Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

“You’re sure it’s a suicide?” she queried.

“Definitely. Got a neighbor who was trimming the hedge that’s between their properties. She just climbed up the ladder to get to the top, looked over, witnessed him drinking at his kitchen table, writing notes, talking on the phone with a gun right there beside him. Don’t ask me why she didn’t think that unusual enough to call in until she heard the gunshot, but there you have it.”

“Other than that, anything?”

“Nothing,” Hilleary said. “That’s what doesn’t make sense. I mean, until Vince here called me, asked me to take a look at that note, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, even after the Feds came in, wanting the whole thing kept hush-hush, and removing the note from evidence. That part I figured had to do with the Senate confirmation stuff. No big, you know? Especially since it wasn’t murder.”

Vince asked, “You recall what the note said?”

“It’s like this. That guy had quite a few notes scattered around his kitchen table, apologies saying he wished it didn’t have to end this way, crumpled up like he was trying to get it just right. I lost track. Glanced at most of them, but didn’t really take notice, at least not until one of your guys called me up right after, asking about the guy. Even then it didn’t seem out of the ordinary.”

“Who from our office called you?” Vince asked.

“Some agent named Hatcher. Said he was doing a background on the guy for something. Wanted to know if I thought it was a legit suicide and if he left a note. I told him, yeah, that he left several notes, all booked into evidence. He wanted us to release the notes to him. They were booked by that time, so it was too late. He had to satisfy himself with the photocopies that were in the evidence file. I figured if it was a big deal, he’d pull the proper strings, get the originals. You know, if the Bureau was taking over the case, or something.”

“The photocopies,” Sydney said. “Can I see them?”

“Copies of the copies.” He opened the manila folder and handed them to her. The top sheet was a copy of the property record, showing, among other things, six suicide notes, along with a variety of other stuff found at the scene.

She read each note contained in the file, seeing nothing but the same words. “I’m sorry it had to end this way.” One was actually addressed to his ex-wife, Becky Lynn, and he’d signed it. The shadows and creases that appeared on each told her these had been the crumpled notes that were no doubt straightened by the CSI for copying. “This is it?” she asked.

“That’s all I saw, but like I said, I wasn’t really looking.” He ran his finger on the edge of the manila folder, eyeing it before turning his gaze on her. “Here’s the thing. We run a tight ship here, and it made some of the guys nervous, what with the Feds coming down on us saying no one discusses the case, because it’s a matter of national security. A bit overkill for a suicide, you ask me, but in this day and age, who are we to question it? Especially considering there isn’t shit here in the notes, or even in the investigation. I could see if there was, say, some big government conspiracy, kill him, make it look like a suicide, but like I said, his neighbor saw it. Of course, you want the real scoop about what was out there, I’d ask the crime scene investigator, Sandra Sechrest. If there was something there, something more than the nothing you got in those photocopies, she’ll be able to tell you. That woman’s got a memory for detail.”

“She here today?”

“Yeah. I can take you up to her office. She works in CSU on the twenty-fourth floor.”

It took two separate elevators to get up to the Crime Scene Unit’s level from the sixth floor. The first elevator took them to the sixteenth floor. “Chief’s office,” Hilleary said, indicating why the carpet seemed a bit nicer on that level. From there, they moved to the second elevator bank, rode up to the twenty-fourth floor. The firearms lab was on one side, the CSU offices on the other, accessed by a rather humblelooking wooden door.

Hilleary knocked and waited. “No one gets in or out, without being escorted,” he said. “Evidence.”

A few moments later, the door was opened by a young man wearing navy combat fatigues and a shoulder holster. “Hilleary. What’re you doing way up here?”

“Hey, George. Sandra in?”

“At her desk.” He stepped aside, revealing a large office of cubicles. Posters and Halloween decorations covered the walls, photos and knickknacks littered the desks where the investigators worked. Sydney scanned the room, saw the top of a snowy white head just on the other side of a cubicle; other than that, the office was empty. George escorted the three to the woman’s cluttered desk. A nameplate reading “Sandra Sechrest” sat atop a stack of reports, finding more use as a paperweight than a desk marker.

Officer Sechrest held a phone tucked beneath one ear, talking to someone as she rifled through a file cabinet, searching for something among the masses of hanging folders. She was a small woman, her white hair cut short, blue eyes that lit up when she saw Hilleary standing there with them. Sydney put the woman in her sixties, probably close to retiring sometime soon.

“Gotta go,” George said, waving at Sandra.

She nodded, and he walked out. “I’m telling you they’re wrong,” she said into the phone. “It’s in here somewhere, Evan. Copied it myself right before I went into court… Wait, wait. Got it!” She pulled out a file folder, opened it, and removed a printed document. “ Five latent print cards from the trunk portion of the victim’s car. I lifted those myself, so if they’re trying to tell you anything different, they’re full of- Yeah, yeah. I’ll have it here for you when you get in.”

She hung up, swiveled in her chair, and eyed the three of them waiting in front of her desk. “This looks a tad official…”

“Trust me,” Alexander Hilleary said. “It’s un official business.”

Sydney leaned across the desk, shook the officer’s hand. “Special Agent Fitzpatrick. Not really here.”

“Special Agent Pettigrew,” Vince said. “Not here, either.”

“Sandy Sechrest. Nice not to meet you.” Officer Sechrest leaned back in her chair, smiled. “So what can I do for you?”

Hilleary leaned forward, whispered, “The McKnight suicide. Now that you know that much, I gotta get back to work. But help ’em out, would ya?”

Sechrest raised her brows as he left. “Yeah. Sure…” The moment the door closed behind him, she said, “You do realize we were ordered not to discuss the case?”

“So Investigator Hilleary never mentioned,” Sydney replied. “Which is why we’re not really here…”

“Not sure what I can do for you. There wasn’t much there. Seemed pretty cut-and-dried.”

“In particular the suicide notes he left behind. What they said.”

“Mostly he was sorry it had to end that way. Every single one of them. Pretty much the same.”

“One in particular. One that might be missing from the files.”

“What do you mean missing?”

Vince glanced around the otherwise empty office, while Sydney replied, “We have reason to believe that… another government agency removed the original suicide note from the files, perhaps due to political reasons.”

Officer Sechrest shook her head, her smile bemused. “Removed them? This is that guy who was being looked into for some political appointment, right? I don’t know about anyone removing the notes, but I do remember the FBI agent I gave copies to. He said it was a matter of security. No discussing the case with anyone, no releasing copies to anyone. Heaven forbid something nasty makes it to the press in an election year.”