McCall. I’m going to have to step outside for some better reception. I need to call in the troops.”
Alone with what was left of the woman she assumed was Melissa Lowery, Annie tried to ignore what part her inquiries into the woman’s whereabouts might have played in her death.
We don’t know if she was murdered, Annie silently protested against the first twinges of guilt. She could have been ill, she could have had…
What? Annie asked herself. What could she have had that might have caused her to die at the same time as I was looking for her? How coincidental could it be?
Annie just hadn’t seen enough true coincidences in her life to start believing in them now.
She stood and began to take note of her surroundings. The house was small but neat and well kept, the walls freshly painted, the furniture relatively new. She walked from one room to the next and found the entire house had a just-decorated feel to it. However long Melissa had been in Montana, she’d only just recently started to feather her nest.
A few family photos stood in a line across the mantel over the living-room fireplace. The same young, dark-haired woman appeared in several of them, and Annie thought that might be Melissa. In one photo, she appeared with a younger woman and an older man, a large black dog on the ground in front of them. In another, there was just her and the dog. In a third, she sat on a large outcropping of rock, with two other young women, all of whom bore a strong resemblance. Sisters, maybe, Annie thought. The older man might be the dad.
Annie went into the living room and straight to the dark green leather bag that had spilled from a chair onto the floor. She looked over the contents-makeup case, cell phone, a small address book, several keys on a brass chain from which a large letter
“You wouldn’t happen to have a pair of rubber gloves I could borrow, do you?” she asked Sheriff Brody when he came back into the house.
“I might have, in the trunk. I can check,” he said, but made no attempt to go back outside to his car.
“Was there something you wanted to ask me, Sheriff Brody?” Annie stood and folded her arms across her chest.
“I’m wondering what your interest is here. What brought you here. What business you had with Ms. Gray. She wasn’t a friend of yours, judging by your reaction.” His eyes narrowed. “You’ve had no visible emotional reaction to seeing her body, the way you would if you knew the deceased. So it’s got me wondering why you’re here.”
“Agent Lowery was involved in an operation that took place a few years back. Recently, some questions about the operation itself have come up, and in reviewing the file, it was discovered that the report she wrote is missing. I needed to ask her a few questions about what was in the report.”
He nodded slowly, as if mulling over the information.
“It just occurred to someone in the FBI that her report was missing? After a couple of years?”
“I don’t know when the report went missing.”
“And you came all the way out here to ask her about it?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just call her?”
“I had a presentation to give in Seattle this week, so I thought I’d make a stopover and speak with her in person.”
He went silent again, thinking it through.
“Still seems like a long way to come, when a phone call would have gotten you the same information.”
He paused, as if waiting for her comment. When none was forthcoming, he said, “Unless for some reason you thought she wouldn’t speak to you.”
“There’s a good chance she may not have,” Annie told him.
“What are you basing that on?”
“She’s gone to great lengths to change her identity. You don’t go to all that trouble unless you don’t want to be found.”
“Maybe she was being stalked. Maybe she just needed some peace and quiet.” He leaned back against the doorjamb. “I grew up back east. Can’t say I’d blame anyone who felt like they needed to escape.”
He folded his arms across his chest and appeared to be waiting for her to say something more.
“Look, I don’t know why this woman came out here or why she changed her name. I don’t know for certain that she was hiding out here, but I feel very strongly she was trying to get as far from someone or something as she could. I’d be real interested in knowing who that person was.” Annie turned to look over her shoulder at the corpse that lay fifteen feet behind her. “It has to make you wonder, doesn’t it? What brought her here under a phony name? Why she’d leave a career with the FBI and just disappear?”
“I’m sure she wasn’t the first FBI agent who decided to quit.”
“True. But many former agents leave the Bureau and join local law enforcement agencies. Private security, that sort of thing. Any idea what she was doing for a living?”
“No idea.” He shook his head. “Maybe someone in town will know, maybe one of the neighbors.”
The sound of car doors slamming drew their attention to the driveway, where several sheriff’s vehicles and a beat-up black sedan had parked, their occupants filing up the walkway to the house.
“Looks like the gang’s all here,” Brody observed. “Let me get you those gloves, Dr. McCall, so we can put you to work along with everyone else. I could see you’re interested in the contents of that purse there. Let’s see what’s what…”
The first thing Annie did was start to check the numbers of the last calls that had been made to Melissa’s cell phone, but one of the sheriff’s deputies made a point of looking for that item, so she had to hand it over. While doing so, she tucked the address book under her leg as she knelt on the floor next to the spilled purse. When the deputy walked outside to start calling back the numbers, she took the small red book and stepped around the M.E. to walk into the kitchen. There she opened the back door and sat on the top porch step to skim through the pages.
For some reason, Melissa seemed to prefer listing some of her contacts not by name but by initials. Annie went page by page, studying the entries, but none were recognizable. Until she came to the
Grady Shields?
She tapped the book against the palm of one hand. Could be an old phone book. Could be a number Melissa hadn’t called in a long time. Annie took her cell phone out of her pocket and checked the number she had for Grady. It wasn’t the same as the one in Melissa’s book. Annie dialed the number and listened to it ring.
“Hello?” A familiar male voice answered.
“Grady?”
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“It’s Annie.”
He hesitated, then asked, “How did you get this number?”
“I found it in Melissa Lowery’s phone book.”
“What are you doing with Melissa’s phone book?”
“Looking for someone who might have had a reason to kill her.”
The silence that followed was so long and so complete, Annie thought Grady had hung up.
“Melissa…?” he whispered, his voice little more than a rasp.
“She’s dead, Grady.”
“But…” Another silence, then finally, a click.
“Grady?” Annie asked, though she knew he was no longer on the line. She disconnected the call and slid the phone back into her jacket pocket.
“You find anything interesting in that book?” Sheriff Brody asked from the top of the steps.
“Not really,” she said, handing it to him.
“Well, we got two of the neighbors out front, just drove by and saw all the cars, so they stopped in. I’m just about to go on out and talk to them, thought you might want to come out with me.”
“I would. Thank you.”
Brody came down the steps and walked toward the corner of the house.
“Too much going on in there,” he told her. “I want to stay out of everyone’s way as much as I can.”
“So we figure she’s been dead approximately two weeks.” Annie fell into step beside him.
“Yeah, that’s what we figured.” He nodded.
“And no one missed her in all that time?”
“From what I gathered, from the folks out front, she didn’t work. Went into town for food and supplies every two weeks or so. Stopped at the library to pick up a couple of books while she was there, maybe had lunch at Sullivan’s. Other than that, it seems like she kept to herself.”
“Well, let’s see if the neighbors remember if she’s had any company lately…”
The neighbors did.
In particular, Mrs. Owens, a widow in her midseventies who lived half a mile up on the other side of the road, distinctly recalled having seen a tall, good-looking dark-haired man with the deceased on several occasions.
“Recently?” Annie asked.
“Last time, maybe a month ago. Maybe a little less.”
“Within the last two weeks?”
“Not him, but there was a car parked here week before last.”
