9 hours left…
12:29 p.m.
Margaret and I stepped to a corner of the room, and she hardly waited until we were alone before ripping into me. “The next time you go above my head to Director Rodale…” Her words scorched the air between us, but she paused mid-threat, and I took advantage of it. “I didn’t go above your head, Margaret. I went to talk with Rodale about something else, and he asked me to work the case.”
“Mmm-hmm.” It was not her way of agreeing with me.
“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” I said. “Let’s just focus on catching these guys. We can argue about all this later.”
A moment passed. I had the sense she was trying to slice me in half with her eyes. “I have a question for you,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She leaned close and spoke in a tight, whispery voice, “When you were meeting with Director Rodale, did you get any indication that he was being unduly influenced by Congressman Fischer?”
Her question came out of nowhere. The answer was yes, I had gotten that impression, but it didn’t seem appropriate to say so. “Why would you ask me that, Margaret?”
She did not reply, seemed to be deep in thought.
“Does this have to do with Project Rukh?” I asked. “The research of Dr. Libet?”
Her gaze narrowed almost imperceptibly. “What do you know about that?” I’d posted the information from Rodale and Fischer on the online case files this morning, but I realized she might not have had a chance to review it yet.
“I know it’s being utilized by the Gunderson Foundation, and I know Fischer supports their work and doesn’t want word about his involvement to leak out.”
“No,” she mumbled. “He doesn’t.”
“What’s going on here, Margaret?”
“Did you find any information about abortion?”
“Abortion? No, I…” That was even more out of left field. “What does that have to do with any of this?”
“The right to life,” she said enigmatically.
“What?”
“That’s what Vice President Fischer was going to speak on six years ago when he was shot at.” She seemed to have disappeared into her own private world. “The changing views about the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that you cannot be deprived of life and liberty without due process.”
“Changing views?”
“When does life begin? At birth? At conception? How do you define liberty?”
I was getting more and more lost here. “How is all of that connected to what’s going on here this week?”
She shook her head. And when she spoke, she didn’t answer my question. “There are some things I need to check into.” Before I could get a word in, she added sharply, “If you have a problem with me, you talk to me. Not Rodale.”
“If I have a problem with you, I’ll make a point to let you know. Now tell me what-”
But, abruptly and without any further explanation, she excused herself and walked away.
All right. That was odd.
And a little unsettling.
After she was gone, Lien-hua approached me. “What was that all about?”
“Good question.” I shook my head. “She started off by getting on my case, but when I mentioned Project Rukh, her whole attitude, her entire demeanor, changed.”
“In what way?”
“She seemed uneasy.”
No, she seemed scared.
Silence passed between us, then Lien-hua softly stated the obvious, but for some reason it felt reassuring to have it out in the open: “This case goes a lot deeper than just these four homicides.”
Twana Summie, the college student.
Mollie Fischer, the congressman’s daughter.
Rusty Mahan, the boyfriend.
Juarez Hernandez, the gas station attendant.
“Yes, it does,” I said. “And Margaret knows something she’s not sharing with the rest of the class.”
What is obvious is not always what is true.
I gazed around the room. “Lien-hua, what are you going to work on right now?”
“Clearly, the killers had some grounds for choosing to use the same two Lincoln Towers rooms used by Hadron Brady. I think the key to solving this case will be zeroing in on the killers’-you’re not going to like this-”
Motives, I thought.
“Reasons,” I said.
A half smile. “Close enough. I’m looking into that. And there’s one other thing: the lack of DNA and prints at each of the scenes, it really troubles me. All of these crimes? No physical evidence?”
“Hmm.” I considered that. “The dog didn’t bark.”
“What?”
“Sherlock Holmes. It’s… well, the idea is to avoid looking at what did happen and focus on what didn’t happen that should have-and they should have left DNA.”
“Yes.”
“So by not leaving any, the killers have revealed something significant about themselves: they know how to avoid leaving even the most minute physical evidence at a crime scene.”
“Someone in law enforcement?” she said softly, repeating her observation from the briefing.
“Or the military.” I showed her the six names I’d pulled up during the briefing.
“Great minds.” She jotted down the names. “What about you?”
“I’m going to review that video of Rusty Mahan’s death,” I said. “And then I think I’ll spend a little time watching the news.”
The baby kicked. For the first time ever, she felt the child inside of her kick. “I’m alive! Don’t forget about me! Let me live! Let me live!” The struggle to survive. Always. Always. To live. “Two for the price of one,” her ex-lover had said just before rolling her into a shallow grave on top of a rotting corpse. Her baby kicked again. “I’m sorry I wasn’t stronger,” her father had written the night he gave up on life. The night he let death win. She heard a voice, nearly audible, “Don’t let it win! Don’t let it win!” And as she felt the tiny life inside of her move again, despite her raw exhaustion, despite her broken hope, she promised her child that she would be stronger, that she would be strong enough to survive. And she began to rage against her bonds.