Page 90 of I’ll Be Watching You

“What are you going to do?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Maybe I don’t want to tell you.”

Nate grinned at her and she ignored him as she pulled out her laptop and logged into the program she had running in the background of the VA network.

Chapter Thirty-One

Margo Angelhart

Nico didn’t like that Jack and I insisted on dropping him off at work and picking him up at the end of the day, and made him promise not to leave the security of the Maricopa County crime lab. Though sometimes Nico was tasked with going into the field to collect evidence at a crime scene, he was primarily an analyst.

We left him, and then headed to Christina Aberdeen’s sister’s house in Avondale, not far from where Jack’s son lived with his ex.

I first tried calling Teri Stockman, Peter Stockman’s ex-wife, in Maine. She didn’t answer. I left a message without any detail about why I wanted to talk.

“Have you talked to Austin?” I asked my brother. “Is he going stir-crazy?”

Jack laughed. “In Logan’s house? It’s a haven for young boys. Laura is making sure they’re doing their homework, but both Austin and Cody are good students and are staying on top of it. Logan has an arcade, huge consoles of every classic video game, not to mention every gaming system known to man, and a full theater. His pool is heated and he has an indoor half basketball court.”

I laughed. “So he’s having fun.”

“I wish I was,” Jack grumbled. “Laura is anxious about our investigation, but she’s doing a good job keeping the kids from worrying. I hope this doesn’t go on much longer, but I don’t know—I don’t feel like we’re that much further along in finding out what happened to Liz.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “We know that Jim Novak was at the medical center on Monday, and we know from Luisa that Novak’s records are missing. We also know that he remembers Liz. It’s all coming together.” But I understood his frustration. Things were still murky, and we didn’t have enough evidence to get Dad out of prison.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“We also know that Devin Klein was going to blow the whistle on falsified data in a drug trial—of a drug that will be going to market imminently. There’s no other reason we’ve found why he would be killed and Dad framed.”

“That’s the thing that’s bugging me,” Jack said as he merged onto I-10 heading west. “Why Dad? Why was he threatened and framed?”

“I was thinking about that,” I said. “I have a theory, and Dad can probably confirm it when we talk to him. Devin was talking to Dad about the trial, Dad hooked him up with Dr. Pierce. He didn’t know details, it’s not his area of expertise, but he knew enough that he may have been a threat when the detectives followed up with more questions. At a minimum, he might say, ‘Well, call Dr. Pierce, she knows more about what Devin was working on.’ Or he might tell them that Devin was preoccupied with the trial, and they’d follow up on that, find more information, seal his office and get the records that Georgia said disappeared sometime after the murder.”

“True,” Jack said. “Once law enforcement starts asking questions—maybe even getting the FBI involved—covering up the fraud would have been more difficult.”

“And even if they didn’t uncover the falsified data,” I said, “Phase 2, 3, and 4 may never have happened. It could have been enough controversy to shut the whole project down.”

Jack nodded. We were on the same page.

“My main sticking point,” I said, “is why did Dad go over to talk to Devin in person that night? Why not have Devin come to the house? Or meet at a bar? Or talk on the phone?”

“They were friends. If Devin asked, Dad would go.”

“Why would Devin need to see him that night? Right then? Why couldn’t it have waited until morning?”

“I see what you’re getting at, but I know Dad. If Devin said, ‘Coop, I need you to look at something, make sure I’m right about A, B, and C,’ Dad would go.”

“And just happen to arrive right after he was shot. A shot no one heard. Just like Liz Swanson.”

“Silencers aren’t silent, but they do suppress noise. I’ve never seen the ballistics report from the murder, and ballistics would be inconclusive about whether a silencer was in fact used,” Jack said. “It’s usually GSR and iron fragments for a close range suppressed shot that will tell you. Of course, some older suppressors or a homemade one might yield different information.”

“I wonder if Nico has ever looked,” I said.

“I think we can safely assume that a suppressor was used. The medical building was closed that time of night. The emergency room was open, but someone would need a card key to get into the medical building from the emergency wing.”