Meg didn’t have any yet.
“We appreciate that,” Matt said. “Now let me ask you this. Lara didn’t say anything to you that she didn’t say to Congressman Walker, did she?”
Ellery opened his mouth. For a moment, Meg was certain he was going to say something revealing, something unexpected, but he was looking toward the office.
She swung around; the door was just closing.
“She wasn’t happy that the congressman wanted to compromise on the health bill and not remain true to his campaign promises. She really was...disillusioned. That happens around here. But you can’t win. If you stick to your guns, you create a stalemate, nothing gets done and people are angry. If you compromise, then the idealists are angry. It’s not easy,” Ellery said.
“No, I understand that. Did she say anything to you about home, or going anywhere, at any time?” Matt asked.
Ellery turned to Meg then. “Agent Murray, are you the Meg Murray who’s Lara’s good friend?”
Lara had evidently talked about her. It seemed pointless to lie.
But she didn’t have to answer, because Matt did.
“Yes, Agent Murray and Lara were good friends,” he said.
Ellery Manheim smiled awkwardly. “Then you know that she loved Richmond, where she was born, and the place she officially called home. But she talked to me about the past, and said she loved hanging around in Harpers Ferry with you and your grandfather the most. Lara said you and she loved to play at the national park, and that you crawled up to the heights and hung around when the ghost tours were going on. You reenacted John Brown’s raid and you actually had a job with the parks department for a while, right?”
Meg knew how to keep a straight face. But she still hadn’t managed to control her coloring and felt a flush rise to her face, along with the urge to cry.
Yes. Lara had talked about her to this man.
“That night she told us she’d had it with politics. She was going home,” Ellery said. “Ian tried to convince her to stay. I did, too. But she kept insisting that she was going home. When she left, Ian and Joe and Nathan and I kept up the conversation. Then, after she’d been gone ten or fifteen minutes, Ian suddenly stood up and said, ‘Lord, it’s almost three in the morning!’”
“What about Lara?” Meg asked. “So no one went looking for her, to make sure she got home okay?”
“Honestly, I figured she was fine, that she’d managed to hail a cab or, with the adrenaline she had going, she might even have walked to her place. You know where she lives, right?”
“Of course,” Meg said.
“And we’ve been there already,” Matt added.
“You found nothing?” Ellery Manheim asked.
Matt Bosworth smiled. “We didn’t find Lara,” he said. “Thanks for your help. And I’m sure we’ll be talking again soon.”
He headed out to the car. Meg followed.
She was tall, and walked with long strides, but she had to hurry to keep up.
Matt was silent as they got into the car.
“Walker does seem to be a real family man,” Meg said. “When she went to work for him, she thought she’d finally met a decent politician, a man who meant to do good things.”
“What’s the impression you got of him?” Matt asked, backing out of their parking spot and then moving forward onto the street.
“His wife is as loyal as they come, the grandkids obviously adore him. I also think he cared about Lara. He was certainly ready and anxious to see us,” Meg said.
“Yes. But he could’ve seen us at his office. Seeing us at his home seemed...staged,” Matt argued. “I’ll admit the kids were a nice touch.” He sounded a little—just a little—sardonic.
“You—you think Ian Walker could have...could have killed Meg?”
“I don’t know yet. One thing I sure as hell do think is that man’s hiding something. What it is, we have yet to discover.”
*
Lara had screamed. She’d shouted until she had no voice.
She’d explored her world of darkness. Dirt, stone, strange metal blades. She was in a space of about ten feet by fifteen, with a giant stone in the middle.
She didn’t dare think about the creepy crawly things in this small dark space.
She’d found one plastic gallon jug filled with liquid. Despite her thirst, she hadn’t tried the liquid at first. It had to be a trick. She was supposed to drink and find out that it was lighter fluid or drain cleaner or something equally toxic.
Then her thirst had become overwhelming, and she’d known she’d rather die fast, even in agony, than suffer that torture any longer.
She’d still had the sense to drop a little of the liquid on her fingers. She’d smelled it, felt it—and then she’d tasted it. She’d meant to go slow; she couldn’t. She had drunk too quickly and then gagged and nearly vomited, except that her stomach was empty and she’d retched with nothing but the water coming out.
It was water, just water. She learned to take one tiny sip at a time.