Best Laid Plans(95)
Lucy slipped on gloves and opened the desk drawers. “I think I found it.”
“That was fast.” Barry looked inside the bottom drawer. There were hanging files, all neatly labeled. The contents from one hanging file were missing. The identifying tab had been torn off.
The files on either side of the missing file were dated: April, June.
“This must have been what he was working on,” Lucy said. “And whatever he was doing in May, that’s now gone.”
She pulled the two files and glanced through them. Nothing jumped out at her. She was about to sit down and go through them more carefully when she heard Barry on his cell phone. “Juan, can you send Zach with an agent to Gary Ackerman’s studio? There’s potential evidence here, and we need someone with an analytical mind to weed through the irrelevant files to find the important items.”
When Barry was done, Lucy said, “We’re not doing this?”
“We have another appointment. I wasn’t sure what we would find here, and I didn’t want to send Zach on a wild-goose chase. Juan’s going to send Nate with him.” Zach Charles was an analyst, not a field agent, and therefore couldn’t work in the field without being accompanied by an agent. And in a case like this, an agent would be added protection.
Lucy glanced around before they left. She felt compassion for the veteran she’d never met. A good, honest life damaged by a reckless driver. Living with paranoia and fears he might not even understand. The brain was the most complex organ in the human body. Even neuroscientists knew less about the brain than what they suspected they could learn. But what was the trigger? What event or article or image had Gary Ackerman seeking out Harper Worthington?
Or was it the other way around?
Back in the car, she said to Barry, “What if Harper was the one who sought out Gary’s help? They went to school together, and Harper must have known Gary had volunteered for Travertine. It stands to reason he at least knew about his accident and Web site. Harper became suspicious about Adeline’s activities and went to the FBI. The FBI put him off because they didn’t want him trampling on their ongoing investigation. Harper then contacted Gary—maybe because of something he wrote?—and they put their resources together.”
“Zach and his people are going through each of Ackerman’s articles—if there’s something there, they’ll find it.”
“It might not be obvious.”
“They know how to do their job.”
Of course they did. Zach was exceptionally smart. His thought process was similar to Sean’s—they both saw not only the big picture, but how all the little pieces fit in. It’s why Zach made a good analyst, and Sean a good security expert.
“Where are we headed now?”
“James Everett.”
“Agent Dunbar isn’t going to like it.”
“I don’t care.”
This was a new side of Barry.
“Did something happen last night that I wasn’t involved with?”
“I don’t like bringing work home with me, Lucy, and yet I couldn’t get this case out of my head.” He sounded angry about it, too. “Everett and Adeline were partners. They split up when she ran for Congress, but remained friends. He’s feeding information to the FBI. Then two months ago he cuts all ties with Adeline and endorses her opponent. Why not last year when Dunbar first started this investigation? Or why not keep the fa?ade up, considering he could probably gather more information if he remained close to her? And Dunbar … his reaction was odd to me. I’ve been mulling it over and over in my head. Then I thought back to Elise Hansen.”
“The prostitute.”
“She claimed she was hired to take photos of Worthington, which she believed were to blackmail him. It has a ring of truth. Then why not Everett? He’s worth a small fortune. And the one thing that connects the two of them is Adeline.”
“So she has her husband killed and blackmails Everett … Why?”
“What if she knows about the FBI investigation?”
“Then Dunbar is at risk. We need to warn him.” That wouldn’t go over well.
“Maybe she doesn’t think it’s Dunbar. Maybe she doesn’t even think that it’s someone on staff—but that it was her husband. Or her former partner. So she has Worthington killed but sets it up to look like an accident or natural causes. It’s complex because in her head, she’d think that no one would look at her because she wouldn’t do something so outrageous that might embarrass her or jeopardize her campaign.” He paused, as if realizing how convoluted the reasoning was, but it still sounded plausible. “She then sends the hooker to Everett … to get pictures to blackmail him. Maybe he tipped her off that he was working with the feds when he cut ties with her. It made her suspicious. And maybe that’s what made Harper suspicious as well.”
It made sense, in a twisted way. “We need Elise’s statement. She said a man shot her—implied,” Lucy added. “If Adeline is behind this entire thing, she has someone working for her—someone we can cut a deal with.”
“This is where it gets tricky, Lucy. Elise is an unreliable witness. She’s already lied to us. Harper was dead before she left the motel room. She flirted with the taxi driver. She went to another client and had sex with him. She admitted to accepting a substantial amount of money to take dirty pictures of Worthington. And, even knowing that whoever hired her gave her a lethal drug and tried to kill her, she hasn’t given us a name. Plus, there’s nothing that connects Elise to Adeline.”