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“Did she have any close friends in the department?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Not you.”
“No, I rarely saw her after FTO. Is that it?”
Juan had confirmed what Kara had been thinking. That Marcy Anderson was whoever she thought people wanted her to be.
But it wasn’t enough, and Kara didn’t quite know what to do with the information.
“One more question,” she said. “Did she ever talk to you about an ex-boyfriend named Caleb McKinnon?”
“Sure. They were living together when she was training.”
Whoa. That was not what Cal, Marcy, or Lisa had said. Was this a completely new story?
“Did you meet him?”
“Sure—well, actually, no. I don’t think we ever met, though I felt like I knew him. A few months after training ended, Marcy and I ran into each other at a fellow officer’s retirement party, and she said that Cal had been transferred to another base and she didn’t think their long-distance relationship was going to work out. I had the impression she was hitting on me—it was different than when I trained her—but I had a girlfriend back then—now my wife—besides the fact that I made it a policy to never date fellow cops.”
“Thank you, Detective.” Kara ended the call before he could ask her any more questions.
She got up and ordered the soup of the day to go. She didn’t text Marcy or call her but drove directly to her house.
Marcy lived in an apartment only a few blocks up from the Fish & Brew. It was a small, clean, generic building with eight units, four up, four down. Redwood trees demarcated the property line. Each unit had both a front and back balcony, and Marcy had the bottom south unit, #4.
Kara knocked.
No answer.
She knocked again, rang the bell.
Though supposedly ill at home, Marcy wasn’t there.
Dammit, Kara knew she wouldn’t be. She could have saved the eight bucks on the soup.
But it smelled good, and she hadn’t finished her sandwich. She sat in her car and stared at Marcy’s apartment and ate the soup—some sort of spicy chicken vegetable soup—and considered what this all meant.
Maybe nothing.
Maybe everything.
Fifteen minutes later, she was done with the soup and headed back to Jamie Finch’s house.
She wasn’t there, either.
32
Matt and Catherine sat in the interview room waiting for Damon Avila to be brought in for questioning.
The Coast Guard had caught up with Pete Dunlap’s family while they were sailing in Massacre Bay, across the sound. According to the captain, Avila had come without incident and he had told Dunlap exactly what Matt had suggested: Avila was wanted for questioning by the FBI in an ongoing investigation. They didn’t actually arrest Avila, but they would have if he balked about coming in.
But Avila came. Matt asked about the family, and they were concerned and on their way back, so to expect them. But the Coast Guard cruiser was much faster than a sailboat, so Matt had time before he had to face Pete Dunlap and tell him that his brother-in-law was responsible for ten deaths—and likely more. They were only arresting him for the two bombings and the attempted murder of a peace officer—by setting the bomb in his house—but they would be putting a lot more charges on that before they were done.
Matt convinced the sheriff, who wanted to participate, to observe the interview instead of being a part of the questioning. He had been satisfied with the sheriff’s team, but they personally knew the suspect and his family, and in this case Matt didn’t think that would be a benefit to getting a full confession.
And that’s what Matt wanted. He didn’t want doubts or questions, he wanted a signed statement and then he would turn Damon Avila over to the Seattle FBI for processing and arraignment.
