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“This is bullshit,” Garcia whispered to Laura Lee and Grant. “We are taking Zhou’s word that there is no one else in this house who is probably hiding items right now. We should have come in and searched room by room, securing individuals and collecting our own evidence.”
“Easy Razor,” Shepherd’s voice came through his and Laura Lee’s comms. “You’ll have that chance to search on your own yet.”
“And we’re not even in his real office,” Garcia added. “There isn’t a single picture on the walls in here.”
“I have the Digital Team pulling the schematics of that house,” Shepherd said. “We’ll make sure you have searched every square inch of it before you’re done.”
“How long until we have those blueprints?” Garcia asked.
“It’s taking a while. There have been multiple additions added to the house over the years,” Shepherd replied. “Whiting is filling his AIC in on the next phase of the search now. You won’t get any interference from the FBI on site.”
“Good to hear,” Garcia said.
Laura Lee glanced at Zhou, sitting behind the desk. He was calm and appeared to not have a care in the world. He obviously thought himself to be above the law or protected. That made her believe he had someone paid off. Maybe one of the FBI agents in the room, the same agent who’d passed on the details of Liu’s, West’s, and Geiger’s arrest. That thought infuriated her. Had he known they were coming before they knocked?
Agent Fletcher re-entered the room and took a direct path to Garcia and Laura Lee. “Join me in the hall,” he said in clipped words. “You too,” he said to Grant. They all followed him out of the room. “I don’t like it, and this is probably going to blow up in my face, but we’ve been ordered to conduct a solo room by room search. Your boss has pull.”
Laura Lee watched the corners of Garcia’s lips tug upward for just a second before the scowl retook control of his facial muscles.
“So sorry you’ve been ordered to do your fucking job,” Garcia growled.
“You don’t understand the politics of this town,” Fletcher said. “People who live in this neighborhood can bring heat down on my department.”
“We won’t disturb anything in the house,” Garcia said. “But we’re going to do our jobs and look on our own because that fucker in there is lying to us.”
“Or maybe Laing lied to us,” Fletcher said.
“No, he didn’t,” Laura Lee argued. “He knows that if what he gave us doesn’t pan out, he’s on the next flight to Beijing.”
“Maybe,” Fletcher said.
“We need to find Zhou’s real office, the one with the painting of the Forbidden City,” Laura Lee said.
“We split up and search, room by room,” Garcia said. “How many of your men can assist?”
“I’ll keep one other agent in the office with me, and the rest of you can have at it,” Fletcher answered. “I’ll run through our list of questions with Mister Zhou and keep him occupied while you search.”
“Don’t you find it odd that he hasn’t called his lawyer?” Laura Lee asked.
“I suspect his attorney is one of those employees of his in there and will speak up when I ask the wrong question,” Fletcher said, pointing towards the room.
Directives were given, and they all headed in different directions to search. Laura Lee went in the direction Zhou had approached from. It was still the workday; he very well could have been in his real office when they arrived. She passed through a lavish living room with floor to ceiling glass windows that showcased the beautiful back yard of the property lit up by the many pathways and spot lights that highlighted statues, a swimming pool and hot tub, and various seating groups.
She came to another hallway with four open doors on each side and one closed door at the end of the hall. “Ops, I’ve found the employee’s offices.” She gave a description of where in the house she was.
The offices were all identical. They were sparsely decorated and furnished. The tabletop desks had no drawers. Docking stations were on each desktop, the laptop computer removed from it, leaving the monitor, keyboard, and mouse on each. There were only a few papers on each person’s desk. And the majority of writing or printing was in Chinese. She gathered the papers up to take with her when the search was completed.
She opened the door at the end of the hall. “Ops, I’m at the room at the end of the hall, and this room is confusing.”
“How so?” Dupont asked.
She smiled hearing his voice. “It’s smaller than the other offices, the size of a closet. There is the same tabletop desk, but there are also several wingback chairs, as though it’s a waiting area.”
“There’s no door on the west wall?” Dupont asked. He could clearly see in the blueprints there was supposed to be a door that led into another room that was eighteen by twenty-four feet with several large windows and a fireplace.
“No,” she replied. “But that would be where it should be based on the alignment of the furniture in here.”
“Search for a hidden door. I bet it’s there,” Dupont said.
