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“I’m at the station, but don’t want to talk about it here. Coffee? I could use it.”
“Okay, that little place across from the sheriff’s station, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
She called Matt. “Marcy wants to talk to me, I’m having coffee with her.”
“In the middle of this investigation?”
“I think she has something important to say. I’ll call you right after.”
“You’re doing this alone?”
“Matt—I’ll call you when I find out what’s going on. If you don’t hear from me in an hour, then you can start worrying.”
“I’m in the conference room with Ryder and Catherine. We’re digging into Damon Avila’s life. We don’t have enough for a warrant, but since he and Rena worked together, that’s one more connection.”
“Going from staging accidents to bombings to cold-blooded slicing a throat?”
“Murder is violent, and killers escalate.”
She agreed in principle, but this was violent versus gory. Still...she added, “Because they worked together, maybe she suspected something. Overheard a conversation, or caught him in a lie... It’s definitely possible.”
“I think a friendly conversation might work. Catherine and I are talking it through now. But I don’t want to tip our hand.”
“I’ll call you when I’m done with Marcy.” She ended the call as she parked in the sheriff’s lot, then walked across to the coffeehouse. It was a small place but set up with several sitting areas for people to chat. Marcy sat in the corner by the window. Kara sat across from her.
“Coffee?” Marcy motioned to the to-go cup in front of her. “Black, right?”
“Thanks,” Kara said, though she wouldn’t drink it. The chances that Marcy would poison her were slim to none, but she never drank what she didn’t obtain herself. “You look like you haven’t slept all night,” said Kara.
“Barely. When I got home last night, I watched television to unwind and dozed off. The curse of living alone. I woke up at midnight and had this really uneasy feeling that I knew something important. So I cleaned my whole apartment—I know, that’s weird, but when I’m thinking through problems, I clean. Then it came to me.
“I was at the gym working out with Damon. It was a Sunday morning last summer—a week or two before he went back to school, so probably late July, early August. I’d started working for SJSD in May, and Damon was the first person I really got to know outside of work, because of the gym. Damon was angry about something, I could tell by how he was working out and dropping the weights. I asked. He wouldn’t talk about it, but then asked me to go to brunch. We had mimosas—Damon started talking about past mistakes biting him in the ass. I asked what he was talking about. He said he couldn’t tell me, I’m a cop, and rambled about statute of limitations, but it didn’t make sense. Then he said he didn’t want anything to complicate our friendship. I said I understood, though the whole conversation seemed weird. Like he wanted to ask my opinion on something, but because I was a cop, he couldn’t.”
“He could have pulled the standard ‘I’m asking for a friend’ plausible deniability.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I didn’t think about that. Anyway, the next time I saw him at the Fish & Brew, he was back to his old self. He was gone shortly after that, until Memorial Day weekend. I honestly forgot about the conversation until last night.
“Then this summer, I was at the Fish & Brew one day for lunch before my shift and Neil was there. Damon acted strange. Nothing I could pinpoint, but when he came over to give me the check, I asked him about it. He said Neil was a jerk and should just let sleeping dogs lie. I should have remembered that before now.”
“When was this?”
“Beginning of the summer. Four, five weeks ago.”
Though Kara suspected she had the answer, she asked, “Where does he teach? You said he taught high school the other day. Math, right?”
“Yes. Bellingham High.”
Kara went back to the station, closed the door of the conference room, and told Matt, Catherine, and Ryder what Marcy had told her.
“It fits,” Catherine said. “It fits really well. Ryder just talked to the retired campus security chief from U of W.”
Ryder said, “Nearly fourteen years ago, in the fall, Damon Avila had been a star football player. He was expecting to go high in the draft but a weather-related accident early on New Year’s Day—Brian Stevens was driving—ended his football career. The incident was ruled accidental. The roads were a mess, icy, and Avila was speeding—not above the speed limit, but above what was safe for the conditions. His left leg was shattered. The security chief told Neil this earlier this year—and sent him emails with photos. The reason Avila’s name wasn’t in the Stevens report was that two different jurisdictions and agencies responded. They referenced each case number, but not the names of the individuals involved. Stevens was not cited, he submitted to a drug and alcohol test, and was clean. He was uninjured. Jason Mott was in the car with him, had a broken wrist.”
“Motive,” Kara said. “But not enough for a warrant.”
“Missy Douglas,” Catherine said. “She had dated Avila for nearly two years in college. She broke up with him after that accident. Her fiancé didn’t know much about her college years, but her sister did, and I spoke with her this morning. Avila became despondent after the accident, he changed, according to Missy’s sister. He accused her of breaking up with him because he was broken. But she had broken up with him because he was verbally abusive and full of self-pity.”
“Waiting eight years to kill her? That seems far-fetched,” Kara said. “I’m playing devil’s advocate here, because Avila looks good for this, but the timing. Why wait eight years?”
