Chapter 11

T he next morning, Kate walked into the office twenty minutes early, sat down, and pulled the file for the Feldspar case. As she dove into the material she had, Reese walked in and handed her the rest of what she had collected.

"Feldspar is a pretty fascinating case," Reese stated, "and unsolved the entire time. Cold Cases looked at it a couple times but never really found anything new that they could do with it."

"Good enough," she muttered absentmindedly.

At that, Reese stared at her. "You have something new, don't you?"

Kate flushed and nodded. "Maybe."

Reese's gaze glinted with excitement. "This is a really famous one."

"What does that mean?"

"It could really cement your name if you solved it. Feldspar is one of those unsolvable cases."

"Ha. I'm not so sure that solving it will be all that easy."

"If it were easy," Reese replied, "somebody would have done it already. Anyway, if you need anything else, let me know." And she turned and walked out.

While Kate was making notes, the front desk called her. "We've got a man here to see you."

"Who is it?" she asked, as she got up. When she heard the name, Kate stared at the phone. "Interesting. I'm coming." She walked out to the reception area and, sure enough, found Amie's boyfriend. Nate looked up in relief when he saw her. She motioned him to one of the interview rooms, where they could privately talk.

As he sat down nervously, Nate looked around the room. "Am I in trouble?"

"No, but I presume you want to talk, and privacy is a little hard to get around here. This is just the easiest place for that."

"Oh." Nate accepted her word and relaxed a bit.

"So, what's going on?" she asked.

"I've been a complete wreck since we last talked."

"Why is that?" she asked curiously.

He hesitated but then asked, "Do you think Amie did it?"

"I don't know," Kate admitted. "What I can tell you is that her husband did not commit suicide. He was murdered. You don't have an alibi, and neither does she. According to her, she was sound asleep."

He nodded. "That's what she told me too, and I don't have any reason to disbelieve her."

"But now you're wondering."

"It's not that I'm wondering," he clarified, yet winced as some odd expression crossed his face. "Hell yeah, I'm wondering. I don't want to be dead husband number four."

"Good thinking," she replied. "So give us a little bit of time to figure it out and be available for any questioning for now."

"Is that it?"

"Do you have anything more to offer?"

"Not really, but I think she's been threatened a couple times."

"Threatened?" she repeated, staring at him.

He nodded. "She hasn't really talked to me about it, so I don't know how bad it is. She's not been very open when it comes to her personal life."

"Does that secretiveness concern you?"

"It should, shouldn't it?" he asked, looking at her. "I thought we were close enough because we were talking marriage."

" Were ?"

He winced. "I have to admit to being a little worried about going down that pathway, especially now."

Privately Kate thought it was very wise of him to be a little worried, but she didn't want to set him off into making drastic changes in his life, not when she couldn't confirm any details of Amie's life or the untimely deaths of her three husbands. "What about any friends of hers or family? Do you ever see any other people around Amie?"

He shook his head. "No, I really don't. It's just been her."

"What about her husband's friends?"

"I don't know any," he replied, dropping his head in his hands. "Honestly, I feel shitty about the affair now, but I didn't have anything to do with him dying."

"So, how did you meet Amie?" she asked curiously.

"At her work. We work together."

"Ah, and did she tell you that she was married?"

"Not at the beginning… no, she didn't," Nate shared. "I was pretty upset when she finally told me, and then she explained that her marriage was done and that she was figuring out how to leave him and all that stuff, and I believed her. I still believe her," he added quickly. "Yet, wh en you bring up other dead husbands, it's hard to separate fact from fiction."

"I'm glad to hear you're at least thinking about it," Kate told him. "I don't yet know for sure what Amie may or may not have done, but obviously we don't want to walk into a room and find you as the next victim either."

"No, God, no.… I told my sister." When Kate stared at him, he shrugged. "We're really close, so I told her about Amie's husband."

"That he was murdered?"

"I didn't realize you were sure it was murder at that point, but I told her that he committed suicide."

"What did she say?"

"Her instinctive thought was that it didn't surprise her."

"Why is that?"

"Because obviously he was unhappy, and, if he had found out about me, that would have made him even more so."

When Nate glanced at her, she saw tears in his eyes.

"God, if it wasn't suicide, and it was murder, that changes things."

"It changes a lot of things," Kate confirmed, "but what was the concern when you thought it was a suicide?"

"I was afraid that I was responsible."

"Ah, you mean that he'd found out about your affair and decided to take his life instead of facing a divorce and the truth about his wife?"

"Yes," he agreed, raising both hands in frustration. "It sounds godawful when you say it that way." She just stared at him, and he nodded. "I know. I get it now. Having an affair was godawful. Somehow, someway along the line here, I took a wrong turn and lost sight of that, at least according to my sister. She's not very happy with me."

"You can see her point, I presume?"

"Yes, of course I can," he muttered in frustration. "Especially now, but the thing is, I love Amie."

"Good. Amie needs to be loved too," Kate noted, "but let's hope she's not killing her husbands in order to make way for the next love in her life." When Nate swallowed hard at that, Kate added, "Have you seen Amie do anything strange or act in any way unusual, guilty even, or anything suspicious? Have you ever even asked her about her past?"

"No, I never did," he said, raising his head a bit, then dropping it again. "I didn't consider her past, which is even more stupid of me because everybody has a past."

Kate didn't know what to say to that, but it was true. Everybody did have a past. Then she took this opportunity to ask him several more questions. "Did Amie ever get any strange phone calls?"

"Just the threatening one that she said was a bit of a concern."

"And you believed her?"

"Sure, of course I believed her." Then he stared down at the table again. "That makes me feel even stupider because my instinctive response is, Of course I believed her , but then maybe I shouldn't.… I shouldn't because she had hidden things before, such as being married in the first place. Should I question everything she's ever said or says now?"

"It certainly would be a good idea to question anything you have doubts about. You should ensure that everything happening in your world with her is up-front, particularly under these circumstances."

"She told me that she had nothing to do with her husband's death and that, although she wanted out of the marriage, she would never have killed him," he murmured.

"Did she say anything else?"

"No, just that it would be completely stupid of her to do that."

"I can't argue with that because it certainly looks suspicious as hell for her three husbands to all die on her."

"God." Nate stared off into the distance. "It just makes me sick."

"Did you ever meet the husband?"

He winced and shook his head. "No, and that makes me feel like an ass too."

"Why?" she asked. "Seems to me having an affair would make you avoid him."

He just stared and muttered, "He shouldn't be considered a nobody. He shouldn't be buried now because somebody decided to knock him off. He had a loving wife… and I don't really know what happened to that relationship. Yet it feels very wrong to think that, just because he's dead and gone… everything in his life is gone too."

"And yet it is. He's not here anymore, and he's not part of either of your lives anymore, is he?"

"In a way," he clarified, staring at Kate, "he's a big part of our lives… bigger than ever before, at least for me."

She asked him a few more questions, then brought up the threatening phone call Amie spoke about.

"All I can tell you about the phone call or the threat was that she told me it was made against her. And she did get a weird look in her eyes."

Kate tried to school her expression. In her gut, she felt this Amie bitch was lying. Again. Trying to cast doubt away from her. Kate didn't believe Amie was receiving any threats. More likely Amie was sending out threats herself. "Did she say anything about who it was from or why she was being threatened?"

"No, she wouldn't say anything." He swore then. "Of course, at the time… I just let it go. I shouldn't have."

"Now you have a chance to talk to her," Kate noted, "because, if she didn't have anything to do with her husband's murder, she could be in danger." He looked at her hopefully, and she shrugged. "I have no way of knowing yet what's going on, so I just want you to look after you. This is a good time for you to think back and to see if you let go of anything else that maybe you shouldn't have."

"Right." He gave a heavy sigh. "That's one of those next issues, isn't it?"

"It sure is," she declared, "and it's never an easy next issue , but you must do everything you can to keep you safe. So, if you think of anything or hear anything that worries you or makes you think she might have done something, please contact us."

He nodded, as he stood up. "I should have said something right away. I just didn't want to believe that she could have had something to do with it."

"We still don't know that she did," Kate repeated, looking at him intently. "That's the thing. We still don't have proof of that."

He winced and nodded. "I guess that's good for her, isn't it?"

"If she did it, yes. It's good for her to escape justice, in her mind. If she didn't murder her husband, we don't have any answers to give her about who killed her husband."

"She's pretty adamant that nobody killed him and that this was suicide. "

"She can be adamant all she wants," Kate replied, with a gentle smile, "but we have forensic evidence that says she's completely wrong."

"Christ," he muttered. As he walked to the interview room door, he looked back at Kate expectantly. "I don't suppose you have a card, do you?" When she handed him one, he looked down at it and nodded. "Let's hope I don't need to be in touch."

"If you do, call me, no matter what you have to say. Just call me, okay?"

He nodded. "Okay, thanks." With that, he left.

When Kate exited the interview room, Lilliana was there. By the looks of her expression, she had heard everything that was said.

"Do you believe him?" Lilliana asked Kate.

Kate winced. "I'm not sure I believe him, but I do think he's a little freaked out. Now, as to the reason behind that, I'm not entirely certain."

"You mean, outside of the fact that he could just as easily have been coerced into killing Amie's husband, only to find out afterward that she may have already done this a time or two before?"

"Yeah, that's part of it," Kate noted, brushing a strand of unkempt hair from her face. "Also, according to him, Amie's been getting threatening phone calls. Technically only according to Amie though."

" Hmm , I wonder about that. I'm not so sure I believe that either."

"Exactly. I'm not convinced of that myself. On the other hand, we don't have anything to prove it one way or another. I'll contact her and see what she has to say."

"She won't like that. "

"Nope, she sure won't," Kate said, with a beaming smile, "and that'll just make me even happier."

Lilliana laughed. "You really don't like her, do you?"

"No, I do not," she admitted, frowning. "Yet I don't have any particular reason, outside of my gut, so I promise it won't interfere with my job."

"If it does, the rest of us are always there to pull you back," she pointed out. "In the meantime, go, tiger, go." With that, Lilliana turned and walked off.

She had said what she wanted to share, and Kate wasn't in a position to argue.

*

All throughout the day, a theme repeated in the back of Simon's brain about Shawn, the homeless man, and what Kate had shared last night about her plans for today. Simon sent her several texts already, asking her not to show up at the Feldspar house, the house he had warned her about earlier. When he got a phone call, he pulled his cell from his pocket. He checked the Caller ID. It was her. "Kate, where are you?"

She hesitated. "I didn't mean to," she began, a note of humor in her tone. "Yet I find myself standing outside the Feldspar house."

"Jesus," he muttered, his hand slapping his forehead. "Even after all the warnings I sent you?"

"Nobody is around, and I see no signs that anybody is living here," she explained. "I need to look around the exterior of the house and get the lay of the neighborhood. I'm also not sure what the danger is that you're talking about, and it's definitely something I take into consideration, but—"

"But what?" he snapped. "You have absolutely no need to be there right now." Then he stopped, and his voice cracked as he asked, "Or is there?"

"No, just curiosity," she murmured, "and the fact that it's somehow connected to the Paragon property you and Shawn were talking about. This has all been spinning around in my head, and somehow I need to get it out of my system."

"You don't have enough work on your plate?" he asked in frustration.

"I'm outside the house, not inside, and I'm still considering my next move. But, if it's dangerous for me, then we need to ensure that we mitigate or remove whatever that danger is, so that other people around this neighborhood won't be affected. Children play on the street here, so if you see a bomb or something, tell me so we can take care of it."

He groaned. "And the fact that I'm telling you it's dangerous isn't enough?"

"But is it dangerous right now ?" she asked. "I assumed when you told me to not go in there a few days ago that potentially a killer was in there, somebody with a gun doing a drug deal or something."

He stopped and stared at his phone in frustration. "I don't know."

"Exactly," she murmured gently. "Just because it was dangerous then doesn't mean it still is today."

He frowned, but he wasn't getting a message either way right now. He thought about lying to her to keep her safe but knew Kate would see through that. "I don't get a warning now," he conceded. "Yet I got such a definite warning before, and it really didn't take much to hear it, loud and clear."

"I get that. I do," she stated, "and I understand you still don't want me to go in there. "

"But you'll go anyway, won't you?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I'll walk up to the house and take a look in the windows."

She gave a running narrative to Simon, and, all the while, he heard her footsteps getting closer to something. "You're really walking up to the house?"

"Do you have something you want to tell me?" she asked. "I mean, if you say a bomb or something is inside, that's a different story. If you tell me a murderer is in there, that's a different story too. You told me when I was here before that it was dangerous, and I believed you. I got an odd feeling myself about it back then, but today, right now? There just isn't any strange feeling."

"What do you mean that you had an odd feeling back then?"

She hesitated, then replied, "I didn't argue with you, did I?"

"Ah, so because you didn't argue with me, that means you had an odd feeling?"

"I can't argue about it now," she said, exasperation in her tone. "What I can tell you is that I don't feel anything is wrong here, yet last time I did. I'm just not feeling anything negative in the here and now."

He groaned, then closed his eyes and sent out as much of a probe as he knew to send. When it came back completely blank, his shoulders slumped. "Neither am I."

"Exactly," she said, her tone turning cheerful. "So, I'll just walk through, and, if you get any messages about a problem, you call out for help."

"Meaning that I'm your backup."

"Sure, it's not as if I have anybody else at the moment."

"Why the hell is that?" he snapped. "Why the hell can't you just get a bomb-sniffing dog or whatever?"

"First, I don't have backup because everybody is busy with their own cases, and the Feldspar house isn't part of anybody's case—not even mine, for that matter. I shouldn't be working a cold case. Which is why, second, I can't call for a bomb-sniffing dog. It's not in the budget to satisfy my every whim. Therefore, I am here."

"And… there you are," he grumbled.

"I know you are worried, and yet it should be clear now, right? Isn't that what your woo-woo senses say?"

"I don't know what to say," he stated crossly.

"Is it wrong for me to deal with my curiosity here?" she asked in exasperation. "Now I'm standing by the window, and, so far, I'm not seeing anything dangerous."

"Sure, but that danger could come up from behind and kill you before you have a chance to respond."

"I understand," she muttered.

He heard something on the other end. "What are you doing?"

"I'm just trying to wipe the window a bit. Years of grime have built up on the outside, and it doesn't seem anybody has been here for quite a while."

"Yeah, well, that's what happens to empty buildings after a few months," he stated, mocking her, plain and simple, "and definitely people go through those unoccupied places."

"And you know that people have been through the Feldspar house?" After a moment of silence on the other end, she groaned. "Fine, I'll accept that there may have been traffic through this place."

"There definitely has been traffic, and some of that traffic is very dangerous."

"Any idea which part of it? "

"No," he snapped, "and I really don't like the fact that you're there."

"I get that."

"No, you don't."

"Simon, I'm just walking around to the back now," she shared. "I looked in the front and wasn't a whole lot there to see. Oh, look at that."

"What do you mean? Look at what? Look at what, Kate?" When she didn't respond fast enough, he was frantic, panicking in a big way.

"Back door is open," she muttered.

Simon's panic peaked. "And what? Something is wrong, isn't there?"

"There's a distinctive smell."

Then he groaned because he knew in his gut where this was headed. "Please, no."

"Sorry, but it's a definite yes. I'm walking into the kitchen right now."

"Shouldn't you have a forensics team there? Aren't you contaminating the scene?"

"Not if I'm careful," she said. "I must be sure before I call in a team, shouldn't I?"

And then Simon heard her sigh heavily. "I presume you just found your confirmation?"

"Yeah, I sure did. Looks to be a homeless guy," she whispered in a gutted tone. "I need to call this in."

"Fine," he muttered. "Do that, but I sure as hell wish you weren't there. Do remember that I am just trying to keep you safe."

"I know, and I love you for it," she replied in a cheerful voice, "but I've got to go now." With that, she disconnected.

Yet Simon was much less focused on her hanging up as the words she had just left him with. In all of their relationship, she'd never once mentioned love , and, even now, it was a backhanded compliment, and that was an odd thing for her too. But she had also sounded oddly cheerful. She was the only woman who he knew was made happier by homicide cases.

He got it, and she always respected the poor victims, but she was never happier than when she had a case to work on. When she had multiple cases, she really thrived. This meant she had another case to work on, and he would probably have to get interviewed about the little bit he'd told her.

That wasn't something he wanted to deal with, but then he never wanted to deal with the police. Kate was the exception, and grudgingly he admitted to himself that the team members she worked with were okay as well. Simon had no problems with any of them, something else that surprised him. Yet, so far, they'd all proven to be upstanding and straight shooters, and he appreciated that.

He slowly pocketed his phone, then turned to look around. The whole time he'd been talking, he'd been walking as well, and where had he ended up? Damn it all, he was back at the Paragon, the ghost-filled building. He made a quick trip inside to see if Shawn was here but found no sign of him. As he stepped back outside again, he noted a group of three or four homeless guys nearby. He walked over and asked them about Shawn but didn't get much of a reception.

They just shrugged and stared him down. One of them finally said, "Haven't seen him for a couple days."

"But he's usually right around here, isn't he?" Simon asked.

"Oh, he is. Yet he keeps telling us about the ghosts in the building," another shared with a laugh.

Simon nodded. "He told me the same thing."

"Well then, you better listen to him because he definitely got something right."

Since they didn't know where Shawn was, Simon headed to the coffee shop, as that's where he'd last seen Shawn yesterday. Simon looked around the whole time he walked there but still saw no sign of him. He bought a coffee and sat outside and waited, thinking this would likely be a better place to run across him.

Still sitting here alone, he then got that ugly feeling at the back of his neck. Pulling out his phone, he quickly texted Kate, asking for an image of the homeless guy.

She phoned him instead. "Why do you want a photo? That's not something we generally do."

"I get that," he replied, "but I can't find Shawn, and now I've got this ugly feeling."

She sucked in her breath. "Oh, crap, hang on a minute."

Within seconds he had a grainy photograph. As he stared at it, his heart sank.

She called him right back. "And?"

"It's Shawn. His birth name is Jack Ludwig."

"Shit," she muttered.

"Yeah, that's a good word for it." Simon stared around. "He normally hangs around this part of town. I spoke to a couple of his friends this morning, and they confirmed that the Paragon was his usual hangout."

"Then what the hell was he doing clear up here, and how did he even get here?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure you'll find out."

"Yeah, damn right I will," she declared. "Forensics is on the way. I've got to go." Then she quickly disconnected.