Page 7 of Innocent Intent

Interesting, Davis thought. Good men rarely got murdered in cold blood the way that Williams had. Amira, however, wasn’t the shooter. She had a solid alibi, considering she’d spent the evening at dinner with her boyfriend, after which they had drinks at a bar, not leaving until a little after three a.m.

A good man.

Williams might have been a good man, which Davis doubted, but he also had secrets. His identification didn’t match who he was supposed to be. The New York license was valid, not a fake, and the credit cards he kept in his wallet matched the identity on the license. He had plenty of personal items around the apartment, signifying that he spent enough time there, but as Jerrod Williams and not Niles Anderson, Cassidy Evans’s legal husband.

“What are you hiding, Anderson or Williams, or whoever the fuck you really are?”

Davis drummed his fingers on the photos of the body before leaning back in his chair, lifting one leg to rest an ankle on the opposite thigh.

“Once I figure out who you are, then I can start to figure out who killed you.”

3.

Dr. Cassidy Evans. Her name meant something. She wasn’t exactly a world-renowned celebrity, but her name held value. It had taken a long time for Cassidy to reach the point where she was proud of the woman she had become, but she had indeed arrived.

As a child, she lived with parents who shouldn’t have been allowed to procreate. They weren’t abusive or cruel. Jana Oliver and Donald Reynolds were simply careless and irresponsible. Inserting a kid into the lives of two people who loathed responsibility didn’t make for a happy, nurturing home life. There were flashes of memories where Cassidy could recall her rough start with Jana and Donald. Only a few, and she rarely revisited the time she spent with her parents. Most children, even those from broken homes, had good memories to balance the bad. Not Cassidy. The flashes from the time she spent with her parents were of hard times. Being left alone, hungry to the point of pain, dirty, and neglected. Cassidy never had the proper care that children required. There were no hugs, smiles, or encouraging words, only mutters about how she slowed them down, got in the way, and cost them money they didn’t have.

The most prevalent memory was when Cassidy was eight years old. Her mother marched her to the neighbor’s house, which stood directly across from the shotgun home her parents had rented. Every structure in the neighborhood was run-down—paint peeling, rotted wood, and barely standing—but Cassidy loved to visit her neighbor, Ms. Clara. Clara Evans. Her house wasn’t the best with its old, worn furniture and creaky wooden floors, but it always smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. The place was also spotless, and Ms. Clara always had food and treats. Those fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies were the best, warm and gooey.

The day Jana stood on the porch with Cassidy and shoved her toward Ms. Clara for the last time, Cassidy didn’t know it then, but it was the best decision her mother, or possibly both parents, had ever made. She wasn’t sure how her father felt. He didn’t bother saying goodbye and instead, sat impatiently in their old, ratty Honda, tapping the horn while Jana severed ties with their child.

“Her stuff’s in the house. Door’s open. Get what you need, but you better hurry. Rent’s three months behind. Landlord will be showing up soon,” Jana said in a rush of words.

Cassidy’s eyes bounced between Jana and Ms. Clara, trying to figure out what was going on. She’d stayed with Ms. Clara enough times to know their usual routine, but this time felt different. Maybe it was her instincts or the hushed conversation the two women had, but Cassidy knew. She knew that her parents were leaving her behind, and instead of being sad, she felt relieved. Her mind kept circling back to the scent of vanilla and cinnamon. She would much rather have something pleasing than the smell of stale air and garbage.

That was the last time Cassidy saw her parents. Years later, she realized Ms. Clara was a retired social worker. She’d offered to take Cassidy in when she found out Jana and Donald were leaving. The child had been neglected, deprived of basic needs, and the worst, love. She had always wanted a child of her own, but it never happened. Until Cassidy. Things were eventually made official through the government. An abandoned Black child didn’t make much of a wave. No one really cared about her well-being and having someone willing to accept the responsibility of caring for the child meant one less case file they had to deal with. When Ms. Clara asked to foster Cassidy, the request was approved, and adoption eventually followed. Cassidy Oliver became Cassidy Evans. That was the end of Cassidy’s old life and the turning point where she began to have good memories.

Ms. Clara passed when Cassidy was eighteen. Died in her sleep, but she left Cassidy the best gift possible, as if she hadn’t already done enough. What little money she saved was placed in a trust for Cassidy. The funds were sufficient to pay tuition at a junior college, and thus, she began her formal education. Cassidy once looked up her parents and located Jana in a county jail for credit card fraud. She never found her father but hadn’t invested much time in searching. He could have been dead for all she knew. Neither of them had ever tracked Cassidy down over the years. If they didn’t care, why should she? Her name had been officially changed to Evans, but they could have located her if they truly wanted to. They hadn’t.

The early, short time she’d spent with her parents began Cassidy’s lack of trust in people. Cassidy’s parents let her down. They weren’t who they proclaimed to be. Frauds. They stole the identities of others, living off their hard-earned money, and then moving on. Now, Cassidy was experiencing the same thing years after she’d felt secure enough to trust and love.

Jerrod Williams.

Her husband was a fraud. She let him in, and he let her down. Cassidy stood in her kitchen, staring out into the living room. Their home was a spacious one-level modern construct. Clean lines, multiple rows of paneled glass, and a mix of imported marble and bamboo wood floors that had been customized with the ability to warm in the colder months. This was her dream home.

She held a glass of wine, Riesling, one of her favorites. The glass was half-empty or full, depending on how you looked at it. Right now, Cassidy’s life had been flipped upside down multiple times, so she viewed it as half-empty. What was the point in seeing the good in things?

Or people.

“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” she whispered lowly to the ghost of herself that now existed.

Because she had worked so closely with APD early on in her career, Cassidy had experienced enough profiling situations to know what was expected. Grieving family members, lost intentions, and uncertain futures. The cases she had worked on in the past gave her multiple blueprints of what to expect and how she should feel. Grief and loss were universal, after all, right? However, none of those scenarios seemed to fit her mood correctly.

She couldn’t grieve her husband’s death, at least not yet, because the dead body she’d seen carried her husband’s face but not the man’s name. The victim wasn’t Niles Anderson. It was Jerrod Williams.

My husband wasn’t murdered. A stranger was.

That was what she kept telling herself, but regardless, Cassidy’s rational mind understood this new reality she found herself in. Her life had been a façade. Her husband had been dishonest, and she had been played. Niles Anderson was no better than the parents who had left her behind. He was a fraud, just like them. Cassidy swallowed a healthy gulp of wine and stared blankly at an unfocused view of her pristine home. Her fingers gripped the glass of wine until she felt a pinch of pain and lowered her eyes to it.

Okay, first round: anger.

She couldn’t mourn the loss of her husband, but she very much could be infuriated by his lies.

Cassidy slammed the glass on the counter and stormed into their bedroom. She paused several steps inside the neatly kept space as if trying to decide what she was doing. With a deep breath, she found a brief moment of clarity, then moved to the closet. The massive, two-sided walk-in separated their lives.

His and Hers.

How ironic.

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