“That’s all I saw, but like I said, I wasn’t really looking.” He ran his finger on the edge of the manila folder, eyeing it before turning his gaze on her. “Here’s the thing. We run a tight ship here, and it made some of the guys nervous, what with the Feds coming down on us saying no one discusses the case, because it’s a matter of national security. A bit overkill for a suicide, you ask me, but in this day and age, who are we to question it? Especially considering there isn’t shit here in the notes, or even in the investigation. I could see if there was, say, some big government conspiracy, kill him, make it look like a suicide, but like I said, his neighbor saw it. Of course, you want the real scoop about what was out there, I’d ask the crime scene investigator, Sandra Sechrest. If there was something there, something more than the nothing you got in those photocopies, she’ll be able to tell you. That woman’s got a memory for detail.”
“She here today?”
“Yeah. I can take you up to her office. She works in CSU on the twenty-fourth floor.”
It took two separate elevators to get up to the Crime Scene Unit’s level from the sixth floor. The first elevator took them to the sixteenth floor. “Chief’s office,” Hilleary said, indicating why the carpet seemed a bit nicer on that level. From there, they moved to the second elevator bank, rode up to the twenty-fourth floor. The firearms lab was on one side, the CSU offices on the other, accessed by a rather humblelooking wooden door.
Hilleary knocked and waited. “No one gets in or out, without being escorted,” he said. “Evidence.”
A few moments later, the door was opened by a young man wearing navy combat fatigues and a shoulder holster. “Hilleary. What’re you doing way up here?”
“Hey, George. Sandra in?”
“At her desk.” He stepped aside, revealing a large office of cubicles. Posters and Halloween decorations covered the walls, photos and knickknacks littered the desks where the investigators worked. Sydney scanned the room, saw the top of a snowy white head just on the other side of a cubicle; other than that, the office was empty. George escorted the three to the woman’s cluttered desk. A nameplate reading “Sandra Sechrest” sat atop a stack of reports, finding more use as a paperweight than a desk marker.
Officer Sechrest held a phone tucked beneath one ear, talking to someone as she rifled through a file cabinet, searching for something among the masses of hanging folders. She was a small woman, her white hair cut short, blue eyes that lit up when she saw Hilleary standing there with them. Sydney put the woman in her sixties, probably close to retiring sometime soon.
“Gotta go,” George said, waving at Sandra.
She nodded, and he walked out. “I’m telling you they’re wrong,” she said into the phone. “It’s in here somewhere, Evan. Copied it myself right before I went into court… Wait, wait. Got it!” She pulled out a file folder, opened it, and removed a printed document. “ Five latent print cards from the trunk portion of the victim’s car. I lifted those myself, so if they’re trying to tell you anything different, they’re full of- Yeah, yeah. I’ll have it here for you when you get in.”
She hung up, swiveled in her chair, and eyed the three of them waiting in front of her desk. “This looks a tad official…”
“Trust me,” Alexander Hilleary said. “It’s un official business.”
Sydney leaned across the desk, shook the officer’s hand. “Special Agent Fitzpatrick. Not really here.”
“Special Agent Pettigrew,” Vince said. “Not here, either.”
“Sandy Sechrest. Nice not to meet you.” Officer Sechrest leaned back in her chair, smiled. “So what can I do for you?”
Hilleary leaned forward, whispered, “The McKnight suicide. Now that you know that much, I gotta get back to work. But help ’em out, would ya?”
Sechrest raised her brows as he left. “Yeah. Sure…” The moment the door closed behind him, she said, “You do realize we were ordered not to discuss the case?”
“So Investigator Hilleary never mentioned,” Sydney replied. “Which is why we’re not really here…”
“Not sure what I can do for you. There wasn’t much there. Seemed pretty cut-and-dried.”
“In particular the suicide notes he left behind. What they said.”
“Mostly he was sorry it had to end that way. Every single one of them. Pretty much the same.”
“One in particular. One that might be missing from the files.”
“What do you mean missing?”
Vince glanced around the otherwise empty office, while Sydney replied, “We have reason to believe that… another government agency removed the original suicide note from the files, perhaps due to political reasons.”
Officer Sechrest shook her head, her smile bemused. “Removed them? This is that guy who was being looked into for some political appointment, right? I don’t know about anyone removing the notes, but I do remember the FBI agent I gave copies to. He said it was a matter of security. No discussing the case with anyone, no releasing copies to anyone. Heaven forbid something nasty makes it to the press in an election year.”
Sydney recalled Scotty mentioning his concern over things leaking to the press during elections. Somehow there had to be more to this than political scandals and swaying the voters. “So you think that maybe the notes are still there, that maybe they just didn’t want them somehow leaked to the press?”
“Sure they are. More than likely they removed the copies from records so some clerk wouldn’t accidentally set it in front of a reporter.”
“Can you check in evidence? See if their copies still exist?” Sydney asked.
Officer Sechrest seemed to consider it, then shrugged. “You’re the FBI, no reason I can’t discuss the case with you.” She picked up the phone, talked to someone, waited a couple of minutes, then said, “Thanks. I appreciate it. Hey, what about the photographs I took? The film…?” Her gaze narrowed as she listened to whatever the evidence clerk told her, then hung up. “It’s not there, and she checked with the film lab. The film was developed, and all photos of that note, including the negatives, are gone…”
Vince asked, “Any chance you recall what the notes said?”
“Not much. I mean, it really didn’t make much sense, but- Wait! The ME’s office. They get copies, SOP, for the autopsy. How did I not think of them?”
Officer Sechrest called the medical examiner’s office, her fingers tapping a cadence on her desk as she waited for them to check their files. Sydney knew what the result was by the way she’d hung up the phone. “Okay. This is really, really strange. The copy of that particular note is missing from their office as well…” And just when Sydney was beginning to despair that she’d ever find out what was in that note, Officer Sandy Sechrest smiled, grinned actually. “Ya know, I almost forgot we were dealing with a suicide here. That’s a whole different game.”
“Why is that?”
“The guy that just walked out when you got here, George? He studies suicide notes. Collects them in an unofficial capacity, much like your unofficial visit. A bit unusual as far as collections go, but you’d be surprised what you can learn from these things. Highly educational. And if we’re lucky, he snagged a copy for his file.”
23
She sat in the airport, bone-tired, read the note for the fiftieth time, while she waited for Carillo to get back to her, because he wanted to do some research of his own. But as she examined it again, she wasn’t sure what he could do, because nothing in it seemed to be the sort of thing you could check on.
Dear Sydney,
I’m sorry it had to end this way. I should have sent the money to your father. He only wanted it for Cisco’s Kid, but Iggy said no. They could tie it to BICTT and it would ruin us all. I tried to call Boston. I always thought he’d be sick of fish and beer after twenty years. He was the only smart one. We should have all gone down there. What was I supposed to do? God, I’m so sorry. Sorry about your father. I’ll make it right. Screw Iggy. BICTT is going to take him down, because they’re still operating. The bastard gets what he deserves for what they did to you. Your father was right all along. I know it now.