The two men headed off in opposite directions.
Patrick Johnson’s fiancée had finally stopped sobbing long enough to answer a few standard questions posed to her by Alex and Simpson, who sat across from the devastated woman in her living room. The FBI had already been by to interrogate her, and Alex doubted that Agent Lloyd had exhibited the greatest bedside manner. He decided to try a gentler approach.
Anne Jeffries lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Springfield, Virginia, where eighteen hundred a month in rent bought you considerably less than a thousand square feet, a single bedroom and one toilet. She was medium height and a little on the plump side, with a puffy face engraved with small features. She wore her brunet hair long, and her teeth had been bleached to a startling white.
“Our wedding was to be on May first of next year,” Jeffries said. She sat dressed in a rumpled sweat suit with her hair unkempt, her face unmade and a pile of used Kleenex next to her feet.
“And there were no problems that you were aware of?” Alex asked.
“None,” she answered. “We were very happy together. My job was going great.” However, she made each of these statements as though they were questions.
“What is it that you do?” Simpson asked.
“I’m director of development for a nonprofit health care group based in Old Town Alexandria. I’ve been there about two years. It’s a great position. And Pat loved his job.”
“So he spoke about it to you?” Alex asked.
Jeffries lowered her tissue. “No, not really. I mean I knew he worked for the Secret Service, or something like that. I knew he wasn’t an agent, like you two. But he never spoke about what he did or even where he did it. It used to be that old joke between us, you know, the ‘if he told me, he’d have to kill me’ thing. God, what a stupid line.” The tissue went back up, and the eyes filled with fresh tears.
“Yeah, it is a stupid line,” Alex agreed. “As I’m sure you know, your fiancé was found on Roosevelt Island.”
Jeffries took a deep breath. “That was where we had our first date. It was a picnic. I still remember exactly the food that I brought and the wine we had.”
“So he maybe committed suicide at the site of your first date?” Simpson asked. “That might be symbolic.” She and Alex exchanged glances.
“We weren’t having problems!” exclaimed the woman, who’d sensed their suspicion.
“Maybe from your perspective you weren’t,” Simpson said in a blunt tone. “Sometimes the people we think we know best we don’t really know at all. But the fact is a bottle of Scotch and a gun were found with his prints on them.”
Jeffries stood and paced the small room. “Look, it’s not like Pat was leading some secret double life.”
“Everyone has secrets,” Simpson persisted. “And killing himself at the place where you had your first date, well . . . ? It may not be a coincidence.”
Jeffries whirled around to look at Simpson. “Not Pat. He didn’t have secrets that would cause him to take his own life.”
“If you knew about them, they wouldn’t be secrets, would they?” Simpson said.
“His suicide note said that he was sorry,” Alex interjected, shooting Simpson an angry look. “Any idea what he was sorry about?”
Jeffries dropped back onto her chair. “The FBI didn’t tell me about that.”
“They were under no obligation to tell you, but I thought you would want to know. Any idea what he might have meant?”
“No.”
“Was he depressed about anything? Any change in emotions?” Alex asked.
“Nothing like that.”
“The gun he used was a Smith & Wesson .22 caliber revolver. It was registered to him. You ever see it around?”
“No, but I knew he’d purchased a gun. There’d been a couple of break-ins in his neighborhood. He got it for protection. I hate guns personally. After we were married, I was going to make him get rid of it.”
“When was the last time you spoke with him?” Alex asked.
“Yesterday afternoon. He said he’d call me later if he got the chance. But he never did.”
She looked like she might start bawling again, so Alex spoke quickly. “No idea what he was working on lately? Anything he might have mentioned, even just in passing?”
“I told you, he didn’t talk about work to me.”
“No money problems, ex-girlfriend, things like that?”
She shook her head.
“And what were you doing last night between the hours of eleven and two?” Simpson asked.
Jeffries looked stonily at her. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“I think the question is pretty straightforward.”
“You said Pat killed himself, so why does it matter where I was?”
Alex cut in. He was finding his partner’s interrogation technique very annoying. “Technically, it’s a homicide, which can include anything from suicide to murder. We’re just trying to establish the whereabouts of everyone involved. We’ll be asking lots of people that same question. Don’t read anything more than that into it.”
Slowly, Anne Jeffries’ defiant look dissolved. “Well, I left work around six-thirty. Traffic, as usual, was a bitch. It took me an hour and ten minutes to crawl a few miles. I made some phone calls, had a bite to eat and went back down to Old Town to meet with the woman who’s making my wedding dress.” Here she paused and let out a sob. Alex handed her a fresh tissue and nudged the glass of water she’d earlier poured for herself closer to the woman. She gulped from it and continued. “I finished with her around nine-thirty. That’s when I got a call from a girlfriend who lives in Old Town, and we met for a drink at Union Street Pub. We were there for about an hour or so, just chitchatting. Then I drove home. I was in bed by midnight.”
“Your friend’s name?” Simpson asked, and wrote it down.
The two agents rose to leave, but Jeffries stopped them.
“His . . . his body. They didn’t tell me where it is.”
“I would imagine it’s at the D.C. morgue now,” Alex said quietly.
“Can I . . . I mean would it be possible for me to see him?”
“You don’t have to do that. They’ve already positively identified him,” Simpson added.
“That’s not what I meant. I . . . I just want to see him.” She paused and said, “Is he, is he terribly disfigured?”
Alex answered, “No. I’ll see what I can do. By the way, is his family nearby?”
“They live in California. I’ve spoken with them; they’re flying in with Pat’s brother.” She gazed up at him. “We were really very happy together.”
“I’m sure you were,” Alex said as he walked out the door with Simpson.
Outside, he faced off with his partner. “Is that what the hell you call effective interrogation techniques?”
Simpson shrugged. “I was the bad cop and you were the good cop. It worked pretty well. She’s probably telling the truth. And she doesn’t know zip.”
Alex was about to respond when his phone rang.
He listened for a minute and then turned to Simpson. “Let’s go.” He started walking off fast.
“Where to?” she asked, hustling after him.
“That was Lloyd from the FBI. They think they just found out what Patrick Johnson was sorry about.”
CHAPTER
21
WHEN ALEX AND SIMPSON arrived at Patrick Johnson’s Bethesda residence, they were surprised, for two reasons. One, there was no visible police presence, not even a marked vehicle or yellow police tape. A couple of Suburbans in the driveway were the only evidence of someone being on-site.