“I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m Mattie Winston. I work here. This is my desk and my computer.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” She hopped out of the chair and gestured for me to take it. I hesitated and instead looked at what she’d been doing on the computer. She had the word-processing software open, and I saw she was typing a footnote at the bottom of the page, citing some kind of reference book. She saw me studying the screen and reached over to grab the mouse. “Just let me save this and then you can use the computer. It’s part of my doctorate thesis,” she said, clicking the save icon.
I was surprised to hear she was working on a doctorate; she looked barely old enough to be out of high school.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. I doubted it, but then she proved me wrong. “You’re thinking, is she a girl genius or what because she can’t be old enough to be pursuing a doctorate, right? I get that all the time. My mother says it’s all the youthful genes on her side of the family. All of us women in the family look much younger than we are. How old do you think I am? Come on, take a guess.”
I thought a moment, gave her a few years for her good genes, and said, “Twenty-six.”
She let out a loud, boisterous laugh. “Heck, no, I’m thirty-two,” she said. “I’m already working on my second career. I have a master’s degree in business. Yep, an MBA. What the heck was I thinking when I did that? It turns out business is a real snore. The whole thing bored me to tears. So I decided to start over and do something I love. I figured it’s never too late, you know. A lot of people thought I was crazy, and maybe I am, but I don’t care because I’m happy. And happy is what it’s all about, don’t you think?”
It took me a moment to realize that she had actually paused. The woman talked a mile a minute and didn’t seem to breathe between sentences.
“Happy is good,” I said. Then, hoping to get her back on topic, I added, “I won’t need the computer for very long. I just need to flip through some photos I took of the crime scene we’re investigating.”
“It’s not the crime you’re involved with, is it? Because Dr. Henderson said no one from this office can be involved with any of that. He had me install some spyware on all the computers to make sure no one accesses any files they shouldn’t.”
“Did he now?” I said. Clearly, trust wasn’t high on Henderson’s list of attributes. “Well, not to worry. The photos I want are from a murder that took place on Saturday night. You can stand here and watch over my shoulder if you want and make sure I don’t access anything I’m not supposed to.”
“Oh, I don’t think I need to do that. I’m sure you’re trustworthy. Besides, the spyware will nab you if you go where you shouldn’t.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be insulted or flattered.
“I am trustworthy,” I assured her. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d appreciate it if you’d stay. I don’t want there to be any questions regarding the investigation into my own case.” I slid into the chair she had vacated, minimized her document, and then logged in to the office shared drive.
“What’s your name?” I asked, as I found and opened my photo file from the Ames case.
“Oh, crap. I’m sorry. It’s Laura, Laura Kingston.”
“Nice to meet you, Laura. I take it you’re part of Dr. Henderson’s group?”
“I guess you could say that. He called several of us yesterday to come here and help him out for a while. He said you guys are working with a skeleton crew as it is and that an incident had occurred that required outside investigation. I couldn’t get here until this morning, and Dr. Henderson’s been tied up in the autopsy suite all day, so I’m just killing time until he’s done. Not to worry, though. An autopsy isn’t required for killing time.” She let out an awkward little laugh at her own joke, and to be polite, I smiled.
“What is it you do exactly?” I asked her as I started flipping through the pictures in the file.
“My area of study is forensic botany, with a minor in forensic toxicology. But I’m also Dr. Henderson’s assistant, which basically means I’m a glorified secretary and teaching assistant.”
“Henderson teaches?”
She nodded. “He’s a professor in the forensic pathology program at U-Dub. I was going to become a forensic pathologist, but it turns out I don’t do so well looking at dissected dead bodies. After fainting six times in the autopsy suites, I was forced to go in a different direction. I wasn’t sure what field I wanted to switch to, and to help me decide, Dr. Henderson hired me on as his assistant. It proved very helpful because it gave me exposure to a number of different subfields in forensic science. I thought about forensic psychiatry or psychology, but all that criminalistics mind stuff gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’m not a fan of creepy-crawlers either, so that ruled out entomology, and some of the other subfields are just a snore, like forensic accounting and documents, though my MBA might have given me a leg up in those fields. So I settled on botany and toxicology because I don’t have to deal with the bodies, but I get to be involved in the investigations and the processing of evidence. The stuff I get to study is fun and exciting.”
I kept flipping through the pictures after Laura stopped rattling on, and after watching over my shoulder for a few silent seconds, she said, “May I ask what it is you’re looking for?”
“Evidence.”
Laura scanned the photos along with me even though she didn’t know exactly what I was looking for, and when we reached the end of the file, I closed it, logged out, got up, and gestured toward the computer. “You can have it back now.”
“Did you find the evidence you were looking for?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“So what does that mean?”
“It means something about this case I’m working on just doesn’t fit.”
“Ooh, a puzzle,” Laura said, clasping her hands together and rocking on her feet. “I love puzzles. That’s what attracted me to forensic science in the first place.”
I smiled at her. “I like puzzles, too.” My cell phone rang then, and I grabbed it out of my pocket and looked at the caller ID. It said it was an unknown number, and that made my heart skip a beat. With a mix of trepidation and anticipation, I answered the call.
“This is Mattie Winston.” There was no response. “Hello?” I listened and heard the faint sound of breathing. Someone was on the line, but they were making no effort to speak to me. “Hello?” I said again. “Who is this?” Then the line went dead. I put the phone back in my pocket, forced a smiled, looked at Laura, and said, “Must have been a wrong number.”
“I hate those,” she said.
“Me, too.” Especially this kind, I thought. “It was nice to meet you, Laura.”
“Same here. You just let me know when you need to use your desk or your computer and I’ll get out of your way.”
“Thanks. I’m good for now, but I might need it later on today.”
“No problem. Just holler. Dr. Henderson will probably have me doing stuff somewhere else later, anyway. He’s always got lots of papers he needs filed, and reports to run and review. The man keeps me busy, that’s for sure.”
I escaped chatty Laura, but remained inside the building, hovering in a hallway. That phone call had unnerved me. And I realized I’d left the police station without any guard or body armor. Then my phone rang again, making me jump. I looked at the caller ID, expecting to see the same unknown caller screen, but instead it was Hurley.
“Hey, Hurley,” I said, answering the call.
“Where the hell are you?” he snapped.
“At my office. I walked over here about twenty minutes ago because I needed to check on something.”
“Damn it, Mattie, you know you’re not supposed to be going anywhere without someone with you. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” I admitted. “And Hurley, I just got another one of those phone calls.”
This revelation was met with several seconds of silence. �
��You mean like the ones you had before?”
“Yes.”
“But the guy is dead.”
“Clearly it wasn’t him making the calls.”
“Stay put. I’ll be over there in a minute. Don’t leave, and don’t go near a window or door until I get there, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, disconnecting the call. Earlier, when Richmond and Hurley had made such a fuss over the whole protection thing, I thought it was an overreaction. Now I wasn’t so sure. And suddenly I found that I didn’t like puzzles all that much after all.
Chapter 28
My mind was a flurry of thoughts. I had assumed the previous calls were coming from the man who had shot at me, but clearly that wasn’t the case with this one. Were they connected somehow? Was the person who hired the shooter the one who was calling me? Or had my original suspicion that the calls were coming from my father been right?
Hurley found me standing, or rather quaking, in the hallway minutes later. “Are you okay?” he asked, looking concerned. He was holding Richmond’s old body armor, the vest I had tossed in the corner earlier.
I walked up to Hurley and hugged him. “I’m fine, just a little spooked,” I said into his shoulder. “That phone call has me a little freaked.”
“We’ll get the troopers on it right away. Hopefully they can tell where it came from.”
I nodded, reluctantly relinquished the warm security of his body, and stepped back. That’s when I saw that Charlie was standing just a few feet away. She had a camera in her hand, but she wasn’t using it.
Before I had a chance to ask her what the hell she was doing there, my cell phone rang again. I took it out and looked at it with trepidation, but it was only Richmond calling.
“Hey, Richmond,” I said, turning my back to Charlie. I couldn’t trust myself not to glare at her.
“Where the hell are you?” Richmond barked into the phone.
“At my office.”
“Why the hell did you go over there?”
“I had a thought about the Ames case. Hurley is here with me. I’ll tell you when I get back. See you in a few minutes.”
I disconnected the call before Richmond could yell at me again, and looked at Hurley. “I need to go back to the station.”
A voice that was definitely not Charlie’s came from her direction. “What’s going on?”
I turned and saw Henderson standing just behind Charlie, staring at us.
“We aren’t doing anything we shouldn’t be,” I said irritably. “I came here to use my computer to review some crime scene photos I took on the Ames case. Your assistant, Laura, can vouch for me. She watched over my shoulder the whole time.”
“That’s all fine and dandy, but I asked what was going on because you’re standing in the hallway with two other people, one of whom is carrying a camera while the other is carrying a bulletproof vest. I’m not worried about you snooping.”
“Really? Is that why you installed spyware on the computers?”
Henderson sighed heavily. “The program I put on your computers is standard stuff back in Madison. It should be here, too. It’s a security check for your office and protection for any evidence stored on your system. I would have put it on the computers here even if I wasn’t investigating a case you’re involved in. You are free to use the office as much and as often as you like. Besides, from what I’ve been told by Trooper Grimes, I expect you’ll be cleared in the next day or so.”
“She might be cleared, but that doesn’t mean the case is solved,” Hurley said.
“What do you mean?” Henderson asked.
Hurley explained about the phone call, the lack of any known connections between the shooter and me, and the stuff the troopers found in Roscoe Schneider’s car that suggested he might not have been working alone. “Given all of that,” Hurley concluded, “we’re worried that someone might still be after Mattie.”
“I see,” Henderson said. “I guess that would explain the vest.”
It did, but it didn’t explain Charlie’s presence, which at the moment I considered to be the bigger question. Henderson shifted his gaze to me. “I can bring in some extra security for the office, if you like.”
“I like,” Hurley said before I could answer.
“Consider it done,” Henderson said. He then walked past us and headed down the hallway. “And be careful,” he added over his shoulder. “Dr. Rybarceski will have my ass if I let anything happen to his top-notch assistant.”
This last comment made me smile. I suspected Izzy and Henderson had chatted some more since last night.
“Put this on,” Hurley said, handing me the vest.
“It smells, and it doesn’t fit right.”
“It’s the best we have for now. So put it on.” His tone made it clear he would brook no more protests, so I put the thing on. We headed to the main lobby area of the office, and Hurley made me stand in a corner away from the door while he signed all three of us out. Then he told me to stay and went outside. He returned a minute later and said, “Walk fast and straight back to the station, and make sure you stay close to me.”
I was more than happy to oblige, and had I not been imagining some crazy crackpot assassin lurking behind every window, door, and building, I might even have enjoyed sticking to Hurley like glue while Charlie trailed behind us. As it was, I was hugely relieved once we were back inside the police station.
As we entered the break room, Hurley glanced at his watch and said, “It’s mid-afternoon already. Have you had lunch yet?”
Both Charlie and I said, “No,” at the exact same time.
“Well, then, I think it’s time we eat something. How does Chinese sound?”
“That works for me,” I said. At the moment I was hungry enough to eat just about anything. “Let’s go.”
“Oh, no,” Hurley said. “I’ll bring the food back here. In the meantime, you stay put. And I mean it. Don’t you dare set foot outside this station unless you have that vest on and an armed cop with you, got it?”
I nodded, but my expression made it clear I wasn’t happy about it. Had I known then how long my confinement was going to last, I’m sure I would have looked even more miserable—though a few seconds later my misery increased by leaps and bounds.
“Mind if I ride along?” Charlie asked, bestowing her gorgeous smile on Hurley.
“Not at all. We’ll be back in a flash.”
I had a flash in mind for Charlie, but it was more nuclear in nature. I watched the two of them leave as I shrugged out of Richmond’s smelly vest, and then I stomped down the hall to Hurley’s office and threw the vest back into its corner. Richmond was there, typing away on the computer at the desk that was now shared by him, Hurley, Trooper Grimes, and any other lurking trooper who might be around. Richmond spun around in his chair, took one look at me, and said, “Uh-oh, who peed in your cornflakes?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Fine, then let’s talk about whatever it was that was important enough to make you risk your life by walking over to your office.”
“Give me a break, Richmond,” I shot back irritably. “I’ve already had the lecture once, and I don’t need it again. I got focused on this idea I had, and the other stuff momentarily slipped my mind. I’m not used to having a target on my back and having to act like Jason Bourne.”
“Well, until we figure this thing out, you better get used to it,” Richmond grumbled.
“I got another one of those phone calls when I was in my office,” I told him.
He looked puzzled for a second and then he said, “You mean the hang-up calls?”
I nodded. “So I’m thinking the calls I was getting before probably aren’t related to this Schneider guy.”
Richmond shook his head. “No, they’re related. Grimes told me this morning that they were able to resurrect the cell phone that Schneider had on him when you . . . when he was killed. And after comparing those phone records to yours, they determined that several
calls from Schneider’s cell went to your cell, and they were on the dates and around the times you recalled getting those hang-up calls. Some of the other hang-up calls you had in the past were from different cell phones, but they were all untraceable burner phones with preloaded minutes and paid for in cash.”
“I don’t understand that,” I told him. “How can the calls be related to Schneider if he’s dead?”
Richmond’s brow furrowed in thought. “Maybe this last call was a legitimate misdial or wrong number. Or maybe it was from whoever hired Schneider, because Schneider’s phone also had several calls to Florida numbers that belong to untraceable burner phones.”
“Everything keeps coming up Florida,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t get it. I don’t know anyone who is from there or who lives there.”
“Hold on,” Richmond said. He picked up his phone, dialed a number, and after a few seconds he said, “Hey, Grimes. I’m here with Mattie Winston, and she said she just got another one of those strange hang-up calls a few minutes ago. Clearly it didn’t come from Schneider, so can you look into it for me?”
He listened for a minute, said thanks, and hung up. “We should hear something back from him in an hour or so. In the meantime, what was this big idea you had that made you go dashing over to your office?”
“It’s something that occurred to me as Jacob was telling us what happened when he went back to his father’s place. Is he still here?”
Richmond shook his head. “Brenda took him to booking. I’m finishing up the paperwork now.”
“Is Wendy still here?”
“No, she and Stanley left some time ago. Why?”
“Remember how Jacob said he knew it was stupid to take out his anger on the cell phone, as if that would prevent his father from contacting his girlfriend?” Richmond nodded and shrugged. “The reason he said it was stupid was because there were several other ways his father could have contacted Mandy. One of the things Jacob mentioned was that he could e-mail her on his laptop. But I didn’t recall seeing a laptop in Derrick’s house, or a computer of any kind, for that matter. That’s why I went to my office. I wanted to look through the photos I took at the house. And the reason I couldn’t recall seeing any sort of computer is because there wasn’t one there. And that makes no sense. Not only was Derrick a teacher, he was the parent of a teenager. He has one whole room dedicated to gaming. He would have had some kind of computer in his house. Clearly he did or Jacob wouldn’t have mentioned the e-mail option.”
Stiff Penalty (A Mattie Winston Mystery) Page 23
