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“They still have you doing surveillance work?”
“Sort of. They’ve got me vetting politicians, if you can believe that.”
“I can,” Hank said. “I’ve actually heard that you’re doing a great job and that your services are in high demand.”
“They keep me busy and keep paying me, so I must be doing something right.”
Hank looked at his watch. “They don’t have you working third shift, do they?”
“No,” Annette said. “I was meeting a contact. He chose the place, I obliged.”
Hank tapped his watch, and Annette recognized the embarrassment on his face. “They’ve got me on overnights, so my day is winding down. That’s the only reason I’m drinking whiskey at this hour.”
“I get it, Hank. I know the hours can be brutal. Hey, just out of curiosity, who was the woman you were just talking with?”
Hank pointed at the empty stool next to him, Alex’s empty glass still resting on a square coaster on the bar. “Oh, that was a legal investigator I sometimes work with. We help each other on cases when we can. Her name’s Alex Armstrong. Works for Lancaster and Jordan, a big firm here in DC. We were just exchanging information on a case. And I’m divorced, by the way, in case you’re worried you caught me in an illicit affair.”
“You’ve gotten paranoid in your old age.”
“Probably so.” Hank smiled again. “Annette Packard. Man, it’s been years. I know it’s early, so I won’t ask if I can buy you a drink, but you want to grab breakfast?”
“I wish I could, Hank, but I’m in the middle of a case right now and I’m up to my neck. Can I take a rain check?”
“Of course. Thanks for flagging me down. It was good seeing you.”
“You too, Hank.”
Hank checked his watch again. “I’d better hit the road myself. But let me grab your number so I can hold you to that rain check.”
They exchanged contact information and both turned to leave, Annette allowing Hank to walk in front of her. In one quick motion she reached to the bar and retrieved Alex Armstrong’s empty glass, then slipped it into her bag before anyone noticed. If she was going to tap the woman for information about Larry Chadwick and his son, Annette needed to run a background check on the woman to make sure there were no red flags—typical protocol before enlisting someone as a source in one of her vets.
CHAPTER 47
Washington, D.C. Saturday, April 29, 2023 10:30 a.m.
ALEX’S MIND WAS SPINNING AS SHE ENTERED HER CONDO. THE IDEA that Byron Zell’s killer had dropped photos of child pornography around his body had conjured up the images of her parents’ bedroom in McIntosh. Although Garrett had never shared the crime scene photos with Alex—despite that he had access to them when he was fighting for her freedom in the weeks after she was arrested—Alex had still managed to see them. They were leaked by the McIntosh Police Department in a misguided attempt to win favor with the public, as if seeing the horror that took place inside her parents’ bedroom would prove to the public at large that Alex was a killer.
She’d first seen the photos when a group of kids at Alleghany printed them off the Internet and pinned them to the walls of Alex’s room while she was in a group therapy session. The images continued to show up throughout her time in juvenile detention—in her room, in the bathroom stall, in the recreational area, in envelopes stuffed into her mailbox. Alex had no choice then. She was forced by the vile kids who made up the population at Alleghany to look at the images from the night her family was killed. It was after her release that viewing them became voluntary.
She had dedicated hours and hours of therapy to organizing and compartmentalizing those images and the thoughts they brought with them, trying to work out what made sense and what was a figment of her imagination. There was a period of time during the dark days when Alex had even allowed herself to believe what everyone around her—from the detectives who interrogated her, to the reporters who wrote about her, to the true-crime fanatics who stalked her—was suggesting: that she had pulled the trigger that night, and that her mind had somehow erased it from memory and replaced the truth with a fantasy of her escaping the night by hiding behind the grandfather clock in the hallway. Alex had traveled so far down that rabbit hole that some distant part of her mind still considered it a possibility.
Although she had not been able to bring herself to fully admit her failure the fact that she had searched for a decade without finding an alternate theory added to the smoke-filled corner of her mind where that hazy theory resided. But now she had something. Now she had a link to another homicide. It wasn’t much—the photos left around Byron Zell’s body—but it was more than she’d had the day before. It was the first clue she’d come across since returning from Cambridge years ago. And it was just enough to push the door to that hazy part of her mind closed a little farther.
Alex had always known that the pictures of the girls left on her parents’ bed were the key to figuring out the truth about that night. The pictures were of three women who had worked for Roland Glazer, the business tycoon who had been arrested on child sex trafficking charges and who had hung himself in his jail cell the night before his trial was to start. The knowledge that whoever killed Byron Zell had also dropped photos by his body had Alex’s mind churning in a redundant loop from which she could not escape. Could the slaughter of her family be linked in some way to Byron Zell?
She hurried to the dining room, where she pushed the accordion divider to the side and stood in front of her evidence board. She looked at the photos of the three women who were still missing to this day. It was widely suspected, Alex had learned from her deep dive into the Roland Glazer case, that Glazer had killed the women in order to protect his secrets. Alex moved her gaze from the women to the photos of her parents. Then she stared at the photo of the Sparhafen Bank in Zürich and the statement for the numbered account she found hidden in her attic. An account that had been opened by Roland Glazer. There was a connection there that she still couldn’t understand.
Alex turned from her board and ran to the kitchen. She grabbed the Washington Times article that covered Byron Zell’s death. Foregoing scissors, she tore the article from the newspaper, pinned it to her board, and allowed her gaze to jump from her parents to Roland Glazer to the bank account statement to the three women and, finally, to Byron Zell. She stared for twenty minutes, searching for understanding that would not come. Only when her doorbell rang did Alex finally give up.
She turned from the board and walked to the kitchen, where she activated the intercom.
“Hello?”
“Alex, it’s Jacqueline. We have a problem.”
Alex was used to Garrett making house calls. Their relationship was such that it was not unusual for Garrett to stop by unannounced. Sometimes it was work related, but oftentimes it was with Donna and for no other purpose than a visit. For Jacqueline Jordan to make an appearance meant something was happening in the Matthew Claymore case. Alex buzzed her up and waited with her door open until the elevator arrived. When it did, Jacqueline emerged.
“Sorry to barge in on a Saturday,” Jacqueline said as she exited the elevator and walked up the hallway.
