If She Ran

Cass Nobilini, Kate thought.

She’d thought of the woman almost right away, after Duran had told her about the possible connection. She’d thought of her again when she’d heard the wails and screeches of Missy Tucker as she grieved her murdered husband, and then again while talking to Jack Tucker’s friends.

Cass Nobilini, the mother of Frank Nobilini. The woman who had found it insulting and darkly improper for the media to latch onto the event of her son’s murder just because he had once worked closely with a few popular men in Congress as a financial advisor. Kate felt that she had been a fool to even pretend that this case was not going to lead her back to Cass Nobilini in some way.

It was that thought that remained with her for the remainder of the night, clinging to the forefront of her mind as she eventually lay down in bed and drifted off to sleep.

She could still see the crime scene in her head. The wear and tear of memory made it a little faded and rusty, but the haziness was stripped away whenever she dreamed about it. In her dreams, it was as clear as if she were watching television.

And she saw it that night, managing to fall asleep shortly after nine yet twitching and moaning slightly in her sleep as the midnight hour approached.

The scene: Frank Nobilini, killed in the alley and still holding his BMW keys. The case had eventually led her back to his home, a four-bedroom house in Ashton. She’d started in the garage, which had smelled faintly of lawn trimmings from a recent grass-cutting. She’d felt like she was in some haunted place, like Frank Nobilini’s spirit was there somewhere, waiting for her. Maybe in the empty space where his BMW was supposed to be but, at that time, had sat in a parking lot several blocks away from where his body had been found. The garage had been cold and like some weird tomb. It was one of the handful of scenes from her past that always came back vividly for reasons she had never understood.

There had been no clues of any kind at the house, no signs of why someone might want to kill him. One would think that maybe it was for his very nice car, but the keys had been in his hand. The house had been clean. Almost eerily so. No paperwork trails, nothing of note in the address books or the mail. Nothing.

In her dream, Kate was standing there, in the alley. She was touching the still-sticky smear of gore on side of the wall in the same experimental way a child might touch a stray drop of syrup on the kitchen table. She turned and looked behind her, wanting to look down the alleyway, but saw the interior of the Nobilinis’ garage instead. As if she had been invited inside, she walked to the wooden stairs that led to the door that would take her into the kitchen. She then moved in the way that only dreams allow, fluidly, almost being projected rather than moved by her legs. She somehow ended up in the bathroom, looking to the large tub/shower combo installed in the wall. It was filled with blood. Something was moving beneath the surface, causing little bubbles to rise to the top of the blood. When one would pop, it would send tiny droplets against the porcelain side of the wall.

She backed away, stepping through the bathroom doorway and into the hall. There, Frank Nobilini was walking toward her. Behind him, his wife, Jennifer, simply watched. She even gave Kate a harmless little wave as her dead husband lurched down the hallway. Frank walked very zombie-like, slowly and with an exaggerated gait.

“It’s okay,” someone said from behind her.

She turned and saw Cass Nobilini, Frank’s mother, sitting on the floor. She looked tired, defeated…as if she were waiting for an executioner’s blade.

“Cass…?”

“You were never going to solve it. It was over your head. But time…it has a way of changing things, doesn’t it?”

Kate turned back to Frank, still advancing. As he came by the bathroom door, Kate saw that some of the blood had come out of the tub and into the floor, seeping out into the hallway. When Frank stepped in it, it made a wet sucking sound.

Frank Nobilini smiled at her and raised his hand to her—slightly decayed and mottled. Kate slowly backed away, raising her own hands to her face, and let out a scream.

She woke up, feeling the scream lodged in her throat.

That damned house. She had never understood why it had rattled her in such a way. Maye because of Jennifer Nobilini’s screams and wails, laced with the picture-perfect house…it had all seemed surreal. Like something out of an artsy horror movie.

Kate sat up and slowly inched her way to the edge of the bed. She collected a few deep breaths and looked at the clock: 1:22. The only light in the room came from the numbers on the alarm clock and the faint glow of the security lights outside, barely shining in through the closed blinds.

She’d had dreams concerning Cass Nobilini and that first case before, but this one had been a doozy. Her heart was still hammering in her chest as she got out of bed and walked to the mini-fridge for a bottle of water. She sipped some down as she walked over to the bedside table where she had set her laptop up.

She flicked on the bedside lamp and logged into her email. She had only one new one, and that had come from Assistant Director Saunders. She’d tasked an agent with digging up the Nobilini files and they had been delivered to her shortly before midnight.

She knew that there was no way she’d return to a deep sleep, so she opened them up one by one, a bit uncomfortable by how natural it seemed and how familiar those old files felt. She looked through them briefly at first, in the same way someone visiting a somewhat familiar location might give the area a once-over before truly starting to study the place. When she came to the last of the twenty-six pages, she went back to the beginning. But before getting deep into it, she went to the little complimentary coffee maker and set a pot to brew. As it started to percolate, she made the bed, relocated the laptop to the small table against the far wall, and made herself a little workstation.

Within five minutes, she was reading each of the files line by line and sipping on a cup of very dark, very cheap coffee. The account of Frank Nobilini felt like an old friend, the sort of friend that only called with bad news. The case detailed every conversation she’d had with neighbors and friends in Ashton. As she read over them all, she was unsettled with how similar they all were to the conversations she’d recently had concerning Jack Tucker.

The only thing that had even remotely resembled anything of merit had come from twenty-two-year-old Alice Delgado, a nanny for a family in Ashton who had cared for two kids, ages eight and eleven. Alice had admitted to making sexual advances toward Frank Nobilini when they had crossed paths at a local park. Frank had responded with flattery and polite rejection. While that had been the extent of it, the news of Frank’s death had made Alice feel incredibly guilty—so guilty that she had contacted Jennifer Nobilini to confess. Jennifer, the caring and apparently flawless woman she was, had forgiven her almost right away.

Aside from that one detail, there had been nothing. Not in conversations, not at the crime scene, not in the Nobilinis’ home. And nothing in the criminal records for Frank or Jennifer—no history of criminal activities, no enemies to speak of…nothing.

Kate had remained on the case for six months, then took a step back, working on it only as a background project for another eight months before the case was totally given up on. It had not been the only unsolved case in her career, but it had been the only unclosed case with such a degree of strangeness to it.

As she read through, she did her best to apply Jack Tucker’s death to it. And the more she read and reacquainted herself with the case, the more certain she became that Jack’s murder was linked. It was either done by the exact same killer or a copycat.

It was 4:10 before she felt she had given the notes and files their proper attention. She stared at her second cup of coffee for a moment and then slowly picked up her cell phone. She placed a call to the twenty-four/seven resource line at the bureau. It was a bit slower than a direct call to Saunders or Duran during the day but it was better than nothing.

After giving her name and badge number, she was greeted by a voice that was far too warm and pleasant for a quarter after four in the morning.

“Agent Wise, how can we help you?”

“I need the current address and phone number for a woman that probably lives somewhere in New York. Cass Nobilini.”

“Okay, and is this going to be the best number to send that information to?”

“It is. Thanks.”

But even before she ended the call, Kate felt guilty as hell. There was a very large part of her that hoped Cass Nobilini had decided to move. If Kate could make it through this case without having to cross paths with Cass, she’d consider herself fortunate.