thought this would put things right. I told the-oh. I should have known something was wrong yesterday. I got my hopes up that she would find Oliver.”
Mitch wasn’t sure he was hearing correctly. “What happened yesterday?”
“A private investigator came to me after class. She was looking into Oliver’s disappearance. I told her everything I told you, plus how excited Oliver was about his thesis, ‘The Perfect Frame’ he called it. He said he finally had the information to prove his hypothesis. I just got my hopes up that Oliver was okay. She seemed so determined to find him. I think in my heart I knew he was already gone, but-” She took a deep breath and the tears started running down her face again.
“Do you remember the PI’s name? A company?”
“Claire. Um, Claire something. From Rogan-Caruso. I have her card in my desk upstairs.”
“That’s okay,” Steve said. “We’re familiar with the company.”
Mitch’s stomach felt like lead. What was Claire doing?
“Thank you for your time,” Steve told Tammy. “Would you like me to call someone for you?”
She shook her head, wiping her nose with her sleeve. “My roommate is upstairs. I just want to go home.” She sniffed. “Do you have any idea who would want to hurt Oliver?”
“No, Tammy, but we’re working on it.”
NINETEEN
Claire walked through the glass doors of the Renaissance Towers at 8th and K Streets-known to locals as the Darth Vader Building because the top dozen floors had a shape reminiscent of the Sith lord. She showed her Rogan-Caruso badge to the guard, who waved her through. She was still mulling over the information she’d learned from Phineas at the morgue.
On the elevator, Claire punched the 18 button. It was 1:30, past the lunchtime rush, and she had the ride to herself straight through to the eighteenth floor.
Guilt washed over Claire. She was about to violate someone’s trust, and it didn’t make her feel good. She worked through a cover story-something close to the truth, but without mentioning her father had contacted her or left her a letter. She’d simply heard that Oliver Maddox was dead and she wanted to figure out what he’d learned about her father’s case. She had a right, didn’t she? Her mother had been the victim.
Half-truths were still half-lies.
Rogan-Caruso Protective Services took up the entire floor, but you wouldn’t know it when you exited the elevator into the simple yet comfortable waiting area surrounded by designer bulletproof glass, the Rogan-Caruso logo of a sword and shield etched in the center. Though the office was thoroughly modern, the logo harkened back to the days of white knights to the rescue.
Claire always felt inadequate coming into the offices. She had a small workspace that she used primarily to access protected computer files, and she briefed her boss, Henry Opacic, twice a month on her assignments or before testifying at trial if one of her investigations went that far. But today she was coming in to use the Rogan- Caruso state-of-the-art computer system to find out everything she could about this mysterious Frank Lowe.
She hated being deceptive, but she didn’t want to bring her boss or anyone else in the company under the scrutiny of the FBI. And while Rogan-Caruso played hardball with the government, they also took jobs from the same. Claire wasn’t exactly sure of everything the company did, and that was fine with her. She was happy with her low-level, below-scrutiny position, and she hoped that because of that no one would notice the computer time.
She stuck her badge into the slot that opened the first door. Aggie, the receptionist, glanced up. “Good afternoon, Claire. How are you?”
“Good, thanks.”
“Henry is out of town.”
“I’m just doing some research.”
“Go right in.”
Aggie knew everything about Rogan-Caruso.
She wasn’t planning on looking at internal files beyond the Ben Holman investigation.
Claire walked down the quiet, plush hall, around the corner, and hesitated outside the office of the only person she truly considered a friend, Jayne Morgan, the computer genius Dave had a crush on. But Claire didn’t want to abuse her friendship, and she hated asking anyone for favors. This was her problem; she would handle it the way she preferred to handle all her personal problems: alone. Still, she peeked in and was both relieved and disappointed that Jayne wasn’t in.
She sat at her desk and quickly wrote up the report on the Holman arson investigation, scanned in Pete Jackson’s report, her interview with Holman, and what she’d learned from her informants about the medical supplies on the black market. She sent the whole report to Henry.
Claire then logged in to the Rogan-Caruso system and the world appeared at her fingertips. Jayne had created the intensive computer system which pulled public records and archived information from the Internet into a powerful database, which could be combined with secured data maintained internally or through their memberships and associations.
She typed in “Frank Lowe Sacramento,” figuring that if Lowe was involved somehow with Chase Taverton fifteen years ago it would have been local. She could expand the search if nothing came up.
Immediately, more than a dozen Frank Lowes popped up. She wished she had more to go on because she didn’t know
She surmised that if this Lowe knew anything about Chase Taverton and the murders, he’d have been in Sacramento County in the early 1990s. That eliminated two potentials. Next she looked at ages. One Lowe had been a child in the early ’90s. She took him out.
Using similar methodology, she eliminated half the Frank Lowes she’d uncovered. Then she started going through the remaining individuals more carefully, making notes. She was particularly interested in any jail time or arrests. If Taverton had made a plea agreement with Frank Lowe, he had to have been arrested at some point.
“He’s dead,” she said out loud when she came to a petty thief who had done time for burglary. She almost deleted his records from the search except for one thing: He’d died in a fire in the early morning hours of November 18, 1993. Less than a day after Chase Taverton was murdered.
She switched to LexisNexis, where she pulled up all newspaper articles related to the fire. Lowe had been a bartender who lived above a bar called Tip’s Blarney in downtown Sacramento. The fire was ruled arson, but the owner, Tip Barney, had been cleared of any wrongdoing and no one had been arrested. The building was a complete loss. One body was recovered, burned beyond identification. There were no dental records for Frank Lowe, but Barney said Lowe was the only person who lived in the building, and he’d left him there at one a.m. when Lowe closed for the night.
Maybe she had the wrong Frank Lowe. Oliver had told her father that Frank Lowe had information. How could a dead man have information?
She made notes on the remaining Frank Lowes, but she kept coming back to the dead bartender. He’d died the night after her mother and Taverton were killed. In an arson fire. She ran a search on Tip Barney, not knowing what, if anything, would pop up.
She almost jumped out of her chair. Barney now owned a bar in Isleton. Oliver’s Explorer was found in the river outside of Isleton.
That was a coincidence Claire planned to follow up on. Tonight.
She glanced at her watch. It was nearly four!
She was supposed to meet Mitch at her house at six, but first she needed to see Bill. She’d told him she’d stop by this afternoon. She had questions about Oliver Maddox as well as about her father’s trial. Questions that Bill might have the answers to-she’d just never wanted them before.
