fine. And even if something should go wrong, I’ll make sure everything is covered. This is my wedding, Mom. I’m not going to let anything bad happen.”

This time it was Chloe who nearly rolled her eyes. It was once again his way of standing up for her but of also not irritating his parents. Just once, Chloe would like for him to truly defend Danielle. She knew that Steven had no real problems with her but that he was doing his best to pacify his mother’s uneasiness of her. It was a little disgusting.

“Enough of this nonsense,” Wayne said, reaching out for a second helping of the roasted potatoes. “Let’s talk football. Now, Chloe…you’re a Redskins fan, right?”

“God, no. Giants.”

“Just as bad,” Wayne said with a laugh.

And just like that, the uneasiness of the night was swept under the rug. Chloe had always valued Wayne’s boldness in being able to ignore his wife’s bitchiness, pushing along to some another benign topic whether she was done or not. It was a trait Chloe wished Steven had picked up from his father.

Still, as the night went on, Chloe couldn’t help but wonder if Sally’s worries were legitimate. Danielle was not the sort to dress up, stay quiet, and get in front of people. Danielle would be stepping out of her comfort zone at the wedding and Chloe herself had wondered how it might go over.

As those worries floated through her head, she thought of the little girls from so many years ago, sitting on the front stoop as the body bag was carried out of their apartment. She could easily recall the blank look in Danielle’s face. She knew something had snapped in her at that moment. That, overnight, she had lost her sister.

And she suspected that, from that moment on, Danielle would never be the same again.

Chapter Four

It was raining when Chloe and her field work instructor arrived on the scene. She felt very minor league as she stepped out of the car into the drizzling rain. Because she was an intern having to go alongside her instructor in shifts with other interns, they were not given high-profile cases. This one, for instance, sounded as if it were a typical domestic abuse case. And while the details of the case did not sound very graphic or brutal, the very words domestic abuse made her cringe.

She had, after all, heard those words a lot after her mother had died. Her instructor must have been aware of her past—of what had happened with her parents—but had mentioned nothing of it this morning as they had headed out.

They were in the town of Willow Creek on that first day, a small town about fifteen miles outside of Baltimore. Chloe was interning with the FBI to eventually become part of the FBI’s Evidence Response Team, and as they walked toward the simple two-story house, the instructor even let her take the lead. Her instructor was Kyle Greene, a forty-five-year-old agent who had been taken out of basic field work when he had torn his ACL while chasing down a suspect. He’d never healed properly from the injury and had been given the option to serve as an instructor and mentor of sorts for interns. He and Chloe had only spoken twice before this morning, having met via FaceTime a week ago to get to know one another and then two days ago, during her ride from Philly to Pinecrest.

“One thing before we go inside,” Greene said. “I held this from you until now because I didn’t want you dwelling on it all morning.”

“Okay…”

“While this is a domestic abuse case, it is also a homicide case. When we get inside, there’s going to be a body. A relatively fresh one.”

“Oh…” she said, unable to contain her shock.

“I know it’s more than you were expecting. But there was some discussion when you came in. Discussions to maybe let you peek behind the curtain right from the start. We’ve been toying with the idea of letting the interns have more responsibilities, letting them stretch out a bit more. And based on your dossier, we thought you’d be a prime candidate to test that out. I hope that’s okay with you.”

She was still taken aback, unable to form any real response. Yes, it was more responsibility. Yes, it meant more eyes would be on her. But she had never backed down from a challenge and she didn’t intend to start now.

“I appreciate the opportunity.”

“Good,” Greene said, his tone indicating that he never had a doubt.

He waved her on to follow him as they walked to the porch and up the stairs. Inside, were two agents conversing with the coroner. Chloe did her best to ready herself for the scene and while she thought she’d done a pretty good job, she was still shaken when she saw a woman’s legs sticking out from behind the kitchen island.

“So I need you to take a walk around the body,” Greene said. “Tell me what you see—both in terms of the body and the surroundings. Walk me through your processing.”

Chloe had seen a few dead bodies in the course of her interning; When she lived in Philadelphia, they had not been all that hard to come by. But this was different. This one felt a little too close to home—a little too familiar. She stepped behind the kitchen counter and looked down at the scene.

The victim was a woman who looked to be in her thirties. She had been hit in the head with a very solid object—most likely the toaster that lay shattered in pieces several feet from her. The brunt of the impact had been along the left side of her brow, hard enough to shatter the ocular cavity, making her eye look like it could very well slide out onto the floor at any moment. A pool of blood surrounded her head like a halo.

Perhaps the oddest thing about her was that her sweatpants were pulled down to her ankles and her underwear pulled down to her knees. Chloe hunkered down closer to the body and looked for any other details. She saw what looked like two small scratch marks on the side of her neck. They looked to be fresh and in the shape of fingernails.

“Where’s the husband?” she asked.

“In custody,” Greene said. “He’s admitted to it and already told the police what happened.”

“But if it’s a domestic dispute, why call the FBI in?” she asked.

“Because this guy was arrested three years ago for beating up his first wife so bad that she went to the ER. But she didn’t press charges. And his home computer was flagged two weeks ago for potential snuff videos.”

Chloe took all of that information and applied it to what she was seeing. She interlocked it all like a puzzle and spoke her theories out loud as they came to her.

“Given this man’s history, he was prone to violence. Extreme violence, if the crushed toaster is any indication. The sweatpants pushed down and underwear not quite all the way down indicates that he was trying to have sex with her here in the kitchen. Maybe they were having sex and she wanted it to stop. Scratch marks on her neck indicate that the sex was rough and either consensual at first or entirely unwanted.”

She paused here and studied the blood. “The blood looks to be relatively fresh. I’d estimate the murder to have occurred within the last six hours.”

“And what would your next steps be?” Greene asked. “If we didn’t have this guy in custody right now and there was an active search for him, how would you follow up?”

“I’d check for evidence of intercourse. We could get his DNA and get a match. While waiting for those results, though, I’d look for things like wallets upstairs in the bedroom, hoping for a driver’s license. Of course, that’s if it wasn’t already suspected that it was the husband. If that were the case, we could get the name from the address.”

Greene smiled at her, nodding. “That’s right. You’d be surprised how many rookies miss the fact that it’s sort of a trick question. You’re in the guy’s house, so you’d already know his name. But if it wasn’t suspected that it was the husband, you’re exactly right. Also…Fine, are you okay?”

The question took her by surprise—mainly because she wasn’t okay. She had zoned out, staring at the blood on the kitchen tile. It pulled her all the way back into her past, staring at a pool of blood drying into the carpet at the bottom of the stairs.

Without warning, she started to grow faint. She braced herself against the kitchen island, afraid she was going to puke. It was alarming and embarrassing.

Is this what I can look forward to at any remotely gruesome crime scene? At any scenes that remotely resemble what happened to Mom?

She could hear Sally in the back of her head, one of the first things she’d ever said to Chloe: I don’t know how a woman would make an exceptional agent. Especially one with your traumatic background. I wonder if that sort of stress comes home with you…