her control almost faltered.
“Has anything happened to Julia?”
Erickson took a breath, released it. Megan saw his foot move up and down over his knee.
“We have to get in touch with Roger Gordian,” he repeated again, clinging to his laconic manner.
Megan waited before she answered. Her office was silent. The double-pane glass of its windows completely deadened the lash of wind and rain against them, somehow increasing her awareness of the dark splotches of moisture on Erickson’s coat.
“So far we’ve been talking through a wall,” she said. “It’s difficult to come together that way. How about we step around it and see if it works any better?”
Brewer shook his head angrily, almost rising off his chair. “We don’t have to do anything or step anywhere. We are conducting a police investigation, and you should be aware you’re on the brink of obstructing—”
Erickson got his partner’s attention with a tap on the knee, held up a preemptive hand. He looked embarrassed.
“Consider us as having stepped,” he said.
Megan kept her eyes off Brewer’s flushed face as he settled back in his chair. Compounding his belittlement would serve no useful purpose.
“I realize that whatever has brought you here must be very serious,” she told Erickson. “And you can rest assured I’m ready to help you reach Mr. Gordian and anyone else who has to be contacted. If there’s bad news to be broken, however, I intend to be the person who does it. As a second in this company and a close family friend. But I obviously can’t until you tell me what this is about.”
Erickson sat there looking at Megan another moment, shrugged, and uncrossed his legs.
Then he leaned forward and told her.
“Still ain’t heard nothing from Africa?” Thibodeau said.
“Not yet,” Megan said. “Pete’s on his way to tell Gord right now.”
“Seems like it’s taking a while,” Ricci said.
“When I spoke to him, he was outside the city. It’s night in Gabon, and I don’t think there are any passable roads through the jungle. He’s flying back to Port-Gentil in one of our helicopters.”
“What was the problem reaching Gordian yourself?”
Megan looked at Ricci across the small conference table. “He’s staying as a guest at a local Sedco executive’s home to avoid the bugs in the hotel walls, and they’re behind closed doors having a late consultation about that affair on the oil platform. Hughie Bennett and his entire court are in attendance, and I don’t want the boss to hear this news over the phone under those circumstances.” She paused. “Better Pete tells him in person. He should be there any time.”
Ricci did not answer. His glassy calm eyes gave no clue to what he might be thinking or feeling. Megan saw her reflection in them and could not keep her own nerves from becoming exposed. That was unlike her, and she resented him for it — how much more of herself might be revealed on the mirror’s surface?
She sipped from the glass of water beside her to relieve her parched throat.
“I don’t know, Rollie,” she said. “My mind is everywhere at once. I know I’ll pull it together, but for now I just can’t center.”
Thibodeau nodded grimly.
“Soup to soup,” he said. “Be a Creole saying I heard a lot growing up. Ain’t no food for the pot tonight, we find something to put in it tomorrow.”
She gave him a thin smile. “I’ll try to remember that one.”
Megan was quiet a moment. With the detectives in her office, she had called Nimec to break the news about Julia, then phoned Ashley Gordian’s sister’s house in Los Angeles, gotten the answering machine and left an urgent message for Ashley to get in touch. After that she had summoned Ricci and Thibodeau down here into one of UpLink SanJo’s underground safe rooms — a spare rectangular enclosure that was little more than the conference table and four windowless, two-foot-thick concrete walls webbed with an array of interstitial countersurveillance systems.
It hadn’t taken her long to share what she knew, and none of it was encouraging. Julia Gordian was gone from the animal shelter where she did volunteer work a number of days a week. The woman whose husband operated the shelter had been shot dead along with her infant daughter, their home a crime scene Erickson had described as beyond horrible.
“This Rob Howell,” Ricci said now. His eyes went to Megan as he spoke. “Those cops figure he’s clean?”
“He’s under no suspicion of having been involved,” she said. “His co-workers saw him arrive at the hotel Sunday morning, then rush back home — he’d forgotten a bookkeeping file of some sort. His cell phone LUDs show the calls that were placed from his car to his house and the greyhound rescue center. He uses FastTrack for his bridge tolls, and account deductions were recorded both ways at the plaza lanes off Highway One into San Gregario. He also bought gas with a credit card on his return trip. In both cases the systems show when those expenses were paid and back up his story.”
“Don’t tell us nothing about what he did before he left his place,” Thibodeau said. “Or after he got back.”
Ricci looked at him, then shook his head.
“You consider travel distances, average road speeds, and the time Howell’s call to the police was logged, it narrows things far as opportunity,” he said. “My guess is the operation was planned for when he wouldn’t be around. Pro all the way. The phone lines disconnected at their feeder pole, more than a single type of weapon used. There were fresh tire tracks showing several vehicles at the center and at the utility station near the pole.” His eyes returned to Megan. “Is Howell available? In case we need some information from him.”
“I don’t know.” She took another drink of water. Her tongue and throat continued to feel as if they were lined with sandpaper. “I suppose I should have thought to ask—”
“You done your’n fine,” said Thibodeau. “Those detectives gave you enough to think about. Ain’t likely they would’ve been generous with that information anyway.”
Ricci kept looking neutrally at Megan.
“You told me the cops found blood at the animal shelter.”
“Yes, I did.”
“That it might be Julia’s.”
“Yes.”
“What makes them think she’s not a third murder victim?”
Megan stabbed a look at him, her shoulders rising a little.
“Let’s not try to be too delicate.”
“I was asking a question.”
“About the boss’s daughter. And my good friend.”
“I have to know what there is to know,” Ricci said. “You don’t like my way of phrasing things, I’m sorry.”
But he did not sound apologetic. Megan’s posture remained very straight, her eyes green fire in a face pale with strain.
“There was blood at the shelter,” she said. “And, yes… it’s believed to be Julia’s. But Erickson suggested that whatever took place in there seems of a different nature from the violence that occurred at the house.”
“Any concrete reasons?”
“He wasn’t about to submit an itemized evidence list to me, and I didn’t press my luck. We could profit from a good relationship with him if he doesn’t shy away.”
Ricci studied her a moment.
“You find out what line those cops are working, or decide that was out of bounds, too?” he said.
In her anger, Megan could have balled her hands into fists until the knuckles were white, dug her fingernails into her palms. She held her composure and folded them on the table instead.
“Nobody broke into Julia’s SUV. There was nothing stolen from the shelter, or the house where the mother and baby were killed. Nothing to indicate robbery was a motive,” she told him. “I heard a lot of words from Erickson
