Murder of Innocence (Murder Is Forever) Read online

  Mark punches her in the jaw, sending her head into the windshield. It’s a hard blow—he can’t believe he just did that—but Susan only laughs and says, “That all you got? That’s nothing.”

  “Go to hell, you bitch!”

  “No,” Susan spits. “I’m going to make your life a living hell. I’ll come down to Florida if I have to. I’ll tell all your FBI buddies that the way you get ahead is to sleep with your informants.”

  “Shut up, Susan. I’m fucking warning you!”

  “I’ll come to your house”—she’s verbally twisting the knife now—“and put our baby in your daughter’s arms and she’s going to look at you and say, ‘Daddy, why does Susan’s baby have the same last name as us?’”

  Mark’s rage erupts. “Shut up, you goddamn bitch!” He slams the palm of his hand over her mouth and shoves her head against the window. Susan bites his hand, hard, and he jerks it away. His teeth clenched, growling like an animal, Mark swings at her again. But she kicks and squirms, and his fist lands against the door, sending shooting pain through his wrist that only enrages him more.

  She lunges at his face, screaming, her hands like claws, but he stops her by seizing a fistful of hair and yanking her head back, exposing her throat. He grabs her neck, first with one hand and then both. His long fingers encircle her neck and he squeezes. Her neck is small in his big hands. She digs her nails into his arms, and he tightens his grip. She kicks and thrashes, but he holds on.

  She makes no sound—not a grunt or a gasp.

  Her airway is blocked.

  Her muscles begin to relax.

  Her body sags flaccidly in his grip.

  When Mark lets go of her, she flops against the passenger door.

  He can’t see her expression in the dark, but he assumes she’s unconscious. He breathes heavily from the exertion for a few moments, then reaches over to give Susan a small shake to rouse her.

  Her body remains completely limp. Trying not to panic, Mark grips her arms and drags her out of the car, her limbs loose, her head dangling unnaturally. He gently lays her in the gravel and kneels to examine her.

  Her eyes are open, catching the moonlight, but there is no life in them.

  Susan is gone.

  CHAPTER 28

  OH, FUCK.

  What now?

  It’s only a few hours until sunrise. Mark drives back to the hotel, though he knows there’s no way he’ll sleep. He strips off his clothes, which stink of sweat and panic, and takes a long hot shower. Afterward, he dresses in a daze. His arms are scratched from Susan’s nails, but a long-sleeved shirt easily covers the marks.

  The sky is still a dark blue when he heads back out. There is no activity in the town this early. As he walks across the parking lot, his shoes click loudly in the silence; he turns around, thinking he is being followed.

  When he arrives in Lexington, the sun is bright. He parks his car at a meter in front of the U.S. Attorney’s Office building, places his bubble on the dash so he won’t get a ticket, and walks inside like it’s any other day.

  He doesn’t let on that his mind is anywhere but on the job. It’s actually pretty chilling to realize how easy it is to compartmentalize his brain. Even though he thinks about the situation with Susan nonstop, he’s also able to function in conversations with the attorneys and make small talk with other agents.

  Later that day, he drives back to Pikeville and gets a bite to eat while he waits for the sun to go down. Then he drives out of town in the gloom of twilight. He takes a turn at Harmon Branch Road, about ten miles outside of Pikeville, and then another down an old mine road. He and Susan met here often.

  It is one of the places they made love.

  He parks the car next to a steep ravine with mounds of rock excavated from the mine piled on the opposite side of the embankment. He takes a deep breath, climbs out of the car, and circles back to the trunk. He sticks the keys in and pops the trunk open.

  Susan’s dead body lies contorted inside.

  He’d expected her corpse to stink after sitting in the hot trunk all day, but there isn’t much smell yet. He tugs off the shorts and shirt that belong to him. Underneath, she wasn’t wearing anything, so her body is now completely naked except for the small gold cross around her neck.

  It’s difficult to wrestle her out of the trunk, but he finally manages it. Carrying her like a bride over a threshold, he walks to the edge of the ravine.

  “Goodbye, Susan,” he says, and he kisses her forehead.

  Then he heaves her dead body down the embankment.

  CHAPTER 29

  Miami, Florida. Two Weeks Later

  MARK MAKES IT TO the toilet just in time. Diarrhea exits his body like hot water out of an open tap. His forehead is clammy, and he feels feverish.

  He washes his hands, splashes water on his face, and straightens his tie. He looks at himself in the mirror. He’s losing weight, and the circles under his eyes grow darker each day. He can’t get any sleep. He wonders how anyone can look at him and not notice that something is seriously wrong.

  Out in the kitchen, Kathy has just prepared breakfast for the children. Jenny scribbles with a crayon in her Little Mermaid coloring book with one hand while spooning Lucky Charms into her mouth with the other. Evan eats a Pop-Tart with both hands.

  Kathy starts to pour Mark a cup of coffee.

  “No coffee,” he says, waving her off and reaching for a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in the cupboard. “Thanks anyway.” He gulps the thick liquid directly from the bottle.

  “Do you still have that stomach bug?” Kathy asks. “I wish you’d see the doctor.”

  “No time,” he says, putting the bottle of Pepto into his briefcase. “It will pass.”

  “You work too hard,” she says.

  He doesn’t argue. It’s true. He hasn’t slowed down, because he doesn’t want anyone—including Kathy—to suspect that anything is wrong. He figures the best way to hide in plain sight is to do good work.

  He kisses both children goodbye and then gives Kathy a long hug. She smiles up at him. Miami has been good for her. She looks tan, healthy, and happy—a sharp contrast to how she’d been at the end of their time in Kentucky.

  He drives to work with the windows open, letting the breeze fill the car and cool his clammy skin. Palm trees line the road, and the smell of salt is thick in the air.

  Mark enters the FBI’s Miami office and greets the secretary with his usual friendly smile.

  “Good morning,” she says. “Graham wants to see you. Told me to send you in straightaway.”

  She delivers the message with a smile, but Mark’s gut seizes up. Graham Blevins is the special agent in charge of the Miami office, and if he wants to see Mark first thing, it’s important.

  “Come on in,” Blevins says when Mark knocks. “Shut the door behind you, please.”

  Mark takes a seat across from him. The office is austere, the mahogany desk uncluttered, the walls adorned only with his diplomas and certificates and a photo of Blevins with President Bush.

  “I’ll get right to it,” he says, taking a single sheet of paper and sliding it across the desk to Mark.

  They know about Susan.

  Mark tries to keep his hands from trembling as he lifts the piece of paper. He expects to see a subpoena to appear before the Pike County grand jury. Or an indictment. Mark wonders if he’ll have to turn over his badge right now. He might be taken out of the office in handcuffs.

  But then his mind registers what he’s looking at. The paper isn’t an indictment—it’s a commendation. It’s a memo from the U.S. Attorney’s Office praising Mark’s work on the chop-shop case.

  “You’ve made the FBI proud,” Blevins says, extending his hand as he rises.

  Mark doesn’t hide his smile as he shakes his boss’s hand.

  I can’t believe it, Mark thinks when he returns to his desk and reads the commendation again. He knows that someone—the state police, the FBI, or both—will investigate Susan’s disappeara
nce eventually. It will look suspicious if he stays quiet and doesn’t mention she’s missing.

  He picks up the phone and dials the number for Susan’s sister Molly from memory.

  “Molly,” he says. “This is Mark Putnam. I’m trying to reach Susan. Do you know where she is?”

  There’s a long pause on the other end of the line.

  “I haven’t heard from her,” she says finally. “It’s not like Susan not to call.”

  Mark tells her that his former partner in the Pikeville office hasn’t heard from her either.

  “The last time she called me,” Molly says, her voice uneven, “she said she’d just told you the baby was yours.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Mark says. “You know you can’t believe half of what Susan says.”

  “She showed me the paperwork,” Molly says. “Said she left it on your desk.”

  “Look,” he says, “let’s not argue about the father of her baby. Once we know Susan’s safe, I’ll take a paternity test to prove she’s just making up stories.”

  Mark tells Molly that if she doesn’t hear from Susan in a few days, she should report her missing. He’s surprised when Molly replies, “Why don’t you just stay down there in Florida and mind your own business. You’ve done enough harm to Susan.”

  Mark opens his mouth to object, but he’s too late—there’s only a dial tone on the line. Flustered, he sets the phone down. He thinks hard about the next call, wondering if he’s going too far, but he decides to make it anyway.

  “Kentucky State Police,” says a cheerful voice on the other line. “How may I direct your call?”

  “This is Mark Putnam from the FBI,” he says. “I’d like to report a missing person.”

  Part Three

  * * *

  NINE MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER 30

  Lexington, Kentucky. April 1990

  SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT Pete Pearson is sitting in his office signing off on routine reports when Agent Jack Cornell knocks on his door and asks if he can talk to him.

  “Sure,” Pearson says, putting his pen down as Cornell walks in. “What’s up?” Pearson sits forward in his chair. He can tell his colleague has something serious on his mind. The agent has done impressive work in the Lexington office since he transferred from Pikeville three years ago.

  Cornell takes a seat and says, “Listen, we may have a situation down in Pikeville.”

  Pete Pearson frowns. Pikeville is supervised by the Covington office of the FBI, but Pearson knows about most of what goes on in the state. He hasn’t heard much out of the Pikeville office since Mark Putnam transferred away a year ago. The hardworking rookie had made some big busts—a bank robbery, a stolen-automobile ring—but he’d moved on to Miami. The guy there now, Glen Bell, is a veteran but hardly a model agent, and he hasn’t done much since Putnam left as far as Pearson knows.

  “I was down in the Pikeville area doing some interviews on one of our cases,” Cornell says, “and I figured I’d swing by the state police office and say hello to some folks. One of the detectives—Steven Gerards, you might know him—he told me they’ve been working a missing-persons case.”

  “Okay,” Pearson says, waiting to hear what this has to do with the FBI.

  “The missing girl used to be an informant for us,” Cornell tells him. He goes on to explain that the state police investigation has turned up all kinds of rumors about the girl. “Apparently, before she disappeared, she was telling people that she and Mark Putnam were having an affair,” Cornell says.

  “Putnam’s been gone since last year,” Pearson says.

  “So has the girl,” Cornell says. “She went missing last summer right around the time Putnam was back in town finishing up some work on old cases. The state police want to interview him, but according to them, the FBI’s been stonewalling them.”

  Pearson sits back in his seat. He’s been in the FBI twenty years, ten as a supervisor in the Lexington office, and he’s never heard of a state police agency actively investigating one of their agents.

  “Mark was one of the people who reported her missing,” Cornell says, “but they still think he might be involved somehow.”

  “We can’t have these kinds of rumors flying around,” Pearson says. “Let me make some calls.”

  As Jack Cornell leaves, Pearson calls the captain in the Pikeville state police office, Isaac Wood, a man he’s worked closely with on and off over the past several years.

  “I just heard a rumor that you’re looking into one of our agents in a missing-persons case,” Pearson says, as politely as possible.

  “You know my detective Steven Gerards?” Wood asks.

  “Yes,” Pearson says. “He does good work.” He means it too—Detective Gerards is known to be careful, methodical, and thorough. He has good instincts and he follows them until he finds answers.

  “Steven’s looked into this case for the better part of a year,” Wood says. “We don’t have any evidence, but your guy Putnam might very well be involved.”

  Pearson doesn’t like the sound of this.

  “And even if he isn’t,” Wood continues, “this girl was one of your informants and she’s gone missing. The FBI has a responsibility to find out what happened to her.”

  “I agree,” Pearson says.

  “That’s music to my ears,” Wood says. “We’ve been hitting nothing but brick walls trying to deal with you Feds. You’ve got access to the one guy we need to talk to.”

  Pearson discusses the situation with Wood for a few minutes. The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction in local investigations, but if the woman was kidnapped and taken across state lines, it can be considered a federal case. No one has any real idea if she was kidnapped or murdered or if she just ran off, but it’s the simplest way to justify the FBI’s involvement.

  “This needs to be a real investigation,” Wood says. “This better not be some fake inquiry where all you’re trying to do is cover your own asses.”

  “Don’t worry,” Pearson says. “I’ll assemble a team of some of our best agents, all with experience in Kentucky, and bring them down to Pikeville.”

  “Whoever you put in charge, let me know, and I’ll have Steven Gerards get in touch with the case files.”

  “I can tell you who it is right now,” Pearson says. “Me. I’m going to be leading the team.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Pikeville, Kentucky. May 1990

  TWO FBI SEDANS PULL into the parking lot of the Landmark Hotel at dusk, and five agents exit. One of them, Supervisory Special Agent Pete Pearson, is carrying two pizza boxes. He leads the other agents across the parking lot as the setting sun ignites the surrounding Kentucky hills in an eerie red glow, adding an ominous weight to what the five men are about to discuss.

  “Meet in my room in fifteen,” Pearson says, and he climbs the stairs to the second floor.

  The other agents—Jack Cornell, Tracy McGovern, Boyd Robertson, and Daryl Christopher—go to their rooms, make quick calls to their wives or children, then head to their supervisor’s room for a long night of work.

  They’ve spent the past week reviewing the Susan Daniels Smith investigation that the state police have been pursuing. As far as they can tell, the state investigator who’d been looking into Susan’s disappearance left no stone unturned. It was good police work, but it’s led to nothing but dead ends thus far.

  Susan Smith, they’ve discovered, had plenty of enemies.

  Her ex-husband has a history of criminal behavior, and before her disappearance, Susan filed a restraining order against him, claiming assault. She’s also testified against a bank robber known as Cat Eyes, and retribution is a legitimate possibility. And she was apparently working to make connections with drug dealers out of state in an effort to help the FBI nail a dirty cop in Illinois.

  The problem is, many people who were once close to Susan had turned their backs on her because of her work as an FBI informant, and they were naturally uncooperative when the agency c
ame around asking questions. Of those who would talk, several said they assumed she’d just run off and would turn up again sooner or later.

  The investigation seems to be at an impasse. The good news is the FBI is caught up on everything the state police were able to find in their nearly yearlong investigation. The bad news is they don’t know where to go from here. Despite this technically being a kidnapping case, they’re all working under the assumption she’s likely been murdered.

  But by whom?

  “Okay,” Pete Pearson says as the FBI agents discuss the case over pizza, “let’s just go around the room.” He stands facing his four agents, who are seated on the two beds. “One by one, I want to hear what you think might have happened.”

  He points first at Agent Jack Cornell.

  “Cat Eyes probably had her killed,” Cornell theorizes. “Either he ordered the hit from prison or people loyal to him took it upon themselves to avenge him. We know Crystal Black assaulted her once. Maybe she came back to finish the job.”

  “Okay,” Pearson says, turning to Tracy McGovern. “What do you think?”

  “Her ex-husband did it,” McGovern states. “He has a criminal record. There’s a history of domestic violence. We all know that wife-beaters often graduate to wife-killers.”

  Pearson turns to Boyd Robertson.

  “I think it was the drug dealers out of Chicago,” Robertson says. “I bet she went up there trying to make drug contacts, and something happened to her. If there really is a dirty cop involved, she was dealing with a whole new league of drug dealers than what she was used to.”

  Pearson nods, considering this. “Okay, what about you, Daryl? What do you think happened?”

  Daryl Christopher takes a deep breath and says, “I think Mark Putnam killed her.”

  “You don’t really mean that, do you?” says Pearson, looking around at the other agents, who all seem shocked too.