Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan)

by Leslie A. Kelly

  Daniels narrowed his eyes, shading them against the high noon sun, and surveyed the men as they entered the building. “That’s Tate? The man responsible for turning us all into walking bar codes? He doesn’t look like Doctor Frankenstein.”

  “The younger one’s his son. I haven’t met him, but I recognize him from some magazine pictures. I think there’s some story there.”

  “I do love a good story,” he said, his eyebrows wagging.

  “There was talk during our training that the senior Dr. Tate did not give the O.E.P. technology over willingly but the son strong-armed him into it.”

  “Nice guy.”

  “If this thing flies, the financial benefits could be...substantial. The father wanted his invention to be an altruistic gift. Supposedly, he was working on the eye device to help Alzheimer’s patients retain their visual memories.”

  Rolling his eyes, Daniels asked, “Wouldn’t a photo album be just as effective, and a little less invasive?”

  “You know as well as I do that we’re not just talking about photographs.”

  If they were, the device wouldn’t be quite as magical. Tate had actually managed to develop a microchip that enabled the human eye to be the lens of the camera. So all the variances, the depth, the shading, the subtlety, the colors—even emotions that colored vision—would appear in images captured by the device.

  It truly was brilliant.

  “Yeah, I know. And I don’t regret signing up, for the crime solving benefits. But it seems a little invasive for the average Joe. Pictures on a digital frame would probably be just as valuable to somebody who has no memory of any of it, anyway.”

  “In theory, the camera in the optic canal would someday be linked wirelessly to a processor in the frontal cortex that would enable people to re-view the images in their mind.”

  “No downloading?”

  “Right.”

  Daniels whistled, finally looking impressed. “I don’t think I ever heard that part. That’s some seriously science fiction sounding shit.”

  “He’s a genius. He might have pulled it off. Besides, ten years ago, the idea of an optical camera being implanted in the brain sounded like serious science fiction, too. Movie fodder.”

  “Wonder how many heads he’d have to dig around in to get it to work.”

  Frowning, she didn’t reply with her immediate thought. There would always be death row inmates who’d agree to be test mice if it got them some perks in their last months and money for their families. Human testing was just one more goody to come out of The Patriot Act. The thing seemed to bloat like a corpse rotting in the sun whenever the government wanted to do something the public wouldn’t like.

  “I think one of the ways they got Tate to come around was to offer him state-of-the-art support to eventually see the project through for its original purpose. But in the meantime, he’s caught up in the more immediate uses of his invention.”

  “The spy game.”

  “I believe the focus is on crime solving and prevention.”

  “And spying.”

  And spying.

  Once inside the building, Ronnie spotted Agent Bailey, looking a little more healthy than he had this morning. He even managed a tiny smile as he approached. “Special Agent Johansen asked me to let you know there’s a status meeting going on right now in Special Agent In Charge Kilgore’s office.” He blanched. “I mean, sorry, in the security operations room.”

  Hmm. That message came through loud and clear. The lead Secret Service agent apparently didn’t like his trailer and considered the sec-op room his own personal territory.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “There are lots of high-level people showing up, wanting to know how this could have happened.”

  “Let the blame game commence,” Daniels muttered.

  She spared a moment to hope Daniels was wrong and the meeting would involve a reasonable group of professionals coming together to discuss strategies for solving a terrible crime.

  She should have known better.

  The sound of raised voices was audible even from down the hall, growing louder with every step she took toward the meeting room. More than a dozen people had gathered inside the large office, which had been nearly completed for use during construction. Unlike much of the building, with the bare concrete floors and roughly-studded walls, this one was tiled and drywalled. It also featured some state-of-the-art computer equipment and desks laden with files and paperwork.

  Johansen stood practically nose-to-nose with another blue-uniformed Secret Service agent, while a female green-shirt looked on. Bailey immediately joined her. A little eavesdropping gave Ronnie the name of the other senior agent—Kilgore—and told her he was the big boss, the-buck-stops-here head of security for the White House project, the one who had his own trailer but liked this room just a little bit better. Probably because he liked claiming he had an office in the White House.

  Special Agent in Charge Kilgore was the most likely one to catch the blame for this whole mess. But he obviously wasn’t going to go down alone. Kilgore, a middle-aged guy whose face was about the color of a beet, was drenching his subordinates in spittle as he reamed them out. Blame game, indeed.

  Elsewhere in the room, a handful of executive types in suits were asking rapid-fire questions of a guy in a hard-hat...maybe the worker who had found the victim? One man in a recognizable FBI uniform was staring intently at blueprints of the site, an Army guard right beside him.

  The cacophony of noises and visible belligerence on some of the faces told her the ass-covering had already begun. Nobody was going to take responsibility for this one. A classic game of pass-the-buck was well underway. Kilgore—or his flunky, Johansen—would almost certainly shoo most of them out in a few minutes, but until he did, it seemed like the crap that was already knee-deep in this room would keep getting shoveled.

  “Wake me up when it gets interesting,” Daniels muttered.

  “Who’s going to wake me up?”

  The one person she would have expected to be center-stage, exuding the air of brilliance that seemed to ooze from his pores, instead stood quietly, observing the scene from just inside the doorway.

  “Detective Sloan,” he said, a genuine smile softening Dr. Phineas Tate’s pensive expression when he spotted her. “I was told you were here. I couldn’t be more pleased that you were called in.”

  Nodding, Ronnie replied, “It’s good to see you again, sir.”

  “Though, of course, not under these circumstances.”

  “No, of course not.”

  He took her hand and squeezed. “How have you been? Are you glad to finally have the chance to put all that hard work and training to use?”

  “I am.”

  “I imagine Agent Sykes is going to be green with envy,” he said, a twinkle appearing in those eyes.

  Stiffening at the mention of the FBI agent who’d been both a fascinating challenge and an adversarial thorn in her side, she chewed on her tongue to keep herself from making a snarky comment.

  “I can call him to come assist, if you think it necessary.”

  “No!” Swallowing, she forced a smile. “I mean, I’m sure he’s got plenty to do in New York.”

  Beside her, she felt Daniels stiffen. He’d suspected from the first time Ronnie had mentioned Jeremy Sykes’s name, after returning from training in Texas, that something had gone on between them. She’d never been able to explain that it wasn’t what he thought. Mainly because she wasn’t sure what on earth had happened between her and Sykes. She just knew it had left her shaken and confused. Two things she didn’t like feeling.

  Tate’s smile faded and he shook his head. “I suppose you’ve heard the news? About the inability to locate the...device?” His voice had grown soft, a bit tremulous, even, which made Ronnie suspect he had seen the crime scene.

  “I have.”

  “Appalling,” he replied. “Man’s inhumanity to man.”

  Indeed it was.

&
nbsp; “I’d like you to meet my partner,” she said. “Detective Mark Daniels, this is Dr. Phineas Tate, who created the Optic Evidence Program.”

  Daniels extended his hand, muttering hello and nothing more, very un-Daniels-like. Maybe he was star struck. Meeting the Einstein of the age would do that to anyone.

  “And you must meet my son,” Tate said, his round shoulders straightening with obvious pride. If there were problems between father and son, they apparently had not affected the elderly man’s paternal feelings. “Philip, this is the D.C. police detective I told you about. One of our star trainees. Veronica Sloan.”

  A smooth, sophisticated-looking man with dark brown hair and intelligent blue eyes joined them. His round-jawed face was too pretty to be called handsome, but he filled out his tailored suit—which even Ronnie, a non-clothes-person, could tell was a designer one—very well. Probably about forty, he was a good four inches taller than her five-nine, and wore that confident aura of a man used to getting his way. Via his charm, or his money. He had ‘playboy’ written all over him.

  His eyes flared as he looked her over, head to toe. Then a slow smile widened his mouth. “You didn’t tell me everything, Father. I wasn’t picturing your brilliant detective to be quite so attractive”

  Smarmy. God, she couldn’t stand smarmy men. But knowing her perceptions of the son might have been tainted by the stories of what he’d done to the father, she stuck her hand out to shake his, anyway.

  Fortunately, she was saved having to make small talk by the sound of deep, ragged breathing that drew everyone’s attention. One of the suit-wearing politicos, who had been standing apart from everyone else, was looking down at a table loaded with photos of the crime scene. His shoulders shook as he gradually lost the battle to disguise his audible heaves of air. Maybe he figured hauling in deep breaths would prevent him from spewing out sobs and tears.

  “The victim’s supervisor, Jack Williams,” Philip Tate said softly, sounding appropriately sympathetic and mildly superior at the same time. As if strong emotions were anathema to him.

  Well, maybe they were to rich playboys, but Ronnie had to feel for the victim’s boss. If he’d cared anything about her at all, he would be devastated looking at those post-mortem pictures.

  What the hell he was doing here, looking at those pictures, however, was the more pertinent issue. Right now, this room should be occupied by only the investigative team.

  Kilgore finally finished verbally bludgeoning his subordinates, looked around, then barked an order to Johansen to get the meeting underway.

  The flushed, chastened agent cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention. “All right,” he said, his voice raised, “we’re all here now. Let’s proceed with the briefing.”

  A quick round of introductions later and she understood why everybody and his brother had been included in what should have been a law enforcement only meeting. The reverberations from yesterday’s crime were reportedly shaking the foundations of Camp David. Supposedly the president himself had demanded full participation of some of the key people involved in the Patriot Square project.

  But key people like the construction foreman and lead architect? They might as well have opened the door and asked the next passing bricklayer to come on in and pour himself a cup of coffee. And the victim’s own supervisor? Stupid. Even if he was the head of the whole reconstruction project, his relationship with Leanne Carr should have kept him out.

  Personally, Ronnie thought if Kilgore and Johansen had any balls they would have excluded the civilians despite the wishes of the gods and generals. If the optic chip had been found and Ronnie truly had some power in this investigation, that’s what she would have done. First, clear this room of all non-police personnel.

  Second on her to-do list would have been getting rid of SAIC Kilgore

  But it wasn’t her show, not yet anyway. And Johansen now appeared reluctant to give over the investigation, as he had almost seemed ready to do this morning…probably because of his boss, who sat in a corner, arms crossed over his chest, silent and assessing like a big-ass spider watching the flies get tangled in its web.

  Frankly, it made her wonder just how badly the Secret Service wanted to find the rest of the victim. For now, they seemed perfectly comfortable retaining control while bending over to take the political garbage that came with it. Which could explain why they were high-level agency guys and she would never be anything but a detective.

  She wouldn’t trade spots with them. Not for anything.

  Gathering around a conference table quickly constructed out of a couple of sawhorses and a huge sheet of plywood, everyone quieted down, listening as Johansen ran through the pertinent facts in the case, then went around the makeshift table asking for information of all the people who were familiar with the site. She learned nothing new—no head had miraculously surfaced while she and Daniels had been outside.

  Finally, Johansen looked at the chief of the forensics team, inviting him to give a report. Before the science geek could say a word, however, Ronnie had to clear her throat. She just couldn’t stay quiet. Talking in generalities about site security was one thing. Specifics of the murder were quite another.

  “You have something to say, Detective Sloan?” Johansen asked. Behind him, she saw Kilgore leaning forward in his chair, as if he’d stuck his hand up Johansen’s ass and was puppeting him through the conversation.

  She kept her tone civil and even. “I was going to suggest that the civilians leave now.”

  The construction supervisor, Frank something, nodded his head and leapt to his feet, obviously thrilled to get out of here. The architect looked just as relieved.

  “I believe we made it clear that we need everyone’s input,” Johansen said, though he didn’t meet her eyes as he said it.

  Okay. So Kilgore was definitely pulling his strings. Johansen wasn’t happy about it, either.

  “Perhaps,” she said, “but considering the security clearance issues we will be discussing, don’t you think it’s better to close the loop?”

  The security clearance issues--IE: The fact that Leanne was an O.E.P. participant. Something only a few people in this room had high enough clearance to know about.

  Kilgore finally deigned to speak. “We won’t be discussing any top secret issues.” He hardened his gaze, staring at her in challenge. “Because there’s nothing to discuss at this point.”

  Until the head was found. Check. She had been put firmly back in her place.

  Yes, sir, that’s a mighty long one you’ve got there, I’m sure we’re all terribly impressed.

  So, track two. “Sir, it’s just good police work to restrict discussions about the evidence to actual investigators,” she insisted, growing more frustrated at his inexplicable obstinacy. What the hell kind of law official was he? Keeping civilians—and potential witnesses—out of the case was Crime Solving 101. She had to wonder whose back he’d scratched to get to so high on the Secret Service’s ladder, because it sure didn’t seem like skill or intelligence had played a part.

  “Look, miss,” the senior agent replied, his sneer audible, “the president wants the top people on this site involved in the investigation. Those orders came right from Camp David. Are you going to question the president’s orders?”

  That’s when she pegged him. The guy had no imagination, was a goose-stepping, completely by-the-book, couldn’t-think-for-himself bureaucrat. He was apparently incapable of formulating judgments for himself.

  “Are you sure he didn’t mean the top law enforcement people, Agent Kilgore?” she asked, wondering if he heard the rest of the sentence, the part she didn’t say: you jackass?

  Johansen apparently heard it because she saw his head bob up and down in a tiny nod.

  Kilgore opened his mouth, apparently about to release a full head of steam, when he was cut off by the only man in the room who could do it.

  “I suspect that’s exactly what the president meant, Detective Sloan,” said Phineas
Tate. “It’s idiotic to think otherwise.”

  Kilgore blinked rapidly. His forehead furrowing, his head dropping, and his shoulders hunched, he looked like a bull lowering its head for a goring. A flush rose from his thick neck through his cheeks as he eventually realized he’d not only been contradicted, but also called an idiot.

  “Shall we call the president to confirm?” Tate asked, his voice pleasant as he reached for his phone, acting like he had the commander in chief on speed dial. Ronnie had no idea if it was a bluff, but if so, it was a pretty convincing one.

  Kilgore muttered something to Johansen, then threw himself back in his seat.

  “Very well,” said Johansen, “all those not directly involved in the investigation, thanks for your time. Please stay on site for further questioning.”

  The civilians got up to leave. Everyone except the guy in the expensive suit, the one who looked like he’d been trying to hold himself together by sheer force of will. The victim’s supervisor, she recalled. Ronnie looked at him and lifted an eyebrow.

  “I have top security clearance,” he insisted, settling deeper into his chair. “I’m also the head of the Phoenix Group, and the president himself called me to ask me to help with this investigation in any way I could.”

  She frowned, not liking the idea, but Kilgore had apparently had enough. “Mr. Williams is staying,” he barked. His tone bordering on supplicating, he added, “Sorry, Jack.”

  “That’s fine,” the executive said, offering Ronnie a weak smile. “Detective Sloan is right to err on the side of caution.”

  The compliment didn’t improve her mood. God, this was not going well. She made a mental note to find out how well Kilgore and Williams knew each other. Given that Kilgore was the Special Agent In Charge of the Secret Service contingent on site, and Williams was in charge of the whole damn thing, they probably interacted on a daily basis. Cozy.

  Outvoted, outgunned, Ronnie nodded and withdrew from the skirmish, knowing she had to pick and choose her battles when it came to megalomaniacs who liked to throw their weight around.