CHAPTER NINETEEN
David’s heart pounded as he showed his ID to the desk officer at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Manassas, twenty miles west of Fairfax. He kept his expression nonchalant and gave the officer what he hoped was a bored smile when she glanced up at him.
“And you’re from the D.C. office?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why are you looking at a case in Virginia. A closed case?”
The lie rolled off his tongue. “We’re training our MEs next week, and I needed a case of vehicular trauma. I chose a closed case for obvious reasons and this one because it’s a little more complex than your usual broken neck or blunt force trauma.”
The officer nodded, “All right. Fair enough. I’ll issue you a visitor’s pass. You know how to get to Records?”
“No, not yet.” He flashed her the aw, shucks grin. “First time here.”
“Take the elevator to the third floor. It’s the sixth door on the right.”
She stamped the card, folded it in half and clipped it to a lanyard, then handed ID and lanyard to David. He fitted the lanyard bearing the visitor’s pass for Dr. Gabriel Allen around his neck, gave the officer another smile, then headed for the elevator.
His heart continued to thud, and his hands trembled as he pressed the button. He really needed to get that under control. If that officer wasn’t too bored to care about anything, she would have noticed how nervous he was and wondered about it.
The elevator chimed, and David started forward. He squeaked and leaped back when a man in a business suit stepped out of the elevator flanked by two doctors in white lab coats. All three looked at him with vague amusement as they walked past.
David released a ragged breath, stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor. The doors slid shut, and the elevator rose.
“Oh God,” he whispered, wiping a shaking hand across his throat. “God, this sucks.”
He took a deep breath, and when the door opened, he was wearing his aw, shucks smile again. He passed three more MEs on his way to Records. All three spared him a quarter second glance before forgetting entirely about him.
He entered the Records office and found himself in a library-esque study room with fifteen different computer terminals lined along three walls. Eight of the computers were occupied, which wasn’t encouraging at all, but he expected something like this.
He sat down at the nearest terminal, took a deep breath, and cracked his knuckles. The man sitting next to him gave him a dry look, and he reddened and pressed the enter key.
Username:
Password:
He stared at the screen for a long moment. Son of a bitch.
He hadn’t thought about a password. Neither had Jeff or Greg, who were waiting in the parking lot.
They’d been focused on getting him an ID that wouldn’t trip alarms the instant it was scanned.
Neither of them had considered that he might have to have actual credentials to access the records they needed.
Damn it.
He considered his options. One was to ask others here for help, but assuming they would even bother, they would probably also become suspicious if he needed to borrow their username and password for the computers.
The other option was to give up and come back later after he got a username and password.
The problem with that was that he had no idea how to do that.
He assumed it wasn’t as simple as just creating one and hoping the system didn’t flag it.
He didn’t know the first thing about computers beyond how to type and browse the internet.
He had no idea what went into hacking into a security system.
The third option was… Well, that was it. Give up or don’t give up.
“Forget your password?”
David jumped and squeaked at the voice again, earning a chuckle from the ME who’d glared at him for cracking his knuckles a moment ago.
“Yeah, I had to call my supervisor to get mine.”
“Oh. Yeah, I might do that.”
“Here,” the man said. He closed out his terminal and typed info into David’s. “You can use mine. Just don’t look up any porn, okay? I don’t want that coming back to me.”
David assumed that was a joke, but the man didn’t laugh, so he only smiled and said, “Thank you.”
“Yep.”
The man got up and pulled a baseball cap down over his head. David frowned when he saw that. Something about the maneuver was familiar. He couldn’t place it, and the guy didn’t stick around long enough to ask why David was staring, so he put it from his mind and got to work.
He opened the records search app and typed in Richard Fenniman’s name. Sure enough, it popped up, third in a list of five Richard Fenniman’s who’d kicked the bucket in the State of Virginia within the past two years.
David pondered that fact for a moment. He had no idea that Fenniman was such a popular last name.
You’re stalling. Get moving. In and out, just like you discussed.
He blinked out of his funk and downloaded the report he needed.
Greg and Jeff had impressed upon him the need to stay in that place as little as humanly possible.
The longer he was there, the more likely someone would wonder who he was, why he was there, and who had given him permission to be there.
When the report was downloaded, he ejected the thumb drive and closed the computer. His heart still thudded, and he resisted the urge to jog out of the building, but it was elation that filled him now, not fear.
He had done it! He had sneaked into a government office undercover and stolen evidence without being caught!
He felt like a real FBI agent! He wasn’t sure if Faith had ever stolen information from a government office, but she’d shared stories about times she’d bent some of the rules of evidence-gathering to find what she needed to bring a killer to justice.
He wondered if she’d be proud of him. She’d be scared, of course, but would she be proud too?
“Excuse me.”
The voice brought him up short. He kept moving, hoping it wasn’t meant for him.
“Excuse me! Dr. Allen!”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
He turned toward the voice, hoping he was wearing his aw, shucks grin and not his, damn it, you caught me grin. The voice belonged to the desk officer who had let him in earlier. She was frowning, and her eyes were narrowed in suspicion.
She stopped in front of him, arms crossed. “You never gave us your order number.”
He stared blankly at her.
“The Washington Medical Examiner’s office never provided our office with the request for the files on Richard Fenniman’s death. I need to put that number into the system in order to authorize release of that data.” Her eyes narrowed further. “Normally that’s done before they send you over here.”
“Oh. Um… I’m so sorry.” He thought quickly. “You know, that’s probably why my password didn’t work.”
She blinked. “Oh yeah?”
“No. Yeah, that’s why I came back down so quickly.
I tried my username and password, but it didn’t go through.
I even tried the forgot password thing, and it said my username wasn’t recognized.
I tried calling my boss, but he’s off for the night.
I was going to call him in the morning and get it worked out. I’ll ask him about the request then.”
The officer was still frowning at him, but she no longer looked suspicious, just annoyed. “Make sure you do that. I’ll get my ass handed to me on a platter if I let someone look at our records without an authorized request.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I’ll make…”
But she was already gone, stalking back to her desk and muttering to herself. David turned around and made his way out of the building and back to the Suburban. When Jeff pulled the SUV out of the lot, he whistled. “Oh, boy. That was close.”
“Yeah?” Greg asked. “What happened?”
He related his story about the near miss with the request, expecting the two agents to react in consternation and shock. Instead, they grinned knowingly at each other and chuckled.
Heat climbed David’s cheeks. “What?”
“Nothing,” Greg said, stifling laughter. “You did good.”
David reddened further. “Was I worried for no reason?”
“No, it would have been bad if they figured out you weren’t supposed to be there,” Jeff said.
“It’s just funny that you thought your goose was cooked because the desk officer didn’t have a request for access.
Shit like that happens all the time, and they don’t even flag it.
She was probably just having a bad day and wanted to take it out on you. ”
David wasn’t sure that was the case and was even less sure what the joke was supposed to be. He guessed he would have to be an agent to understand. “Well, anyway, I got the record.”
He opened his laptop and plugged it in. Greg cursed and pulled up the privacy screen on the window next to David. “Jeff, get the other one, will you?”
Jeff did, cursing softly in exact mimicry of his partner. “Man, don’t look at stolen data with the windows open like that,” he scolded David.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Man’s worried about a secretary having a bad day, and he’s committing a felony in broad daylight in front of God and everybody,” Jeff muttered.
David’s cheeks heated again, and he shrunk down a little as he began reading the report.
After a few minutes, he sat bolt upright. After a few more minutes, he whispered, “Oh no. Oh, shit.”
“What?” Greg asked, instantly alert. “What is it?”
“It’s accurate,” David replied. “Damn it.”
Greg frowned. “What? Dude, you need to start making sense.”
David closed his laptop, tossed it on the seat next to him, and leaned back, rubbing his forehead.
“The report is accurate. The autopsy was thorough, and the evidence proves without a doubt that Richard Fenniman died as a result of his vehicle crashing into a guardrail on I-95, rolling over, and bursting into flames. The crash is believed—probably correctly—to have been brought on by Dr. Fenniman’s excessive consumption of alcohol that evening. ”
“They could have doctored it,” Jeff offered.
"Maybe, but even if that's true, there's no way to prove it.
And they had pictures too not just of the accident but also of his liver and kidneys.
He was definitely suffering from alcohol poisoning.
I had to learn how to tell because sometimes assholes make their dogs drink beer.
It's extremely unlikely that they managed to fake those physical symptoms and definitely impossible to prove it. "
The two agents shared a look. Greg put to words succinctly how David felt. “So we just wasted our time.”
“Yep,” David said.
“Ah.” Greg reached back and squeezed David’s shoulder. “That sucks man. I get it. But don’t be too down on yourself, okay? That’s how this game works. We follow leads, and they don’t work out. But eventually, we follow a lead, and it does work out. Keep working at it. We’ll figure it out.”
David managed a brief smile, but he wasn’t encouraged by Greg’s words.
Those dogs were still suffering, and everywhere David looked, he ran into a wall.
He felt like a rat in a maze while Colonel Chastain and Sergeant Whitaker watched and laughed as he ran in circles, never finding the exit because there was none.
They had blocked it without telling him and were now watching him exhaust himself to death.
Meanwhile Sierra and her comrades continued to suffer abuse at their hands.
If they were still alive at all.