Terminal Secret Read online

“I can’t figure out why you would rather be dead than have your husband discover whatever secret it is that you’re keeping from him.”

  “There are things worse than death, Mr. Lord.”

  “Like what?”

  “Poverty. At least you can rest in death. Poverty just gnaws at you. All day. All night.”

  Chapter 24

  Dan slapped his hand against his open mouth and the three painkillers in his palm landed in the back of his throat. He took a swig of water from a plastic bottle and nodded at two uniformed police officers exiting the brick building in front of him. The large sign over the door identified the location as DC Police Headquarters for District Two.

  Dan had been in the building once before, on a somber morning when a fallen officer was being mourned by his colleagues. By the time Dan had left the precinct on that gray day, his popularity had waned. Today was his chance to make a second impression. All he had to do was clear the cobwebs in his head and flash a little charm.

  He walked across the lobby entrance and introduced himself to the white haired officer standing guard at the check-in booth; a vertical Plexiglas coffin with a bird’s eye view of the front door, the waiting area, and the large staircase that led up to the heart of the police station.

  “My name is Dan Lord. I’m here to see Detective Earl Wallace.”

  “Dan Lord?”

  “Yes.”

  The officer behind the glass nodded and Dan noticed a slight change in the man’s demeanor. The officer’s face softened, and for a split second Dan thought he saw a twitch of the man’s lip, a precursor to a smile that didn’t follow. “Just a second, Mr. Lord,” the officer offered with a subtle undertone of respect.

  Moments later, Detective Wallace appeared on the staircase from the floor above. Dan threw his keys, phone, and wallet into a blue plastic basket and passed through the metal detector on the side of the room. He followed Wallace up the stairs and walked along the periphery of the robbery and homicide division in all its outdated glory. Old wooden desks and chairs brandished scratches older than some of the detectives using them.

  Near the water cooler, Wallace directed Dan to a short hall on the right. Following directions, he entered the open door at the end of the hall. Inside, Emily was sitting at the middle of a large U-shaped table. A young forensic technician in civilian clothes stood at the front of the room, connecting a laptop to a large screen TV. Dan nodded to the young man and took a seat on the far side of the table, with a view of the door.

  Wallace found his seat next to Emily and asked the first question. “How’s the head?”

  “I’m not sure which is worse, the neck, the head, or the shoulder blade. It’s a little hard to distinguish this week’s beating from last week’s.”

  “Sounds like you need to learn how to fight better or run faster,” Wallace said.

  Dan ignored the statement. “Thanks for the ride home.”

  “You’re welcome, but it’s the last time I drag you to your bedroom,” Wallace responded. “Tucking in big boys is not part of my job description.”

  “I guess I can find someone else willing to drag me to my bedroom,” Dan replied, glancing quickly at Emily who was looking at a folder on the table in front of her.

  “And for the record, the two of you scared the shit out of my roommates.”

  “Tell them to keep their weed in smaller bags. We aren’t busting for anything less than an ounce, but that was a pretty large Ziploc I saw.”

  “I’ll pass along the advice on the size of their weed sack.”

  Emily added her two cents. “I’m not sure which surprised your roommates more—cops busting through the front door or being asked to babysit a forty-year-old roommate.”

  “For the amount of rent I pay, they can put up with some inconvenience.”

  The young technician stifled a laugh and Wallace returned the conversation to a more professional tone. “Can we go over what happened last night?”

  “As I think I mentioned last night, I was following the lady who was hit by the bus.”

  “But of course you were,” Wallace said. He turned to Emily, who pushed a long strand of hair behind her ear. “When Dan here starts following you, one of two things is going to happen. You are about to be killed, or someone you know is.”

  “That’s not fair,” Dan said.

  “Tell that to the waitress.”

  “She’s still alive.”

  “For now. I’m just pointing out the high correlation between you following someone and their impending demise. Based on our history together.”

  “Why were you following her?” Emily asked.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “We’ll take the short version,” Wallace replied.

  “I was hired by the wife of someone prominent to find out who committed a murder in Virginia.”

  “And this person who hired you lives in DC?”

  “Yes.”

  “But the murder was in Virginia?”

  “The murder I was hired to solve, yes.”

  “Help me fill in the blanks between that statement and what transpired last night with a waitress getting hit by a bus.”

  “You know how it goes. You pull one small string hanging out of your sweater and the next thing you know, thread is everywhere and you’re showing off your belly and distinct lack of a six-pack.”

  “You could always stop pulling the string,” Emily said.

  Detective Wallace shook his head. “Not him.”

  The young police technician paused from his connectivity exercise long enough to take a better look at Dan, the subject of the conversation.

  Dan continued. “Anyhow, like I said, my client hired me to solve a murder. I have an acquaintance on the Arlington police force keeping me in the loop with the investigation. In the meantime, I was poking around on a few things my client said that seemed relevant to the investigation. I was kicking around the strong possibility that my client may, in fact, be the key to solving the murder she hired me to investigate.” Dan rubbed the back of his head. “In light of last night’s unforeseen early conclusion, it seems like I’m on the right path.”

  “You think your client took a crack at you?” Wallace asked.

  “I doubt it. My client is concerned she may be in danger and she doesn’t want her husband to know she’s hired me.”

  “Do you think your client is in danger?” Emily asked.

  “I do. And she paid a lot of money for me to find whoever it is she thinks may be a danger to her.”

  “You said she’s married to someone prominent.”

  “A congressman.”

  “That’s just wonderful,” Detective Wallace replied.

  Emily chimed in. “So you have the wife of a congressman who claims she may be in danger, but she also doesn’t want anyone to know that she hired you? I imagine that makes hiring a bodyguard difficult.”

  “Very good, Detective.”

  “That’s quite a dilemma,” Wallace added.

  “It gets better. Some of the information my client provided was not factual. I can deal with secrecy. That part of the arrangement with the client is fine with me. And to a certain degree, I go into every client meeting knowing I’m only going to hear half-truths. And that’s on a good day.”

  “So this client is living up to your expectations with regard to deception?”

  “She surpasses them.”

  “Apparently lies are a shared occupational hazard for both private detectives and real ones,” Wallace said. “What did she lie about?”

  “I’m certain she lied about where she met her husband and about knowing the waitress from last night who was hit by the bus. As it turns out, the waitress also had an issue with the truth.”

  “You met her?”

  “Yes. The day before the accident. First my client lied to me, then the waitress. Then the two liars met for lunch. At that point, obviously, I knew there was more to the story than what my client was letting on. I figured I�
�d take a shot in the dark and put in a couple of evenings following the waitress. Just do a preliminary run up. I was in the process of trailing her after work when the accident occurred.”

  “And?”

  “Like I said last night, I was watching from the other side of the street. Saw the accident happen right in front of me.”

  “And you saw the person who tried to kill her?”

  “I saw someone take off and I followed her.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Hard to tell. She changed her clothes. At the first corner, she ditched the hat she had been wearing. Her hair went flying a few yards after that.”

  “A wig?”

  “That’s right. I passed some more clothes in the alley on the backside of the building. By the time I caught a second glimpse of her, she looked different. Mind you, it was dark and she was running away, but she had changed her appearance. On the fly.”

  “She outran you?”

  “She had a head start. I was closing the gap, made it to the top of the stairs near the canal, and that was all she wrote. Lights out.” Dan snapped his fingers for affect.

  “How did you let that happen?” Detective Wallace asked.

  “Keyed up. Didn’t expect an accomplice.”

  “Why an accomplice?” Emily asked.

  “Too random to be anything else. I don’t like the odds of a near-fatal accident, a clothes-ditching jogger, and a mugging of a third person, yours truly, all on the same city block within a minute of each other. Too many coincidences.”

  The young technician at the front of the room had stopped working on the connection of the video equipment and waited until there was a pause in the conversation. “Sir, the surveillance videos are ready.”

  *

  The screen on the TV came to life and the picture showed a sidewalk full of people, frozen in time.

  The young technician handed the remote control to Wallace who immediately slid the remote control back to the young man. “You drive.”

  The technician nodded and checked the notes he had scribbled on a yellow legal pad. “We have video from all the surveillance cameras we could obtain. SunTrust Bank across the street from the bus stop. The Junior League, also across the street. The Barnes and Noble entrance on the same side as the bus stop. Another security feed on each side of the street, farther down the block.”

  Dan took a minute to digest the picture and then he interrupted. “This is taken from the same side of the street I was on. This is basically what I saw. Can you zoom in?”

  “We can, but we lose some definition.”

  The technician zoomed in. Dan emceed. “Carla, the waitress, is the fourth one in line at the bus stop. You can see she’s wearing headphones. The wire runs down the front of her jacket and then disappears into the front seam.”

  Detective Wallace squinted. “If you say so.”

  “If you take a look at the stoop and doorway in the background, you can see a young woman hanging out. She’s wearing a winter cap and a hoodie. The doorstep is dark because the streetlight is out.”

  “Intentionally disengaged,” Emily confirmed. “It was checked out this morning. There’s an access panel on the light pole. It was opened and a wire was cut.”

  The video progressed and Dan continued to explain what he had seen. “At this point I noticed the girl in the doorway. You can see she’s checking the screen on her phone. Then she appears to look over at Carla.”

  The girl in the video repeated the same action multiple times. Each time she checked her phone, her face was momentarily illuminated by the light of the screen.

  “Freeze that picture, right there,” Wallace commanded. The technician did as he was told. “It looks like she has something in her mouth.”

  Dan, Wallace, and Emily leaned towards the screen. “Maybe a straw,” Emily stated.

  The technician looked hard at the image and spoke involuntarily. “Looks like a lollipop to me.”

  Dan and the detectives looked at the technician and then back at the screen. Dan tilted his head to the side in consideration. “Maybe.”

  “I’m going to need a better picture to tell,” Wallace said. He squinted, leaned further forward, and shook his head noncommittally. “Continue.”

  Dan felt a surge of adrenaline as he relived the experience from the night before. “By this point in the video, I was starting to get a bad feeling in my stomach.”

  “Bad Chinese food bad?”

  “Exactly. And you can see in the video, the girl steps down from the doorway and moves in the direction of Carla just as the bus enters the picture.”

  Wallace grimaced and Emily looked away from the video for a split second. Carla’s body absorbed the gruesome impact and the bus came to a screeching halt.

  Dan continued to serve as the play-by-play announcer. “Now the bus is blocking the view of the far sidewalk. You should see me enter the scene just about… now.”

  On cue, Dan ran around the front of the bus, bent over, then disappeared from view. Seconds later Dan reappeared near the corner behind the bus. Moments passed and Dan flashed across the screen, running down the first lane of traffic amidst the chaos.

  “So the view from this camera is pretty much the same view you had from your vantage point across the street?” Wallace confirmed.

  “Correct. Up until the bus enters the scene, you saw what I saw.”

  “I saw an accident,” Wallace stated clearly.

  Dan turned towards Emily. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing resembling evidence of anything beyond an accident.”

  The forensic technician offered a truce. “We have more cameras.”

  “Let’s see them,” Wallace said.

  The forensic technician explained the additional video feeds. “The second surveillance video is only marginally different from the first in terms of angle and distance. It’s from the same side of the street, fifty yards farther up the block.

  “The third video is from the same side of the street as the bus queue and the accident. This video was taken from above. From this overhead angle, the top of Carla’s head is visible in the bus stop line. The mystery woman in the doorway is even more concealed than she was in the video taken from across the street.”

  With the video running, all eyes were glued to the screen as the mystery woman stepped down from the doorway and walked past Carla just as the bus entered the scene.

  “You can see the woman pass within a foot of Carla,” Dan said, staring intently at the screen. “My guess is we have a pusher.”

  “Her arms are crossed,” Emily said. “Our supposed perpetrator has her arms crossed.”

  “Doesn’t mean she didn’t push her,” Dan countered.

  The technician leaned towards the screen along with everyone else in the room. The overhead camera showed the girl from the doorway walk within inches of Carla, arms crossed. For a fraction of second it seemed as if a black object flashed across the screen and then disappeared.

  “Did you see that?” Dan asked.

  “I saw something,” Emily confirmed.

  “Replay the last ten seconds,” Wallace baritoned. “Slow it down if you can.”

  They all watched the video three more times, each iteration in slower motion than the last. On the final pass, the technician managed to freeze the frame at the moment the dark object appeared.

  Dan stood. “I need a police baton.”

  Wallace nodded at the forensic tech, who disappeared and returned a minute later with a well-used police baton. Dan arranged for a demonstration and asked Emily to stand in the middle of the U-Shaped tables. Dan assumed the role of the perpetrator and took up his position off to the side.

  “I’m the girl in the doorway,” Dan said, standing ten feet from Emily. He crossed his arms and buried the baton between his forearms. “I can conceal this baton easily in my crossed arms. You can see my hands without seeing the baton at all. I can walk by Detective Fields here, without touching her, with
out raising any suspicion.”

  Dan walked over to Emily and repositioned her with a gentle hand on her hip, turning her slightly so Wallace could have a better view.

  “Now imagine that instead of a solid baton, I have a retractable baton. With the press of a button the baton will extend and when I press the button again, it will retract. One click, POW. Another click, gone.”

  “You’re saying the flash of the object is a retractable baton, concealed between the woman’s arms?”

  “Or maybe up her sleeve. Or maybe in the pocket of her hoodie, which would explain why she was wearing a sweatshirt with a hood and a hat, which I thought was odd. At any rate, she doesn’t need much room. She only needs to press a button. With a little practice, someone could become quite adept at wielding the retractable baton without anyone seeing. Bam, bam. And she only needs to provide enough force for Carla to fall off the curb.”

  “We have medical evidence that Carla was epileptic and that may have contributed to her fall.”

  “I’m not putting my money on it,” Dan said, looking at the screen in momentary deep thought. “You have anything looking across the street away from the accident. Anything focused on the location where I was sitting?”

  The technician picked up the pile of surveillance discs and flipped through them. “I think we have one here. It’s focused across the street. It doesn’t show the accident, or the victim, or the possible perpetrator.”

  “I’m not looking for them.”

  “Who are you looking for?” Wallace asked. “Or are you feeling the need for additional screen time?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The technician found the correct feed and the screen flashed to the video image of the opposite side of the street. The technician fast-forwarded to the appropriate time and Dan entered the picture. The video showed Dan standing for several long minutes, his eyes fixed, as if he was watching something with intense focus.

  “There,” Dan said. “The guy in the Baltimore Orioles baseball cap with the dark glasses. To my left. Twenty or thirty feet away.”

  “What about him?” Emily asked.

  “He’s doing the same thing I am. He’s performing surveillance. Look at the movement on the sidewalk there. A steady flow of people in each direction. There are no stores right there, so he is not waiting outside for someone. He’s too far away from the bank to be waiting in line for the ATM. And he has a clear view to the accident, or the crime, if you believe I’m not crazy.”