Blood Trust (34 page)

McKinsey laughed and shook his head. “Jesus, give it a rest, would you?”

Beyond the high revolving doors was a massive space clad in marble with wood and brass accents. The ceiling rose to a height of a cathedral’s, and, at this late hour, there was a hush unnatural even for a bank. A bank of tellers’ stations lined the right wall; a phalanx of gleaming ATMs was to their left.

A young man bustled out from behind a waist-high wooden partition. He wore a wasp-waisted suit, a solid-color tie, and a tight smile. His gleaming hair had an old-fashioned part in it. He looked as if he’d just come from the barber’s.

He held out his hand, which was firm and dry. They introduced themselves and he led them back through the gate, past the cubicles where the investment and customer-relations officers normally plied their trade. Pausing at a door just long enough to punch in a six-digit code, he opened it and ushered them down a cool, low-lit hallway, its gleaming mahogany panels speaking of both money and discretion.

“Mr. Evrette is expecting you,” the flunky said unnecessarily.

At the end of the hallway was a wide wooden door upon which the flunky rapped his knuckles.

“Come,” a muffled voice said from within.

M. Bob Evrette was a hefty, florid-faced man in his midfifties, balding and running to fat, but there was no mistaking the youthful fire in his eyes.

“Come on in,” he said with a friendly wave as he stood up behind his desk. “No good will come of standing on ceremony with me.”

He had a good ol’ boy accent and an aw-shucks attitude that belied his business acumen. Naomi disliked him on sight. She distrusted friendliness before there was a reason for it. He bounced out from behind his desk and indicated a grouping of chairs near the window a stone’s throw from the Exxon Mobil Corporation offices.

“So,” he said, as they took their seats, “how can I be of service?”

Naomi looked at him with gimlet eyes. He reminded her of a department store Santa who got his secret jollies snuggling little kids on his lap.

There was a small silence. She became aware that McKinsey was watching her with the wariness of a hawk.

“We’re investigating a triple homicide,” she began.

“Excuse me, Agent Wilde, but I’m curious why the Secret Service—”

“It’s a matter of national security,” she said stiffly.

“Of course.” He nodded. “I understand.” His tone indicated that the matter was as clear as mud. He spread his hands. “Please continue.”

“One of the victims in this case is William Warren.”

An expression of sorrow dampened Evrette’s face. “One of my best analysts.” He shook his head. “Shocking, truly shocking. And, of course, sad. Incomprehensible.”

“We’re trying to make sense of it.” Naomi cleared her throat. “Toward that end, we’d like to take a look at Mr. Warren’s computer. Have the Metro police been here?”

“Not yet,” Evrette said. “But a Detective Heroe will be over first thing tomorrow morning. She said not to let anyone in Mr. Warren’s office.”

“We’ve taken over the case; Detective Heroe simply hasn’t gotten the memo yet,” McKinsey said.

Naomi added: “We’d also like to examine the files on the loans Billy Warren was working on.”

“Of course.” He rose and, returning to his desk, punched a button on his intercom. “We have visitors from the federal government. After they’re through in Mr. Warren’s office, I’ll bring them directly to you.”

He rubbed his hands together as he returned to where Naomi and McKinsey sat. Naomi watched him and, when she could, McKinsey, to see if there was any hint of a prior meeting or relationship, but neither seemed particularly interested in the other. Evrette seemed entirely focused on her.

“As you may or may not know,” he said, “we’re in the midst of being engulfed and devoured by InterPublic.”

He laughed good-naturedly, and again Naomi was reminded of that dirty-minded department store Santa.

“As part of the transition, InterPublic hired a forensic accounting team to examine our books for the past five years.” He waved them toward the door with a little puff of breath. “You wouldn’t be wrong in counting that a damned daunting job. In fact, that’s precisely what went through my mind. But then this gentleman showed up and started directing his team, and, let me tell you, he’s something of a genius.”

He led them down another corridor to an office appropriate in size and furnishings to a midlevel executive. Blinds were down over the window. Peeking through them, Naomi saw the window grid of the building across K Street.

“Okay,” she said.

Looking at Billy’s workspace, she said, “I think we’d better get Forensics over here.”

“Consider it done.” McKinsey drew out his cell phone and made a call. As he began to speak, he walked out of the room. A moment later, he returned. “All set.”

Naomi nodded. Snapping on latex gloves, she first went through all the desk drawers. Then she fired up the computer.

“Has anyone been in here since Billy’s death?”

“Not since I got the call from Detective Heroe.” Evrette shrugged. “Before that, I suppose the cleaning people the night he was … killed. If anyone else was, I’m afraid I can’t say.”

“Please find out who among the cleaning staff was in here,” she said, fingers flying over the keyboard. “I’d like to interview them.”

Evrette nodded. “Just give me a moment,” he said, and went out.

Out of the corner of her eye, Naomi saw McKinsey standing with his arms crossed. He seemed to want to look everywhere at once.

She spoke to him while she checked the folder tree of Billy’s hard drive. “Peter, are you nervous?”

“I told you I’d have your back.”

“You also told me not to come here. How well do you know Evrette?”

“I’ve never met him before today.”

She glanced up and sensed that he was telling the truth. “Did you tell anyone we were coming here?”

“No.”

For a long moment, they held each other’s gaze. Then Naomi nodded and went back to her work. When she found the folders she wanted, she went through the desk drawers until she found a package of blank DVDs. Placing one in the plastic tray, she copied all the folders and files that looked relevant.

“If there was anything untoward going on,” McKinsey said, “I very much doubt Warren would be stupid enough to keep the files on his hard drive.”

“Sadly, I agree.” She pulled out the loaded DVD and pocketed it. “But it would be foolish to assume anything.”

She methodically went through the drawers, looking for locked sections or false backs, but found nothing of interest. At that point, Evrette returned and handed her a slip of paper with the name, address, and contact number of the cleaning person who was on duty the night Billy was murdered. Naomi thanked him and pocketed the paper.

“Okay,” she said, standing up.

As she headed toward the bank of filing cabinets, Evrette said, “They’re all empty. The files were taken to the vault by the forensic accounting team.”

“Then lead the way,” she said. “But first I need to make a pit stop at the ladies’.”

“Certainly.” Evrette gave her directions.

She wanted to try one more time to speak to Jack. Failing that, she wanted to update him again. But once she got into a stall and rummaged around in her handbag for her cell, she recalled that it was still in its charger in the center console of her car. She’d run it down to zero. Cursing her own stupidity, she returned to Billy Warren’s office and Evrette led them down the hall.

“The forensic team insisted on working on-site. We chose the vault because it’s quiet and out of the way of both our staff and our clients,” Evrette explained as they proceeded down one hallway, then another.

The vault was at the end of a long corridor, the last third of which offered blank walls rather than the usual office doors. The huge round opening beckoned. With its massive hinges and seven-foot-thick hardened steel-and-titanium door opened inward, the entrance looked like a modern-day equivalent to Aladdin’s cave.

As they stepped inside, a cool breeze from the internal air venting system stroked their faces. A table and chairs had been set up in the middle of the vault, but at the moment only one man sat, poring over masses of files and folders.

As Evrette announced them, he put down his pen, stood up, and turned around to face them. A good-looking man in his late thirties, he was impeccably dressed in an expensive, European-cut suit of midnight blue silk, a starched white shirt, and a modish paisley tie. He had thick, dark hair left longer than most people in his trade. His eyes were hooded, dark, and intelligent. He smiled and Naomi felt a curious sensation along her skin when he approached, as if he were giving off some kind of powerful energy.

M. Bob Evrette made the introductions. “Agents Wilde and McKinsey, this is John Pawnhill, the head of the forensic accounting team InterPublic hired.”

*   *   *

“S
O WHAT
do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?” the man sitting next to Annika said. When she hesitated, he said hastily, “That’s all right. If you’d rather read, I understand completely.”

She laughed softly. “No, I was getting bored anyway.”

They were wearing their seat belts. The plane, slicing through the night on its way to Rome, had encountered a powerful storm, and they had experienced some unpleasant turbulence before the pilot had taken them up to 43,000 feet. Below them, vicious streaks of lightning flashed in the remote blackness of their time-annihilating flight.

“May I see what you’re reading?”

She handed him the book. He had the face of a Roman senator, aggressive without being arrogant. His tan almost camouflaged the pockmarks on his cheek. The backs of his hands were scarred; they were work hands, which she liked. His gray eyes scanned the book jacket.

“The Copenhagen Interpretation
:
the Orthodoxy of Quantum Mechanics, or The Wavefunction Collapse.”
He glanced at her as he handed back the book. “That’s quite a title. Are you a scientist?”

“A detective, of sorts,” she said with a mischievous smile. “A very
specific
sort. I’m looking for the Higgs boson.”

“The what?”

“A particle so small it’s virtually beyond human comprehension.” She waved a hand. “It’s complicated and, for a layperson, probably boring.”

“Not to me.” He settled in, apparently content to listen to her as long as she wanted to talk.

“I work for CERN at the LHC,” she said. “Also known as the Large Hadron Collider.”

He tapped a finger against his lip. “I’ve heard about … didn’t your team just break a record once held by Fermilabs?”

“That’s right.” She appeared delighted. “The LHC is in a massive tunnel on the border between France and Switzerland, in a space that’s the coldest in the known universe.”

In time, she could see him becoming infatuated. Not with her, precisely. He was in love with the lie she had spun, the image she had projected on the screen of his mind. It was an art, really, this ability to understand the power of lies, the way a lie—even a small one—had the power to bore its way through anyone’s defenses. Her genius was in making this lie, no matter how small, into a truth that someone could believe in, because believing was the same as falling in love. Someone in the throes of infatuation had no defenses.

This is what she had done with Jack because it was the only way she knew how to live life. But then somewhere in the midst of the Ukraine something had changed. That lie had become a bitter pill, poisoning their relationship. She began to hate herself, and then to hate him for believing her lie. She had wanted, more than anything, for him to pull aside the curtain of her lies, to reveal her as Dorothy revealed the Wizard of Oz.

It was only afterward that she understood why she had defied her grandfather and confessed to Jack. She wanted him to hate her, she wanted to push him as far away from her as possible, and then to see if he would come back. Because if he did she would know that for the first time in her life she had met a man for whom the lies didn’t matter. She would know that he loved her, not the persona she had presented.

The man in the seat beside her—Tim or Tom or Phil—was laughing at something she said. She could read his lust for her in every expression, every gesture he made. He was a wealthy businessman. He owned his own firm, which he was about to take public. The IPO would net him over a billion dollars. He was under the mistaken impression that she would be impressed, but her current persona had no interest in wealth or status. He readily admitted that he’d never met anyone like her.

“If you’ll excuse me.” She unbuckled her seat belt.

A tentative smile played across his lips. “Would you find it offensive if I accompanied you?”

As a gift, she presented him with her softest laugh. “Not at all. What a perfect gentleman you are.”

He unbuckled his seat belt and followed her up the aisle to the toilet. It was nearly 5
A.M.
Eastern Daylight Time and everyone in first class was either asleep or absorbed by the electronic flicker of their personal video screens. One of the attendants appeared from the galley and asked if they’d like some fresh-baked sugar cookies. They declined and she vanished the way she had come.