Chapter 19

I had to stay put while the forensics techs crowded into the stairwell so they could take note of my shoe. I imagine Laura Kim would’ve thrown it away, but I settled for wiping it off with a couple of alcohol swabs. It wasn’t like they were haunted now. Besides, I liked the way they fit.

 Weird to think I had ever presumed Laura was the Assassin. All the circumstantial evidence had pointed to her, and even so, it was obvious she didn’t have it in her to take another person’s life. I wasn’t even entirely convinced that the assassin existed, because it seemed exactly like the sort of thing Roger Burke would tell me to mess up my head.

Then again, I couldn’t deny somebody was killing FPMP agents.

When Darla and I got back to the office, Carl was busy at the scanner. “Say, Carl,” she asked, “did you know an agent named Colleen Frank?”

He looked up sharply. “What do you mean, did?” 

Shit. Here I thought she’d actually been pretty smooth. A lot slicker than me, anyway. I probably would’ve started out with something really tactful like, Guess who just died?

“There’s been an accident,” Darla said. I almost corrected her, too, but then I realized that she was in that stairwell, same as me. And while I might not know exactly how accurate her reception was, at the very least, she’d heard my end of the conversation. If she was calling the obvious murder an accident, she must’ve had a good reason.

Carl dropped the book he’d been holding. “What happened? Is she—?”

“She fell and…it was quick. She didn’t suffer. I’m really sorry.”

“Excuse me,” he said, and strode out of the office. The door slammed behind him.

I looked at Darla. She looked at me. Before I could figure out what to say, she said, “I don’t know whether your info is classified or not, and I don’t know who’s under investigation and who isn’t. That’s for Internal Affairs to sort out.”

“Why would they be looking at Carl?”

“Not just Carl. They’ll investigate everyone in the building. Good thing we both have an alibi.”

Of course, Carl had nothing to do with it. Okay, he’d left the room abruptly a few minutes before Colleen Frank tipped over that railing. But he was always leaving the room abruptly. Damn, Jacob was gonna have his work cut out for him. I’d need to get to him ASAP and tell him what I knew.

 “I’ll deal with IA,” I said. “Can you write up the official report?”

“I could,” she said, as if she wasn’t really sold on the idea. “So, you’re the lead. What do you want it to say?”

“Whatever you think is best. You were there. You know what happened.”

That answer seemed to please her—weird, since whenever I gave actual thought to what I said, it went over like a lead balloon. “Okay, then. I’ll handle it.”

“But make sure you note that I was only asking her the sort of questions any investigator would ask. I wasn’t mansplaining.” Darla sniffed a little laugh, and I insisted, “I wasn’t.”

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you need to tell yourself.”

* * *

Jacob was disturbed, to say the least, when I broke the news about Colleen Frank’s death. While he paced back and forth in his office, I sprawled in one of his reasonably comfortable chairs and enjoyed the plant-free ambience. “The two deaths are obviously connected,” he said. “What if the leak was worried about being found out, so they started killing their office mates?”

“Which would mean we’re looking at either Agent Garcia or the fake schoolteacher.” Yeah. That sounded more likely than an assassin.

“Her name is Agent Lipton.” Jacob checked his notes. “Peter Garcia and Veronica Lipton.”

“And if one of them is the leak, the other one had better start sleeping with one eye open.” I thought back to the meeting in which we broke the news of “Andy’s” death to his colleagues. Angry and smug. You’d think psychic empathy would give us more to go on. “Did Bly notice anyone feeling scared during our grief counseling, like they were worried they’d get caught?”

“Not that he mentioned.”

“I think he’ll need to take another look at each of them.”

“As soon as possible,” Jacob agreed. “In fact, I’d rather interview them separately, in case they’re working together.” I realized he was gauging my reaction just a little too closely when he followed that up with, “We should split up. One of us with Bly, the other with Stefan.”

“No.” It was a knee-jerk reaction, and I didn’t give a damn.

But Jacob, being Jacob, plowed right on ahead. “It’s the perfect opportunity. We’ll be informing them of another colleague’s death. One of us brings a ‘counselor’ with us to soften the blow, take the tack that we’re concerned for their emotional well-being. The other takes a more physical approach. They all know Bly as an investigator. We make that suspect think we’re worried that they might be next in line.”

“Stefan is not a trained law enforcement officer.” Hell, I wasn’t even sure Stefan was a legitimate human being.

Didn’t matter. Jacob railroaded me anyway. “We need to do it now. Before they collude. Or before they disappear.”

“I’m not talking you out of this. Am I?”

“The longer you argue with me, the more chance we have of losing one of them. Or both.”

One thing I did have time for…a long-suffering sigh. “Fine. On one condition.” Psych-resistant or not, there was no way in hell I was giving my treacherous ex an opportunity to pick Jacob’s brain. “Stefan is with me.”

“Whatever you think is best.” Ha. Said the guy who’d just steamrolled me flatter than an FPMP agent in an industrial wood shredder. 

I buzzed Patrick and let him know what I needed. “Let’s see. Agent Garcia.” There was the sound of a keyboard. “Here we go. He’s in the field at the moment—setting up surveillance on ex-agent Richard Duff. Medium. Huh. Did you know him?”

Einstein? Did I ever.