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“How are we going to prove every step I took over an entire weekend?”
“Lots of ways. You’re going to walk me through your weekend and tell me every detail from every hour that you can remember. I’ve got a laundry list of questions that will help jog your memory. Then, independently, I’m going to confirm what you tell me. And, Matthew, if you lie to me, I’ll figure it out because I’m going to talk with every person you can remember seeing, from friends to classmates to professors. I’m going to go through your phone and highlight every call you made, every text you sent, and every social media footprint you made. I’ll pull cell tower logs to confirm the pings your phone registered and track your movement, and I’ll confirm everything using your cell phone’s GPS locator to map out every step you took. I’ll pull surveillance video from every establishment you were at and match them to receipts. Credit cards, debit cards, and digital payment transactions will confirm your whereabouts.”
“Holy shit.”
Alex pouted her lower lip. “It’s hard to navigate through this world without leaving a trail. And I’m going to use this complete invasion of our privacy to prove you had nothing to do with Laura McAllister going missing. So, are you ready to prove to me that the last time you saw Laura was Friday morning, or would you like to amend that statement before we start?”
“No amending. The last time I saw her was Friday morning. Let’s start.”
CHAPTER 38
Washington, D.C. Friday, April 28, 2023 8:15 a.m.
THE DEN WAS LOCATED ON THE NINTH FLOOR OF THE ONE FRANKLIN Square building, a floor below the main offices of Lancaster & Jordan. The den was reserved for the investigators, the paralegals, and the new law grads who spent ten hours a day with their noses buried in law books or pressed against computer monitors scrolling through thousands of archived records doing research for the real attorneys upstairs. The partners at Lancaster & Jordan dictated protocol on the tenth floor, but the investigators ran things on the ninth. The perimeter of the den held modest offices that paled in comparison to the massive corner units upstairs, but they still had four walls and a door and carried clout. The longest tenured investigators claimed them, and with eight years under her belt, Alex was one of them.
She sat at her desk while the laser printer chugged away. She’d had a busy and productive two days since she sat down with Matthew Claymore. Now she was printing her efforts for her meeting with Jacqueline Jordan. Alex had worked enough cases for Jacqueline to know exactly what the woman wanted and exactly how she wanted it. And she knew that her research on this particular case needed to be perfect. It often looked like Jacqueline had a family bias when assigning investigators to the cases she handled, most of the time appointing her brother to the high-profile ones. But the real reason Jacqueline appointed Buck to important cases was because Buck was the best investigator Lancaster & Jordan employed—a point Alex would never argue. But the fact that Jacqueline had selected Alex for the Matthew Claymore case—one that had the potential to become newsworthy—was testimony to the fact that even though Buck Jordan held the top spot among the firm’s investigators, Alex was a close second.
She heard a knock on her door and looked up to see Buck poking his head into her office.
“Hey, kiddo,” Buck said. “Here before nine. Must mean you’re working a case for the boss lady.”
Alex smiled. “Gotta work Jacqueline’s hours when you’re on one of her cases.”
“Just playing dumb. We all know you snagged the Claymore case. Good for you. Anything juicy?”
Buck’s smile pushed his drooping jowls upward, causing his eyes to squint nearly closed. Almost sixty, Buck Jordan wore the years of his profession on his face. Long, chain-smoking stakeouts and alcohol-fueled all-nighters had taken their toll. Alex knew Buck well and over the years had even tried to tame his drinking with subtle encouragements aimed at pointing out that functioning alcoholics are still alcoholics.
“Working on it,” Alex said.
“Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks, Buck.”
When the printer finally quieted down, Alex gathered her research, ran the pages through a hole-punch machine, bound everything in an L&J binder, and headed up to the tenth floor. She walked to the corner office, held up the binder for Jacqueline’s assistant to see—an unspoken password that meant the boss was waiting for something important—and received a nod to proceed. Alex knocked on Jacqueline’s door at the same time she opened it.
“Hey, Jacqueline, I’ve got the early research on Matthew Claymore.”
Emblematic of a big-city attorney, Jacqueline Jordan always dressed impeccably. That morning she wore smart business attire made up of a white silk blouse under a gray blazer that matched her knee-length skirt. The woman looked perpetually fresh and sharp. Notorious around the firm for being the first attorney in her office, usually arriving before 7:00 a.m., she rarely left before 7:00 p.m. And there was no fluff baked into the woman’s schedule. She was the founding partner of one of the biggest criminal defense firms on the East Coast and her services were in high demand. Married to a prominent anesthesiologist, Jacqueline Jordan was half of a powerful DC couple, and, Alex knew from conversations with Garrett, the woman had money to burn. She worked long hours not for any need of monetary gain, but because it was in her blood.
She was somewhere in her fifties, the only evidence of midlife being the cheaters that balanced at the end of her nose when she worked. Unlike her older brother, whose dogged career in the back alleys of legal investigation had creased Buck’s face with deep furrows, Jacqueline Jordan was wrinkle-free—the result, Alex assumed, of monthly Botox sessions. Jacqueline looked up from the brief she was reading and peered at Alex over her glasses.
“And? How do we look?”
“First pass, the kid looks clean,” Alex said, taking a seat in one of the chairs in front of Jacqueline’s desk. Alex handed over the binder that held her work.
“I can definitively place him with Laura McAllister Friday morning at his apartment, confirmed by Matthew’s roommate, who saw Laura leave, and by his cell phone’s GPS. Two professors confirm seeing Laura in their classrooms Friday morning and afternoon, so we have proof Laura was alive and well after the last time Matthew saw her. Laura was last seen by her roommate Friday evening, reportedly on her way to the school of journalism’s recording studio. No one’s seen her since. She was reported missing Sunday afternoon by her parents, and police knocked on Matthew’s door at one-twelve Monday afternoon, confirmed by a police report I obtained.
“I was able to create a detailed timeline of Matthew’s movements from the time Laura left his apartment Friday morning to when police spoke with him Monday afternoon, all confirmed with credit card usage, ATM camera, social media posts, cell phone pings, and the GPS tracker on his phone. Everything. It’s pretty tight other than Matthew’s sleeping hours, which technically cannot be vouched for. An eager prosecutor or rogue detective could use those hours of anonymity to claim that they were when Matthew was on the prowl.”
“Any way around those hours when Matthew was asleep?”
“Not really. I spoke with his roommate and he confirms that he believes Matthew was asleep in his room. No eyewitness proof, though. Unfortunately, those are blank hours in Matthew’s timeline that we can’t account for.”
“How about a Fitbit or smart watch?”
Alex shook her head. “Already asked. He doesn’t wear one. His cell phone puts him at his apartment during those hours, but it could be argued that he left his phone at his apartment to do his dirty work.”
“Okay, we’ll have to deal with the dead hours later, if the subject comes up. Any red flags?”
