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“Was this immediately after the project was over?” Rachel asked.
“No…this was probably about two years ago. And guilty or not, the drama of it all ruined Webber.”
"Yeah," Lawrence said rather grimly. "He was fired, and there were a few blips on the news about him."
“On the local news?” Sullivan asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Lawrence said. “Webber was a Seattle native, too. He was quite helpful in making connections for Jane at the start of her career. I think it might have even been him that squared her away a spot on that team.”
“Any idea if he still lives in town?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Mary said. Lawrence shrugged in agreement. “I think even if Jane did talk to us about her work more often, she wouldn’t have mentioned him.”
Rachel took out her phone and snapped a picture of the photo. It felt silly to take a picture of a picture, but she wasn’t about to ask a grieving mother if she should take a picture of her recently killed daughter if she had it out in such a place of prominence.
“Mr. and Mrs. Adler, thank you for your time,” she said as she pocketed the phone. “And please accept my condolences.”
As Rachel started back for the front door, Sullivan followed closely behind. She was vaguely aware of Mary Adler trailing hesitantly after them. And just as Rachel reached the door, Mary spoke up. Her voice was thin and breaking.
“You don’t think Carl Webber did these atrocious things so you? Did he…do you think he killed our Jane?”
“We have no reason to believe that right now,” Sullivan said, giving the same answer Rachel was a second away from giving. However, on the trail of her unspoken comment was a follow-up thought.
But we’re sure as hell going to find out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
All it took to get Carl Webber’s address was a single call from Sullivan to a local station. He was on hold for about thirty seconds before he was given the address. He recited it out to Rachel from behind the wheel and she started typing it into the GPS app on her phone.
“No need,” Sullivan said. “I know the place. And it seems Dr. Webber had had a pretty terrible fall from grace.”
“How’s that?”
“That address is for Sunquest Apartments. It's run-down and infested with just about every sort of criminal you can think of. If I had a quarter for every visit I made over there, I’d be a rich man.”
As he drove as the afternoon unwound ahead of them, Rachel typed Grayson Labs into a Google search. She got a few hits, most from four years ago. It spoke about the facility in Nevada that was being created to study the science and ethics in stem cell research and anti-aging practices. She skimmed over a few articles and only found two that mentioned any of the doctors by name.
By the time she’d opened up the sixth article, the car came to a crawl and she heard the click-click of the car’s turn signal. “We’re here,” Sullivan said.
As he pulled the car into the parking lot of the Sunquest apartment complex, Rachel saw that Sullivan had not been exaggerating. She counted three floors and seventeen windows along each floor on the front. Assuming the odd seventeenth window was the stairwell, she figured the complex held forty-eight apartments. And according to the address Sullivan had been given, Webber lived in Apartment 22.
Sullivan parked beside a car that looked far too nice and expensive in front of a building like this, and they headed inside. The front doors led to a small alcove area, which was blocked off by more doors. There was a security lock along the frame—the sort with codes tenants could punch in to unlock it—but it was clearly busted; the back had been cracked open and a few wires dangled out.
“That thing has been replaced at least twice in the past six weeks,” Sullivan said as he opened the next set of doors up for her.
They stepped into a small lobby that smelled of body odor and marijuana. Underneath it all was a cleaning agent that probably smelled like bleach when it wasn’t overwhelmed by the other smells. A small office was located to the right, but the door was closed and a sign hanging on it, written on notebook paper in back marker, read: NOT IN. CALL 206-555-0168.
The thrum of bass from loud music came from somewhere overhead. A low hum issued from somewhere else, a sound Rachel thought might be a vacuum cleaner being used. They made their way past the closed office and to the stairway on the other side of the lobby. It was brightly lit, which helped the dirt and litter along the stairs to stand out even more: empty beer cans, little bits of paper and food wrappers. And as they climbed the stairs, the reek of pot grew even stronger.
“There’s nothing subtle about this place, is there?” Rachel asked as they stepped up into the second floor.
“Not at all.”
They made their way down the hall toward Apartment 22—just the second door on the hallway. The doors were all painted brown. The paint had started peeling and flaking on some of them. The number 22 sat in the upper center of the door, the one on the right slightly out of place. When Sullivan knocked on the door, the loose number trembled a bit.
Rachel knew that just ,after two in the afternoon, there was a very good chance Webber would not be home. Her heart sank a bit at this thought, as she didn't think it would be very easy locating him, given that he'd essentially devolved into a lifestyle the exact opposite of the one he’d been living just as recently as two years ago.
But to her surprise, shuffling feet approach the door on the other side. This was followed by a man’s gruff, irritated voice. “Who is it?”
