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Sullivan looked to Rachel, raising an eyebrow. he gestured for the door with an inquisitive look, essentially asking: You want to take it? She politely shook her head, and Sullivan did the honors.
“This is Detective Paul Sullivan with the Seattle PD. I’ve got a federal agent with me as well, Special Agent Rachel Gift. I was hoping to have a word, sir.”
Rachel was rather surprised when there were no further questions or hesitations. She heard the door unlocking right away, then opening just seconds later. The door was opened all the way, revealing Carl Webber on the other side. Rachel could just barely make out the man she'd seen in the photo back at the Adler house. His salt-and-pepper hair had gone almost completely gray, and the clean-shaven look from the picture had been replaced by a thick and unkempt beard. Deep crow's feet extended out from the corner of his eyes.
“FBI?” Webber said, eyeballing Rachel. “Really? Seems a bit much.”
“For what, exactly?” Rachel asked.
Webber scrutinized them a bit more and, leaning against the doorframe, said: “Aren’t you here about the noise complaint I called in last night?”
“No, sir,” Sullivan said. “I’m afraid not. I don’t know anything about that.”
“So then what use are the police? The idiots who live below me got into some sort of a fight last night. Screaming and yelling and things breaking for the better part of an hour.”
Rachel wasn’t about to let him sidetrack them, so she went ahead and dove right into the heart of the matter. “We’re here to ask about how you’ve been spending your time over the course of the past week.”
“I don’t…what? What for?”
“You are Carl Webber, correct?” Sullivan asked.
“I am.”
“Mr. Webber, you once worked with two doctors named Jane Adler and Emma Willis, right?”
“Yes, I did. But wh—”
Webber cut himself off and stood straight again. His eyes went wide, and his mouth drew back in an astonished expression. "You're here to ask me about their deaths?"
“So you’ve heard about them, I take it?” Rachel said.
“Of course I have. Emma’s has been all over the news. I actually heard about her murder before I heard about Jane, though. And I…” he chuckled in a dry, nervous fashion before finishing. “And I guess you’re here to ask the screw-up of their team if he killed them?”
“We’re just here to ask some questions for right now,” Sullivan said. “Can we come in?”
He said nothing, but when he turned his back to them, he waved them inside. Rachel caught a quick look of his face as he turned away and it was hard to read his expression. At first, she thought it was one of sorrow, but it could have also been one of fear. One thing she did know was that based on his demeanor and the way he'd answered his door promptly and was not inviting them in without question, she thought she'd be able to get a good read on him. She'd always been a good judge of whether or not people were lying, and there were occasions where it was almost eerily easy for her. It came down to how the suspect carried themselves and how they processed emotion while in the middle of an interrogation.
The door led them directly into the living room, with the kitchen adjoined off to the side. With the exception of a small hallway that led to a bathroom, the apartment was essentially just the one single room with nothing more than a small bedroom; Rachel could see the bedroom through the opened door on the far side of the living room.
“So, tell me,” Webber said as he fell into an old, well-worn couch. “What do you need from me to prove I didn’t kill them?”
“Well, for starters,” Sullivan said, “you might try not speaking so flippantly about their murders.”
“I think that’s a fairly appropriate response when a detective and FBI agent come asking if you killed two women you once worked with…that you respected a great deal.”
“Well, take a second and view things the way we see them right now,” Rachel said. “Two women you worked with on what seems to be a very important and exclusive project are dead. The two others who were on the team are married and in another country. That leaves just you…the member of the team who just happened to make some very bad decisions and fell from grace while these two recently deceased women went on to continue making strides and breakthroughs in their field.”
She caught some bitterness in his eyes for a moment, but it instantly turned to sadness. "Seems like a dull and rather straight-to-the-point way to put it."
“We have two dead women,” Sullivan said. “Straight-to-the-point is the best approach. So forgive me…but unless you can give us alibies for your last few nights, this conversation is going to get a lot more stressful for you.”
“Well, that’s easy enough. I don’t go anywhere. I’m here all the time.”
“You’re not working?” Rachel asked.
“All freelance. I edit technical manuals for medical equipment. It’s niche stuff, but I’m booked for the next six months and the money is remarkable.”
“If you’ve been here every night for the past week, can anyone back that up?”
