We haven’t waited long before the team walks in. We all stand as introductions are made, and I’m handed business cards from the three agents and the assistant US attorney.
We sit down. The assistant US attorney, Dhar Patel, looks at me. “I understand you know my boss.”
I nod, but don’t say anything since he didn’t ask a question.
“They travel in the same social circles,” Marci answers.
He seems surprised by that, and he looks at me to elaborate. I don’t.
“Well, now that we’ve established that you know the US Attorney, tell me how you know Heather McCoy,” he finally says.
“I don’t,” I reply.
“But you had sex with her.” He cocks his head to the side.
“No, I didn’t.”
“She claimed otherwise, didn’t she?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Why should we believe you over her? She had a paternity test that said the child she was carrying was likely yours.”
Here we go. The morning is peppered with the same questions I’ve answered a thousand times.
When we break for lunch, Marci hands Patel copies of all the affidavits, the jump drive, and CD.
We walk out, and Stan is waiting in the Suburban. We creep the few blocks to Marci’s office, and when we arrive, she suggests we leave our federal visitor badges at reception on the way in.
Upstairs, Tinsley, Claire, and Mason are waiting with box lunches. Mason puts his down and comes over to shake my hand. “Hope you don’t mind me crashing lunch. I wanted to be here for support.”
“Thanks,” I mutter.
“Marci, you look stunning as usual.” Mason winks at her, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Mason flirt. I’m a bit taken aback.
“Mase, great to see you again. When was the last time? That’s right, last week.”
Now I get it. They know each other. I should have known better.
“How did it go?” Claire asks.
“I think well,” I hedge.
“This guy here is a rock-star witness.” Marci is all smiles as she kicks off her shoes. She takes a box lunch and sits down with her leg beneath her. “Man, the first question lobbed at him is asking if he knows Walker Clifton, this guy’s boss’s boss, and rather than tell him how tight they are, he nods.” She snorts in laughter. “I knew we were going to be in great shape.”
We talk about all sorts of things over lunch, not just business, and by the end I’m feeling much more at ease.
About twenty minutes before we have to return, Marci moves us to prep. “We know they have emails that are supposedly from you coming from Lewiston,” she says, shuffling papers.
Jim removes a file from his messenger bag. “This is the research we did regarding those emails.” He hands her the pile. “In the first one you can see the email address. Their copy doesn’t capture the name, but if you look at it, you can see the email address is incorrect. It shows @disruptivetech.com when it’s actually only @disruptive.com.”
“That’s good news,” Marci says.
“Well, maybe,” Claire replies meekly. “We do own @disruptivetech, as well as @disruptivetechnology, @disruptive, @disrupt, and @disruptivecommunications. We own all the .com and various country’s versions of that, as we expect to grow internationally. But to confirm, right now our email is all @disruptive.com.”
Jim nods. “The other thing is the geo-tag. It says Lewiston, but the ranch is Crow Nation.”
Marci looks at me. “Do you have email capabilities on your smartphone?”
I nod.
“So, that’s a tough one. What else can we expect?”
“They say my blood was in her apartment with her blood, but the second round of testing proved she wasn’t pregnant.” I look down at the table, and all the jubilance I felt after this morning has been replaced with dread. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t write them. Those emails provide a reliable link between me and Heather McCoy.
“The second blood test is a double-edged sword for them, so I don’t expect they’ll come back with that too hard. It proves you were correct about not being her baby’s father, and that the first test was most likely tampered with.” Marci searches through her file.
“What do we know about the lab where they did the original test?”
“Here’s the information.” Jim hands her another file. “My team was able to see that the lab had a hacker the evening of the test. We can’t prove the hacker changed the test, but they’ve done additional checking, and there’s no sign of the hacker before that day or since.”
“I like that.” Marci eyes his stack of files. “What else do you have?”
“These are the background checks on Heather McCoy, her boyfriend, both of their parents, a few friends, and Heather’s brother.” He hands her another batch of files.
Marci nods. “Okay, good. I’m going to keep these here. If I need them, I’ll have them brought over. It’s still our first date, so we’re just feeling each other out.” Marci winks at me, and I try to relax.
“I have a team in Illinois looking in to her parents and trying to see if Heather has shown up in town,” Jim adds.
“We don’t have a body, so there’s a good chance she’s in hiding because she attempted a scam and it backfired,” Marci rationalizes. She begins to pack up her belongings. “We should be done about four—FBI are government employees, and they tend to work seven to four.”
As we walk out, I ask, “Why did we leave
