“I’ll talk to you later, Tom.” Carlson hung up the phone and pressed in another number.
A voice answered, “National Tracing Center.”
“Working late, Donna?”
“And I’m trying to get out of here, Nick. What do you want?”
“A really big favor.”
“No,” she said. Then with a big sigh, “What?”
“You still have that thirty-eight we found in the Sarah Goodhart safety-deposit box?”
“What about it?”
He told her what he wanted. When he finished, she said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“You know me, Donna. No sense of humor.”
“Ain’t that truth.” She sighed. “I’ll put in a request, but there’s no way it’ll get done tonight.”
“Thanks, Donna. You’re the best.”
When Shauna entered the building’s foyer, a voice called out to her.
“Excuse me. Miss Shauna?”
She looked at the man with the gelled hair and expensive suit. “And you are?”
“Special Agent Nick Carlson.”
“Nighty-night, Mr. Agent.”
“We know he called you.”
Shauna patted her mouth in a fake yawn. “You must be proud.”
“Ever hear the terms aiding and abetting and accessory after the fact?”
“Stop scaring me,” she said in an exaggerated monotone, “or I might just make wee-wee right here on the cheap carpeting.”
“You think I’m bluffing?”
She put out her hands, wrists together. “Arrest me, handsome.” She glanced behind him. “Don’t you guys usually travel in pairs?”
“I’m here alone.”
“So I gather. Can I go up now?”
Carlson carefully adjusted his glasses. “I don’t think Dr. Beck killed anyone.”
That stopped her.
“Don’t get me wrong. There’s plenty of evidence he did it. My colleagues are all convinced he’s guilty. There is still a massive manhunt going on.”
“Uh-huh,” Shauna said with more than a hint of suspicion in her voice. “But somehow you see through all that?”
“I just think something else is going on here.”
“Like what?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“And if I suspect that this is a trick?”
Carlson shrugged. “Not much I can do about that.”
She mulled it over. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t know anything.”
“You know where he’s hiding.”
“I don’t.”
“And if you did?”
“I wouldn’t tell you. But you already know that.”
“I do,” Carlson said. “So I guess you won’t tell me what all that talk about walking his dog was about.”
She shook her head. “But you’ll find out soon enough.”
“He’ll get hurt out there, you know. Your friend assaulted a cop. That makes it open season on him.”
Shauna kept her gaze steady. “Not much I can do about that.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” Carlson said.
“Why don’t you think he’s guilty?”
“I’m not sure. Lots of little things, I guess.” Carlson tilted his head. “Did you know that Beck was booked on a flight to London?”
Shauna let her eyes take in the lobby, trying to buy a second or two. A man entered and smiled appreciatively at Shauna. She ignored him. “Bull,” she said at last.
“I just came from the airport,” Carlson continued. “The flight was booked three days ago. He was a no-show, of course. But what was really odd was that the credit card used to purchase the ticket was in the name of Laura Mills. That name mean anything to you?”
“Should it?”
“Probably not. We’re still working on it, but apparently it’s a pseudonym.”
“For whom?”
Carlson shrugged. “Do you know a Lisa Sherman?”
“No. How does she fit in?”
“She was booked on the same flight to London. In fact, she was supposed to sit next to our boy.”
“Another no-show?”
“Not exactly. She checked in. But when they called the flight, she never boarded. Weird, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Shauna said.
“Unfortunately, nobody could give us an ID on Lisa Sherman. She didn’t check any luggage and she used an e-ticket machine. So we started running a background check. Any guess what we found?”
Shauna shook her head.
“Nothing,” Carlson replied. “It looks like another pseudonym. Do you know the name Brandon Scope?”
Shauna stiffened. “What the hell is this?”
“Dr. Beck, accompanied by a black man, visited an attorney named Peter Flannery today. Flannery defended a suspect in the murder of Brandon Scope. Dr. Beck asked him about that and about Elizabeth’s role in his release. Any clue why?”
Shauna started fumbling in her purse.
“Looking for something?”
“A cigarette,” she said. “You have one?”
“Sorry, no.”
“Damn.” She stopped, met his eye. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“I have four dead bodies. I want to know what’s going on.”
“Four?”
“Rebecca Schayes, Melvin Bartola, Robert Wolf—those are the two men we found at the lake. And Elizabeth Beck.”
“KillRoy killed Elizabeth.”
Carlson shook his head.
“What makes you so sure?”
He held up the manila folder. “This, for one.”
“What is it?”
“Her autopsy file.”
Shauna swallowed. Fear coursed through her, tingling her fingers. The final proof, one way or the other. She tried very hard to keep her voice steady. “Can I take a look?”
“Why?”
She didn’t reply.
“And more important, why was Beck so eager to see it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but the words rang hollow in her own ears and, she was sure, his.
“Was Elizabeth Beck a drug user?” Carlson asked.
The question was a total surprise. “Elizabeth? Never.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course. She worked with drug addicts. That was part of her training.”