Eric stepped into the hallway and kept his voice low. ‘Mark told us. They know King?’
Scott nodded, his lips tightly compressed.
Eric registered the case on the floor. ‘You’re going to interview them?’
‘Jayne saw him just last week.’
‘Christ.’
‘She could have told him something. Inadvertently, of course.’
Eric’s eyes widened and he dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘You are
Scott gave a tense shrug.
‘Let me do the interview,’ Eric almost pleaded.
‘No. I know they might be the best lead we have on where this asshole is right now – I’ll have my kid gloves on.’
‘That’s not the reason to wear them, Scott. This is Jayne and Steelie. Look, if King is Tripper, he’s leading a double life and there’s no way in hell he told Jayne. If she knows anything useful, she won’t realize it. She doesn’t know Tripper; she knows King.’ Eric paused and watched Scott closely. ‘Don’t do an interview. Just ask questions. And make it clear they’re not suspects.’
Angie approached. Eric abruptly stepped back from his huddle with Scott. She didn’t appear offended by this nor did she ask about the recording equipment on the floor. She held up a sheet of paper.
‘With the help of Health and Human Services, I’ve got a list of battered women’s shelters in the metro area. It’s recommended that we go in person so we can show ID, otherwise, forget it.’
Just then, Mark got off the phone and called them all into the office.
‘The Lab confirms that King worked for the Bureau doing trace evidence and photography for seven years. He was loaned to the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on a nine-month agreement in ’ninety-six, going into ’ninety-seven. Official title: forensic expert. He resigned from the Lab in nineteen ninety-nine, stating personal reasons.’
Eric interrupted: ‘Nothing precipitated it?’
Mark shook his head. ‘Nothing disciplinary in his file. The only thing that stands out was a psych debriefing after the UN mission that came back with a recommendation for further appointments. He never made them but he wasn’t required to, either. Speaking of his file, there’s no explanation for why it isn’t in the Bureau’s General Records because it’s there in the Lab’s database at the Administration level.’
Scott responded thoughtfully. ‘That’s smart. He doctored it so anyone who knew him from the Lab would find his records as expected but he’s not in the system that the rest of us use when we’re checking a name against government employee lists. Did the Lab think he had the tech skills to do that?’
‘The Director of the Lab didn’t know King well – came on just before he resigned, but said King was known as a jack of all trades. He’d been in the Bureau long enough to gain some working knowledge of everything. Blood spatter, geology, entomology, forensic accounting, you name it.’
‘They got an address for him?’
‘Same one we’ve got crime scene officers at right now.’
Angie looked at Scott. ‘Are we going to have a problem taking Steelie and Jayne over there?’
‘I don’t know yet. What I want you to do is keep on the shelters, and see if we can find out where this guy frequented besides his house and the airport. Mark, see if you can get on to whoever was the director of the Lab while King was working there. We need leads on friends, anything on what he was planning to do when he resigned. We need some hidey hole he might be at right now, nursing his wounds from last night.’
The team broke up.
TWENTY-FOUR
Jayne’s mental review of possible signs of violent tendencies on Gene’s part had quickly run back to Rwanda. But the only thing she could think of was metaphorical violence.
Steelie said, ‘I remember when Gerrit called Gene combative, particularly in regard to you.’
Jayne was staring at the tabletop. ‘He didn’t miss a thing. For whatever reason, Gerrit had my relationship with Gene down pat.’ A movement caught her eye and she glanced at the door. Scott was standing there, watching her.
She started to get up. ‘Scott, I—’
He launched into the room. ‘Whatever you have to say about King is going on tape.’ The case he was carrying hit the tabletop with a thud.
Jayne froze, half standing, half sitting.
He spoke again, less roughly. ‘So just hold that thought and we’ll get to it on tape. OK?’
She nodded and sat down.
Steelie was eyeing the contents of the case he’d now opened. ‘What’s the deal, Scott? I’m getting the feeling you’re about to read Jayne her rights.’
He continued to busily pull out equipment as he replied. ‘She’s not a suspect.’
He set up a microphone on a stand in the middle of the table. ‘Neither are you, for that matter. You’re material witnesses. I’m recording this because I need it to be available for the whole team. You’re going to give us background on the suspect. You’re not under oath.’
He yanked tangled wires free and bent down to plug into the sockets on the table’s edge. He caught Jayne’s eye. ‘But it would be helpful if you told the truth.’
He turned on the recorder, pulled over a legal pad, and looked squarely at her. ‘Who is Gerrit?’
Jayne opened her mouth, closed it, then started again. ‘Gerrit? Aren’t we supposed to be talking about Gene?’
‘Yeah and it sounds like this Gerrit is a mutual friend of you and King so I’ll want to talk to him.’ He dropped his eyes to the pad, jotted something on it and added, ‘For background.’
Scott repeated his question, directing it at Steelie. ‘So, who is Gerrit?’
Steelie calmly replied, ‘He was the UN Tribunal’s lead criminal investigator for the sites we exhumed in Kigali in ’ninety-six, when we worked with Gene.’
‘Surname?’
‘Leuven.’
‘Seconded or . . .’
‘Seconded.’
‘One year or two?’
‘He was into his second year.’
‘From?’
‘Government of the Netherlands.
‘Do you know his current title?’
She looked to Jayne, who replied, ‘Chief of Police.’
‘You’ve got contact information for him?’
Jayne nodded and pulled her bag from the chair next to her. She dug around for her cell phone while Scott pushed the legal pad toward her, a fresh page uppermost. She wrote down Gerrit’s email and direct telephone numbers as stored in her phone, then pushed the pad back across the table. ‘He continued working with Gene after we left.’
Scott turned to the next page of the pad. ‘You stated that you saw King last week?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Which day, what time?’
So much had transpired since that night, Jayne had to think for a second. She felt the pause made it seem like she had something to hide so she met Scott’s gaze directly. ‘Wednesday evening. I picked him up around seven and he left my place at about eleven.’
She saw his pupils dilate and the start of a frown in the moment before he looked down at his pad. It felt like an entire minute passed before he looked up from his pad.
