Chapter Eight
The offices of Griffen + Smoltz Design were located on M Street in Georgetown.
Gonzo and Arnold trudged up the stairs to the second floor where the offices were situated above several high-end boutiques.
They pushed through monogrammed, frosted double doors to enter a wide open space that bustled with activity and young people wearing mostly denim and hoodies and other casual attire.
At the reception desk, Gonzo asked to speak to the managing partner, Simon Griffen.
“Whom shall I say is calling?”
They flashed their badges. “Sergeant Gonzales and Detective Arnold, Metro PD.”
“Is this about Mr. Enright?”
“Could we see Mr. Griffen, please?” Gonzo asked. He was the one asking the questions, not her.
“I’ll see if he’s available.”
“Make him available.”
She scurried off into the fray of the large room where the entire team worked except, it seemed, for those who occupied offices along a far wall.
The receptionist ducked into one those rooms and shut the door behind her.
Gonzo noticed that everyone else was looking at them and probably wondering what was up now.
The sort of thing that had happened to Enright changed the people around him as much as it changed the victim.
It took some of their innocence, messed with their sense of safety and left them edgier, warier, on guard.
Gonzo had seen it often during his career and sympathized with what they were going through after one of their own had been brutally attacked.
The receptionist returned with a handsome young guy in jeans and a dress shirt that he wore with the sleeves rolled up. He had light blond hair and an athletic build. “I’m Simon Griffen.” He shook both their hands. “What can I do for you?”
“Sergeant Gonzales, Detective Arnold. Could we have a minute of your time, preferably in private?”
“Of course. Right this way.” He led them through the maze of workstations. Each desk had at least one huge computer screen. Many had two or more.
The workers stopped what they were doing to watch the cops follow Simon into his office.
“Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, we’re fine, thanks,” Gonzo said, answering before Arnold could accept. “We’ve come from seeing Mr. Enright in the hospital.”
“How is he today? I’m planning to get over there after work.”
“He’s weak but improving.”
“Thank God. What a shock it’s been for all of us. Will is such a nice guy. Everyone loves him. We can’t imagine anyone would want to harm him.”
“He mentioned some difficulties with a client named Giuseppe Besozzi. What can you tell us about that?”
“He told you about that?” Griffen asked, visibly rattled.
“Why do you ask?”
“We’re all about client privacy and confidentiality. If it gets out that a client’s personal business was being discussed with the police, that could put us out of business.”
“What if one of your clients was the one who attacked your employee?” Gonzo asked.
“You don’t honestly think it was him, do you? These attacks have been so random.”
“They’ve seemed random. Our job is to find out whether or not they really are and to apprehend the person or persons responsible. What can you tell us about Besozzi?”
Griffen took a deep breath and seemed to sag some under the weight of the circumstances.
“He came to us through a referral from another client. He was interested in a website for his retail T-shirt business. We met with him, took him on as a client and Will worked closely with him on the design of the site. They were getting close to finished when Will came to me with concerns about some add-ons that Besozzi was suddenly interested in.”
“What kind of add-ons?” Gonzo asked though he already knew.
“Webcams and chat rooms. That kind of stuff.”
“What would a guy in the T-shirt business want with such things?” Arnold asked.
“That’s what Will wanted to know, too. It sounded bizarre to him and he thought it was possible that Besozzi might be involved in something illegal.
He did the right thing coming to me. We don’t want to be part of anything questionable.
I consulted with my partner and we agreed to terminate the relationship.
We met with Besozzi, returned his deposit and told him we were ending the relationship. ”
“And how did that go over?” Gonzo asked.
“Not well. He was furious, but I could understand why. He’d spent months working with us and was close to launching his site. He ranted about the time he’d lost and what kind of business were we running. We anticipated that, but he was angrier than we’d expected.”
“Did he threaten any retribution of any kind?” Arnold asked.
“Not specifically, no.”
“But?” Gonzo asked, sensing there was more to it.
“He was kinda scary mad, you know? Yelling and screaming and knocking things over on the way out. You heard all the chatter out there,” he said, gesturing to the big room.
“After he left, you couldn’t hear a pin drop for a full minute.
My partner and I brought in security for a couple of days, to be safe.
You hear about people coming back with guns to settle a score. ”
“Did you think he would do something like that?”
“We didn’t know, so we acted with an abundance of caution.”
“Did you ever see him here again?” Arnold asked.
Griffen shook his head. “Thankfully, no. We haven’t heard from him since that day.”
“Was this an unusual occurrence? To have things go bad with a client?”
“Very unusual. We’ve been in business ten years and have had our issues with clients.
Design is a very subjective thing. What one person loves, another hates.
So at times we’ve been unable to satisfy a client and parted company as a result.
That’s an unfortunate outcome that we work hard to avoid to the best of our ability.
But the thing with Besozzi was different. ”
“Do you have a local address for him?” Gonzo asked.
“I can get it, but you won’t tell him we gave it to you, will you?”
“We won’t mention where we got it.”
He got on the computer and clicked around for a minute. Then he wrote down the address and handed the piece of paper to Gonzo. “You think he might be behind the knife attack?”
“Truthfully, it’s the best lead we’ve had yet.”
“Wow,” Griffen said. “I can’t believe he’d do something like that.”
“Well, we don’t know that he did,” Gonzo said. “All we know is he had a beef with someone who was attacked. We’ll be talking to other victims to see if there’re any tie-ins. This has been very helpful. If you think of anything else we should know, here’s my card. Please call me, night or day.”
“I will. I hope you catch whoever hurt Will.”
“I hope so, too. We can see ourselves out.” As they pushed through the double doors, Gonzo handed the paper with Besozzi’s address to Arnold.
“Call Dispatch and let them know we’re going to need some subtle backup.
No charging in with lights and sirens, and tell them to stay a block or so away until they hear from us. ”
While Arnold called Dispatch, Gonzo called Malone.
“What’ve you got, Sergeant?”
“A hot lead in the knife attacks.” He updated the captain on what they’d learned about Besozzi. “We’re heading there now, and we’ve called for backup.”
“Are you thinking this is our guy?”
“I’m thinking he had a beef with Enright. That’s all I know right now. I’m going to send McBride and Tyrone over to talk with our other surviving vic to see if there’s any connection, but I don’t want to wait on Besozzi until we know that. He may be a flight risk if he thinks we’re on to him.”
“Agreed. I’ll update McBride and Tyrone and give them their orders.”
“Great, thanks.”
“Good work, Sergeant. Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
“Patrol is set to provide subtle backup,” Arnold said.
“Great. Let’s go pick this guy up.”
Sam felt claustrophobic the second the door clicked shut behind Trulo. She took the visitor’s seat while he returned to his desk and packed up his lunch. He again wiped his mouth with a napkin that he discarded before he turned to her, his expression expectant.
As usual, he wasn’t going to make this easy for her.
“Since that day,” she said, haltingly, “I’m afraid pretty much all the time.
I relive it, over and over, looking for signs that I missed, signs that I shouldn’t have gone back into Marissa’s house, especially alone.
I go through every minute of that day, from when I left my house until SWAT got me out of there.
” She placed her hand on her belly. “I can almost always trust my gut. If there’s some instinct telling me to watch out, I feel it here.
I always feel it. But this time, there was nothing.
That’s the part I can’t get past. How could there be nothing when that was about to happen? ”
“So you think there’s something wrong with you because you didn’t see it coming?”
“It makes me wonder if I’ve lost that instinct and how effective I’ll be on the job without it.”
“Talk to me about Stahl.”
Well okay then. Guess we aren’t talking about my instincts anymore… “What about him?”
“You’ve had a difficult relationship with him.”
“To say the least.”
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“There’s bad blood between him and my dad from before I was on the job that carried over onto me.
He resented everything about me, from my last name to the fact that I was female to the way I rose through the ranks much too quickly for his liking.
The two years I answered to him directly were a living hell.
I swore he sabotaged some of my cases to make me look bad, but I could never prove it.
Everything got worse when they gave me command of his squad and moved him to the rat squad. ”
“When you say it got worse, how do you mean?”