The Silenced

by Heather Graham

  Matt looked at Meg. “Did she ever suggest that there was anything going on between her and the congressman?”

  “No. But... I haven’t spent much time with her since I started at the academy. We talked every other day, but I’ve only actually seen her twice. As far as I knew, Lara adored him, as a father figure. She lost her parents when she was eleven. I think she saw Walker as a fine man, the way she’d seen her dad.”

  “Maybe Walker will solve the mystery,” Jackson suggested.

  “Doubtful,” Will Chan said.

  “And...” Kat began, before hesitating.

  “And?” Adam repeated.

  “To the rest of the world, the idea that something’s wrong is...mere supposition. She’s a young woman who became disillusioned with politics and left DC.”

  “There’s another message,” Adam reminded them.

  Meg pressed her phone again. All they heard was a whooshing sound—like the wind—and then a thump.

  And the phone went dead.

  “I’ll check with her cell phone company,” Angela said. “Meg, I’ll need your phone for the next few hours. We’ll have techs try to decipher those sounds.”

  “Of course.”

  “You’ll be with Matt if we need to reach you for any reason. We’ll get the recording and return your cell as soon as possible.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Meg said.

  “And you’re off to see Congressman Walker!” Angela looked from Meg to Matt. “I don’t envy you. Interviewing a politician. I don’t think many of them are capable of telling the truth, even when they’ve got nothing to hide!”

  Matt liked Angela. She was down-to-earth, pleasant under the most trying circumstances—and skilled at figuring out past sins that might have emerged in the present. Attractive, in her early thirties, she was light-haired and light-eyed. She was married to Jackson. Matt hadn’t been around when they’d done the deed; they’d slipped quietly away for a small private wedding. In this “special” unit, agents being married to each other was acceptable. Will and Kat were a couple, too.

  They all had to work so closely together that Matt felt they were more a family than a workforce. He wondered how their new member was going to fit in.

  Of course, when he’d joined, the others had wondered if he’d fit in.

  “Your work sounds intriguing,” Meg said.

  “It’s different,” Angela agreed. “It’s a million hours a week most of the time. It’s travel when you’re tired of going places. It’s seeing a lot of what can only be described as evil. That would be true whatever position you took after graduation, but then you’ve been through the academy. You know that.”

  “Yes,” Meg said. She added a little hesitantly, “I’m grateful to be here. I was going to apply when I was able to. This is all...faster than I expected.”

  “Meg is certain that Lara is dead,” Adam said flatly.

  There was silence for a minute. Matt realized that Meg was doing a worthy job of hiding her grief. And yet he wasn’t certain that she was right about Lara’s death. He walked over to her. He wasn’t sure why he placed his hands on her shoulders except that he wanted her full attention.

  She seemed to draw herself up, stand taller, but didn’t move or back away.

  “Meg, are you positive? Maybe you saw her, but she was in your mind, asking for help.”

  She still didn’t back away. “I don’t see people who step out of my mind, Agent Bosworth. Do you?”

  “Actually, I have. The dead can reach out, as we all know. But sometimes the living can, too, from a distance.”

  She slipped away from him and he was almost sorry he’d spoken. She lowered her head. He thought she might have had an expression of hope on her face.

  “I haven’t had that experience. I honestly believe that she’s dead.” He asked himself how true that was. He had the impression that she and Lara had often read each other’s minds.

  “I’m sorry, Meg,” Jackson said. “Very sorry. Adam, I have some news. We have a match for our first victim. Her name was Cathy Crighton. She worked at the Big Fish down in Georgetown. Her boss assumed she just took off. Apparently, the pay isn’t very high and he has a large employee turnover. Not only that, he considered her a fairly unreliable employee, showing up late and so on. Turns out a friend in Oklahoma, who’d been trying to reach her, reported her as missing. The report took a while to get to us. I’m making inquiries about her last movements.”

  “Anything about the girl who was found yesterday?” Adam asked.

  “No, not yet,” Jackson answered. “We’ll be cross-referencing all the victims we have on record and missing-persons reports, seeing if we can come up with a common denominator.” Jackson looked over at Matt. “I’ve emailed you all the particulars I have so far.”

  Adam turned to Meg. “Make sure you have everyone’s cell phone number.”

  “I’ll get started on the digital,” Will said, leaving the room.

  Kat was going off to the OCME, while Jackson and Angela left to research Congressman Walker. It was time for Matt to head out with Meg Murray.

  “We’ll make a stop at Lara’s apartment first,” he said.

  Meg bit her lip, eyes closed. He could only imagine what she was fearing—that they’d enter her friend’s apartment and find her there. Dead.

  “It has to be done,” he told her calmly.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’ve already been to the apartment, though. I have a key. Lara isn’t there.”

  “Wasn’t there,” he pointed out.

  “Yes...”

  “Chances are you’re right, but we’ll take another look, anyway. I’ve called the landlady. We’ll have her let us in officially—and start fresh. Maybe the landlady will have something useful to say,” Matt added.

  “Fine, you two get on that, and then go over to the congressman’s place. We don’t want to lose this first session with him.” Adam paused, smiling at Meg. “Scariest part of the job,” Adam said lightly as they left the office. “Politics! Scary as hell.”

  3

  Meg wasn’t sure why, but it seemed that she and Agent Matt Bosworth were destined to be at odds—over little things that didn’t really matter. She didn’t mean for that to happen. It just did.

  It started as soon as they left Adam’s office.

  “My car is parked on the street.”

  “My company car is just below.”

  “Yes, but I’m going to need mine...”

  “I’ll ask Jackson to see that it’s flagged so you won’t get a ticket.”

  “Honestly, it would be simpler if I drove myself...”

  “We’re going in a company car. This is a Krewe case.”

  Who cares which car we go in? she wanted to shout.

  She refrained. He didn’t open the door for her; they were both agents. Equals? Not in his mind! She didn’t think he was sexist. She just thought he considered himself superior because of his seniority.

  She slid into the passenger’s side. Before he drove off, he put a quick call through to Jackson. “Can someone see to Agent Murray’s car?” He glanced over at her. “What kind of car?”

  “Jaguar.”

  He didn’t say anything; the slight quirk on his face seemed to indicate that a cadet shouldn’t be able to afford such a car.

  “It’s a 2004,” she said, trying to sound as if she was just giving a description. She had no intention of explaining that it had been her dad’s. “Silver,” she added, annoyed with herself, wondering why the hell she was concerned about his opinion. It was all because she’d nearly passed out on the man. A matter of pride, she supposed. Or maybe even denial. She’d gone to the academy with fit, intelligent, attractive people. Agent Bosworth seemed to be all of those things—ten times over. He was harde
ned by his years with the FBI, she supposed, and guided by the single vision of an assignment. And yet if she so much as brushed against the man...

  She also wondered if he was so rude and blunt because he recognized his own appeal. Maybe it was his way of telling her, Hey, back off! Don’t touch, don’t come too close.

  He passed the description on to Jackson, then hung up and drove.

  Dread filled her as they made their way to the Capitol Hill area. Lara had rented the most affordable apartment she could find, as close to the Capitol as possible. She lived in a converted mansion, an old family home that had been divided into six units, two on each floor. Lara was on the first.

  As Matt parked, Meg realized he’d done his homework. He knew exactly where they were going. He pulled out his phone as they exited the car and headed toward the house.

  By the time they reached it, Lara’s landlady, a silver-haired woman named Mrs. Shelley, was there to meet them. She extended a hand to them both, smiling at Meg since they’d met a few times, and introducing herself to Matt Bosworth.

  “Lara didn’t say anything to me about breaking her lease or going away,” Mrs. Shelley said. “I do hope that she’s all right—she’s such a lovely young woman!”

  “We’re certainly hoping she’s all right, too. But Meg can’t get in touch with her and we’re worried, so thank you for your help,” Matt said.

  “Of course! Come on in.”

  Mrs. Shelley led them through the main door to the house. Stairs stretched up to the second floor, with hallways leading to the downstairs apartments.

  Taking out a ring of keys, Mrs. Shelley looked through them as they walked to Lara’s door.

  For a moment, Meg felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She was overwhelmed by the same fear she’d felt when she’d come here yesterday evening, when terrible visions had rushed through her head and she’d been terrified that she’d open the door and find the apartment trashed and Lara in a pool of blood. Or that she’d go into her bedroom and find her with her throat slit.

  Mrs. Shelley opened the door.

  The living room was neat, as Meg had known it would be. Lara had once told Meg that she wasn’t home enough to really mess the place up.

  “Be careful what you touch,” Matt said.

  She tried not to glare at him. She knew that!

  “We’ll go through the place later,” he said. If he knew how offensive he was being, he gave no sign.

  With anxiety dogging her every step, Meg still managed to walk quickly through the living area to the bedroom and the small office beyond.

  All the while, she knew that Agent Bosworth was a step behind her. Did he not trust her? Or was he afraid she hadn’t looked carefully—that they might stumble across Lara’s body?

  “I guess she’s not here,” Mrs. Shelley called out. She hadn’t moved from the living room.

  “Can you tell if she packed up anything at all?” Agent Bosworth asked Meg.

  “I don’t think she did. At least, it didn’t seem that way to me last night. But I can’t be one hundred percent sure without looking through her drawers and her closet. I don’t have gloves, so...”

  “I do,” he told her before she could finish, taking out two pairs. “We don’t have time for a complete search now, but maybe you can tell if she did pack.”

  And find out if her friend’s body had been stuffed in the closet.

  Meg pulled on a pair of the gloves and opened the closet door. Lara’s clothing hung there neatly. The black-and-red carry-on Lara took anytime she traveled—her lucky travel bag, as she called it—was on the floor, along with sneakers, sandals and shoes Lara would’ve taken on a trip.

  “I don’t believe she packed and left,” Meg said.

  “Okay,” he told her. “We’ll pay our visit to Ian Walker and come back for a more thorough search.”

  They met Mrs. Shelley in the living room. She seemed relieved that they’d found nothing.

  “She must’ve taken a little trip, then,” Mrs. Shelley said, smiling. “If she was really leaving, she would’ve told me.”

  “Of course,” Meg assured her.

  “We’ll be back this afternoon,” Matt Bosworth said. “We’re going to see if we can dig up any clues as to where she might be.”

  Mrs. Shelley nodded and unfastened two keys. “Here you are. The first opens the main door. All the tenants have one. The second is to this door.”

  Matt thanked her, not mentioning that Meg already had a key.

  “Oh! You might want the security video,” Mrs. Shelley said.

  “You have security tapes?”

  “There’s a camera just over the entry,” Mrs. Shelley replied. “It’s a wonderful selling point when I need to rent out the units, although that isn’t often. This close to Capitol Hill, I don’t have much trouble landing good tenants. You know DC—once people get into a place they like, they tend to stay for the long haul.”

  “I’m going to have an agent come out for the security footage covering the past few days, if you don’t mind.”

  “Anything,” Mrs. Shelley said fervently.

  They both thanked her and headed back to the car.

  “Shouldn’t we be looking at the footage right now?” Meg asked.

  “I’m going to have Will retrieve it and then check it out,” he said.

  “But...”

  “He’s an expert. He’ll know if anyone’s tampered with it.”

  She fell silent. She knew she’d been letting her emotions take hold.

  “Onward to Congressman Walker’s house,” Matt announced.

  Meg realized she had no idea where the man lived; that was something Lara had never mentioned.

  She quickly found out.

  Ian Walker lived in the Sixteenth Street Heights in DC in a grand colonial-style mansion—when he was in the city.

  The congressman had been blessed with family money. He’d also known how to play the stock market to improve on his inheritance. She knew that because Lara had talked about him so much. While she and Lara had been friends forever, Meg’s home was really Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Lara’s parents and family were from Richmond, although they also had a home in Harpers Ferry, where they’d spent summers. Meg had worked and lived in Richmond for a few years after she’d graduated from college there; she was still a West Virginia voter.

  “Nice neighborhood,” she murmured as they approached the house. “It was his idea for us to come here rather than his office?” she asked.

  She didn’t use Agent Bosworth’s name as she spoke to him. In the car, it was only the two of them. She’d noticed that while most law enforcement agents and the instructors she worked with called one another by their surnames, Krewe agents were on a first-name basis. They knew one another well. Or, at least, they seemed to. Matt. She couldn’t bring herself to call this man Matt. He obviously thought he’d been saddled with a neurotic beginner.

  She wasn’t a beginner. She’d qualified as a Richmond police officer and now she was officially an FBI agent.

  “Yes. Someone on his staff gave you a hard time, but Walker himself seemed concerned about the fact that we were worried. Adam told me that to the best of the congressman’s knowledge, Lara just wanted to move in another direction. That they’d parted on good terms,” Matt said, watching the road. “Be very careful. We’re going in there for help. No accusations, okay?”

  “I did make it through the academy!” she told him.

  He laughed. “Yes, as you’ve pointed out. And admittedly that’s an accomplishment. But I know plenty of agents with plenty of what you’d call the right stuff—and no social skills. Doesn’t mean they’re not good agents. It just means there are certain places, certain times, they shouldn’t be in the field.”

  “My social skills are just fine,
” she insisted. She decided not to suggest that he might want to work on his own.

  There was a gate, artfully designed, a break in a high wall around the house. Ivy and vines grew along the wall, making it appear that the home was well established and a pleasant addition to the area.

  “Capitol police,” Matt murmured.

  “Pardon?”

  He pointed down the street, and she saw a car with the markings of the Capitol police department. She knew that the department was responsible for a two-hundred-block area around the Capitol, but in reality their reach extended all the way around the globe, if need be. They were responsible for Congress when it was in session, but their responsibility to senators and congressmen, their families and staff, went far beyond that. If a congressman from Utah, for example, was speaking back in his home state, Capitol police might be there to look after his safety. In 1801, when Congress moved from Philadelphia to DC, only one man was assigned by Congress to protect the Capitol building. But in 1828, when a son of John Quincy Adams was attacked in the rotunda, the United States Capitol Police Department was established.

  “Maybe the congressman thinks he’s in danger,” Meg suggested.

  “Or maybe the patrol car is just doing a drive-by,” Matt said thoughtfully.

  “It might have something to do with the death of Garth Hubbard,” Meg said.

  “That’s an interesting possibility,” Matt said.

  They paused at the gate. When he stated who they were and it rolled open, they drove through to the circular drive.

  Three men in suits were standing on the porch.

  None of them was Ian Walker.

  As they both got out of the car, Matt Bosworth took his ID wallet from his suit pocket; she did the same.

  The men seemed to recognize Matt.

  And they’d been expecting them.

  The three on the porch were a varied trio. One was tall, maybe an inch taller than Matt. He was bald and looked like he might have been a biker in an earlier life. Another one was lean, about a foot shorter, with thick wavy hair and a ready smile. The third was somewhere in between, well built, about six-even and with close-cropped brown hair.