J.T. Ellison - What Lies Behind

“It’s going to be an interesting one, that’s for sure. None of the vials were disturbed, but the refrigerator had been turned off. The C-bot—sorry, botulism—had begun breaking down. It wasn’t perfectly sealed, and that’s what the terrible smell was. The proteins began to decompose, just like flesh.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Is botulism a hazard?”

She shook her head. “It is a disease, not an airborne pathogen, which is the only reason we’re being isolated here instead of locked down in a containment unit. No, I don’t think there’s any real danger from any of these, so long as they’re treated properly. But it’s quite convenient that he had the wine fridge built into the bar. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never find it.”

“But maybe the killer did find it. There might be a vial missing. Hell, we’re going in circles. We need to find out what Souleyret was doing with Cattafi in the first place.”

“Yes, we do. I have word in to Baldwin. As soon as he lands in Denver, he’ll call. He told me he didn’t think her current assignment had anything to do with her death, but that was when we thought this was a domestic. Now that we’re dealing with a potential double murder, we have to approach it in a whole new light. Face it, Fletch. You’re stuck with me.”

He grinned at her. “What a perfectly horrible thought.”

Hart came by a few minutes later. Arms bulging, neck now sweating. He had a hand on the Glock at his waist, an impenetrable look spread across his face.

Fletcher put up his hands.

“Don’t shoot, Occifer. I ain’t drunk.”

“You’re demented, that’s what you are,” Hart replied. “And cleared. All the field tests are negative. You’re fine, you’re out of isolation. All the brain rot is from natural causes.” He turned to Sam with a smile. “Good to see you, Doc. This loon roped you into another case?”

“Hey, I’m your commander—you can’t call me a loon.”

Hart rolled his eyes. “Doc, I ever tell you about the time me and Fletch were down in Loudon County on a domestic? Turns out this guy’d been doing it with his goat, and the wife caught him going at it in the barn, lost it, grabbed the closest weapon and pumped him full of bird shot. Dude dies with his, ahem, boots on, so to speak. Now, Fletch here, he’s trying to figure out how we save this poor goat, so he—”

Sam was already giggling, and Fletcher reached out like he was going to smack Hart’s arm, but thought better of touching him. “Don’t you dare say another word, or I’ll bump you back to uniform. Tell me what’s happening at the hospital. How’s Cattafi?”

Hart flashed him a grin, then got serious. “Dude lost a lot of blood. He’s not giving too many signs of waking up anytime soon. His family’s on a flight in from Michigan. They’ll be in—” he checked his watch “—by one or two. There are big storms in Chicago and their plane was delayed. Your dead chick has a sister. We’re trying to locate her to do notification now. There’s not a lot of info floating around about either one of them, and the vic lived overseas. We’re trying to track it all down. I figure you’re gonna want to talk to the families when we round them up, at the very least.”

“Kind of you to save them for me.”

“Yeah, yeah. The sacrifices I make.”

“Cattafi’s parents wrecked?”

“They’re as distraught as you can imagine. Claim the kid’s some sort of supergenius. Gonna cure cancer, all that.”

“I keep hearing that. Anything on the traffic cams? I noticed one on the corner.”

“We’re looking at everything between ten and two. And we’re going to recanvass the area. There’s a camera mounted a few doors down, but the folks weren’t home when we knocked.”

“Good. Anything we can get will help. Sam, you know his professors at Georgetown, right? Can you get us in to talk to them?”

She nodded. “Of course. I’ll go set something up right now.” She walked a little ways down the leafy green street, punching numbers in her cell phone.

Hart gave him the fish eye. “What are you doing, dragging her in here? She’s a civilian, Fletcher, albeit a talented one. You can’t keep involving her in our cases. It’s not seemly.”

“Now, now, don’t get your panties in a wad. She’s a legitimate part of the investigation. Apparently, our female vic was undercover FBI. Sam’s taking John Baldwin’s place for the time being while he deals with another case.”

“Whose idea was that?”

Fletcher smiled. “Lonnie, worry not, okay? I wouldn’t do anything to compromise this investigation. She’s got a knack for this—took her all of ten minutes to dig out the hidden refrigerator. Speaking of which, I trust you’ve told Robertson I’m gunning for him?” Mel Robertson was the head of the crime scene unit—it was his boys and girls who’d screwed the pooch.

“Robertson is quaking in his size-fourteen boots.” A few spatters of rain started, and Hart popped a baseball cap onto his bald pate.

Fletcher put the file he was holding over his own head as a shield. “I’m not kidding. If Robertson ain’t gonna take this seriously, I’ll let Armstrong go after him. What sort of bullshit is this, that we can’t trust our own crime scene techs to do their jobs?”

“You sound like a bureaucrat.” But Hart was smiling. He liked the idea of Robertson getting chewed out.

“I am a bureaucrat. Now.”

Sam was walking back toward them, a worried look on her face. When she reached them, Fletcher shared his file folder with her.

“What’s the matter?”

She bit her lip. “Thomas Cattafi isn’t a student at Georgetown anymore. He was kicked out two weeks ago. The dean says he can’t discuss it over the phone. We’ll have to go see him to find out more.”

Chapter 15

Teterboro Airport New Jersey

XANDER WAS ONCE again standing with his hands behind his back, shifting his weight from foot to foot to alleviate the boredom. As predicted, when the New Jersey cops had rolled in, he’d been recuffed and brought to another interrogation room inside the Teterboro Airport, then left to cool his heels while the powers that be decided what to do with him. The room was a dingy white, a twin to the one he’d been in with Chalk and Denon, nothing more than a table, four chairs and a camera bolted high in the northeast corner. No windows, nothing to allow him to entertain himself.

Left to his own devices, he’d begun brooding about the shooting again. He’d done the right thing, he knew it, but the image of the shooter crumpling over the parapet replayed in his mind. He hadn’t killed anyone since he’d separated from the Army, taken his honorable discharge and walked away into the woods. For the first several weeks, he’d even done catch and release on the damn trout he landed, simply because he couldn’t stand the thought of harming anything else.

That ended. Of course it did. His sense returned. But he’d not taken a human life since that last firefight in Jalālābād, and he’d hoped he never would have to again.

If he was going to have a career in close protection, clearly he was going to have to realign his priorities.

The door opened, and a plainclothes officer he hadn’t seen before walked in. He uncuffed Xander, handed him a bottle of water, shook his hand.

“Arlen Grant. New Jersey State Police. Seems you’ve had yourself an interesting day.” Grant was tall and lanky, a solid jaw, just this side of forty, hair about to thin but not there yet, with a sleek gray suit and a chunky stainless-steel watch, a Fitbit trainer on the opposite wrist. He had the hungry look of a man who’d lost weight recently, and would do most anything to sink his teeth into a thick steak and fries instead of salad and veggies.