CHAPTER ELEVEN

Martin Hendershot had been Sam’s predecessor in the Kirk Bureau field office. Hendershot had opened the office and acted as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) until he was shot and killed eight years earlier in an apparent robbery on a roadside where his wallet and watch were stolen. Hendershot had been the husband of Marian Hendershot.

Sam had worked Hendershot’s murder with the Columbia office. It had been Sam’s first investigation as SAC here. They’d come up empty. Hendershot’s murder had never been solved.

Sam returned to the interview room. Harry and Paige followed. Sam stood opposite Adams and his lawyer.

“Agent McKade, my client is prepared to cooperate fully,” Berg said. “Mr. Adams made a mistake in engaging with Agent Platt and he was negligent in not verifying the items he received from Mr. Corbett. Mr. Adams is prepared to plead guilty to a misdemeanor of theft by receiving. He’s prepared to accept probation with time served.” Berg turned to Adams. “We’ll have this cleared up very soon.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, counselor.” Sam’s tone was hard. Seeing Hendershot’s watch now, Sam had to work to keep the table between himself and Adams. “We’re getting ready to charge your client with murder.”

Adams blanched. “I didn’t kill Lonny. I already told you that.”

Sam held up the watch. “Look familiar?”

Recognition lit in Adams’s eyes. “It’s not mine.”

Sam wanted to punch the denial from his mouth. “It was in your shop.”

“That is … what I mean is … I only got it a few days ago. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Save it for the judge,” Sam said.

“Mr. Adams we need to talk,” Berg said.

Adams ignored his lawyer. “Look.” He held up his hands. “I didn’t kill anyone. I got the watch from Lonny. Yeah, Lonny told me that he stole it. I’ll cop to that. But if the owner of that watch was killed, Lonny did it, not me.”

Sam sneered. “Convenient that he isn’t around to ask.”

Adams choked. “I didn’t kill Lonny and I didn’t kill whoever owned that watch. I’ll tell you all I know.”

“Mr. Adams,” Berg tried again.

Adams turned to his lawyer with a snarl. “Shut up! Just shut up. They’re saying I killed two people. You aren’t doing anything to convince these feds that I’m innocent. I’m not going back to the can. Get out! You’re fired!”

Berg snapped his briefcase shut and left the room.

“Where did Corbett get the watch?” Sam demanded.

“I don’t know. Lonny didn’t say.”

Sam bit down hard on his back teeth to quell a sudden rush of anger. “What did he say?”

“Nothing. Maybe he said it was a nice piece.” Adams’s voice rose, became shrill. “I knew that it was, but I didn’t want to agree, you know and have to jack up the price.”

“Was the first time you saw this watch when Corbett brought it to you?” Sam asked.

“Yeah. I already said it was.”

Sam crossed his arms. “Yeah, you did, but I’ll ask you again: was that the first time you saw this watch? It’s been missing for several years. I’m wondering where it’s been all this time. The way it looks to me, you had it.”

“No! First time I saw it was when Lonny brought it in.”

Sam’s shoulders tightened with the desire to rip Adams’s head from his shoulders. “This watch belonged to a federal agent who was murdered eight years ago. Tell me why I shouldn’t believe you killed him?”

“Wait! I don’t know anything about a murdered agent. I don’t know anything other than what I’ve already told you. Lonny brought the watch to me. The watch is expensive. I figured I could make bank on it. Lonny told me he wouldn’t be coming around again. That he was coming into big money.”

Sam flattened both palms on the table and got in Adams’s face. “How? How was he coming into this money?”

Adams reared back, away from Sam. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Adams chewed a thumbnail. “Lonny talked a lot. Most of it was white noise. That’s all he said about it.”

Sam could smell the foul odor of Adams’s fear sweat. “I’m thinking that Lonny told you more than that, enough that you wanted that ‘big money’ for yourself.”

“No. No!”

“Lonny leaves your shop and forty eight hours later he’s dead.”

“I don’t know about that. I don’t know about Lonny’s murder. I didn’t kill Lonny!”

“Where were you when Lonny was killed?”

“I was in the shop!”

“Anyone with you?”

“I was alone.” Adams stammered. “It was lunch time. I was having a sandwich at my desk. Fridays at lunch time are slow.”

Sam eyed Adams. “Too bad you don’t have anyone to back that up.” Sam turned away from Adams toward the door.

“Hey! You can’t just leave me in here!”

Sam kept on walking.

Out in the hall Sam faced Paige and Harry who’d followed him from the interview room. “Corbett and Adams may have been in on something together. I’m not ready to let it go with Adams.”

Paige said, “We can hold him for twenty-four hours without charging him. The watch was stolen during a murder. We can use that to apply to hold Adams for up to ninety-six hours before formally upping his charge while we check this out.”

“That would buy us some time, Sam,” Harry said. “If we hold off on charging him for trafficking and receiving, we’ll delay his processing time.”

“Agreed,” Sam said. “Harry, I want to find out all there is to know about Adams. I want to know when he left Miami Dade and when he landed here in Kirk. You and Dom go deep. I want to know if Adams is telling the truth about getting the watch from Corbett or covering his own ass about a connection to Hendershot.”

Harry nodded.

The bag with the watch seemed to grow heavier in Sam’s pocket with each minute that passed. “I need to speak with Marian.”

Harry exhaled deeply. “This is going to hit her hard.”

“Yeah,” Sam said quietly.

Sam went to Marian where she sat at her desk. “Will you come into my office, please.”

“Certainly.”

Marian picked up her notepad and pen. Sam thought about telling her she wouldn’t be needing them, then just stood back for her to precede him. In his office, he closed the door.

The wind must have increased. The large window behind his desk showed leaves that had fallen from the mature trees in back of the Bureau office blowing across the yard. Sam didn’t want to drag this out and focused on Marian. “Let’s sit down.”

“Very well.”

She perched on the end of the leather chair with her pad and pen in her lap.

Rather than sitting at his desk, Sam took the visitor chair beside the one Marian sat in. She looked up at him in surprise. Her back was ramrod straight, but she clasped her hands in a rare display of nerves, one of the few times in the years Sam had known her. He was sorry to be the cause of them.

“Marian, we recovered this,” he said gently.

He withdrew the clear plastic bag from his pocket. He regretted that he could not remove the watch from the bag. She would probably like to touch it as the last thing that had touched her husband while he was still alive, but the watch was evidence. Sam would play this to the letter to make sure they convicted Hendershot’s killer when they found him.

Sam held the bag out to her. She reached out. Her fingers curled into her palms, her short blunt nails digging into her skin, as if she feared once she touched the watch it would vanish.

And when she did finally touch it, she didn’t take it from Sam right away, but brushed her fingertips against the band before picking it up.

Once it was in her hand, she didn’t cry as Sam thought she might. Worse, her body gave out and she fell forward. The pen and pad dropped from her lap. Sam caught her, preventing her from sliding right out of the chair.

He eased her back against the seat, keeping his hands on her shoulders, his eyes on her. “I’m sorry. I know this is a shock.”

“Where did you . . . where did you find Martin’s watch?”

Her voice was so low, Sam had to strain to hear her. “It was recovered during the course of the Corbett investigation.”

“The Corbett murder? How?”

Sam’s hand flexed. “We don’t know the connection yet, but we’ll find it.” Sam felt the anger over Martin Hendershot’s murder that he’d felt eight years earlier resurfacing.

She clung to the watch a moment longer then held it out to Sam. “You’re going to need this for now.”

Sam lowered his hands and took the watch from her. “I’ll see that it’s returned to you.”

She nodded.

“Would you like me to drive you home?”

“No, thank you.” She gained her feet.

Sam retrieved her pen and pad from the floor and rose with her. He bent so he could level his gaze on hers. “Marian, are you all right?”

“Yes, of course.” She straightened her spine, though it was not as erect as it had been before they’d entered his office. “Now, please excuse me. I have work to do.”

* * *

The wall of Sam’s office that faced the squad room was half glass. Paige’s eyes were drawn again and again to Mrs. Hendershot as Sam spoke with her. Seeing her crumple in Sam’s arms left Paige feeling weakened as well.

Mrs. Hendershot made her way out of Sam’s office. She was moving slowly, stiffly. She looked as if she’d aged a decade in the last few moments. Rather than returning to her desk, she entered the ladies’ room. It was the obvious place for her to be alone.

Following Thames’s attack, and throughout her surgeries when Paige had been in and out of the hospital, her fellow agents and Mrs. Hendershot had visited her daily. Words Harry had once spoken to her, returned to her: You’re one of ours. Harry could not have known what those words meant to Paige, she, who’d never belonged to anyone, or to anything. Paige’s throat tightened at the memory. Sam, Harry, Dom, Mike, Riley, and Mrs. Hendershot had become family to Paige.

Paige studied the closed restroom door. She didn’t want to intrude on Mrs. Hendershot now. As far as Paige had come in building personal relationships since being in Kirk, it still wasn’t natural for her to reach out, or to insinuate herself into other people’s lives. She had enough of her own pain. She wouldn’t willingly take on anyone else’s. But at this moment, she found she could not stay away. She could not stand back and do nothing while Mrs. Hendershot was hurting. Paige clutched her cane and made her way to the ladies’ room.

Mrs. Hendershot was bent over one sink. At the sound of the door opening, she startled, bumping the box of tissues off of the small white counter. “Oh! How clumsy!”

She dropped to her knees and scooped the box from the floor. Slowly, she regained her feet then stood, head down, staring at the box in her arms. Paige limped to the other woman.

Mrs. Hendershot’s head shot up. Her lips trembled. “Agent Carson, whatever are you doing?”

Paige didn’t know what she was doing. She wasn’t a nurturer. Didn’t know how to offer comfort. Feeling her own lips quiver Paige said quietly, “I’ll just stay here with you for a while.”

* * *

Later that night, Paige did her exercises with Sam, putting weights on her weak foot in an attempt to build strength, endurance, and mobility. It was another session that only served to demonstrate her lack of all three. She wanted to scream out her frustration at her physical limitations, to hit something, but all that would do was spend the meager energy left from the exercises and in the end, she’d be right back where she was.

But she wasn’t the only one hurting tonight. Mrs. Hendershot hadn’t spoken all the time they’d been in the ladies’ room, but the devastation and sorrow in her eyes had spoken volumes. And then there was Sam.

The news stations ran with the story of the Corbett homicide. The media was attempting to paint Corbett’s murder as an unprovoked act of violence by a member of law enforcement who believed himself to be above the law. Riley was not that kind of cop. Paige felt anger on Riley’s behalf. But it wasn’t the media sensationalism that had left Sam distracted and edgy.

The discovery of Martin Hendershot’s watch, though certainly welcome, had struck Sam. Neither his grueling workout, nor his shower after, had eased the tension and the anger Paige felt emanating from him.

The blinds were open in Sam’s bedroom. A quarter moon did little to provide light. Paige rolled closer to Sam, putting her head on his chest but she didn’t speak. She hoped just being here would give Sam the comfort that being with him always gave her.

His arm wound around her and he began absently stroking her arm. After some time, Sam’s voice came out of the near darkness.

“Someone killed Hendershot,” Sam said. “Corbett? Adams? Corbett had Hendershot’s watch. Now someone killed Corbett.”

She placed her palm on his cut abs. “You thinking there’s a link between the two murders?”

“Two days before his murder, Adams says Corbett fenced Hendershot’s watch. Where has it been for the last eight years?”

Paige considered his question. “Eight years ago, Corbett would have been, what, fourteen? How was Hendershot killed? I don’t think you ever said.”

“Gunned down one night in an apparent robbery on a remote road in Haldonville. Not a good place to be at any time, but especially at night. Killed with his own weapon. It was left with the body. I couldn’t find anyone who knew what Hendershot was doing there in the first place.”

“Are you thinking that Corbett could have killed Hendershot?”

“Corbett might have been going down that path even at that age, but I can’t see how he—a fourteen-year-old-kid—would have gotten the jump on Hendershot, a veteran agent, and taken his gun. If Corbett had used his own gun, I would find that more plausible.”

Paige was thinking out loud, trying to find a dot to connect. “Maybe Hendershot knew Corbett? Trusted him?”

“We’ll ask Hailey about that. I don’t recall Marian or Riley ever mentioning that Hailey knew the Hendershots before she met Riley, but we’ll ask her. If not her, maybe somehow Corbett came into contact with Hendershot on his own.”

Paige could hear a lack of conviction in Sam’s voice. “You sound like you’re covering the bases but not expecting anything from this. Why?”

“If Corbett did manage to kill Hendershot, I don’t see him holding on to the watch for eight years, certainly not after he got into meth. It’s valuable. Corbett would have fenced it and used the money to fund his habit. It doesn’t add up that he would keep it for eight years.” Sam shook his head. “None of this adds up.”

Sam’s muscles tensed. “Eight years ago, I turned Kirk County upside down looking for Hendershot’s murderer. He was killed on a public road. I couldn’t find one thing. I’ve never worked a case that was so clean. I dug into Hendershot’s old cases to find out if something he’d worked on got him killed. I wasn’t able to find out what he had been working on at the time of his death. I’ve been asking myself about that too. I have to wonder why that was.”

She raised her head from his chest and looked at him. The darkness was not absolute and she could make out his face, now drawn in harsh lines. “You’re questioning why Hendershot kept whatever it was to himself, didn’t confide in anyone, didn’t make any records. You’re thinking someone found out what Hendershot was investigating and buried it along with him.” She stopped speaking for an instant before adding, “Someone at the Bureau?”

Sam’s hand that had been stroking Paige’s arm went still. “Someone who would know how to get it done. Maybe one of ours. I don’t know yet, but I will. I won’t let this trail get cold again.”

Paige felt a chill. “If you start poking around the Bureau, you won’t be able to keep that quiet. It will get out.”

“Good, if I rattle a cage and it brings our unsub out in the open. We’re supposed to protect people. They have to be able to count on us to do our jobs the right way, and to hold those of us who don’t accountable. We can’t allow anything less.”

Paige heard anger and outrage in his voice. “You won’t allow anything less.” She put her arm all the way around him, loving his sense of justice, loving him. “We’ll find out what happened to Martin Hendershot and we’ll free Riley.”

Sam faced her. The deep brown of his irises grew darker as his eyes intensified on her. “My gut is telling me when we find one, we’ll have the other.”