Detective Rossi stared at the computer screen inside her home office, her hair still damp from a morning shower as she scoured the pages of information from the state police library on the science of DNA testing. She’d referenced CODIS numerous times on previous investigations involving DNA samples taken from convicted offenders. In the case of Simon Hollis, his attorney argued the DNA evidence gathered before his trial had been processed incorrectly by Volxen Laboratories and cross-contaminated with an unknown sample, resulting in a false positive that helped send Simon Hollis away for life. After years of legal wrangling and endless motions filed on his behalf, Simon’s legal team convinced a judge to authorize new DNA testing through a different laboratory, which resulted in a negative match against the blood evidence recovered from the triple homicide scene.

She referenced an electronic file with previous research she’d garnered on mitochondria DNA and the merits of the more reliable nuclear DNA testing. Aside from identical twins, no two people shared the same nuclear DNA, but people in the same family line shared mitochondria DNA. Despite the superior reliability of nuclear DNA testing, it was mitochondria DNA that overturned Simon’s conviction. Why the lesser test method was selected, she didn’t know, which prompted her to try a different search engine on her computer. She typed the name Volxen Laboratories to display the corporate website. A quick glance revealed the mundane overview she expected from an accredited forensic laboratory specializing in polymerase chain reaction testing, where a trio of medical doctors from Vanderbilt had banned together to form their own company, led by CEO William Brady. All three doctors specialized in pathology. And all three included professional headshots and lengthy biographies on the Volxen website, espousing their commitment to family and medicine with a synopsis of their early careers prior to forming Volxen Labs. Finding nothing unusual, she reverted to the previous list of search results to see an article about a high-profile murderer convicted of poisoning his landlord after falling three months behind on his rent. She skimmed the story to learn Volxen Labs had processed the DNA evidence used to convict the fifty-eight-year-old suspect. Other search results yielded similar articles about Volxen’s commitment to law enforcement through rigorous testing standards.

She searched the department database of convicted felons, then cross referenced the results against the keyword DNA to yield thirty-seven cases involving DNA evidence evaluated by Volxen Labs, including DNA processed for Simon Hollis. Disappointed by the search results, which yielded nothing she didn’t already know, she filtered on homicide investigations where the primary suspect was convicted. With the previous search results pared down to twenty-one, she opened other files to review the crime scene details. In one case, a mugger attacked his victim with a knife. In another case, a woman shot her husband to death with a stolen revolver.

She skimmed over pages detailing the various means and motives behind the violent crimes committed by predominately male perpetrators, most of them repeat offenders with criminal records dating back to their pubescent years. Nothing unusual stood out, including Captain Peter Wallen’s signature on the chain of custody authorization for DNA evidence on numerous homicide investigations. Curious, she opened all twenty-one of the DNA cases resulting in a conviction and found Captain Wallen’s signature on every chain of custody document associated with Volxen Labs.

She checked her watch and scribbled a note on her desk pad beside a stack of subpoenaed patient files from the Chun Lin investigation. She looked up when she heard her car alarm blaring from her garage and tapped her empty holster. She proceeded to her bedroom to retrieve the loaded Glock 22 from her bureau. “Hello?” she called out with a .40 caliber hollow point in the chamber.

She hustled through the empty kitchen toward the living room with windows on two walls. She maintained a two-hand grip with her elbows slightly bent, her finger resting on the trigger as she approached the door to her garage and entered to find the headlights on her unmarked Charger flashing intermittently with her piercing alarm. She tapped the wall-mounted garage door opener and pegged her front sight on the male figure standing in a Navy-blue raincoat outside. Light rain sprinkled the driveway.

“Sir?” she announced with her finger away from the trigger and the muzzle lowered toward the ground. “I almost shot you.” She reached in her pocket for the key fob to deactivate the alarm.

“Bad time?” the deputy chief inquired.

“Would have been if I’d shot you.” Rossi holstered her weapon and motioned for the deputy chief to enter through the garage, unaware of the eyes staring down at her from the gap between the garage ceiling and the panel for the raised attic stairs. “Since when do you make house calls?”

“Since when do you greet visitors with a loaded weapon?”

“Something triggered my car alarm.”

The deputy chief followed Rossi. “You still live alone?”

“My shift starts in forty minutes. If this is a social call—”

“I don’t do social visits.” The deputy chief retrieved folded pages of a wiretap transcript from his inside jacket pocket. “You should see this before internal affairs gets a whiff.”

“What is it?”

“The wiretap on Captain Wallen’s phone caught an incoming call a week ago from a number registered to a Stewart Harvey in Ocala, Florida. Some sort of fiction author. The call lasted eight minutes. Wallen’s phone has been radio silent since the call took place.”

Rossi read the memo. “This only gives a name and number. Where’s the conversation text?”

“The judge wouldn’t authorize a Title III.”

Rossi brought the deputy chief to her study and opened the Chun Lin patient files. “I recognize the name Harvey.” She skimmed the alphabetized list of patient names. “Right here. Dr. Lin had a patient named Lisa Harvey. Age forty-two. Resident of Ocala, Florida. Could be a wife or next of kin?”

The deputy chief examined the file. “I made some calls before my shift. Had Marion County Sheriff do a courtesy visit to Stewart Harvey’s last known address. No one home. The deputy who responded said he talked to neighbors. No one’s seen cars in the driveway for days.”

“What is Stewart Harvey’s connection to Captain Wallen?”

“Family friends? Former classmates? Fraternity brothers? Who knows…”

“Maybe Harvey dialed a wrong number?” Rossi posed.

“For eight minutes?” the deputy chief asked rhetorically. “We put a tap on Harvey’s cell phone, but the line’s been dead. Track him down and bring him in. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

“I have nothing to charge him with.”

“Then encourage him to cooperate voluntarily.”

“I’ll look into Lisa Harvey as well.” Rossi crossed her arms. “Captain Wallen depleted what was left of his savings before he fell off the grid. Internal affairs believes he’s on the run to avoid pending charges for evidence tampering. Could be he reached out to Stewart Harvey for money? I’d like to talk with Captain Wallen’s wife and find out what she knows about her husband’s connection to Harvey.”

The deputy chief raised an eyebrow. “Tread lightly, detective. If internal affairs finds out you talked to her without their knowledge, you’ll be facing more heat than I can shield you from.” The deputy chief furnished Rossi a business card with an address written on the back.

“What about IA?”

“I’ll send them down a different rabbit hole. This conversation stays between us.”

* * *

Rossi typed Captain Wallen’s Nottingham Drive address into her phone navigation and drove across town to a Nashville neighborhood with upscale cars and backyard pools with water fountains enclosed in two-story screened lanais. She ran the name Stewart Harvey through the IAFIS database from her wireless tablet on the Charger’s console. The search resulted in an outdated misdemeanor charge for prostitute solicitation. When she checked her department’s convicted felon database, she came up empty.

She contemplated the phone call between Stewart Harvey and Captain Wallen but found no obvious connection between the two men from her cursory background check. Whatever Wallen and Harvey had in common, she hoped the captain’s wife might have some insight.

She found her destination address with a blue convertible Jaguar F-Type in Captain Wallen’s driveway and circled the block to check for any lingering tail she might have caught on the way. She parked on the street near the captain’s residence and casually approached the driveway with the Jaguar. She waved her badge in front of the doorbell camera before a woman opened the door. “Mrs. Wallen?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Detective Blaire Rossi. I’d like to talk with you about your husband.”

Mrs. Wallen held the door in her Tennessee Titan sweatpants and a crew neck sweater with a diamond pendant necklace. She looked out to see her car alone in the driveway. “Get in line.”

“I’m not with internal affairs.”

“I gathered as much. Why are you here?”

“When was the last time you spoke to your husband?”

“I already provided a formal statement through my attorney. I don’t know where Peter is.”

“Are your daughters home?”

“They’re at college. Why?”

Rossi put her hand out. “The less people who know we talked, the better.”

“You’re a day late and a dollar shy if you think the rat squad isn’t watching my house at this moment.”

“They’re chasing a bogus lead.”

“And where does this leave us?” Heather Wallen inquired as she peered through the living room blinds to find the black unmarked cruiser missing from its usual spot across the street.

“I’m investigating another case tangential to your husband’s disappearance.”

“Peter hasn’t disappeared, he’s run away. If you’re here to accuse me of aiding and abetting—”

“Not my intent, Mrs. Wallen.”

“Then define tangential.”

“I can’t discuss the details of my investigation.”

“Spare me the legal sermon, detective. I’ve been a cop’s wife a long time.”

“You don’t seem very distraught about Captain Wallen’s disappearance.”

“You wouldn’t either if you knew the man the way I do.”

“Then enlighten me.”

Mrs. Wallen motioned for Detective Rossi to enter the lavishly decorated residence with heirloom furnishings and custom window treatments. A marble end table in the foyer displayed a platinum club business card holder with the name Heather Wallen engraved above a real estate agency logo. “If you’re looking to sell, I can refer you to a respectable agent. I don’t work with law enforcement anymore.”

“Did you know your husband was scheduled to fly out of Nashville?”

“He told me he was going on a business trip. Some sort of consulting contract. He didn’t say where, and I didn’t ask.”

“His luggage was found in the airport parking garage. Airline records indicate he recently purchased a flight to Jamaica, but he never boarded the plane.”

“Jamaica?”

“Jamaica has full extradition with the United States. If your husband was trying to evade pending charges, he picked a bad location to hide. Unless his objective was more recreational oriented.”

“Are you asking me if Peter was having an affair?”

“Was he?” Rossi inquired.

“If he was, I can tell you Peter’s extramarital proclivities don’t always include fraternizing with the opposite sex.”

Rossi gawked at Mrs. Wallen. “You’re saying your husband is gay?”

“In all our years of marriage, I’ve never known Peter to let a nice piece of ass go to waste, dick or no dick attached. He likes women when it suits him. I think he indulges the act of playing both sides.” Mrs. Wallen brought Rossi to the open den configured into a home office. “You look surprised. Are you married?”

“Not anymore,” Rossi replied.

“Are you gay?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re pretty for a detective, and you don’t seem like the single type.”

Rossi examined the real estate award plaques centered on the wall behind a glass L-shaped desk with dual monitors. She took her phone out and showed Mrs. Wallen a photo of Stewart Harvey. “Have you ever seen this man before?”

Mrs. Wallen shook her head. “Never seen him before in my life. You think my husband ran off with him?”

Rossi glanced around the room and noticed a framed vacation photo taken from a cruise ship with two couples enjoying drinks together. She recognized Captain Wallen and his wife. She also recognized the strikingly handsome CEO from the Volxen Labs website. “You look like you’re having fun.”

Heather Wallen acknowledged the framed vacation photo. “That was a cruise to Alaska for our twentieth anniversary.”

“With friends?”

“Sort of.” Heather pointed to the other man in the photo. “Peter went to college with William Brady. We bumped into him and his wife on the cruise.”

Rossi examined the picture closely when she noticed the peculiar look on the other wife’s face. “Given what you know about Captain Wallen, why did you stay married to him?”

“He had his interests. I have mine. Not everyone lives a perfect life, detective. Not even you.”

Rossi put her phone away and surveyed a tall bookshelf with various novels arranged in alphabetical order by the author’s last name. She noted the Cs through Gs, then stopped to put her fingers on a novel by Stewart Harvey. She opened the hardcover volume published four years prior and parsed over the introductory pages, searching for a personal note or autograph; anything that might connect Stewart Harvey to Captain Wallen. “Have you read this one?”

Mrs. Wallen scanned the book in Rossi’s hand. “Those books belong to Peter. I keep them in here so they don’t clutter the house.”

“When was the last time you spoke with him?”

“Two weeks ago.”

Rossi put the book back. “And he hasn’t tried to contact you since?”

“No, but…” Mrs. Wallen unlocked a file cabinet drawer to retrieve a printed page. “I found this email on Peter’s account and printed it before the department confiscated his laptop.”

Rossi moved closer to read the message.

I know what you did and why you did it. If I can’t live with myself, how can you? Either you tell the world, or I will.

“I assumed it was some jilted lover he met online or someone threatening to out him.”

“Why are you sharing this?”

Mrs. Wallen stood up and eyed a wedding photo on the edge of her desk. “Better or worse, Peter is still my husband. He deserves a fair trial like anyone else. Assuming you can find him.”