Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) (8 page)

Oh.
That
day.

Every American still talked about
that
day on at least a weekly basis. Here in D.C. the subject was virtually inescapable and there didn’t seem to be one twenty-four hour period that went by when Ronnie wasn’t slapped in the face—or stabbed in the heart—with it all over again.

Her father and brothers hadn’t been at the Smithsonian like Leanne’s late father. They hadn’t even been on the Mall when the attacks started.

Her dad had been a cop, a high-level staff member working directly for the Chief of the D.C. Police Department. He’d accepted the promotion at her mother’s urging—it was supposed to see him safely into his retirement with little danger and a lot of spare time. Only, neither her father nor the chief were the types to sit at headquarters and wait for reports. As word of the scope of the attacks had spread, they’d raced to the scene, anxious to help try to free the people trapped under piles of debris.

The chief had ordered her father to set up a base of operations at the Washington Monument, which appeared—at that time—to have been spared from the blasts. He did, supposedly barking orders, calling for triage, his calm, strong demeanor lending courage to all those in a panic around him.

Someone had suggested they go up inside the monument to get a clearer view of what was going on in the mall.

The explosives had been set to detonate as soon as someone stepped onto the viewing platform. Her father and four of his men had been blown out of the clear, blue sky, pieces of them raining down, falling on the statues of the soldiers at the Korean War memorial and into the reflecting pool.

The blast sent the structure tumbling down in huge chunks of concrete, and also killed seven firefighters who were using the monument as a base of operations. Among them her brother, Ethan, who’d been proud as could be at having made lieutenant at his firehouse the week before. Knowing her father, he’d wanted his youngest son safe and close by; she would bet he had called him and assigned him to the base of that monument.

Her other brother, Drew, had been employed at the Pentagon, which was, mercifully, spared that day. But Drew had been asked to attend a meeting downtown that afternoon. Not wanting to deal with traffic, he’d ridden in on a Metro train. The wrong Metro train.

It had taken weeks to dig down to the crushed hunk of metal in that underground tunnel. And months to try to sort through the bits and pieces of the hundreds of people who’d been aboard it when the tunnel imploded in on them.

Sometimes she wondered if she should have moved. A tropical island might have done the trick, might have helped soothe her spirit and heal her heart a little. Her mother would never go, however. She wanted the grief and the parades and the martyrdom. She wanted the graves at Arlington—which, as far as Ronnie could figure, probably didn’t contain much more than a cup of bone or a wisp of hair that had once been part of her big, strong, funny, handsome father or brothers. Those things didn’t mean anything to her--they were empty reminders, shadows of the vibrant people she’d known, of far less value than the memories that played constantly in her mind. But Ronnie couldn’t abandon her mother, so she’d never moved way.

She dared anyone to start playing a my-sad-story-is-worse-than-your-sad-story game with her. To hell with anybody who said she was hard-hearted or didn’t understand loss.  Her heart was hard because she understood loss far too fucking well.

Unable to sit there any longer, thinking those thoughts, Ronnie got up out of the chair and began to move around. Daniels continued the interview while she prowled the office, listening attentively to every question and answer, but also examining Leanne’s boss’s workplace. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with neatly-organized books with un-cracked spines filled one section of wall. Framed degrees, awards and commendations covered another, and below them was a huge credenza that matched the oak desk. It was covered with framed photographs—more of Williams and his wife, most often on the same yacht. A few group shots with them and their children. It appeared they had a son and a daughter, both of whom now looked to be in their twenties. It was the kind of happy display any parent would have in an office, one that told stories of special family moments, and oozed warmth and love. The picture perfect life of the perfect executive.

Huh. Why that made her a little nauseous, she couldn’t say. Something about Williams just struck her the wrong way, whether he’d been banging his assistant or not.

She moved on, eyeing more photos.

“That’s Leanne with me and my wife,” Williams said. He’d risen from his desk and walked over to join her. “She loved coming out with us on our boat.”

“Nice.”

Obviously Williams pulled down big money; calling that thing a boat was like calling cancer a little infection. Boat didn’t even come close to describing it, the thing had to be fifty-feet long, at least, with an enclosed cabin and a huge mast, complete with billowing sails. Williams and his wife obviously spent a lot of time on it; most of the pictures were taken on deck.

“It’s a classic,” he said with pride. “My grandfather built her thirty years ago and I’ve restored and overhauled her twice. The old man loved that beauty, I just can’t let her go into retirement.”

“Looks like she’s far from ready for that,” Ronnie replied pleasantly. Then she got back to the matter at hand. “So, Leanne liked sailing?”

“Oh, yes. After she lost her own parents, we sort of adopted her into our family.” He reached out and ran the tips of his fingers over a coffee-table sized, leather-covered book, embossed with Williams’s name in the front. “She had this made for me for my fiftieth birthday a few weeks ago.” His voice broke a little. “She was very creative.”

She reached for the book, raising a questioning brow. He hesitated a moment, as if not sure whether she was humoring him or was really interested, then nodded his assent for her to pick it up. 

Okay. She
was
humoring him. Still, she made it look good, taking the book and flipping it open. She scanned the pages, seeing a lifetime of photographic images showing the progression of little Jackie Williams, drooling infant, to Mr. Williams, CEO of the Phoenix Group. Oh, and yachtsman.

“Did your wife help her?” she asked, wondering where Leanne had gotten the pictures. Hell, maybe the man wasn’t full of shit and Leanne really had been as close as a daughter to them both.

“Some. I’m sure she must have given her those baby pictures. Leanne was very clever, though, she actually found some old photos I’d never even seen before by using that new Google face-search program.”

“Ahh. Good for her,” Ronnie said, familiar with the program. Cops had been using it for a while; the site was now popular with everyone. You simply scanned in a photograph, uploaded a .jpg of a face to the search box, and the engine would scour the Internet looking for matches. They used some high tech algorithm that matched twenty-seven points on the face or something, and usually came back with stunningly accurate results.

She’d heard there had been a few lawsuits over it. Some people hadn’t liked getting busted for being at a casino when they were supposed to be home sick from work, or being with another man when they were supposed to be at the charity luncheon.

Ronnie had considered utilizing the program herself, maybe putting in her brothers’ images. She’d wondered if she could find some old tidbit from their college days, stumble across a picture she’d never seen before that might trick her into thinking them alive and well out there in the world somewhere, if only for a few minutes.

She’d never done it, not sure whether it would be more painful to find nothing or to strike gold.

“So, uh, do you mind giving me a list of those employees who knew and interacted with Leanne?” Daniels asked.

Hesitating briefly, as if not sure whether to remain with Ronnie or return to Daniels, the man mumbled, “Certainly.”

Leaving Ronnie standing beside the credenza with his memory book in her hands, Williams returned to his desk and retrieved a single sheet of pristine paper from a drawer. As he wrote, he blathered on about how much everyone just loved Leanne.

Ronnie feigned interest, ready to get out of here, talk to a few more people, then get back to the White House. While she waited, she absent-mindedly turned the pages of Williams’s photo book, and was about to put it back on the credenza when one particular two-page spread caught her eye. Unlike the rest of the book, it was not perfectly laid out and symmetrical. In fact, it looked…choppy, or badly edited. The large page on the left contained a few pictures, including one huge group shot taken at night on a beach. Well, it contained half that shot. Considering the way other pages had been laid out, she would have expected to look on the right-hand page and see the other half of the beach photo. Instead, she saw completely different images altogether.

Interesting. Had he torn-out the other page?

Her suspicious mind immediately went to the
he’s hiding something
place. An incriminating shot of Williams and Leanne on a business trip?

She shifted, making sure her back was to the man at the desk, and lifted the book a little closer, trying to commit the image to memory. It didn’t take long to discount the photo-evidence-of-a-romance theory. Judging by the hair and clothes, not to mention the easily-recognizable, though much younger, Williams, the half-picture looked to have been taken way back in the eighties or nineties. No obvious reason he’d want to tear page out, unless maybe an ex-girlfriend was in the picture and the wife had gotten jealous. Or maybe Leanne wasn’t as great with Photoshop as she’d thought she was. 

“Well, I think we’ve taken up enough of your time,” Daniels said.

Ronnie closed the book and set it on the credenza. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“You’re most welcome,” Williams said as he came out from behind his desk and walked them to the door.

Daniels shook his hand. “If we need to talk to you again…”

“You may certainly call and set up an appointment if that’s really necessary,” the man replied, his tone losing some warmth, as if he was coming to the end of his rope when it came to being questioned.

Well, maybe he was used to that tactic working when dealing with his employees, contractors or other underlings. But it wasn’t going to work with her or with Daniels. If they needed to talk to him again, they’d talk to him again. She just hoped the man hadn’t put his guard totally up and wouldn’t demand that talk take place at his lawyer’s office. She didn’t necessarily like Williams as a suspect just yet, but no way was she ready to rule anybody out.

Outside in the front lobby of the building, Daniels asked, “So, do you really wanna go interview all the vic’s co-workers right now?”

Ronnie glanced at her watch. Four-ten. “No, I really want to get back over to the White House before five in case any of the people we need to talk to over there are about to leave for the day.”

“I assume by ‘any of the people’ you’re referring to just those who work on the site. ‘Cause most of the people we technically need to talk to have scattered to the four corners of the globe by now. All fifty-five thousand of them.”

“Don’t remind me. Let’s just hope Leanne’s head turns up…otherwise you and I are going to be putting in for a whole lot of overtime.”

Returning to Patriot Square, Ronnie and Daniels picked right back up with interviews of witnesses and site workers, one after another. While Daniels was focused on specifics, facts and figures, Ronnie was already beginning to segue from D.C.P.D. detective into O.E.P.I.S. investigator. So it wasn’t just the facts she was interested in.

She wanted to get to know Leanne as a person. Not just the details—the history—but how she interacted with people, her mannerisms, her personality. Strange as it sounded, part of being an O.E.P.I.S. investigator was about getting into the shoes, and the eyes, of the victim. She needed to understand what made Leanne tick. Only that way could she effectively sort through the massive data dump on the woman’s hard drive, finding the details that were important and discarding those that weren’t. She needed to know why Leanne’s gaze might linger on a daisy but skim right over a rose, why she might pay particular attention to a newspaper but barely spare a passing glance at a magazine.

By ten p.m., she had a pretty good feel for Leanne, at least the professional side of the young woman’s life. Soon she’d go into her head—right into her memories—but for now, she wanted to walk in her footsteps.

“You’re sure you want to split up?” Daniels asked as they stood inside the empty room they’d been using as an interview office all evening. There was one more worker to talk to, but considering it was heading well into the night, she needed to leave him to her partner.

“I’m sure. I need to explore the crime scene—alone—before I tackle her downloads.”

Daniels frowned, displeased at the plan. Not because of the rules and regs—technically speaking, they both should have gotten off-duty several hours ago and were pulling overtime right now, so the argument could be made that they weren’t breaking rules by splitting up. Nor would he be worried about her physically; he knew as well as anyone that she could take care of herself. She’d saved his ass on more than one occasion and certainly knew how to take care of her own. Truth was, she suspected he had an idea of what, exactly, she was planning to do.

“You do know you’re not some kind of FBI profiler, right?” he muttered, obviously not wanting to be overheard by the few witnesses and agents still milling around on this floor.

“I know.”

“Don’t go getting your mind all torn up.”

“Considering what happened to our vic, I thought you’d be more concerned about my internal organs getting all torn up.”

He snickered. “Any psycho who comes after you with a stun gun is gonna be feeling it jammed up his ass and get one hell of a shock to his prostate.”

“Damn straight.”

“Just...be careful,” he warned her.

“I’ll be fine. Back in a half-hour.”

“Thirty minutes. Then I come after you.”

“Okay,
Dad
.”

Daniels smiled as she turned away, but she knew if she looked over her shoulder, that smile would have faded. He was worried about her, worried about this case. One reason she’d made it into O.E.P.I.S. was because of her educational background. The O.E.P. investigators had to be part cop, part shrink. They needed to be able to think like the people they were studying. Ronnie had double-majored at Georgetown, with degrees in criminal justice and in psychology. So Daniels knew she’d be utilizing those skills and techniques while working this investigation, and he was worried about how it might affect her.

Ronnie wasn’t worried. Yet. After she’d cleared one real investigation, she’d think about whether this method of truly trying to get into the victim’s head was worth the psychological toll, but for right now, it seemed the wisest course of action.

Although the construction elevators were working, Ronnie headed for the nearest enclosed stairwell instead. Like a deep sea diver, she wanted time to mentally adjust to the descent, to pull her mind out of the interviews and the paperwork and put it strictly with Leanne, to almost
become
the other woman.

The place had been buzzing with people earlier; mostly investigators and witnesses, but there had also been some construction workers milling around, waiting for the go ahead to get back to work. They’d been cleared to do so in one part of the building a few hours ago, and even now, though it was fully dark outside, she heard the buzz of heavy equipment and machinery. They’d be working 24/7 to make up for the lost time this week.

That buzz began to fade as she slowly walked down the stairs toward the first basement level. The main floor had been brightly lit and populated. Her descent into the belly of the beast marked a definite change.

The heels of her boots clicked on the hard cement beneath her feet, the clicks growing louder with every step. By the time she hit bottom, she realized the clang and whirr of construction work had completely faded away. The new White House was being built to extreme specifications and would someday be about as bomb-proof as a structure could get these days. Which also made it fairly impervious to drifting noise. Of course, yesterday, it would have been louder, even down here.  No matter how soundproof the building, with fifty-five-thousand people, marching bands, heavy vehicles and fireworks, noise would have sifted through the layers of concrete and insulation.

Had Leanne heard? Had she been listening to the celebration going on far above her and wondered how the world could continue going on its merry way while she was being tortured and mutilated? Ronnie paused, considering the question, thinking like the victim.

It didn’t require much effort or imagination.

Yes. Of course Leanne had thought those things. Anyone would.

Ronnie blinked and tried to mentally move past what she was certain had been a real moment for the victim, and took a look around her. Not only was the basement deserted, it was a little eerie. Curling her lips, she drew in a slow, steady breath, hearing the faint brush of the air through her teeth. It was
that
silent.

Rather than proceeding down to the next level—her intended destination—she stayed on the landing, her hand on the rough-hewn handrail. The door between this stairwell and the main corridor hadn’t even been installed yet, and she could see out into the vast, expansive hallway that would one day lead to dozens of offices.

Leaving the stairs, she walked into that empty cavern, peering into the long tunnel of black that stretched out on either side of her. The only soldiers battling the darkness were emergency Exit signs with arrows that appeared every twenty feet or so. The green letters cast only the tiniest pools of light, each a small oasis on the empty concrete. She counted two of them to her right, and six to her left, the furthest one out only a small dot from here. She suspected she was seeing all the way to the emergency exit at the far end, with absolutely nothing to break the monotony of nothingness, other than those tiny green pools.

Strange to imagine all the things she might
not
be seeing in those twenty-foot wide expanses of darkness between each one.

Hearing the faintest shuffle, she cocked her head and called, “Hello?”

Nothing.

“I’m Detective Veronica Sloan, DCPD. Is anyone down here?”

More silence.

Wondering if the sound she’d heard had been merely the settlement of a newly constructed wall or beam, she let her eyes continue to adjust to the absence of light, searching for a shadow or a shape that didn’t belong. Though her senses weren’t telling her why, her whole body was reacting to something. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, her fingers tingled. She’d risen onto her toes, as if in anticipation of a sudden, unexpected dash. From something? Toward something?

Toward. Without a doubt. Ronnie had never run away from anything in her entire life. Except, perhaps, personal relationships that threatened to get past the emotional barrier she’d set up between herself and other people.

She spotted nothing, heard nothing, not the faintest whisper of movement on the air. Apparently the creepiness of the place was playing tricks with her hearing. Finally, after a solid minute of nothingness, she went back to the stairwell and resumed her long descent to the bowels of the White House.

If the first basement level had felt terribly empty, the sub-basement would be utterly desolate. This whole area would eventually be used for storage, mailrooms, security stations and overflow office space, so it didn’t rank high on the completion-list. After today’s discovery, she doubted any workers were going to want to come down here for a good long time.

They certainly weren’t here now.

She reached the bottom and stepped out, turning toward the left, thankful for the presence of more of those emergency exit signs. She could have flipped on some overheads—bare bulbs strung out along the ceiling—but didn’t want to just yet. She wanted the atmosphere, wanted the darkness, the lack of all other sensory input, the better in which to think. She wanted the empty space and the quiet air, wanted to move through it with her senses wide open so she could pull in any impressions that might have occurred to Leanne Carr.

Knowing she couldn’t go far before she’d run into the crime scene tape, she pulled a flashlight out of her belt and flipped it on. The mag cast a powerful blast of light that banished shadow. The beam landed with unrelenting harshness on the bright yellow tape, revealing the tiny evidence markers and faint spots of red on the floor where the spider-webby lines of blood had been found. The remains had been removed, of course, as had as much of the other evidence as could be gathered. But she could still see the scene in her mind, remembering with utter clarity the position of each mass of tissue, bone or sinew.

“Why did you come here, Leanne?” she whispered as she ducked under the tape. “You’d been working on this event for months, it was your baby. So why were you
here
, rather than outside enjoying the fruits of all your labor?”

During their interview with Jack Williams this afternoon, Leanne’s boss had said he had no idea why she would have come to the White House, and that the last words he’d exchanged with her had been that morning, when he’d told her he’d see her at the ceremony. He’d left the Phoenix Group’s office shortly after 11 a.m., fully expecting to see his assistant at the Washington Monument later in the afternoon.

The witnesses and logs said she’d arrived on the site at 1:45 p.m. yesterday, able to move through a special pre-authorized-staff-only security checkpoint fairly quickly since there was not supposed to be any work going on. She’d noted her destination as the White House, and the soldier who’d checked her in said she’d appeared preoccupied and perhaps a little annoyed.

“Of course you were,” she murmured. “Because you didn’t want to have to come over here, yesterday of all days.”

So why had she?

Per the guard, Leanne had commented on the day’s activities, quipped that there was no rest for the weary, and waved as she’d driven past the checkpoint toward State Street. From that point on, nobody else had seen her. Her electronic key-card had been used to gain entry to the building at 1:57. Not another soul was supposed to be inside at the time…so had her killer entered with her, meaning it would have to be someone she knew very well, and trusted? Or had he somehow gotten around the security and managed to keep his presence hidden from everyone? Was he some kind of damn super-spy who could have evaded detection during intense security sweeps? If she hadn’t already confirmed that the old tunnel system that had been a key part of the 10/20 attacks had been demolished and closed over, she’d wonder if the killer had been utilizing them.

Leanne’s internal chip said she’d been zapped with a stun-gun at about 2:10. What had happened in those intervening thirteen minutes? Had her destination been the sub-basement all along—was that why her heart had spend up? Was she afraid?

Or had someone attacked her upstairs—chased her down into the sub-basement?

Or had he incapacitated her and then dragged her down into this dark hole so he could take his time with her? 

Damn, she wished the building had been wired for its internal security system. Someday there would be cameras covering every square inch of floor space, but for now, they had nothing other than those high-security locks, agents and guards who’d been assigned to other tasks yesterday.

One thing Ronnie felt certain of: Leanne Carr hadn’t randomly come here and stumbled across a psychopath. The crime had felt too deliberate and personal, the set-up was too methodical and well-timed. Someone had lured her here, like a spider catching a juicy fly, and he’d covered his tracks.

“But who?” she asked, as if some of Leanne’s memories might be lingering in this stale, dank air that still smelled of blood and chemicals. 

Ronnie spent the next twenty minutes circling the crime scene, moving from spot to spot, relying on her excellent memory to recall the forensic report. She considered what must have happened, minute by minute. She made a few mental notes, including pausing to wonder why the killer had stayed here, fairly close to the stairwell, rather than taking Leanne to the far end of the corridor, where it was less likely anyone would hear her screams.

“Were you
that
sure of yourself, that positive nobody would be around to hear?” she whispered, trying to imagine the killer’s motivations.