A Neighbor’s Lie

Chloe kept back from the rest of the group for a moment, trying to get her head straight. She’d woken up this morning excited to start her career as a member of the Evidence Response Team. Everything for the foreseeable future had essentially been planned out. And now here she was, placed into a department she was not very familiar with, assigned to a partner with a stick up her ass.

“She doesn’t exactly seem like a people person, does she?” someone said from behind her.

She turned and saw the man who had walked with her down to the floor—the handsome one who had asked if she had any violent tendencies.

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Imagine having most of your courses with her at the academy,” he said. “It was miserable. Speaking of which…I don’t remember you being in any of my courses or modules.”

“Yeah…I’m sort of new. I was placed in this department this morning.”

A look of mild shock came over his face. “Oh, okay. Well, welcome to ViCAP. I’m Kyle Moulton and if your new partner doesn’t want to have lunch with you, I’d like to take her place.”

“Help yourself,” Chloe said, finally falling in behind with the rest of the group. “It’s fitting of my day to say the least.”

“How so?”

“Because nothing else has really gone as planned, either.”

Moulton only nodded as they left the auditorium. Even though Moulton was a stranger (albeit a handsome one), it was nice to have him by her side as they walked to the catered lunch waiting for them elsewhere in the building. She was afraid that if she had to step into this uncertain future completely alone, it might make her rethink everything.

“Plans are overrated anyway,” Moulton said.

“Not to me. Plans mean structure. Plans mean predictability.”

“I don’t think predictability was in the job description for our positions,” Moulton joked.

Chloe smiled and nodded but had never quite looked at it that way. Quite frankly, it frightened her a bit. Which made no sense, really. Her life had never been anything more than an unpredictable pile of utter crap, so why would her career be any different?

Luckily, she had learned to roll with the punches. And if snotty bitches like Nikki Rhodes happened to obscure her path along the way, then Rhodes could either adapt or get the hell out of her way.

CHAPTER THREE

The following morning, Chloe got a rude awakening to how the remainder of her career would be structured. Her phone rang at 5:45, the call coming from one of the assistant directors who worked under Director Johnson. She had barely managed to croak out a raspy “Hello?” before the man on the other end started to speak.

“This is Assistant Director Garcia. Is this Agent Chloe Fine?”

“It is.” She sat up in bed, her heart hammering as a surge of adrenaline flooded through her, kicking out the remnants of sleep.

“You’re to meet Agent Rhodes in Bethesda at seven a.m. You’ll be working together on what we believe is a pretty open and closed case of gang violence, likely from MS-13. Any questions should come directly to me, at this number. Agent Rhodes will be given the exact same information. Following this call, the address will be texted to your phone. Do you have any questions, Agent Fine?”

Chloe was sure she had some questions, but they were hiding in the wake of her first actual assignment.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Be safe and smart out there, Agent Fine.”

And that was it. That was how she got her first assignment. She knew that they would not come like this in the future; they’d been told this much at orientation yesterday. Still, it was quite an effective way to kick off her first day on the job.

She’d already laid her clothes out and showered the night before, doing everything she could to make sure she would not be late for whatever awaited her on the first day. She dressed, grabbed a bagel with some cream cheese, and poured a thermos of coffee that she had set to brew at 5 a.m. last night. During all of this, the text from Director Garcia came through, giving her the address in Bethesda. When Chloe got to her car, only fifteen minutes had passed since the call had come in.

She’d been to Bethesda, Maryland, several times so she knew it was a quick drive—a little less than half an hour, especially leaving this early and getting in front of the miserable morning commuter traffic. Once she was out of the grind of DC’s streets and onto more open lanes, she plugged the address into her GPS and saw that she was only twenty-two minutes away.

She found herself wanting to call Danielle. She felt herself driving toward one of the more memorable and meaningful moments in her life and felt the need to share it with someone. But she knew Danielle would still be sleeping and that she would also probably not understand the excitement of it. And that was fine with Chloe. They had different interests and passions, and neither one had ever been particularly great at faking their enthusiasm.

She arrived at the address two minutes ahead of the time her GPS had given her. It was a rundown one-story apartment building, the kind that was usually visited by the police at least a dozen times over the weekend for violence, drugs, sexual assault, and just about anything else imaginable.

She’d fully expected to be there ahead of Rhodes but was a bit dejected to see the other agent not only already there, but walking up the porch steps toward the crime scene.

Annoyed, she parked along the side of the street and hurried up the sidewalk. She made it up to the porch just as Rhodes opened the door to head inside.

“Good morning,” Rhodes said, clearly not meaning it.

“Good morning. What did you do…fly here?”

Rhodes only shrugged. “It doesn’t take me very long to get ready in the mornings. It’s okay, Agent Fine. This isn’t a race.”

As they stepped inside, they saw a man standing in the center of a small cluttered living room. He turned toward them and his eyes seemed to hang on Agent Rhodes for a moment. She was wearing very modest black slacks and a conservative white top. Her hair had been straightened and although she’d claimed she took very little time to get ready, it was obvious that there had been some makeup work done that morning.

“You with the bureau?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Chloe said quickly, as if making sure the man knew there were two agents present, not just the tall pretty blonde one.

“Agents Rhodes and Fine,” Rhodes said. “And you are?”

“Detective Ralph Palace, Maryland Homicide. I’m just taking a few final notes, as I understand this is your case now.”

“What can you tell us to get us started?” Chloe asked.

“It’s pretty basic. Gang-related murder. MS-13 is a big one in this area, so that’s what we’re going with. The bodies of a husband, wife, and thirteen-year-old son were removed yesterday afternoon, about seven hours after the call was placed. Reports of shots fired, and this place ended up looking like this.” He waved his arms all around, indicating the mess of the apartment. “Some pretty simply police work revealed that the father once had ties with a rival gang, the Binzos.”

“If MS-13 is involved how is ICE not on this?” Chloe asked.

“Because it hasn’t been proven yet,” Palace said. “With immigrant-related gang crimes, we have to be pretty certain. Otherwise, we can expect lawsuits and grievances about the unfair treatment of ethnic groups.” He gave a shake of his head and sighed. “So if you guys could prove this one way or the other, that would be great.”

He made his way to the front door, taking a business card from his wallet as he did. It was no surprise at all when he handed it directly to Rhodes. “Call me if you need anything else.”

Rhodes didn’t bother with a response as she pocketed the card. Chloe assumed she had been the kind of girl in high school and college who had gotten acclimated to having guys ogle her all the time. This encounter with Detective Palace had no doubt been just another one of those tiresome moments.

Chloe took a moment to look around the place. The coffee table in front of the couch had been overturned. Something—a dark soda from the looks of it—had been spilled from the table during the melee. The dark fluid had mixed with what was clearly drying blood on the pale shag carpet that covered the entire living room up until the adjoining kitchen. There was more blood splattered on the walls. There was also some smeared on the linoleum floor in the kitchen.

“How do you want to split this up?” Rhodes asked.

“I don’t know. If shots were fired, there’s a good chance one went into a wall or the floor. And from the messy look of the place, it wasn’t a simple shootout. There was a struggle. And that tells me there’s probably fingerprints somewhere as well.”

Rhodes nodded. “We also need to figure out how the killer got in. Did you get a look at the front door? No signs of forced entry. So that means one of the family members let the guy in—maybe someone they knew well and trusted.”

Chloe agreed with all of this and found herself impressed with Rhodes and the way she had already checked the door before even stepping inside.

“Why don’t you look around outside for signs of forced entry?” Rhodes suggested. “I’ll see if there are any signs of what type of weapons were used in here…see if there are any bullet fragments or anything like that.”

Chloe nodded in agreement but was already sensing that Rhodes was doing her best to angle herself as the lead in the investigation. Chloe took it in stride, though. Based on what Palace had told them—and the fact that this had been assigned to two brand new agents with the oversight of an assistant director—she knew it was considered a small-time task in the grand scheme of things. So if Rhodes was going for some sort of power play already, it wasn’t anything to get bent out of shape over. Not yet, anyway.

Chloe headed back outside, running the scenario through her head. If the killer was someone the family knew, why the struggle? If the killer had used a gun, three shots one right behind the other would not have allowed much time for any sort of struggle at all. But the door had indeed showed no signs of being forced open. So really, some sort of forced entry was more likely than the killer simply being allowed inside. But if not at the front door, then where?

She walked slowly around the building, realizing that calling it an apartment building was a bit of a stretch. She became more and more certain that it was some sort of urban housing, perhaps offered as some form of government aid. It was at the very edge of a collection of four identical buildings, separated by a strip of mostly dead grass between each one.

The left side offered nothing. It was mostly featureless with the exception of a small gas tank and a busted spigot where a water hose was coiled uselessly on the ground. But when she got around back, she saw several opportunities. First, there were three windows. One looked into the kitchen and the other two looked into bedrooms. There was also a set of concrete stairs that led up to a back door. She checked this door and found it unlocked. It opened up into a very small area that looked to have served as a mudroom. A few pair of dirty shoes were on the floor and a tattered dirty coat hung from a hook on the wall. She checked the door and the frame and found that it was all sound. From her point of view, she could not see where it had been forced open at any time in the recent past.

She went back to each window, looking for anything suspicious, and was not disappointed. On the third window, looking into what she assumed was the master bedroom, there were two small chunks of wood removed from the frame. They had been crudely removed, as if chipped away. One was along the bottom edge, where the frame sat against the edge of the pane. The other was along the top of the bottom portion of the frame. Whatever had happened to chip the wood had also caused a crack to form in the glass, though nothing hard enough to break it.

She did not want to touch anything out of fear of damaging any prints that had been left behind. But by standing on her tiptoes, she could see that this particular chip in the wood would have allowed someone from the outside to push down to disengage the window lock.

She went back inside through the back door and made her way into the master bedroom. There was no clear indication that anyone had entered through the window. But she also knew that a thorough dusting might tell a different story.

“What are you doing?”

She turned and saw Rhodes standing in the doorway to the bedroom. She had a skeptical look on her face as she studied Chloe.

“This window has been tampered with from the outside,” Chloe said. “We need to collect prints.”

“You got evidence gloves?” Rhodes asked.

“No,” Chloe said. She found this ironic; had she started her day as a member of the Evidence Response Team as she had originally planned, she’d have them on her. But after Johnson had switched her department yesterday, she hadn’t thought to bring any evidence-based equipment along.

“I’ve got some in my car,” she said. She then tossed Chloe a set of keys with a look of annoyance. “In the glove box. And please lock it when you’re done.”

Chloe muttered a subdued “Thanks” as she passed by Rhodes while leaving the room. She wondered why Rhodes would keep evidence gloves in her car. As she, Chloe, understood it, each agent would be supplied with the appropriate equipment and materials for any given case from the bureau. Had Rhodes been given the correct supplies? Had her late addition to the ViCAP program already come back to bite her in the ass?

She went outside and found a box of latex gloves in Rhodes’s glove compartment. There was also an evidence kit, which she took out as well. It was a small emergency kit but better than nothing. And while it showed that Rhodes was prepared, it also indicated that she wasn’t going to go out of her way to help Chloe. Why keep it a secret that she had gloves and an emergency evidence kit in the glove box unless she had planned on keeping them for herself?

Determined not to get too bogged down by such details, Chloe slapped the gloves on as she walked back into the house. As she passed by Rhodes again, Chloe handed her the evidence kit. “Thought we might need this, too.”

Rhodes gave her a biting look as Chloe headed back for the window. She checked the area that has been chipped and found that her hunch was correct. It would allow someone from the outside to apply just enough force to the lock to get it to pop open.

“Agent Fine?” Rhodes said.

“Yeah?”

“I know we don’t know one another, so I’m going to say this as polite as I can: Can you please watch what the hell you’re doing?”

Chloe turned back toward Rhodes and gave her a defiant look. “Excuse me?”

“Look at the carpet under your feet for God’s sake!”

Chloe looked down and her heart sank. There was a footprint there, just a partial one but clearly the top half of a footprint. It was made of what looked like dust and mud.

And she had stepped on it.

Shit…

She stepped back quickly. Rhodes took her place by the window, kneeling down to look at the print. “Hopefully you didn’t ruin it enough to make it unusable,” Rhodes spat.

Chloe bit back the retort that jumped up on her tongue. After all, Rhodes was right. She’d somehow overlooked something as glaringly obvious as a footprint. It’s because I’m just in my head too much, she thought. Maybe Johnson switching departments on me is affecting me more than I thought.

But she knew that was a lame excuse. After all, so far this crime scene had essentially been nothing more than evidence collecting—which was what she had been wanting to do all along in the first place.

Feeling embarrassed and enraged, Chloe walked out of the room to collect her breath and her thoughts.

“Jesus,” Rhodes said as she observed the print. “Fine…why don’t you see what you can find out there that might of some use? There are bullet holes in the kitchen wall I didn’t get a chance to look at while you were outside. I’ll wrap this up…if it’s even possible.”

Again, Chloe had to bite back quite a few vile comments. She was in the wrong here and that meant she had to overlook Rhodes being a bitch. So she kept quiet and headed back out into the central area of the apartment, hoping to find some way to redeem herself.

She went into the kitchen and saw the bullet holes Rhodes had mentioned. She saw the casings in each hole, several inches deep into the plaster. She was sure they’d be able to find out what kind of gun had been used based solely on that. So as far as Chloe was concerned, the bullet holes were a gimme—an easy clue that would give them just enough information to keep the case chugging along.

Maybe there’s something else, though, she thought.

She walked back toward the hallway and stopped where it connected with the living area. If the killer had indeed come in through the window in the master bedroom, this would likely be where the shooting had started. The lack of blood or chaos in the bedroom indicated that nothing violent had happened back there.

She looked to the couch and saw the spray of blood on the floor in front of it. Probably the first shot, she thought. She observed the layout of the place and could see it all in her head. The first shot had killed someone on the couch. That would have caused anyone else on the couch to jump up quickly, perhaps knocking over the coffee table. Maybe they tripped over it or tried jumping over it. Regardless, the blood and spilled soda on the other side of the overturned coffee table indicated that this person did not make it out.

Still, it made her wonder. She slowly walked into the living room, following the path she assumed the bullets had gone. The amount of dried gore on the back of the couch gave her enough evidence that the person sitting there had died right away. She could see no entry on the couch where the bullet had torn into it, meaning it had lodged somewhere in the victim’s head.

She could easily see two bullet holes in the kitchen wall, about three inches apart. She could see them from the couch. But if there were two stray shots there, maybe there were more elsewhere. If there were, it might give them a more precise chain of events throughout the scene.

She went to the coffee table and hunkered down. If someone had stumbled here before being shot, the killer would have aimed low. She looked around for any other stray shots and saw none. The killer had apparently hit his target.

However, she did see something else that she had not even been looking for. There was a small desk pushed against the wall to her right. It held a decorative bowl and a framed picture. Stuffed between the legs of the table was a tattered wicker basket with old mail and books. Between that basket and the back legs of the table was a cell phone.

She picked it up and saw that it was an iPhone. She pressed the power-up button and the screen lit up. The lock screen was a picture of Black Panther. She pressed the home button, expecting the passcode screen to pop up. When it didn’t, she was surprised. Instead, it opened without an issue.

Must have been the son’s phone, she thought. And maybe the parents rigged it so there was no passcode so they’d have access at all times.

It took her a moment to understand what she was looking at. She saw a young boy’s face with some weird zombie-like features cartooned over it. She checked the edges of the screen and then saw the telltale signs of Snapchat. She was looking at a video (or a “snap”) that had not yet been sent.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

She then realized how warm the phone felt. She looked to the battery indicator in the upper right corner and saw that it was in the red.

She ran toward the hallway, gripping the phone. “Rhodes, do you see a phone charger in there?” she yelled.

There was a pause before Rhodes answered. “Yeah. On the bedside table.”

By the time the full answer was out of her mouth, Chloe was already entering the room again. She saw the charger Rhodes had mentioned and instantly ran to it.

“What is it?” Rhodes asked.

Chloe couldn’t help thinking: Wouldn’t you like to know, you bitch? But she kept it quiet as she plugged the charger into the phone.

“I think the son was on Snapchat when the killer came in. And I think he was sending a snap to a friend. Only he never got a chance to send it.”

She played the video that had been on the screen when she found the phone. It was of a young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen. He was sticking his tongue out, his face highlighted with the zombie-like animation. Within two seconds, the first gunshot sounded out. The phone was jostled and then a second gunshot sounded out. The boy appeared to fall to the floor, the phone was jostled again, and then the screen went black—apparently coming to a stop in its resting place beneath the little desk.

That’s where the snap ended. The entire thing lasted about five seconds.

“Play it again,” Rhodes said.

Chloe replayed the video, this time paying attention to the jostled moments. For about a quarter of a second, there was the shape of a figure standing in the hallway, coming into the living room. It was brief, but it was there. And because the phone was a newer one, even in its hectic movements, the image was fairly clear. Chloe couldn’t make out a face with her untrained eye, but she knew the bureau would have no problem running a frame-by-frame analysis and enhancing the footage.

“This is literally the smoking gun,” Rhodes said. “Where did you find the phone?”

“Under the desk pushed against the wall in the living room.”

Chloe could tell that Rhodes was excited by the find but did not want to give her too much credit. Instead, she nodded her approval and went back to her work, dusting for prints underneath the window.

They both sensed that, thanks to the Snapchat video, their work here was just about done. They had the perfect piece of evidence and anything they did afterward was just going to be out of methodology and routine.

Chloe figured she might as well play along and not cause any further tension between them. She took the phone with her back into the living room. She walked across the kitchen and set about digging the bullets out of the wall. But she knew the key to the case was in the phone she carried, waiting to bring the killer of this family to justice. And in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but feel that this was too easy. She was sure that Rhodes might also be thinking the same thing—as well as a way to somehow make it backfire in Chloe’s face.