CHAPTER THREE
Kate wasted no time. She returned home and sat at the desk in her small study for a moment. She looked out of her study window, into her small backyard. Sunshine came in through the window, laying a rectangle of light on her wooden floors. The floors, like most of the rest of the house, showed the scars and scabs of its 1920s construction. Located in the Carytown area of Richmond, Kate often felt out of place. Carytown was a trendy little section of the city and she knew she’d end up moving elsewhere fairly soon. She had enough money to get a house just about anywhere she wanted but the very idea of moving exhausted her.
It was that sort of lack of motivation that had perhaps made retirement so hard for her. That and a refusal to let go of the memories of who she had been while with the bureau for those thirty years. When those two feelings collided, she often felt unmotivated and without any real direction.
But now there was Deb and Jim Meade’s request. Yes, it was a misguided request but Kate saw nothing wrong with at least making a few calls. If it came to nothing, she could at least call Deb back to let her know that she had tried her best.
Her first call was to the Deputy Commissioner of the Virginia State Police, a man named Clarence Greene. She had worked closely with him on several cases over the last decade or so of her career and they shared a mutual respect for one another. She hoped the year that had passed had not totally obliterated that relationship. Knowing that Clarence was never in his office, she opted to skip his landline and called his cell phone.
Just when she thought the call was not going to be answered, she was greeted with a familiar voice. For a moment, Kate felt as if she had never left work at all.
“Agent Wise,” Clarence said. “How the hell are you?”
“Good,” she said. “You?”
“Same as always. I have to admit, though…I thought I was done with seeing your name pop up on my phone.”
“Yeah, about that,” Kate said. “I hate to come to you with something like this after more than a year of silence, but I have a friend who just lost her daughter. I gave her my word that I would look into the investigation.”
“So what do you want from me?” Clarence asked.
“Well, the main suspect was the daughter’s ex-boyfriend. It seems that he was arrested and then let go in about three hours. Naturally, the parents are wondering why.”
“Oh,” Clarence said. “Look…Wise, I can’t really divulge that to you. And with all due respect, you should already know that.”
“I’m not trying to interfere in the case,” Kate said. “I was just wondering why no real reason has been given to the parents for letting the only suspect go. She’s a grieving mom looking for answers and—”
“Again, let me stop you there,” Clarence said. “As you well know, I deal with grieving moms and fathers and widows pretty regularly. Just because you happen to know one personally right now doesn’t mean I can break protocol or look the other way.”
“As closely as you’ve worked with me, you know I mean only the best.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do. But the last thing I need is a retired FBI agent poking around in a current case, no matter how hands-off it may seem. You have to understand that, right?”
The hell of it was that she did understand it. Still, she had to try one last time. “I’d consider it a personal favor.”
“I’m sure you would,” Clarence said, a bit condescending. “But the answer is no, Agent Wise. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to head into court to speak to one of those grieving widows I just told you about. Sorry I couldn’t help you.”
He ended the call without a goodbye, leaving Kate to stare at that slowly shifting square of sunlight on the hardwood floor. She considered her next move, noting that Deputy Commissioner Greene had just revealed that he was about to head into court. She supposed the smart move would be to take his refusal to help her as a defeat. But his unwillingness to help only made her desire to keep digging that much stronger.
I was always told I had a stubborn streak as an agent, she thought as she stood up from her desk. It’s good to see that some things haven’t changed.
***
Half an hour later, Kate was parking her car in a parking garage adjacent to the Third Precinct Police Station. Based on where the murder of Julie Meade—married name Julie Hicks—had occurred, Kate knew it would be the best resource for information. The only problem was that aside from Deputy Commissioner Greene, she didn’t really know anyone else within the department, much less the Third Precinct.
She entered the office with confidence. She knew there were certain things about her current situation that an observant officer would notice. First of all, she did not have her sidearm. She did have a concealed carry permit but given what she was up to, she figured it might cause more problems than it was worth if she was caught being even the slightest bit dishonest.
And dishonesty was really something she could not afford. Retired or not, her reputation was on the line—a reputation she had built with great care for over thirty years. She was going to have to walk a fine line in the next minutes, something she welcomed. She hadn’t been this anxious in the entire year she had spent retired.
She approached the information desk, a brightly lit area separated from the central room by a pane of glass. A woman in uniform sat at the desk, stamping something in a ledger as Kate approached. She looked up at Kate with a face that looked as if a smile had not graced it in days.
“What can I do for you?” the receptionist asked.
“I’m a retired agent with the FBI, looking for some information about a recent murder. I was hoping to get the names of the officers in charge of the case.”
“You got an ID?” the woman asked.
Kate got out her driver’s license and slid it through the opening in the glass partition. The woman looked at it for a grand total of one second and then slid it right back. “I’m going to need your bureau ID.”
“Well, like I said, I’m retired.”
“And who sent you? I’ll need their name and contact information and then they have to fill out a request to get you the information.”
“I was really hoping to step over all of the legalities.”
“I can’t help you, then,” the woman said.
Kate wondered how far she could push it. If she went too hard, someone would surely notify Clarence Greene and that could be bad. She racked her brain, trying to think of another course of action. She could only come up with one and it was much riskier than what she was currently attempting.
With a sigh, Kate gave a curt, “Well, thanks anyway.”
She turned on her heel and walked back out of the office. She was a little embarrassed. What the hell had she been thinking? Even if she did still have her bureau ID, it would be unlawful for the Richmond PD to give her any information without approval from a supervisor in DC.
It was beyond humbling to walk back out to her car with such an absolute feeling—the feeling of being a basic civilian.
But a civilian who hates to take no for an answer.
She took out her phone and placed a call to Deb Meade. When Deb answered, she still sounded tired and far away.
“Sorry to bother you, Deb,” she said. “But do you have a name and address for the ex-boyfriend?”
As it turned out, Deb had both.
CHAPTER FOUR
While Kate did not have her old bureau ID, she did still have the last badge she had ever owned. It was propped up on the mantel over her fireplace like some relic from another time, no better than a faded photograph. When she left the Third Precinct station, she headed back home and scooped it up. She thought long and hard about also taking her sidearm. She looked longingly toward the M1911 but left it where it was in her bedside drawer. Taking it with her for what she had planned would be asking for trouble.
She did decide to take the handcuffs she kept in a shoebox under the bed with a few other treasures from her career.
Just in case.
She left her house and headed for the address Deb had given her. It was a place in Shockoe Bottom, a twenty-minute drive from her home. She was not nervous as she made the drive but she did feel a sense of excitement. She knew she should not be doing this, but at the same time, it felt good to be out and on the hunt again—even if it was in secret.
Just as she reached the address of Julie Hicks’s former boyfriend, a guy named Brian Neilbolt, Kate thought about her husband. He popped up in her head from time to time but sometimes he seemed to pop up and sort of settle in for a while. That happened as she turned onto the destination street. He could see him shaking his head in frustration.
Kate, you know you shouldn’t be doing this, he seemed to say.
She grinned thinly. She missed her husband fiercely sometimes, a fitting contrast to the fact that she sometimes felt she had managed to move on from his death rather quickly.
She shook the cobwebs of those memories away as she parked her car in front of the address Deb had given her. It was a rather nice house, split into two different apartments with porches separating the properties. When she got out of the car she could tell right away that someone was home because she could hear someone speaking very loudly inside.
When she climbed the porch stairs, she felt as if she had taken a step back in time, about one year ago. She felt like an agent again, despite the lack of the firearm on her hip. Still, being that she was in all actuality a retired agent, she had no idea what she would say after she knocked on the door.
But she didn’t let that stop her. She knocked on the door with the same authority she would have one year ago. As she heard the loud talking inside, she figured she’d stick with the truth. Lying in a situation that she was already not supposed to be a part of would only make things worse if she was caught.
The man who answered the door took Kate a little off guard. He was about six feet three inches and was absolutely jacked. His shoulders alone showed that he worked out. He could have easily passed for a professional wrestler. The only thing that betrayed that façade was the anger in his eyes.
“Yeah?” he asked. “Who are you?”
She then made a move that she had missed very much. She showed him her badge. She hoped the sight of it would carry some weight to counter her introduction. “My name is Kate Wise. I’m a retired FBI agent. I was hoping you could speak with me for a few moments.”
“About what?” he asked, his words quick and snappy.
“Are you Brian Neilbolt?” she asked.
“I am.”
“So your ex-girlfriend was Julie Hicks, correct? Formerly Julie Meade?”
“Ah shit, this again? Look, the fucking cops already hauled me in and interrogated me. Now the feds, too?”
“Rest assured, I’m not here to interrogate you. I just wanted to ask some questions.”
“Sounds like an interrogation to me,” he said. “Besides, you said you’re retired. Pretty sure that means I don’t have to do anything you ask.”
She pretended to be hurt by this, looking away from him. In reality, though, she was looking over his massive shoulders and the space behind him. She saw a suitcase and two backpacks leaning against the wall. She also saw a sheet of paper sitting on top of the suitcase. The large logo identified it as a printout of an Orbitz receipt. Apparently, Brian Neilbolt was leaving town for a while.
Not the best scenario for when your ex-girlfriend had been murdered and you had been taken in and then immediately released by the police.
“Where are you headed?” Kate asked.
“None of your business.”
“Who were you talking to so loudly on the phone before I knocked?”
“Again, none of your business. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
He went to close the door, but Kate persisted. She stepped forward and wedged her shoe between the door and the frame.
“Mr. Neilbolt, I’m only asking for about five minutes of your time.”
A wave of fury passed through his eyes but then seemed to subside. He hung his head and for a moment, she thought he looked sad. It was similar to the look she had seen on the faces of the Meades.
“You said you’re a retired agent, right?” Neilbolt asked.
“That’s right,” she confirmed.
“Retired,” he said. “Then get the fuck off of my porch.”
She stood resolute, making it clear that she had no intention of going anywhere.
“I said get the fuck off of my porch!”
He nodded and then reached out to push her. She felt the force of his hands when they struck her shoulder and acted as quickly as she could. Right away, she was amazed at how quickly her reflexes and muscle memory kicked in.
As she went stumbling backward, she wrapped both of her arms around Neilbolt’s right arm. At the same time, she dropped to a knee to stop her backward momentum. She then did her best to hip toss him but his bulk was too much to handle. When he realized what she was trying to do, he threw a hard elbow into her ribs.
The breath went barreling out of Kate’s chest but because he had thrown the elbow, his leverage was thrown off. This time when she attempted the hip toss, it worked. And because she put everything she had into it, it worked a little too well.
Neilbolt went sailing off the porch. When he landed, he hit the bottom two stairs. He cried out in pain and tried to get back to his feet right away. He looked up at her in shock, trying to figure out what had happened. Fueled by rage and surprise, he hobbled up the stairs toward her, clearly dazed.
She faked him out with a right knee to the face as he neared the top step. When he went to dodge it, she caught the side of his head and again went to her knees. She forced his head hard into the porch while his arms and legs scrambled for purchase on the stairs. She then freed the handcuffs from the interior of her jacket and applied them with a quickness and ease that only thirty years of experience can provide.
She stepped away from Brian Neilbolt and looked down at him. He was not fighting against the cuffs; he looked rather dazed, in fact.
Kate reached for her phone with the intention of calling the cops and realized that her hand was trembling. She was pumped up, flooded with adrenaline. She realized that there was a smile on her face.
God, I’ve missed this.
Although the blow to her ribs did hurt like hell—a lot more than it would have hurt five or six years ago for sure. And had the joints in her knees always ached this way after a skirmish?
She allowed herself a moment to revel in what she had done and then managed to finally make a call to the cops. Meanwhile, Brian Neilbolt remained groggy at her feet, perhaps wondering how a woman at least twenty years older than him had managed to so thoroughly hand his ass to him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Honestly, Kate had expected a little bit of blowback about what she had done, but nothing to the degree of what she experienced when she reached the Third Precinct Station. She knew something was coming when she saw the glances from the police who passed by in the midst of their office errands. Some of the looks were of awe while others stank of a sort of leering ridicule.
Kate let it slide right off of her back. She was still too riled up from the confrontation on Neilbolt’s porch to care.
After she’d waited several minutes in the lobby, a nervous-looking officer approached her. “You’re Ms. Wise, right?” he asked.
“I am.”
A flash of recognition showed in his eyes. It was a look she had once gotten all the time when officers or agents who had only ever heard about her record met her for the first time. She missed that look.
“Chief Budd would like to speak to you.”
She was frankly quite surprised. She was hoping to speak to someone more along the lines of Deputy Commissioner Greene. While he might have been a hard ass on the phone, she knew he could be persuaded more effectively in face-to-face meetings. Chief Randall Budd, though, was a no-nonsense kind of man. She’d only ever met him on one occasion a few years ago. She barely remembered the occurrence but did remember Budd leaving an impression of someone strong-willed and strictly professional.
Still, Kate did not want to seem intimidated or at all worried. So she got up and followed the officer out of the waiting area and back through the bullpen. They passed by several desks where she got more uncertain glances before the officer led her down a hallway. In the center of the hall they came to Randall Budd’s office. The door was open, as if he had been waiting for her for quite some time.
The officer had nothing to say; once he had delivered her to Budd’s doorway, he turned on his heel and left. Kate looked into the office and saw Chief Budd waving her in.
“Come on in,” he said. “I won’t lie. I’m not happy with you, but I don’t bite. Close the door behind you, would you?”
Kate stepped inside and did as she was asked. She then took one of the three chairs that sat on the opposite side of Budd’s desk. The desk was occupied with more personal effects than work-related items: pictures of his family, an autographed baseball, a personalized coffee mug, and some kind of sentimental shell casing sitting in a plaque.
“Let me start off by saying that I am well aware of your track record,” Budd said. “More than one hundred arrests in your career. Top of your class in the academy. Gold and silver placement in eight consecutive kickboxing tournaments in addition to standard bureau training where you also kicked ass. Your name got around while you were running things and most of the people here in the Virginia State PD respect the hell out of you.”
“But?” Kate said. She didn’t say it in an attempt to be funny. She was simply letting him know that she was more than capable of being reprimanded…although she honestly didn’t think she deserved much of it.
“But despite all that, you have no right to go around assaulting people just because you think they might have been involved in the death of one of your friend’s daughters.”
“I didn’t visit him with intent to assault,” Kate said. “I visited him to ask some questions. When he got physical with me, I simply defended myself.”
“He told my men that you pitched him down the porch stairs and banged his head against the floor of the porch.”
“I can’t be blamed for being stronger than him, now can I?” she asked.
Budd looked closely at her, scrutinizing her. “I can’t tell if you’re trying to be funny, taking this lightly, or if this is really your everyday attitude.”
“Chief, I understand your position and how a retired fifty-five-year-old woman beating up someone that your men had questioned briefly and then released could cause you a headache. But please understand…I only visited Brian Neilbolt because my friend asked me to. And honestly, when I learned a bit more about him, I thought it might not be a bad idea.”
“So you just assumed my men didn’t do an adequate job?” Budd asked.
“I said no such thing.”
Budd rolled his eyes and sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to argue about it. Honestly, I would love nothing more than for you to leave my office in a few minutes and once we are done talking about this matter, it’s done. I need you to understand, though, that you crossed a line and if you happen to pull something like this again, I might just have to place you under arrest.”
There were several things Kate wanted to say in response. But she figured if Budd was willing to press all arguments down, so could she. She knew that he was well within his power to really bring the hammer down on her if he wanted, so she decided to be as civil as possible.
“I understand,” she replied.
Budd seemed to think about something for a moment before interlocking his hands together on the desk, as if trying to center himself. “And just so you know, we are certain that Brian Neilbolt did not kill Julie Hicks. We have him on security cameras outside of a bar on the night she was killed. He went in around ten and didn’t leave until after midnight. We then have a text message trail between him and a current fling that went on between one and three in the morning. He checks out. He’s not the guy.”
“He had bags and suitcases packed,” Kate pointed out. “Like he was trying to leave town in a hurry.”
“In the text thread, he and this fling of his discussed visiting Atlantic City. They were supposed to be leaving this afternoon.”
“I see.” Kate nodded. She did not feel embarrassed per se, but she did start to regret acting so aggressively on Neilbolt’s porch.
“There’s one more thing,” Budd said. “And again, you have to view things from my position on this. I had no choice but to contact your former supervisors at the FBI. It’s protocol. Surely you know that.”
She did know that but honestly had not thought about it. A slight yet gnawing irritation started to bloom in her guts.
“I know,” she said.
“I spoke with Assistant Director Duran. He wasn’t happy, and he wants to speak with you.”
Kate rolled her eyes and nodded. “Fine. I’ll give him a call and let him know it’s from your instruction.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Budd said. “They want to see you. In DC.”
And with that, the irritation she was feeling quickly morphed into something she hadn’t felt in a while: legitimate worry.