Detective Darren Fletcher
With Glenn Temple identified as the man who was passing himself off as his boss in the D.C. underground sex scene, Fletcher felt the edges of the case start to come together. He sent Inez off to do a complete and thorough background on Temple, but she was back a few minutes later with a printout.
“ViCAP results. Thought you’d want to see them.”
“Let me guess. We have matches.”
“Six of them. All from the tri-state area. It looks like whoever killed the girls in Indiana is killing here, too.”
Fletcher whistled.
“Still a very good setup to hang on the congressman. I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts the murders all coincide with times he’s in the city for session. Okay, Inez. Work quickly. We are going to have to find everything and anything on Glenn Temple. We’ll need DNA from him as well, so get creative. We don’t want to screw up, here. I need to brief Bianco, too, so I need details.”
“Do you really think that he would set up his oldest friend to take the fall for his crimes?”
Fletcher nodded. “Wait till you meet him. The man is cold as ice. Yes, I can totally see it. And what better way to clear yourself than hang the stink of suspicion on a public figure? Who has more to lose? If it is him, he probably planted the DNA—they got the sequence off a straw from a fast-food drink. That’s easily manipulated. Temple hasn’t returned my calls, so when you have everything, we’ll go at this from the other side. You can call the office and say it’s Gretchen Leighton for Mr. Temple. They had an intern on the phone last time I was there. They won’t know the difference.”
“And then?”
“We’re going to make every detail from our end seamless and airtight. Once we’re all set, I just want to establish his whereabouts, then we go in and grab him up. But we have to move quickly. The hookers aren’t exactly known for their discretion. Word will go around fast. So get going.”
Inez scooted away.
Fletcher chewed on a pencil, thinking. Could Temple be behind the Metro attack?
The answer came to him disturbingly quickly. Yes, of course he could.
The phone on his desk rang. He jumped; he’d never heard it before, and the ringer was set on ten. People half a world away had probably heard it. He hit the speaker.
“Yes?”
“Detective, a woman is here to see you. Her name is Loa Ledbetter.”
“I’ll be right there.” He hung up and looked over at Inez. “Conference room still free?”
“Should be. Bianco is caught at a meeting over at the FBI about the Moroccan. I hope she’s not in trouble.”
I hope she is.
“All right. I’m going to be in there. If the artist shows up with the Identi-Kit, let me know.”
“Yes, sir.”
He left her happily tapping away and went to meet Ledbetter’s daughter.
Time to get some damn answers.
*
“I just can’t believe she’s gone. When I found out, I thought it was some sort of bad joke.”
Loa Ledbetter was the spitting image of her mother in her photos from twenty years earlier. Fiery red hair barely tamed, milky skin, hazel eyes. She had an unaffected speech pattern, soft and sweet, with a touch of Southern, probably from the girls’ school she’d attended in rural Virginia, and hardly fit the bill as a scheming heir. She seemed rather calm, all things considered, but was certainly grieving—beneath her elegant makeup, Fletcher could see dark circles and puffy eyelids, a sure sign of extended crying.
Losing a parent is always hard. To have one murdered was worse, and to be estranged from them? Either you were a heartless wretch and couldn’t care less, or there was remorse, or regret, and maybe even some self-loathing driving your every waking moment. Ledbetter seemed to be suffering from all three.
Fletcher sat across from the girl and watched her carefully. Even the best investigator could be taken by a pretty face, but Ledbetter didn’t seem out to con him. She seemed genuinely upset, and willing to help. Well, he thought, let’s see just how willing she was.
“Ms. Ledbetter—”
“Loa, please.”
“Loa. What can you tell me about your mother’s life? She was a big traveler, wasn’t she?”
“She was. A different city every summer, and we’d park it in some weird hotel or silk-covered casbah or tent in the middle of the desert, and she’d spend all her time digging in the sand while I entertained myself. It was a hard way to grow up, but not too unpleasant. I saw a great many things, and experienced a great many cultures. But I’m a bit of a homebody. I avoid travel if I can. Anything more than a three-hour drive away gives me hives.”