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Lucy shook her head, her smile gone.
Abigail pressed “record” on a small digital recorder and said, “This is Special Agent Abigail Resnick and Special Agent Noah Armstrong with Lucia Kincaid, regarding case file 201101120197. Ms. Kincaid, do you consent to have this interview recorded?”
“Yes,” Lucy said.
“For the record, Ms. Kincaid, you voluntarily agreed to come to FBI Headquarters and answer questions pertaining to the investigation into the homicide of Roger Morton?”
“Yes,” Lucy said.
Noah took over the questioning. He confirmed everything she’d said the night before, that she didn’t know about the plea agreement nor did she know Morton was out of prison. Lucy was to the point and professional. Knowing what Noah now did about Lucy’s trauma, his admiration for the woman grew.
But he couldn’t let that cloud his judgment.
“When was the last time you saw or spoke to Mr. Morton?”
Lucy visibly tensed, and responded curtly, “Six years ago last June.”
“Ms. Kincaid, thinking back to the time when Mr. Morton held you captive, can you remember anything—something you saw or something you heard—that might help us track down his killer?”
She was wrestling with an answer, and finally said, “I’d like to speak off the record.”
Noah almost said no. Then he nodded to Abigail, who paused the recorder. “You’re free to talk.”
Lucy waited several seconds before she spoke with thinly veiled anger. “After my kidnapping and rape I spent months trying to forget, trying to put everything I saw and heard and felt out of my mind. And I couldn’t do it. When I gave up, when I thought I would have to learn to endure the nightmares and the anger and the fear and the deep, never-ending humiliation, it all finally began to fade. I don’t know how long it took, but I let it go. I let every memory disappear.
“Now, all I remember are snippets of that Hell, and I refuse to put myself back there. Not for this, and most certainly not for Roger Morton. I didn’t kill him, I don’t know who did, but I’m not grieving. He was a disgusting, vile rapist who took pleasure in hurting women. He should never have been released from prison. I’m glad he’s dead.”
She nodded to Abigail, who hesitated, then turned the recorder back on.
“To answer your question, Agent Armstrong,” Lucy continued as if she hadn’t just spoken, “I don’t remember much about those two days, and nothing that would even hint to who killed that monster.”
Sean had spent the last fifteen minutes convincing Lucy’s brother Patrick that he didn’t need to fly back to D.C.
“Patrick, I’ll keep watch over her. I promise.” It wouldn’t be a hardship for him. Sean only wished he could have found a different reason to spend time with Lucy. “The bastard’s dead. I don’t think she’s in any danger.”
“I don’t know.” Patrick was torn, and if this job weren’t so important he would have already been on a plane back.
“Call her,” Sean told him. “I’m sure she’ll tell you to stay at Stanford, do the job. They asked for you specifically.”
“I seem to recall they asked for anyone but you.”
“There’re not many people out there who can do what we do with computer security.”
Patrick sighed. “I’ll finish the job—unless Lucy needs me. Then Duke will have to do it on his own.”
“Fair enough.”
“Keep me in the loop,” Patrick said.
“I promise.”
Sean said goodbye and hung up as he retrieved his email.
He smiled when he saw the message from Jayne Morgan, the RCK research guru. He wished he could have convinced his brother Duke to let him take her to D.C. as well as Patrick, but Duke put his foot down. Both Patrick and Sean were computer experts, but Sean’s skills were in circumventing the law. One of the primary roles of RCK East was computer security. Sean could hack into virtually any system, but he didn’t have the experience on how to fix the breach. Patrick had the technical background to secure the system, just like Duke. When Patrick started working for RCK in Sacramento last year, they’d hit it off—and both of them had wanted to get out of the shadow of their older brothers.
Sean read all the documentation Jayne had retrieved on Roger Morton, Adam Scott, and the Lucy Kincaid kidnapping.
Since his release from prison, Roger Morton had been living in Denver. Until he’d come to Washington, D.C., for an unknown reason, risking his probation to do so. According to the plea agreement Sean now had a copy of, one slip up and Morton would be back in prison for life. What was so important that he’d risk life in prison when he’d been given a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card? And what did he know, or what had he done, that got him killed?
