Deadly Pasts (Agent Nora Wexler Mysteries)

by CR Wiley

  “Exactly,” Nora said, glad he was getting it. “And the reason I’m here is that there was another student from a few years ago who faced another terrible tragedy. Back before I graduated, I was friends with a girl named Maria Correa, who was killed our junior year. Maybe you remember her. For some reason she never mentioned having a work-study in the Chemistry lab. I wanted to ask you if you remembered anything about her.”

  Gupta nodded thoughtfully and took another sip of his soup. Some of it got on his goatee and he wiped it off with his forefinger.

  “Of course I remember her. Who wouldn’t? May I ask what got you interested in following up on her?”

  “I’m trying to figure out what happened to her,” Nora answered. “It really cuts me that her killer might still be out there somewhere. We have a picture of him as he was leaving the bar with her, but it’s been impossible for us to find out who he is.”

  Nora watched him carefully, trying to see if his reflective expression would anticipate any real leads on what happened.

  “Here’s a question for you. It’s my understanding that no one saw the murder take place. Even if you tracked down this man, wouldn’t he be able to concoct some story of having parted from her and still not being the killer?”

  “I’m not one to get pushed aside by an easy lie. He could say anything he wanted, but there were fingerprints left on the murder weapon. They don’t have a match so far, but if we found this guy we’d be able to tie him to the murder,” Nora said. She was getting excited about solidifying that link and finally putting Maria and her case to rest, but Professor Gupta remained calm and measured.

  “And what if you find this man but discovered that for whatever reason the fingerprints do not match his?”

  It was a hypothetical Nora had never considered, and even an inkling of it brought a measure of despair.

  “That would be impossible. There’s just no way. If they don’t, there would be nothing left to go on,” she said.

  A flash of worry gave way to laughter. It was a ridiculous supposition, a joke even.

  “In science, we need to do our best to account for every possibility and anticipate outcomes wildly divergent from our expectations. I’ve built my career studying rare instances of molecules that we would expect to behave one way but somehow react differently. The universe has a penchant for defying our certainty.”

  Nora nodded, but for now considering whether the man Maria left with wasn’t the killer didn’t fit in with her need to find him.

  “OK, I’ll take your word for it, but I hope you don’t mind if we talk about Maria a little more. Do you have any guesses about why Maria wouldn’t have ever told anyone about working in the chemistry lab?” Nora asked.

  Gupta shrugged his thin shoulders.

  “That’s something I may never know. I often said hi to her around campus and she wasn’t reluctant about returning the kindness, but she was congenial to everyone she knew,” he explained.

  “And what did her work consist of? Did she come in contact with a lot of people from outside the college community?”

  “Not that I could tell. It involved a lot of prep work and cleaning, the labor most students don’t want to do. I highly doubt she got much enjoyment out of it, which might be why she didn’t discuss it openly.”

  Nora began to wonder if she was about to be completely adrift. She opened her mouth but stopped short when the professor resumed speaking.

  “Despite a lack of enjoyment, there might have been something other than a paycheck she was doing it for. I now recall that she had me write a few recommendations for her. I think she was applying for a summer internship or a job. The details escape me at the moment.”

  Nora perked up. This was news to her.

  “Maria was a psychology major. Depending on the job, a recommendation from a chemistry professor could’ve carried a lot of weight. Is there any way I could see them?”

  The professor nodded and turned to his computer, an old iMac.

  “Let me print them out for you. She was a hard worker and I’m sure the letters were glowing, if I recall. My mistake. It looks like there was only one.”

  The sound of a printer echoed through the hall. Gupta got up and returned with a printed page in his hands, which he gave to Nora. She looked closely at the document, immediately seizing on the name of the company the letter was intended for.

  “Altec Industries?” Nora said.

  “They do actively recruit on college campuses and have an extensive internship program, I believe.”

  “OK, I’ll check them out. This is a whole side of Maria’s life I knew nothing about!”

  “Only trying to be of service. Give my best to Lauren. Oh, apparently a student has come to see me,” Professor Gupta said. The footsteps in the hall were Nora’s cue to leave. She thanked the professor again and headed out. Before she got in the elevator, she’d researched enough on her phone to find that Altec Industries was located in San Francisco. Her rental car was in for a little more use.

  The opportunity to make the trip across the bridge to Altec Industries came the very next day, but before she could make it past the living room for the front door she found Stephanie on the couch with her head lolled against a pillow.

  “Hey, are you OK?” Nora asked. Steph’s face was puffy and red.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just feeling a little nauseated lately is all. Actually, the night before last I went into the ER just to check on things. Glad my insurance carried over!” she said, making Nora cringe.

  “Why didn’t you say anything to us? If you weren’t feeling well, we could’ve driven you or waited with you there.”

  “I’m not an invalid, Nora. I can still do things for myself even though I’m pregnant.”

  Nora shook her head. “Speaking of not saying anything to anyone, did you know that Maria used to have a work-study in the chemistry lab?”

  “She might have mentioned it once or twice. Most of those interns just do boring data entry on the computers. I never thought anything of it. She’d said things about trying on your clothes while you were asleep too, which you probably never heard. You should investigate that.”

  Nora didn’t need to draw upon her FBI experience to see that Steph’s condition influenced her snarky attitude. Rather than go into the details of Professor Gupta’s recommendation and the internship at Altec, she decided proceeding with the trip was the best course of action.

  While traffic slowed her down substantially, the weather was gorgeous and the view of the bay proved irresistible. Sitting in a parking garage, Nora spent a few more minutes burning through her data plan finding out about the cognitive research Altec conducted, which seemed a perfect blend of Maria’s psychology major and chemistry experience. Judging by the impressive building and the stories she read about interns moving up the ranks, if Maria had been around now she might’ve been doing better than any of them.

  Walking around the ground floor of the building, Nora noticed how many young professionals were around. They seemed like a great-looking bunch that enjoyed their work. It even crossed Nora’s mind that she should take a chance and apply for a job here.

  Although most of the people milling about were young, the men behind the reception counter were old enough to be retirees. One of them had a warm smile for Nora as she leaned against the counter.

  “Hi, do you have a few minutes to help with some questions I have about your internship program? I had a friend who was applying and I’m trying to find out more about it,” Nora said.

  The older man wore a nametag that read James. He had thick gray hair and white eyebrows so big it seemed like lab mice were above his eyes.

  “Answering your questions where I can would be my pleasure, but I can’t speak about specific applications. Why don’t I take a quick stroll with you around the facility? You can see where we have our focus groups and clinical trials,” he said, getting the OK from his companion and coming around. He was a sturdy man, taller than Nora by at
least a foot. He put his elbow out like a gentleman and Nora took it.

  “Can you tell me if all of the interns do the same thing? What does the program entail?” Nora asked.

  “A lot of what we do here involves teenagers and adolescents, and we find that having young interns run those studies creates a better atmosphere. That leaves me out, but then again, I wouldn’t know the first thing about some of the instruments and doodads used here. What I do know is that our internship program is one of the most prestigious in the country, and applicants are rigorously screened. The application process itself involves a five-day stretch of living in the building and taking part in studies together to see who would best fit into our culture.”

  Nora narrowed her eyebrows. This was starting to sound more like a summer camp than a job.

  “Wait, a five-day period when everybody lives here? When do they do that?”

  “We time these things in waves to correspond with the most common spring break weeks.”

  Is that what Maria was doing during spring break just weeks before she was killed? Nora had gone home to be with her family and friends, and as far as the emails she read indicated Maria had done the same, but it suddenly became apparent that she never mentioned her exact location.

  Nora glanced through the door windows, seeing smartly dressed young men and women speaking to kids who sat in a circle of chairs. It looked like a classroom, except the words on a white board suggested they were discussing brand name drugs.

  “And then after that there are more formal interviews until the end of the selection process. Interns are offered one-year contracts, and those who perform in the top tenth are given full-time positions within the company for very competitive pay,” the receptionist explained.

  Nora nodded as they turned a corner and seemed to be moving back toward the direction of the front desk.

  “I see. And there’s no way I could look at an application from a few years ago?” she asked.

  “My apologies, but that material isn’t something we make available,” he said.

  Nora sighed, reached into her bag, and pulled out the last card she had to play.

  “I’m actually looking for someone who I think was involved in this program, or at least had applied. Here’s a picture of him. Do you happen to know who he is?”

  Nora produced the image of the handsome young man from the bar. The receptionist studied it closely but seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes. He handed it to the other receptionist for inspection. Nora would’ve bet her life savings that Maria met her killer while applying for this internship.

  “Took me a second, but that’s Seanie, no doubt about it,” the other man said.

  “Seanie?” Nora said. Rapt attention was an understatement.

  “Seanie Green. He passed the internship a few years ago and is already up to junior management now.”

  A deluge of relief came over Nora at the thought that she’d finally found her suspect. Now all she had to do was find a way to take him down. Seanie Green, your past is about to catch up with you.

  “Is he around now? Is there any way I could see him? I’d so much like to do that,” she said. The two men smiled.

  “Let me check if he’s around,” the first receptionist said. Nora’s mind was already going a mile a minute. If meeting Maria’s killer was imminent, what would she do? “Yes, he’s in his office and has a few minutes. Go on up.”

  Nora thanked them and went for the elevator. If it was really him, the possibilities for what might happen were mind-bending. More than anything, Nora prepared for him to recognize that she had come to take him down and fight back.

  CHAPTER 16

  ALTEC INDUSTRIES

  390 STUTTER STREET

  SAN FRANCISCO, CA

  The elevator doors opened in front of Nora, removing one more barrier between her and Maria’s killer. Seanie Green. How long she’d been waiting to learn that name. She would’ve gone to the ends of the Earth to track him down, but trudging through the hall proved remarkably taxing. The thought of Maria and all she could’ve been felt like such an incredible weight.

  Passing a few cubicles among the countless on the floor brought her to one with his name on the label quicker than she thought. Her heart beat faster as her eyes came across a young man’s light brown hair. He turned as soon as she was there, and the shock of recognition instantaneously came over her. His appearance had changed somewhat since that night at the bar. Dark circles under his eyes and noticeably dry skin on his cheeks slightly detracted from his imposing handsomeness.

  “Hi, can I help you?” he said. In the elevator, Nora had pulled her hair back tight in a way she’d never done in the hopes of masking her appearance. He didn’t seem to recognize her.

  “Sorry to bother you. I’m looking for the Great American Music Hall and the guys downstairs seemed to think you lived around there.”

  “No, I don’t live even close to there,” he said, squinting. He looked tired and it may well have been because of his job, but Nora imagined it was a sign of a guilty conscience.

  “But you know the way, right?”

  “That’s over on O’Farrell in the 800’s…”

  “My mind is like a sieve and I’ll forget all of this the second I walk away. Would it be a big pain for you to write out the way to get there?” she said, feigning a look in her bag. “I can’t believe I don’t have anything to write on.”

  The annoyance started to appear on Seanie’s face as he turned and pulled a sheet of paper from the printer. Grabbing a pen, he sat down to jot down the directions. He was a leftie, and the fingers on his right hand held the page steady on the table. The sight of him nearly had Nora drooling, but it had nothing to do with his appearance.

  After a few lines he stopped writing and turned his attention to Nora, peering at her in a way that set off alarm bells in her head. A weak smile was her only defense.

  “Do I know you from somewhere?” he asked.

  “What? I’ve never been in this building before in my life,” she said, trying to play it cool.

  He finished writing the directions. The way he got up to hand her the page gave her the same impression of his presence as she got at the bar. Cool, confident, and collected, but he’d just made his biggest mistake.

  “Thank you so much, and I’m incredibly sorry for the trouble. I’ll let you get back to what you were doing,” she said. She held the very corner of the page between her thumb and index finger, carrying it all the way down the hall and to the elevator. She sensed someone behind her, but when she looked back it was just another Altec employee.

  Nora returned to her car as fast as she could. She set the paper on the passenger’s seat and stared at it for a moment. The paper was destined to go straight to the police in order to match the fingerprints from the alley crime scene, but that didn’t mean she was going to just hand it over without making sure she retained some of the documentation.

  Her first stop was a grocery store, where she picked up some construction paper, scotch tape, cocoa powder, and a soft brush. Back in her car she taped the paper with directions on the dashboard, dusted a section of the page with the cocoa powder, gently brushed to reveal the fingerprint, set tape over it, and taped the captured print on a piece of the construction paper.

  Smiling, she snapped a picture of it with her phone, enlarged the size, and compared it to the copy of the crime scene print she had in her bag. If they were vastly different, she might’ve been able to tell, but figuring out if it was an exact match was beyond her. If only Travis had been there!

  Instead it would be up to the loafers in the Berkeley Police Department to make the final determination. She hit the gas, hoping that before the end of the day she’d be right back here watching them put the cuffs on Seanie Green. The drive back across the bridge seemed interminable, but anything longer than the blink of an eye would’ve been too slow for Nora and the adrenaline pumping inside her.

  After throwing open the door to the po
lice station, Nora marched to the front counter, where Officer Plevy happened to be sitting.

  “I’ve got it! I’ve got his fingerprints. Seanie Green is the man with whom Maria left the night she was murdered. He works at Altec Industries in San Francisco. I found out she got a recommendation to work there after learning about a campus job she had,” she said.

  “Whoa, slow down,” the officer said, taking a look at the paper sliding toward him. He cringed. “What did you do to this?”

  “I lifted one of the fingerprints myself, just to check. But they’re all over it. I only touched this one corner here. All we need to do is match the prints, arrest him, interrogate him, prosecute him, and then lock him away for the rest of his life,” she said, beaming.

  “OK, we’ll run it through,” Plevy said. He reached out to take the paper, but Nora caught and held his hand. They looked each other square in the eye.

  “This is our chance to put this to rest. Call me as soon as you know, and be ready to organize bringing him in,” she said.

  To find some way to burn a grueling afternoon, Nora drove through the streets of Berkeley, looking for distractions. She drove along the coastline, went up to the hills, cruised around Elmwood, and started to turn back for Caroline’s house from San Pablo Park when she came to a red light. Her arm propping up her head, she shifted to look out the window and saw a thin man in a sweatshirt with the hood up ducking into a tiny convenience store.

  She wouldn’t have been able to recognize him if he hadn’t glanced back, but their eyes met, and his sharp eyes, narrow face, and brown bangs gave him away.

  “Danny…”

  He continued into the store, and without thinking Nora left the running vehicle and ran after him. The light changed and horns blared, but her eyes were fixed on the figure through the window slipping into one of the aisles. He’d seen her, but her hair might’ve thrown him off. She pulled the tie out and elbowed the store’s front door open. The shelves were short enough for her to see him by a cooler case in the back.

  She felt like she was on fire with rage. It wasn’t until she had her hands on him that his head jerked to look at her. Effortless was the only word that could describe how easy it was to push him onto the floor.