Allison Brennan - Playing Dead

She needed the coroner’s reports. Both for her mother and Chase Taverton, and for Oliver Maddox. Fortunately, she knew the supervising forensic pathologist at the morgue.

Mitch and Steve walked into the Davis Police Department at 10:30 Thursday morning after finishing up with the autopsy and working out jurisdictional evidence issues with the sheriff’s department. The flash drive was already on its way to the FBI’s computer forensics laboratory in Menlo Park, less than three hours away. They figured the best way to preserve any information that had been saved on the chip within the submerged stomach of Oliver Maddox was to have the best computer minds in the Bureau work it.

Detective Theo Barker introduced himself to the Feds. “I made you a copy when you called earlier,” he said.

“Thanks,” Mitch said and glanced through the report. Standard missing persons-the girlfriend called it in three days after she last saw Maddox, which was approximately noon on Sunday, January 20 when she left him, alone, at his town house on F Street. A neighbor reported seeing the white Explorer pull out of the driveway at dusk-which put his departure roughly at 5:30 p.m. That was the last reported sighting of Oliver Maddox.

There were interviews with the girlfriend, his advisor, classmates, neighbors, and his grandmother who lived in the Midwest. Nothing unusual, but Mitch would need to read it in more depth.

“Sorry to hear he’s dead,” Barker said, “but that’s what I suspected. Young college student like that without financial or female problems doesn’t just walk off. But what is the interest of the FBI? Your people don’t investigate routine traffic fatalities.”

“The cause of death is possible homicide,” Steve said.

“The FBI doesn’t usually investigate routine homicides, either.”

“We’re working with the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department,” Steve said. “Maddox was a person of interest related to one of the fugitives from San Quentin.”

“Think a convict killed him? I hadn’t heard of any in this area.”

“No, he was dead before the earthquake,” Mitch interjected.

“By the way, there’s a private investigator interested in the file. A real looker.”

Mitch knew it was Claire, but asked anyway. “Do you have her name?”

Barker slid over a business card. “I didn’t know Rogan-Caruso would take such a small case, but live and learn.”

Mitch picked up the card. CLAIRE O’BRIEN, LICENSED INVESTIGATOR. Steve glanced at him without expression. “Thanks,” Mitch said. “Appreciate the help.”

They left the police station and drove over to the university. Steve asked, “How did she find out Maddox was missing?”

“Maybe she knows he’s dead,” Mitch said. “She has a lot of friends on the force.”

“She’s walking into the gray area,” Steve warned.

“I know.”

Steve’s cell rang and while he talked, Mitch ran through last night. Claire was definitely more on edge than she’d been in the recent past, but he couldn’t pinpoint any one thing that made him suspect she had been in communication with her father. Yet it looked as if she’d taken on her father’s cause.

Steve hung up. “That was Meg. Five days ago O’Brien was possibly spotted in Redding.”

“Five days? Why’d it take so long for us to get the call?”

“The Shasta County Sheriff’s Department took that long to pull the tapes and look at them. They didn’t give a lot of credence to the sighting. It was a truck driver at a diner off the interstate. But they reviewed the tapes and think it might be O’Brien. A deputy is driving down with the tapes, should be here early afternoon.”

“If it was O’Brien, that means he’s in town by now.”

“You’re thinking something,” Steve said.

“There was a sticky note on Claire’s computer with her name printed on it. It wasn’t her handwriting. I couldn’t find anything that looked like it that came from O’Brien, but she did searches on Maddox and Collier.” He glanced at his watch. “She left at seven this morning. Collier’s first class was at eight. What if she went to talk to him?”

“About Maddox? Why?”

“To see if he knew what Maddox knew about her father. Maddox thought O’Brien was innocent. I know for a fact that Claire gave Maddox no credence-believe me, she believes her father is guilty.” Believed. “At least until recently. And I don’t know about now, but it looks like she’s trying to learn exactly what Maddox knew.”

“To clear her father?”

“To decide whether he’s telling the truth.”

“Fuck,” Steve muttered. “I put the fear of God in that woman, why is she screwing around with her future like this? She knows she could be charged as an accessory.”

“She blames herself for the murders, but if her father is innocent, she’d blame herself for not standing by him,” Mitch said.

“She told you that?”

“Not in so many words, but she did talk about the murders last night.”

Steve glanced at him. “And she left at seven in the morning? You slept with her, didn’t you?”

“I don’t see-”

“Dammit, Mitch, what are you thinking?”

“Steve-”

“Don’t bother making excuses.”

“I wasn’t going to.” He should have, but he didn’t regret his relationship with Claire. He only regretted deceiving her.

“I knew you’d fallen for her, but you’re going to get yourself in deep shit if you persist in this. What if she is working with her father? What if she knows where he is and is helping him evade the authorities? Can you honestly tell me that your judgment isn’t clouded? That you can-oh, this is really fucked. Anything you learn we can’t even use to prosecute. You’ve contaminated the entire case!”

“Whoa, hold off a minute, Donovan,” Mitch said. “O’Brien is a fugitive, and we can pursue him using any means possible. There is no contamination, other than the fact that Claire will hate my guts when she finds out I lied to her.”

“We sure as hell can’t use anything you’ve learned to-”

“To what? Prosecute Claire for talking to her father? Is that what you really want to do? We don’t even know that she has seen him. What we’ve guessed is that somehow he got a message to her, told her something that prompted her to track down Maddox.”

“She’s supposed to report any communication, not just physical contact.”

“I get that. But we agreed that the most important thing was putting O’Brien in federal custody to protect him. Wrongly convicted or not, he is in danger on the streets. If Claire is in contact with him, being close to her will help us find him. If we push her, I won’t be on the inside.”

His deception suddenly took a darker focus. He was not only watching Claire, but actively using her. It made him ill, but it was the single best way they had right now of finding Tom O’Brien.

“Think she’s on to you?”

“No.” Claire wasn’t the type to keep her opinion to herself.

“You’re going to have to push.”

“She’ll know.”

“What do you think this is, Bianchi? A game?”

“I’m not playing any fucking games. I think O’Brien made contact with Claire, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what he could have said that would have her working with him. I searched her computer and desk this morning when I sensed a change in her demeanor, found nothing from him, but lots of research on Oliver Maddox and the Western Innocence Project. And this guy”-Mitch tapped the file he was reading as Steve drove-“Professor Don Collier, which I already told you.”

They’d arrived at Maddox’s town house. “Okay, we work this but I’m going to be sitting on Claire,” Steve said. “I have to. If the tapes suggest that O’Brien was heading to Sacramento, I need to put this case on the front burner, which means authorizing surveillance on Claire.”