‘So, did he contact you for the meet?’
‘I wouldn’t call it a meet. It was just dinner. He contacted me – us, really. Sent an email to the Agency on Tuesday and—’
‘Meaning last Tuesday, the day before you met?’
‘Right.’
‘So you were in regular contact?’
‘No—’ She threw her hands up. ‘You don’t understand.’ She looked to Steelie.
Steelie’s tone sounded conversational compared to Jayne’s. ‘Scott, we hadn’t heard from him since we worked with him in Rwanda. This was a one-off.’
‘Uh-huh. So you get this email out of the blue. What did he say?’
‘Just that he was flying into LA the next day and could we meet up,’ replied Steelie.
‘Just Jayne or both of you?’
‘Both of us.’
‘But you didn’t attend the meet, Steelie?’
‘Gene was never my favorite person. Even before you alleged he was a serial killer.’ Steelie gave him a thin smile.
He made a note. ‘OK, we’ll get to that.’ He looked to Jayne again. ‘How many more emails did you have from him?’
‘I wrote back, said I’d be meeting him, then he just wrote one more time to tell me that he’d be staying at the Omni and what time I could pick him up.’
‘That’s it? Nothing about what he was doing in LA?’
‘No.’
‘And you’re sure he said he was flying in the next day, the Wednesday?’
‘Yes, positive.’
‘Flying in from . . .?’
‘I presumed DC because that’s where he used to live.’
Scott tapped his pen against the pad. ‘We’ll need to see the email traffic between his account and yours, track his account.’
Jayne bit back the words
‘Have you had any more emails from him since you met?’
‘No . . .’ Jayne paused, remembering the message she’d sent Gene on the day the half-empty filing cabinet had depressed her. She realized that Scott would probably see that message now.
‘You sound unsure.’
Jayne noticed Steelie looking at her curiously, so mustered herself. ‘I’m sure. He hasn’t written again.’
The door opened and they all looked up.
Mark Wilson walked in and addressed Scott. ‘You want this now?’
Scott nodded and turned off the tape recorder.
‘There’s almost nothing on this guy. Two people say they were friends of his when he worked at the Lab but they haven’t been in touch since. They understood he was resigning to take care of his mother down here, who was getting sick; one of them thought it was Alzheimer’s—’
Jayne cut in. ‘That’s right. He told me she died a few years ago, after living with Alzheimer’s.’ She looked at Scott but he only indicated that Mark should continue.
‘King’s friends only ever socialized with him at their local bar in DC or at professional conferences. He used to have a DC-area code cell phone. I called it and also checked with the phone company. He dumped the number four years ago.’
‘When his mother died?’
‘Around the same time, yeah.’
‘Find out if it was before or after and by how much time.’
‘You want me to check on the Alzheimer’s business?’
‘Yeah.’ Scott flipped back to another sheet on his pad, ripped it off and handed it to Mark. ‘And get a hold of this guy in Holland; get him out of bed if you have to. He was the lead investigator when King was working with Jayne and Steelie in Rwanda. He may have worked with King even longer than they did. Find out if anything happened out there. And his name’s pronounced
Mark nodded and left the room.
Jayne opened her mouth to speak but Scott was already restarting the tape recorder.
‘OK, let’s go back to Wednesday night. Did you ask for King at the desk inside the Omni?’
‘No, he said he’d meet me where the taxis pull in.’
‘Did you see him come out of the hotel, through the doors?’
‘No . . .’ Jayne felt sudden surprise. ‘I was scanning the area but he spotted me first and met me at the truck.’
‘What was your impression of him?’
‘Like, his behavior or what?’ Jayne knew she sounded distracted.
Scott frowned at her. ‘Are you getting tired?’
Jayne shook her head. In fact, her brain was busy fast-forwarding her memories of that night, now alerted to how much she’d taken for granted with Gene’s visit to LA and how little she’d actually learned from him.
Scott sounded more solicitous. ‘Just think back to the first moment you saw him. Close your eyes if that helps.’
Jayne dutifully followed this direction. She thought back to Gene jumping in the passenger side of the truck, the hug he gave her once in the cab. ‘I didn’t recognize him at first; he looked older than I’d expected even though we’re all older. His skin seemed grayer and it was as though his cheeks were being pulled down by gravity but he was energetic, lively, funny, and it was . . . nicer to see him than I’d expected.’ She opened her eyes and shrugged.
‘Good. OK. Was he clean shaven? Moustache? Beard?’
‘No. No facial hair.’
‘What was he wearing?’
‘All beige. A zip-up windbreaker, golf shirt, slacks. I don’t remember his shoes. No logos.’
‘So he got in the truck. It’s about seven p.m. and then what?’
‘I drove to Little Tokyo.’
‘His choice or yours?’
‘Mine, because it was close.’
‘He pick the restaurant?’
‘No, I’d suggested we see what looked good once we got there.’
‘During the drive, what did you talk about?’
‘Let’s see . . . he explained that he’d left the Bureau years ago, didn’t miss it, and now worked for an electronics company that was expanding to the West Coast and he was the advance guard.’
‘Which company?’ Scott had drawn a line out from his notes and was circling something three times, the ink sitting in a groove on the paper.
‘I don’t know. Didn’t ask.’
‘And he didn’t volunteer? At any point in the evening? Give you his business card?’
‘No.’
‘Did he say where he was based?’
‘No.’
‘So you park and walk into Little Tokyo. Where’d you eat?’
‘Um, I didn’t notice the name. We had stopped in front of it and the host just handed us a menu.’
‘He stopped or you stopped?’
‘I don’t remember; we just stopped. No, wait. I stopped because he’d said something that pissed me off and I couldn’t walk and respond at the same time.’
Scott’s mouth twitched into a tiny grin and then he became serious again. ‘You were arguing?’
