Murder in the Aisles (9 page)

“Thank you.” She swallowed it all in two gulps and then placed the cup on the desk.

Mark sat on the edge of the desk and studied her. “Feeling better?”

Felicia barely nodded and then suddenly stood, nearly knocking Mark off the side of the desk in the tightly confined space.

“I'm sorry. I…just remembered an important…meeting that I must attend.” She grabbed her coat from the back of the chair. “I'm sorry.”

“Whoa…what the hell is going on? First you bug me to death about this disk. I get you the information. Get you in here for you to see for yourself and you suddenly realize that you have a meeting! Are you fucking with me or what?” His outrage had tinged his skin.

“I'm sorry. I have to go!” She spun away and was a step short of actually racing down the hall.

Mark jumped up behind her, but rather than follow her out, he stood in the doorway and watched her make a beeline for the exit.

* * * * *

The bite of the cold air helped. Rather than immediately get into her car, Felicia stood in front of it for a moment to make sure that the last of the attack had passed. It had been years since she'd had an episode like that. Therapy and mental exercises had helped tremendously. She'd gotten to a point in her life where that night was no longer the focal point of her existence but rather a shadow that she knew was there but was powerless to hurt her. She took a final look around, got in her vehicle and turned it on. Mark must think that she was a complete nutcase. A tear slid down her cheek. Maybe she was.

Chapter Twelve

Conflicted, Mark walked back to his desk undecided about what to do. Should he call her or just leave it alone? The case was closed anyway. But clearly something was totally off-center with Felicia.
Why
was the question, and what brought it on? It must have been pretty powerful to get her to leave without even seeing what she'd come for, something that to her was vitally important. He ran his fingers through his close-cut hair, made a mental note that he needed a haircut and plopped down in his seat. He frowned in concentration and rewound the last few moments in a loop through his head and stopped when the filmstrip got to the part where he handed her the water. He'd looked right in her eyes and he'd seen that look hundreds of times in the eyes of victims.
Terror
.

Eddie peered around from the side of his newspaper. “What happened with the good-looking doctor? I saw her fly out of here like she was being chased.”

Mark linked his fingers behind his head and leaned, cautiously, back in his seat. “Wish I knew. One minute she was fine, the next,” he snapped his fingers, “gone.” He shook his head slowly.

Eddie put his paper down, lowered his glasses to the tip of his nose and leaned forward. “Look, I'm not one to tell you how to run a case, but you know your ass will be in a sling if the captain finds out that you're still pursuing a closed case with no cause.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he groused with a wave of his hand to swat the advice away. “I know that. But my gut is telling me that there's more to this thing.”

“You sure it's your gut and not your Johnson talking? A blind man could get turned on by her.”

“Seriously, Eddie, seriously. That's what you think of me?”

Eddie gave a careless shrug and snapped his paper back open. “Only an observation.” He lowered the paper again and pointed a warning finger at Mark. “Just watch your ass and get some real evidence before this all blows up in your face. Because that would really piss me off if they threw you on desk duty and me back out on the street.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” Mark pushed back from his desk. “I'm heading out.”

“Don't forget what I said.”

“As if you would let me. See you in the morning.” Mark checked his pocket for the disk and headed out.

Mark jogged down the steps of the precinct building and double-timed it to his car. It had started to snow again. He couldn't remember hearing the forecast but he sure as hell would be glad when this winter was over. D.C. had experienced the most snow and below freezing days in decades, and there were still at least two more months of winter ahead.

* * * * *

Felicia felt like a fool having run out of the precinct like that. There was no telling what Mark thought. It was bad enough that he barely believed her about Dr. Dresden. Now he would really think that she was crazy.

She put her bare feet up on the couch and slowly sipped her second glass of white wine. With her free hand she wiped away the tears that had been steady since she'd crossed her threshold. She was so tired of being different. So tired of all the rituals she had to go through so that she wouldn't start screaming: the organizing, the breathing exercises, the counting, the imagining. For all of her brilliance she couldn't figure out how to make herself normal. She sniffed harder, finished off her wine and refilled her glass.

Her cell phone shimmied across the coffee table. Listlessly Felicia leaned toward the phone, sniffed back her tears. Detective Rizzo's name lit up the face of the phone. She let the call go to voicemail. She wasn't ready to answer his questions, which she knew he would have.

Felicia stared at the phone waiting for the voicemail alert to pop up. It didn't. She snatched it up from the table willing the message to appear. Nothing. The doorbell rang instead.

She frowned before swinging her feet to the floor, took two steps and swayed a bit to the left. The half bottle of wine that she'd downed had gone from her empty stomach straight to her head. She drew in a breath to steady herself and clear her mind then went to the front door, and looked through the peephole. She froze with her hand on the knob. The bell chimed again, jolting her into action. She wiped her face with the hem of her T-shirt and tugged the door open.

“Hey, Doc. Uh,” Mark shifted his feet as the snow whipped around him and into Felicia's front door. “I did call first.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Saw your car.”

Felicia lifted her chin. “Getting bad out there,” she commented and looked beyond him. She wrapped her arms around her body as if she intended to have whatever he'd come for happen right on her doorstep.

Mark hunched his broad shoulders against the whipping snow and wind. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the disk. He held it up. “Did you still want to see what was on here?”

She took a reluctant step back. “Come in.”

“Thanks,” he murmured. He walked past her and stomped his feet on the welcome rug, then shrugged out of his coat.

“Your coat is wet. You can hang it on the hook,” Felicia instructed while she walked away.

Mark hung up his coat and took off his shoes. He followed Felicia into the living room.

Felicia was standing in the middle of the space with a glass of wine in her hand.

Mark cleared his throat. Felicia blinked and turned her focus on him.

“I'm sorry, would you like something to drink, tea or coffee or something stronger? Unless you are still on duty?”

“Actually I could use a beer if you have one.”

“Beer isn't my beverage of choice, but I try to keep some around to stem Elizabeth's periodic craving whenever she stops by.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Felicia spun away and padded off to the kitchen, returning moments later with a bottle of Coors, an opener and a glass. She placed both ceremoniously on the table and then sat down opposite Mark.

“Thanks.”

Felicia offered a tight-lipped smile and reached for her glass of wine.

“You want to tell me what happened back there at the precinct?” He opened his beer and looked at her.

“No.” She stared right back at him as if daring him to challenge her answer.

Mark wrapped his lips around the opening of the beer bottle. He took two long swallows then leaned back and crossed his right foot over his left knee.

Felicia's nostrils flared ever so slightly. He took up entirely too much man space. She flicked her gaze away.

“How bad are the panic attacks?” he asked, so softly she thought she imagined the question.

Felicia's head snapped toward him. Her first instinct was to be indignant, to deny, to lie. She looked away, ran her tongue along her bottom lip then looked across at him. The backdrop of the soft evening light that danced against the swirl of pearly white snow fell like a halo around him and softened the rugged lines of his features; made the hard impasse of his expression easier to cross.

“Not often,” she finally admitted, speaking the words to the floor. “Today—was different.”

Mark uncrossed his leg, rested his forearms on his muscled thighs and leaned forward. “How?” he asked in that same soft timbre.

Felicia took a fortifying sip of wine. “My high I.Q. comes with an array of pitfalls; mainly OCD. And for added entertainment I get bouts of claustrophobia.” She tugged in a breath that made her body shudder. “I'd gotten them under control. I hadn't had an attack like that since my junior year in college. I was seventeen.”

Mark frowned. “You were seventeen and a junior in college?” he asked as if able to swallow everything else she'd said except that.

“My parents didn't want me skipped through school anymore. They stopped it when I was in the fifth grade. I was six. I would have graduated college at sixteen.”

“Are you shitting me?”

Felicia almost smiled. “No, Detective.”

“Amazing.” He swigged more beer. “So…this attack today, do you know what triggered it?” he casually asked, easily switching to interrogation mode.

She ran her hand across the spiky cut of her hair. “I haven't been sleeping well lately. When I don't get enough sleep and get overtired, I get anxious. I get flare-ups.”

“Hmmm,” he hummed deep in his throat. He stared off into space. “The sound of cars backfiring, sudden screams messed with me for nearly three years after I left the Marines.” He seemed to study his hands, turning them over. “Never really goes completely away, you know, the things you've seen. You just find a way to deal with it.” He glanced at her. “What happens when you get flare-ups?”

Felicia's gaze flashed to his. She studied his expression for signs that he was only placating her, but what she saw was open, genuine concern.

She wasn't sure why but she told him about her rituals and the yoga and the therapy that all helped her to reclaim a sense of calm. Maybe she told him because he used his detective technique on her, that father confessor thing, empathizing, befriending her, making her feel that she was not alone. Or maybe what he was saying was true. “Tingling in my hands. Racing heart. Cold sweats. Sometimes my vision doubles.” She swallowed. “I've been able to manage them mostly.”

Mark was quiet once she'd finished. “You'd never know it to look at ya. You deal with it well.”

Felicia snorted a laugh, and pushed the comment aside with a shift of her shoulders. “The disk. Can we talk about that? It's what you came for.”

The façade was back in place. “Yeah, sure.” He placed it on the table. “Need a floppy drive.”

“Oh, right.” She was thoughtful for a moment and then pushed up from the couch. “I think I have an old external drive in my office.” She walked away.

Mark took the downtime to replay the things Felicia told him. She had issues; there was no doubt about that. Her usual haughtiness was nowhere in sight. If anything, she looked weary and sad, as if she'd been crying. The question was did any of her issues impair her judgment? He didn't think so. If anything it may give more credence to her hunches. She was particular. Her life was about order. All one had to do was look around her living space, her car, her appearance. She had an eye for detail. Nothing was ever out of order. Even when she was casual there wasn't a hair out of place. She was obsessive about the rightness of things. It was that quirk that led her to believe that something wasn't right about Dresden's death. She was gutsy. He had to give her that. It couldn't have been easy for her to tell him and he wondered why she did.

Felicia returned with her laptop, some cords and the external drive. “I haven't used this thing in ages. I'm not sure it even works.” She went about making the plug-in connections and then powered up the computer.

Mark watched while she got everything connected, but more importantly he watched the economy of her movements, the look of concentration that framed her features, the way her long fingers moved, delicate but sure. What she was doing was no big deal: sticking parts into openings. Anyone could do it, but watching Felicia was like watching a ballet and he didn't even like ballets—but he could.

“Ready.” She held out her hand.

Mark snapped to attention. He handed her the disk and she inserted it into the drive.

Chapter Thirteen

Mark came around and sat next to Felicia on the couch. He expected her to put up her usual distance barriers, but she didn't move, which gave him the opportunity to stealthily inhale that unique scent of hers that was nothing man made, but rather her own thoroughly female essence.

The disk loaded and requested the password.

“Password,” Felicia said, prompting Mark out of his reverie. He took out a piece of crumpled paper from his shirt pocket, looked at the information and keyed it in: @laureatequery7. The disk clicked and hummed inside the drive followed by a series of folders that popped up on the screen. There were four in all.

“Open the one that says ‘notes',” Felicia instructed.

Mark took the curt directive in stride and opened the folder without comment.

The folder contained a series of documents, all on Steven Hollis, the poet laureate. It detailed his complete biography, which dated as far back as grade school. There were even copies of his transcripts from high school through college. Then there was a timeline of everything he'd ever published, the names of the publishers, articles written about him and by him, blog posts. The collection of data was voluminous. The next folder was information on the search process that included all the steps taken to vet him by Dr. Wallington, and eliminate other possible contenders. The next folder was listed as personal. It was filled with photographs of Steven Hollis at a variety of venues and also pictures of him and his wife. The last folder was the most damning of all. It was titled “comparisons”. The information seemed to push Felicia back in her seat. According to the details in the file, comparisons were made between work authored by Steven Hollis and six other lesser to unknown poets which clearly pointed to the fact that the poet laureate, who was scheduled to speak at the presidential inauguration at the end of the month, had plagiarized multiple pieces of work and claimed them as his own. Included in this file was a PowerPoint slide presentation, which showed Hollis's work side-by-side with the original writers.

For several moments Felicia was uncharacteristically at a loss for words.

Mark may not have been a genius, but he fully understood the implications. Dr. Dresden must have had his doubts and started his own research on Hollis. Somehow, Hollis got wind of it. He couldn't risk being found out: losing the money, the endorsements, the notoriety and surely his career. What choice did Hollis have but to get rid of the doc before someone found out?

“This Hollis had a good reason to get rid of Dr. Dresden,” Mark said.

Felicia remained quiet. She scrolled back through the information page by page.

“Dr. Dresden didn't do this.”

“What? You were the one that found the disk in his office.”

“I know that. But he didn't put this together. He didn't document this information.”

Mark scrubbed his face with his hands. “Excuse me for being slow, but you're gonna have to explain what the hell you're talking about.”

Felicia pushed out a breath of frustration. She angled her body to face Mark. He forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying and not the way her lips moved or how her eyes sparked from the light.

“Dr. Dresden, for all of his brilliance, was basically illiterate when it came to computer programs. He wouldn't know how to put together a PowerPoint if it had step-by-step instructions. And look at this.” She leaned forward and pointed out the arrangement of information in Hollis's bio. “Meticulous. The amount of detail from his hobbies to his favorite kind of music?” She vigorously shook her head. “Never in a million years would Paul give a damn about any of this.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I'm saying that there is no way that Dr. Dresden put this together. Someone else did.”

“Someone like who?”

“Whom?”

“What?”

“Never mind.” She flopped back against the cushions of the couch and tugged on her bottom lip with her teeth. “I don't know,” she conceded.

“Is this the kind of information that's usually collected for all of those poet laureates?”

Felicia's eyes widened. Her back straightened. “Excellent point. That I can find out.”

“The way I see it, somebody put the information together on the doctor's orders apparently because the doc had his suspicions about how legit this Hollis guy is. Or maybe it's as simple as the other doc, Wallington, pulled the info together and passed it along to Dresden to see what he thought.”

“Hmmm. Paul never mentioned anything to me,” she said in a faraway voice. “The decision is Dr. Wallington's. He makes the selection. If Dr. Dresden requested the research he had to have a good reason to question Dr. Wallington's choice.”

“Bottom line. Someone put this together. Some way Dresden got hold of it or requested the Intel. Somebody didn't want the information to get out. I narrow it down to two people: this Dr. Wallington and Steven Hollis.” He enumerated on his fingers.

“So you believe me.” Felicia squeezed her hands into tight fists.

“I believe something ain't right. I believe you found part of that something.”

Felicia smiled and the room grew suddenly warm. Mark ran his finger around the inside of his collar.

“That's a start, Detective. The one thing I am sure of is that whoever did all of this research prepared it especially for Dr. Dresden. As I told you, he is the only one that still uses a floppy drive.” She paused and looked curiously at him then pointed to his tie. “Is that your only tie, Detective?”

He glanced down. “What?”

“Is that your only or favorite tie? I've seen it on you every time we've met. I remember that little spot.” She extended her finger and pointed to an almost invisible stain. “Right there.”

A half dozen explanations and excuses ran through his head but he couldn't catch one of them. Instead he chose to sidestep her comment. “I'm gonna run all this by my captain in the morning.”

“Is there anything you need from me?”

Wrong question
. “If I do I'll let you know. You've done a lot already.” He popped the disk out of the external drive. “Evidence,” he said, holding it up before slipping it into his shirt pocket.

They both stared at each other in a moment of awkward, “now what” silence.

Mark cleared his throat and stood. “I should be getting out of here.”

Felicia got up as well. Mark was already heading for the door. He stepped into his shoes then reached for his coat. He turned to Felicia. “I'll uh, let you know what the captain says.”

“I'd appreciate that.”

“In the meantime, no more investigating. Somebody has something to hide and obviously will do whatever to keep their secrets.”

Felicia angled her head to the side. A half smile curved her mouth. “Are you worried about me, Detective?”

Mark made busy work of buttoning his coat rather than look at her. He was accustomed to people following his commands without question. Felicia Swift was not going to be one of them. “Just do what I say.”

Felicia reached around him and opened the door. Their bodies brushed. “I'll think about it, Detective. I don't like being told what to do.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He turned toward the opened door. “Good night.”

“Drive safely, Detective.”

He trotted down the steps and hurried toward his car. Felicia stood in the doorway for a moment before shutting it, putting distance and a solid object between them.