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Chapter 8
Adam
The lacy underwearin my pocket answered the question.
She hadn’t displayed the Benson cowardice I’d expected. This girl had spunk.
After a quick glance each direction, I didn’t see anyone tailing us, but I took her hand just in case. “Tell me about your job.”
“Nothing much to tell. I’m an auditor in OIG, Office of the Inspector General.”
“Basically the same as Melinda Brooks?”
Her smile deadened. “Yeah. She worked in our department.”
I squeezed her hand. “Sorry to bring her up.”
She nodded. “I get it. It’s just hard every time I hear her name. I’d rather not remember what she must have gone through.”
I stopped us and turned her toward me. “Just remember, this is all about catching the guy so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
She sucked in a breath. “Ask away then.”
I started us walking toward the car. “Did her job and yours overlap in any specific area?”
“No.”
“Does your job give you special access to anything worth stealing?”
“No. I don’t handle any accounts that have money in them. I don’t handle any of the exhibits. Paper pushing is my stock in trade. All I do is make sure things tally up. It’s mostly spreadsheet work—checking the wording of contracts, stuff like that.”
“But you would be in a position to let somebody get away with stealing something, right?”
“On paper, I guess, but it’s not like I have the keys to anything of value. And, the system is designed to catch that. We rotate areas of audit so a different set of eyes is looking at things every so often.
I punched the button for the crosswalk. “A lot of money must flow through there.”
“Our budget is about a billion a year, but three quarters of it is salaries, and a lot of the rest goes into building upgrades and maintenance.”
“Do you have access to buildings other than yours?”
“Of course, but it’s not like I can walk out with anything. We don’t have a mint with money lying around. I mean, we have the Hope Diamond on display in Natural History. But it’s in a case no one person can open, and there are always guards around. Lots of people have access to the buildings.”
I was out of questions for the moment. Her answers didn’t provide anything that stood out. Her mention of the Hope Diamond was a thought, but how would an auditor help someone carry off a heist like that?
The killer’s note was clearly a test to see if Kelly would cooperate. But what did he need her to help with? Nothing was making any sense yet. With two bodies in the ground, the only thing clear was he was a sick son of a bitch.
“Isn’t that where we parked?” she asked as we walked past and kept going south.
“Our date isn’t over yet.”
She leaned into me. “Really?”
“I hope those are good walking shoes. They say the Washington Monument is pretty at night.”
“I can handle that.”
“Good. We need to get our history straight.”
