The Price of Innocence (12 page)

‘So the bomb was planted by someone with access who screwed up the timing and miscalculated Lambert’s movements—’

‘Or by someone who mailed it here in a box of supplies and didn’t care about access or timing, who targeted the facility and not the people in it. The bomb squad will have to figure that out.’

‘I have to go to a death call,’ Frank told her. ‘Try not to get killed in the meantime.’

Snappy comments such as ‘No guarantees’ or ‘I’ll take that under advisement’ stuck in her throat, and in the end she simply assented and then hung up, still without mentioning David Madison.

She snapped another photo of the dead engineer.

‘Do you have to do that?’ Bruce Lambert asked. He stood with a smudge on one cheek and a slump to his shoulders. He had lost his glasses at some point, exposing large brown eyes. His brother had disappeared. Two firemen combed the room for residual fires but stopped every foot or so to exclaim over some unusual gadget.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I do.’

He squinted at her camera as if a bit perplexed. ‘You
were
on the tour, weren’t you? We were just underneath a table together, right?’

‘I’m a fellow alumnus, yes.’ She introduced herself, stating her position with the M.E.’s office.

‘Did we have any classes together?’

She shook her head.

‘I’d have remembered you.
He
would have.’ He gestured at the dead man on the floor. ‘Aaron never overlooked a pretty girl. He said science didn’t reward the unobservant and neither did cupidity.’

‘You’ve known him since college?’

‘I’ve known him since grade school.’ The man collapsed into a singed task chair, unable to take his gaze from his dead friend. ‘He was brilliant, generous, and sometimes a supercilious pain in the ass. He’d get ideas so fast that the rest of us couldn’t keep up, then he’d want us to finish developing them so he could go on to something else.’

‘I thought that was you,’ Theresa said, having read several articles to that effect.

‘It
is
me. It’s also Aaron and every other guy here. We thrive on the pace but that doesn’t stop us from driving each other crazy with it. My brother kept telling him to get married, that maybe that would channel some of that intensity and give the rest of us a few moment’s peace. For the first time I’m glad he didn’t.’

‘The man who was hurt – did you know him personally, too?’

Lambert finally looked at her instead of the dead man. ‘Leroy, yes. Met him at MIT. He’s one of those guys that got rich counting cards in Vegas. I convinced him to use his powers for good.’ This brought the touch of a smile to his face, which Theresa returned. ‘He loved to catch wild animals. They’d just migrate to him, squirrels, crows, raccoons, like he was some sort of St Francis. Then he’d leave them in my room. The skunk was the worst. I had a wild rabbit as a room-mate for half a semester. I couldn’t get it out from under my bed so finally I just left it food and water and it would come out at night to drop little bunny bombs all over the carpet. Him, I’m glad he got married. His wife put a stop to that sort of thing.’

Theresa leaned over, scooped up a twisted piece of clear material. ‘What were they working on in here? The lights?’

‘Headlights and taillights, yeah, and all the other molded plastic to be used in the design. The radio cover plate, the inside door handles. Gearshift. Battery cover, power steering tank. The entire body is a plasticized metal alloy.’

‘Do you think whoever planted the bomb is trying to sabotage your car?’

Anger flashed across his face, hardening his features. ‘Could be. It could also be half a dozen other things we’re working on here, but the car is definitely the biggest project and the most far-reaching. It will change the face of the American landscape. It will also shift its power structure. This country has always been run by the most profitable corporations, insurance, banking and oil, and this will take one-third of that block out of the equation. It will also make me a tanker full of thousand-dollar bills, which I had hoped to use to ransom some groups of people from poverty, both here and internationally.’ This did not sound like a speech, using the moment to stump an agenda. He spoke absently, as if sorting through possibilities in his mind.

She worried the chunk of plastic between her fingers. ‘What about you personally? Any threats – enemies?’

His look changed to one of pity at her naivety. ‘I have a lot of money. A
lot
. Everyone hating me comes with the private jet and the villa in Barbados.’

Three people appeared at the far end of the room, moving cautiously over the rubble. The two FBI agents from the Bingham followed Lambert’s brother. Johnny-on-the-spot, as always.

‘I’m sorry,’ Theresa told Bruce, ‘for your loss, and because the FBI will now ask you all the same questions that I just had the audacity to ask you, and many more besides. But they’ll find out who did this. We’ll find out who did this.’

He climbed out of the task chair, stretching to an unexpectedly tall height, and regarded her. ‘But I love women with audacity.’

She had just begun to smile when Carl Lambert reached them and began speaking. ‘These two are from the FBI. I don’t know what they’re doing here, and I don’t think you need to talk to them.’

‘Aaron’s dead,’ Bruce reminded his brother.

‘That doesn’t make it a federal case.’

‘What are
you
doing here?’ the male agent asked Theresa. ‘How did you get here so fast?’

‘I was taking a tour.’

‘She’s OK,’ Carl Lambert insisted. His face was structured like his brother’s – elongated with a shock of brown hair on top – but his eyes were a cool blue. ‘
You
have no jurisdiction here. It’s an industrial accident on private property.’

‘It’s not an accident,’ Bruce gently pointed out to his sibling, nodding at the damage the bomb had wrought for emphasis.

The female agent put in, without rancor: ‘We have the investigation at the Bingham building. This is obviously related, so this becomes our investigation as well.’

‘It’s not obvious to me!’

‘It’s the same explosive.’ Theresa also did not want to enter this argument, but saw no choice. ‘And it’s a relatively unusual one.’

‘How could you know that?’ Carl demanded.

‘By its smell.’

He gaped at her, snorted, threw his hands up, turned in a short circle and then said to his brother: ‘All right. I just don’t like anyone federal poking their noses in our business, you know.’

‘I know,’ his brother assured him. This seemed to be a conversation they’d had many times already.

Carl thought another moment, then added, ‘It always winds up with them raising our liability cap.’

‘I know. But they have a job to do.’

Carl added to the agents: ‘And you don’t remove anything from this facility without my written approval!’

The female agent said, ‘We’re not here to pirate your secret designs, Mr Lambert.’

‘All the same. I play golf with your boss, you know.’

‘We’re aware of that, yes,’ the woman said, in a voice soft enough to lull a baby to sleep. Her partner rolled his eyes, but only after Lambert the elder had turned away.

Just then Theresa’s phone rang, and she moved to the relatively unscathed hallway to answer it.

It was Frank. ‘I need you,’ he said.

T
heresa found the house with the sagging apple tree in the yard within fifteen minutes, responding to the concern in her cousin’s voice. She located Frank upon entering the house; he stood gazing at a TV set with a decently sized screen and a fraction of the dust found on the rest of the furniture. Nothing appeared on the TV and she saw no dead bodies. ‘It helps if you turn it on.’

His eyes but not his mind turned toward her. A small, well-groomed dog also looked up from its perch on the threadbare sofa.

‘Frank? What’s going on?’ He didn’t usually get so lost in thought – that had always been her bailiwick, and his the job of teasing her out of it.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

‘Fine. I told you, I heard the rumble, that was it. Didn’t even get knocked down.’ Not by the explosion, anyway.

‘This is Marty Davis’ TV set,’ he told her.

She waited, but that seemed to be the sum total of his explanation. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Because our victim is Marty Davis’ beneficiary,’ he said, with some irritation, as if she had not been paying attention. He wore the scowl that made weaker beings confess on the spot and his hair stood up as if he’d run a hand or two through it. ‘He left her all his worldly possessions, of which this TV represents the crown jewel.’

‘Where is the victim?’

‘Upstairs, in the bathtub.’

‘Drowned?’

‘Only in her own blood. She slit her wrists. And then let her son find her when he finally decided to mosey home from school – this had to be the day he actually
went
to school, which I gather is not a regular occurrence. Great plan, huh? Let your kid find you?’

‘Frank,’ Theresa asked carefully, ‘how long have you known this woman?’

That he did not seem to find this question strange only proved his agitation. ‘Since yesterday.’

Angela Sanchez came in the front door at that moment. ‘You all right?’

Theresa said, ‘Fine.’

‘And our resident genius?’

‘Shook up. One of his staff dead, one critical. He seemed pretty upset.’

‘You spoke to him?’ the cop asked, staring, and Theresa realized that even the normally unflappable Angela was a bit star-struck. ‘Isn’t he, like, the richest man in the world?’

‘Not
the
richest, I don’t think. But in the top five.’

Again, the slightly unfocused stare, but then Angela shook it off and spoke to her partner. ‘The landlord let her take the stuff. Lily had a copy of the will proving that she was the beneficiary.’

‘So he just let her waltz off with whatever she wanted?’

‘He had no intention of waiting for the probate process to clean out the apartment. Says he needs to rent it, and likewise had no intention of storing all Marty’s stuff for the duration. He wanted to get rid of it and she wanted to take it.’

‘Terrific.’ Frank did not seem able to tear his gaze from the TV set.

‘Marty Davis had lived there for almost ten years, and the landlord knew Marty didn’t have any close friends or relatives likely to protest.’ Angela looked around. ‘Where’s the kid?’

Theresa turned up her hands to confess ignorance.

Frank said, ‘A Victim Advocate took him to a neighbor’s. What about a car? If she got excited over a TV set, she must have wet herself to inherit Marty’s car.’

Angela shook her head. ‘A lease. The landlord called the company to come and get that before Marty’s body had cooled.’

‘Efficient guy.’

‘He needed the parking space. He says Lily was distinctly unhappy when he told her that, but the mood didn’t last long.’

‘Not this afternoon, it wouldn’t have. She was flying when we saw her.’

‘So how did she go from high to slitting her wrists in one afternoon?’ Angela asked.

They fell silent. Theresa tried to sort out this information into a timeline, and fill in the missing parts. ‘So this victim – Lily? – went to Marty’s apartment to collect her inheritance?’

‘Three times,’ Angela clarified. ‘He says she broke in yesterday; it must have been immediately after we talked to her. I guess she had to check out her windfall. He came back from dinner to find the M.E.’s seal on the door broken, says he didn’t think much of it and figured one of the other tenants helped themselves to stuff that Marty wouldn’t need any more. He didn’t report it. He figured they only waited that long out of respect for Marty, whom everyone seemed to like despite his occupation. His tenants, he tells me, are not of the highest quality.’

‘So that was Lily?’ Frank asked.

‘He doesn’t know. But she showed up bright and early the next morning, demanding to collect her inheritance. He wouldn’t let her take anything, but he did let her go in and check it out while he dealt with a leaky pipe. Next thing he knows, she’s running off with what looked like a red cardboard box that had been on the dining room table and something shiny, a watch, or jewelry or something.’

‘And didn’t report that either, did he?’

‘Too busy with the leaky pipe. I’m guessing Lily then came downtown to get a copy of the will from the legal department – don’t ask me how, she probably stole that too—’

‘They might have given it to her.’ He didn’t exactly growl, but it came close.

‘True,’ Angela said, more cautiously. ‘It’s only one page long and hers is the only name in it – aside from his mother, who’s dead. After she left our car she somehow got back to the apartment and showed him the will. That was enough for the landlord, who by then wanted to be rid of both Marty’s stuff
and
Lily both.’

‘How did she get that TV back here?’

‘No idea. The landlord didn’t see anyone else with her or know what kind of vehicle, if any, she had.’

‘So Lily either got a ride or carried a fifty-two-inch, what, three miles?’

Angela said, ‘The TV’s bigger than she is. Though she seemed to have a lot of extra energy. The landlord described her as “super-hyper” on the second visit.’

Frank nodded, finally turning from the TV set. ‘So she helped herself to Marty’s watch, probably pawned it, then used the money to stop and smoke some meth before bouncing down to the Justice Center and running into us. Then she used the rest of the money to get a ride and cart Marty’s TV set home.’

‘And some other stuff,’ Angela said. ‘There’s a box on the kitchen table with some more jewelry, an iPod, a ton of CDs and a Nintendo model from four years ago with games to match.’

‘No way she walked, then,’ Frank said.

Angela said, ‘She worked for a courier. She could have called a co-worker, someone in the area who could pick her up and drop her off in between deliveries. A job perk the boss doesn’t need to know about.’

‘Send a guy to her job.’

‘Already did.’

‘This all happened earlier today?’ Theresa asked, still playing catch-up.