Eleri took a seat at the conference room table. This was worse than what they’d already suspected. The Miranda Industries offer was suspicious as hell, but this?
She would have put her hands flat on the surface but for the papers laid out everywhere. Though she couldn't tell exactly what the pattern was, she could see that one existed and didn't want to mess it up. Reaching out, she asked. “Can I read that?”
GJ held the paper by the corners as she handed it across the long conference table. “Sorry, I touched it before I realized what it was. We've been touching everything.” She motioned between herself and Noah Kimball.
It was Donovan who let it slide. “I can't imagine there's much fingerprint or DNA data left on any of this. So I guess it’s already gone and we can touch things as we need.”
Despite Donovan’s assessment, Eleri held the page by the corners. When she’d read it carefully, she didn’t find anything she hadn’t seen from across the room. It merely said, “If you don't stop, there will be consequences.”
“Kind of dull, as threats go,” Eleri offered up to the room. No one disagreed. She held it out as though one of them would take it from her or need to look closer. “Can we get any evidence from the paper? The ink?”
It was Noah who answered. “We can send it in for testing. But I think that looks like notebook paper. The loose-leaf kind you buy anywhere, really. And the ink looks like regular permanent marker. Again, there'll be no tracing that, even if we get a batch number. I'm sure it was distributed to forty thousand different stores all across the US.” He took the note from her and set it carefully aside. “But we can check. We might get lucky.”
“Handwriting?” Eleri grasped at straws, but even as she asked it, she thought about the letters. They were all capitals, mostly block-style. Analyzing it was likely pointless. “Never mind.”
She spoke the word just as Noah was opening his mouth. At least he held back the shut-down he probably had ready to tell her. Going for another tactic, Eleri tried again. “So, this was just tucked into the lab notebook, GJ?”
GJ nodded, not quite looking up, still flipping through pages. There were seven lab notebooks.
“Did Westerfield send you these?” Donovan asked, and Eleri understood the connection he’d made. Hannah had sent them in, and Westerfield had handed them off to GJ, but hadn’t told the rest of them what he’d done.
GJ nodded absently to the table, but when she looked up, she only asked, “Did Hannah Raisman provide anything to support or contradict any of this? It’s my understanding that she was the source for this material.”
“We saw most of these papers,” Donovan supplied. He explained Hannah's issues, how she’d gotten tired of photocopying once she had found the Miranda letters. He didn’t tell her that Westerfield hadn’t informed them of the notebooks’ existence. “I think it was the grief, and that she was stunned by the offer.”
Eleri piggybacked on that. She and Donovan had only gotten to rehash the interview a little while in the car. “We both agreed that Hannah’s reaction seemed genuine. She said she’d not seen the letters while Allison was still alive. She only found them while trying to cobble enough information together to convince Westerfield she had a case.”
“You saw these same letters?” GJ pointed to where she’d pulled out the Miranda Industries notices.
Eleri nodded. “We saw the originals.” She was turning to Donovan when she stopped cold. “Wait. We saw four. Right, Donovan?” When he frowned and nodded, she went on. “There are five here. Did Hannah pull one out? Lose one?”
“Clearly, she copied it,” Noah volunteered, popping into the conversation again. Eleri was getting the impression that he was hanging back until he had a better feel for the way they worked. She understood, but she wished he’d just dive in. At least he asked another question. “Was it an honest mistake, or something more?”
There were no answers for that, and Eleri could only tuck the thought away for later. Her brain didn’t want to let it go. Hannah was too smart to think she could hide something she’d already photocopied and sent into the FBI. Wasn’t she? But Eleri’s thoughts were quickly derailed by GJ and Noah.
“Look!”
“I found one.”
The words came simultaneously from the other agents. Both had returned to flipping through lab notebooks, simply trying to shake loose whatever might fall out. And both now held new papers toward Eleri and Donovan, who had hopped to their feet.
The four agents moved like a fluid around the table, coming together at one spot. Eleri tried to look over GJ’s shoulder, but even the younger woman was too tall for that. She inserted herself where she could see, letting Donovan hover easily in the back.
“What dates were they tucked into?” Donovan asked.
Looking up from where she was already making notes on exactly that, GJ replied. “The first one was from April. This one that I just found was from early May. What do you have?” She leaned toward Noah as all three strained to see his note.
“Three weeks ago?” he replied in a somber tone. “This one would have been sent just before Allison died.”
Eleri didn't say it—no one did—but they knew Allison must have received the message because she had tucked it into her lab notebook. “By how many days?” Eleri asked softly. “Does the lab notebook continue after that threat?”
Noah took a moment and then looked up. “She got this three days before she died.”
So the last threat—the one that Noah held—arrived just before Allison's fatal dive.
Did they all say the same thing? She hadn't looked. She'd only noted that each of the other agents held up a scrap of notebook paper with the same black sharpie and same block lettering.
Looking at the one Noah held, she read it carefully. But it had only two words: LAST CHANCE.
“Well, that's not suspicious at all,” Donovan snarked to the room at large.
Despite the seemingly accidental nature of Allison's death, there was now clear evidence that Hannah had been right. This was almost definitively a murder. And it was starting to look like it was a little bigger than just personal revenge.
“This one says ‘You've been warned,’” GJ read from her paper. She gingerly handed it off to Eleri and turned to make another note. She also pulled a sticky note and added a tab into the lab notebook where the threat had been found. Then, she recorded in her own notes dates that Allison appeared to have filed the threats, the current date—the date they’d found it—and more.
Eleri tried to wait patiently, but she wound up picking up all three notes and placing them side by side in the center of the conference table. It was the only place clear of paper, letters, contracts and notebooks.
So as not to disturb GJ, Eleri spoke softly to Donovan. “It’s the same paper. Same marker. Same handwriting. It looks like one source.”
Donovan nodded. “We should get at least one of them tested.”
“It wouldn't hurt.” Eleri thought of Westerfield possibly pushing back on the budget, given that they were testing for something they suspected would not play out at all. Eleri didn’t think they would find anything, either, but if there was something to be learned, leaving it on the table was a fool’s mistake.
If whoever was threatening Allison was halfway smart, they would have made sure to use paper that, no matter how traceable, was too widely used to indicate anything specific about the sender. They would use generic markers. It was obvious they’d disguised their own handwriting to some degree. No, Eleri thought, they wouldn’t find anything.
GJ’s voice then pulled her out of her side discussion with Donovan.
“Oh shit.”
All three of them turned to look at the youngest and newest agent in the room.
“What did you find?” Eleri asked.
“That warning. . .” GJ let the words trail off as she picked up the lab notebook to show them something. “Look, look at this. See how it was wet at one point?”
She held the notebook up facing them and turned several pages. They were wrinkly and blurred in places. “This writing was done before the lab notebook was wet.” GJ waved a gesture at the page. “But it looks like Allison continued using it after it dried out.” GJ now pointed to a specific note: dates Allison had entered. “You can see a several-day gap here. But look at the words.”
They all leaned forward, but GJ kept talking. “I just thought the lab notebook got wet because. . . well, because she's an oceanic researcher and. . . water. But now the notes on the first page after the notebook dried out say that they were outside of Nassau on that date. And they were boarded by some kind of pirates. . . and their ship was blown up.”
GJ took a deep breath to steady herself, and Eleri found she needed one, too.
“The researchers were all okay?”
GJ nodded, now having turned the book back to her own view and reading from it. “She says they were thrown overboard, but all the data was lost. All the samples were gone. She somehow managed to save this lab notebook.”