“Well, then, what the hell were you investigating? She’s rich; rich people get kidnapped; she was missing—the FBI knew she was missing. Her father is a very important man; I figured that was why the FBI was working on a weekend.”
“Jesus Christ!” Leibowitz said. “You really thought we were investigating her kidnapping?”
“I had the feeling you thought I had done it,” Matt said. “Understandably, I was a little annoyed.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what we were investigating, what we are investigating,” Leibowitz said. “But it can’t go any further than this room.”
“I’m sure, Leibowitz,” Davis said pointedly, “that we can trust the discretion of Chief Coughlin, Inspector Wohl, and Detective Payne.”
Special Agent Leibowitz’s face showed that he was more than a little uncomfortable trusting the discretion of Detective Payne.
“Does the name Bryan C. Chenowith mean anything to you, Detective Payne?”
Matt searched his memory, then shook his head, “no.”
“Eloise Anne Fitzgerald?”
Matt shook his head again.
“Jennifer Ollwood?”
Matt shook his head.
“Edgar L. Cole?”
Matt held up both hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“Never heard of any of them,” he said.
“They’re all wanted by both the federal government and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on a number of charges—”
“University of Pittsburgh?” Chief Coughlin interrupted.
“Right,” Leibowitz said.
Matt looked at Coughlin curiously
“So far as we’re concerned,” Leibowitz went on, “we want them, and some others, on—among other federal charges—unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.”
“Prosecution for what?” Wohl asked.
“Murder.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Coughlin said. “They’re the people who blew up the Biological Sciences building at the University of Pittsburgh?”
“Thereby causing the unlawful deaths of eleven persons, according to the indictments handed down by the grand jury in Allegheny County—Pittsburgh.”
“As a gesture of their displeasure with the use of monkeys in medical research, right?” Coughlin said, now bitterly. “Eleven innocent people were blown up!”
“Yes, sir,” Leibowitz said.
“What’s this got to do with Susan Reynolds?” Matt asked, unable to easily accept the accusation that Daffy’s friend had been involved in blowing anything up.
“We have reason to believe Miss Reynolds has in the past, and is now, aiding and abetting these fugitives in their unlawful flight,” Leibowitz said. “Sufficient reason for us to have obtained permission in federal court for a wiretap on her parents’ residence and, for that matter, wherever she happens to be.”
“I’m more than a little confused,” Wohl said. “How did you guys get to Matt?”
“Well, we’d like to have enough people to surveille her around the clock, but we don’t,” Leibowitz said. “But we listen to her phone calls, and when something interesting comes up—her mother getting excited that Susan didn’t make the usual ‘Good night, Mommy dear’ phone call and calling Mrs. Nesbitt to find out where Susan was, for example—we act on it.”