I knew I had to get out. The invisible tap on the shoulder for me to resign came out of a domestic violence murder. The place was an affluent address officers had visited too many times over the past year. An attractive young woman lay dead on her bedroom floor, a victim of a prolonged beating that had continued even after death. Investigating the scene and listening to her husband rant had almost prompted me to verbalize, “So what did she expect? That he would change?” I blamed the victim for her death.
At that point, I realized I’d gone beyond jaded to callous, and it was time to leave the force. I had burned out; I was no longer able to speak for the victim. I’d lost part of my soul when my wife had died of breast cancer, and the job had eaten up the rest of it. At forty-two, I felt the emotional weariness of a seventy-year-old. I had seen too much as a cop that was impossible to forget. Sex was a faceless release of tension for me, and when a woman inched a little too close, expecting a piece of my heart, I cut her loose.
“Lee, is that OK with you?” I heard Mary say as she shoved a paper toward me.
“Look, Mary, no offense, but I should take the lead in the employee interviews. I’ve done this for the last ten years on hundreds of cases. It takes years to learn how to make people drop their guard. I’ve watched you question people, and they become defensive. You have this nonverbal accusatory way about you. In some situations, your age works for you, and in other situations, people don’t take you seriously,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. It was the truth; why sugarcoat it? I wasn’t saying it to be difficult, just stating a fact.
“In a corporate culture, where most people have not one but two PhDs, I’ll go out on a limb and say you’re out of your depth,” I continued. “You can’t outthink them, so you’ll need to rely on instinct. You’re the lead. If you want to do the interviews, I have to accept it. However, Jackson hired me for my skill set, and one skill I’ve honed is how to get information from people.”
Mary’s sharp eyes bored into mine with an unwavering stare, not even a blink. The realization I didn’t care and wouldn’t participate in her drama caused her to lean her fluffy hair against the headrest. Her body language taut, tension radiated from her as if she wanted to unload on me, but she worked hard to hold it back.
“I’m not sure I like you. You’re not much of a people person, and you could use some work on your communication technique,” she said, averting her gaze.
Fair enough, a correct assessment.
“Mary, I get that, but talking is overrated. I say what I mean. That’s all you have to understand for us to get along. I respect your accomplishments and the skills you bring to the table, but I’m here to do a job, give your company the best I can, and get paid. So, if my honesty offends you, get over it, or fire me, because those are your only two options.”
I stretched my legs forward and reached into the seat pocket where I’d stashed a bottle of water.
“Think of this encounter with me as your good karma in life,” Mary said with a head bob. Impossible. I didn’t need to share my feelings with her; I wasn’t that guy. “Pretty Zen, Mary,” I said, acknowledging I’d heard her but attempting to cut her off from saying more.
“Lee, you have no idea. Picture me as your personal life coach, your own Tony Robbins,” she said, tapping the armrest.
“Who the hell is that?”
“He is one of the greatest motivational speakers of our times. Google it.”
“Think I’ll pass,” I replied, gazing out the window, uncaring.
Benjamin Hightower’s office was an architectural wonder, combining glass, steel, and wood to make a distinct first impression. Not a place I’d find comfortable to work in but aesthetically pleasing. The offices surrounding his were encased in glass. Nowhere for anyone to hide. It appeared our client wasn’t a trusting soul. Possibly his secrets caused him to add a layer of caution.
As we entered his office, he hit a button, and the glass frosted over for privacy. Good trick. He could still see out, but no one could see in.
Like his habitat, Hightower was sleek, polished, and reeked of money. His yellow tie against his crisp white shirt and gray suit set the tone of exactly what to expect from him. Efficiency and a mover and shaker. I’d already decided we couldn’t trust him, because he’d admitted to being involved in a questionable, if not illegal, activity.
I was about to open my mouth when Mary began. “Good morning, Benjamin, you have a lovely facility.”
Before he could position himself behind his desk, Mary walked to a conversation area with a round table, sat down, and waited for us to join her. OK, I had to admit that was a good move, take him out of his comfort zone and level the playing field.
Once we were seated and our pads were out, I again tried to open the conversation, but Mary again jumped right in with no small talk.
“All your employees are required to have a high-security clearance akin to a government standard. Why is that?” she asked, leaning forward.
He looked a bit startled. Obviously not a question he had come prepared to answer.
“Sometimes we review government projects, and that’s a government requirement.” He leaned back, pulled at his right cuff, and balanced his right foot on his left knee.
“I see Fiona didn’t have that clearance. Why is that?” she asked.
A good question I hadn’t thought to pose.
“We’d never assign a person on probation to a project that needed security clearance. Once she had been here for six months, that would’ve been a requirement,” he answered without voice inflection, returning Mary’s stare.
“So, how did she get access to this project to steal it, if she did? It’s marked classified, so she must have had some level of clearance,” Mary said.
Benjamin leaned forward with his elbows on the table, steepling his index fingers under his chin. “Let me be clear; I never said she stole the project. I said she was a person of interest who may be in possession of my information.”
Wait, why was he being so evasive now?
“Care to elaborate?” I asked.
He continued, “Fiona had amassed many male admirers, and I believe one of them may have taken the project for her. However, I have no evidence to substantiate that conclusion. It’s just a gut feeling.”
“Did you rule out that the other two men, Ryan and Dennis, removed it for their personal use? Or are you saying they may have been the conduit for Fiona?” Mary tapped her ballpoint pen twice on her notepad, making an indent.
“The latter,” he replied, his shoulders stiffened. “To be candid, I’m uncertain we would have extended a permanent offer to Fiona after her probation. Her work was meticulous, but she was becoming a distraction in the work environment.”
This would be a good time to tease out more information. I leaned forward with my forearms balancing on my legs in a non-threatening stance. Before I could speak, Mary steamrolled over me.
“You had sex with her.”
It was a statement not a question. Surely such a baseless accusation would have Hightower showing us the door. Jackson was going to be furious.
Without losing a beat, he responded, “A brief regrettable indiscretion.”
She nodded in understanding. “OK, that’s out of the way. I prepared a list of people we need to interview today,” she said, handing him the list.
“You can use conference room 211. While you set up, Nancy, my administrative assistant, will ask their project supervisor to escort them to you.” Hightower rose, and as he walked out the door, he hit the button to clear the glass of frost. We followed him.
Our walk was short, and he pushed the thick glass door to another glass-walled room. He excused himself as we settled in.
I walked to the ceiling-to-floor windows to admire the view of Seattle and to try to absorb the energy of the place. All this glass, so cold, so exposed. I turned to ask Mary how she came to her conclusions but waited when I saw her busily scribbling on her pad. As I moved to take a seat opposit
e her, she motioned me over to her with a tip of the head. I ambled over next to her and glanced at her pad.
She’d written, “Three cameras in the room” and marked X’s for their placement. My eyes casually swept the room and landed on the well-hidden devices. Was Hightower monitoring us, his employees, or all of us? I didn’t like that he was observing us without our permission, and I didn’t like that he’d had a fling with Fiona. I hoped this wasn’t some wild goose chase to find this girl because he was a spurned lover, and she’d decided to cut and run.
From the interviews we conducted, Fiona appeared to be a charismatic woman who knew her way around a man’s ego. Her academic record proved exemplary, and she was a member of Mensa. In other words, she was a genius. There were no complaints about her work. The interviews produced nothing of interest that would lead us to believe Fiona had stolen the drive. However, it troubled me that Fiona had shown way too much interest in the information’s end use.
The only thing that caught Mary’s interest was the one co-worker who had indicated Fiona had approached him to escort her to a venue. Once he’d arrived, he felt she’d duped him into attending. She had taken him to a BDSM dungeon that had proven to be a bad experience for him, and that was all he would say. He provided us with the address of the place and said it was a private, high-end sex club. I took satisfaction thinking that, if Hightower was watching, I hoped he was having a panic attack wondering if he should make an immediate appointment to be tested for STDs. Served him right. This piece of information was something worth investigating, though, considering the way the crime scene appeared.
By the end of the afternoon, we were no closer to determining the chain of events. The camera footage in the lab had been erased, leaving nothing to help us answer who, what, when, why, or how.
As we packed up to leave, Hightower told us Ryan was conscious and alert enough for the police to interview him. Although he would remain a person of interest, they hadn’t arrested him. There were no fingerprints on the handle of the knife, and the fact he’d been in the room was circumstantial, not direct evidence. I’d have loved fifteen minutes to question him. He’d know if Fiona had been in the motel room or not. But that would be out of the question; we’d never be allowed access to him at this point.
Although Mary and I argued about investigating the sex club, I overruled her. We told Hightower our next stop would be the university Fiona had graduated from in Los Angeles. We wanted to get a feel for her from people she’d interacted with for over two years. In the back of my mind, it niggled away at me that someone may have abducted her to get the drive she’d hidden, or had taken her for some other evil reason. With little else to go on, visiting the university was our plan, and Hightower was on board.
We settled into our booth, and I ordered a Jameson, and Mary ordered a cola. I needed to feel the burn slipping down my throat to clear my head. People committed homicides for a reason. Revenge, jealousy, anger, and greed were the top reasons. Less often mental health issues came into play. I still couldn’t figure out the motive behind this murder, but I reminded myself it wasn’t ours to solve.
“I’m stumped,” Mary admitted, cleaning her silverware with the linen napkin. “No one stands out. If we knew why Fiona disappeared, we could probably figure out how.”
“I agree. Nothing feels right about Fiona stealing the project. She had a low-security clearance, and it would have been difficult for her to access that project without help. But why run if you’re not guilty? And who wiped the server? I would think you’d need a background in IT for that.”
“We can sit here all night and go through what-ifs, but it will circle us around to where we are now. Let’s proceed as if she’s guilty and take a week to gather information about her. What else can we do? The police have searched the men’s apartments and don’t have probable cause to search hers, unless they accept Benjamin’s missing person report. So, let’s head to LA, as we planned, and see what turns up,” Mary said.
“You’re the boss,” I replied, throwing back the rest of the whiskey.
“So, what’s your story? Do you enjoy doing the skip tracing for the firm?” Mary asked, placing her silverware next to each other.
“For now.” I shrugged, twirling the glass, waiting for a refill.
“Got big plans?” she asked as the waitress saw my empty glass and nodded.
“Living day to day, Mary.”
“Not much of a talker,” she said.
I suppose this was her way to engage me to share my feelings.
“Nope.”
“Well then, I’ll accept that as a challenge to crack you open like a walnut,” she retorted as she moved aside for the waitress to replace my drink and take our order.
“Knock yourself out.”
We plotted our next two days and finished the meal in relative silence. After Mary finished her dessert and mine, we retired for the night to prepare for an early flight to LA.
I spent the next two hours, before dozing off, researching Benjamin Hightower and didn’t like what I found. Several years back, he’d been investigated for insider trading, but no charges had been filed. And the FDA had pulled some of the clinical trials he had worked on but hadn’t disclosed why. I wondered if Jackson knew what his friend had been up to?
Lee
Los Angeles, I hate it. Please, Governor Moonbeam, secede from being a member state. Go your own way. Do it, now.
“Mr. Stone and Ms. Collier, Dean Mathison will see you now,” the secretary said as she waved us toward his office door.
“Thank you, dear,” Mary said. “Your hair is so pretty and full of volume. Are those extensions that make it so sexy? I’ve thought of getting some myself. Bubblegum pink would be my choice.”
The young lady’s face went from a full smile while accepting the compliment to shock as the visual of Mary with bubblegum-pink extensions manifested in her mind. What the hell was she thinking? That fluffy cotton-white hair that reminded me of a Q-tip, streaked with pink, what a nightmare to picture. Not the best look for her. Poor receptionist may be damaged for life.
I moved Mary forward with a hand to her back. “Mary, you ladies can swap beauty tips later.”
The man behind the desk, the dean of students, looked to be in his early sixties and appeared to be the school’s head airhead.
He guided us toward the left by the window and offered us a seat in a small conversation area. We told him a legally sanitized version of why we were looking for Fiona O’Dell. That version emphasized the fact she hadn’t arrived for work one morning, and we were treating her as a missing person.
“I am sorry, Mr. Stone; you made this trip for nothing. We are under a contract with Ms. O’Dell that prohibits me from speaking about her except to say she was a student and graduated. I can add that since she left, I have not seen nor had any contact with her.” He shifted and assumed a defensive position.
Mary and I exchanged glances, which she broke to address him. Mary had an impressive ability to morph at will into different personas, a real chameleon. Today she chose her “Trust me; I’m a little old lady” persona.
“Dean Mathison, please indulge me. I can become forgetful at my age; that’s why Lee is here to keep me on track.” She smiled and patted my hand in a grandmotherly fashion. “We won’t take up much of your time and don’t want to place you in an awkward position.”
His body unfolded and relaxed; he’d bought it.
“Lee, sweetheart, can you be a good boy, and fish out my note pad and pen from my purse so I can take a few notes?” she asked as her large glasses eased their way down her nose.
As requested, I rummaged through her purse, which, to my horror, was replete with makeshift weapons. I saw a pen that was pepper spray, a lipstick stun gun, and hornet repellent I assumed was for an emergency. We’d be having a serious talk later.
“Now, Dean, my understanding is an incident occurred involving Fiona that embarrassed the school. We don’t need the details,” Ma
ry said with a dismissive wave.
Wait, what? When were we briefed on this; had I missed something?
“Now, now, don’t be uncomfortable. I can understand your hesitancy to share the details. Would you tell us who Ms. O’Dell’s last roommate was?” Mary asked with her brightest smile. “If my granddaughter were missing and had everyone worried to death that something had happened to her, I’d hope people would cooperate.”
The dean sat back and pondered the conundrum she’d placed him in.
“We guard our students’ privacy. The most I can say that may help you is that the news articles mentioned information about her roommate, and we tried to rectify that blunder. I would be more comfortable if you tracked her down through an independent source. Is that all?” he said, standing to signal the meeting was over.
It was clear we couldn’t pry any more information from him, so we thanked him and left.
We availed ourselves of one of the many green spaces on campus. Mary found a stone bench and claimed it by placing her massive bag on it. We needed to regroup.
I paced around the bench before I lost my shit. “What the hell, Mary! A heads-up you’d found information would’ve been nice!” I said as she sat on the stone bench.
She looked up at me for a moment, then opened her enormous handbag, and removed a tablet. After adjusting her hideous owl glasses, she focused on the screen and waited for her search results to appear.
“Mary, did you hear me?” I asked, becoming more annoyed.
She responded by handing me the tablet. I skimmed the article as I planted my ass on the stone bench.
I hit the back arrow and found the only other article about the incident at the school involving Fiona. The school, or someone, had used clout to make the matter disappear.
“Damn. How did you know?”
“Lee, no one signs a non-disclosure unless something bad has happened. I bluffed, and he folded. The article doesn’t give the roommate’s name but gives the student complex name, so let’s start there; there’s always a blabbermouth on hand. Let me do the talking while I’m into my little-old-lady frame of mind. Now, before we go, I need to fuel up on caffeine. There has to be a Starbucks in the student center. Let’s go.” She packed her tablet and intertwined her arm with mine; I suppose in character with her old-lady role. With Mary, you never knew what her game entailed. We were all her puppets being moved around at her will.
The Last Lie She Told Page 2