Hoping to catch Fugate at work, Linden and I returned to the Law Offices of Baxter, Freeman, and Lester. When we arrived, Candace, the secretary, was once again on her cell phone, texting away as if her life depended on it. Not surprisingly, she ignored us just like the last time. Linden walked up to her desk and put his hand in front of the screen. She looked at him as if he had snatched her newborn baby out of her hands and thrown it against the wall.
“That was rude,” she said, pulling the phone away from Linden.
“Not as rude as failing to acknowledge a visitor,” he said. “Especially when it’s your job.”
“Fine,” she huffed and set down the phone. “How can I help you?”
“We need to talk to Bobby Fugate,” I said.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“When will he be back?” Linden asked.
“I have no idea,” she said. “He called in sick this morning.”
“Hello, gentlemen,” a familiar voice spoke behind us.
I turned to see Oscar Freeman standing a few feet away from the desk. “Mr. Freeman,” I said.
“Mr. Crawford,” he greeted me and then addressed Linden. “Agent Linden. Perhaps we could talk more privately again.”
“Of course,” Linden answered. “Where are your partners?”
“They’re at the courthouse,” he replied then motioned toward the hallway. “Please.”
We followed him back to the conference room with the mahogany table in the center.
He motioned for us to sit and then took his seat at the head of the table. Once we were all settled, he took a deep breath and paused for a moment. I read his mind to discover that he already knew about Margaret’s suicide and was carefully choosing his words before he addressed it.
“I’m sure you fellows heard about Maggie,” he finally said. “I couldn’t believe it when I got the news. She was a wonderful person and an excellent employee.”
“Yeah,” Linden chimed in. “We got that part. But what was her relationship with Bobby Fugate?”
“Relationship?” he asked. “They were co-workers.”
“Did they spend time together outside the office?” I inquired.
“Not that I’m aware of,” he answered.
I checked his thoughts again. He was either telling the truth or doing a great job hiding it from me. And then, from somewhere in his mind, a memory arose. He came into the office one day to find Bobby standing at the front desk and laughing with Margaret. As soon as they saw him, they quickly went back to business as if they had suddenly been caught in the middle of something.
“What about in the office?” I asked, wanting to take advantage of his mental digression.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said, trying to put the recollection out of his head.
“I think you do,” I persisted. “Were they ever…inappropriate with each other at work?”
“God no! They were always—”
“Excellent employees?” I finished his sentence.
“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely.”
“Is it possible that something else was going on?” I continued. “Something you turned a blind eye to but knew was happening all along?”
“Now you look here,” he became defensive. “This is a professional establishment. I—”
“Save the speech, Mr. Freeman,” Linden interrupted. “A girl is dead, and another is in a coma. Professionalism isn’t going to help either of them. If you know of anything that might help us figure this thing out, now is the time to clear your conscience.”
“Alright,” he said after a long pause. He leaned back in this chair and appeared defeated.
“There were a few times when things between them seemed a little odd.”
“Could you be more specific please?” I asked.
“Sometimes I’d find them whispering to each other and, when they saw me, they’d stop.”
“Whispering about what?” Linden inquired.
“How should I know?!” Freeman threw his hands in the air. “They were whispering! I couldn’t hear!”
“Did Margaret ever meet Beth?” I asked.
“Let me think,” he said and pondered on it. “There was this one office party. Family members were invited. I seem to remember Bobby introducing them to each other.”
“How did that go?” asked Linden.
“Agent Linden, in my line of work, people meet each other every day. I can’t recall the specific details of one particular encounter.”
He was lying. The night in question appeared vividly at the forefront of his mind. I let him and Linden go back forth while pieces of the evening unfolded before me like a badly edited movie. It began with Freeman and his partners in the same conference room where we were sitting. They were reminiscing about some case they had recently won and filling their cups from a spiked punchbowl in the middle of the mahogany table. Their wives stood nearby, also drinking and having their own conversation about friends of theirs that weren’t in the room. They were all sipping and laughing when Beth and Bobby walked in to the room.
After a few choppy greetings, Bobby joined the men and Beth sat down at the table by herself. He offered her a drink, but she declined. The partners’ wives tried to involve her in their banter. She went along with it but, ultimately, seemed to feel awkward being there. The scene then cut to Margaret’s arrival. At that point, Bobby had become quite inebriated. Beth watched as he hugged Margaret more closely than fellow employees normally would.
“Let me get you a drink,” Bobby told Margaret. He noticed Beth as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Oh, and this is my fiancée, Beth.”
“Nice to meet you,” Margaret said and extended her hand.
Beth shook it hesitantly. “Nice to meet you, too,” she said.
The scene then abruptly switched to later in the evening. Beth was still sitting in the same spot, but Bobby and Margaret were noticeably absent. Freeman walked over to Beth and tried talking to her, but she didn’t acknowledge him. From her crossed arms and icy glare, it was obvious that she was angry. Freeman shrugged and went back to the others. A few seconds later, Bobby and Margaret entered the room laughing.
Beth rose to her feet. “Where were you?” she asked.
“What’s the big deal?” slurred Bobby. “Maggie was just showing me her new car.”
“I’m ready to go now,” Beth said, trying to stay calm.
“But we just got here,” he said.
“I want to go home!” she raised her voice, causing everyone to stop mid-conversation and turn to look at her. “Please,” she added more quietly, as if doing so would cause the sudden attention to her to go away.
“Fine,” Bobby said and then stormed drunkenly out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” Beth told everyone and then left as well.
Back in the conference room and out of Freeman’s head, Linden was still pushing for more information. “Surely there’s another time you can remember,” he said to Freeman. “Did they ever go on extended lunch dates?”
“That’ll do,” I said before he could answer. I stood up to leave. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Freeman.”
“You’re…welcome?” Freeman said with a bewildered look on his face.
Once outside, Linden walked beside me as we approached the car. “Did you see something?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Should we talk to Lester and Baxter?”
“Probably be a waste of time. I doubt they know any more than Freeman. The only person I want to talk to right now is Bobby Fugate.”
We hopped in the car and headed uptown to Fugate’s apartment. Quite the upgrade from Margaret’s complex, a gate separated the residents from the outside world. An attendant waved us in after seeing Linden’s badge and we parked near the unit where Fugate lived. We got out of the car and went straight to his door on the second floor. I pressed the buzzer and waited. No response. I hit it a second time.
“It’s like I told you,” said Linden. “He doesn’t have to speak to us.”
“Yes?” a voice finally came through the speaker.
“Mr. Fugate, it’s Max Crawford and Agent Linden of the FBI,” I spoke into the microphone. “We need to talk to you.”
“Why don’t you two just go away?” he said, sounding slightly broken. “Haven’t you done enough already?”
“Actually, we’re just getting started,” said Linden. “What was your relationship with Margaret Stevens?”
There was a long pause. “I’m not going to talk about Maggie,” he finally said.
“What about Beth then?” I added. “She’s not in a good place.”
“No, shit,” he said.
“It’s more than you realize,” I continued. “She believes she’s Margaret.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he said.
“She thinks she’s Margaret,” I reiterated. “She doesn’t seem to remember who she really is.”
“She’s in a coma, asshole,” he said. “How could she think she’s somebody else?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” I said. “We thought maybe you could shed some light on the situation.”
“Now you listen here,” he said, his voice becoming threatening. “I don’t know what mind games you two are trying to play, but it’s really starting to piss me off! If you had any decency, you’d leave me and my fiancée alone! Do not come here again!”
After that, the speaker went silent. Linden and I went back to the car. We were on our way to the hospital when the forensic specialist at Margaret’s apartment called Linden.
Evidently, he had discovered Margaret’s cell phone hidden under a couch in the living room not long after we left. He told Linden he’d hold on to it, so we could check it before he bagged it. We passed the exit for the hospital and headed straight for Margaret’s apartment.
When we got there, the crowd that gathered earlier had disappeared. Even the manager and Glen, the maintenance man that discovered Margaret, were gone. We climbed the stairs and went inside. Margaret’s body had been taken away, but her blood was still on the bathroom floor.
We found the forensic specialist waiting for us in the living room. He handed the phone to Linden.
“You’ll need to charge it,” he said. “It’s been dead for a while.”
Linden plugged it in a wall outlet and, once it was on, bypassed the password screen. I stood beside him as he scrolled through her phone records. If there had been any calls between her and Bobby, they had been deleted. He then checked voicemail. Also empty. It wasn’t until he clicked on the text message application that he found something. There had been an exchange between Bobby and Margaret the night before.
Maggie: I can’t keep doing this, Bobby.
Bobby: Keep doing what? You need to calm down.
Maggie: How can I calm down?! Beth’s in a coma! The FBI came by to see me! I can’t understand how you’re calm!
Bobby: Maggie, I promise you. It’s going to be okay.
Maggie: It’s not going to be okay, Bobby! They’re going to find out and, when they do, I’m not going to be around!
Bobby: What do you mean by that?
Bobby: Maggie, are you still there?
Bobby: Look, I’ll call you in the morning, okay? Just stay put like we talked about. We’ll figure it out.
There were no texts before that, but Margaret could’ve deleted those as well. Just as Linden appeared as if he was ready to storm into Fugate’s apartment and arrest him on the spot, a plan came to mind. I took the phone from him and went into Margaret’s photo application. I looked through several pictures of her and watched a couple videos to get a good grasp on her voice patterns and mannerisms. There was one that I viewed three times because it had close-ups of her sitting on the beach and talking to someone off-screen about how much she loved it. I studied every little characteristic and, within a few minutes, had what I needed.