Chapter 17

One thing I was learning about police procedure was that all those crime shows lied. They left out the hours of boring details. The characters would comment on “canvasing the neighborhood” or “going over records” but they never ever mentioned how time-consuming those efforts are. I know most shows are only meant to be entertainment, but with the abundance of channels that are dedicated to education, why couldn’t there be a single show that explains how some procedures really work?

It had been two hours since Agent Radcliff left to check on my alibi. This wasn’t something she had to research or talk to a lot of people about in the hopes to find someone who had information she could use. I gave her the phone numbers for Jordan and Danielle as well as Raven’s home address. I could understand some time going by while waiting for all three to come in or for her to go to talk to each one in person, but I was beginning to lose my patience.

I took to pacing. I had to do something with the energy my anger generated and trying to crack the two-way mirror with a chair seemed reckless. More than once, I checked the door. It was unlocked, but there was an officer in uniform standing there. Every time I took a peek out of the room, he turned and asked what he could do for me. I never said anything, only closing the door in answer.

After another hour, the door opened and Agent Radcliff came in. Her face and body language said she didn’t have happy news. “You’re free to go, Mr. Connors.”

I walked toward the door, more than ready to leave.

She stood in front of it and held up her hand to slow me down. “But do NOT leave town. We may have more questions for you at a later point. And, do not talk to anyone else about what we discussed today.” Then she stepped out of my way.

I walked out into the hall and the officer who had been standing ‘watch’ at my door waved in the direction opposite of the way I had come in. I was too eager about leaving to ask questions and went the way he indicated.

The officer led me though the building to the front area with the large plate glass. I went to the doors, expecting him to be right there with me, but he had disappeared. I looked around, but no one was looking my way. I was on my own. I went outside and looked up at the flags. They slightly flicked with the lackluster wind.

I shook my head and was about to call Jordan when someone behind me said, “Excuse me, are you Seth Connors?”

I closed my eyes and silently counted to ten. There wasn’t anyone here I wanted to talk to, so I was a little frustrated. I turned and looked at the person speaking to me. “Who wants to know?”

She was lovely, with soft brown eyes, flowing dark chestnut hair, and a slight curve of the lips that suggested she liked to smile. She wore an inexpensive skirt suit that hugged her curves as much as muted them. Her expression, however, suggested she had been having as bad a day as I had, though I was sure she hadn’t been detained by the FBI. “My name is Linda Morgan and I would like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”

I frowned at her. “Are you a detective or something?”

She shook her head. “No, I’m a defense attorney.”

Confusion made my brow furrow more. “I don’t need an attorney, Ms. Morgan.”

She blinked for a second and then said, “I’m not offering to be your attorney, Mr. Connors. I’m trying to get information for one of my clients.” She glanced at my phone and looked around the parking lot. She must have put two and two together fast because she said, “How about I give you a ride anywhere you want and in return, you answer my questions?”

I sighed, looked at my phone, and realized that her offer really wasn’t that bad. Besides, what could she possibly ask me that I knew anything about anyway? I looked at her again and said, “Sure, where’s your car?”

She didn’t say anything. She turned on her heel and strode off toward several cars parked in front of the police station.

I followed her and couldn’t help seeing, even in the falling light of this early fall evening, how well her skirt hugged her thighs and butt.

She walked around to the driver side of a newer model Ford Taurus. I stopped on the passenger side but noticed that she was taking off her suit jacket. I was confused, because compared to the record-setting summer Texas just had, this autumn day was fairly chilly.

She pulled out her keys and hit the button to unlock the car. Once we were both inside and buckled in, she looked at me and said, “I’m sorry to say something’s wrong with the heater. The fan is stuck on max.” She started the car and the vents blasted us.

I reached over and turned off the fan. The entire panel was made up of electronic controls. If it were an older model, I could have made an immediate adjustment under the hood at the heater core, but the computer would override anything like that in a model this new.

She frowned at me.

I smiled reassuringly. “Turn the fan back on when it gets too cold, and when it gets too hot, turn it off again.”

She hesitantly nodded, put the car in reverse, and twisted to watch where she was going. I had only recently gotten my license, so I understood what she was doing, but I also noticed that her car had a small screen with a video of what was behind her. Mr. Chambers, the auto mechanic I worked for before coming to college, told me how much trouble those video systems caused. Just because you saw what was right behind you didn’t mean you could see what was coming, which your own eyes could provide peripherally.

There was something else I noticed while she was turned to watch what she was doing. Her blouse wasn’t made of the same material as her suit, so it hugged her chest but couldn’t obscure it. More than that though, small gaps opened between the buttons. I could see slightly pale flesh and the edges of her bra. I wanted to feel bad about noticing, but I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had to change my focus.

Maybe she bought it a touch too small, in the hopes that her feminine wiles could potentially distract the opposition. Maybe she had grown since she bought it. She wasn’t a teen, so her growth was from weight rather than natural development - something I would never point out to her. She looked like she was in good shape otherwise. Maybe it was something simple. Maybe she didn’t do as much walking as she had in college. She probably drove everywhere nowadays. One thing was for certain, if she didn’t find some form of agreeable exercise, she was going to need a new suit.

She pulled around to the exit onto West Division. I pointed toward North Cooper and she went that way. Once we were heading South on Cooper, she pulled out her phone, tapped on a control and an old-style microphone appeared on the screen. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

I shook my head. “No.”

She nodded, hit the button to record, and set the phone in a cup holder. She stated a few things out loud, like the date, approximate time, and our names. Then she asked, “Is it true the FBI was questioning you in regards to the disappearance of Francine James?”

I should have known better than to believe she wanted to talk to me about anything else. It was too much of a coincidence that she found me right after the feds let me go. “Yes,” I said with a slight sigh.

“Then what part did you play in her disappearance?” she asked.

I considered not answering, due to Agent Radcliff’s warning not to talk, but I believed she didn’t want me letting it out that two of the missing girls had been seen alive and apparently running around on their own. So, I said, “I didn’t. They talked to a student who saw me with Francine two nights before her disappearance was reported. They talked to a few more people about me and came to the conclusion that I did something to her.” Ms. Morgan opened her mouth to ask another question, but I interrupted her. “BUT, I didn’t. I have an alibi with witnesses from the last time I saw Francine at a student orientation until I saw the news report of her disappearance.”

This line of questioning bugged me too much not to ask, “Haven’t the feds told you any of this? I’m sure they have it on video as well as high-def audio.” I waved at her phone to signify the latter.

She shook her head. “You agreed to answer my questions, and we’re going to stick to that agreement.”

I suddenly wished I hadn’t agreed to this, or that traffic was moving faster than it was. If we had left an hour earlier, we would have made it to my apartment by now. As it was, everyone was on the street and with all the traffic lights, everything was moving a lot slower than I wanted.

Ms. Morgan glanced at me and asked, “What was the witnessed incident about?”

I didn’t like that either but recounted it, in as much detail but as briefly as possible. I held back the names of the two girls Francine had been with, making it sound like I didn’t get a very good look at them.

Ms. Morgan shot me a glare and then hit the brakes hard because the van in front of us had done the same. “You expect me to believe you didn’t see the other girls after all the details you just gave me?”

“You can believe what you want to believe,” I said.

She shook her head. “I need details. There was word that you named several people while you were in there. I need those names.”

“I gave the Feds the names of the people who could verify my alibi,” I said. “That’s all.”

“No, that’s not all, dammit!” she said. “There was something you told them. It caught the attention of the entire station.”

I couldn’t argue over something I didn’t know. “That doesn’t mean much to me.”

“But it means a lot to me,” she said. “So spill it. What did you tell the feds?”

I looked away again, shaking my head. “I can’t tell you. I’m not allowed to discuss it. Besides, the Feds will have to tell you sooner or later.”

Out of the side of my vision I could see her hair occasionally fly as she turned her head to both watch traffic and probably stare daggers at me. I could hear her softly growl as she jerked the car around the van we’d been behind for several lights. It put us at the lead of the light we were at, but we were sitting next to the same van.

When the light turned green, she hit the gas. Unfortunately, we quickly caught up with another group of slow moving cars. At least we could see beyond those cars, unlike while behind the van. It also allowed me to see my apartment complex coming up. The only problem was we were in the wrong lane.

I pointed out the complex. She made a turn that crossed the lane we were supposed to be in and took us smoothly into the parking lot. There wasn’t even a horn blast telling us how close we might have been to being hit by someone else.

She slowed down and asked which apartment was mine. I pointed it out and noticed the Sheriff’s Suburban parked in front of it.

She parked behind the Suburban but didn’t turn off the engine. She released her seatbelt and turned in her seat so she could see me better. “Are you going to tell me what you told the feds?”

There was a different tone in her voice. It lacked the confidence and determination she’d had since we left the police station. It sounded like she was giving up on something, but the question itself suggested she wasn’t giving up on the direction she was going.

I shook my head. “I can’t. I told you that. Besides, who could you possibly represent that would require you to know any of this? The only person I can think of immediately would be someone involved.” I released my seatbelt, ready to get out of the car if necessary.

If what Augur told me was right, both cases were linked, which meant whoever was involved in this case was also involved in the Lockdown. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but I didn’t know whether Linda Morgan was a Magus or not. As much as I had admired her body, her suit hid enough to keep me from being able to tell whether she had a Magus’s mark or not. She could even be the person responsible for all of this and only wanted to know what the feds knew so she could take further precautions. As if they had a prayer of stopping a Magus capable of pulling off the Lockdown.

Her eyes flicked over me. She knew that I was thinking about running. She met my eyes with a frown. “You’re right, the only kind of client I could have in this case is someone potentially involved. From what little I’ve heard, you’re the only person any of the investigators have brought in with any kind of connection to the case, which means I don’t have a client.”

I didn’t relax. She didn’t represent the person responsible, but that didn’t clear her of being that person. “Then why are you so interested in this case?”

She shook her head. “That’s personal. I need to know what you told the feds. If you can’t tell me with our current status, then we’ll have to change that status.”

A few thoughts ran through my head about what kind of status she meant. Instead of guessing, I asked. “What do you mean?”

She studied my face for a second and then said, “If you were to hire me as your defense attorney, then you could tell me everything. They couldn’t prosecute you for it. You would be protected by attorney-client privilege.”