“Ok. Well, I guess let me know if anything on that changes. I also had an unrelated request.”
“Which is?”
“I’m tracking back through Whitaker’s actions before Wissler died. She made a stop at the medical examiner’s office to ask about Mr. Wissler’s death. I wanted to go and talk to the Medical Examiner and ask questions about that visit.”
“We’ve already interviewed the medical examiner.”
“I understand that, but I want to get a feeling for where her head was at and where she might be going. I know Whitaker, and I know how she conducts investigations. I might hear something in his answers that you missed. At this moment, it’s all we have to go on to find her unless you guys stumble across her by chance. You don’t have a lot of leads at the moment.”
There was a long pause again while Graf considered. Taylor had played this card a lot so far, and, while it did lead them to the storage locker, it hadn’t gotten them any closer to Whitaker. Taylor had to be careful how many times he tried this tactic because eventually, Graf would stop buying into it.
“Fine. I will make a call for you to go be allowed in to talk to them. They will be closing shortly, so you will need to wait until the morning.”
“That’s fine. I can still go and see the files today, right?”
“Yes. I will call the precinct now and get you access.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you if I find anything.”
Graf hung up, and Taylor left the hotel and went to catch a cab to Graf’s precinct, where an officer was waiting to lead him into an interrogation room where they had the boxes of files waiting for him. An officer sat in the room the entire time, half watching Taylor as he read through one document after another, presumably to keep Taylor from taking any of the documents or messing up some part of the evidence.
It turns out they didn’t need to worry. Taylor read for hours, long enough that the officer watching over him changed twice before he finished. He read through or at least skimmed, every document in the boxes, and nothing stood out to him. It was all financial documents from the Wissler family going back decades. There was a chance something in these boxes did shed light on Fredericks's death, but Taylor couldn’t see it. This was just the paperwork that builds over a person’s lifetime, important enough to keep but not important enough to ever look at a second time.
That, of course, begged the question of why this was important enough to put in a storage unit all by itself. Its possible someone, even Whitaker, switched out what was in the boxes before Taylor and Graf found them, but Taylor couldn’t see the reasoning behind it.
Taylor knew he was missing something, but he still couldn’t see it. He was coming at this case sideways, working from the middle out. It was frustrating. Over the last few years, Taylor had gotten pretty good at this thing and usually had a feel for where things were headed.
This time, he had nothing. Just a bunch of questions.
He caught a cab back to his hotel and planned on calling it a night. Graf had sent him an email letting him know he could go by the medical examiners' office the next day and, if the medical examiner wasn’t busy, he would talk to Taylor about Frederick’s autopsy and show him the files.
Taylor lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. It wasn’t really all that late, but there wasn’t a lot that Taylor could do until tomorrow. When Taylor finally fell asleep, his thoughts of Whitaker in danger out there somewhere plagued him.
Taylor was in the middle of a dream, back in the desert, except Whitaker was with him this time, tied up in one of the caves. Their torturers kept asking why Whitaker had killed her aunt. The bright glow of his cell phone threw shadows across the room, its harsh light making him squint. He was forced to rub his eyes several times before the screen came into focus enough to hit the answer button.
“Hello,” his voice croaked.
“John, I’m sorry if I woke you up,” Caldwell said. “I know it’s late over there.”
“Its fine Senator, I was up anyway.”
“You’re a terrible liar, John. I’m sure you’ll want to hear this anyways. I managed to speak with someone from the Wissler family just a little bit ago and they’ve agreed to meet with you tomorrow at eleven your time. You’ll be meeting with Albrecht Wissler. I’m not clear on his relation to Loretta’s relative, but my best guess is this is one of the lesser members of the family. They’ll also have one of the family attorneys present and they made it very clear that they are only doing this as a professional curtsy. While I’d never find fault with your methods, I’d advise that you... temper your normal approach.”
“By temper, I take it that I shouldn’t go barging in headfirst like normal.”
“Please don’t take it as a criticism, I just have the feeling that they’ll look for any reason to shut the interview down.”
“No offense was taken, Senator. Whitaker regularly pointed out the issues with my normal approach. Heck, if she were here, I’d let her take this meeting without me, or at least try and stay silent through all of it. I’ll be good.”
“I’m about to step into a fundraising dinner, but don’t hesitate to call if you need anything else. I’ve been praying for you and Loretta.”
“Thank you, Senator. That means a lot.”
She hung
