by Pamela Clare
They thought she might have used the equipment to get rid of Andy’s body.
She fought back an impulse to laugh, the seriousness on Kevin’s face telling her he found this anything but amusing.
“We cooperated with them, of course, and told them about the outstanding work you’ve done. We want to stand behind you, but we also have a responsibility to this institution. Is there anything I ought to know?”
Mia understood why he was asking this, but she couldn’t help feeling hurt. “No, sir. I’m a person of interest only because I was the last person to see him before he disappeared. He and I served together and were deployed together in Iraq. He was wounded and disabled. I was his executive officer. He has problems with anxiety and depression, so I check on him from time to time. As soon as they look into where I was that night, they will clear me.”
Kevin nodded, a frown on his face. “They’ve asked for our surveillance footage from Friday afternoon onward.”
As much as this surprised her, it was also reassuring. If she’d been out there burying bodies among the rose bushes, it would have been captured by the surveillance cameras. Still, it was a lot of hassle for the security staff.
“I’m so sorry about this. Don’t they realize that someone would notice if I were dragging around a body or digging holes somewhere?”
“I said something to that effect. I agreed to give them our surveillance footage. I even checked security records, which show that you didn’t use your key card this weekend. If you were here, you would have had to come through a public entrance.”
“That would have made carrying a dead body awkward. And for the record—no, I didn’t come in this weekend.”
“Right. Good. Well, I guess that’s it.” Kevin got to his feet.
“I’m really sorry about this.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s more of a disruption to your life than ours.” He stood and turned to leave the greenhouse, when Sharon, the office manager, hurried in.
“Can I talk to you?” Her gaze flitted to Mia.
The two of them stepped outside for a moment, Sharon leaning close to him as if she didn’t want to be overheard. Then Kevin took out his cell phone and made a call.
Mia did her best to focus once again on internship applications, but she couldn’t stop glancing out the window. Once when she did, she found both Kevin and Sharon looking at her. She let out a breath.
You’re imagining things.
Kevin came inside again. “Mia, this is difficult, but I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to the front office.”
“What’s going on?”
“We can talk about it when we get there.”
Shit.
This couldn’t be good.
She slipped into her parka and followed him outside, her stomach knotting. Two of the security staff—Beth and Michael—were headed straight toward her.
You have no reason to be afraid.
Maybe not, but her pulse spiked anyway.
“They’re just going to walk with us,” Kevin said.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“We’ll talk about that in my office.”
Damn it.
Beth and Michael fell in beside Mia, flanking her, as if they thought she might try to bolt. But she had no reason to run. She hadn’t done anything.
The walk back to the office building seemed to take forever, her co-workers watching her with furtive glances until her cheeks burned with frustration and fury. One of the guards held the door open for her, and she walked into the warmth.
“This way.” Kevin motioned her into his office, then spoke quietly to the two guards, who planted themselves outside Kevin’s door.
Mia was at the end of her patience. “What the hell is going on?”
Kevin looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “One of the grounds crew went to run branches through the wood chipper, but it jammed. Inside, he found a plastic bag filled with bloody towels and a bath mat. There was also a driver’s license. It belonged to Andrew Meyer.”
“What?” Mia gaped at him, unable to believe what she’d just heard. “You can’t possibly believe that I—”
“We can talk about that when the police arrive.”
“Review the security footage now,” Mia urged Wu. “It will prove that I was nowhere near the mulch yard today.”
“There are no cameras in the mulch yard,” Kevin told Wu.
“No, but there are cameras everywhere that I’ve been today.” Mia could see that Wu was listening. “You’ll be able to account for every moment of my day and know for certain that I didn’t go there. I rarely go there. The footage will also show that I haven’t been at the gardens since last Friday afternoon.”
“We did check her key card,” Kevin said. “She didn’t come in through any of the staff entryways after clocking out Friday night. Surveillance would show whether she came in through any of the public gates.”
“If you would check out what I told you Friday and review this security footage, you’ll see that I couldn’t have done this.”
Wu’s gaze was inscrutable. “I’ve already followed up with the restaurant. The manager remembers seeing you there. We got your credit card and cell phone records this afternoon. They corroborate your story.”
“Oh. Good.” She let out a relieved breath.
“We’ll look at this footage, see what we find. There’s a backlog at CBI’s lab, so it’s going to take time to get the DNA back on the blood. The driver’s license is valid, however, so I suspect we’ll find that the blood is Meyer’s.”
Mia couldn’t believe this. “Why would I bring incriminating evidence to my workplace?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you were going to take it somewhere else and had to ditch it. Maybe you didn’t realize it would jam the machine and hoped it would get mulched.” Wu looked straight into her eyes. “Ms. Starr, I’d like you to come down to the station to answer some questions and give an official statement.”
Mia gaped at him, stunned. “You still think I did it. I was across town when he disappeared. You know that.”
“I don’t know anything at this point. I’m still investigating.”
How could he say that when he’d verified her whereabouts and corroborated what she’d already told him?
She shook her head. “This is crazy. So, I’m supposed to follow you down to the station now—in the middle of the workday?”
Kevin cleared his throat. “We’ve placed you on administrative leave for the time being. Until this situation is resolved—”
“You don’t believe me.” The realization put an ache in Mia’s chest.
It wasn’t the first time a supervisor had let her down.
“Mia, I don’t know what to think. Try to see this from my point of view. Evidence that ties you to a possible homicide was found on our premises. I can’t let negative publicity surrounding this case hurt this institution. People aren’t going to want to bring their grandmas and their children here if they think we hire criminals. When you’re cleared, you’re free to return. I’ll even give you back pay for the days you miss.”
Mia supposed what he’d just said sounded fair to him, but to her, it meant temporary loss of income, embarrassment, shame. “It could take months for the police to resolve this, especially if they keep looking into the wrong people.”
“We’ll hold your job for you as we can—unless you’re guilty.”
Mia turned to Wu. “Am I under arrest?”
Hell, did she need a lawyer?
Wu shook his head. “I just want to ask you some questions. I need your help to make sense of this.”
Kevin stood, held out his hand.
For a moment, Mia thought he wanted to shake her hand and wish her luck.
“I need your key card,” he said, his expression hard.
Dear God.
“Right.” Unable to believe this was happening, Mia stood, lifted the chain that held her key card and ID from around her neck an
d placed it in Kevin’s upturned palm. “I didn’t have anything to do with this. I love my job here. I’ll be back.”
Kevin said nothing.
Sharon stepped into Kevin’s office, carrying Mia’s backpack and parka. She handed them to Mia. “Here you go.”
They didn’t even want her walking back to the employee break room.
Mia took her belongings, slipped into her parka. She turned to Wu. “Can you give me a lift to the station? I’m not sure I can drive right now.”
Wu nodded. “Sure.”
Mia followed him out the office building and the front entrance to an unmarked police car, too numb to notice the staff staring at her.
4
Joaquin walked up to the front desk at the Denver Police Department’s main station. “I need to pick up a mug shot.”
The DPD hadn’t yet entered the twentieth century, to say nothing of the twenty-first. They still required newspapers to fill out actual paperwork for this shit.
Without a word, the uniformed staffer, a young woman whose brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun, handed him a clipboard and a pen.
Some guy had beaten his wife, locked her in the trunk of her car, and tried to drive the vehicle into Sloan Lake, apparently not realizing it would be frozen. Fortunately, an early morning jogger had seen and called the police. The husband had run off, and the jogger, who’d heard the woman’s screams, had broken the window and popped the trunk to free her moments before the ice broke. The cops had caught the husband an hour later when he’d used his credit card to pay for a cab to the airport.
Pendejo.
Joaquin had just handed the clipboard back to the staffer when Mia walked through the front door with Wu, a troubled expression on her face.
Joaquin stared. “Mia?”
His first thought was that she’d been arrested, but that couldn’t be true. She wasn’t in cuffs, and they’d brought her in through the main entrance, not through the rear doors that led to the holding cells.
She glanced over at him, clearly surprised to see him, then shook her head, letting him know that she didn’t want to talk.
He watched her pass, his mind racing. Wu must have brought her in for questioning, which meant something had happened.
Had they found a body?
To hell with this.
He drew his smartphone out of his pocket and typed a text message to Julian Darcangelo and Marc Hunter. Darcangelo headed the DPD’s vice unit, while Hunter was captain of the SWAT team. Both men were good friends of his. They were also Joaquin’s shooting buddies. They’d taught him how to use firearms, and now the three of them trained together at the police range once a week.
A friend of mine is here for questioning. I want to know what’s going on. I’m out front.
He hit send and waited. They would probably tell him to get lost, and he couldn’t blame them. He had no right to get involved in Mia’s business—or a police investigation, for that matter.
After a few minutes, Darcangelo stepped through the security door, a frown on his face. At six-foot-three, he stood a little taller than Joaquin, his dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, a shoulder holster resting against his black T-shirt. Before joining the DPD, he’d worked as a deep-cover agent for the FBI, bringing sex traffickers to justice. Last month, he’d helped storm the Christmas party, working with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to free all of them from terrorists at considerable risk to himself. Joaquin respected the hell out of him.
He glared at Joaquin. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
Trying not to be overheard, Joaquin explained. “She’s my friend. I think she’s in trouble, but she didn’t do anything.”
Could you be any less articulate, cabrón?
Joaquin tried again. “I just want to know what’s going on so I can help her.”
“You know I can’t tell you anything, right?”
Joaquin let out a frustrated breath. “I know. I’m not trying to presume on our friendship, man.”
“Sure, you are. That’s okay.” Darcangelo gestured with his head. “Come on.”
Darcangelo led him to the security door, swiped his keycard, and held the door open for Joaquin. Hunter stood in the hallway, wearing a black SWAT sweater, hands on his hips. Tall like Darcangelo, he’d served as an SFO sniper then worked for the DEA, before landing in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. It was Sophie’s investigative work that had exposed the truth and set Hunter free. The two had gotten married and had two kids. Hunter had saved God knew how many lives at last month’s holiday party and had taken a round to the side doing it. “What the hell’s going on, Ramirez?”
“That’s what I want to know.” Now that Joaquin wasn’t in a public part of the building, he could tell them the whole story. “Mia Starr was just brought in for questioning, I think. She’s a person of interest in the disappearance of Andrew Meyer, but she had nothing to do with whatever happened to him.”
“You’re certain of that?” Darcangelo asked.
How could Joaquin explain? Would they be able to understand if he told them that viewing the world through his camera had taught him to see things other people missed, to look beneath the surface, to read the emotions people tried to hide?
Nah, probably not.
He answered with a question of his own. “If there were circumstantial evidence against me in a homicide, would you believe it?”
The two men’s gazes met again, and they shook their heads.
Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “How well do you know this woman?”
Joaquin wouldn’t lie to them. “We’ve danced together. She was my cousin Elena’s commanding officer during Elena’s first year in the Army.”
“Huh.” Hunter sounded unimpressed.
“You danced with her?” Darcangelo crossed his arms over his chest. “Is this about your sex life?”
Didn’t Joaquin wish? “Nah, man, I told you. She was Elena’s CO.”
Hunter exchanged another glance with Darcangelo. “You can sit in my office for now. We’ll try to find out what’s going on.”
“This is off the record. Understood?” Darcangelo leaned in close, lowered his voice. “If one word of what we tell you ends up in the newspaper, Old Man Irving will have our balls for breakfast.”
“Got it. Thanks, man.”
“Andy was depressed—about being disabled, about the way the government treated him.” Mia was fighting a losing battle against her temper. “Seriously, how long can it take to review six hours of security footage? I’ve told you where I was all day. You ought to be able to corrob—”
“I’ve gone over your military record.” Wu pulled a file folder out of a stack that sat on the table beside him. “You were decorated twice. No disciplinary actions against you. An honorable discharge. It says here, ‘an exemplary officer.’”
“I did my best, sir.”
Wu nodded. “Thank you for that.”
He reached for another, thicker file and opened it. “Andrew Meyer, on the other hand, was Uncle Sam’s problem child. His file says that he ‘demonstrated a pattern of behavior that consistently fell short of the Army’s expectations for its soldiers.’ He was discharged under ‘other than honorable conditions.’ What does that mean?”
“His service was not exemplary, but it wasn’t serious enough for a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge.”
“He sounds like a total fuck-up.” Wu watched her.
Mia chose her words carefully. “He was a disappointment.”
Wu looked down at Andy’s file. “I see here that you were the officer who reported him on a number of occasions.”
“I was the XO of his company.”
“I thought an executive officer was in charge of paperwork, food supplies, and toilet paper, not disciplining soldiers.”
“I was second in command. It was my job to deal with paperwork, to keep our company supplied and running, and to supervise certain staff.”
Wu nodded. “So, all of these docu
ments with your signature—they don’t represent a grudge against Meyer?”
“A grudge?” Heat rushed into Mia’s face. “No. Of course not.”
“Did he have a grudge against you?”
That was closer to the truth.
“He blamed me in part for the nature of his discharge. He thinks that I’m the reason he can’t get disability benefits.”
“Did he have cause to believe that?”
“Do the crooks you put in prison believe their time behind bars is your fault?” Mia could see that her words had hit home. “Some people have a hard time taking responsibility for their own actions.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Wu glanced at the documents again, flipping through them. “I searched his file for some documentation—how he was wounded, when and why he was discharged. There’s nothing here. Do you want to fill me in?”
Mia’s pulse skipped. “He was discharged after—”
A knock at the door cut her off, gave her a reprieve, the door opening to reveal a man with a dark ponytail. “Hey, Wu, you got a minute?”
“Sure thing.” Wu stood, leaving Mia alone, giving her time to think.
What the hell was she supposed to say? The conditions of Andy’s discharge were classified. The whole catastrophe was classified. She had been ordered not to talk about it with anyone. She didn’t agree with how the Army had handled the situation. If she’d had any say, Andy and the others would have been court-martialed. Instead, Army brass had buried everything—and ordered her to keep her mouth shut.
Mia had always followed lawful orders, and she wasn’t going to stop now. She would tell the detective the truth, but not the whole truth, and hope he was satisfied. He would have to go up the flagpole if he wanted more information.
The door opened, and Wu entered, shutting the door behind him and returning to his seat, his gaze fixed on her. “It seems you have friends here.”
She did?
“One of them is waiting for you in the lobby.”
Joaquin.
He was waiting for her?
The idea both irritated her—and lifted her spirits. Her friends from work had stared at her with suspicion. Her boss, a man she trusted, had put her on leave. But Joaquin was here. He barely knew her, but somehow, he believed her.