Eight hours of fruitless searching later, Windermere was forced to conclude that either Roy O’Connell was a very good liar or he really did have nothing to hide.
She’d managed to talk her way into a glorified broom closet down the hall from the Criminal Investigative Division at the FBI’s West L.A. offices, had commandeered a couple of Bureau techs to comb through O’Connell’s hard drives, and in the meantime had plugged away at a fossilized computer and a labyrinthine phone system, looking for someone or something that would point the finger at Benjamin Arnaud’s killer.
MacLean hung around until early evening, talking her through his own investigative process, pointing her toward questions he’d been unable to answer the first time around. For all of his Hollywood pretense, Windermere decided, the detective was a pretty good cop. Windermere wasn’t finding many holes as she reviewed his work, and after Roy O’Connell’s records came back clean, the FBI agent was forced to conclude that she didn’t have the slightest clue who’d paid for Benjamin Arnaud’s murder. Killswitch, in this case, had been remarkably fastidious.
How many others? Windermere thought. How many more murders has Killswitch committed, murders we just don’t know about because the guy’s too goddamn good?
MacLean begged off around the time the sun finally set. He’d made a play at her, had run one hand through his perfect hair and fixed her with a movie star smile. “Feel like a drink, Agent Windermere? Sometimes it takes a bit of social lubrication to make the pieces fall into place.”
Horrible line notwithstanding, Windermere had been tempted. MacLean was a decent-looking guy, and after that debacle with Stevens, she could use some distraction. In the end, though, she couldn’t do it. She shook MacLean’s hand and told him she’d probably see him tomorrow, watched him walk off and then settled back into her work.
Now, with darkness settled in outside, she sat back from her ancient computer and surveyed the tiny workspace. My own office. Hardly all it’s cracked up to be.
She thought about Stevens and wondered if he and Mathers were making any progress. Wished she hadn’t bolted on Stevens so quickly. She wondered what he’d thought when he found Mathers waiting for him in the hotel lobby that morning. Whether he’d been surprised or upset. If he’d missed her.
Knock it off, dummy. Who cares if he missed you?
Windermere stared out of her tiny office to the dark sky in the windows beyond. Thought about Stevens some more, and then pushed the BCA agent from her mind. Turned back to her computer and brought up a gossip website, figuring maybe a spurned movie star would dish on Roy O’Connell.
She waded through tripe for an hour, got nothing but paparazzi pictures and pregnancy rumors. Felt her eyelids getting heavy and stood and walked out to search for the coffee machine. Then she felt her phone buzzing. Stevens’s number.
She answered. “Stevens?”
“Mathers.” A pause. “I borrowed his phone.”
Windermere swallowed. “Oh,” she said. “Okay, Mathers. What’s up?”
“Doing the New York thing.” Mathers sounded tired, but cheerful. “Anyway, we figured we should tell you: We got ourselves a guy here. Says he paid Killswitch to murder Maria Nadeau.”