“Thank you. I will call back in the morning.”
I closed the phone. I had what I needed from Allmand, Bradshaw and Ward. I next called Daly ?amp; Mills back and went through the same ruse, getting the same backhand confirmation from an assistant to the managing partner.
I felt that I had nailed the connection. Both of the law firms that had represented the Unsub’s two victims stored their case files at Western Data Consultants in Mesa. That had to be the place where Denise Babbit and Sharon Oglevy crossed paths. That was where the Unsub had found and chosen them.
I shoved all the files back into my backpack and started the car.
On the way to the airport I called Southwest Airlines and bought a round-trip ticket that left LAX at one o’clock and would get me into Phoenix an hour later. I next booked a rental car and was contemplating the call I would need to make to my ace, when my phone started buzzing.
The screen said private caller and I knew it was Rachel finally calling me back.
“Hello?”
“Jack, it’s me.”
“Rachel, it’s about time. Where are you?”
“At the airport. I’m coming back.”
“Switch your flight. Meet me in Phoenix.”
“What?”
“I found the connection. It’s Western Data. I’m going there now.”
“Jack, what are you talking about?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you. Will you come?”
There was a long delay.
“Rachel, will you come?”
“Yes, Jack, I’ll come.”
“Good. I have a car booked. Make the switch and then call me back with your arrival time. I’ll pick you up at Sky Harbor.”
“Okay.”
“How did the OPR hearing go? It seemed like it went really long.”
Again, a hesitation. I heard an airport announcement in the background.
“Rachel?”
“I quit, Jack. I’m not an agent anymore.”
When Rachel came through the terminal exit at Sky Harbor International, she was pulling a roller bag with one hand and carrying a laptop briefcase with the other. I was standing with all the limo drivers holding signs with their arriving passengers’ names on them and I saw Rachel before she saw me. She was looking back and forth for me but not paying attention to what or who was directly in front of her.
I stepped into her path and she almost walked into me. Then she stopped and relaxed her arms a little bit without letting go of her bags. It was an obvious invitation. I stepped up and pulled her into a tight hug. I didn’t kiss her, I just held her. She bowed her head into the crook of my neck and we said nothing for possibly as long as a minute.
“Hi,” I finally said.
“Hi,” she said back.
“Long day, huh?”
“The longest.”
“You okay?”
“I will be.”
I reached down and took the handle of the roller bag out of her grasp. Then I turned her toward the exit to the parking garage.
“This way. I already got the car and the hotel.”
“Great.”
We walked silently and I kept my arm around her. Rachel had not told me a lot on the phone, only that she had been forced to quit to avoid prosecution for misuse of government funds-the FBI jet she had taken to Nellis in order to save me. I wasn’t going to push her for more information but eventually I wanted to know the details. And the names. The bottom line was that she had lost her job coming to save me. The only way I was going to be able to live with that was if I somehow tried to set it straight. The only way I knew how to do that was to write about it.
“The hotel’s pretty nice,” I said. “But I only got one room. I didn’t know if you wanted-”
“One room is perfect. I don’t have to worry about things like that anymore.”
I nodded and assumed she meant that she no longer had to worry about sleeping with someone who was part of an investigation. It seemed that no matter what I said or asked, I was going to trigger thoughts about the job and career she had just lost. I tried a new direction.
“So are you hungry? Do you want to get something to eat or go right to the hotel or what?”
“What about Western Data?”
“I called and set up an appointment. They said it had to be tomorrow because the CEO is out today.”
I checked my watch and it was almost six.
“They’re probably closed now, anyway. So tomorrow at ten we go in. We ask for a guy named McGinnis. He apparently runs the place.”
“And they fell for the charade you told me you were going to pull?”
“It’s not a charade. I have the letter from Schifino and that makes me legit.”
“You can convince yourself of anything, can’t you? Doesn’t your paper have some kind of code of ethics that prevents you from misrepresenting yourself?”
“Yeah, we’ve got a code but there are always gray areas. I’m going undercover to get information that cannot be gathered any other way.”
I shrugged as if to say, no big deal. We got to my rental car and I loaded her bag in the trunk.
“Jack, I want to go there now,” Rachel said as we got in the car.
“Where?”
“Western Data.”
“You can’t get in without an appointment and our appointment’s tomorrow.”
“Fine, we don’t go in. But we can still case the joint. I just want to see it.”
“Why?”
“Because I need something to take my mind off what happened today in Washington. Okay?”
“Got it. We’re going.”
I looked up Western Data’s address in my notebook and plugged it into the car’s GPS. Soon we were on a freeway heading east from the airport. Traffic moved smoothly and we were to Mesa after two freeway changes and twenty minutes of driving.
Western Data Consultants loomed small on the horizon on McKellips Road on the east side of Mesa. It was in a sparsely developed area of warehouses and small businesses surrounded by scrub brush and Sonora cacti. It was a one-story, sand-colored building of block construction with only two windows located on either side of the front door. The address number was painted on the top right corner of the building but there was no other sign on the facade or anywhere else on the fenced property.
“Are you sure that’s it?” Rachel asked as I drove by the first time.
“Yeah, the woman I made the appointment with said they had no signs on the property. It’s part of the security-not advertising exactly what they do here.”
“It’s smaller than I thought it would be.”
“You have to remember, most of it is underground.”
“Right, right.”
A few blocks past the target, there was a coffee shop called Hightower Grounds. I pulled in to turn around and then we took another pass at Western Data. This time the property was on Rachel’s side and she turned all the way in her seat to view it.
