The Black Sheep

Audra spent the early part of Monday in her hotel room going through the photo albums and letters her team designated as her portion. When she got to a letter that hadn't been opened, she was surprised. The postmark was approximately six months prior to Abigail's death. It was addressed to Abigail with no return address.

Audra took care to get a pair of gloves and opened the letter on the table unfolding it as tenderly as possible.

"It still breaks my heart that it is over." Audra read the first sentence out loud and quickly trailed down the letter to see the signature. "Eli Shelley," she read his name.

She took the letter from her room to the command post up the hallway. Opening the door to find the normal hub of business going on, she zeroed in on Cordero, taking the letter directly to him and placing it on the table in front of him.

"There's a letter never opened from Eli to Abigail six months before she was killed, saying he's heartbroken that it's over," Audra explained.

Cordero read the letter in its entirety. "Where is he now?"

"As far as I know he's in prison on the vehicular homicide of Amanda Stuart, which he may not be guilty of."

"Find him and talk to him today," Cordero said. "Take someone with you. And since I haven't seen you since before the dinner party, I wanted to fill you in that shortly after the party let out we monitored a strange energy source coming from the Shelley house around the same time Yolanda says Ethan went to pick up Margret."

"Really?" Audra asked.

"Yes, it showed up as a pink signature. Early the following morning it showed up again at the Shelley house as well as at Ethan's."

"While Margret was there?" Audra asked.

"We tried to call to see if everything was okay but we couldn't get through to his cellphone."

"Did you tell him this?" Audra asked, scared.

"I don't know if we should."

"Why not?" Audra countered.

Cordero let out a heavy sigh. "I sent Thomas to stake out the house. He went to pick up Margret Shelley then he took her to his home."

Audra swallowed. "So, you think this signal came from Margret? Have you seen that energy signal since?"

"No," Cordero said, "but still, it's quite a coincidence."

"The constellations haven't moved much in the last week. If the killer is one of the Shelleys they could be after Margret as the seventh sister," Audra said.

Cordero shrugged. "I'll leave it to your discretion. What do you want to do?"

"Ask Thomas to find out where Eli Shelley is being held. I'm going to call Ethan and give him a heads up just in case his or Margret's life is in danger."

"Yes, ma'am." Cordero gave her a salute.

"I want the information sent to my phone when I get in my car in the next five minutes. Have Eric Neil meet me at my car."

Audra was well aware that she was giving orders to her boss, but he didn't seem to mind. She hustled to her room to slip on her socks and shoes as well as her gun belt, loading it up with the specter zapper and her handgun. She clipped her badge on the edge of the belt then strapped her specter shield onto her arm and activated it. She picked up her cellphone and dialed Ethan.

He didn't answer. When his voice mail picked up she cursed.

"Ethan, I know you're probably in the middle of getting the new station built, but I have to warn you. The night you picked up Margret, the command post picked up a very strange energy signature that went from the Shelley mansion to your house. No one knows exactly what it was or who it came from, so I just want you to watch your back and look after Margret if you can. I'm going to visit Eli Shelley in prison today, but you can reach me on my cellphone." She paused as she reached for the door to her room. "I love you."

She hung up the phone and a text from Thomas with Eli's location came through. She sent a thank you text back and let him know that she was on the way. Eric was standing at her car when she entered the B&B parking lot.

***

The state prison that housed Eli Shelley was nearly forty-five minutes away from the small town of Specter, Georgia. Eric Neil must have caught the edge of her mood as he refrained from speaking to her for the entire duration of the trip. When she parked in a visitor's spot and took the key from the ignition, Eric reached over and placed a calming hand over hers.

She looked at him gratefully. He smiled and winked. Without a word they exited the car. Audra dispensed with any notion of pleasantry as she impatiently flashed her badge at everything that attempted to talk to her until she was placed in a small room with Eric to wait for them to produce Eli Shelley.

When the door opened, Audra was taken aback by what she saw. If the triplets had been hard to tell apart five years ago, there would be no mistaking one for the other now.

Eli had beefed up in prison. He was at least two hundred pounds of steel muscle and his tall frame made every ounce of him more intimidating than Audra had anticipated. He had the same dark hair and eyes as his brothers, and she could see the resemblance in the shape of his nose and the set of his mouth, but that was where the similarities came to a screeching halt.

His hands and legs were bound with shackles. A guard, no more than half of Eli's size, escorted him to the table, helped him take a seat, and hooked his shackles to a lock on the floor.

Eli smiled as if the visit were a welcome surprise. Audra slapped her badge on the table and the smile fell from his face. The guard stood in the corner to the right.

"Leave," Audra said.

"But, I have to watch…" the guard began.

Eric grabbed the guard by the collar and pushed him out of the room. "We'll call if we need you."

"What happened?" Eli asked.

"Gwyneth Miller was murdered," Audra said flatly.

She watched as the giant of a man shackled in a prison uniform wilted right in front of her.

"How?" his voice was authoritative but still barely above a whisper.

"We can't explain how, but her windpipe was crushed by an unknown force."

"What do you mean force?" Eli questioned.

"That is as much as I can tell you," Audra said and watched him get angry. "I'm here about Abigail Stevens."

"What about her?" He looked down and swallowed.

"We recently found a letter from you to her that was unopened."

"So you think I must have killed her," Eli stated.

"Did you?" Eric asked.

"No." Eli looked at Audra when he answered. "I loved Abigail. After all we'd been through…" He allowed a smile as charming as his politician brother's to touch his lips. "She was a spit-fire."

"What can you tell us about her?" Audra sat back to read his body language as it relaxed while he conjured up memories of Abigail Stevens.

"She was skinny," he began. "It was the first thing I noticed about that girl when I was in high school. She was so damned skinny. I wondered if she ever ate. She wasn't nothing but twelve I guess and a pretty easy target to pick on cause she was one of those poor kids of the Native people, as we called them. I'm sure there is a politically correct way to say it. Anyway, most little girls ignore stuff like that, or run away crying. But not her. I said something about her chicken legs and she came right back with well, you noticed them didn't you?" Eli laughed.

"Twelve years old and I guess I was sixteen," he continued. "I saw her off and on in town, then I went off to college and came back to visit. Kenneth was all geeked up about professor Hawthorne at the high school while he was interning. Brendon and I never really cared for that smarty-pants guy. But, anyway, he went to visit him at the school and took me to meet his smarty-pants boyfriend while he was tutoring some students. And there she was. I recognized her face but she wasn't so skinny anymore. She caught me looking at her legs and smiled. Still looking aren't you?" Eli tried to mock Abigail Stevens' sixteen-year-old voice.

"Bold girl. I liked it. No games, just straightforward. She got pregnant and we came up with a plan to elope after I graduated. I had just a couple of months left when her mother found out and tried to make her tell who the father was. She said one of the Shelley boys. But, she never named me. I don't know why that bothered me. It was like she was saying it was one of us, but really didn't know which one it was.

"I knew there was no chance that she slept with Kenneth, so I asked Brendon if the baby could be his. He just shrugged and said anything was possible. Now that I'm older I know he was bullshitting. He was drunk or high most of the way through college. Abigail was all about being alcohol and drug free. I couldn't even smoke around her. Anyway, I asked Abigail if it were possible that it was Brendon's. She swore no way.

"I asked her why she didn't name me. She asked me why I didn't name myself. I know it was a cruel thing to do, but I said I wasn't sure if I should. The look that girl gave me could freeze water. Next thing I know my parents and her mother made a deal; she'd give up the baby in exchange for money. So, Margret grew up thinking I was her damn brother. Giving all of her love to my parents, none to me or Abigail.

"When I came back from college, I learned Abigail had become a stripper at The Scoop. I couldn't believe it. I went to see her one night. But, I never got the nerve to talk to her. Next thing I know, she elopes with some Indian guy and gets the hell out of Specter. I hated her for leaving."

"But then she came back," Audra said.

"Actually, I went to find her. I asked her to come back. Told her about Margret and how she was doing. I said we could still be a family. It took some time but I wore her down. Eventually we started having an affair. Her husband was on tour when she decided to leave him."

"She told her sister that he died in Desert Storm," Audra informed Eli.

"Yes, there was some business between them. Something to do with immigration and a product that he was trying to sell to the US government. I never knew much about it. But, the way she explained it, it would be better if people in Specter didn't try to speculate about what happened for her to divorce and then marry me. The best clean slate possible, or something like that."

"So, she gets pregnant again," Audra pushed him along. "Yours?"

Eli nods. "Yep. I put her up at the apartments we owned at the time, and she started a bank account that I could drop money into every month. We were going to try to get married. But then…"

"What happened?" Audra coaxed.

"I told my father. He told me that I couldn't marry Abigail because Abigail was my sister."

Eli swallowed hard.

"I thought he was lying," Eli said. "But, I had to find out. So, I took DNA from both of them and ran it."

Eli shook his head. "I didn't care. No one else knew. I wasn't going to tell Abigail. I was going to just pretend I didn't know. I made the announcement and that was that. A lot of rumors flew around town, but we were going to get married, take Margret, and move out of that town."

"Who do you think killed Abigail?" Audra asked him.

"Her husband," he whispered. "I never knew what all that immigration and product sales she mentioned was about. But, I figured, maybe they thought she was some kind of liability."

"After Abigail's death, why did you continue to put large sums of money into her account?" Audra wondered.

"I didn't," Eli said, confused. "If she was getting money after her death it wasn't from me."

Eric and Audra exchanged glances.

"One more question," Audra said. "Were you the one who ran Amanda Stuart off the road, or was it your brother Brendon?"

Eli frowned and cleared his throat. "I did it."