Baldwin laughed. “When’s the last time you ate?”
She thought back. Xander supplied the answer. “You had that bag of cashews we grabbed from a Shell station on the drive back up.”
“You both must be starving. I’ll have something brought in. We don’t need you passing out during the interviews.”
Chapter
33
WHILE THEY WAITED for the food, Baldwin called June Davidson using the speakerphone in the center of the conference table. It looked like a three-sided gray flying saucer. They all stared at the device, waiting. The Lynchburg detective answered after five rings, sounding tired and more than a little annoyed.
“Yeah, this is Davidson.”
“Detective, Supervisory Special Agent John Baldwin, FBI. I have Dr. Owens and Sergeant Whitfield with me. We’re calling for an update on Mrs. Scarron, and anything else you have on the attack.”
Davidson sounded weary. “When did the FBI get involved? What happened to Detective Fletcher?”
Baldwin deflected him nicely. “Detective Fletcher is working on the task force searching for Rachel Stevens. How is Mrs. Scarron?”
“Not good. I’m here at the hospital now. She’s not waking up anytime soon. They’ve put her in an induced coma because of some edema on her brain. She was oxygen deprived for a while before we got there. She’d started to come to, but the swelling began and the docs thought it was safer to knock her out and put in a stent. The only reason she’s alive at all is Dr. Owens’s quick work. That was pretty impressive, Doc. Sorry you had to rush off like that.”
“Duty called,” she said lightly. “Did you find anything on the cameras at her house?”
“We did. I have a decent still shot of the guy who broke in and tried to kill her. I can email it. He’s a big son of a gun, looks taller than me, buzzed light-colored hair. We don’t have an ID, but he was definitely in the house a half an hour before we got there.”
“I’ll have the photo run through our facial recognition system, see if we can’t find a match,” Baldwin said.
“Sounds good. So why’s the FBI involved with this?”
Sam filled him in as simply as she could, running him through everything that had happened over the past few hours, then broke the news about Savage’s background and alias.
“Seriously? He’s ex-military, ex-FBI? I wonder if Mac Picker was telling us the truth about the name Timothy Savage not being in their client databases. Maybe he did it under the name Doug Matcliff, and only Benedict knew. I’ll have to go over there and have a talk with Mac—it’ll have to be in the morning, though. Everyone’s buttoned up tight for the night here.”
“That’s fine. We’ll touch base about it then. June, we need you to start from scratch with Matcliff, and his son. Do we have an idea of who this kid’s mother is?” Sam asked.
“No. It was common knowledge she was dead. I never saw the need to investigate it further. I will now.”
“Great. We haven’t found Henry Matcliff, so we’re up in the air until we do. Look into their background in Lynchburg. Give us some information so we have an idea of what’s been going on down there. Everything and anything you can muster up, property records, physicians, dental work, schooling. You said you thought Henry attended Randolph College—can we get his transcripts?”
“Sure, I’ll get on it. I’ll have it all for you as soon as I can get it in the morning. By the way, you’d asked about Frederick McDonald. I ran the name through the system, and there is a Frederick McDonald here in town. He’s clean, has a couple of minor traffic violations, owns a Mexican food joint out on Highway 29. Nothing strange about him. I gave him a call, told him what’s going on. He’s never heard of Savage, doesn’t have any idea why he’d be on the list. I offered him a protective detail until this gets resolved, but he said no. I’ll follow up on the Matcliff angle. Listen, I gotta run, Ellie’s coming out of surgery. Have a good night.”
He hung up and Xander shook his head. “We’ll still want to go down there. I’m not one hundred percent convinced he’s telling us everything.”
Sam touched his arm. “I think he is, Xander. He’s just caught in the middle of a very strange case and doesn’t know who to trust. Sort of like us.”
A young agent knocked on the door with their food, three bags of Chinese takeout. The smells were heavenly. Sam settled into some fried rice, the hole in her stomach closing with each bite. But while the hunger was being appeased, she couldn’t shake the feeling there was something more going on here. Something much bigger.
She waited for the guys to get some food in them before she said, “Baldwin, speaking of people not telling us everything, are you being entirely forthcoming about the history of this case? I feel like we’re missing something.”