“Who says they kept the front door open?” Lucy doesn’t believe it and as I watch her I’m reminded of what it used to be like when she did this for a living.
When she was with the FBI and later with ATF she was so amazing they got rid of her. Maybe it’s in the Scarpetta DNA that we can’t work for anyone. We’re Lone Rangers and have to be in charge and walk right into trouble.
“I was told it could be an explanation,” Marino says. “A ranch hand I talked to said he’s seen it like that when it’s decent weather and a lot of people are in and out.”
“They’re lying,” Lucy says. “They know who it is.”
“It’s a good thing you got here. Now I can go home and forget about it.”
“The four partners are out of town so who was around to be in and out?” Lucy asks. “And it wasn’t toasty warm this morning even with the sun out.”
“There’s a back door and a basement door, both of them locked and dead-bolted. This is the way he came in, just like you are,” Marino says. “Maybe he had access because his fingerprint is scanned into the lock and he got in that way. In other words, it’s someone they knew.”
“That would be good if we have his fingerprint. You’re right,” Lucy says. “You can go home and forget about it.”
Marino tries not to smile. He works so hard to look severe he looks ridiculous.
“As security minded as they seem to be it’s hard for me to believe they’d leave the front doors open and unlocked,” I agree with Lucy.
“No way,” she says. “Have you checked what was picked up by the cameras?”
“Hell no. I’m stupid,” Marino says.
The open room has four offices in a row that are horseshoe-shaped consoles with built-in desks and drawers.
Each work area has a multilined phone and several video displays as if one is supposed to imagine financial experts constantly monitoring stock markets and investment accounts. I don’t notice a scrap of paper, not a single pencil or pen or hint that whoever works here has hobbies or family. The appearance is of a business that’s transparent, with partners engaged in open communication and camaraderie, yet there’s an empty, fake feeling as if I’m walking into a design showroom or a movie set. I don’t sense that anybody lived here even before people were dead.
On the far right side is a floating staircase with cables and plate-steel treads, the wall next to it old brick hung with modern art prints and across from it is a wall of light ash cabinetry. It’s a masculine space lacking warmth or creativity and at least four thousand square feet, I estimate. It adjoins a room that I can’t see into but I hear voices through the open door, a steel door with no window that’s been propped open with a magnetic stop. The two Concord detectives are inside what must be another office, the CEO’s private suite on the left wing of the building where Lombardi and his assistant are dead.
In the front office, at the back of it, is an open kitchen with exotic deep red wooden cabinetry, what looks like the Bois de Rose used to make musical instruments. From where I stand I can see the blood-streaked dark trousers, the white pockets turned inside out, and the bloody sneakers of the victim who remains unidentified. Her coagulating blood is spread over the wide-plank flooring behind a dramatic sculpture in zebrawood folded around a corner of a whitewashed wall to the left of the granite counter that blocks most of my view. I ask Marino about the pockets.
“Did the police go into them looking for identification?” I want to know.
“They were already inside out. Remember, he took their wallets, IDs, cash.”
“Cleaned out the cash and whatever else he wanted and probably threw the wallets into the pond on his way out of here.” Lucy starts walking around. “A perfect place to dump stuff, across from the barn, you’d go right past it if you’re heading into the woods on foot, getting the hell out of here.”
I scan work areas with their ergonomic chairs, all exactly arranged with no sign of violence, and again I’m struck by the vacant feeling. During office hours on a Wednesday morning and only three people were inside except for their killer.
“The DVR’s gone,” Marino then tells Lucy — reluctantly, it seems, as if he hates to admit she’s right about something.
“Check off a second point for unpremeditated,” she replies.
“You’d have to know where to look and what for.” Marino hunches a shoulder, wiping his sweaty face on his shirt. He tends to overheat anyway and now his blood pressure is up because he’s a cop again who smokes again.
“How hard would that be?” Lucy asks.
We’re having this discussion in the entryway near the officer at his laser-mapping station, where black hard cases are open on the floor. A yellow power cord connected to a charging station is plugged into a wall, and the officer and his scanner are in sleep mode, waiting. He doesn’t look at us. He doesn’t want to appear he’s listening to people who aren’t talking to him.
“There’s a closet in the other room with all the components for surround sound, the server and wireless networks, their phone system and security stuff.” Marino walks over to my scene case near the stairs and picks it up.
“The server.” Lucy’s like a snake spying a lizard and she strikes. “Double S’s server. Now we’re talking.”
She walks over to the desks against a wall, four of them in a row. Nudging a chair with her knees, she rolls it out of the way and picks up the phone.
“But you’d have to know what a DVR is.” Marino hands my field case to me. “Most people wouldn’t think of it unless they’re familiar with security cameras.”
“It’s not rocket science and it may be someone who’s been here before. We need to get the server to my lab.” Lucy looks at the display on the desk phone and pushes a key. “Concord PD can receipt it here and I can take it in.”
She walks to each desk and does the same thing, checking the phones. Then she returns to the first one and picks it up again.
“You might want to write this down,” she says to Marino. “None of these phones have made any outgoing calls since last Friday as if nobody’s been working in the front office. With the exception of this one.” She indicates the phone she’s holding and she gives him a number. “Lambant and Associates,” she reads the display.
“What?” Marino walks over and looks. “Well, big surprise. So I’m right. Haley Swanson was here and he called his office.”
“Someone did,” Lucy says. “Someone made an outgoing call from here to that number at nine fifty-six this morning and was on the phone for twenty-seven minutes. If the guy running through the park was spotted around eleven then whoever was on the phone here probably hung up right about the time everybody got killed.”
“We know who that guy is, the one in the hoodie with Marilyn Monroe on it and now we know he was in here using the phone.” Marino has it all figured out again. “Haley Swanson.” He’s latched on to that conviction all over again. “Lambant’s the crisis management firm where Gail Shipton’s gender-bender friend works,” Marino says and Lucy just looks at him.
“One might conclude they’ve been handling Double S’s PR,” I suggest. “Possibly Swanson is who Lombardi picked up at the train station this morning.”
“Exactly,” Marino says.
“I guess we know how Gail met him, at any rate, both of them in thick with Double S,” Lucy says with nothing in her tone. “Did you confirm who she was with at the Psi last night?”
“She was there talking to someone who wasn’t a regular. It could have been Swanson and that would make sense since he’s the one who reported her missing. It was really crowded and Gail was jammed at the bar with a lot of other people. That’s what witnesses have said and it’s as good as we’re going to get.”