hadn’t been lost on her. Technically the FBI was just one of the divisions of the Department of Justice although that had been very easy to forget the few times she’d been inside the massive J. Edgar Hoover Building with its millions of files and hundreds of millions of fingerprint records and its museum. For the moment, anyway, she would leave Washington protocol for Washington.
The sergeant led them into one of the tiny offices, where an older version of himself sat behind a wooden desk, frowning over some papers as though he were translating them with difficulty from a foreign language. When he saw he had visitors he looked relieved. He turned the papers face down in a far corner of his desk and popped up, his hand held out. “You must be agents Hart and Waring,” he said. “I’m Bob Donaldson. Always happy to cooperate with the FBI.”
“Thank you,” said Elizabeth, forestalling the correction Hart would probably feel was necessary. “As they probably told you on the phone, we’re interested in the Veasy murder.”
“Well now, ma’am,” said the chief. “We’re still not absolutely and completely sure it was a murder yet. We’re coming around to that hypothesis, but we aren’t sure.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, smiling. “I misspoke, calling it what we’re looking for rather than what we’re looking at.”
He seemed appeased. “I’ve notified the homicide squad that you’d be here, and told them to be ready with the reports of the investigating officers and so on. Beyond that I thought we’d just wait and see, let you look around and pick out the leads you want to follow.”
“I’d like to take a look at the physical evidence, since that’s what I do best,” said Hart. “Miss Waring would like to study the reports. That way we can do two things at once.”
“Good idea,” said the chief, as though the idea struck him as revolutionary. “Sergeant Edmunds, take Agent Hart to the lab, will you? Miss Waring, I’ll show you the reports.” He took her elbow in a gentle but somehow weighty pressure, as though he were guiding a prisoner who wasn’t quite dangerous enough to be handcuffed, and led her down the corridor.
There was nobody in the room marked
She heard his voice in the next office. “Where the hell are those guys? I told them these people were coming this morning.”
Another male voice said in a bored monotone, “Out on a call. Found a Mexican lemon picker stabbed to death out on Telegraph Road about half an hour ago. Macaulay told me to let you know if you asked.”
“Oh,” came the chief’s voice, now much quieter. Then there was a moment or two of silence. At last the chief said, “Well, when they come back in tell Macaulay I want to see him.”
Elizabeth heard him returning from the other office. She looked up at him in the doorway and listened with an expression of interest while he recapitulated the substance of the conversation she’d just overheard. She wondered how he could not know the sound carried between the little cubicles, but apparently he didn’t. Then he was gone and she was able to look over the reports in peace.
Until the instant of his death, Veasy hadn’t been particularly noteworthy. He had a wife who’d been in his graduating class at Ventura High School, and three children born in the second, fourth, and fifth years of their marriage. They lived in a three-bedroom house in a tract which they’d been paying on for about eight years. Veasy was a machinist, making fairly good money working for Precision Tooling. The investigating officer had made a note at the bottom that his sources—the wife, the shop foreman, two fellow workers, and a neighbor—had not the slightest idea that Veasy had any enemies.
There was no indication that he owed anybody any money except the mortgage on his house. He didn’t gamble except for an occasional poker game at the union hall and the beer frames in his weekly bowling league. He had never been arrested or had anything to do with known criminals. Elizabeth was more than disappointed. She was bored. The only thing about the man that made interesting reading was his death.
She turned to the interviews with the witnesses. The whole thing had been completely unexpected. The monthly meeting of Local 602 had adjourned, he had climbed into this truck and was blown up. That was all any of them seemed to know.
After an hour and a half of reading and study, Elizabeth had made only two notes: to interview Richard O’Connell, the union president, about the minutes of the meeting, and to request file checks of Precision Tooling and Local 602. The file checks would have to wait, because it would be lunchtime at Justice now. She went to one of the empty desks and dialed the extension at Precision Tooling that O’Connell had given the homicide man. Yes, O’Connell said, he could see her at ten thirty.
Elizabeth sat for a minute staring at the file. She got out her telephone credit card, deciding to take a chance that Padgett was still busy enough to be working through another lunch hour.
On the other end she heard Padgett’s phone snatched up and his voice say, “Justice Padgett” as though it were a title.
“Roger,” she said. “I know you must be busy if you’re answering phones at twelve thirty, but I need some background. I need a file check on a company in Ventura, California, called Precision Tooling, and on Machinists’ Local 602.”
“All right, but what specifically?”
“I’m afraid I’ll need the whole thing on both. Any indication that anything isn’t aboveboard. History, assets, cast of characters, everything.”
“So you don’t know what you’re looking for.” He said it without emotion, as though he wasn’t surprised.
“I’m afraid not, Roger,” said Elizabeth. “I’m fishing.”
“I’ll get somebody on it after lunch. Give them a couple of hours and call back.”
“Thanks, Roger. I’ll do that. You’re a love.”
“I’m that all right. But Elizabeth?”
“What?”
“Try to keep it within bounds. Fishing can get expensive.”
She put her notebook away and went down the hall to Donaldson’s office. She found him still pondering the same sheaf of papers. “Chief,” she said, “I wonder if I could get a ride in a squad car. Agent Hart has the keys to our rented car, and I don’t want to interrupt him.”
“A ride? Sure,” he said. He lifted his phone and said, “I’m sending Miss Waring to you. Get her a car and driver. Right.”
THE FACTORY WAS A SMALL, rectangular aluminum building surrounded by a chain-link fence with an open gate. The place seemed to be all metal. Even the sounds that came from it were metallic, the noise of metal machines cutting and grinding and shaving metal, heating, bending, cooling it.
When she entered the shop, a man working a lathe lifted his safety goggles and walked over to her. “Are you Miss Waring?” he asked. He seemed to be about fifty, balding, and with the massive forearms of a man who worked with his hands.
“Yes. Mr. O’Connell?”
“We can talk out in the yard where it’s quiet.”
She followed him through the shop—where the whine of machinery was punctuated by an occasional ring of a hammer or the clank of chains—and out into a small asphalt square where there were a picnic table and benches. “Is this where you eat lunch?” she asked.
“That’s right,” said O’Connell, sitting down. “Now what can I tell you?”
“Mr. Veasy’s death was rather unusual, as you know, and so we’re working with the Ventura police to find out whatever we can about it. If there’s anything at all you think should go into the record, I can guarantee that it will.” She watched him for a moment, but he was just waiting for her to continue.
“I’d like to know what went on at the union hall that evening. Do you have the minutes of the meeting? I understand you’re president.”
“There aren’t any minutes of that meeting. We didn’t vote on anything, so there wasn’t much to write down,” said O’Connell.
“Do you remember what was said?”
“We were talking about the investment of the pension fund. How to get the best return for our money, how to keep it safe, you know. The usual things.” He looked at her through clear, empty gray eyes.
“Did Mr. Veasy say anything that you remember?”
