AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll be right there with you, Horatio.”
“Good, because from what I’ve seen of that woman, there’s not a man alive who can take her by himself.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
CHAPTER
38
AS THEY PULLED THROUGH the college town home of William and Mary and its neatly laid out brick buildings, Sean glanced over at Hayes. The good sheriff was hunched forward gripping the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were the color of an eggshell.
“Sherriff Hayes, if you break the steering wheel in half we won’t be able to get back.”
Hayes’s face reddened and he loosened his grip. “Just call me Merk, everybody does. I guess I’m not acting like a proper law enforcement officer, am I?”
“Most cops don’t get summoned to meet with the big bad wolf in the middle of an investigation.”
“What do you think he’s going to say?”
“I doubt anything we really want to hear. And I can tell you straight out, the C does not stand for cooperation.”
“My day just keeps getting better and better!” Hayes exclaimed.
“So did you talk to Alicia?”
Hayes nodded. “After you told me she was seeing Rivest, I had to.”
“Was it serious between them?”
“She seemed to think so.”
They parked in front of the address Hayes had been given. It was a three-story brick building that appeared to Sean to be made up of residential units.
A man dressed in a polo shirt and khaki pants met them inside the lobby area. Sean sized up the fellow as Ian Whitfield’s security. The guy wasn’t as tall as Sean, and lacked bulging muscles, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body; the man’s six-pack abs were visible through the shirt. And to Sean’s informed eye, the guy carried himself with the air of someone who could kill you a dozen different ways without breaking a sweat.
The first thing he did was show them his ID, then confiscate Hayes’s sidearm. He next frisked Sean, all without saying a word.
They rode the elevator up to the third floor and were soon seated in comfortable chairs around an oval table inside one of the corner units. Six-Pack disappeared for a moment and then returned with another gent. This guy also wore a polo shirt and khakis and was in nearly as good condition as the other, even though he had close-cropped gray hair and was probably nearing sixty. However, Sean noted the man limped. There was something wrong with his right leg.
A flick of a gaze by the man at Six-Pack and a manila file folder appeared in Whitfield’s hand, for this was Ian Whitfield, Sean assumed.
There followed a few minutes of silence while their host methodically read through the file. Then he finally turned his attention to them.
“There have been four confirmed suicides in the vicinity of our installation over the last twenty-seven months,” Whitfield said.
Sean hadn’t expected this opening line and obviously neither had Hayes.
Whitfield continued: “For some reason we’ve become the whipping boy for the depressed and suicidal. I don’t know why, but it seems there could be many reasons, including wanting notoriety or causing trouble. It goes without saying that I’m growing a little tired of these stunts.”
“Someone dying hardly qualifies as a stunt, does it?” Sean asked while the blood drained from Hayes’s face. “The circumstances of Monk Turing’s death have not been fully uncovered yet. Suicide, murder, we don’t know yet.”
Whitfield tapped the file. “All facts point to suicide.” He looked at Hayes. “Don’t you agree, Sheriff?”
Hayes stammered, “I guess you could say that.”
“There was no evidence that Monk had been depressed enough to take his own life,” Sean pointed out.
“Aren’t all geniuses depressed?” Whitfield answered.
