Total Control Page 43

  so had actually delivered it to the intended destination: Sidney Archer.

  The reference to the Seattle warehouse made sense. Jason had evidently run into some serious trouble with whomever he was meeting.

  The exchange had somehow gone bad. All wrong? Obviously, Sidney had pounced on it as proof of her husband's innocence.

  Sawyer wasn't so sure about that. All backwards? That seemed to be an awkward phrase. Next, Sawyer stared at the password. Jesus, Jason was truly a brain if he could pull that long a password off the top of his head. Sawyer could make no sense out of it. He squinted and parked his face closer to the paper. Jason obviously had not had the opportunity to finish the message.

  Sawyer stretched his kinked neck from side to side and leaned back in his chair. The disk. They had to get the disk. Or, more accurately, Sidney Archer would have to get it. His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing phone. Certain it was Sidney calling back, he snatched it up.

  "Yeah?"

  "Lee, it's Frank."

  "Christ, Frank, can't you ever call during normal business hours?"

  "It's bad, Lee. Real bad. Law firm of Tyler, Stone. The under ground garage."

  "What is it?"

  "Triple homicide. You better get down here."

  Sawyer put the phone down. Sidney's last words to him had just taken on real meaning. Sonofabitch.f The street leading into the underground parking garage was a sea of red and blue lights as police and emergency vehicles parked everywhere.

  Sawyer and Jackson flashed their badges at the security line.

  A concerned-looking Frank Hardy met them just inside the entrance and led them to the lowest level of the garage, four stories underground, where' the temperature in the garage was well below freezing.

  "Looks like the murders took place very early this morning, so the trail's reasonably fresh. The bodies are in good shape, too, except for some extra holes in them," Hardy said.

  "How did you find out about it, Frank?"

  "The firm's managing partner, Henry Wharton, was notified by the police in Florida, where he's on firm business. He called Nathan Gamble; Gamble, in turn, immediately informed me."

  "So I take it whoever got bumped was affiliated with the law firm?" Sawyer asked.

  "You can see for yourself, Lee. Everybody's still here. But let's say Triton has a particular interest in these murders. That's why Warton called Gamble so fast. We also just found our that the security guard at Tyler, Stone's office in New York was murdered early this morning."

  Sawyer stared at him. "New York?"

  Hardy nodded.

  "Anything else on it?"

  "Not yet. But there were reports of a woman running out of the building about an hour before the body was discovered."

  Sawyer digested this new development as the men walked through the throng of police and forensics personnel to the driver's side of the sleek limo. Both doors were open. Sawyer observed the print technicians completing their dusting of the limo's exterior. A crime scene photographer was snapping away, while another technician was filming the area with a video camera. The medical examiner, a middle-aged man wearing a white dress shirt with shirtsleeves rolled up, tie tucked inside the shirt, and sporting plastic gloves and a surgical mask, was consulting with two men wearing dark blue trench coats. Then the two men walked over to join Hardy and the FBI agents.

  Hardy introduced Sawyer and Jackson to Royce and Holman, a pair of D.C. homicide detectives. "I've briefed them on the bureau's interest in the case, Lee."

  "Who found the bodies?" Jackson asked Royce.

  "Accountant who worked in the building. Arrived a little before six. His parking space is down here. He thought it was odd to see a limo here at this hour, particularly since it was blocking a bunch of other parking spaces. The glass on the vehicle is all tinted, as you can see. He tapped on the door, got no response. So he opened the passenger door. Bad decision. I think he's still upstairs puking. At least he managed to call it in."

  The men moved over to the limo. Hardy motioned for the FBI agents to have a look. After peering inside the front and back, Sawyer looked up at Hardy. "Guy on the floor looks familiar."

  "He should be: Paul Brophy."

  Sawyer looked over at Jackson.

  "Gentleman in the backseat with the third eye is Philip Goldman," Hardy stated.

  "RTG's counsel," Jackson said.

  Hardy nodded. "Victim in the front seat is James Parker, an employee of the local RTG subsidiary; the limo is registered to RTG, by the way."

  "Hence, Triton's interest in the case," Sawyer said.

  "You got it," Hardy said.

  Sawyer leaned back in the limo and studied the wound on Goldman's forehead before scanning Brophy's body. Over his shoulder, Hardy continued, his tone calm and methodical. He and Sawyer had worked innumerable homicides together. At least here all body parts were intact. They had viewed many where that was not the case. "All three died from gunshot wounds. Appears to be heavy-caliber, fired from close proximity. Parker's wound is a contact one. Brophy's looked to be a near-contact, the little I was able to see of it. Goldman probably bought it from about three feet, maybe more, considering the burn pattern on the forehead."

  Sawyer nodded in agreement. "So the shooter may have been in the front seat. Took out the driver first, Brophy next, and then Goldman last," he ventured.

  Hardy didn't look convinced. "Maybe, although the killer could have been sitting next to Brophy, facing Goldman. Popped Parker through the partition opening, shot Brophy and then Goldman, or vice versa. We'll have to wait for the autopsy to get the exact trajectory of the shots. That may give us a better idea of the order." He paused and then added, "Along with some other residue." The interior of the limo was indeed a grisly sight.

  "Got an approximate time of death yet?" Jackson asked.

  Royce checked his notes. "Rigor hasn't peaked yet--far from it, actually. Lividity isn't fixed either. They're all in similar stages of postmortem, so it looks like they all bought it at roughly the same time. Coupled with the body temp, ME just gave me a preliminary of four to six hours."

  Sawyer checked his watch. "Eight-thirty now. So anywhere between two and four this morning."

  Royce nodded.

  Jackson shivered as a cold draft swept down on them when the elevator doors opened to emit additional police. Sawyer grimaced as he watched clouds of breath floating everywhere. Hardy smiled. "I know what you're thinking, Lee. Nobody screwed with the air-conditioning like with your last corpse, but as cold as it is down here--"

  "I'm not sure how accurate that time of death is going to be,"

  Sawyer finished for him. "And I feel pretty certain that every minute we're off is gonna be real significant."

  "Actually, we've got an exact time of entry for the limo into the garage, Agent Sawyer," Royce volunteered. "Access is limited to those having valid key cars. The garage's security system records who enters by the individual card used to access the premises. Goldman's card was entered at one-forty-five this morning."

  "So he wouldn't have been here long before it all went down," Jackson ventured. "At least it gives us a benchmark."

  Sawyer didn't answer. He rubbed his jaw as his eyes continued to dart around the crime scene. "Weapon?"

  Detective Holman pulled out an object enclosed in a large sealed plastic bag. "One of the uniforms found this in a nearby sewer drain.

  Luckily it had gotten hung up on some debris lodged in there or we might never have found it." He handed the baggie to Sawyer.

  "Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter. Hydra-Shok rounds. Serial numbers intact. Shouldn't be much trouble tracing it. Three rounds short of a full clip. And we've preliminarily accounted for a total of three wounds in the victims." All of the men could easily see the traces of blood on the pistol, which was natural enough if it had been used to perpetrate a contact wound. "Sure looks to be the murder weapon," Holman continued. "Shooter picked up the ejected shell casings, but the slugs appear to stil
l be in all the victims, so we'll get a definitive match from ballistics depending on projectile deformity."

  Even before he was handed the pistol, Sawyer had already noted it. So had Jackson. They looked at each other with a sinking feeling: the cracked grip.

  Hardy noticed the exchange. "You got something?"

  Sawyer sighed. "Shit," was all he could think to say at the moment.

  He shoved his hands deep in his pockets, looked over at the limo and then back at the murder weapon. "I'm ninety-nine percent sure this gun belongs to Sidney Archer, Frank."

  "What was that name again?" Both homicide detectives piped in almost simultaneously.

  Sawyer filled the detectives in on Sidney's identity and connection to the law firm.

  "Right, the paper ran a story on her and her husband. I knew the name was familiar. That explains a hell of a lot," Royce said.

  "How's that?" Jackson asked.

  Royce consulted his notebook. "The front entrance ro the building also tracks who enters and leaves after hours. One-twenty-one this morning, guess whose security card was entered?"

  "Sidney Archer's," Sawyer said with a weary tone.

  "Bingo. Damn, husband and wife. Nice couple. We'll get her, though. Bodies are fresh, not too much of a head start." Royce sounded confident. "We've already lifted a slew of partials from the limo. We'll run them against the dead men for elimination purposes and then focus on the remaining ones."

  "I wouldn't be surprised if Archer's prints turned up all over the place," Holman said. He cocked his head at the limo. "Particularly with all the blood in there."

  Sawyer turned to the detective. "Got a motive?"

  Royce held up the recorder. "Found this under Brophy. It's already been dusted." The detective hit the play button. They all listened to the tape until it stopped a few minutes later. Sawyer's face flushed.

  "That's Jason Archer's voice," Hardy said. "Know it well." He shook his head. "Now if we just had a body to go along with the voice."

  "And that's Sidney's voice," Jackson added. He looked over at his partner, who was leaning against a support column, looking miserable.

  Sawyer assimilated the new information and plugged it into the mutating landscape this case had become. Brophy had taped the conversation the morning they had gone to interview Sidney. That's why the sonofabitch had looked so pleased with himself. That also explained his trip to New Orleans and his little frolic and detour through Sidney's hotel room. Sawyer grimaced. He never would have disclosed voluntarily what Sidney had told him about the phone call. Only now the secret was out. She had lied to the FBI.

  Even if Sawyer testified--which he would do in a minute--that she had later disclosed to him the details of the phone call, she had still made plans to aid and abet a fugitive. Now she was looking at throw-away-the-key prison time. Amy Archer's tiny face intruded on his thoughts and his shoulders slumped even farther.

  As Royce and Holman drifted away to continue their investigation, Hardy walked over to Sawyer. "You want my two cents?"

  Sawyer nodded. Jackson joined them.

  "I probably know a couple things that you don't. One being that Tyler, Stone was terminating Sidney Archer," Hardy said.

  "Okay." Sawyer's eyes remained fixed on Hardy.

  "Ironically, the letter of termination was found on Goldman's person.

  It could've gone down like this: Archer comes down to the office on her own for some reason. Maybe it's innocent, maybe it's not.

  She meets up with Goldman and Brophy, either by accident or arrangement. Goldman probably made Sidney Archer very familiar with the contents of the termination letter, and then they spring the tape on her. That's pretty heavy blackmail material."

  "I agree the tape is very damaging, but what would they blackmail her for?" Sawyer's eyes were still fixed on his friend.

  "Like I told you before, up until the plane crash, Sidney Archer was lead counsel on the CyberCom deal. She was privy to confidential information. Information that RTG would be dying to get their hands on. The price for that information is the tape. She either gives them the deal info or she goes to prison. The firm is terminating her anyway. What the hell does she care?"

  Sawyer looked confused. "But I thought her husband had delivered that information to RTG already. The exchange on the videotape."

  "Deals change, Lee. I know for a fact that since Jason Archer's disappearance the terms of Triton's offer for CyberCom have changed.

  What Jason gave them was old news. They needed fresh stuff. Ironically, what the husband couldn't give them, the wife could."

  "Sounds like they would've made a deal, then. So how does the killing part come in, Frank? Just because it was her gun doesn't mean she fired it." Sawyer was now being argumentative.

  Hardy ignored the tone, continuing on with his analysis. "Maybe they couldn't agree to terms. Maybe things turned ugly. Maybe they decided the best way was to get the information they needed and then dispose of her. Maybe that's why they ended up in the limo.

  Parker was carrying a gun; it was still in his holster, unfired. There might have been a struggle. She pulls her piece, fires and kills one of them in self-defense. Horrified, she decides not to leave any witnesses."

  Sawyer was shaking his head vigorously. "Three able-bodied men against one woman? Doesn't make sense that the situation would've gotten out of their control. Assuming she was in the limo, I can't believe she would've been able to kill all three and just walk away."

  "Maybe she didn't just walk away, Lee. She might've been wounded, for all we know."

  Sawyer looked at the concrete floor beside the limo. There were several bloodstains, but none readily visible farther away from the limo. Inconclusive at best, but Hardy's scenario was plausible.

  "So, she kills all three and then leaves without the tape. Why?"

  Hardy shrugged. "Tape was found under Brophy. The guy was big, at least two hundred pounds of literally dead weight. It took two heavyweight cops to move the body when they were trying to I.D. him. That's when they spotted the tape. The simple answer may be that she physically couldn't get to it. Or maybe she didn't know it was under there. From the looks of it, it fell out of his pocket when he went down. Then she panicked and just ran. She tosses the gun in the sewer and gets the hell out of Dodge. How many times have we both seen that happen?"

  Jackson looked at Sawyer. "Makes sense, Lee."

  Sawyer, however, was doubtful. He walked over to Detective Royce, who was signing off on some paperwork.

  "You mind if I call some of our forensics people in to check out a few things?"

  "Hell, be my guest. I rarely turn down an assist from the FBI. You guys got all those federal dollars. Us? We're lucky if we have gas in the cars."

  "I'd like to run a few tests on the interior of the limo. I'll have my team here within twenty minutes. I'd like them to do the exam with the bodies still in place. Then I'd like to do a more thorough search--minus the bodies, of course--back at the lab. Tow's on us."

  Royce considered the request for a moment and then said, "I'll get the necessary paperwork in order." He looked suspiciously at Sawyer.

  "Look, I'm always glad of the bureau's help, but this is our jurisdiction.

  I'd be more than a little ticked to see credit misplaced when this one gets solved. You hear what I'm saying?"

  "Loud and clear, Detective Royce. It's your case. Whatever we learn is yours to use in solving the crime. I sincerely hope it earns you a promotion and a nice raise."

  "You and my wife."

  "Can I ask a favor?"

  "You can always ask," Royce replied.

  "You mind having one of your techs get gunshot residue samples from each of the three corpses? We're running out of time on that one. I can have my people analyze the samples."

  "You think one of them might have fired the gun?" Royce looked highly doubtful.

  "Maybe, maybe not. We can pretty much tell one way or another, though."

  Royce shrugged and
motioned for one of his techs to come over.

  After instructing her on what was wanted, they watched as she lugged over a battered, bulky crime scene kit, opened it and began