Page 11 of I’ll Be Watching You

First thing I did was check for information about the double homicide on the local news websites. There were few details.

Two Confirmed Dead in Shooting

Peoria, Arizona. A married couple were shot and killed in their vehicle outside their home in North Peoria at approximately 6:50 this morning, Peoria PD Sergeant Xavier Mendoza confirmed. Identities are being withheld until next of kin have been notified.

There is no apparent motive to the shooting, and police are asking residents of the Willow Glen subdivision for help. If you saw or heard anything between six and seven this morning on or near the 3200 block of Birch Glen Circle, please contact the Peoria Police Department. A press conference is scheduled for this afternoon.

I checked the Peoria PD website; the press conference hadn’t happened yet. Phoenix PD often live streamed their press conferences. I didn’t know if Peoria did, but I should be able to view it later if I miss it.

I dug deeper into Liz’s background than I had this morning. She was forty-four, a nurse for twenty years, and a mother of two. A University of Arizona grad—like both of my parents. My dad followed the Wildcats religiously and stayed active with the alumni. He was always warm toward fellow U of A grads. That connection alone would’ve put Liz on his radar, and I could see how they might be friendly.

She’d worked the last nine years at the VA medical center, after a stint in trauma care at HonorHealth, one of Arizona’s major hospital networks. Though she hadn’t served in the military, her father had retired as a one-star general. He’d died eighteen months ago in Virginia, where he’d lived with his second wife. Liz was an only child. I found little on her mother, only that she lived in Florida and hadn’t remarried.

Her husband, Josh Swanson, was forty-five. They’d been married twenty-two years. He was a corporate lawyer for a major bank—U of A undergrad, Arizona State University Law. Josh was from Phoenix. Liz had been born in Virginia but moved often with her Army dad before landing at U of A, where I assumed she met Josh. They bought their 3,000-square-foot home when it was built ten years ago. Their sons were now seventeen and sixteen.

Josh kept a low social media profile, rarely posting himself, but showing up often in Liz’s feed: sports shots of their kids, family vacations. They lived modestly but comfortably: suburban home, two older but reliable cars, and they appeared to co-own a cabin in Flagstaff with Josh’s three siblings. Mike, his brother who was tagged in many of the family photos, was the one I’d seen this morning sprinting to the Swanson house.

They looked like a typical middle-class family. No red flags.

Now they were dead, leaving two kids behind.

Did her killer know she’d contacted me? How would they?

It didn’t add up. If what she saw was random, something she stumbled across during her shift, why would it make her a target and how would anyone know what she’d seen?

She could have mentioned it to someone. A colleague? The attending physician? Could accessing the file alone have raised alarms? What about the second file with a missing year? Who was it and had that file also been deleted?

Dad would have answers. He had remained silent about why he killed Dr. Klein. Without a motive, I didn’t accept his confession. He was in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. Dad had confessed and it was an off-limits subject. He made it clear, Mom made it clear.

But today, I wouldn’t let him stay silent.

Unless you were a lawyer meeting with your client, all prisoner visits were in the community room.

It was Tuesday, so the visitors’ area wasn’t crowded. Weekends were packed, which was why I rarely visited Dad then. Mom came every Sunday without fail, but I usually chose a weekday.

My heart fluttered and sank when Dad walked in. He was tall and lean. He’d never been heavy, but the weight loss since his incarceration was noticeable, though not alarming. Dark blond hair liberally threaded with gray, green eyes lighting up when they found mine. He smiled. And dammit, even with everything on my mind, I smiled back.

I’ve always felt closer to my dad than to Mom. Jack said it was because Mom and I were “too much alike,” but it was more than that. Dad was my hero—firm but fair, quiet but kind, principled yet compassionate. He worked hard, showed up for everything, loved us without question. He adored Mom and showed us what a strong marriage looked like. He taught us what it meant to be an Angelhart: to give back, to love family, to stand tall.

So I would stand for him.

That he hadn’t stood for himself three and a half years ago, that he’d taken the fall and confessed to a murder he couldn’t be guilty of, still tore me apart. Seeing him in a prison uniform broke me every time. Yet here he was, smiling, eyes bright because I was here.

And I was about to gut him with the truth. Not to hurt, but to save him. It was time to stop hiding, stop lying. Time for the truth. Time to let his family stand for him, like he always had for us.

“Margo,” he said as I hugged him. Physical contact wasn’t allowed, but brief touches were usually overlooked.

We sat across from each other.

“You doing okay?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Rafe came with your mother Sunday, which was nice. And Jack and Tess visited Friday. Why didn’t you tell me about your new boyfriend?”

I hesitated. “It’s new . . .”

“He’s in the DEA?”

“Yeah.” I wasn’t ready to talk about my love life, but he seemed eager for information and I didn’t want to disappoint. “Cal Rafferty,” I said. “We met on that case I told you about in September, the high school honor student who died?”