CHAPTER ELEVEN
She turned at the sound of them and looked at their coffees and then at their faces. "FBI?" she said.
"That obvious?" Vic said.
"You called yesterday, right?" She pushed the door open and held it for them. "And we usually don’t see anyone come through the doors until ten or so. So yeah…you sort of stick out. I'm Debbie. Come on in. Ray's already here, actually. He gets in early most days."
She led them through a front reception area that smelled of metal and industrial solvent and into a short hallway that opened onto a large workshop floor where two technicians were already moving around a worktable covered in glass tubing.
She knocked on the door of a glass-walled office along the far wall and leaned her head in.
"Ray? These are the agents who called yesterday."
The owner of Lone Star Neon was a compact man in his early sixties.
He had the deeply tanned forearms of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors.
He waved them into chairs across from his desk and leaned back in his own with the unhurried ease of someone who had been dealing with unusual requests for a long time and had stopped being thrown by them.
Miles introduced himself and Vic and shook Ray's hand across the desk.
"We're investigating two deaths here in Austin," Miles said.
"Both victims were electrocuted. In both cases, the source was a modified neon sign transformer, and in both cases, the signs were installed by your company.
Your name came up on stickers on the transformer housings and in financial records at one of the scenes. "
Ray was quiet for a moment as he looked back and forth between them. "Both scenes," he said.
"Both," Miles confirmed. "We're not suggesting any connection to your company beyond the installation work at this point. But in a case like this we have to follow every thread, regardless of how far it's likely to lead."
"Yeah. I get that," Ray said, setting his coffee down. "What do you need from me?"
"Employee records, primarily,” Vic said. “Current and former…anyone with access to your client sites or your transformer inventory over the past year or two."
"I can pull that together this morning." He looked at them steadily and then, nearly in a sad voice, he added: "I run a small operation.
I only have eight people on payroll; plus, a handful of contractors we use for larger installations.
I know everybody who works here. That's not me being cagey, that's just the size of the shop. "
"We appreciate that," Vic said. "The records would still be helpful."
Ray nodded and typed something on his desktop. "I'll have Debbie compile it and email it to you before noon." He looked up to them expectantly and Miles was pretty sure the man would indeed do whatever he could to help. "Is there anything else? You could have asked for records over the phone."
"There is something else," Miles said. "Given that we're talking about a level of technical sophistication that goes beyond basic sign installation, we'd like your read on whether anyone in your orbit has the knowledge base to do what was done to these transformers.
The modifications were specific. They included disconnected and internally capped ground wires, adjusted winding connections to push output voltage toward the upper end of the range without tripping a breaker.
Someone who understood transformer circuit design at a real level. "
Ray's expression shifted, not with surprise exactly but with something that looked like recognition of a question he had already been turning over since they sat down.
"Most of my people couldn't do that," he said.
"They're installers, not engineers. They know how to mount a unit and wire it to spec, and they know how to swap one out when it fails.
But what you're describing is a different level.
You'd need to know the internal architecture of the unit, how the windings interact, where the grounding circuit connects and what happens to current distribution when you remove it.
I can think of maybe three or four people I've employed over the years who had that depth of knowledge.
Electricians with formal training, not just sign guys. "
"Are any of them still with you?" Vic asked.
"Two of them, yes." He folded his hands on the desk. "The third one I let go about six months ago. His name is Marcus Rivera. He was an electrical contractor who came to us with good credentials, and for about the first year he was excellent. Then things started going sideways."
"In what way?" Miles asked.
"Safety violations, mostly to start. Little things at first that I chalked up to shortcuts, but then more serious stuff.
He left a secondary terminal exposed on a job over on South Lamar because he was rushing, and if a client had reached behind the sign housing, she would have gotten a nasty shock.
I wrote him up for it." Ray shifted in his chair and his expression changed a bit.
"Then there was an incident on a commercial installation downtown where he got into a shouting match with the building's facilities manager over something minor, a scheduling conflict.
The facilities manager called me directly afterward and said he didn't want Rivera back on the property.
And about two weeks before I let him go, there was a job at a restaurant on Congress where he and the client very nearly came to blows.
Rivera had been redoing a transformer mount, the client came in before he was done and said something Rivera didn't like, and it escalated fast. One of my other guys had to physically step between them. "
The office was quiet for a moment. Through the glass wall, the workshop floor continued its ordinary activity.
"His behavior got erratic," he continued.
"He started coming in with this intensity about him that was hard to describe.
He'd always been serious, but it became something else.
He'd have long conversations with himself on job sites, according to a couple of the other guys.
He stopped socializing with the crew entirely.
I held on longer than I should have because he was genuinely skilled, but after the restaurant thing I didn't have a choice. "
"Do you have a current address for him?" Vic asked.
"I'll have Debbie include it with the records. I have whatever was in his personnel file, though if he's moved since then I wouldn't know." He looked between them, looking genuinely concerned for the first time. "Is he a serious suspect?"
"He's someone we’d need to speak with," Miles said.
“Well, just let me know if you need anything else.”
“We absolutely will,” Vic said.
They thanked Ray and, on the way out, Miles gave Debbie his business card so she'd have his information when everything they were compiling could be sent.
Outside, the morning was already warm, the sun above the chain-link fence at a low angle that put a hard glare on the windshields in the lot.
Miles pulled out his phone as they reached the car and texted Sarah Kim the name Marcus Rivera with a brief note asking her to run it.
He put the phone in his jacket pocket and got in.
Vic got in on the passenger side and pulled her door shut. She looked straight ahead through the windshield for a moment.
"Can I ask you something?" she said.
"Sure."
"Kim. Is there something going on there?"
Miles went quiet, mainly because the question was so out of the blue. Given what they’d been looking into this morning, a friendly interrogation about Sarah Kim was the last thing he’d expected. But he was sort of glad it had come up. He was surprised to find that he was excited to talk about it.
"We've been spending a lot of time together," he said. "And yes, I'm interested. I think. In that direction, anyway." He looked at the steering wheel. "But I can't do that to Elena. It doesn't feel right."
Vic turned toward him slightly. "Miles, it wouldn't necessarily be—"
His phone rang, and he was glad for that, too.
He looked at the screen. It was Sarah; less than five minutes had passed since he'd sent the text. He put it on speaker and answered.
"That was fast," he said.
"Well, Rivera has a history." Her voice was clear and businesslike on the speaker.
"He has three formal complaints filed against him with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation over a four-year period.
Two were from clients citing aggressive and threatening behavior during jobs, one of which mentions a verbal altercation that the client described as frightening.
The third complaint was from a co-worker at a different company, before Lone Star, who said Rivera confronted him in a parking lot after a workplace dispute and wouldn't leave when asked.
That one went to a police report." She paused briefly, as if making sure to give them enough time to follow along.
"There's also a restraining order filed against him two years ago by a former girlfriend. It was active for eight months."
"Do you have a current address?" Miles asked.
"East Austin. I'm texting it to you now."
"Awesome. Thanks as always, Sarah."
“Yeah, thanks,” Vic piped in, giving Miles a small grin as she did so.
"There's more in the file when you want it,” Sarah said. “That's just the highlights. You’ll have everything in your inbox in about five minutes.”
Miles ended the call and only a few seconds later, the address came through on his phone. Vic scanned it from her seat and quickly pulled up the map on her own phone. “And with that,” she said, still with the traces of a smile on her face, “we have our first lead.”