“Abigail, can you run a list of all Trask Enterprise employees and associates? Current address, records, anything you can get.”
“What are you thinking?”
“The method. Bullet to the back of the head. It’s cold and impersonal.”
“Kicking his balls wasn’t impersonal,” Abigail commented.
“Yes, but the killer, or killers, had privacy-the marina was deserted. No security cameras in the area. They could have beaten him to death. Tortured him. Shot every limb and made him suffer. If it was personal.”
“Remind me not to get on your bad side, Armstrong.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand yet,” Noah continued. “Why was he here in D.C.? He had to have a reason. It seemed sudden and unplanned. Any word on the motels?”
“Still searching. If he used an alias, we’re screwed unless some manager recognizes him. We’re checking both his name and his cousin’s name.”
“What about someone who hasn’t checked out?”
“Already ahead of you. We’re working that angle.”
Noah’s instincts told him the reason Morton was in D.C. related directly to his murder.
The Denver field office was interviewing everyone who’d associated with Morton since his release. “No word yet from Guardino?”
“It’s eight in the morning in Denver. I’ll start nagging in an hour.”
Noah’s phone buzzed. “Lucy Kincaid to see you.”
Right on time. “Thanks, I’ll be right there.” He nodded to Abigail. “Let’s get this over with.”
Lucy was alone. Kate Donovan hadn’t won the lawyer battle. “Thanks for coming down, Ms. Kincaid.”
She nodded. Noah led her down the hall to a small conference room. Lucy was a very attractive woman and seemed more mature than her years-her twenty-fifth birthday was next month, but she had the air of a woman with experience and confidence, who didn’t let people push her around. At the same time, her body language-tight, controlled, with minimal facial expression-told Noah she kept her true self bottled inside, that her exterior was a shell. He’d seen that yesterday when she first walked into the dining room-how hard she struggled to rein in her outburst after learning that her sister-in-law had been lying to her for six years.
Lucy Kincaid was intriguing, and perhaps a bit mysterious.
“We’re simply going to confirm your statement yesterday, and ask a few more questions,” Noah explained as he gestured to the chair across from him. “Can I get you any water? Coffee?”
She shook her head. “No, thank you.”
Abigail sat at the table and smiled. “We didn’t get a chance to formally meet yesterday,” she said to Lucy as she extended her hand. “I’m Abigail Resnick. I’ve worked with Dr. Vigo on several cases. He speaks very highly of your brothers. All four of them.”
Lucy’s lips curved into a hint of a smile. “Likewise.”
“Do you mind if we record our conversation?” Abigail asked.
Lucy shook her head, her smile gone.
Abigail pressed “record” on a small digital recorder and said, “This is Special Agent Abigail Resnick and Special Agent Noah Armstrong with Lucia Kincaid, regarding case file 201101120197. Ms. Kincaid, do you consent to have this interview recorded?”
“Yes,” Lucy said.
“For the record, Ms. Kincaid, you voluntarily agreed to come to FBI Headquarters and answer questions pertaining to the investigation into the homicide of Roger Morton?”
“Yes,” Lucy said.
Noah took over the questioning. He confirmed everything she’d said the night before, that she didn’t know about the plea agreement nor did she know Morton was out of prison. Lucy was to the point and professional. Knowing what Noah now did about Lucy’s trauma, his admiration for the woman grew.
But he couldn’t let that cloud his judgment.
“When was the last time you saw or spoke to Mr. Morton?”
Lucy visibly tensed, and responded curtly, “Six years ago last June.”
“Ms. Kincaid, thinking back to the time when Mr. Morton held you captive, can you remember anything- something you saw or something you heard-that might help us track down his killer?”
She was wrestling with an answer, and finally said, “I’d like to speak off the record.”
Noah almost said no. Then he nodded to Abigail, who paused the recorder. “You’re free to talk.”
Lucy waited several seconds before she spoke with thinly veiled anger. “After my kidnapping and rape I spent months trying to forget, trying to put everything I saw and heard and felt out of my mind. And I couldn’t do it. When I gave up, when I thought I would have to learn to endure the nightmares and the anger and the fear and the deep, never-ending humiliation, it all finally began to fade. I don’t know how long it took, but I let it go. I let every memory disappear.
“Now, all I remember are snippets of that Hell, and I refuse to put myself back there. Not for this, and most certainly not for Roger Morton. I didn’t kill him, I don’t know who did, but I’m not grieving. He was a disgusting, vile rapist who took pleasure in hurting women. He should never have been released from prison. I’m glad he’s dead.”
She nodded to Abigail, who hesitated, then turned the recorder back on.
“To answer your question, Agent Armstrong,” Lucy continued as if she hadn’t just spoken, “I don’t remember much about those two days, and nothing that would even hint to who killed that monster.”
Sean had spent the last fifteen minutes convincing Lucy’s brother Patrick that he didn’t need to fly back to D.C.
“Patrick, I’ll keep watch over her. I promise.” It wouldn’t be a hardship for him. Sean only wished he could have found a different reason to spend time with Lucy. “The bastard’s dead. I don’t think she’s in any danger.”
“I don’t know.” Patrick was torn, and if this job weren’t so important he would have already been on a plane back.
“Call her,” Sean told him. “I’m sure she’ll tell you to stay at Stanford, do the job. They asked for you specifically.”
“I seem to recall they asked for anyone but you.”
“There’re not many people out there who can do what we do with computer security.”
Patrick sighed. “I’ll finish the job-unless Lucy needs me. Then Duke will have to do it on his own.”
“Fair enough.”
“Keep me in the loop,” Patrick said.
“I promise.”
Sean said goodbye and hung up as he retrieved his email.
He smiled when he saw the message from Jayne Morgan, the RCK research guru. He wished he could have convinced his brother Duke to let him take her to D.C. as well as Patrick, but Duke put his foot down. Both Patrick and Sean were computer experts, but Sean’s skills were in circumventing the law. One of the primary roles of RCK East was computer security. Sean could hack into virtually any system, but he didn’t have the experience on how to fix the breach. Patrick had the technical background to secure the system, just like Duke. When Patrick started working for RCK in Sacramento last year, they’d hit it off-and both of them had wanted to get out of the shadow of their older brothers.
Sean read all the documentation Jayne had retrieved on Roger Morton, Adam Scott, and the Lucy Kincaid kidnapping.
Since his release from prison, Roger Morton had been living in Denver. Until he’d come to Washington, D.C., for an unknown reason, risking his probation to do so. According to the plea agreement Sean now had a copy of, one slip up and Morton would be back in prison for life. What was so important that he’d risk life in prison when he’d been given a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card? And what did he know, or what had he done, that got him killed?
Money or revenge.
Revenge was the easy answer, but revenge pointed to the Kincaids, not Morton. Lucy had been a victim, and her entire family had a justifiable reason to want Morton dead. But would they do it?
Sean thought not. If one of the Kincaids had killed Morton, why would they have lured him to D.C.? If he’d
