Cold Spite (Cold Justice: Most Wanted #5)

Chapter 53

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

D elilah presented herself to security at FBI HQ at 8:45 a.m. and was quickly waved through after they checked her identity and verified the fact she was expected. Security personnel weren’t fellow agents. Hopefully, her name meant nothing to them.

Trainer had called her an hour ago and told her to get her ass here. He hadn’t sounded happy. Perhaps the director had intervened on her behalf again. She hoped it meant she’d be able to sit in with the task force rather than twiddle her thumbs doing nothing.

She felt exposed as she headed across the open courtyard. She grabbed a coffee from the onsite Starbucks as she had a few minutes before the meeting started and the place was quiet. Then she hurried across to the elevators, got off on one floor and walked a mile of convoluted corridors to the next one. It was a maze. Another separate elevator got her to SIOC. Thankfully, she’d spent a lot of time in the building with her father back in the day and didn’t get lost.

She headed into the briefing room and registered surprised glances from some of the other agents. Yael sat at the large conference table with her laptop open. Delilah sat beside her feeling decidedly unwanted and unwelcome.

“Hey, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“So I gather.” Delilah pulled a face. “Trainer called me and told me to be here.” She glanced around. Unease crept over her. “Given the warm reception, I’m a little worried about his motives now.”

People filed in, and it was standing room only as ASAC Trainer stood at the front on the room sorting through his notes.

Delilah found herself staring at the clocks showing the different times around the world. They didn’t have a clock for Louisiana, but she wondered if Joseph Scanlon had told his daughter about her mother’s death yet. How would he spin it? What would happen to the kid? Would the grandmother take her in? Or was Joseph expecting to get away with his crimes and raise her himself?

Trainer began the meeting with a full-frontal assault. “Agent Quinn. I spoke to Seattle PD, and it turns out Nicole Scanlon left a phone message on her ex-husband’s messaging service less than fifteen minutes before she died, telling him the FBI had just been to see her. But when I spoke to the SAC at the Seattle Field Office, she says no agents had so far managed to connect with Mrs. Scanlon.”

“Zimmerman,” Delilah corrected through gritted teeth. “She wasn’t a Scanlon. She was a Zimmerman.”

“Her name isn’t the issue,” Trainer ground out.

The hell it wasn’t. And how come agents in the same city as her hadn’t managed to talk to the woman, while she and Cas had flown across the country and found her at home without any issue?

“Do you have anything to tell me before I initiate a full investigation into your whereabouts yesterday?”

“That’s not necessary, sir. And, if you’d let me talk to you yesterday, you’d have known we discovered Mrs. Zimmerman’s daughter was catching a flight that afternoon to visit her father, solo.” She wanted to drag her hands through her hair, but he’d see it as a weakness. “Without definitive feedback on this development I decided to act on my own initiative”—something FBI agents were supposed to do—“and go speak to her myself. Try to discourage her from letting her daughter stay with someone I believe is potentially dangerous.”

“Let me get this straight. Even aside from the fact I had already specifically forbade you to contact the ex-wife, thanks to your actions Joseph Scanlon likely knows we’re investigating him?”

Forbade ?

“Joseph Scanlon knew we were going to investigate him before he committed any of the crimes. Hence the alibi for every damned minute.”

Trainer looked smug. “What you seem to be missing from your own statement is he has solid alibis for all of the murders except Valerie Strauss and Agent Gonzales. We haven’t even questioned Scanlon directly because we don’t have enough probable cause.”

Delilah stared at her coffee cup rather than reveal her true feelings regarding Trainer’s investigative abilities.

“Your service weapon came back, and the only DNA on it is yours.”

The agents around her shifted uneasily.

She looked up. “Of course my DNA and fingerprints are on my own weapon.”

Trainer crossed his arms. “A defense attorney would suggest it is as viable a scenario that you killed your friend and set fire to your own townhouse to destroy evidence and then went to Agent Gonzales’s home and shot him dead. Maybe there was a lover’s tiff.”

Anger had her tightening her jaw. “David was not my lover. He was a valued colleague and friend. And I would never have harmed Val.” Tears blinded her for a second, but she blinked them away. She probably shouldn’t be having this conversation without a lawyer but what the hell. “She’s the best friend I ever had, and I did not hurt her in any way.” Except for being the reason she died. “ Following this line of dubious logic, what exactly did Clarence Carpenter do to me?”

Trainer shrugged with a smug glint in his eye. “Perhaps that case is unrelated. Or perhaps you killed him to throw us off the scent. Perhaps his boss killed him when he heard he was working with the FBI. Frank Bannon has some criminal contacts and questionable business practices.”

Delilah’s mouth went dry because the guy had basically accused her of murder—exactly as Scanlon must have hoped when he’d taken her weapon and shot David.

“And all these other events?” She waved her hand in the air. “The bomb at the memorial service? The murder of the admiral and his wife? Nicole Zimmerman and her unborn child’s shooting death?” She was incredulous. “Are they coincidences ?”

“We don’t have a shred of evidence to link Scanlon that isn’t circumstantial, nor do we know for sure these incidents are connected.”

Was he fucking kidding?

She looked around the room feeling helpless. Did these people genuinely believe they were sitting here with a desperate killer? An armed, desperate killer? Was this an elaborate setup and interrogation? She kept her hands visible on the table in front of her. “What about DNA? Is that back yet?”

Yael held her hand up like they were in school.

“We identified Petty Officer Kevin Holtz’s DNA on parts of the device, and HRT have gone to pick him up.” Trainer ignored Yael. “We’ll be questioning him here in a few hours, but a good defense attorney could put the DNA down to something that happened in the course of his duties, a bit like you and your gun.”

Nausea rose up inside her.

Yael turned her laptop to face the team leader. “We have Agent Quinn on camera going for a run after her house is ablaze.”

“It’s still possible for her to have committed the crimes.” He raised his hand in a placatory gesture. “I’m not saying that’s what happened, but I am saying we need to investigate the possibility, and Agent Quinn’s continued presence and interference is a hindrance and conflict of interest to the case.”

Lincoln Frazer entered the room and walked up to her. The agent on her left stood and offered him her chair. He took it.

Was he here to arrest her?

Yael spoke up again. “Did you all get the information on the light aircraft belonging to the Scanlons that I sent out early this morning?”

Trainer nodded. “We appreciate the help, but we can take over that part of the investigation now.” Obviously, Yael had been tainted by association with her.

“Oh, so you’re not interested in the fact I can place that aircraft at airfields thirty miles north of Norfolk early on Wednesday morning? And that it flew out of Renton Municipal Airport near Seattle on Tuesday evening? Or that it flew to Renton from Gillespie Field in California—a forty-minute drive from La Jolla—early Tuesday morning? Or that Virgil Scanlon was the pilot on record?”

“Not Virgil Scanlon who looks identical to his twin brother Joseph?” Delilah stage-whispered.

“Would be awful hard to tell them apart without a PCR machine in your pocket,” Yael matched her tone.

“Damned good work. Did you get any sleep last night?”

Yael yawned. “Not a lot.”

Trainer looked baffled. “If you can pass the details onto us, I’ll have our analysts check and verify the information.”

Yael smiled slightly and hit a button on her computer. “There you go. A hard copy. I’ll email you the rest.” A printer on the credenza behind Trainer began spitting out sheets of paper.

Trainer frowned. “I thought you needed a password to access that? How did you know it?”

Yael raised a quizzical brow. “I have no idea what you mean. It just popped up as an available machine. That’s all the data I was able to assemble last night. No flight plans were logged, but each airport keeps their own records. You’ll need to send agents out there with photographs of one of the Scanlon brothers for a definitive ID.”

Trainer gave her a hard stare. “Are you telling me how to do my job?”

“No, sir.” Yael shot him a blank smile as if she weren’t twenty times more intelligent that the task force leader.

“Be that as it may,” Trainer continued, undeterred, “it’s still all circumstantial.”

Delilah finished her coffee and stared down at the table in defeat. Trainer didn’t care about facts. He just wanted rid of her.

“Look, Agent Quinn, we appreciate this is difficult for you, but I need to ask you to step back. In fact, I’ve asked that you be put on paid leave until this is all resolved. I’ll need your weapon and your badge.”

Delilah’s gaze shot around the room. Humiliation pumped blood into her cheeks. She was being stripped of the job that meant so much to her in front of her colleagues. She pulled the black leather wallet where she kept her badge out of her blazer pocket. Joseph Scanlon would be very happy to discover this if he ever found out she was still alive. She didn’t intend to give up her backup Glock, which technically belonged to her.

Lincoln Frazer closed his hand around hers. “Wait. I hardly think it’s the wisest time to leave the target of a suspected serial killer defenseless.” Lincoln Frazer raised his brows at Trainer like he thought he was an idiot.

They were in sync on that.

“Well, fortunately, you aren’t in charge, are you?”

Delilah’s eyes widened but the profiler looked unconcerned by the jab.

“That may be technically correct, however, more importantly, I spoke with the director before this meeting, and what you failed to mention was that she hadn’t decided whether or not to suspend Agent Quinn. She said she’d taken your comments under advisement—the same way she would take my opposing opinions under advisement. ”

Trainer looked uncomfortable at being called out in front of everyone. “A criminal conviction is going to be a nightmare if Agent Quinn is involved?—”

“And who invited her to this meeting?” Frazer wasn’t bothering to hide his anger now. “When she could have been sitting at home, none the wiser about any of this?”

Trainer’s face flushed. “I can’t have her going off around the country interfering with this investigation.”

“She tried to warn a woman she might be in danger, and that same woman is now dead!” Frazer’s voice rang out in the small, overcrowded room.

“And from where I’m sitting, Quinn is as likely to be Nicole Scanlon’s killer as Joseph Scanlon is.”

Delilah felt her mouth drop open in shock.

Frazer reared back as if slapped. “What possible motive could she have for shooting a pregnant woman she barely knows?”

Trainer’s gaze shot back to her. “Nicole Scanlon made multiple accusations against Agent Quinn in the past. Plus,” he raised his voice when Frazer went to interrupt, “plus, there is the fact Agent Quinn could be jealous Nicole was pregnant.” His stooped shoulders pulled back. “As she is unable to have children. Perhaps she snapped.”

Delilah felt the blood drain from her head, and she had to fight the dizziness that crashed over her like a giant wave.

That Greg Trainer would splash her private medical information to everyone in the room, a secret she had guarded assiduously for the past five years, made her want to vomit. Rage filled her and tears burned the back of her eyes.

Frazer stared at the man aghast. “That was unforgivable. Agent Quinn will be making an official complaint, as will I.”

She couldn’t talk. Her lips and mouth felt numb. She stumbled to her feet. Fought for control of her tongue. “I assume I’m free to go? You’re not making an arrest at this point?” Her voice dripped sarcasm.

Trainer shook his head. “Not at this point. ”

She stared at the black leather wallet on the table. Frowned. “Am I suspended or not?”

“Yes,” said Trainer.

“No,” said Frazer.

She scooped up the creds and put them in her pocket. She’d go with ASAC Frazer’s decision as he was the same rank as Trainer and fuck him. “Let me know what the director decides.”

All of a sudden Scanlon’s attachment to his trident pin made a lot more sense.

“I assume I’m off the task force?”

Trainer jerked his chin down in a sharp nod.

She looked around the crowded room of her peers. “For the record. I went to warn Nicole Zimmerman that her ex-husband might be dangerous. I went to Seattle even though ASAC Trainer ordered me not to. I did it because the life of Nicole and that little girl, a child you have barely even mentioned, are worth more than my career. I hoped Nicole might listen to reason, but she didn’t, and I am sick to my stomach she’s dead now and that Melody is with a man who I know from personal experience is a violent misogynist. Nicole believed that prison had changed him, and he’d found religion. She refused to accept her ex might hold a grudge.” She looked at the analyst who she knew was doing most of the work. “I don’t know the exact time Nicole was shot, but I’ll almost certainly be on the security cameras at SeaTac. Or on the plane. I’d get on verifying that as soon as possible if I were you.” She pointed her finger at Trainer. “And rest assured, I will be making a formal complaint about your actions today. What you did here was inexcusable.”

Trainer’s face flamed in outrage and she wondered if he’d lash out.

“And another thing, ASAC Trainer,” she reached the door and turned to stare him down, “next time you come for my badge, you better not miss.”