Tonight, though, I wasn’t looking at any of that. As soon as I got home, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt and poured a mug of Mac & Jack’s from the growler in my refrigerator. The sun wasn’t down yet, and the early evening was still balmy. I popped in a Brandi Carlile CD and listened to her tell me about her dreams. I plopped myself down on a lounge chair on my balcony and considered the case.
Richard’s argument regarding the odds made sense, but I don’t always trust the odds. I don’t know if I’m burdened with a bad-luck charm, or what, but whatever it is, I’ve had my share of unlikely calamities. The second time I got wounded was on the outskirts of Tikrit in Iraq in 2003. I was crouched behind a rock wall—excellent cover, in theory. But I still got hit when an RPG blew up in front of the wall where I was hiding and sent a piece of shrapnel whizzing past the wall and into the rocks behind me, from which a good-sized chunk ricocheted back and hit me in the right thigh, just below my butt. I was the only one to get hit. Put me in the hospital for a week and a half. What are the odds of that happening? So, based solely on the odds, the 5 percent theory made me nervous. And the overdue silent serial killer, not to mention several busloads of registered sex offenders, didn’t help.
Chapter 8
IT DOESN’T RAIN all that often in the summer in Seattle, but by Friday morning, it hadn’t officially rained for forty days straight, and that was newsworthy. Warm and dry—again. Last night, Toni agreed to meet me at the office at 8:00 a.m. The plan was to drive together to Pacific Wine and Spirits for the nine o’clock appointment I’d made with Robbie. Before we talked with Reggie Campbell about supplier and customer lists, I wanted to speak to Cindy Dunlap in the HR Department and get a copy of the employee names.
We arrived at Pacific Wine and Spirits with five minutes to spare. After we met Robbie in the front, he took us back and introduced us to Cindy Dunlap. He then excused himself, saying he was late for a meeting.
Cindy Dunlap was a short, middle-aged woman with hair that was half brown, half gray. She wore a gray dress suit. First thing, I asked for an employee list.
“Do you need all the employees?” she said. “There are 417 of us altogether, in three states. If you’d like, I can distill the list to just our Seattle employees, or even to those who worked in Gina’s department.”
“Good question,” I said, considering our resources. “Why don’t we start with just the Seattle employees.”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get started on the printout. There are 274 employees in our Seattle operation. It will only take a minute.”
“Two hundred seventy-four,” I said. “I think we’re just looking to match up a name. That shouldn’t take long.”
“Before you get started,” Toni said, “you’ve met pretty much everyone in the company, right?”
“Yes. I generally do an orientation with every new employee—at least those in Seattle.”
“Good. Do you recognize this person?” She took the picture of Kara from me and showed it to Dunlap. “We believe her name is Kara. We don’t have a last name.”
She took the picture from Toni and stared at it intently for thirty seconds or so. “I’m sorry, I don’t recognize her at all.”
It only took a couple of minutes for Cindy to run the query through the company’s computers and print us a list.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said, as she handed me the paper.
“No problem,” she answered. “I hope you can find Gina. We sure need her around here.”
“We’re working on it,” Toni said. She took the list from me. “One other question, Cindy. We haven’t had a chance to interview you yet. Last Friday, as I understand it, you accompanied Robbie to Gina’s condo to check on her. Find out why she hadn’t come to work?”
“Yes,” she said. I looked at Toni. These questions were a surprise—something we hadn’t discussed.
Toni continued. “Robbie already told us what he saw, but it might be helpful to hear another perspective, just in case we missed something or in case something new comes out.”
“Okay,” Cindy said. “We were actually only there for a few minutes. The front door was locked, but Robbie has a key. He unlocked the door and we went in. The curtains were drawn, so it was a little dark. We turned on the lights inside and looked around.”
“What did you see?” Toni asked.
“Nothing, really,” Cindy said. She thought for a second before continuing. “Gina wasn’t there, of course. We checked the whole condo. But nothing looked out of place or out of order. Her keys and purse were on the bar by the kitchen. Then Robbie looked outside and saw Gina’s car. After that, we turned off the lights and locked up. We came back to the office, and Robbie called the police. We were careful not to touch anything the entire time we were there.”
Toni wrote all this in her notebook. “That’s it, that’s all I needed. Thank you.”
Toni turned to me and held the list so we both could scan it. At about the same moment, we saw the same thing on the first page.
“What about this?” I asked Cindy, pointing to a name. “It says there’s a girl named Karen Brown in the shipping department. This resembles the name we’re looking for. Does this Karen Brown look anything like the girl in this picture who we thought was named Kara?”
Cindy laughed.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, turning to her.
“It’s just—well, you’re looking for the girl in the photo—a blonde-haired, blue eyed Kara. Karen Brown who works in accounting? She’s black.”
“Oh.”
~~~~
After this unfruitful encounter, Cindy took us back to the accounting department where we met up with Reggie Carpenter. Robbie rejoined us a couple minutes later.
“Any progress?” Reggie asked, after we’d said our hellos and sat down.
“A little,” I said. “We’ve learned that this guy,” I pointed to the group photo, “is a genuine pillar of society named Eduardo Salazar.”
“Actually, he’s an illegal alien also known as Eddie Stiletto who was arrested last year for attacking a girlfriend with a knife,” Toni said.
“Holy shit,” Reggie said. “He seemed weird, but not that weird.”
“He’s a real piece of work,” I answered.
“We also learned that he’s got some dangerous friends,” Toni added.
“That’s right,” I agreed. “They nearly jumped us in the parking lot at Ramon’s just for asking questions about him.”
“Great. Is there any way that this lands on me?” Reggie asked, suddenly looking concerned. She flipped a strand of hair that had fallen across her face.
“No way,” I answered. “We have the only copies of the photos—us and the police, anyway. The only thing Salazar’s thugs seemed concerned about was our interest in Eddie Salazar. I’m 100 percent confident you don’t have anything to worry about.” This was mostly true. I was actually about 95 percent confident. There’s that pesky 5 percent risk again. Like they say, shit happens.
“Good,” Reggie said. She seemed to believe me, and I suppose that for now, anyway, that was the best.
I continued. “We’re also pretty confident now that the girl in the picture you couldn’t identify is named Kara. You were close when you thought it was Karen. We’ve been led to believe that Kara is someone who works in your industry. We thought there was a slim chance that she might be an employee here, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.”
“I’ve never seen her around here,” Reggie said. “I know most of the people here. I’d have recognized her.”
“True. We probably should have asked you first,” I said.
“I didn’t recognize her, either,” Robbie said.
Toni nodded. “She probably doesn’t work here,” she said. “It was just a shot. We think it’s actually more likely that she works for one of your suppliers or maybe one of your customers, but we wanted to make sure. We want to talk to her to see if she knows anything more about Eddie Salazar.”
Reggie nodded. “I can run a report of vendors and customers on our accounting system,” Reggie said. “It will just take a few minutes.”
“Do you also keep records of contact people at those companies?” Toni asked.
“Yes—it’s part of the same database on the accounting system.”
“Can you add that to the report?”
“It’s already there. We have a standard vendor report that will give you company name, address, phone, and contact. The customer report will do the same.”
“Perfect,” I replied. I considered this for a second as I referred to my notes. Then I turned to Robbie. “Robbie, we haven’t seen Gina’s office yet. While the report’s running, would you mind unlocking Gina’s office so I can have another look around?”
~~~~
Robbie took us back to the corner where Gina’s office was located and unlocked the door.
“We’ve kept it locked in case you guys or the police needed something,” he said as he flipped on the lights. “I wanted it to be in exactly the same condition as the last time she was here. I had our IT guys set it up so that I automatically get copies of her incoming e-mails, so the business doesn’t suffer. Or at least, suffer much. I’m not nearly as good at what she does as she is. I can’t negotiate and make arrangements like she can. My talent seems to be in operations. Shipping, receiving, that sort of thing.”
We went inside and I said, “Robbie, speaking of e-mails, there was no computer at her condo. I’m wondering how she gets e-mails when she’s not at work.”
“I’m not sure. I think she used to get them on her phone, as well as on the computer here,” he said. “They must be tied together somehow.”
“I’d like to take a look at her e-mail records and see if I can find anything, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure,” he said. “Go ahead. I haven’t seen anything that looks suspicious as the message copies have come across my desk, but you’re welcome to have a look.” He pointed to the chair at her desk. “Please, have a seat and take a look.”
I sat down at Gina’s desk and looked around. There was an eight-by-ten photograph of Gina and her family in a frame on her credenza. A motivational poster was hung on her wall—one of those lone-hang-glider-against-a-sunset sorts with the snappy saying on the bottom. A silk ficus tree was in the corner. That was pretty much it for decorations.
A half-dozen Post-it notes—none of them consequential—were stuck to the frame of her computer monitor. I pressed a key on the keyboard. The PC beeped at me, and the locked-screen notification appeared.
“PC’s locked,” I said to Robbie. “Do you know her password by chance?”
Robbie thought for a few seconds, and then said, “Try PTCROISSANT1747.”
I had him spell it for me as I typed it in. It worked and her desktop opened up. She used Microsoft Outlook, and I was able to look at her e-mail logs. I was initially interested in the dates. There was no outgoing activity after the eleventh of August—her last day at work.
“Do you mind if I browse the individual messages to see if any of the posts might be relevant?” I asked.
“No, Danny,” Robbie said. “Go ahead.”
I did, and they weren’t. Like Robbie had said, unless there was some secret code being used, all of the e-mails—there were about a hundred—appeared to me to be either business-related or junkmail of some sort.
“I guess I didn’t really expect to see anything here,” I said. “But, you never know. And anyway, at least I’m able to confirm that the account hasn’t been used to send anything over the past week. Or at least, this PC hasn’t been used.
“Is there another PC she might have used?” I asked.
“Nothing else here at the office,” he said. “Like I said, I’ve seen her reading mail on her phone. But in the entire time she’s been with the company, she’s always worked right here in this office.”
“No other locations?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said. “None. Right here in this office the whole time.”
We started to leave when Toni suddenly said, “Danny, excuse me for a second. I just thought of something. I need to go outside and give Kenny a call.”
“Okay,” I said. I turned to Robbie. “I’m ready to head back to Reggie’s and see what she’s got.”
~~~~
Reggie had printed a vendor report seventy-six pages long and a customer report 214 pages long. She’d been kind enough to place each report in its own three-ring binder. She even slipped a cover sheet into the plastic covering on the binder. Sweet.
I found an empty office and started flipping through the reports while I waited for Toni. Once I found where the contact name was, I was able to get a system going and fairly well blaze through the pages. There were three records—three contact names—per page. Once I knew where to look, I could quickly scan the page and flip to the next in about four seconds. I looked at my watch when I started. It took six minutes to look at the vendor report and there was not a single “Kara” listed in the contact name field. I was about to start in on the customer report when Toni came back into the office. She closed the door.
“Want to see something interesting?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Look at this.” She handed me her iPhone.
On the display was a photo of a Post-it note that read K—Nu Cell: 206-438-3992.
“What is . . . is this—?” I started to ask.
“Is it Kara’s cell phone number?” she said, finishing my sentence. “I think so, anyway.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“When we were in Gina’s office and I saw those Post-it notes stuck on her monitor, I suddenly remembered that she had notes stuck on the bulletin board at her condo as well. You had me take pictures of them, remember?”
“Yeah.”
“After I took the pictures, I gave my phone to Kenny. He took the pictures off my phone and stored them on the server at the office. For whatever reason, seeing the notes in Gina’s office triggered something, and I vaguely remembered seeing a phone number on one of the notes. I didn’t make the connection at the time. I called Kenny and asked him to pull them up and have a look. This is what we found.”
“Damn,” I said. “This might be great news. I’ll call Kenny and have him start trying to work backwards and verify the name and get an address.”
“I already told him to get started.”
“That’s damn good work, Toni. Thank you.”
“I know,” she said, smiling smugly. “What would you ever do without me?”
~~~~
Because of construction activity, it took nearly forty-five minutes to get back to the office. Seems Paul Allen decided to demolish the entire area around south Lake Union and rebuild it in his vision, and he’s doing it all at once.
“Those questions you were asking Cindy Dunlap,” I said as I drove. “Were you trying to corroborate Robbie’s statements?”
“Very good,” she said. “Until now, he’s been the only one with access to the condo-slash-potential-crime-scene. Both we and SPD—including CSI—have assumed that what he said is truthful. It’s also a little disconcerting that he has a key to the condo. A smart person with enough uninterrupted time can do a lot to manipulate a scene.”
“Makes sense,” I said. “The questions, I mean. I don’t think Robbie had anything to do with the disappearance of his sister, but the questions are logical.”
“I don’t really think he did, either,” Toni said. “I just don’t want to be surprised.”
I nodded as I pulled into our parking lot. “I agree. But now that Cindy’s backed Robbie’s story, Robbie’s closer to being in the clear. He still had access to the condo—could have been there anytime Thursday night or Friday morning.”
“Right,” Toni said. “Then he brings people out Friday, pretends to be surprised at what he sees when it was him that staged it all along.” She thought for a minute. “I just have one major problem with this
scenario.”
“Aside from Robbie not seeming to be anywhere near swift enough to pull that off?” I asked.
“Bingo,” Toni said. “That’s it—we’re thinking alike. I like Robbie. He seems pretty bright. But he doesn’t seem like he’s devious enough or tough enough or resolute enough to be able to dream this up and execute it and not crack in front of his parents, in front of us, and in front of several sets of police officers. That’s just not Robbie, unless he’s the best damn actor in the world. I don’t think so. My money lands on someone else, not Robbie.”
“Agreed,” I said as we walked into the office. Kenny was standing in the lobby, waiting for us.
“Saw you drive in,” he said. “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”
Great. “Bad news first,” I said.
“There is no bad news,” he said, smiling. “I’m messing with you. The good news is that the phone belongs to a Miss Kara Giordano. She lives at 756 East Green Lake Drive, unit 212. It’s at the top of Green Lake just past the park.”
“Outstanding,” I said, beaming. “Good job, guys.”
“There’s more,” he said. “I printed out her last two months’ telephone activity. There were numerous calls to Gina’s cell phone—nearly daily. That ended abruptly last Thursday afternoon. The last call to Gina that went through was at 3:34 last Thursday afternoon. Nothing since then. Nada.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Does that mean that she didn’t try to call Gina, or that she may have tried to call but didn’t get through?”
“Could be either,” Kenny said. “The minute meter only rolls when the connection is made.”
“Wow,” I said, trying to think. “So Kara either knew that Gina wanted to disappear and wasn’t using that phone or she didn’t know anything and kept trying to call but Gina never answered.”
Angel Dance (Danny Logan Mystery #1) Page 12