Chapter 30
The dog whined and dug in the blanket covering Flash’s bare shoulder. When Flash responded with a disapproving look, Snuffles licked her nose.
Flash didn’t want to move. It seemed so incredible that such an extraordinary woman still wanted to share her bed that she could easily remain beneath these covers holding her all day. But here was that adorable, pleading face. An accident always left Snuffles looking ashamed.
“All right,” she whispered, carefully sliding limbs out from under and around the gorgeous special agent in charge of her division. She supposed Athena’s rank roughly equaled the one Velasquez had held in the HFD. Athena would never take a bribe.
The instant she began to move, Snuffles hopped excitedly to the foot of the bed and bounced up and down like a miniature kangaroo, her ears flying comically in the pre-dawn glow outside the window.
Flash pulled on sweats and a hoodie, and down the stairs they trotted.
Snow still swathed the world in its white blanket, holding it in a suspended hush.
Flash hadn’t noticed before how quiet everything was in the snow.
Just as Snuffles finished her business, the whine of a distant siren caught her ear, reminding her of the day ahead.
“Come on, you pesty little pup,” she said. “Let’s make Athena breakfast in bed.”
Snuffles peered up at her with a joyful expression, probably more from physical relief than the bit about breakfast in bed. Still, she knew the words breakfast, Athena, and bed, so maybe?
Their tracks showed the way as Flash’s waterproof rubber slip-ons crunched through refrozen slush and Snuffles’ paws padded over the crust. Half an hour later, she set a plate with bacon, eggs, a hash brown, and a fruit cup on Athena’s nightstand beside a steaming cup of coffee, light cream and sugar the way she liked it.
Athena’s chest rose as she inhaled the aroma before opening her eyes.
The covers slipped when she stretched, revealing soft porcelain shoulders, so unlike her own.
Her cute nose wiggled, sniffing the air.
Then her lids fluttered up, uncovering stunning hazel eyes, eyes that could strike the fear of God into a suspect or underling, and yet express such tenderness and vulnerability when they were alone.
“What time is it?” She yawned.
“Six-fifteen.” Flash sat beside her on the edge of the bed. “Snuffles got me up early, but not early enough for me to come back to sleep. So, I made us breakfast.”
Athena pushed up, eyes widening. “Is it the 14th already?”
A smile broadened across Flash’s face. “Not until tomorrow.”
“But you brought me breakfast in bed.”
“Yep!” Flash grinned, then touched her lips to Athena’s. “I’ll just go grab mine and come join you.”
Flash’s thoughts turned dreamy as she collected her plate and coffee.
I wonder how long the power will stay out?
Weeks? And I get to keep Athena here all that time.
Flash believed she’d like to keep her love here for the rest of their lives …
unless they retired and moved to the Piney Point Village mansion with the giant TV and the awesome swimming pool.
Athena could get used to this so easily. She feared she already had and dreaded the day the electricity came back on in her lonely condo. I can just invite Flash over more often, she thought. But she knew what she really wanted. Patience.
She strode into her office a few minutes early in FBI black and Jimmy Choo knee boots. Travis, in his standard Bureau suit and black, classic-toed Justins, held the door for her.
Agent Paulson was pouring his coffee, and the others had yet to arrive. “Good morning,” he greeted. He’d clearly showered and shaved and had put on freshly creased slacks, a pinstripe shirt, and a solid tie.
“Good morning,” Athena responded in kind. “I hope you’re sleeping well up here in the crib, and I hate that you’re away from your family for so long.”
“Ha!” He spun his wheelchair toward them with a storyteller’s look in his eyes. “Back when I was a field agent, I’d be gone for days on a stakeout—weeks or months doing an undercover operation. A couple of snowed-in days in the safety of FBI headquarters is like a vacation at the Ritz.”
Agents Hernandez, Campbell, and Howard soon arrived, taking their spots. Then Detective Bach escorted Agent Shoops through the door. Athena wouldn’t ask. Maybe he was just giving her a lift, as Travis had done for her. Better not to know.
“Let’s make this the day we catch our guy,” Bach declared with an air of optimism.
“We got an update from the lab. The techs have identified a few trace materials on the victim’s clothing that suggest he was assaulted and killed in the office, not merely moved there to get burned up.
” He scrolled on his phone for a few seconds.
This wasn’t big news, but every detail counted.
“Carpet fibers, toner dust, lead and silica particles dispersed across his clothing, and a cleaning solvent on his shoulder,” Bach listed.
“The janitor said he cleaned the room early that morning, but you can’t vacuum up everything.
Also, no scuff marks on his shoes or particulates suggesting being dragged across a polished concrete surface. ”
“Ok, let’s take a glance at this from the beginning,” Athena said as she stood before her team. Every head turned, eyes fixed on her. She addressed them in her typical authoritative posture.
“Employees arrived about nine Friday morning,” she began.
“A witness recalled janitor Isaac Mora performing regular maintenance on the generator between nine and nine-thirty. During that time frame, Inspector Nolan arrived. The janitor then moved inside to tidy up the office before Nolan began going over the books. Kim Reynolds escorted him around until Nolan dismissed her, sometime shortly before ten. Mr. Booker gathered his staff in the conference room at approximately ten o’clock for their meeting.
Wendy Newbacher, the pregnant woman, stepped out for the restroom but doubtfully hid a device in the generator or murdered Nolan.
The explosion occurred at 11:10, followed by fire and mayhem.
Before, we focused on who could have planted the bomb and when.
Now let’s dig into who could have gone into the office and bludgeoned Inspector Nolan between ten and eleven o’clock. ”
“It couldn’t have been any of the office workers,” Howard suggested. “They were all accounted for at that time.”
Stepping to the whiteboard, Athena took a marker and drew lines through Booker and Walsh’s names. “We didn’t give them strong likelihoods, but now they’re completely off the table. So, who does that leave?”
“Any of the blue-collar workers,” Hernandez said. “We ran them. Only a few had criminal hits.” He quickly shuffled through papers, plucking one out. “Jimmy Schultz, Patrick Garrett, and Julio Sinclair. Do you want me to follow up on them?”
“Yes. You and Ice track them down and question them. If any seem viable, bring them in.”
“We ran the heck out of the tree huggers,” Campbell said. “I could dig deeper—”
“No,” Athena interrupted. “We need people with access to the building while it was open, and none of them passed the front gate camera. Were any of the service providers present Friday morning filling vending machines, delivering or collecting laundry, floor mats, anything?”
Agent Howard thumbed through his file. “No outside providers were scheduled for Friday morning.”
“Again, no service vans on the gate cam,” Campbell confirmed.
Paulson let out a low whistle. “That leaves a workforce of about 1,200 laborers, specialists, drivers, production operators—the works.”
“Then the rest of us spend the morning running deep dives,” Athena instructed.
“Agent Paulson, generate a list and divvy out the names, please. Agents, start with people who had a legitimate reason to enter the office building. I want personal histories, family backgrounds, education, religion, philosophies, anything that intersects with the EPA, OSHA, Jeff Nolan, or a grudge against management. We know the killer used a weapon brought from outside the office, so focus harder on mechanics, maintenance workers, and people who worked on the pipes. There’s plenty of them, I’m sure.
It’s unlikely, but maybe the unsub thought the office was empty, happened upon Nolan, and whacked him in the head so he wouldn’t be reported. ”
“Yes, ma’am,” Shoops replied.
“Y’all have fun,” Agent Ice called from the door as he and Hernandez headed out.
“Are you going to cross Whitmore and Kerrington off your list?” Bach asked. Their photos and sticky notes featured prominently on the whiteboard.
Athena scowled. “I don’t want to on principle. But neither are viable suspects anymore.” She drew a single line through each name yet left their photos in place when she took Booker’s and Walsh’s down.
She studied the board, tapping her chin with the butt of the marker. “Nexus, who are you?”
Hours passed. Ice and Hernandez returned with a bag filled with burritos from a food truck in service.
Athena secretly loved Mexican food truck fare but never ate it at work.
Her minions were all excellent detectives and would spot the indulgent glow as she bit into the decadent guilty pleasure.
Today she took one and said, “Thank you.”
“All three had solid alibis between ten and eleven, as a dozen employees saw each doing their jobs out on the line,” Ice said before taking his first spicy bite.
“Lunch to the rescue,” Campbell exclaimed, grabbing a wrapped burrito from the bag. “My eyes are glazing over. These are the most boring set of workers.”
“Here you go, Agent Shoops,” Bach said as he placed two burritos on her desk and pulled up a chair. “Do you like Tex-Mex?”
“As long as it’s not too hot,” she said, giving the lanky detective an appreciative look. She glanced at Travis. “Is this from the Taco Loco truck that’s usually at Jester Park?”
“Yep.”
Returning her gaze to Bach, she answered, “These are so good.”
Athena agreed in silence. After a few bites, Shoops’ hesitant stare caught her attention. She set down her half-eaten common delicacy and raised a brow. “What is it, Agent Shoops? I do eat, you know.”
Karen blushed. “No, I mean, yes, of course you do. That’s not it. I don’t want to disturb you, but just before Travis and Samuel returned bearing lunch …” She swallowed and pushed up her glasses. Athena wanted to order her to an optical shop to have them adjusted, so they’d fit her face properly.
Instead, she prompted, “Agent Shoops, you seem to be capable of finding important details and making astounding connections, yet incapable of articulating yourself in my presence. I’m not the Pope. I’m not even Director Smith, so out with it. What did you find?”
“Sorry,” she muttered, twirling her fingers in her lap. Athena might not be able to see them from her vantage point, but she knew that’s what she was doing.
“It’s just that I found something strange that doesn’t seem to make sense when doing my employee background runs. It’s one of the janitors, Isaac Mora, the one seen doing the generator maintenance and who supposedly cleaned the office just before Inspector Nolan shooed everyone away.”
“Go on,” Athena prompted. She’d read his interview, and the wrench from his locker didn’t have Nolan’s blood or DNA on it. Had she overlooked him as a suspect because she was so focused on the distasteful billionaire? And why would a random janitor want to kill an EPA inspector?
Karen’s face scrunched up like a child’s who was about to confess to eating the last cookie.
“He’s smart. Mora was salutatorian of his class at James Bowie High School in Austin in 2011 and was accepted to MIT on scholarship that fall.
He studied chemical engineering for two-and-a-half years before getting expelled for unauthorized lab access and chemical misuse.
The dean wrote a note in his file indicating that he was conducting secret experiments using university supplies and equipment.
Also, he’d broken in after hours. It was his second reprimand, and he behaved disrespectfully at his academic hearing, telling off all the professors. ”
“Then he’s working a job far below his potential,” Paulson commented, pivoting his chair around.
“And then?” Athena exchanged a glance with Paulson, perceiving his piqued interest.
Karen bit her lip before continuing. “He tried his own start-up company, but it failed in under six months due to a lack of investors. Then his employment record jumps around between chemical companies and research facilities for three years. Termination reasons cited: brilliant but impossible to work with. Arrogant. Poor team dynamics. Then he totally switched gears and worked as a freelance private detective for a year.”
Athena furrowed her brows at that one. “A chemical engineer geek stalking unfaithful spouses with a camera?”
“I don’t know,” Karen replied. “He was self-employed during that time, so he could have been doing anything. Then he completely fell off the grid in 2020, emerging again when he was hired in November 2021 by Gulf Allied Chemicals as part of their janitorial staff.”
“Good work, Karen,” Bach praised in what appeared to be astonishment. Athena lifted her chin with pride in her junior agent. “That’s highly suspicious,” Bach continued, “though we don’t know what it has to do with Nolan.”
“Not yet,” Athena declared. “Paulson, start pulling up everything you can on Mora’s online activity for the past twelve years.
No, go back fourteen, to when he was at MIT.
Maybe we’ll discover what he was trying to cook up that got him expelled.
I want social media, emails, account names, login history, messaging history, IP addresses, contacts, cloud storage, boards, forums, chat rooms—everything from the time he was a student through today.
I’ll take care of the warrants and subpoenas. ”
“I’ll get right on it, but I’ll need some provider information from the subpoenas to do a thorough search.”
“I’ll inform Mr. Smith we need a rush on this.
” Athena shifted to the rest of the room.
“Shoops, stay on your end. Make a list of friends and family. Try to get a handle on Mora’s state of mind.
Ice and Hernandez, bring him in. Howard and Campbell, I want a meticulous search of Mora’s residence, and bring back all his electronics. ”
“I’ll send over a CSI team to swab and collect evidence,” Bach said, digging into his pocket for his phone.
“Good.” Athena shot out of her chair with less finesse than usual, leaving behind the last quarter of her thoroughly delicious burrito.
She could always reheat it later. “I’m off to see Mr. Smith.
You should have your warrants by the time you arrive.
” Anticipation surged through her. This could be the big break they’d been chasing all week.