Page 17 of The Accomplice
Bloch, Kate and Harry all believed in Carrie Miller. I couldn’t discount that. And when I had looked her in the eye, and asked if she had killed those people, she had told me the truth. I knew it. The evidence against her was circumstantial, but it all added up. I had learned not to discount my instincts, no matter what the prosecution said.
I thought that perhaps she knew more about her husband’s dark life than she was willing to say. Maybe she had known about it all along and had been living in fear – slowly drowning in the guilt of her silence. I knew there was a point when she suspected him, and she didn’t act on it. And that was torturing her. It meant that she cared. Killers don’t have empathy, and they can’t fake it. All four of us believed Carrie. That counted for a lot.
It was just the rest of the world that thought she was a killer.
The DA would make two arguments. First, that she intended the victims to be murdered and she encouraged or aided her husband’s conduct. If the DA couldn’t prove intent, there was a fallback argument – that she was an accomplice. In this case, he had to prove her knowledge that her husband intended to kill, and she provided the means, opportunity or simply aided his crimes. The last was easier to prove. If she was found guilty of either one, she would never see another day from the outside of a prison cell.
A final piece of prosecution evidence gave us a big problem. It was one I hadn’t asked Carrie about. Not specifically. No doubt the grand jury would have found this crucial when considering whether she should be indicted. One thing was certain about this case. Daniel Miller was the Sandman, and he had killed all of those people. No question.
And Carrie Miller had lied to cover it up.
The question I needed answered was why she’d protected him.
My cell phone began to vibrate on my desk.
I checked my watch, a gift from my daughter, Amy, many years ago. The face was all scratched up, and the battery needed replacing every few months now, but there was no way I would part with it. She had one just like it, or at least she used to until hers stopped working. Her stepfather, Kevin, had bought her a new one for her fifteenth birthday. He wasn’t officially a stepfather, not quite yet. My ex-wife, Christine, was due to be remarried in a few weeks and the news hadn’t hit me as hard as I’d expected. I had accepted that Christine had moved on. It felt like old grief. Most of the time I was fine, it only hurt when I bumped right up against it, unexpectedly. I was more concerned about Amy than Christine. It felt like I was losing my daughter.
I swept up my phone, double checked the time on the screen with my watch.
Coming up on two in the morning. Calls at that time of night are never good.
It was our investigator, Bloch.
‘Are you okay ?’ I asked.
‘I’m on my way to the FBI resident agency out by JFK. A state-wide alert just went up. One of the occupants of Paige Delaney’s building called the cops. Paige’s car was in the basement parking lot, all four doors open and the alarm going off. Her cell phone and side arm were found in the car …’
I wanted to speak, but I couldn’t. My breath had frozen in my chest.
‘He’s back,’ said Bloch.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EDDIE
The FBI’s Manhattan field office sits at 26 Federal Plaza. There are five satellite offices scattered around New York, known as resident agencies. The Jamaica resident agency, out toward JFK, was in a modern glass-covered building on Kew Garden Road. It took up one floor and shared the building with a twenty-four-hour fitness center, a nursing agency, a bartending school, a hair salon and an insurance brokerage.
Security was light.
Bloch waited for me outside, wearing a black tee under a black sport coat, skinny blue jeans and steel-toe-capped boots. I still wore my navy suit, but I’d lost the tie and left my white cotton shirt open at the neck.
‘Lawyers should wear ties,’ said Bloch.
‘I do things a little differently.’
‘I’ve noticed.’
‘Any update ?’
She shook her head.
We approached the glass revolving doors and shuffled through them without a problem and took the elevator to the FBI satellite office. All the security was on this level. Metal detector gates, bag scanners, body scanners – the works, all before we got to the reception area. It was pretty small. Four hard plastic chairs. Two on either side of the door all facing a formidable desk ahead with a formidable woman behind it. She was in her sixties and carried the benefit of those years in her eyes. Swiveling her chair toward us, she glanced over the top of her thick black spectacles and drew her lips together.
‘Can I help you ?’ she asked.
‘We’re friends of Paige Delaney. Could we speak to one of the agents on duty ? My name is Eddie Flynn.’
‘Take a seat,’ she said, then disappeared through a side door. I didn’t tell her that I was representing Carrie Miller, because they would escort me from the building in a flash.
