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We bailed my car out of the garage and checked out of the motel the next morning at around ten. Duvall had already left. The ride home felt longer than it was, but the car was running. It had only cost me several hundred dollars in repairs, a night’s stay at a cheap motel, and ten years off my life from the close call in Breezewood. I’d have to remember to put preventive maintenance a little higher on my to-do list.
Melanie was quiet. She looked like I was taking her to her execution. I turned on the radio to fill the uncomfortable silence. After stopping for lunch, we went to the police.
I waited up front while they processed her. Detective Derry came out and motioned me to follow him. He took me down a hall, past a series of offices to a conference room where they seemed to be holding a convention of suits. One of them was Jergins. The rest I’d never seen before.
“This is Ms. Hayes’ attorney, Sam McRae,” Derry said to the group sitting around a long table. “Why don’t you introduce yourselves? You already know Special Agent Jergins.”
Jergins gave me a terse nod. A woman next to him with red poodle-cut hair said she was Special Agent Simmons with the FBI’s Baltimore field office. Assistant Director Trask came next—a gray-haired man whose mouth turned down in a look of faint disapproval or worry. He was also from Baltimore. A special agent from the Bureau’s DC headquarters mumbled his name without looking up from the papers he was reading. I couldn’t believe the manpower the feds were putting into this one. You’d think these guys were after Dillinger.
There was an empty chair between the FBI contingent and two other people, a man and woman.
“Special Agent Joe Petrocelli, ma’am,” the man said in a booming voice. He had a swarthy complexion, a dark buzz cut, and a nose shaped like a pepper.
“Special Agent Marla Holmes.” The woman was about ten years younger, with brown hair, green eyes, and freckles that made her look like she ought to be in an Irish Spring commercial.
“And which part of the FBI are you with?” I said.
“Not FBI, ma’am,” Petrocelli said. “Secret Service.”
“Secret Service?”
“Yes, ma’am. We have jurisdiction over major identity theft cases.”
“The Bureau, of course, will also be investigating this matter,” the mumbling agent from DC said.
“Secret Service has primary jurisdiction,” Petrocelli said. I looked at Agent Holmes. She could have been playing poker in the Irish Spring commercial.
“Your jurisdiction is concurrent with ours over federally insured financial institutions,” the red-haired poodle-cut said.
“I’m sure my counterpart at Treasury will be happy to cooperate with the Bureau on this,” the gray-haired Trask said, his brow furrowed with parallel lines. “Of course, as assistant director, I’ll be coordinating your efforts on this case.”
“With all due respect, assistant director,” Petrocelli said, making an authoritative if meaningless gesture with one hand, “our superiors at Treasury may not agree to share jurisdiction over certain aspects of this matter.”
“I don’t think they’ll have much choice.” It was Jergins. Always the diplomat.
I looked at Derry. His eyes were closed. Perhaps he was thinking about early retirement.
“Excuse me,” I said. Everyone looked at me. “Are we going to talk about my client? What are the charges? Do you intend to question her and when?”
“We’ll get to that in a moment, ma’am,” Petrocelli said. I wished he would stop calling me that. “We need to work out the logistics. I still think we should question Ms. Hayes as a group.”
“And I still think we should question her separately,” Ms. Poodle Cut said.
Derry spoke. “The decision’s been made.” He opened his eyes. “We’ll question her in shifts. Agent Jergins will go first. Agent Simmons will follow. Then the Secret Service. I’ll sit in on all sessions.”
Trask, the assistant director, leaned forward. “That wasn’t my—”
Derry cut him off with a look that would have stopped a speeding freight train. “Meanwhile,” Derry continued, “I’ll talk to Ms. Hayes myself.”
“Are we sure we want to proceed just yet?” the DC mumbler said. “Isn’t the Maryland AG interested? What about DOJ? Or the FTC?”
“Or the SPCA?” I asked. Everyone looked at me as if I’d passed gas, except Agent Holmes, who continued to play poker.
“Unlike the federal government, we can’t drag things out forever,” Derry said, giving Mumbles a pointed look. “Get your act together and let me know when you’re ready to see her client.” He turned to me and said, “Let’s go.”
Derry strode down the hall with me double-timing beside him. “Sorry about that. This was, supposedly, decided.”
“Quite a crew in there.”
“Too damned many cooks.” He reddened a little. It was the first time I’d heard him swear.
“You don’t need them to go forward with your own charges.”
“Sure, but I’m getting pressure from above to cooperate with them. I’d like to see the chief handle these ... people.”
I got the feeling he might have chosen a word other than people if I’d been a fellow cop. Or a man. “Hard to coordinate,” I said.
He shook his head. “It’ll get done. Meanwhile, let’s take care of business. Your client’s looking at possible identity theft and murder charges.”
“The identity theft charge is iffy at best.”
“We have what we have. She worked at the bank. She and Garvey could have worked together.”
“Tom Garvey was a computer expert. He could have accessed those records himself.”
“Or maybe she helped him. When she kicked him out, maybe he threatened to tell on her. Maybe she killed him to protect herself.”
“And maybe I’ll win a million bucks in the next Lotto. You’re grasping at straws. Who says there’s a connection between the crimes? Besides, wouldn’t Garvey also have been implicated?”
Derry shrugged. “So maybe he thought he could cut a deal. I don’t know.”
“Far as the murder goes, aren’t there other suspects? What about the roommate? For that matter, the Mob guy could have done it.”
“The Mob wouldn’t leave a body lying around. As for the roommate—” He shrugged. “So far, we have nothing to go on.”
“So he hasn’t been ruled out?”
Derry didn’t say anything. As far as I was concerned, that meant yes.
“Have you found the gun yet?” I asked.
He shook his head.
We stopped at the door to the interrogation room. Through a window, I could see Melanie, hunched in a chair, staring at her clenched hands.
“Can you at least tell me what kind of gun?”
“Nine millimeter,” he said, enunciating slowly and with exaggerated patience.
“So she goes there and shoots him and is careless enough to leave fingerprints, but cautious enough to get rid of the gun?”
Derry gave me the kind of look one might give a pesky child. “Perhaps I’ll ask her,” he said, in a quiet voice. He opened the door, and we stepped inside.
φ φ φ
After Derry questioned Melanie, I insisted on a break. Then Jergins took his turn. Mostly, he asked Melanie what she knew about Christof Stavos and Gregory Knudsen and the CD, which was nothing. I suggested we continue the questioning the next day.
I needed the postponement almost as badly as Melanie. She looked worn out, and I still felt the pain of physical recovery. My two-week “vacation” from work was turning into a busman’s holiday.
The good news was that everything Melanie said was squaring with what she’d told me. The bad news was that Derry didn’t appear to believe her.
“I think your case is a little light on evidence,” I said. “You have no gun. On the identity theft charges, there’s nothing other than that box of files.”
“The neighbor swears he saw her on the scene.”
“Did he hear the gunshots?”
“No. Said he was in the shower or something.”
“How convenient. What about the identity theft charges? A box of files doesn’t prove a thing.”
Derry didn’t say anything.
“Fine.” I checked my watch. “God, it’s late. Everyone at the state’s attorney’s office will have left by now.”
“He’s here.”
I did a double take. “What?”
“Yeah. I was just talking to him.”
“You’re telling me the state’s attorney assigned to this case is actually here?”
Derry shrugged. “This is big. Said he wanted to talk to you, too. I told him you might be a while. He’s waiting up front.”
I headed toward the lobby. State’s attorneys usually confine themselves to their offices and the courtroom. The case must be big if this guy came all the way to the police station to discuss it with defense counsel—after hours no less.
I opened the door. Across the room, standing up to greet me, was Ray Mardovich.