Secure Location

chapter Eleven

Cruz had no choice but to take Jana with them. He and Meg hurried down the hotel hallway, the little girl running to keep pace with them. She chattered, about dinner, about the day, misjudging their anxiety for excitement.

For her, it was just one more adventure.

For Cruz, it was just one more punch in the gut.

When they got to Meg’s office, he stepped out in front, blocking their view. One glance told him that that the outer area, Charlotte’s domain, was untouched. Sanjoi had his butt perched on the desk. He frowned at Cruz and nodded in Meg’s direction.

“It’s a real mess in there,” he said.

Cruz looked through the connecting door. He could see the backs of two uniformed officers. They were standing in front of the desk. Between their shoulders, he got a glimpse of Detective Myers’s face. His eyes were focused down. Cruz took a step forward, the man looked up and Cruz could see a mix of frustration and anger on the detective’s face.

He turned to check Jana. Meg had grabbed a stack of yellow legal pads, some red pens and settled the little girl on the leather couch. “Can you please watch her?” she asked Sanjoi.

“Sure. I got one her age at home.”

Cruz stepped aside, letting Meg go first. It was her office, after all. But at the last second, he grabbed her hand and hung on. Her fingers were cold.

“Meg. Detective Montoya.” Detective Myers greeted them.

It was a repeat of her apartment, sans food. The glass on all the pictures had been broken, books had been shoved off shelves, and the walls and curtains sprayed with paint. Her desk had held up, even though it appeared, based on the dents and nicks in the wood, likely caused by a hammer or a similar tool, that the intruder had tried valiantly to break open the locked drawers.

Everything that had been on the desk was now on the floor. Cruz couldn’t focus on that, however. He was too busy looking at the desk. He’d been prepared. After all, they’d been told there was blood. But he hadn’t been prepared for the extent. The entire surface of the large desk was covered. A thick mat that had dried, in rough waves and ridges.

The intruder had taken his hand in a circular motion, like he was waxing a car.

“Whose blood is that?” Meg asked, her voice subdued.

Myers shook his head. “Not even sure it’s human,” he added.

Cruz could feel Meg’s grip loosen and he wondered if she was going to faint. “You’ve seen enough,” he said. “Go sit with Jana.”

She shook her head. “I left here at shortly after five, just a little over two hours ago. There are cameras in the hallway. He made a mistake. This time we should be able to identify him.”

“Your security department has already pulled the tape.” Myers walked over to the television and built-in DVD player that hung on Meg’s wall. He pressed a button.

The good news was that the camera had been working. The clarity was actually pretty good, certainly better than the grainy image that some cameras captured. The bad news was that the guy had been smart.

He’d worn a jogging suit with the hood up. He’d had a towel draped around his neck and a backpack slung over one shoulder. Anybody walking past him wouldn’t have given him a second look—would have just assumed that he’d been working out in the hotel gym. He kept his head down the entire time, never giving the camera a look at his face.

The black-and-white tape supported the theory that today’s intruder was likely the same person who had pushed Meg toward the canal and then run up the stairs. He was the same height, weight and moved with the same fluid grace.

He opened the outer office door with a key.

When Cruz saw that, he spun around to face Sanjoi who was standing in the doorway. “How would he have gotten a key?”

The man shrugged his thin shoulders. “I don’t know. All the executives and their administrative assistants have a key to their own office suite and then there are a few master keys that can unlock any door. But we keep them on a tight string. None of our keys have come up missing lately.”

“That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have been copied.”

The man shook his head. “They’re all clearly marked as a Do Not Duplicate key.”

With the right amount of money, that wouldn’t have been too big a problem to get around. And Tom Looney in Maintenance and Troy Blakely in Security would probably have both had access to master keys. He doubted somebody from Accounts Payable would have had that same access but Mason Hawkins had something better perhaps—the Charlotte connection.

“You have your key?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay. We need to ask Charlotte that same question. What’s her address?”

“She lives with her mother. She’s a lovely lady. I don’t want her getting upset.”

He cocked his head.

“Oh, fine.” She grabbed a sheet of paper off Charlotte’s desk and scribbled something down. “Can you not tell her that I know about her and Hawkins? At least until I decide what I should do?”

“I’ll do my best.” He flipped a button and watched the tape again. When the intruder came out, the camera got a good view of the backpack. Cruz assumed that’s where he’d been carrying the blood. It was hard to tell if it looked lighter.

It looked...new. Yes, definitely new.

Cruz studied the intruder. In fact, everything the man had on looked new. His white athletic shoes didn’t have a mark on them. The dark jogging suit wasn’t faded or stretched out.

Cruz drummed his nails on the desk. It was a long shot but he didn’t have much else. “Play that part again,” he said.

Detective Myers hit Rewind and when they got to the part where the backpack was visible, Cruz motioned for him to pause the tape. There was a logo on the bag. “I need this frame blown up,” he said.

Detective Myers stepped forward. He was stroking his chin, looking thoughtful. “We identify the brand, find out where it’s sold locally, and then see if we can trace the purchase.”

Cruz nodded, grateful that Myers was tracking with him. But when Meg stepped forward, a puzzled look on her face, he knew she wasn’t.

“It’s a combination of old-fashioned feet-on-the-street,” he explained, “and using available technology. This guy’s shoes, jogging suit and backpack all look new. So, maybe he bought them at the same time. If it was recent enough, maybe Detective Myers and his team can jog some store clerk’s memories. If that doesn’t work, technology may be our friend. Almost everybody captures their sales records electronically now. The store should be able to tell us if they sold shoes, a jogging suit and this brand of backpack in one transaction. There will be a time stamp on the transaction. So, maybe we can get a better photo of him at the store. Or maybe we get even luckier and we can match the transaction code up with credit card activity. Then we have an address.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Meg said faintly.

Myers shook his head. “Nothing is ever easy. But Cruz is right. We may get lucky, and given that we don’t have much else, I’ll take luck.”

Meg heard a noise. She turned and saw Jana at the door. Before she could react, Cruz had moved. He scooped up the little girl and walked back into the reception area. Meg followed him and saw that Sanjoi was on the phone. He looked up, shrugged and mouthed, “Sorry.”

“Hey, don’t you have some macaroni and cheese calling your name?” Cruz asked the little girl.

She shook her head. “Macaroni and cheese doesn’t talk,” she said.

“I know...I meant... Never mind,” Cruz said. He tickled the little girl’s ribs and she giggled. He glanced back at Meg. “Let’s call it a night. Myers and his team will let us know if they find anything.” Once they were through the door, he moved close. “Does it make you nervous that in-house security couldn’t even contain a four-year-old?”

She smiled, grateful that she still could. He hadn’t even needed to tickle her ribs.

Jana poked her head over Cruz’s shoulder and looked at Meg. “What happened to your office?” Jana asked.

“It got messed up,” Meg said.

“Why?”

Because someone hates me. “I’m not sure, Jana.”

“Do you have to clean it up? I always have to clean up my mess. Mommy says.”

Cruz turned his head. “I doubt that you’ll be able to work in there tomorrow. Myers won’t be done with the scene.”

Jana twisted in Cruz’s arms. “Tomorrow Uncle Cruz and I are going to Six Flags and ride the roller coaster. Can Meg come, too, Uncle Cruz? Please?”

“Meg may have other plans,” he said very carefully.

Yes. She definitely should come up with some plans. But right now her head was empty of everything but the absolute horror of seeing her desk covered in dried blood. She wanted to forget it all. “I’ve never been to Six Flags,” she said.

Cruz’s eyes lit up. “There’s a first time for everything.”

Jana seemed to catch the subtle tension that was flowing between the two adults. Her head swiveled from one to the other. “Pretty please,” she said, to no one in particular.

Cruz stopped walking, forcing Meg to also stop. “Someone is intent upon creating havoc in my life,” she said. “I don’t want Jana to be touched by that. The two of you should go.”

Cruz considered her protest. “Don’t tell anybody where we’re going. Don’t tell Slater, Charlotte or anybody else who might be curious. There’s no way anybody will know where we’ll be.”

A whole day without worry over what some crazy person might do next. It sounded like heaven.

“He or she might follow us,” Meg said.

Cruz shook his head. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Meg chewed on the corner of her lip. “Okay. I’ll go.”

* * *

CRUZ GOT UP EARLY, checked on both Jana and Meg, who were still sleeping, made sure the bolt lock was secure behind him and left the hotel. Fifteen minutes later, he was waiting at the corner of Charlotte’s street, headed toward her house, when she pulled up to the four-way stop. She was alone. He remembered Meg’s comment that she didn’t want Charlotte’s mother to be upset. Maybe the conversation should occur here.

He stepped out of the car and waved her down. She didn’t wave back but she didn’t take off in her car. He approached the car and she rolled down her window.

“Detective,” she said, looking in her rearview mirror.

There was nobody coming. He didn’t care. If someone happened by, they could just go around. “Morning, Charlotte,” he said.

“This is a little surprising,” she said, irritation evident in her voice.

“Where you headed?” he asked.

She tilted her chin down. “Not that it’s any business of yours but I go to a yoga class on Sunday mornings.”

He’d never been to a yoga class but something didn’t seem right. She was in full makeup and had on a nice shirt and pants. “Yeah, well, I have a couple questions for you,” he said. “About your relationship with Mason Hawkins.”

Her upper lip twitched. Once, then again. “He worked in accounting. There were times when he’d need to consult with me on an invoice. Look, I don’t want to be late.”

It was time to cut to the chase. “I saw the two of you yesterday, on the street.”

The way her face colored, he suspected that what he’d seen might have been the more platonic part of the day. He let her wonder.

“I don’t understand what business it is of yours,” she said, obviously deciding the best defense was a whiny offense.

“He’s on a short list of people who might have a grudge against Meg. Definitely my business.”

She shook her head. “I almost took him off the list before I gave it to Meg but I couldn’t take the chance that she’d remember his departure. He isn’t behind any of Meg’s problems. He’s moved on.”

The man was in his boxers in the middle of the afternoon. “Right. How long have the two of you had a thing?”

She shrugged. “We started going out a couple months before he was terminated. So I guess almost a year.” She pulled her lip and got lipstick on her front teeth. “Does Meg know about you being here?”

“No,” he lied. “She’d be pretty surprised, right?”

“I imagine. He wanted to keep it quiet. He didn’t like people knowing his business. He was always asking me if anybody was talking about him.”

Hawkins had been using her, maybe trying to keep one step ahead of anybody who was interested in looking at the financials that didn’t quite add up. For the first time, Cruz felt almost sorry for her. But he still had an uneasy feeling that there was something off here. He decided to take a chance.

“I suppose Hawkins is an okay guy,” he said, “of course, he’s no Scott Slater.”

She narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t as if I’d have much of a chance there,” she said. “Especially considering that your wife is ahead of me in line.”

Now the claws were coming out. And he felt the pain of the verbal scratch. Was Meg in line? Were the two women competing for Slater’s attention?

If they were, he didn’t think Meg realized it. She seemed genuinely fond of Charlotte.

“If I find out that Hawkins had anything to do with any of this, or that you knew about it, I won’t hesitate to bring you both down,” Cruz said.

“Take your best shot, Detective.”