by Bobby Nash
“This way,” was all the detective would say, motioning for Brown to follow him.
They entered the office, where other officers were collecting samples from the room’s various surfaces. It looked a lot like the cop shows he had watched on TV, except it was a lot quieter. He was surprised that there wasn’t more banter between them like the forensic science techs on TV.
“In here, please.”
Detective Fitzpatrick motioned him into the meeting room. Inside sat Mr. Pearce and another plainclothes officer. They spoke quietly to each other, but fell into silence when the two men entered.
The plainclothes officer left the room with only a nod to Pearce and then to Fitzpatrick.
“Mr. Pearce?”
“Take a seat, Ted,” Pearce said, motioning toward the chair across from him. His demeanor was a lot less accusatory than that of the detective. Not surprising considering the man’s years in the field. Richard Pearce knew how to get information just by talking. It reminded Ted of how much he hated it when he was a child and his parents sat him down to talk instead of punishing him. He would have rather taken a beating than have one of those conversations with them.
“No one will tell me what is going on, sir,” brown said as he slid into the chair.
“We have a few questions for you, Mr. Brown,” Fitzpatrick interjected as he took the seat the other officer vacated across the table from Brown. A manila folder sat on the table in front of him. The officer who had been sitting there closed the door behind him as he left, leaving just the three of them in the room.
“Of course,” Brown said. “Whatever you need.”
“Can you account for your whereabouts today?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Just tell us where you’ve been today, Ted,” Pearce said.
“Of course,” he said, confused. “Uh, nowhere really. I was home all day. My girlfriend spent the night and we were up quite late. She left early this morning to get in some lab time. She’s a student over at Northwestern. After she left, I went back to sleep. Actually, I don’t remember her leaving so I must have fallen asleep while she was in the shower. Mr. Pearce’s call woke me. Then I came here as fast as I could.”
“So, you’re saying you’ve been home all morning?”
“That’s correct?”
“Didn’t go out for coffee or breakfast?”
“No.”
“Didn’t take a run? Maybe head into the office for a bit?”
“No. Like I said, I was home. It’s Sunday. I like to sleep in on Sunday.”
“After your girlfriend heads off to the lab,” Fitzpatrick added.
“That’s right,” Brown said, growing angry.
He turned to face his boss.
“What’s going on here, Mr. Pearce?” he asked pointedly.
“Just answer his questions, please,” Pearce said calmly.
Brown started to protest but thought better of it and sat back quietly.
“What do you want to know?” he finally asked. “Stop tapdancing and just ask me what you want to ask me.”
Detective Fitzpatrick opened the folder and slid a photograph across the table in front of him. He recognized the woman in the photo.
“Is this her? Your girlfriend?”
Ted Brown looked at the photo. It was a grainy surveillance photo that was probably taken from a security camera. There was no mistaking that the woman in the photograph was Sarah, although he had never seen her dressed in such a business-like manner before. All of the time they had spent together had either been casual, in jeans and a T-shirt, a party dress, or naked. He’d only seen her in a suit and skirt once before, when they attended that political dinner. He remembered joking that she should wear that little black strapless number more often.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s Sarah.”
“What’s Sarah’s last name?”
Ted did a double take as if he didn’t know the answer.
“What?”
“What is your girlfriend’s last name, sir?”
“Smith,” he answered. “Sarah Smith.”
“And what can you tell us about Sarah Smith, Mr. Brown?”
“What do you want to know?”
Detective Fitzpatrick gave a practiced smile.
“I want to know everything.”
“Well,” Brown said as he scratched his uncombed hair. When he got the call, he had rolled out of bed, dressed, and drove straight to the office without a second thought for his appearance. “Her name is Sarah Smith. She’s twenty-six and in the Master’s program over at Northwestern. She works part time over at Lou’s Bar & Grill, which is just around the corner from my apartment and also happens to be where we met. She’s paying her way through school.”
“And you’ve been dating, you and this twenty-six-year old?”
“You don’t have to say it like I’m doing something illicit, Detective. Yes, there’s about a ten-year age gap between us. We’re dating. It’s fun. She’s fun. I like spending time with her and she likes spending time with me.”
“How long have you and Miss Smith been dating?”
Brown blew out a breath. The detective’s tone was starting to rattle him.
“Four… almost five months,” he said, irritation seeping into his own tone. “Why are you asking me about Sarah? Did something happen to her? I don’t understand. Is she okay? What’s going on?”
“Please, Mr. Brown, just calm down and answer my questions.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!”
Richard Pearce interrupted the detective with a muffled cough before he could respond.
One of the Richard Pearce’s gifts was an ability to remain calm even when confronted with the most volatile personalities, of which Washington DC had in abundance. Over the years he had dealt with many abrasive personalities while on the job and never once had he lost his composure. He was extremely good at what he did.
“Detective, Mr. Brown is cooperating fully,” Pearce reminded him calmly. “I think you should extend him the same courtesy and answer at least one of his questions, don’t you think?”
Fitzpatrick did not appear all too thrilled with the notion of having the flow of information go both ways, but he relented under Richard Pearce’s unwavering gaze. As much as he hated to admit it, it was far more preferable to stay on Pearce’s good side. With the man’s connections, Fitzpatrick doubted it would take more than one phone call for him to have the FBI take over the investigation. Despite an open caseload roughly the length of his arm, the detective hated walking away from a case before it was closed.
“Very well,” the detective said with a hint of exasperation. “Mr. Brown, there was a break in here this morning.”
“A robbery? What could they possibly want out of our office?”
“It wasn’t a robbery, Ted,” Pearce said. “Not exactly.”
“I don’t understand. What does this have to do with--?”
Fitzpatrick interrupted.
“Do you have your keycard, Mr. Brown?”
“Sure.”
“Can I see it, please?”
“Sure,” Ted said as he fished his wallet out of his pocket and opened it to where he kept the plastic access card that allowed him entrance to the Hester Building and the Pearce Analysis office. Since he had been escorted inside by uniformed police officers when he arrived, he hadn’t even noticed it was missing until that moment. He emptied his pockets and placed the wallet, a small stack of one-dollar bills, a set of keys on a simple metal ring, and a cell phone on the table.
“That’s odd.”
“What’s that, Mr. Brown?”
“My card seems to be missing.”
Fitzpatrick and Pearce looked at one another.
“But you already knew that, didn’t you?” Brown asked, the pieces starting to fall into place.
“Yes,” Pearce said. “We already knew that.”
Ted Brown’s patience had reached its limit. “What is going on?” he demand
ed.
Pearce stood and walked around the table to stand next to Ted Brown. He motioned toward the closed conference room door.
“Come with me, Ted,” he said.
Detective Fitzpatrick was on his feet to protest immediately.
“Mr. Pearce,” he demanded. “I’m not through with--”
His patience at an end, Richard Pearce turned to the detective and their eyes locked.
“Yes. You are,” Pearce said before turning back to his employee. “Ted, if you would please? You can leave your belongings.”
They walked out of the conference room, leaving the fuming detective in their wake. Brown did not collect his belongings, as instructed, leaving them on the table. He followed his boss out of the conference room as Pearce led the way toward his office.
The first thing Brown noticed after they were allowed to enter were police technicians taking samples of the blood that was splattered across the desk and walls.
“What the hell happened in here?”
“That’s what we’d like to know? Can you think of any reason your girlfriend would use your key card to gain illegal access to this office?”
“No,” Brown said. “I still can’t believe any of this is happening. What did Sarah say? Do they have her in custody? Surely, there has to be a logical explanation for this. You should ask her what it is.”
“I’m afraid we can’t do that.”
“Why?” Brown asked, fearing the answer even as he asked the question.
“She’s dead.”
Brown felt his knees buckle and the world shifted violently around him. He probably would have crumpled to the floor if his boss had not been there to steady him.
“Easy,” Pearce whispered.
“How?” was all Brown could manage to say.
Pearce took a deep breath. He was not known to beat around the bush so he came right out and told Ted Brown the facts as he knew them without sugarcoating the details.
“We have security footage of the woman you identified as Sarah Smith entering the building this morning using your badge and lock code. I’m going to assume you did not willingly give either of those to her.”
“No. Of course not. Can I see the footage?”
Pearce thought it over for a moment before nodding and leading the way to the security office at far end of the office.
As they walked down the hallway that was created by moveable cubicle walls, Ted Brown felt Detective Fitzpatrick’s eyes on him. He tried not to look, but was unable to keep from casting a glance toward the conference room where the detective was talking on a cell phone. For a moment, Brown thought it was his phone, but assumed that meant they simply owned the same brand.
The security office was small compared to the other offices in the suite. Two chairs sat before a small inelegant table with a bank of four flat panel monitors on it. The servers that were used to monitor security for the entire floor took up the rest of the room. It was chilly in the room to keep the servers cooled.
Pearce pulled up the footage and each monitor showed four different camera angles of Sarah Smith entering the Hester Building. The security footage was processed digitally directly from the cameras to the server so the images were crystal clear.
“Is that her?”
“Yes,” Ted said softly, still not wanting to believe it. “That’s Sarah. I’ve never seen her with her hair tied up like that before.”
“Whoever she was, your girlfriend was good,” Pearce said, pulling Brown’s attention back to the monitors as they watched Sarah walk into the building as if she had every right in the world to be there. She even took a moment to talk to the guard, who did not appear to belong.
“Did she just wink at him?”
“Looks like it.”
“Was he in on it?”
“We don’t believe so.”
When he did not elaborate further, Brown assumed the young guard would be unemployed after today. It would not do to keep him on the payroll after the building was breached.
As Sarah moved out of frame, another camera caught her heading toward the elevators where she pushed the down button.
“Where’s she going?”
“Basement,” Pearce said. “She uploaded a recursive algorithm into the building’s security servers. I’ve got O’Neill and Adams down there checking it out now just to make sure it wasn’t something more serious than disabling the cameras. Tomorrow, the basement server room gets a security upgrade and will be off limits to all unauthorized personnel. This is where we lose visual of her. We never actually see her get back into the elevator, but we know she came up here.”
“How so?”
He tapped a command and the screens shifted to show views of the hallway and elevators outside of the Pearce Analysis office. Roughly five minutes after she entered the basement, Sarah Smith exited the elevator on the eighth floor.
“I guess she didn’t know we had independent camera feeds on this floor,” Pearce said. “Lucky for us, it gives us a better idea of what happened here.”
“And what exactly did happen up here, Richard?” It was the first time Ted Brown had called Mr. Pearce by his first name, but his patience was nearing its limit and he wanted answers.
Pearce let out a breath.
“After she routed security, the woman you know as Sarah Smith made it all the way into my office. As you can see on the screen, she performed a pretty exhaustive search before the guard working the front desk stumbled upon her.”
Sure enough, the security guard appeared on the monitor.
“Why was front desk security up here?”
“We don’t know that either.”
“Is that a gun?”
“Yes.”
The men watched as Sarah spoke to the guard and Ted felt a pain in his gut. How many times had he seen that look on her face when she was talking to him? Has she really been playing me all this time? he wondered. In spite of the proof on the monitor, he was convinced this was a mistake. It must be. There had to be a reason why Sarah had done this.
As the gun fired silently on the monitor, Ted’s heart nearly leapt from his chest. Sarah’s body was thrown backward by the force of the shot, bouncing her off the bookshelf and toppling her and several dozen thick bound volumes to the floor.
Ted was thankful that the cameras could not see behind the desk where Sarah lay bleeding out.
For at least a minute, nothing happened. The guard did not move to check to see if she was alive or dead nor did he make a move to call the police. That struck Brown as not right and he suspected Mr. Pearce found it equally as curious when he had watched these for the first time.
A flash of light caught his attention and he realized that his focus had not been on the guard, but on the desk.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Let’s step back out,” Pearce said as he got to his feet.
They walked back toward the crime scene and Brown made note that Detective Fitzpatrick was once again watching him from the door in front of the conference room. He began to wonder if the detective had moved during the fifteen or twenty minutes they had been looking over camera footage.
“We’re still not sure why he was up here,” Pearce said, ignoring the chaos around him. If not for the blood and crime scene tape, he could have been discussing the quarterly status updates. “This floor should have been off limits to him as well.”
“So, the guard caught her in here and instead of calling the cops or taking her into custody, he kills her? Does that make sense to you?”
“Not really, but that looks like the way it happened.”
“What does that mean?”
“See that spot there?” Pearce pointed to the splatter closest to his desk.
“Yes.”
“That’s where she… where Sarah… was killed.”
“Oh, God.” He had seen it on the monitor, but it did not feel real until this moment. The overpowering stench of blood assaulted his nostrils and he fought the urge
to gag. The last thing he wanted to do was give the smug detective the satisfaction of seeing him throw up.
“But that spot over there,” Pearce continued, pointing toward the shattered window. “That’s the spot where the security guard committed suicide.”
“Suicide? Why?”
“That is the million-dollar question, Ted. None of this makes any sense to us, or the detective out there. We were kind of hoping it would make some kind of logical sense to you since you know her.”
“You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?” Brown asked.
“Of course, not,” Pearce said.
“But he does, doesn’t he?” Brown said, pointing back toward Detective Fitzpatrick.
“We’re all just looking for answers, Ted. I promise you, that’s all.”
He was about to ask another question when Ted Brown heard a familiar voice in the hallway. Even though he couldn’t see her, he knew it was her. He felt that familiar knot in his gut tighten when she walked through the door.
“Oh, God,” he whispered. “What is she doing here?”
Pearce turned to look at the new arrivals.
“I take it you know her?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Who is she?”
Their eyes locked across the room. No hint of pleasantry passed between them, but the knot that had been tightening in Ted’s stomach threatened to cut him in half.
“Samantha Patterson,” he finally answered. “Secret Service.”
“Secret Service?”
Now Pearce was confused. It was the first time Brown could ever recall seeing his employer caught off guard.
“Why in the hell would the Secret Service be involved?”
“No idea whatsoever.”
“But you do know her?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I used to be married to her,” Ted Brown said. “Agent Patterson is my ex-wife.”
Twenty-six
Atlanta, Georgia
Sunday
John Kilgallon ordered another drink.
At the book signing he had worked his magic and talked the brunette with the leather skirt and tight sweater into joining him for an early dinner. After the signing concluded and he dispensed with the usual pleasantries with the bookstore’s staff and his PR rep, they took the limousine to a restaurant he knew in downtown Atlanta. The owner was a fan of his books and had invited him down for what he promised would be one of the finest meals of his life. And best of all, it was on the house.
