Beverly Connor - Dead Secret

“Oh, nothing special,” he said. “Am I getting paid extra now for being the crime lab publicist?”

Diane started to respond when her cell phone rang. It was Garnett telling her they were finished.

Diane had a chill in her gut as she walked to the Pleistocene room to meet Garnett and his team. He was waiting by the mammoth, still looking well dressed in his tailored suit, even after being up all night. She’d have to ask him how he did it. She ran a hand through her own hair, glad Neva had trimmed it for her.

Sergeant Remington and his shepherd stood beside Garnett. Remington was playing with his dog. Some of the search teams were there; others were just coming through the doors. Diane walked over to the mammoth. At least they all looked happy.

“Good news,” said Remington. “We didn’t find a thing. And we gave the place a thorough search.”

Diane closed her eyes and let out a breath. “That felt good. I’d been holding my breath all night. Thank you. Sergeant, please give me the names of your men. I’m going to give each of them and their families passes to the museum.”

“That’d be just real nice. I’d kind of like to see it when I have time to stop and look.”

“I appreciate all of your hard work.”

“Glad we didn’t find anything.”

As the bomb sniffers were packing up to leave, Diane turned to Garnett. She started to tell him about the DNA results when her cell phone rang. It was David.

“I checked Randy MacRae. It’s his DNA. You can’t use this ID, if you know what I mean. You’ll have to get a known sample from him to compare to the sample Jin got from your clothes to make it official.”

“I gotcha. Thanks.”

Diane handed Garnett a card with Neil Valentine’s and Randy MacRae’s names on it.

“These are the two who kidnapped me. The DNA matched Valentine, although we need to get a legal sample of MacRae’s to test against, since he wasn’t in CODIS. MacRae’s a hacker and is an associate of an associate of Valentine. I will also recognize their voices when I hear them.”

Garnett looked surprised as he took the card and looked at the names. He tapped the index card on his hand.

“Good work. I’ll have them picked up. You want to be in on the interrogation?”

“You couldn’t drag me away. Will you let me have a gun?”

Garnett leaned against the wall. He was doing the questioning. Diane sat across the interrogation table from Randy MacRae. He probably had been a pimply faced runt of a teen, because he was now an acne-scarred adult. He was buffed up, but he still had the look of a runt about him. He wasn’t wearing the museum T-shirt, and she wasn’t blindfolded, but she recognized his arrogant voice. He sat smirking at her with his arms folded-still cocky.

“You got nothin’ on me. I’m not saying anything without my lawyer. That means this is over.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” said Diane. “We have you and Valentine. How else could we have found you? And when I say we have you, let me assure you I mean we have you. We have your code of life.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She means your DNA, you stupid little twit,” said Garnett. “We also know you did time as a juvenile.”

“Juvi records are sealed.”

“Not from me,” said Diane. “You were caught hacking into people’s computer files, changing information, trying to mess their lives up. You didn’t learn, did you?”

He was having to force his smirk now. “I’m not talking without my lawyer.”

“Fine by me,” Garnett said. “You want to wait for your lawyer, that’s your legal right. Maybe you think your lawyer can cut you some kind of deal. We don’t need a deal. We’ve got everything we need to put you away for the rest of your natural life. Your lawyer can’t even get you out on bail. Not after you made terroristic threats.”

“You can’t prove nothin’.”

Garnett banged his hand on the desk. Randy jumped.

“You can’t talk without your lawyer. You have to shut up now.”

“I don’t think he’ll talk even with his lawyer,” said Diane. “I think he and Valentine have what they think is job security. All they have to do is a little jail time and they get a lot of money. It’s like a job, except instead of going to work every day, they stay in jail every day. They were probably told they’d serve only a couple of years if they got caught. These aren’t the kind of guys who keep up with current events.”

“No,” said Garnett. “They don’t know that the kind of threats made against you, the museum and the crime lab will put them away for twenty-five to life. Before they get out, we’ll have them for the murders. We’ll turn them over to the Feds for kidnapping you, and they’ll get another twenty-five years under federal mandatory sentencing.”

“Besides,” said Diane, looking Randy in the eyes. “You really think the Taggart family is going to pay you, knowing you gave them up?”

Randy’s fake smirk vanished, his eyes widened and he looked from Diane to Garnett, clearly surprised, clearly scared. She’d made a hit, all of it. He was promised money if he kept his mouth shut, and it was the Taggart family. Shit. She had followed her instinct and she was right. But proving the connection was going to be a problem unless Randy MacRae or Neil Valentine folded.

“Well, I suppose I’ll be going now,” said Diane. “When his lawyer comes, I wonder who he’ll be working for, this skinny little twit or the Taggarts.”

Diane rose and left the room. Garnett followed on her heels.

“Okay.” Garnett was almost in a frenzy. “You want to tell me what that was about? The Taggarts? The ones who own Taggart Industries? The guy running for senator? The best-known do-gooder in the state?”

“The same,” said Diane.

“You have some kind of proof the Taggarts are involved? Because if you don’t, I’m not going to stick my neck out. Why didn’t you tell me ahead of time?”

“I don’t have proof. We aged a snapshot of a young woman we found with Caver Doe-it looks amazingly like Rosemary Taggart. I saw her at the funeral of Vanessa Van Ross’s grandmother. It all just came together for me.”

“That’s it?”

“I was playing a hunch.”

“That’s what we do,” said Garnett. “We play hunches. You find the evidence.”

“When the crime scene unit processed Valentine’s and MacRae’s apartments, they found navy wool caps that match the fibers from the lab break-in and from the quarry murders of Jake Stanley and Donnie Martin. They also found a box of surgeon’s gloves containing the same type of powder present at both of those scenes. It’s circumstantial, but put that with their DNA on my clothes and the same powder on the duct tape that bound me, and the evidence is more than coincidental.” Diane let out a breath. “I know-without a confession I have nothing against the Taggarts, but you saw his face.”

Garnett raked his hands through his hair. “Dammit. Yes, I saw his face.”

“I don’t know which family member. It’s a large family. And you don’t have to interrogate them until we have substantially more evidence to go on.”

“And I won’t.” He paused and gave her a long look. “Okay, let’s see what the other one has to say. Go ahead and play your game on him and we’ll see how he reacts.”

They didn’t get much more information from Neil Valentine. He started out just like MacRae, cocky, calling for a lawyer, and ended up with the same surprised look on his face. He’d done jail time before. Diane was betting he didn’t want to do any more without the payoff he had been promised. She had hoped that putting a wedge of doubt in might get one of them to talk. But the bottom line was, neither said anything.