Winter Black Box Set 3 Read online

  He understood why the bureau had issued an all-hands notice for the murder of a fellow federal agent’s daughter, but until now, he’d assumed that the statement of a judge would be a reliable account of the events that had transpired the night before. Now, however, he had more questions than answers.

  The story itself read like testimony from a drunk witness, not a state supreme court judge.

  After another swig of coffee, Noah nodded at the detective. “Thanks for the walk-through. Like I said, have the CSU dust the pantry and garage for prints. And, for the time being, leave the crime scene tape up. I know that Arkwell claims this was self-defense, but for right now, you and your people treat this like the scene of a homicide.”

  Detective Ramsey’s expression turned grim. “Roger that. We’ll send everything to the FBI lab, and I’ll let you know if we get word of anything new on our end.”

  “Much appreciated. Take care.” With a lift of his hand, he turned to make his way back outside.

  Now, it was time for him to figure out whether or not Peyton Hoesch was the degenerate thief that Arkwell made her out to be.

  And if she wasn’t, then they’d have a brand-new heap of shit to add to the investigation into Caroline Peter’s stalker.

  A heap of shit with a judge on top.

  27

  Leaning back in the rickety chair, Winter crossed both arms over her chest. There were no silver bracelets around Nathaniel Arkwell’s wrists. As of now, the man was merely in the interview room for routine questioning in a self-defense case. He wasn’t even under arrest, and so far, he’d been cooperative.

  To her side, Bobby stifled a yawn with one hand. She knew her fellow agent well enough to realize a strategic gesture when she saw one.

  Nathaniel Arkwell’s light brown eyes shifted over to Bobby, though his expression changed little. “Something wrong, Agent Weyrick?”

  With a pleasant smile, Bobby shook his head.

  Ever since his arrival at the field office, Nathaniel Arkwell had been unusually keen on using their names in his dialogue. The oddity was so striking that Winter wondered if he’d been implanted with a subdermal recording device, or if he was a cyborg altogether.

  Feigning hesitance, Winter raised a hand. “I’ve got something, Mr. Arkwell. I was wondering if you could tell me what exactly it was about this five-foot-two, one-hundred-pound college student that made you fear for your life. No disrespect intended. I’m just trying to make sure we get a deep understanding of what happened. Maryann Hoesch has been a DEA agent for more than twenty years, and she wants answers. You’re a veteran of the armed forces, aren’t you?”

  Jaw clenched, the man nodded. “I am. United States Navy, five years.”

  Winter wrote down the number, even though there was no need. She already knew everything about his military career. The logistics of it, anyway. “Five years. What did you do in the Navy?”

  Beside the glint of indignation in his brown eyes, there was a flicker of a darker sentiment. Was it shame? Guilt? Anxiety?

  “I was a mechanical engineer,” Nathaniel said.

  “For five years. And during that time, you saw combat, didn’t you, Mr. Arkwell?” Winter raised her eyebrows and turned her attention to Bobby. “Agent Weyrick, you were in the military, weren’t you?”

  Bobby’s mouth was a hard line as he nodded. “Sure was. Army. Did two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

  Winter fixed Arkwell with a look of fake intrigue, but she didn’t address the man when she spoke. Her and Bobby’s hope was that a little bit of pressure would get the judge to come clean in the event he was lying to them. “So, Agent Weyrick, what would you do if you saw a petite college girl trying to steal a few grand out of your secret stash?”

  Bobby feigned a pensive expression as he shrugged. “Well, I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t grab my service weapon and shoot her in the back when she was trying to run away.”

  Arkwell narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t see the look in her eyes when—”

  Winter raised a hand. “Neither did you, Mr. Arkwell. You shot her in the back. You shot the daughter of a DEA agent in the back. And during your statement, you mentioned, and I quote, ‘The crazed look in her eyes,’ and how you’d seen it before in people who were high. What are you going to say if we get the tox screen results back and it says she was completely clean and sober?”

  Shadows moved along his face as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. “Then there was something else wrong with her. Clearly, the girl was unstable.” He pushed up his sleeve and gestured to the bandage on his forearm. “She attacked me, Agents. She was at the door to try to leave, but I fully believed that, when she turned, she was going to come after me again. I wasn’t willing to risk it.”

  In the seconds of quiet that followed, Winter pinned the man with a scrutinizing stare. All the little aspects of his story lined up with the evidence they’d collected so far. The shell casings for the forty-five were collected right where Nathaniel claimed he’d been standing when he fired the two rounds—one of which hit the door.

  He’d agreed to provide a sample of his DNA in case they needed the analysis later in the case, and he’d volunteered for them to swab his hands for gunshot residue. But no matter how cooperative the man was, she couldn’t shake the itch in the back of her head that insisted something was wrong.

  Finally, Winter nodded. “Okay. What about the second shot? According to the neighbor who called the disturbance in, there were two shots fired, and one was fired at least a minute after the first. Could you explain that for us, Mr. Arkwell?”

  With a weary sigh, he rubbed his eyes. “I fired the first shot as a warning. I thought it would be enough to scare her into leaving. We...exchanged some unpleasantries, and then she finally turned around. I’ve already told you what happened next.”

  Winter wanted to smack the man and curled her fingers into fists to keep from doing so. A petite, twenty-year-old girl armed with nothing more than a butcher knife had simply stood there while a round from a semiautomatic handgun splintered a chunk out of the door at her back, and that hadn’t been enough to make her run? That made exactly zero sense.

  However, no matter how much the act seemed to be inconsistent with reality, the physical evidence corroborated Arkwell’s story.

  Glancing to Bobby, she pushed to her feet before she said something she didn’t need to say. “All right. Thank you, Mr. Arkwell. If you’ll give us a little more time, we need to double-check a few things.”

  Without waiting for a response, she pulled open the heavy door to step into the hall. Before the latch had clicked into place, a familiar twinge of pain lanced through her temples.

  Squeezing her eyes closed, she pinched the bridge of her nose.

  “Whoa, you all right? You need me to grab you something?”

  Before Bobby had finished the concerned query, she was shaking her head. They’d had a few conversations about their respective headaches. While Winter’s were the result of the traumatic head injury she’d suffered at Douglas Kilroy’s hands, Bobby’s migraines were largely the result of bad luck in the genetics department. Either way, he had assured her he could sympathize with the sudden onslaught of unanticipated pain.

  Though she knew better than to tell him the truth of her headaches, she was glad to have another person with whom she could commiserate.

  “I’m all right,” she finally said, digging in her pocket for the tissue she always kept on the ready. “Give me just a second. I’ll be right back.”

  With a quick nod and a concerned glance, Bobby stepped into the room behind the pane of two-way glass. Winter was surprised to see Aiden in the shadowy space, but she didn’t have time to puzzle over his unexpected appearance. She needed to make it to the ladies’ room before she collapsed into a heap, or before blood started to gush from her nose.

  Groaning, she hurried down the hall and shoved her way into the bathroom. At quarter ‘til seven in the morning, she wasn’t surprised to find the space unoccupied.

  As if the headache was a living creature that could sense the close proximity of relative privacy, another sizzle of pain flashed through her head.

  By now, closing and locking the stall door, wadding up toilet paper to press to her nose, and slumping down in the corner where her feet wouldn’t be visible was a bizarre sort of routine. In a strange way, the familiarity of the whole process was a comfort.

  Back during the Kilroy investigation, the visions had literally and figuratively brought her to her knees. But now, although the headaches were less intense, she had learned to spot the signs that told her to find a quiet place to succumb to her strange sixth sense.

  Pressing the tissue to her nose, she slid down the cool tile wall to sit. As she squeezed her eyes closed, she half-expected to lose consciousness.

  Instead, she felt as if she’d closed her eyes just to teleport through the void of space and time. Either she’d teleported, or she’d stepped onto the set of a movie.

  In the depiction her mind presented to her, she was at the intersection of a rundown industrial neighborhood. Ruddy orange streetlights glinted eerily off the worn asphalt. The dilapidated buildings looked familiar, though she couldn’t place the scene at first.

  A couple young women milled about, and when Winter spotted a petite blonde with large, blue eyes, she realized why the area looked so familiar. The blonde was Alice, and the intersection was where she and a few of her friends conducted the majority of their business.

  A less familiar blonde emerged from the shadows of an alley as a spotless black sedan approached. The engine was little more than a quiet hum, and the ruddy streetlights glinted off the Mercedes emblem affixed to the front bumper. Though Alice gave the car a cursory glance, she turned arou
nd and made her way back to the entryway of a tall building as the blonde approached the driver.

  Alice might have looked young, but she’d been around the streets long enough to recognize a sketchy situation when she saw one. Sometimes, she tried to talk the younger, inexperienced girls out of putting themselves in a potentially harmful situation, but she wasn’t always successful. As she’d told Winter, “Money talks and bullshit walks.”

  As Winter closed the distance between herself and the blonde who’d approached the Mercedes, she took in a sharp breath.

  She recognized the silvery shade of her hair, the hue of her pale blue eyes. Only Winter’s most prominent memory of those eyes was watching them glaze over as the last of the life left the young woman’s body.

  “Dakota,” she heard herself say.

  Those hauntingly familiar eyes snapped over in Winter’s direction, but the driver of the vehicle stretched out an arm to beckon her closer.

  With a sharp intake of breath, Winter sat bolt upright as she was ripped out of the unnerving scene and deposited back into the ladies’ room in the heart of the FBI field office.

  “Oh my god,” she murmured to herself.

  Unsurprisingly, the tissue in her hand was splotched with red.

  A black Mercedes, spotless, even though it had rained that day. Just like Katya had said. And who drove a black Mercedes? Whose name had been mentioned by both Ryan O’Connelly and Oliver Jacobs during the dinner party?

  “Shit, shit,” she spat as she pushed herself to stand.

  Nathaniel Arkwell drove a black Mercedes sedan, and Nathaniel Arkwell was a member of the same group that Ryan O’Connelly had infiltrated.

  Spitting four-letter words every step of the way, Winter shoved her way back into the main part of the bathroom, tossed her bloodied tissue, and washed her hands. Before all the droplets of water had even been displaced, she was back in the hallway.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when she opened the door of the small office just off the interrogation room. Aiden’s pale eyes shifted over to her as the door fell closed. As soon as the latch clicked into place, she flicked the lock on the lever handle.

  “What?” Aiden barked before concern transformed his features. “What’s going on?”

  Though the initial edginess might have been her imagination, she could have sworn he had been annoyed by her sudden appearance at first. Biting back a smartass response, she took a step forward and gestured to Nathaniel.

  “That’s him. That’s our guy.”

  Aiden gave his head a little shake. “He is? For what?”

  She paused to arrange her racing thoughts before she spoke. “For Caroline Peters and Dakota Ronsfeldt. Katya said there was a black Mercedes that picked up Dakota the last time she and Alice saw her. A black Mercedes sedan that was clean even though it had rained that day. I saw it. I watched him pull up to Dakota, and I watched her get into that car.”

  “A vision?”

  Her nostrils flared as she nodded. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about that word. “Yes. A vision. Just now.”

  “Damn,” he spat. “Nathaniel Arkwell? Did you see him? Or just the car?”

  “It’s not a coincidence. You know it’s not, and I know you don’t believe in coincidences. What are the odds that Nathaniel just happens to be associated with a dead girl who matches our demographic? A dead girl killed by a guy who drives the same type of car that was seen picking up Dakota Ronsfeldt less than a week before a video of her murder was posted on the dark web?”

  Aiden kept his eyes on hers as the seconds of silence ticked away. Finally, though the gesture was slow, almost reluctant, he nodded. “How do we prove it? We’d need a warrant to search anything that wasn’t in plain sight around where Peyton was killed. Not to mention, I’m sure Arkwell owns some other properties. We’d have to search those too, if we wanted to be thorough. And the car.”

  Winter pursed her lips as she mulled over his assertion. As it stood, despite the holes in Arkwell’s story, they hadn’t collected enough damning evidence to secure a warrant for the rest of the house, much less any other property in his name. If they went to a judge with the theory that Nathaniel Arkwell also happened to be the voyeuristic murderer they’d sought for the past week and a half, they’d be laughed out of the chambers.

  Not only was Nathaniel Arkwell wealthy, but the man was a state supreme court judge. If they wanted a warrant, the order had to be ironclad.

  For the remainder of the investigation, their steps had to be carried out according to a strict, specific plan. A plan that would give the defense attorney zero room to wiggle or produce a legal loophole or technicality.

  Finally, she returned her gaze to his. “We could get a forensic psychological evaluation of him.”

  To her surprise, he shook his head. “I don’t see how that’d help us get closer to a search warrant.”

  More often than not, he was the one to suggest that they bring in Autumn’s expertise—or the expertise of Shadley and Latham, according to official documents.

  As he returned his attention to the glass, Winter pressed her fingertips against her eyes. “Well, what else do we have to go on right now?”

  “Once the tox screen results get back to us, and once Dan has a chance to write up the official cause of death, we’ll have more to go on.” The twinge of irritability was back in his voice.

  She crossed her arms. “You know that probably won’t be enough for a warrant. Besides, wouldn’t it be better to have more information rather than less?”

  With one hand, he rubbed his eyes and sighed. “We can’t just call Autumn whenever we’re not sure how to proceed in an investigation.”

  Winter studied his face. “Yes, we can. That’s literally her job. When we’re running low on leads, we call her and her firm, and they help us figure out a new lead based on psychological evidence. You know, evidence that we’re not qualified to produce.”

  Though the gesture seemed grudging, he turned to meet her unimpressed stare. As much as she wanted to prod him for more details on his sudden reluctance to reach out to a person he normally didn’t hesitate to contact, she pushed aside the nagging curiosity. “Look, if anyone will be able to tell us whether or not Nathaniel Arkwell matches the profile we’ve come up with, it’s going to be Autumn. At the very least, it can’t hurt.”

  Jaw clenched, he nodded. “Fine. I’ll contact Shadley and Latham.”

  Winter knew Autumn’s capabilities, and she knew the woman would be able to tell with just a handshake whether or not Nathaniel Arkwell was the serial murderer they’d chased after for the past week and a half.

  Because if Nathaniel Arkwell wasn’t the man who had murdered Dakota Ronsfeldt, then there was still a serial killer running amok in Richmond.

  28

  When Autumn Trent arrived at the FBI field office, she was surprised to be greeted by Noah Dalton. According to the tall man, Winter and Bobby were preparing to question Nathaniel Arkwell, and Aiden Parrish was attending to business in the BAU. Though she was glad to see her friend, the absence of Aiden Parrish—her usual FBI escort—struck her as odd.

  However, she didn’t give the oddity much thought as she followed Noah to a briefing room to discuss the Nathaniel Arkwell case. What appeared to be a straightforward instance of self-defense had quickly devolved into a murky web of lies and half-truths.

  And then, there was Winter’s vision.

  Though the piece of insight wasn’t part of any official FBI record, she and Noah both knew that Winter’s visions were just as reliable as any piece of physical evidence they might have uncovered.

  Nathaniel Arkwell was, in some capacity, responsible for the disappearance of Dakota Ronsfeldt. Now, all they had to do was prove it.

  As they headed to the interrogation room, Autumn half-expected Aiden to wander into their path. But other than a vaguely familiar forensics tech, they encountered no one.

  Noah’s green eyes flicked to her as he gestured to the pane of two-way glass. “Well, that’s him. State Supreme Court Judge Arkwell.”