Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) (20 page)

But it was her job. Glancing at the clock, she realized she’d wasted ten minutes on this meaningless search. Angry at herself, she backed up through the files and folders and returned to the main directory. She had enough to do trying to go through Leanne’s visuals, she didn’t have time to speculate on her boss’s old secrets.

Not sure how far back to start, she decided on one week. If Leanne had been stalked before her murder, chances were her killer had crossed her path shortly before her death. He’d have wanted to keep an eye on her, figure out her routines, make sure he could lure her to the spot he’d chosen for her execution.

She queued up the images—thousands and thousands of them—and set the speed as fast as it would go. Images would fly by; she wouldn’t be able to see them all. But she should be able to get the gist of what was happening in each “scene” of Leanne’s life. Being able to fast-forward through the times when the woman had been alone, or sleeping, she could then slow down when the victim had been interacting with other people.

She took a deep breath, settled into the couch, and began, determined to get through this with her emotions intact.

But, after a half hour, she realized the strongest emotion she was feeling was boredom. This was going to be one hell of a tedious job. Seeing the minutiae of another person’s life when they were doing something exciting was one thing. Watching them pluck their eyebrows, wash their face, brush their teeth, drive their car, sit at their desk, answer phones, take messages, type memos and eat yogurt was about as boring as it got.

She was in for a long few days if something in this case didn’t break soon.

About to pause the show so she could go in and pop herself some popcorn, she flinched when she heard a sharp knock on her front door. Glancing at the clock and seeing it was ten-forty, she slowly rose from the couch and crept across the living room.

She’d already talked on the phone to her hairdresser-neighbor, Max, who had gasped when she’d told him about her hair, and knew he was going to be out late tonight. Her mother lived way down in Virginia and their phone conversation earlier hadn’t ended on a note that would inspire a cozy, friendly pop-by. So who would be visiting her this late, she didn’t know.

A hint of tension crawled through her. She’d been so focused on solving these murders, she hadn’t really had time to evaluate how she felt about her own attack the other night. Or the fact that her attacker—a psychotic killer—might have come within seconds of brutally killing her as well.

Now that all came flooding in. So she moved silently across the carpet to the table in the foyer, where she always placed her service weapon when she got home. She unholstered it, dropped it to her side and went to the door.

Another knock.

“Who is it?” she barked, wishing she had insisted the landlord install a peephole.

“Hey, Ron, it’s me. Let me in.”

“Daniels,” she whispered, immediately re-engaging the safety on her 9mm. She unlocked the dead-bolt and twisted the knob to let him in. “What are you doing here?”

He eyed her, his lips twitching when he saw the ragged T-shirt, sweatpants and fluffy slippers. The twitching stopped when he noticed the Glock in her hand. “Atta girl. Safety first.”

“Bullet in your partner second? You should’ve called ahead.”

“I’ve got news,” he said, pushing past her and entering the apartment. Going right for her kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and scrounged around in it. “Seriously? No beer?”

“Nope, sorry.”

“You don’t even keep some hidden away for guests?”

“Is that what you are? I thought you were home invader the way you burst in here.”

“You’da shot my ass if I were.” He grabbed a bottle of juice, then reached for a closed storage container and flipped the lid open, sniffing the contents. “I’m starving!”

“It’s fine,” she explained, wondering when he had last eaten a decent meal. He was more the out-of-a-box-or-a-bag type. Ronnie, while not very domestic, did like to eat healthily and had stir-fried the chicken and veggies he was holding just a couple of days ago.

He tossed the container in the microwave, punched a button, then turned to face her.

“So, what is it?” she asked, knowing something big must have brought him over here tonight.

He grinned. “The tunnels.”

“Yes! I knew it!”

“The president apparently didn’t even know and man is he pissed.”

She had to hear this. Dropping onto a kitchen chair, she said, “Tell me everything.”

“I met with Williams, who’s a little less grief-stricken today.”

She rolled her eyes.

“And with his lead architect, dude named Frank. He was at the briefing the other day.”

She remembered him. He’d stood up and bolted from the room as soon as the civilians were told they could leave.

“While we’re sitting there, a call comes in from Kilgore.”

She also remembered him, the officious head of the Secret Service continent assigned to the White House. “So how is Mr. Happy?”

“Not so happy. In fact, he was on a tear, talking so loud I could hear him through the extension. It seems Dr. Tate’s questions this afternoon got the president a little curious. He made some phone calls, including to the head of the CIA and the Secret Service, and found out that, despite the wishes of every person in the country, somebody made the decision that there should still be emergency tunnels under the White House.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Of course they did. ‘Cause they worked so well the last time.”

He snickered. “Apparently it was a ‘need-to-know’ situation and somebody had decided the president didn’t ‘need to know.’”

“And neither did the cops investigating a brutal murder, right?”

“Exactly. Oh, by the way, it’s still top secret and if you tell anyone they’ll throw you in a windowless cell and never let you see the light of day again.”

“Got it,” she said, getting up to grab a glass. She filled it with ice and then with milk, ignoring her partner’s moue of disgust. Whether he was more grossed out by the milk, or by the ice, she couldn’t say. Daniels usually didn’t even bother to ice his bourbon.

After he’d retrieved his dinner from the microwave, Ronnie gestured toward the drawer containing the forks. “So, did you get a guided tour?”

“Courtesy of Mr. Phoenix Group and Mr. Secret Service themselves. They swear it’s the only one. It’s accessed by a secret door behind the wall of breakers at the base of the stairs in the sub-basement.”

She nodded. “That’s why he stayed close to the stairs to work on Leanne. If he’d heard anything he would have gone right for the tunnel.”

“Yep. It goes about a half a mile and comes out—get this—in the basement of a maintenance building near the Washington Monument!”

Of course it did.  Right where throngs of people would have been on Independence Day. So many thousands that nobody would have noticed one individual person’s movements. It explained why they hadn’t found any hint of someone gaining access through the White House’s electronic security system. And how their ghost had gotten in and out again despite the presence of police, military, guards and witnesses when he was returning Leanne Carr’s head.

Speaking of… “Do you think he had the head stashed in there the whole time it was missing?”

“Hell, yes. No doubt about it—we found a pool of blood and a plastic tarp it was sitting on. And that wasn’t all.”

Her blood coursed more quickly through her veins. “What else did you find?”

He stirred the food, lifted a big forkful to his mouth and chowed down, talking while he chewed. “The mother lode.”

Her heart rolled over. “Weapons?”

“A knife. Black clothes. Blood smears. Forensics took everything back to the lab—maybe we’ll get lucky with a spare fiber or print. Hopefully this guy didn’t think we’d find his hiding place so quickly.”

She wasn’t very hopeful. Their suspect wasn’t stupid. He had to know others were aware of the existence of the tunnel, even if the cops and investigators weren’t. Sooner or later, he’d have to assume somebody in the know would have checked it out. So she doubted he’d left behind anything incriminating. Still, maybe they’d get super lucky.

“Can’t help thinking about what might have happened if he’d managed to drag you into that tunnel before I got downstairs the other night.”

Ronnie had been intentionally avoiding those thoughts, not wanting to imagine what the killer could have done with an unconscious victim, some weapons, some time and a half-mile length of tunnel.

A lot. A whole hell of a lot.

She swallowed, pushing a flash of mental images away, and said, “But that didn’t happen. So, did you find anything else?”

Scrunching his brow in confusion, Mark added, “Actually, yeah. There was a hard-hat with a light on the front of it.”

She sunk down into a chair. “That’s definitely his.” She quickly told him about what she and Sykes had seen on Leanne’s O.E.P. files, explaining how the suspect had used the miner’s light to blind his victim and her implanted camera.

“So,” Daniels said as he finished eating, “this guy knew about the O.E.P., he knew Leanne had an implant, he knew about the tunnel, and he knew how to get in and out of it without being seen.”

They fell silent, digesting all that. It had seemed clear from the beginning that they were dealing not with a random terrorist, but with somebody who’d specifically gone after Leanne Carr.

This new information took things a step further.

This didn’t sound like someone who’d followed her, found out where she worked and figured out a way to get her there to kill her. For the perp to know this much detail, have such insider knowledge, he
had
to be someone who was very familiar with the site. Familiar enough to know about a tunnel so secret that even the president of the United States hadn’t known of its existence.

“So who knew all those things?” she murmured. “And of the people who did, who would want Leanne Car dead?”

“I’ll have a list by tomorrow.”

“Excellent.”

She hoped it was a short one. A very short one. Already, she populated it with an obvious name—Jack Williams. She made a mental note to check on where Leanne’s boss had been the other day during the time of her attack, and the next night, when Brian Underwood was murdered in Philadelphia. She also resolved to make a few phone calls and find out what she could about Kilgore. He was Secret Service and had a high level security clearance, but he was also an asshole. Assholes didn’t necessarily equal murderers, but her instinctive dislike and distrust of the man made her want to know at least a little more about him.

She had no idea whether Bailey or Johansen knew. It seemed doubtful, but if they’d been working on the site for months, it was at least possible. And certainly the lead architect and his key people would be aware, as well as the construction workers who’d rebuilt it.

Shit. Maybe the list wouldn’t be that short.

“Now, tell me what else you found out from your eye-spy routine today,” he said. Then he tilted his head from side to side, cracking his neck, and pulled off his uniform jacket. “Wait, never mind. First, I gotta take a leak.”

He had been here a few times and knew where the bathroom was, so he didn’t wait for her to give him permission. He merely left the kitchen, walking through the dining area into the living room. And there, apparently, he stopped.

She heard his low whistle, and wondered what had caught his attention.

“Holy shit, Ron, if I’d known you were having a porn party, I woulda brought my collection of Big Tits In Tube Tops blue-rays.”

Confused, she walked out to join him and realized he was looking at the oversized computer monitor sitting on the living room table. She’d been watching Leanne’s backups when he’d knocked, and had been so startled she hadn’t even paused the slideshow. During the last several minutes while they’d talked, Leanne’s memories had continued to play out on the screen.

And oh, God, were they hot.

“That’s our victim,” she whispered, seeing Leanne’s peach-tinted fingernails scraping the bare chest of a naked man, whom she was studying with obvious lust and desire. She was in no way paying attention to his face, instead focused entirely from the neck down. As they watched, she tangled her fingers in his wiry hair and moved down to lick his nipples, kissing her way down his midriff, his abs…lower.

“Whoa,” Daniels barked when it became pretty obvious they were about to see a birds-eye view of a guy getting blown.

Ronnie hurried over to the couch, grabbed her hand-held and paused the show. Seeing where the picture had stopped, she rethought that strategy—
hmm, not circumcised
—and stopped the thing altogether.

“So, should I pop the popcorn?” Mark asked.

“I was just about to,” she admitted. “But I think I’ve lost my appetite.”

Many parts of this job pressed her squick button. Seeing a woman having hot sex up against a wall in a dimly-lit room within a few days of her brutal murder smashed that sucker flat.

“It’s pretty nasty, partner, but we need to find out who Mr. Big Dick is,” Daniels murmured, knowing her well enough to know she dreaded going back and watching the whole scene.