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The door opens and the three male members of her squad come in, standing still and sheepish, like high school boys on the other side of the gym, working up the nerve to ask a girl for a dance.
Noa stands up. “Donna, we need to get going.”
Donna slowly gets up, goes over and scratches her cat’s head. “You be a good boy, Bailey. Okay?” To Noa she says, “Can I pack a bag? And brush my teeth?”
“Sure,” Noa says, “but Ms. Liu needs to be with you.”
A nod. “I understand.”
The two go down a hallway and then Phil Cannon steps out in front of Aldo Sloan and Juan Rodriguez. Noa holds up a hand.
“Wait up,” she says.
“Don’t you want us to start processing the place?” Phil asks.
That is procedure but Noa isn’t going to follow procedure. “No, wait until we’re gone. I don’t want her to see you three lugs going through her belongings.”
A loudthudcuts through the silence and Wendy shouts, “Noa! Back here! Quick!”
Noa runs down the small hallway, sees an open door to the right, Wendy over the outstretched form of Donna Otterson. One of her slippers has fallen off. Her feet are trembling, and then they stop.
It’s crowded in the bathroom and Noa says, “Wendy, what the hell happened?”
Wendy’s face is as stern as stone as she feels for a pulse on Donna’s neck. Donna’s eyes are wide open. There’s faint white foam on her lips.
“I’ll tell you what happened,” she says, voice sharp. “She came here to brush her teeth. I stood here and watched. She opened a new tube of toothpaste, smiled at me and said, ‘You’ll really like Bailey,’ and then started brushing her teeth. About five seconds later she collapsed. She’s dead, Noa. Killed herself. Not sure what the poison was but it was certainly contained in that toothpaste tube.”
Behind her Phil Cannon says, “Shit. What now, Noa?”
Noa stands up. “Follow procedure. You three do a sweep of the place, and then I’ll get a contract clean-up squad to come in.”
“Going to be a hell of a thing, securing this one, especially if her dad is retired Agency,” Phil says.
Noa says, “Former Director William Colby was murdered more than thirty years ago and whoever did it made it look like a canoeing accident. That’s still the official word. I’m not worried about a low-level financial officer. Wendy.”
Wendy stands up. “Yes, Noa?”
“You know what to do.”
She looks slightly confused. “I do?”
Noa says, “Damn it, you made a promise to that woman, to take care of her cat. Get his food, toys, bedding, whatever, and be ready to leave in five minutes.”
Wendy says, “On it, Noa.”
Noa takes one last look at the dead CIA financial resource officer on the bathroom floor.
Earlier Noa saw the photographic and video evidence of materials being passed on to Chinese intelligence agents in and around Cherry Hill Park from Donna Otterson.
She would have lost her job, her pension, and probably servesome prison time, but she couldn’t have been in possession of anything that dramatic.
Just numbers and budgets and appropriations.
Was that worth a suicide?
Was it?
Phil says, “We’re starting the sweep, Noa.”
