Hotel
They didn’t have to wait long for Detective Davis.
He arrived with a fresh set of uniformed officers.
Jackson and Tessman let the police clear her townhouse before they went in.
Becca just shook her head in denial and disgust as she surveyed the disarray close up.
They’d even dumped every single kitchen drawer.
They found both of the bedrooms upstairs to be in the same state as the first floor.
Even her closet had been destroyed.
She gathered clothes for a few days and scooped up the bottles of the toiletries and makeup she’d want with her from the bathroom floor and shoved it all into a backpack.
Back on the first floor, she grabbed her laptop bag, which was in the corner behind the curtain and untouched.
They must not have seen it.
She gave Detective Davis a spare set of her housekeys.
He’d lock up when the crime scene crew was done.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Detective Davis told her.
She’d noticed nothing missing, so robbery wasn’t the motive, not that anyone expected it had been.
“At least they didn’t slash furniture or break shit just to destroy it,” Tessman said as they drove.
She watched the side streets pass by her window.
“Where are we going?”
“We have an apartment on the ninth floor of our building on the secure side that can’t be accessed from the public side of our building. It’s Fort Knox. Our boss, Shepherd, authorized you be allowed to stay in it for as long as needed.”
“Who the hell are you guys? You carry federal badges.”
“We do,” Tessman said.
His eyes flickered to his rearview mirror and Jackson’s headlights.
“Shepherd will talk to you tomorrow. I have to ask you not to make any calls tonight, not to tell anyone where you are or about us.”
She forced out an indignant laugh.
“Who the hell would I call? And why?”
“I don’t know. Don’t know if you have a boyfriend or if you’d call one of the attorneys you work with,” he suggested.
“No to both,” she said.
“A best friend you’d want to commiserate with,” he then said.
“But I have to ask you not to do that tonight.”
“Okay,” she said.
“The truth is, I just want to take a hot shower and put my pajamas on and go to bed.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“It’s way past dinner time. I could eat.”
“Are you kidding me? Eat dinner? One man is dead, another shot, and my house was broken into.”
“We still need to eat,” he said.
“Angel keeps food in the refrigerator, mostly leftovers from the lunches she orders in for everyone every day. Or we can stop and get anything you want. I’d prefer to bring it back to our HQ to eat it, though.”
“No, thank you. Whatever she has there will be fine. You’re right. I am a little hungry.”
The two cars pulled into the parking garage beside the ten-story Shepherd Security building.
They were not followed.
Becca was attentive as they drove deep into the second sub-basement level, through the security gate and the two garage doors that required codes and a palmprint scan to enter.
He parked in the private below-ground parking lot in front of the elevator door.
Jackson parked beside them.
Tessman insisted on carrying her overstuffed backpack and her laptop bag for her.
Neither man pulled his weapon as they walked to the elevator, which also required a code and palmprint to call the car.
She assumed this was a secure area.
With all the security to enter, it certainly wasn’t a public facing space.
She relaxed and followed them to the elevator.
“We’re going to stop on five and get something to eat,” Tessman told Jackson, pressing the five button within the elevator car.
Jackson nodded. He pressed ten.
“I’m going up to Shepherd’s penthouse to make an in-person report before I head home. Angel has already put the kids to bed, but she’s waiting to have dinner with me. She’s kept it warm.” He smiled appreciatively.
Becca heard him and it took a second to process that Angel was his wife.
She’d noticed that they both wore wedding bands, as did Cooper and Brielle, but hadn’t suspected that Angel and Jackson were married.
And they had children, which surprised her because of the job he did.
She knew she’d never be able to be married to a man who was in law enforcement.
She’d be too worried every time he went to work that he wouldn’t make it home.
Families that could do it impressed her.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor.
Tessman motioned her out.
“I’ll get her settled in the apartment after we eat. I’ll notify Ops when she’s there and I plan on staying in my office tonight,” Tessman told Jackson.
He also stepped into the hallway.
Jackson nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Becca. This building is a fortress. You’re completely safe here.”
“Thank you,” she said before the elevator door slid closed.
“Come on,” Tessman said, nodding to the hallway.
She followed him to the kitchen.
He set her bags on one side of the large table.
Then he opened the refrigerator.
“We have Chinese. Looks like wonton soup, fried rice, Mongolian beef, and some cashew chicken. And there are sandwich spirals and a garden salad, and of course chips.” He flashed her a grin.
“Can’t have sandwich spirals without chips.”
She peeked over his shoulder and saw large containers with each on the shelves in the full-size refrigerator.
“You said Angel orders lunch in every day. Does this food belong to someone in particular? I wouldn’t want to eat someone’s food.”
“She orders large quantities for everyone in the office and to have enough left-overs for anyone working nights or getting back to HQ at an odd hour. It’s one of the many perks of our job. I’m going to have some Chinese. This place she orders from is the best one in the area.” He began taking those containers from the fridge.
“That sounds good. I could go for some soup and fried rice. Thank you.”
He took two bowls and two plates down from the cabinet.
After they portioned out what food they wanted, he put hers in the microwave to cook first. He grabbed two bottles of water from the door, holding one up in offer to her.
“Yes, thank you. About this agency, Carter, I know you said your boss will talk to me tomorrow, but can’t you explain why you carry an FBI badge?”
The microwave dinged.
He placed her dishes on the table.
Steam rose, sending the incredible scent of the food throughout the room.
Becca had felt just a little hungry, but now, sniffing the aroma, she was famished.
“Go ahead and start,” Tessman said, nodding to her food.
“Don’t let it get cold waiting for mine to heat.”
She dug in.
It tasted as good as it smelled.
It was only after he joined her at the table that she gazed at him with a questioning look, waiting for him to explain how he was an FBI agent.
“Our status is complicated,” he began.
“We are officially a multi-agency task force, but that’s not the entirety of it. Our boss, Shepherd, will explain it fully to you tomorrow.”
“When Detective Davis told me about him and this agency, he mentioned that your boss is a retired colonel from the army and that the majority of you who work for this agency are former military. He didn’t say anything about anyone being federal agents or how you can work cases like mine. He said your agency was some sort of private investigators.”
“We are that too,” Tessman said.
“As I said, it’s complicated. And I am not at liberty to tell you all of it. But Shepherd will tomorrow morning.”
“Why can’t you tell me what he’s going to?” she pressed.
“Because I signed an NDA and could be prosecuted for divulging the information to you because you haven’t been read in yet by Shepherd.”
Becca was taken aback by this pronouncement.
“Will he ask me to sign an NDA?”
“Probably,” Tessman admitted.
“Look, what I can tell you is our agency does a lot of good. We help people other forces, agencies, and police departments don’t or can’t. People like you.”
She nodded, knowing they’d helped her not only by taking on this case, but this evening with the two armed men at her sister’s house.
Had she not had them to call, she may be dead, or if not, she would probably have been forced to shoot that second man, and maybe the third.
She took several more bites of food.
“I can’t argue that fact,” she said after she’d chewed and swallowed.
“And I’ll reserve judgement until I talk with your boss tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you for respecting that I can’t tell you anything more,” Tessman said.
“If this last month has taught me anything, it’s patience. All things have a process that I can’t rush, no matter how much I would like to.”
“The one positive outcome from tonight is that I think Davis will look at your sister’s family’s murders again. If he takes from the crime scene report what we did, he’ll know your brother-in-law killed no one.”
“If he reopens the case, does that mean that you and Jackson won’t continue to look into it?”
“I’m not sure. We rarely work open police cases, but we do in some situations. Shepherd will make the decision.”
“Will you get any input into that decision? Or, for that matter, will I?”
“Yes, to both, I’m sure,” Tessman answered.
She felt better knowing that there would be a discussion.
She would certainly ask his boss to keep them on the case, as well as the police, if the case was reopened.
She was anxious to meet him and talk with him in the morning.
“Did you get into Well-Life to talk with anyone there yet?”
“No, we tried as private investigators, but they turned us down cold. If Shepherd approves it, we could go in as federal agents, but I suspect they’ll hide behind their lawyers and insist we have a subpoena or court order of some sort to even talk to anyone there. Then we’ll have to guess if who they give us access to is really anyone Nick or Nicole worked with directly, which is what we want. And as far as what Nick was working on, I’m sure they’ll cry trade secrets to deny us the inquiry.”
“That’s frustrating,” she said.
“Detective Davis didn’t have much more success, even with his badge.”
“I’m sorry I had no names of their coworkers to share with you or the police. Nick, of course, was very tight-lipped about anything work-related, and Nicole worked quite independently. She didn’t come out and say it, but I got the impression the marketing department had become a competitive environment, so she had no real friends in her department. They weren’t a team. Well, they weren’t since my mom died, anyway,” she said.
“What do you mean? What did your mom have to do with it?”
“My mom was one of the founders of the company.”
Tessman was shocked to hear this.
Why didn’t they know before now?
“I don’t recall seeing her name in any of the company documents we looked at.”
“She went by her maiden name at work, Fuller, Dr. Madeline Fuller,” Becca said.
Tessman had recalled seeing her name.
It just hadn’t dawned on any of them that her date of death lined up with Becca and Nicole’s parent’s deaths.
“Does Davis know your mother had worked there?”
Becca shrugged.
“I don’t know if it ever came up. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” Tessman said.
He pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped out a text to both Brielle and Jackson, informing them of this revelation and asking Brielle to look into her mother.
“What exactly did she do there? Was she an MD or a PHD?”
“Actually both. She was an MD specializing in cancer treatment, which led her to cancer research. She lamented that the treatments were killing as many patients as the disease. She believed there had to be a better treatment, and she was also interested in preventive measures and was looking for more natural, healthier alternatives to the harsh chemicals. Well-Life Pharmaceuticals was founded with grants and private investments with both aspects in mind, better, less caustic treatments and a mission to discover preventive formulas for those most at risk of developing terminal diseases, not limited to cancers.”
Tessman’s thoughts were wildly all over the place with this conversation.
“And what exactly was her role?”
“Head of research,” Becca said.
“She had oversight over all the chemists in the entire company. If she was still alive, she’d know exactly what Nick had been working on.”
“When your mom died last year in that plane crash, who took her place at work?”
“I don’t know,” Becca said.
“It wasn’t Nick, I know that. He went for the position but didn’t get it. And he was not happy about that. From what Nicole said, he should have gotten it. He would have been Mom’s pick to succeed her and not just because he was her son-in-law. Mom always said that Nick shared her moral compass regarding research. She said he had the same low tolerance for risk that she did.”
“Becca, this could be important. Can you write down all of this information and anything else you can think of that is related to Well-Life? Anything and everything about your mom and Nick, past things they worked on that you may know of. I mean, after a drug is out on the market, certainly they’d be able to talk about it.”
“Yes, though the number of drugs my mom worked on over the years is in the hundreds.”
“Concentrate on the last few years for them both,” he said.
“Sure. I can type something up after I take a shower. I still want to just stand under hot water for at least a half hour,” she said with a small grin.
“But I am a bit revived, so sleep can wait until I get you some notes.”
“Have them ready for our meeting with Shepherd in the morning,” he said.
“Did you want more?” He pointed to her empty plate and bowl.
He’d eaten all the food he’d had on his plate as well.
“No, thank you. I’m full,” she said.
“You were right. I was hungry, no matter what happened tonight.” She paused and gazed at him with appreciation and admiration.
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?” he asked.
“Do the job you do and not be jaded, disgusted by people’s actions, or suspicious of everyone and everything.”
“Who says I’m not?” he posed with a grin.
She shook her head. “No, you’re not. You’re compassionate, kind, and you’re even keeled. Doesn’t anything get to you? You were fired at tonight. That man tried to kill you.”
“Tried being the operative word. Which of us is lying in the hospital under arrest right now?”
“Even as a Marine, you had to see the bad in life. How do you deal with it?”
He shrugged.
“It might sound corny, but I believe good triumphs over evil in the end.”
“Well, I’m having a hard time believing that right now.”
“Do you believe whoever killed your sister’s family will be found and punished?”
“I hope they will be, but I have to admit that as each day passes, the odds of them being caught seem smaller. When the police closed the case, ruling that Nick had done it, I think my faith in justice died.”
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this. And I’m sure that once Davis looks at that full report that we did, he’ll come to the same conclusion and the case will be re-opened.”
“I hope you’re right, Carter,” she said.
“Come on, I’ll walk you up to the apartment. Shoot me a text when you wake up in the morning. It’s late and you deserve to not have to set an alarm.” He stood and took hold of her backpack and laptop bag.
They walked back to the elevator.
He pressed nine. “My office is on seven. I’ll be there all night.”
“I’m sorry if you can’t go home because I’m staying here.”
“I sleep on the couch in my office more often than not when I’m in town. It’s quite comfortable,” he said.
“We all have one in our offices, as many of us end up sleeping here for a variety of reasons.” He wouldn’t tell her some of the God-awful places he’d slept during his time in the Corps.
Nor would he tell her that the guy shooting at him this evening was nothing compared to some of the intense firefights he’d been in where he’d swear all hell was raining down on him and his Marine brothers.
No, she didn’t need to hear about any of that after her horrible night.