“The cops have confirmed the ID of the victim,” Cabot said. He put his phone down on the dining counter that overlooked the kitchen. “Sandra Porter. She was a computer programmer who, up until a few days ago, worked in the IT department at a local company called Night Watch. Evidently, Porter recently left the company to pursue other opportunities.”
“That’s usually a euphemism for getting fired,” Virginia said.
They were eating a midnight dinner of pizza and red wine in her condo because by the time the police had cut them loose, neither of them had felt like trying to find a restaurant that was still open.
Just as well, Virginia thought. She was too wired to try to pass for normal in a public place. She wasn’t very hungry, either. After a couple of bites of pizza, she had decided to focus on the wine.
“It’s possible she really did quit,” Cabot said. “Good programmers often move around a lot simply because they can. Their skills are in high demand.”
“Sandra Porter certainly didn’t show up in my back room because she wanted to apply for a job.”
“True. The question is, who else was in your back room?”
Virginia swallowed some more wine and slumped back in her chair. “Think it might have been the phony plumber who broke into my condo yesterday?”
Cabot picked up another slice of pizza. “I’d say that’s a definite maybe. Too early to tell. We don’t have enough information.”
“This thing is getting very complicated, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but we now have a couple more facts than we had earlier.”
“The name of the dead woman?”
“And her place of employment.”
“I suppose the police will chase down all the obvious leads and connections.”
“Sure.”
Virginia examined her almost-empty wineglass. “The cops are not going to buy into our conspiracy theory, are they? They’ll think we’re crazy if we try to convince them that a onetime cult leader has emerged from the past and, for reasons yet to be explained, started murdering people.”
“The police will spend their time investigating more plausible explanations. That’s their job. It’s up to you and me to try to find a connection to the past.”
“Think there’s a chance that Sandra Porter was in Zane’s compound with us?”
“No. According to her profile she was only twenty-four years old. That means she would have been two at the time we were all in the compound. I don’t remember any kids that young. Do you?”
“No.”
“You were one of the youngest on the list of cult members that my brothers and I have compiled. Zane didn’t want the problems that very young children or infants would have caused him. He wanted kids he could lock up at night.”
“We were hostages, weren’t we? We were insurance for our mothers’ obedience.”
“Yes.”
Virginia set the empty glass aside, sat forward and folded her arms on the table. “Okay, so Sandra Porter wasn’t at the compound. That doesn’t mean she didn’t have a connection to it. Maybe one of her relatives got sucked into the cult.”
“A possibility. But the real questions are, what was she doing at your gallery and why did someone kill her?”
“We need to find that fake plumber, don’t we?”
“That would be helpful,” Cabot said.
“So what’s our next step?”
“We start turning over rocks but we stay out of the way of the police. They will be extremely unhappy if they think we’re interfering in their investigation. And if they are unhappy, they won’t provide us with any insider information.”
“I understand. But where do we find the rocks to turn over?”
“Up until a few days ago Sandra Porter had a job,” Cabot said. “That means she had colleagues, people who knew her. She may have had a boyfriend.”
“She’ll have had neighbors and probably some relatives, too. Won’t the police be talking to all of them?”
“Sure,” Cabot said. “But they will be asking questions that are very different from the ones we’ll be asking. They’ll be looking for a relationship gone bad, a drug problem or maybe an indication of corporate espionage.”
“Got to admit, those sound like reasonable avenues of investigation – except none of them explain why Sandra Porter wound up dead in my back room.”
“It also doesn’t explain why Sandra Porter was killed in what television and the movies would have you believe is a classic hit-man style. Two shots, one to the chest to take the victim down, the second to the head to make sure of death.”
“Good grief. Do you think we’re talking about a professional hit man?”
“No, just someone who watches a lot of television. A real pro would have made the hit somewhere else and dumped the body into Lake Washington or Elliott Bay or driven it up into the mountains. There’s too much evidence associated with a body.”
Virginia exhaled slowly. “Good to know we’re not dealing with a hired killer.”
“According to my brother Jack, who studies this stuff, there aren’t a lot of actual professional hit men in the real world. The few that do exist tend to be affiliated with specific gangs or mobs. There are trained snipers, of course, but, by definition, they work from a distance.”
“I see.”
“That said, it doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people who think they’re smart enough to get away with murder.”
Virginia poured herself a little more wine, trying to suppress the wired sensation.
“What now?” she asked.
“Now I go downstairs and get my overnight bag out of the trunk of your car.”
She stilled. “You’re spending the night?”
“Do you want to stay here alone?”
She did not have to think very hard about that. “Under the circumstances, no.”
“Good choice,” Cabot said.