Harlan Coben - Fool Me Once

“What?”

“Thing is, we located the Beretta, like I said. But we didn’t find the murder weapon. The thirty-eight.”

Maya sat back. “I’d be surprised if they kept it, wouldn’t you?”

“I guess. Except...”

“Except what?”

“Punks like these guys don’t always dump the gun. They should. But they don’t. It has value. So they reuse it. Or they sell it to a buddy. Whatever.”

“But this was a pretty big case, right? High profile, lots of media?”

“True.”

Maya watched him. “But you don’t buy that, do you? You have another theory.”

“I do.” Kierce looked away. “But it makes no sense.”

“What doesn’t?”

He started scratching his arm. A nervous tic of some kind. “The thirty-eights we took from your husband’s body. We ran them through ballistics. You know. To see if the bullets matched any other cases in our database.”

Maya looked up at him. Kierce kept scratching. “I’m guessing from your expression,” she said, “that you found a match.”

“We did, yeah.”

“So these guys. They’ve killed before.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you just said...”

“Same gun. Doesn’t mean the same guys. In fact, Fred Katen, the one you identified as the shooter, had a stone-cold alibi for the first murder. He was serving time. He couldn’t have done it.”

“When?”

“When what?”

“When was the first murder?”

“Four months ago.”

The room chilled. Kierce didn’t have to say it. He knew. She knew. Kierce couldn’t meet her eye. He looked away, nodded, and said, “The same gun that killed your husband also killed your sister.”

Are you okay?” Kierce asked.

“Fine.”

“I know this is a lot to take in.”

“Don’t patronize me, Detective.”

“I’m sorry. You’re right. Let’s go through this again, okay?”

Maya nodded. She stared straight ahead.

“We need to look at this in a whole new way now. The two murders seemed random and unconnected, but now that we know the same gun was used for both...”

Maya said nothing.

“When your sister was shot, you were deployed in the Middle East. Is that correct?”

“At Camp Arifjan,” she said. “In Kuwait.”

“I know.”

“What?”

“We checked. Just to make sure.”

“Make sure...?” She almost smiled. “Ah. You mean like to make sure I didn’t somehow sneak home and shoot my sister and then go back to Kuwait and, what, wait four months and kill my husband?”

Kierce didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. “It all checked out. Your alibi is rock solid.”

“Super,” she said.

Maya flashed back again to Joe’s call. The tears. The shock. That call. That damn call had been the end of Maya’s life as she knew it. Nothing would ever be the same after that. It was remarkable when you thought about it. You travel halfway around the world to some hellhole to fight a crazed enemy. You’d think that was where the danger would originate from, that the real threat to her would be from an armed combatant. You’d think, if your life were about to get blown apart, that it would come from an RPG or an IED or a fanatic carrying an AKM.

But no. The enemy had struck, as enemies often do, where she had least expected it: back home in the good ol’ USA.

“Maya?”

“I’m listening.”

“The officers investigating your sister’s murder believed it was a home invasion. She was... Do you know the details?”

“Enough of them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I asked you not to patronize me.”

“I’m not. I’m just being a human being. What was done to her...”

Maya took out her app again. She wanted to see her daughter’s face. She needed that anchor. But she stopped herself. No. Not now. Don’t bring Lily into this. Not even in the most innocuous way.

“At the time of the murder, the cops also took a good look at Claire’s husband, your brother-in-law...” He started searching through his papers.

“Eddie.”

“Right, Edward Walker.”

“He wouldn’t do it. He loved her.”

“Well, they cleared him,” Kierce said. “But now we need to take a closer at the home life. We need to take a fresh look at everything.”

Maya saw it now. She smiled, but there was no humor or warmth. “How long, Detective?”

He kept his head down. “Excuse me?”

“How long have you known about the ballistics report?”

Kierce kept reading the file.

“You’ve known about it for a while, haven’t you? About the same gun killing Joe and Claire?”

“What makes you say that?”

“When you came to my house to check out my Smith and Wesson, I assume it was to make sure that it wasn’t the murder weapon — to make sure it didn’t match either murder.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“No, but you said you no longer suspected me. Remember?”

He said nothing.

“That’s because you already knew I had the perfect alibi. You knew that the same gun had been used to kill my sister. And you knew that I was overseas when Claire was shot. Before then, well, you hadn’t found the two guys with the ski masks. I could have made that up. But once you had that ballistics report, you only had to double-check my whereabouts with the military. You did that. I know the procedure. That’s not one phone call. So how long have you had the ballistics report?”

His voice was low. “Since the funeral.”

“Right. And when did you find Emilio Rodrigo and Fred Katen and get confirmation I was in Kuwait?”

“Late last night.”

Maya nodded — just as she had thought.

“Come on, Maya, don’t be naïve. Like I said, we looked hard at your brother-in-law when your sister was murdered. Here’s one time when there’s no sexism. Think about it. You’re the spouse. You’re alone in a park. If you were me, who would be your number one suspect?”

“Especially,” Maya added, “when that spouse served in the military and is, in your eyes, a gun nut?”

He didn’t bother defending himself. Then again, he didn’t have to. He was right. You always suspect the spouse.

“So now that we got all that out of the way,” Maya said, “what do we do now?”

“We look for connections,” Kierce said, “between your sister and your husband.”

“The biggest being me.”

“Yes. But there are more.”

Maya nodded. “They worked together.”

“Exactly. Joe hired your sister for his equities firm. Why?”

“Because Claire was smart.” Just saying her name stung. “Because Joe knew that she was hardworking and reliable and trustworthy.”

“And because Claire was family?”

Maya considered this. “Yes, but not in a nepotistic way.”

“What way then?”

“The Burketts are big on family. It’s old-world clan-like.”

“They don’t trust outsiders?”

“They don’t want to trust outsiders.”

“Okay, I get that,” Kierce said, “but if I had to work every day with my sister-in-law... ugh, shudder. You know what I mean?”

“I do.”

“Of course my sister-in-law’s a world-class, Olympic-sized pain the ass. I’m sure your sister—” He caught himself now, cleared his throat. “So their working together, Joe and Claire — did it cause any tension?”

“I worried about that,” Maya said. “My uncle, he had a business. Very successful. But then other family members wanted in and he let them and it all went to hell. Family and money is never a good mix. Someone is always going to feel resentful.”

“But that didn’t happen here?”

“Just the opposite. Claire and Joe had this fun new connection. Work. They’d talk business all the time. She would call with ideas. He would remember something that needed to be done the next day and text it to her.” She shrugged. “But then again...”