“Want to come over and share my steak and drink my wine?”
She forced a casual laugh. “Thanks, but I’m sitting here in my pj’s with a cold cloth on my head.”
“Maybe another time.”
“Mmm.”
“Now to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”
Being careful to avoid admitting where she’d gotten the information, she said, “I was actually wondering about the deaths of the O.E.P. participants…”
He cut in. “Well, you know more about those than I do.”
“No, I’m not talking about the two murders. I mean the other six.”
Silence. A long silence. Then, finally he replied, “I’m sorry, Detective Sloan, I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a disadvantage. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Interesting how the flirtatious bluster had bled out of his tone. He sounded wary, hesitant.
“You’re saying you don’t know anything about the fact that six men implanted with the O.E.P. device have died of supposedly natural causes in the past two months?”
Another pregnant pause. He cleared his throat.
“Mr. Tate?”
“This is embarrassing, Detective Sloan, but the truth is, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the technical side of these experiments. I watch the money and the orders and the deadlines and leave the rest of it to my father and his team.”
“So if there are sudden deaths in the middle of an experiment, you don’t even hear about it?”
“What are you getting at, Detective Sloan?” he asked, his mood and tone definitely cooler.
“I’m just trying to do my job, sir,” she insisted, keeping calm and collected, not wanting to escalate this into an argument. The last thing she needed was for junior to go running to daddy and mess up Ronnie’s great relationship with Phineas Tate. “I heard there were some deaths, wanted to make absolutely sure those other men couldn’t have been murdered by our suspect, perhaps in a way to make it look like they’d died of natural causes.”
“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he insisted. “And frankly, I’m questioning your information. Where did you hear about these so-called deaths?”
Whoops. Time to end this call.
“Listen, forget I bothered you, okay? I’m sure it’s not connected, believe me, I just want to cover all the bases trying to find this guy.”
“I’m sure you do,” he said, his tone regaining the tiniest modicum of warmth. “I do hope you find him soon and don’t get distracted by any wild goose chases. Frankly, Detective, I think you should double-check your sources, because you’re obviously getting some skewed information.”
She thanked him, apologized again for disturbing him and ended the call. But after she hung up, she couldn’t help sitting there, thinking about his words and his attitude.
Tate had definitely gotten chilly when she’d mentioned those other deaths. Whether it was because he truly didn’t know about them and was embarrassed at being caught so out of the loop, or because he did know about them and was angry she knew, she couldn’t say. Whichever the case, she wasn’t put off, no matter what she’d told him. If anything, her instincts were pinging even harder than before.
She wanted to find out about those deaths. And she’d find out, one way or another. Somebody out there knew how those men had died, and even if she had to get on the Internet and track down their obituaries, then contact the funeral homes herself, she’d do it.
But she couldn’t do it tonight. In fact, there was nothing else she could do regarding those mysterious O.E.P. deaths right now. It would have to wait for morning.
She still wasn’t tired, though, and had plenty more work to do. Starting by going back to the beginning—to Leanne Carr’s visual memories.
“Okay, Leanne,” she said as she pulled up the other set of files she’d back up onto the micro-drive today, “let’s see what your life’s been like lately.”
She wouldn’t even think about watching Leanne’s murder again. Frankly, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to sit through that nightmare one more time, unless she was strapped down and forced to, and she most definitely wouldn’t do it alone in her own living room. This was her place of peace and security—she wouldn’t consider violating it by allowing the specter of such horror within its walls.
But Leanne’s backups from the weeks preceding her death shouldn’t contain anything other than normal day-to-day stuff. With, she hoped, a few out-of-the-ordinary moments that might explain how the young woman had drawn the eye of a psychopath.
Finishing her dinner, she cleaned off the table and went into the living room of her small apartment. Ronnie didn’t own a television. Some people still did, her mother among them, but most now just watched stuff online. Not being very interested in any regular programming, she probably could have just caught up with the few shows she watched on the tiny screen of her pocket-sized unit. But there was one show she liked to see as close to real size as possible.
It was cheesy, it was dated, it was stupid and had been on forever…but she really loved So You Think You Can Dance. She was a sucker for people who could move gracefully. Mainly because she, herself, couldn’t dance her way out of a lie much less across a stage.
Right now, she was glad she’d splurged on the huge monitor, which she quickly connected to her handheld. Because it would allow her to sprawl on the couch and watch Leanne’s life unfold on the big screen in front of her. It wouldn’t be anywhere near the experience she’d had at Tate’s lab, with that intense projection system, but it should suffice for this kind of work.
Opening the files she’d copied from the micro-disc, she searched for the back-ups from Leanne’s O.E.P. device. The I.T. guys at the precinct had dumped Leanne’s entire hard drive onto the disk, and she had to scan through page after page of files to find them.
As she scrolled down, one file name caught her eye. It was one of many, going by in a blur, but for some reason it just popped out at her, demanding attention. It read: WilliamsBDay.
Hmm. She wondered if the file had something to do with the memory book Leanne had made for her boss. The one with the possibly missing page.
Because she was the suspicious type, Ronne couldn’t resist the urge to check. She double clicked on the folder name, bringing up the next menu, and found a long list of jpeg images. And, one document called Membook.
She clicked on that, bringing the mock-up of the book up on the large screen. She recognized it immediately, seeing the same cover photo and text layout that she’d seen the other day in Williams’s office. She clicked through the pages, yawning as she scrolled through the obligatory baby pictures and second birthday pony ride shots, looking for the page that had drawn her attention the other day—the one with half a beach scene.
She reached the middle of the book and saw the image she’d been seeking. Changing the viewing dimensions so she could see a two-page layout, she immediately realized that yes, a page was missing out of Williams’s book. In the original design, there had been a full, large picture stretching across both the left and right pages of the book. She recognized the left half. The right side she’d never seen before.
She studied it, wondering what made it so special. There was nothing suspicious in it, nothing that hinted at scandal or mystery. Just a large group of teens and young adults standing around a bonfire on a beach. Young adults, guys and girls, maybe twenty in all, they looked happy, drunk and excited. Some of them had probably wandered off down the beach, some may have puked in the surf, some had likely fallen asleep near the fire. It was exactly like a million other spring break photos out there on the world wide web.
So what had made Williams tear it out?
“Maybe he didn’t, idiot, maybe the printer messed it up,” she mumbled, realizing she was creating a mystery that might not be mysterious at all.
Or maybe Leanne changed her mind and had a new version printed. Maybe she’d only included half the picture because it was
the half that included her boss—Jack Williams—who stood almost directly in the middle, close to the seam. He was standing between two girls, a redhead and a blond, one of whom was on the left side of the photo, the other on the mysterious right.
“Hmm. Wife on one side, ex-girlfriend on the other?” she whispered, thinking she recognized the blond.
Stop wasting time, a little voice in her head said.
She realized she’d been stalling, trying to put off the moment when she would find the correct backup files and have to begin the arduous task of watching Leanne’s final days. To think she’d been excited about it a few days ago. Now, having witnessed the woman’s horrible death, she’d been putting off getting sucked any further into her life. It was like watching the end of a sad movie first. Going back and watching the happy parts made it twice as depressing.
But it was her job. Glancing at the clock, she realized she’d wasted ten minutes on this meaningless search. Angry at herself, she backed up through the files and folders and returned to the main directory. She had enough to do trying to go through Leanne’s visuals, she didn’t have time to speculate on her boss’s old secrets.
Not sure how far back to start, she decided on one week. If Leanne had been stalked before her murder, chances were her killer had crossed her path shortly before her death. He’d have wanted to keep an eye on her, figure out her routines, make sure he could lure her to the spot he’d chosen for her execution.
She queued up the images—thousands and thousands of them—and set the speed as fast as it would go. Images would fly by; she wouldn’t be able to see them all. But she should be able to get the gist of what was happening in each “scene” of Leanne’s life. Being able to fast-forward through the times when the woman had been alone, or sleeping, she could then slow down when the victim had been interacting with other people.
She took a deep breath, settled into the couch, and began, determined to get through this with her emotions intact.
But, after a half hour, she realized the strongest emotion she was feeling was boredom. This was going to be one hell of a tedious job. Seeing the minutiae of another person’s life when they were doing something exciting was one thing. Watching them pluck their eyebrows, wash their face, brush their teeth, drive their car, sit at their desk, answer phones, take messages, type memos and eat yogurt was about as boring as it got.
She was in for a long few days if something in this case didn’t break soon.
About to pause the show so she could go in and pop herself some popcorn, she flinched when she heard a sharp knock on her front door. Glancing at the clock and seeing it was ten-forty, she slowly rose from the couch and crept across the living room.
She’d already talked on the phone to her hairdresser-neighbor, Max, who had gasped when she’d told him about her hair, and knew he was going to be out late tonight. Her mother lived way down in Virginia and their phone conversation earlier hadn’t ended on a note that would inspire a cozy, friendly pop-by. So who would be visiting her this late, she didn’t know.
A hint of tension crawled through her. She’d been so focused on solving these murders, she hadn’t really had time to evaluate how she felt about her own attack the other night. Or the fact that her attacker—a psychotic killer—might have come within seconds of brutally killing her as well.
Now that all came flooding in. So she moved silently across the carpet to the table in the foyer, where she always placed her service weapon when she got home. She unholstered it, dropped it to her side and went to the door.
Another knock.
“Who is it?” she barked, wishing she had insisted the landlord install a peephole.
“Hey, Ron, it’s me. Let me in.”
“Daniels,” she whispered, immediately re-engaging the safety on her 9mm. She unlocked the dead-bolt and twisted the knob to let him in. “What are you doing here?”
He eyed her, his lips twitching when he saw the ragged T-shirt, sweatpants and fluffy slippers. The twitching stopped when he noticed the Glock in her hand. “Atta girl. Safety first.”
“Bullet in your partner second? You should’ve called ahead.”
“I’ve got news,” he said, pushing past her and entering the apartment. Going right for her kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and scrounged around in it. “Seriously? No beer?”
“Nope, sorry.”
“You don’t even keep some hidden away for guests?”
“Is that what you are? I thought you were home invader the way you burst in here.”
“You’da shot my ass if I were.” He grabbed a bottle of juice, then reached for a closed storage container and flipped the lid open, sniffing the contents. “I’m starving!”
“It’s fine,” she explained, wondering when he had last eaten a decent meal. He was more the out-of-a-box-or-a-bag type. Ronnie, while not very domestic, did like to eat healthily and had stir-fried the chicken and veggies he was holding just a couple of days ago.
He tossed the container in the microwave, punched a button, then turned to face her.
“So, what is it?” she asked, knowing something big must have brought him over here tonight.
He grinned. “The tunnels.”
“Yes! I knew it!”
“The president apparently didn’t even know and man is he pissed.”
She had to hear this. Dropping onto a kitchen chair, she said, “Tell me everything.”
“I met with Williams, who’s a little less grief-stricken today.”
She rolled her eyes.
“And with his lead architect, dude named Frank. He was at the briefing the other day.”
She remembered him. He’d stood up and bolted from the room as soon as the civilians were told they could leave.
“While we’re sitting there, a call comes in from Kilgore.”
She also remembered him, the officious head of the Secret Service continent assigned to the White House. “So how is Mr. Happy?”
“Not so happy. In fact, he was on a tear, talking so loud I could hear him through the extension. It seems Dr. Tate’s questions this afternoon got the president a little curious. He made some phone calls, including to the head of the CIA and the Secret Service, and found out that, despite the wishes of every person in the country, somebody made the decision that there should still be emergency tunnels under the White House.”
“Oh, yeah, sure. Of course they did. ‘Cause they worked so well the last time.”
He snickered. “Apparently it was a ‘need-to-know’ situation and somebody had decided the president didn’t ‘need to know.’”
“And neither did the cops investigating a brutal murder, right?”
“Exactly. Oh, by the way, it’s still top secret and if you tell anyone they’ll throw you in a windowless cell and never let you see the light of day again.”
“Got it,” she said, getting up to grab a glass. She filled it with ice and then with milk, ignoring her partner’s moue of disgust. Whether he was more grossed out by the milk, or by the ice, she couldn’t say. Daniels usually didn’t even bother to ice his bourbon.
After he’d retrieved his dinner from the microwave, Ronnie gestured toward the drawer containing the forks. “So, did you get a guided tour?”
“Courtesy of Mr. Phoenix Group and Mr. Secret Service themselves. They swear it’s the only one. It’s accessed by a secret door behind the wall of breakers at the base of the stairs in the sub-basement.”
She nodded. “That’s why he stayed close to the stairs to work on Leanne. If he’d heard anything he would have gone right for the tunnel.”
“Yep. It goes about a half a mile and comes out—get this—in the basement of a maintenance building near the Washington Monument!”
Of course it did. Right where throngs of people would have been on Independence Day. So many thousands that nobody would have noticed one individual person’s movements. It explained why they hadn’t found any hint of someone gaining access through the White House’s electronic
security system. And how their ghost had gotten in and out again despite the presence of police, military, guards and witnesses when he was returning Leanne Carr’s head.
Speaking of… “Do you think he had the head stashed in there the whole time it was missing?”
“Hell, yes. No doubt about it—we found a pool of blood and a plastic tarp it was sitting on. And that wasn’t all.”
Her blood coursed more quickly through her veins. “What else did you find?”
He stirred the food, lifted a big forkful to his mouth and chowed down, talking while he chewed. “The mother lode.”
Her heart rolled over. “Weapons?”
“A knife. Black clothes. Blood smears. Forensics took everything back to the lab—maybe we’ll get lucky with a spare fiber or print. Hopefully this guy didn’t think we’d find his hiding place so quickly.”
She wasn’t very hopeful. Their suspect wasn’t stupid. He had to know others were aware of the existence of the tunnel, even if the cops and investigators weren’t. Sooner or later, he’d have to assume somebody in the know would have checked it out. So she doubted he’d left behind anything incriminating. Still, maybe they’d get super lucky.
“Can’t help thinking about what might have happened if he’d managed to drag you into that tunnel before I got downstairs the other night.”
Ronnie had been intentionally avoiding those thoughts, not wanting to imagine what the killer could have done with an unconscious victim, some weapons, some time and a half-mile length of tunnel.
A lot. A whole hell of a lot.
She swallowed, pushing a flash of mental images away, and said, “But that didn’t happen. So, did you find anything else?”
Scrunching his brow in confusion, Mark added, “Actually, yeah. There was a hard-hat with a light on the front of it.”
She sunk down into a chair. “That’s definitely his.” She quickly told him about what she and Sykes had seen on Leanne’s O.E.P. files, explaining how the suspect had used the miner’s light to blind his victim and her implanted camera.
Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) Page 19