The Day Before (2 page)

He waved a hand, and she slunk out of sight. A year ago, she'd been the office hotshot, the girl with the high-­speed career. Now she was the embarrassment of an old man who'd never risen in the ranks past senior agent of a backwater nowhere. She shook her head, gathered her things, and made her way to Marrins's secretary.

Theresa scowled at her through pink cat's-­eye glasses as Sam crossed the polished lobby floor to stop at the secretary's great round fortress in the lobby.

“Stolen hair clips? Marrins says you have all the details.” Sam smiled winningly.

The secretary rolled her eyes with the grace of someone who had put up with the antics of rookies for decades. “Novikov-­Veltman Nova Laboratory is a private physics and astronomy lab on the south end of the district. They had a break-­in over the weekend. Detective Altin sent a call for assistance because one of the scientists is demanding bureau involvement. Technically, since some of the research is government-­funded, we could call it our jurisdiction, but it's just property damage. There's broken glass in the atrium, but none of the labs were touched.”

“Sounds like a thrill ride,” Sam said. The address was on “her” side of the district, which meant she could stop to change before going to the lab. And let the dog out.

At least this won't be a complete waste, then. Any chance to spend some time with my
“
roommate.
”

She headed for her car, unplugged it from the charger, and turned the key. The water engine bubbled to life.

Once upon a time, in some fairy utopia that existed before she was born, there was no such thing as a bedroom tax. Now, having more than one room per person resulted in a luxury tax, and, legally, a single person could only rent a single-­bedroom apartment. She got around that by listing her landlady's mastiff as her animal companion. At 180 pounds, Hoss more than qualified for his own room. It meant she got to live in a beautiful old house where there was no risk of having a meth lab next door, but it also meant getting home in time to let the dog out because her landlady wouldn't walk over after dark.

Driving down the country road, she sighed.

When she'd decided to join the bureau for a paycheck that wasn't considered a living wage, it had been in a fit of pique and the belief that she'd be promoted quickly. The bureau was her escape from her life as an ambassador's daughter and the threats of marriage to one of her mother's cronies. A meritocracy where she would be rewarded for her brains and talent while she helped build a new nation.

So far, the meritocracy she'd signed up for was her mother's world of glittering favoritism done on a budget.

A
faun-­colored dog lay in the crabgrass wagging its nub of a tail as Sam parked on the lawn outside a stately white house with a wraparound porch shaded by oak trees. A withered old woman with skin the color of roast chestnuts and a Smith & Wesson rifle stood in the doorway.

“Hello, Miss Azalea. Hello, Hoss!” Sam waved as she stepped out of the car. Hoss leapt to his feet. A foot-­long trail of saliva dragged behind the dog like the tail of a comet as he bounded toward her.

“Hoss!” the woman shouted. The dog sat, skidding on the remnants of a gravel driveway until he bumped into Sam's knee and looked up with unabashed adoration. His giant head nudged her hip, looking for a treat. Black eyes lost in a black mask of fur watched her expectantly.

Sam patted him affectionately. “You're hungry, aren't you?”

“He's always hungry.” Miss Azalea eyed her, and Sam knew the woman was weighing her against the Southern standard for beauty as she walked up to the house. “Jus' looking at you makes me want to eat fried chicken. Child, you need to put some meat on those bones. What are you doing home this time o' day?”

“Changing my shirt and going to see Detective Altin about something.” Hoss's nails clicked on the wooden floor as he followed her inside. “I have some lemonade in the fridge if you'd like some.”

Miss Azalea waved her hand. “I jus' come up to water the plants in the nursery, hon. Let Hoss run for a few minutes. Can't imagine how he stands it in this heat. Jus' looking outside gots me sweatin' like a sinner at a prayer meetin'. I'm fixin' to melt.” The door snapped shut behind her.

Sam left her landlady in the empty living room, hurrying to change into dry clothes. When she got back downstairs, Miss Azalea and Hoss were both in the kitchen at the big wooden table that didn't fit in Miss Azalea's little house by the creek. “I made us sandwiches. You want me to bring up some supper for you?”

Baloney sandwiches on white bread. Nothing special, but a chance for Miss Azalea to spend some time with her. Sam didn't really have the time, and besides, Sam ate hers in three bites anyway. But she liked her landlady and appreciated the food. “I can't do dinner with you tonight, I'm sorry. I'm meeting Brileigh at the gym, and she'll holler if I'm not there to spot her.”

Miss Azalea nodded. “I'll come up tomorrow to let Hoss out. Leave some fried chicken in the fridge for you. You'll have the rent check? I'm fixin' to leave for Florida by Friday. Gotta see my grandbabies.”

“I'll leave it on the fridge,” Sam promised. Hoss stole some crumbs off her plate. “Poor baby, you're going to be stuck in the house all day all alone. I wonder if I could smuggle him into work.” Hoss's nubbin of a tail wagged hopefully, and she almost felt bad for bringing it up. “I don't think he'd even fit in my office.”

“Honey, he wouldn't fit in your car!” Miss Azalea laughed. “I'd take him with me, but my boy has two dogs. Little things. They'd be snacks.”

“It won't be a problem. I can come home during lunch.”

Hoss licked her face. He wouldn't care what happened as long as he got cookies out of the deal.

“A
gent Rose, we've got to stop meeting like this,” Detective Altin said, as she got out of her car. He was a trim, older man with wiry, steel-­gray hair who often had the thankless task of smoothing out wrinkles when the police chief and Marrins butted heads. ­“People are going to start talking.”

“Hardy-­har-­har. You should try stand-­up comedy, Detective, you're a natural,” Sam said, as they walked toward the nondescript building. “What's all the fuss about?”

“Oh, just your standard weekend vandalism with a side order of fried electronics. The local hooligans decided we were getting too much experience raiding drug labs, so they added breaking and entering to their repertoire. Now I get to teach a class about tracking down stolen property to all our new recruits.”

“What was stolen?”

“Nothing that we know of yet. I have Officer Holt leading the team checking the inventory lists, but a refresher course never hurt anyone.”

“Lovely.” As they stepped inside, the lab's glass atrium was a cool respite from the rising heat and humidity. A large black desk stood guard at the far end of the space, looking over a sea of gray marble and white-­barked beeches and gardenias planted in raised beds, reaching for the skylights. “I like the yellow police tape. It adds a touch of roguish punkery.”

“Good use of taxpayer dollars. To the left we have the government-­sponsored labs run by a Dr. Esther Vergeet. To the right of the guard desk you have the workshop where the team keeps older research displays, abandoned ideas, and Dr. Abdul Emir's modern projects lab.” Yellow police tape hung over the second door, which had been warped and crumpled into a mass of rippled metal.

“Walk me through this. I see two main entrances. The front door”—­Sam pointed behind her to the door she'd come in—­“and the doors over there.” She nodded to an identical set of wide glass doors that looked out over a courtyard with picnic tables. “The labs are to the left, with six cameras I can see, a security desk, and ID locks. Over to the right is?” Sam looked at the double doors leading to the brick addition.

“The green door on the right leads to the lecture and conference hall. Next door is a multimedia room for greeting the press and holding high-­school career fairs and such.”

“So the thief came in through a back door? Fire escape? Down through the roof maybe?” Sam guessed.

“That, we don't know.” Detective Altin led her to door number two. “On Sunday nights, two human guards man the desks. Robotic security with heat sensors patrols the back rooms. The lab is closed at noon Sunday and doesn't open to general staff until ten Monday morning. Weekends, the lab is open only to staff with level-­four security clearance or higher, plus the designated security guards, who never go past the atrium. Dr. Vergeet came in at five this morning to this mess. There were no phone calls, nothing from security, and all the electronics in the building are fried. She isn't happy.”

Sam nodded and started taking notes. “I wouldn't be happy either. Cameras in all the halls and standard perimeter security?”

“The latest and greatest, before the incident. Sunday night, one of the security guards logged out early, claimed he was sick. His name is Mordicai Robbins.”

“Where's he now?”

“Unknown. He's a weekend-­only guy. Records from HR say he's single. The morning security guard says Robbins likes to take off at random—­fishing trips, that sort of thing. We're trying to reach him, but he's got his phone turned off.

“The logs for security that night show both Mr. Robbins and”—­he consulted his notes—­“Melody Chimes worked Sunday night. We have the phone record of Mr. Robbins calling in to the main office asking permission to leave. Miss Chimes is on the recording, too, confirming that she would contact the on-­call backup officer, Leandra Kinsley. We sent an officer out to talk to Kinsley, who says she went to bed at eleven Sunday night. She reported to her day job in Edmond at eight the next morning, and didn't hear a thing about the break-­in until the police called at three.”

“Chimes?” Sam looked at Altin, expecting a laugh. “Melody Chimes? Really?”

“It's legal.”

“Some parents are cruel,” she said with a shake of her head. “Where is Miss Chimes?”

Altin frowned. “Also missing.”

“Miss Chimes called a friend and broke into the lab? Is that the theory?”

“That's
a
theory.”

“I hear a ‘but' coming.”

Altin nodded as he said, “Miss Chimes is a nineteen-­year-­old college student working on an art and marketing degree. She hired on as a part-­time night-­shift employee with the Wannervan Security Firm last fall to earn some money on the side. Good family, no financial problems, she's passed every drug test. There's nothing in her profile that's a red flag for a destructive crime like this.”

Sam nodded. “So work it the other way: what's missing and who would want it?”

“Nothing obvious is missing,” Altin said with a tired sigh. “We did a check of the high-­end, easy-­to-­move stuff first. Computers, monitors, the break-­room television, that's all here. All the data is here, all the lab reports are here. All we have is the fried electronics and the broken windows. Dr. Vergeet called as soon as she pulled up and has her teams going over the computers to see if anything was uploaded or downloaded. So far, there isn't a keystroke out of place.” He spread his hands in defeat. “It looks like careless vandalism, maybe a crime of opportunity although I want to find Robbins and Chimes before I write it all off. Also, there's this.” Altin handed her a set of forensic gloves. “Check this door out.”

Sam ducked under the police tape and inspected the broken hinges. “That took a lot of force.”

“These are steel fire doors. Each one weighs over a hundred pounds, and the hinges are supposed to support over four hundred pounds each.”

“You did your research.”

“I got bored waiting for you to show up,” Altin said. “Dr. Vergeet is ready to file a vandalism claim with the insurance and be done with it, and the rest of the mess fits. But this doesn't. You'd need a battering ram to bend the door like this, and to get it at this angle, I think you'd have to be standing inside the guarded portion of the lab. I mean, I need to run some computer scenarios to prove it, but to me it looks like the door was pushed out, not in.”

Sam frowned at the beige walls and black flooring of the rear hallway. Electric hookups for security bots hung in small alcoves every three meters waiting for their sentries to return. There were cameras, smoke detectors, sprinklers—­everything a high-­security building needed to handle a small war. “Did the lab lose power at any time Sunday night?”

“Not a flicker,” Altin said, as they walked slowly down the hall. “The cameras are out, the computers are down, but the electricity is still running to everything. It doesn't look like a power surge.”

“I see the stations for the robotic-­security patrols. Did you confiscate the bots, or were they stolen?” The black market for security tech was growing, but there could only be a few buyers in the area.

“We took 'em. I sent half to the district tech lab, one to the local PD techgeeks, and the rest to the bureau tech lab in Atlanta.”

“Too bad,” she said. “Stolen security bots would make life interesting.”

Sam studied the scene, trying to glean some sense from what she was seeing. Every door down the hall hung off its hinges. Black security glass littered the floor on both sides of the windows. “Does this look like an explosion to you, or is that just me?”

“No residue from a blast although the impact fractures on the wall support the theory. Dr. Vergeet assured me there is nothing in these labs that could cause an explosion. They don't even have a flammables locker.”

Sam shook her head. “What about residue from your missing security guards? Did you get anything there?”

“Not a single hair. There are no signs of physical violence, and both cars are gone. We have an APB out for them, but anyone with half an ounce of sense stripped those cars down and left them in Atlanta, with the keys in the ignition. They're gone and sold for parts by now.”