Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan)

by Leslie A. Kelly

  At the impressively constructed Phoenix Group building, they were shown in by a quiet receptionist whose swollen face and reddened eyes said she’d heard the news about Leanne. Probably all her co-workers had by now. Ronnie only hoped they hadn’t heard anything beyond, “She’s dead.” Hearing she’d been cut into rump-roast-sized chunks would probably have been seriously bad for morale.

  “Thank you for coming down here to talk to me,” Jack Williams said as they were escorted into his office, which was about the size of her entire apartment. “I realize it must have been an inconvenience.”

  Daniels shrugged, “Nah, not a problem. We prefer to get away from the crime scene when we’re doing interviews and wanted to see the victim’s work area. Plus we’ll get to talk to some of her co-workers on the way out.”

  Hmm. Not entirely accurate—Ronnie sure would have preferred not to have to sidetrack off-site for one interview, today of all days, knowing they’d have to go back to Patriot Square to conduct many more. She’d much rather have stayed on site, so she could be nearby if and when the final part of Leanne Carr was located.

  But Mark’s intentional nonchalance put off a vibe and it was exactly the one that was called for in this situation. He was telling Williams that they hadn’t come here at his request, that Leanne’s boss did not have the upper hand in this situation. Seeing the slight narrowing of Williams’s eyes, her partner’s strategy had been absolutely perfect.

  As so often happened, Daniels had managed to surprise her.

  “Please, make yourselves comfortable.” Williams waved a hand toward two chairs, standing across from his broad, immaculately clean desk. The desk’s highly-glossed surface bore nothing but a single engraved pen in a stand, a blotter, and a framed photograph, turned slightly out so a smiling Jack Williams and an attractive middle-aged woman standing on the deck of a yacht could be displayed and commented on.

  Ronnie did her part. “Your wife?”

  He smiled fondly. “Yes. My best friend and partner. She’s the one who urged me to go after this contract, even though my company was one of the newest in the running.”

  Obviously the Phoenix Group was now set for life with all the work going on in D.C. Ronnie had checked before coming over—Williams’s company had the contracts to rebuild every federal building damaged or destroyed in the attacks.

  “She will be devastated when I tell her about Leanne, who’s like a daughter to both of us. She’s been to our home many times, we even had hopes that she might someday date our son.”

  Uh huh. That’s what the married-man-who’s-trying-to-hide-an-affair would say. Williams might be uttering all the right words and displaying the right amount of shocked grief, but Ronnie wasn’t buying it until she had definite proof of the real relationship between boss and victim.

  “Can you tell us what you recall about the day of the murder? When you last spoke to Ms. Carr, where you last saw her?” Ronnie asked.

  Williams nodded, his brow drawing down in a frown as he considered the questions.

  “Normally, with it being a federal holiday, the offices would have been closed. However, because of the events of the day, I had my key people come in at nine a.m. All of them had special passes to attend the ceremony, but I wanted a final run-through of all the preparations and contingency plans, and I wanted everyone here to put out fires until as close to the two p.m. starting time as possible.”

  “Including you?” asked Daniels.

  “I was here until about eleven-ten. As one of the organizers, I had to be out on the mall by noon. There are plenty of people who saw me.”

  Interesting that he’d offer an alibi for himself when they hadn’t asked for one. Also interesting to imagine trying to round up those “people” and ask them to account for anybody in that mad crush of humanity. Sure, he’d bet any number of people had seen him…but every minute of the afternoon? Highly unlikely.

  “I stopped in to say goodbye to Leanne at around eleven. I congratulated her on a job well done and told her not to stay at work so long that she missed the opening ceremonies.”

  “What was she doing?”

  Sounding admiring, he continued, “She was in her office, handling things as she always did—with efficiency and courtesy. A transport vehicle had hit one of the concrete barrier walls by mistake that morning and she immediately got on that, arranging for its repair. When I left, I was walking by her office and heard her on the phone trying to get clearance for a mixer truck to cut down Constitution Avenue through the throngs of people.” His eyes misted. “She was not the type to take no for an answer. Tenacious, stubborn, that young woman would leave no stone unturned to finish a job.”

  “Was Leanne dating anybody?” she asked.

  Williams frowned. “To be honest, I’m not sure.” He looked like there was more he could say, but wasn’t sure he should.

  “You know she is an implantee,” Ronnie said, pushing the man a little. “We have her downloads of the days and weeks before her death. If she was involved with anyone, I’ll find out.”

  She didn’t threaten, didn’t dangle the possibility that Williams, himself, might like to just come clean now rather than be outed by irrefutable proof. Though, if it were true, and Williams had been having an affair with his assistant, Ronnie would rather know in advance so she could prepare herself to be assaulted by the visual evidence of it.

  “Well, if that’s the case, you’ll probably be far better than I to determine who she might have been involved with. The truth is, I think there might have been someone but she never spoke about it. I, er…”

  “Yes?”

  “I had the feeling it might have been someone she wasn’t supposed to be seeing.”

  “Like, somebody who was married?” asked Daniels.

  “No, I don’t think she’d do that. Perhaps just someone others would consider unsuitable.” The man’s frown deepened and he crossed his arms protectively over his chest. “I hate having to speculate about her private life like this. Bad enough how horribly she died.”

  “I understand that,” Ronnie said. “But it could be pertinent to our investigation.”

  “Well, you’ll soon know better than I. As I said, she never revealed anything. She was a bit private about that sort of thing. A little old-fashioned, if you will.”

  Okay, Williams seemed to be sticking to his story. And considering he knew she’d find out, she began to back off on her suspicion that he was the young woman’s mystery lover.

  “What about family?” her partner asked.

  Williams uncrossed his arms and dropped them onto his armrests, visibly relaxing a little. Ronnie made a mental note of his mood change, wondering whether his slight belligerence had been about him protecting his own reputation, or a friend’s.

  Shaking his head mournfully, he explained, “She was an only child, both parents are deceased. Her father was actually working at the American History Museum on that day.”

  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 c
loser, 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.”