David Baldacci - True Blue

ROY KINGMAN was sitting in the managing partner’s office that was only a bit larger than his space, though it did have a water view. Chester Ackerman was a few inches shorter than Roy, and he carried the heft of a man who liked his food rich and often. He had a horseshoe of graying hair around his broad head and a large nose with a bump at the end. Roy guessed he was about fifty-five, though he suddenly wondered why he didn’t know for sure.

Ackerman brought in far more business to the firm than anyone else. Roy had always found him sharp, tough, and big-voiced. Today, the man was none of those things. He sat across from Roy, his face sweaty, his hands trembling, and his voice low and croaky.

He wagged his head from side to side. “I can’t believe this shit. I can’t believe it happened. Here!”

“Just calm down, Chester.”

“How the hell am I supposed to calm down? There was a murder three doors down from my office.”

“And the police are investigating it, and they’re probably already running down some solid leads.”

Ackerman lifted his head and stared at him. “That’s right, you used to work down there, right?”

“Down where?”

“With the cops.”

“I was a defense attorney, so I was actually on the other side. But I know how the police work a crime scene. And this is high-dollar Georgetown, so they’ll pull out all the stops. Hell, even the chief herself was down here asking me questions.”

Ackerman blurted out, “Who do you think might’ve done it, Roy?” He looked ten seconds from stroking.

Roy said, “I have no idea who could’ve done it. I worked with Diane but I didn’t really know her personally. You were fairly close to her, weren’t you?”

“No, not really. I mean, she never really talked about her personal life with me.”

“You talked to the police?” he asked.

Ackerman rose and looked out the window, his hands fingering the striped braces he favored. They had gone out of style sometime in the nineties, only the man apparently hadn’t noticed or didn’t care. “Yeah. They asked me some questions.” He turned around to face Roy. “And I told ’em just what I’m telling you. I’m scared and I don’t know a damn thing.”

“It could just be random, you know.”

“Random, what the hell are you talking about?”

“Guy follows Diane in, kills her, and exits. Maybe it was a simple robbery.”

“But there’s a guard in the front lobby.”

“Ned’s more of a joke. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve come in the building in the morning and he’s nowhere to be found.”

“What the hell do we pay building fees for?”

“If you want serious perimeter protection, hire a real security firm who’ll send a trained person who carries a gun. The only thing Ned can do is whack an intruder with a frozen sausage biscuit.”

Roy popped up from the chair. “Is there anyone we need to call?”

The other man looked at him with a confused expression. “Call?”

“Yeah, like her relatives?”

“Oh, I’ve got folks doing that. Her father’s dead, but her mom lives in Florida, retired. Diane didn’t have any kids. She has an ex-husband, but he lives in Hawaii.”

“Did you just find that out?”

“What?”

“You said you didn’t know much about Diane personally, but you know all that.”

“I just found out!” Ackerman snapped.

Roy put up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. That’s cool.” He headed to the door. “Do you mind if I take the rest of the day off? I don’t have anything critical pending and what with everything that’s happened.”

“No, sure, go on. Get some fresh air.”

“Thanks.”

“Roy, what was it like? Finding the body?”

Roy slowly turned around. “I hope you never have to find out.”

ROY GRABBED his jacket, waved goodbye to his secretary, and took the stairs instead of the elevator. The police had already questioned Ned, who now sat in his swivel chair with a look of terror interrupted by momentary pangs of what Roy assumed was hunger.

“Hey, Ned. How’re you doing?”

“Not too good, Mr. Kingman.”

Roy leaned against the marble reception console. “Police give you the once-over?” He nodded. “And were you away from the front at any time this morning?”

Ned eyed him a little hostilely. “Am I supposed to talk to you about this stuff?”

“Not if you don’t want to, no.”

“Guess it doesn’t matter. I don’t know that much, really.”

“So you saw Diane come in?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well, either you saw her or you didn’t.”

“I heard her.”

“ Heard her? Where were you?”

“In the back microwaving my biscuit. It always gets cold before I get here.”

“What time was that?”

“Around six. I’d just come on duty.”

“But you were eating a biscuit when I came in an hour and a half later.”

“I eat like five sausage biscuits every morning, but I try to space them out. I’m a big guy: I need constant fuel.”

“Did she come up through the garage elevator or by the front doors?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I didn’t see her.”

“Okay, so what did she say when she came into the lobby?”

“She said, ‘Hey, how you doing.’ And I called back that I was doing fine. When I got back to the front, she’d already gone up in the elevator.”

“You’re sure it was her voice?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard her lots of times. She’s usually with someone when she leaves the building, you know, for lunch or stuff, and she has a pretty husky voice for a lady.”

“But Ned, not to raise the obvious point, if you were in the back and she couldn’t see you, how do you know she was even talking to you ? More likely she was saying hello to someone else coming in the building the same time as her.”

Ned looked puzzled. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Roy continued, “The person had to be coming through the front doors. If she’d ridden up with him in the elevator from the garage she would have already said hello. And there’s only the one garage elevator, so it wouldn’t have had time to go back down and come back up with another person before Diane would’ve headed up in one of the office elevators.”

“You’re getting way over my head now, Mr. Kingman.”

“Did she routinely say hello to you when she came in?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Does that mean she did it once, twice, every other time? Never?”

“Uh, never.”

“Did you hear another person’s voice?”

“No, but like I said, I was using the microwave. It makes some noise. And then it makes a big ‘ding’ when it’s done.”

“Yeah, I know.” Roy glanced up at the security cameras mounted in each corner of the lobby. “Did the police take the security tapes?”

“It’s on a DVD. But no, they didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because the DVD loaded in the central board was full from a long time ago.”

“But once it got full won’t it just record over what’s already been filmed?”

“The system here doesn’t work that way. The disk gets full, it automatically shuts down until you put a new disk in.”

“Well, don’t people check it?”

Ned looked red-faced. “I did, I mean sometimes. But nobody ever told me how to really do it the right way, and I got to the point where I thought I might screw up, so I stopped checking it.”

“Well, you got that right. You did screw up.”

Ned said in a whining tone, “But I thought the cameras were just there for looks anyway, you know, to make people think they were under surveillance. I mean, I’m on duty for security purposes.”