Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Laura felt like she was going in circles already. First the hotel, then the apartment building where they’d found Luisa and Jorge, and now back outside the hotel again.

“Are we really allowed to do that, though?” Agent Moore asked for what felt like the sixteenth time. “Just let him go?”

Laura sighed. “Are you going to personally call ICE and let them know?”

“No,” Agent Moore said, looking horrified. “Of course not.”

“Are you going to tell Rondelle when we get back that I didn’t arrest someone who broke the law?”

“No,” Agent Moore said, more hesitantly. “But—”

“Then who’s to stop me from doing it?” Laura asked. She switched off the engine. “We’re here. Stop thinking about what happened back there and get your head back in the game. We’re too busy tracking down a double murderer to worry about immigration issues.”

“Right,” Agent Moore replied, though less convincingly than Laura would have liked.

Truth be told, she knew as she got out of the rental car that there was a chance she could get into a lot of trouble for what she’d done. She had knowingly allowed someone to continue staying in the country illegally. As much as her own feelings on the matter might be that it wasn’t worth ruining someone’s life over, the law was the law.

She was relying on the rookie to be too awed by Laura’s seniority to let it happen without mentioning it to anyone who had the power to do something about it. She was also, maybe, hoping that the rookie would pick up on the act of altruism and learn to do the same.

If he wasn’t harming anyone, then there was no reason for Laura to be involved in any way in the matter of whether he should be allowed to stay or forced to return where he had come from.

The convention hall was easy enough to find—Laura had noticed it on their way in earlier. It stood directly opposite the hotel as Luisa had suggested. It was very likely that the one had been built to service the other, knowing that a lot of out-of-towners might be looking for a place to stay. Laura shaded her eyes as she looked up at it. It was big, considering what a small town they were in. It wasn’t much more populous than the farming town they had driven over from. But the convention center was clearly a draw for people from all over the county, if not the state.

Laura walked over from the hotel to the center, knowing that if she was right, she was walking in the footsteps of their victims. If they had both stayed at the hotel and both visited a convention, that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t having an affair. But it did hint at a different connection between them—some kind of shared interest or possibly a career.

Not that they seemed, on the surface, to be working in the same field—but perhaps Janae Michaels had been in training.

“Do you recall seeing anything in their bank statements about this?” Laura asked, looking over her shoulder. “Any ticket purchase?”

Agent Moore shook her head, stumbling a little as she rushed over to catch up. “No, nothing,” she said. “Maybe it was a free event? Or they paid cash at the door?”

“Possibly,” Laura said. They reached the impressive double doors that led into the convention hall, and Laura hesitated for a moment. It seemed closed. What did you do? Knock, or just try to head in?

In the end, she tried the door. It opened easily, allowing them into a small lobby area with desks on both sides, no doubt set up to speed up the entrance process.

“Hello?” she called out, loud, into the space. Her own voice echoed back to her for a moment, but the sound of movement off to one side alerted her that they were not alone. A man emerged from a side door behind one of the desks, peeking out to see who was there.

“We’re closed today,” he said. He was probably about twenty-five, Caucasian, with hair that was long enough to be tied into a small ponytail right at the back of his head. “If you’re looking to book tickets, you can visit our website—”

“We’re not customers,” Laura interrupted.

“Oh, right,” the man said, straightening slightly. “Well, if you want to book the hall—”

“And not clients either,” Laura said. She held up her badge. “We need to ask you some questions about a convention that took place last month.”

His eyes bulged. They flicked to one side, and Laura sensed that Agent Moore was also holding up her own badge. “What’s this about? We haven’t done anything wrong, have we? I’m just the marketing manager, so I don’t—”

“Is that the office?” Laura asked, clapping her hands together meaningfully and rubbing her palms together. “It sure would be nice to be invited in out of the cold to sit and have a coffee.”

The man cleared his throat, nodding his understanding. “Right. Would you like to come inside?”

“Thanks so much,” Laura grinned, breezing past the desk and following him through to the office on the other side. It was a small space—only a collection of four desks, three of them pushed together with one at the head, probably belonging to the boss of the company. There was no one else inside. “Is everyone else home today?”

“We tend to take our vacation time on days when there’s nothing on in the hall,” the marketing manager said. “I drew the short straw, I guess. We like to have someone in to answer the phones, at least.”

Laura sat down behind one of the desks at random, noting that it held a collection of ceramic cat figurines in miniature around the monitor and keyboard. “So. Last month’s schedule?” she asked.

“Um,” he said, running a hand back over his hair. One of the strands caught in a ring he was wearing and fell loose from his ponytail. “I guess… we started off with a symposium on new farming techniques. We have a lot of those, actually. There was a sci-fi convention. It’s a bit of a quiet month—after that we had a break for a few days, and then we had this ancestors reunion thing, and then another break before the medical equipment fair—”

“What was that one—the ancestors reunion?” Laura asked, frowning. Something about the name had struck a chord with her. It wasn’t a vision—just the more old-fashioned kind of detective work, going with her gut.

The marketing manager shuffled some papers on another desk and pulled out a glossy flyer. “Here—it’s kind of a trend that seems to be happening lately. People get together with everyone who shares a common ancestor with them. It’s like a family reunion, but, like, much bigger.”

Laura studied the poster. She handed it to Agent Moore, who had taken the desk opposite her, without a word. The dates listed at the bottom of the page matched exactly with the dates that both Janae Michaels and James Bluton had stayed at the hotel.

Still, that wasn’t quite proof. Not yet.

“Can I see your attendee records?” Laura asked. “We need to see if the people we’re investigating were there.”

“Sure, I have them in a database on my computer,” he said. He fidgeted awkwardly where he stood, brushing his hand back over his hair again. “Um… it’s just, you’re in my seat.”

Laura looked at the collection of cat figurines and then back at him with a raised eyebrow. When all he could do was shrug apologetically, she sighed, got up, and moved out of his way so that he could sit down. The advantage now, of course, was that she could look over his shoulder at the computer screen.

She could also see the office’s coffee machine at this angle—and it looked like a very fancy machine indeed, the kind that would make coffee you actually enjoyed drinking rather than just throwing it back.

“Agent Moore,” she said. “Why don’t you get us that coffee?”

If she was honest, she was expecting resistance. But Agent Moore simply leapt up out of her chair with an enthusiastic nod and scurried over to the machine, grabbing a couple of mugs from a display right next to it.

“Okay,” the marketing manager said. Laura had watched him log in. His name was Ben. “I have the database up and ready. What’s the name you need to check?”

“There are two,” Laura said. “Janae Michaels and James Bluton.”

“Can you spell that surname?” he asked, typing in as she read out the letters to him. After a moment, he nodded with satisfaction and pointed at the screen. “There we go—there’s your James Bluton. Attended both days. And… yep, the same for Janae Michaels. They were both here for both days of the event.”

They’d both been there.

Laura allowed herself a small smile of victory. They had their link. Whatever it was that made the killer target them, it had something to do with this ancestors reunion. Which meant it was almost certain the killer was someone who had also attended. Perhaps an argument had taken place, or they had witnessed something they weren’t supposed to.

“Can we verify that absolutely?” Laura asked. “Surveillance footage of the front desk, perhaps?”

Ben shrugged. “I can get it for you. I don’t know how clearly we’ll be able to see them—I know it was a busy day.”

“How busy could it possibly have been?” Laura asked. “This is just people who are related, right?”

“Yeah, but they’re distantly related—like fourth, fifth, sixth cousins and beyond. Most of the attendees never even meet before the day of the reunion,” Ben said. “It starts a few generations back. If you think about the possibilities—children and children’s children and children’s children’s children, and so on, you end up with a lot of people coming in through the doors.”

“How many?” Laura asked in alarm. From the other side of the room there was a large hiss of steam, seeming to punctuate her words.

“Looks like we had one thousand, nine hundred and eighty-nine people in attendance,” Ben said, clicking back to the main list on his database.

Laura just gaped at him.

“Um,” Agent Moore said, calling their attention back to her. She had a kind of upset look on her face. She reminded Laura of a puppy that thought it was about to get told off and really wished it could avoid it. “I think I broke your coffee machine.”

“What?” Ben asked, jumping to his feet.

Laura was similarly upset; she’d been looking forward to that coffee. “It can’t be that bad,” she said. “You probably just didn’t press the right button.”

“No, no,” Ben said, bending over the machine. “Looks like she’s managed to pull out one of the components. The wires are all loose. This is going to need to go back to the manufacturer to be fixed!”

“Oh dear,” Laura said, her tone flat but hurried. “Terribly sorry. If you could just print out that list for us and give us the name of the organizer?”

“Give me a minute,” Ben said, rubbing his face. “The boss is going to kill me. This thing cost more than my car.”

“Let me see if I can fix it,” Agent Moore said, her tone one of complete panic. She turned to fiddle with something on the back of the coffee machine—

And the room plunged into total darkness, with a whirring noise as every electrical item in the place powered down.

“What did you touch?!” Ben demanded, clearly very distressed about what his boss was going to say now.

“That name, and we’ll get out of your hair,” Laura suggested. “I promise Agent Moore won’t touch anything else.”

Agent Moore made a kind of squeak in the darkness, as if to say that she agreed to the terms.

“It’s on my desk,” Ben said, his voice having risen at least an octave in stress. “Just… let me…” He moved through the room, swearing when he bumped into the corner of a desk, and then flipped the screen of his cell phone on to illuminate his desk. He shuffled through what looked like scrap paper to find the torn-off edge of something and thrust it at Laura.

“Many thanks,” she said, as cheerfully as she could. “Well, goodbye then!”

She made a beeline for the exit, making sure to grab Agent Moore by the arm on the way past and haul her out before she could do any more damage.