Allison Brennan - Playing Dead

“His body and his Explorer were in the Sacramento River near Isleton.”

“Isleton? Where’s that?”

“A small town in southern Sacramento County, in the Delta.”

“I’ve never heard of it. I’m not from around here. I can’t believe he had an accident like that. Oliver was such a good driver. I mean, sometimes he got distracted, especially when he was talking, and he’d get excited about something, but he didn’t drink and drive, never, and he was never reckless and I don’t understand how this can happen. When? Where has he been since January? Are-” She gasped. “Oh my God, he’s been dead. Since then. Since January? I knew it. I knew something bad had happened to him!” She couldn’t stop the tears from flowing, and batted them away with her hand.

“We have a few questions, if you have a moment.”

“Anything. I-” She stopped talking and stared at them, blinking rapidly. “Was it an accident?”

“That’s unclear right now, but we’re treating it as a possible homicide.”

She started shaking. Mitch put an arm over her shoulders, felt her body racked with sobs he couldn’t hear. Somehow that made her grief worse.

When the worst of the shakes subsided, Mitch said, “You said in the missing person report that the last time you saw Oliver was about noon on Sunday, January 20.”

She nodded.

“Professor Collier had a meeting with him on Monday, but Oliver canceled it.”

“Canceled it? No. That’s not right.” Tammy squeezed her eyes shut. “No,” she said more emphatically. “Professor Collier told me that Oliver never showed up for his meeting. I’m positive. That’s what had me going to the police. Because no one had seen Oliver for days, and when Professor Collier said Oliver missed his meeting-Oliver was excited about the meeting. Really excited. He and Professor Collier had a dispute ages ago, and Oliver 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.”

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. Receptionist was a misnomer. She buzzed Claire through, and Claire knew before the end of the day Henry would know exactly how long she’d been in the office and what internal files she’d accessed.

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 which Lowe was the man Maddox had referred to. There had to be a better way to weed out the information.

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.