Hawkins always assigned individuals to specific parts of a case. In turn, they fed him and his inner circle their reports, which they integrated and examined for patterns. She’d never been part of his inner circle and didn’t expect this case to be any different. And it wasn’t. After her part of the proceedings, he had assigned her to the Greenwood follow-up. At least Clements was on the bombing at St. Louis University, so between them, she’d be able to keep up-to-date on nearly every aspect of the investigation.
After the meeting, Clements had only a moment to talk, but that was enough to make it clear that Veles hadn’t implicated herself or Price in any way. About as close as she came, according to him, was describing a job they had both worked that involved some medical technology. It sounded like the same project that Greenwood had mentioned to her. But when she asked Clements why this hadn’t made him suspicious, he just chuckled. Then, he said, “That’s right. You would have been at Quantico when all this went down. Check out the stories on Worthington-Huston Technology from about two years ago.”
She had. And after reading some of the online articles, she wondered how she had missed it, even during her training. Apparently, a new medical device originally developed by the Veteran’s Administration had been blamed for a madman’s killing spree. Testing, however, had proved it didn’t work. But when she looked at who had given the technology the thumbs down, it wasn’t Price. It wasn’t even anyone from Ruger-Phillips. It had been … the FBI. Rebecca would have laughed at the irony if she hadn’t felt so frustrated.
After the meetings at the field office, she had spent the afternoon scouring her assigned areas of the hotel, which included the kitchen. Kitchens were always high-risk areas, given all their nooks and crannies, all the people coming and going, all the chaos—chaos, at least to the untrained eye. But she and two other agents had been over every square inch of it, most of it three times, and had found nothing. And in less than 30 minutes, no one would be entering or leaving unless they were on a list of cleared personnel.
She was pulled back to the present by hunger pangs, brought on partly by the aromas wafting through the door and partly from her stomach’s protest. It wanted something a step above the fast food and coffee that had sustained her the last two days. Soon, she’d be off duty, able to find a nice quiet restaurant for a salad, maybe a glass of wine. Finishing the interview with Price, although technically work, would be much later, and the wine would have already run its course. And besides, the meeting with Price no longer held any suspense. He was about as innocuous as an accountant.
Where had that thought come from, she asked herself, knowing how often she used accounting as the prototypical occupation for the future Mr. Marte. Well, he is easy on the eyes. “And unavailable,” she muttered to herself.
“You say something or was that just snoring?” Clements asked from the door to the break room.
“I’ve been working my rear off down here in the zoo,” Rebecca replied, turning to Clements. “Where have you been, up checking the mattresses on the sixth floor?”
Clements just snorted. Rebecca sat up. “So, I didn’t have a chance to ask. What’s Veles like?”
“Smart as a whip, innocent as the driven snow, and cute as a button.”
Rebecca guffawed. “I missed the memo that said the reports to Hawkins have to be written in clichés.”
“Yep, that’s my report,” said Clements as he took a seat beside her. “Minus the cute as a button part. No need to draw his attention.”
That was one of the many reasons Rebecca liked Clements. His opinion of Hawkins was little better than hers; he was just better at hiding it.
“And Price?” asked Clements. “Clichés are optional.”
“A sharp farm boy who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. That good enough?”
“Sharp?”
“Yeah, intelligent. Maybe a bit prone to take things literally,” Rebecca replied. “I asked him if he’d seen anything suspicious in the days before the incident.” She put air quotes around the word, days. “He said there were only 32 hours between the time of the invitation and dinner, not days. I mean, who thinks that way?”
Clements chuckled. “He does, evidently. I assume you corrected him?”
Rebecca stared for a moment. “Corrected? Technically, he’s right … isn’t he?”
“Except that we should look at anyone who knew Veles would be working with Greenwood even before the invitation was extended. Admittedly, it’s a long shot, but that information alone might be enough for the Crusaders to stake out her apartment and wait for an opportunity.”
“I knew there was a reason I phrased the question that way. In any case, Price only mentioned the plans to his boss and probably no one before the invitation, but I’ll ask.”
“Veles told two people about dinner. I’ll get you those names.” Clements paused, perhaps thinking of something funny Veles had said, given the smile on his face. “She’s not sure who all knew she was going to be working with Greenwood. She’s checking with her manager and will get back to us.”
“OK,” Rebecca replied. “Besides those interviews, I have Mr. Holyfield to talk to—the neighbor that sent the text message right before the shot?”
“Yeah, I remember the name. Anything on him yet?”
“Not really,” replied Rebecca, “although Greenwood makes him sound harmless. Of course, that doesn’t mean someone else didn’t put him up to sending that text. I’m hoping to talk to him tomorrow.”
“And since Hawkins gave you the Greenwood part of the investigation, that should make him happy.”
“Don’t try to talk me out of it,” replied Rebecca, giving Clements a fake look of sincerity.
“I’m out of here. When are you getting relieved?”
“Any minute now.”
Clements nodded, stood, and left. Rebecca was about to lean back in her chair again when motion near the door caught her eye. It was a woman. Rebecca blinked several times, her mind unable to move beyond the woman’s hair. It was about as bright red as she had ever seen and looked a bit wild against her pale skin.
“Ma’am, this area is open only to the hotel’s kitchen staff. May I help you?”
“Oh, no. Sorry. Guess I’m lost.” Sheila Moore turned and walked away.
7:26 PM – The St. Louis FBI Field Office
I’d never been in the FBI Field Office before, but if you ignored the seal in the tile work on the floor and didn’t read the nameplates below the pictures on the wall, it could have been the lobby of any government building. About the only indications it housed an organization involved in classified and occasionally violent work were the badge readers by every door and the glass wall in front of the receptionist. Of course, by the time I sat down in the lobby, I had already signed in with an armed guard and was admitted to the building only after showing my ID again. What I saw here was the second line of defense—or maybe the third, since there were probably other self-protection measures I couldn’t see.
I placed a hand on my knee to stop the bouncing.
What the heck am I so nervous about?
It wasn’t like I hadn’t been in similar settings—no, make that ones that were even more tightly guarded. I’d spent days on grounds patrolled by heavily armed men in armored vehicles. I had worked behind blast doors capable of withstanding anything but a direct, nuclear hit. I’d accessed documents that never left the confines of their electronically shielded environs, examining them only after all the signatures and countersignatures had been verified. Nothing at this office came close. But that was my professional side and I was here as myself. Even the knowledge that the FBI had asked and I was trying to help did little to dry the palms of my hands. Of course, that’s the problem with the ancient part of the brain; it doesn’t listen to logic.
There was, of course, another possible source of my unease—the person I was here to see. Besides her appearance, which was evocative, Special Agent Marte had an aura of mystery, toughn
ess, and perhaps a bit of recklessness. She was, what my college roommate used to call, a tri-dub or WWW—wild, worldly woman—although words like wicked, wanton, or others sometimes made it into his definition. And though that was a disparaging label when applied to a member of law enforcement, hundreds if not thousands of researchers had investigated the so-called “police personality,” often finding profiles that showed resistance to society’s usual norms. Of course, I reminded myself, almost as many had found nothing like that. What it meant to be in law enforcement wasn’t a simple question, and apparently, researchers had developed nothing but simple answers so far.
But the real surprise for me came when Marte and I had started talking earlier in the day—all of those thoughts had vanished. The conversation had come easily, naturally, even though I was probably a “person of interest” at the time. Now, shed of that suspicion, could this talk be anything but amicable? Again, however, my lizard brain wasn’t impressed by the reasoning. I’d just have to wait and see what this meeting held.
The wait wasn’t long. Agent Marte came through a door on the other side of the lobby, a slight smile on her face. She nodded to me and started across. I stood and walked to meet her. “Dr. Price. Thanks for coming. I’ve been told that time’s the enemy of memory, so it’s good we can finish up tonight.”
“If I’d known you were going to quote me, I would have come up with something catchier.” And right on cue, my disquiet lifted like fog on a sunny morning. She turned toward the door she had just exited, and I dropped in beside her. “If it’s not against your regulations, you can call me Sam.”
“It’s not,” she said, glancing sideways at me. “But I thought people called you Doc?” She swiped her badge and entered a number on a keypad. We entered and started up a set of stairs.
“They do. And Doc is fine,” I replied, realizing she must have heard Liz use my nickname.
“So, you’re the expert,” Marte said, as we climbed. “We’re about to dig into your memory. Not that I’m saying I’ll follow your advice, but how would you do it?” We stopped on the second-floor landing, and she badged us through another door into a long hallway.
“Seriously? You want to know how I’d do an interview?” She nodded to my question. “Well, we have the biggest concern covered,” I said, as we started down the hall. “The longer you wait, the more the memory may fade or change to match your expectations. And the chance that other thoughts or sensations get mixed in with it also increases.”
“That’s it?” Marte asked. “All those years of schooling and all you have is, don’t wait? Surely, there’s more in your bag of memory tricks than that.”
“I suppose if our places were switched, I’d be asking how much of what I see on TV is true. Something like that driving this question?”
“More or less,” she replied, her expression denying me any further insight.
“OK, there are dozens of things you could try.” I paused a moment, searching for a good example. “You probably know, but memories aren’t complete recordings, like a movie, but bits and pieces of sensory experience that are stored in separate areas of the brain. Anything we do to trigger one of those elements might help in accessing other parts of the memory. In this case, we had lasagna for Dr. Greenwood. So, if we had some Italian food, the smell might help me remember more.”
“Are you suggesting we go to an Italian restaurant just so I can get better information?” Marte raised her eyebrows suggestively as if I had asked her for a date.
I chuckled. “No, but your example will make the point even better. The smell of lasagna has little chance of helping me recall that night because I’ve smelled it dozens, if not hundreds of times before. It’s overloaded with memories. And doing the interview at a restaurant would make the situation even worse. Now, we have an overloaded cue, the lasagna smell, competing with cues for hundreds of other, unrelated memories: of going to that restaurant before, of the guy at the next table who looks like my uncle, of the horn on the street that sounds like my first car. Best case, all these irrelevant thoughts don’t get mixed into my memory of the night of the shooting. Otherwise, I’ll be swearing my old car drove by while we were having dinner with Greenwood.”
“A classic, false memory,” she said.
“Exactly. What we recall is quite malleable; it tends to change every time we touch it. And someone’s confidence about a particular memory is absolutely no guarantee it’s accurate. That’s what you get with a false memory. Near absolute certainty about something that’s never happened because you’ve reconstructed the memory with the wrong parts.”
Marte stopped in front of a door that said Communications but turned to me rather than opening it. “Thanks for indulging my curiosity. I guess I thought ….” She paused. “Never mind.”
“What were you going to say?”
“It’s not important,” she said, as she turned and used her badge and a number to open the door. We entered a room with six large cubicles, although I could see nothing of what they contained.
“I’m going to be observing an operation we’re running at the Conroy rally downtown. The FBI video and audio feeds will be off limits to you. Sorry, but I have a television tuned to a local cable company you can watch. We don’t expect any trouble, so this should be a good time for us to discuss the incident involving Dr. Greenwood.”
“Sure. A bit of multitasking.”
We entered one of the cubicles. It held two chairs and a table, the latter supporting a laptop with a large external monitor, a small, flat screen television, a notebook, and an earpiece with a built-in microphone. There was a whiteboard on the wall. Marte gestured to one of the chairs, then walked around to the other side. The computer’s monitor was turned toward her, while the TV was at the end of the table, visible to both of us. The TV’s sound was off, but from the scrolling narration at the bottom of the screen, I could tell the rally was in its opening moments. Someone was introducing the governor, who I suspected would introduce Conroy.
Marte picked up the earpiece. “This is tuned to an alert frequency. We won’t be interrupted unless there’s an emergency. In that case, I’ll find someone to escort you from the building.” She was quite at ease with the uncertainty of the situation, as if it was just another day at the office. But then, for her, I suppose it was.
“Understood,” I replied.
“OK, let’s do the incident interview … by the book.” The last phrase brought a slight smile to her face. “I’d like for you to tell me in as much detail as you recall, what happened from the time Dr. Laura Greenwood arrived at Ms. Veles’s apartment until the arrival of the first responders after the shooting.”
And by the book, it was, with Marte interrupting infrequently and then, only for clarification using my words. There was never a “didn’t you hear anything from outside” or “how surprised did Greenwood look when the text came in.” Of course, she had violated all those guidelines earlier in the day, but I suspected that was to see if I would lie my way into a contradiction.
“That’s it,” she said when I was finished. “And thanks again for coming in tonight. Not everyone would have made the effort.”
“My pleasure. I’d like to see the Crusaders caught too.”
“Anything you’d like to ask before I find someone to accompany you out of the building?” She dipped her head toward the television where Conroy was still speaking. “I want to stay until the rally is over.”
“Of course.” I paused. “There is one thing I was wondering. The question about how I’d interview someone—was that about me or the research?”
Marte laughed, but then her eyes narrowed. “I’ll answer that question, but first, why do you ask?”
“Some quid pro quo, huh? OK. During the interview we just finished, you were too smooth to be using anything you heard 30 seconds earlier. You already knew what I told you, which makes sense. The FBI wouldn’t be teaching techniques that are no longer admissible in court. And then, the question this mor
ning about one of my papers? That wasn’t to get me to explain it. These questions seem to be … well, aimed at how I see myself or my field. Or am I imagining that?”
“Do you always analyze everything so methodically?”
I held up a single finger, wagging it back and forth. “Sorry. I answered your question. It’s your turn.”
Marte released a sigh. “It’s been hectic. All I had a chance to find on you before the first meeting was your resume with the Ph.D. and that long list of papers. I admit I expected a guy in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbow, smoking a pipe. OK, maybe not that much of a cliché, but an academic anyway. I know better. We get trained to avoid jumping to conclusions like that, but it’s tough.”
“Maybe close to impossible,” I said. “Even psychologists who’ve studied that tendency for years still fall prey to it. At least we got beyond me being a suspect.”
My comment had just slipped out. Marte’s head snapped back as if the words had hit her physically. “You were never a suspect.”
“Yeah, I didn’t mean that,” I said quickly, searching my mind for a change of topic. But a look at her told me she wasn’t going to be easily distracted.
Marte stared for several seconds before asking softly, “So, what gave me away?”
“An FBI agent asking a private citizen about bullet trajectories.”
“I thought that might have been a bit over the top,” she replied. “But that brings me back to my earlier question. Do you really slice and dice all these conversations as much as it seems?”
“So, we’re entering round two, where I get another question?”
“We’ll see,” said Marte.
“Well, it’s not just conversations,” I replied. “It’s everything from my research, where this kind of mindset is appropriate, to what toilet paper I buy. I’ve caught myself thinking about making a spreadsheet to decide how to spend two dollars. But I won’t bore you with the details.”
Mind in Chains Page 13