“Meaning?”
She sat back in her chair and sighed. “I’m sick inside, Darren. It eats at me. I don’t sleep, I subsist on coffee and carbs. The fact that we lost three people is killing me. But I have to keep treading water, conserving energy, knowing that in a few hours, or a few days, or a few weeks, I’ll have to strike off and swim my way to the shore, dragging their bodies with me, hoping we don’t all drown.”
Fletcher looked at her, really looked. Past the artfully applied makeup and the styled hair to the dark circles under her eyes, the small worry wrinkle between her eyebrows. He suddenly found himself wanting to smooth the troubled look away with a few gentle strokes of a finger, and turned away to gaze out the window. They had no view up here, but the city still shimmered beneath him, the warm haze of summer descending. There would be rain tonight, washing clean the sins of the great city.
Bianco got up and came around the desk, set a hand on his arm.
“Darren, this is going to work. I can feel it. We just need to keep treading water a little longer, and we’ll catch a great wave.”
Inez knocked on her boss’s door. Fletcher could see the excitement bubbling off her.
“Ma’am? I’m sorry to bother you, but we have something you need to look at.”
*
Fletcher drove back to Falls Church with some interesting information under his belt.
The skies were gray and low, threatening. Fletcher didn’t care. It was good to get out of the confines of the JTTF, out from under Bianco’s eye. He still thought they were playing with fire, announcing the culprit had been caught when they weren’t one-hundred percent that he was solely responsible, but it wouldn’t be his ass in a sling should the story blow up in their faces.
Instead, he needed to find out more about Marc Conlon, in light of the fact that his computer files showed the mind of a very disturbed young man.
Very disturbed.
The kind of disturbed the JTTF could hang their hat on. The Moroccan may have been publicly trying to blow up the Capitol, but it seemed Marc Conlon could very easily be the accomplice they were looking for instead of an innocent victim.
The Conlons’ house had double doors on the front, a regular wood door behind a glass storm door. The wooden door stood open, allowing easy access for multitudes of people who were coming to pay their respects to Mrs. Conlon and her son.
Fletcher knocked on the glass, then pulled the door open. There were noises coming from the back of the house, a television, most likely. He called out, but no one answered. He tried again, and this time, there was a thin, reedy voice that answered, “In the back.”
Lucy Conlon was a mouse of a woman, small eyes and twitching nose and graying hair cut in an unflattering bob. There was none of her in her son outside of the small stature—he was dark where she was light, gregarious where she was shy, outspoken where she was strangled. She was curled on the sofa facing the television, which was running some sort of infomercial. Maddening if you were in a normal frame of mind, blank distraction if you weren’t.
She turned her head back to the screen when she saw him. “You must be the detective who called. Sit down if you like. What’s wrong with Marc’s computer?”
Fletcher had called before he drove out, just as a courtesy, so she wouldn’t be too blindsided. He may have understated his reason for calling.
He sat in the chair across from her, set the laptop on the table between them.
“Mrs. Conlon, I’m afraid I have some more bad news.”
Chapter 36
Falls Church, Virginia
Detective Darren Fletcher
Fletcher was astonished. Lucy Conlon may have been a mouse, but she was finding her inner reserves right now. She leaned forward with her finger in his face, every inch of her body shaking in anger.
“I will not repeat myself again. My son was not a terrorist. If you say that he was, I will sue you and everyone you’re associated with. He’s never had any contact with that man who was arrested.”
Fletcher ran his palm across his forehead. They’d been at it hammer and tongs for nearly twenty minutes now, and he was getting tired of the battle.
“Ma’am, no one is saying he was a terrorist. But your son’s computer contains some rather disturbing information. You can’t deny he was working on some sort of manifesto. It’s all right here.” Fletcher tapped the lid of the laptop.
“I told you. It’s not a manifesto, it’s a research paper. He was studying their lifestyle. He wanted to be an anthropologist. That Ledbetter woman got him all turned-on with her book, and he struck out to repeat her findings. He was starting his master’s degree work early. They let them do that now, work on credit toward a master’s while they are doing undergrad. That’s all this is.”