She Who Watches (4 page)

“I don't remember requesting OSP involvement, other than the crime lab. Ms. Watson is apparently a missing person, and so far there's every indication this is a kidnap investigation. You know that falls under our jurisdiction, not yours or the Portland Police Bureau.”

“We are well aware of your authority,” Mac said, annoyed by Miller's arrogance. “But we need to make you aware of some political ties that Ms.Watson has to a member of our state government. Sara is Senator Dale Wilde's niece. She's the only daughter of the senator's deceased brother. The senator is Oregon's state senate majority leader, and the governor requested we offer our full cooperation and assistance. So, if you have no objection, we would like to be involved.”

“No objections here. Just so you know who's calling the shots.” Agent Miller sounded more like a man making a personal challenge than an agent having a professional conversation with colleagues.

Mac swallowed back the urge to confront him. He didn't like playing a second-fiddle role in his own town, especially not to the “Famous But Incompetent,” as Philly generally referred to the FBI. But then, Philly did tend to accentuate the negative. As much as Mac hated to admit it, the feds were the best when it came to kidnappings and ransom negotiations.

“So what was this about a spark plug?” Agent Lauden gestured to the white material on the floorboard.

Mac suspected the question was more to break up the awkward silence than to make an inquiry. He moved closer to the car, taking a moment to scan the interior before answering the question and before accepting a piece of the hard, white fragment from Agent Lauden. “It's an old auto thief trick.” Mac rolled the tiny fragment in his gloved fingers. “Car clouts take a spark plug or shattered pieces of a plug and pack them for easy concealment for breaking into cars. The porcelain is dense in these plugs, designed to withstand some serious heat and friction. That makes the material a phenomenal tool for shattering glass. The thief throws a little piece of this, and the glass shatters like a bullet hit it. The beauty is that there's very little sound. Once the glass is broken, all the perp has to do is peck out the safety glass, and he has entry. The good ones will put duct tape on the glass before breaking it so they can lift the pieces away.”

The agents glanced at each other, and Mel raised an eyebrow. He seemed impressed but didn't say so. Mac let the opportunity for some cockiness slide. FBI agents had their strengths, but they often lacked the street-crimes investigative skills that being in uniform and working the streets afforded. Mac noticed that these guys were at least wearing gloves and seemed to be preserving the crime scene.

“Can you bring us up to speed?” Mac asked.

Mel shrugged. “Sure. Looks like our victim was taken from the house. According to her husband's secretary, Mrs.Watson called to talk to her husband early this afternoon. Apparently her car had been broken into in the garage near her office. The secretary says that Mrs.Watson seemed OK and was planning to call the insurance company about arrangements to repair the car.”

“She didn't call the police?” Dana asked.

Miller turned his gaze on Dana, his features softening. “There's no record that she did.”

“And she came home to make the calls?” Dana frowned.

“That would be my guess. Your CSI technicians are inside right now. There may have been a struggle in the kitchen.” He glanced over at the reporters who'd gathered at the scene and lowered his voice. “The vultures are here.”

“As always,” Mac mused. “The disappearance of a popular socialite with political ties would be impossible to keep from the press. I wouldn't be surprised if the senator himself briefed them.”

Not many politicians would be able to pass up a chance for this kind of exposure.

Miller shook his head. “Just makes the job harder.”

“What makes you think we are dealing with a kidnapping?” Mac asked. “No disrespect, but I've never seen you guys get involved this quickly in the game without some hard evidence.”

Agent Miller looked around behind him before answering. “So far, we've seen no obvious blood evidence or signs of trauma or anything that would give any indication she was killed inside the residence. We are well aware of Mrs. Watson's relationship to Senator Wilde.Word is that Senator Wilde has been receiving some threatening letters. He's afraid Sara's disappearance is related somehow to those threats, which is why we're here.”

“Understood. Looks like we both received this assignment through political channels.” Mac looked at Dana and thought about the stack of files on his desk, pending court cases, and personal plans that would need to be placed on hold so he could stand around with the FBI on a case that would more than likely never fall under their authority. On the other hand, the case could turn out to be a murder, which would land it in their laps. He hoped that wouldn't be the case. Regardless, Mac intended to stay on top of the investigation.

“Any leads on the abductor?” Dana asked. “Any witnesses or physical evidence?”

“No witnesses to the possible abduction that we know of. We have some uniformed officers checking at the victim's place of work to see if there were any witnesses or possibly a video surveillance of the original break-in. If we're dealing with pros here, I doubt they left anything behind.There doesn't appear to be anything obvious in the car other than what you'd expect for a break-in, but your lab people are having it towed to a garage to check for forensic evidence.”

“Have you talked to the husband?” Mac leaned against one of the pillars holding up the wraparound porch.

“Yeah. He's inside with his little girl and the senator and his wife,” Miller said. “There's a cousin in there too. Guess they were planning a big family get-together this weekend. We thought it best to give them some space for the time being.”

Nice gesture
, Mac thought. Maybe these guys wouldn't be so bad to work with after all. “What's his story?”

“Name's Lester Scott Watson, goes by his middle name,” Agent Lauden read from his notebook. The husband is the one who reported her missing after coming home and finding the evidence of a struggle in the kitchen. The cousin was here a few minutes before that. She found the door unlocked and looked around but didn't find any signs of Sara. She's the one who called Senator Wilde.”

“What's the cousin's name?” Dana asked.

“Claire Montgomery. She's the senator's daughter.”

“What kind of mess are you talking about?” Mac peered past the open front door.

“A few items on the floor, nothing gory,” Agent Miller responded. “No signs of forced entry, no evidence of a weapon or any obvious blood spatter noted on the floor or walls. The only thing out of place is the car break-in and the mess in the kitchen. The pictures that had been magnetically attached to the refrigerator door were all over the floor, along with some keys, a canister of mace, and a remote phone. The phone cord is missing on the kitchen base unit, and there's a broken vase near the entry. Unless the scene was staged, we think Sara fought with her attacker in the kitchen and in the entry area. No witnesses, no tire tracks or skid marks leaving the house, nothing to go on right now. We'll be checking with neighbors to see if they saw anything, though.”

“You said no sign of forced entry. Any keys missing or theories about how the guy got in the house?” Mac asked.

“Nothing much to go on so far. All the keys were accounted for, and the victim's own set was among the items found on the kitchen floor. The husband said they often go into the house through the garage, but the victim's car was parked out front. We think the victim may have left the front door unlocked. Or, she may have used the remote keypad on the door, which makes it possible the suspect had the door code also.”

“Is Sara's car remote for the garage door accounted for?” Dana asked. “A lot of these car clouters grab the car registration and remote control for the garage when they bust into a car.”

“That's right,” Mac said, appreciating Dana's thoroughness. “The suspects get the address off the vehicle registration and burglarize the house while they know the victim is at work or school. We've had a number of local scumbags working that angle lately.”

Agent Miller leaned inside the car, pulling down the driver side visor. “There's an indentation on the visor where a remote-control clip would have been. I bet you're right, Detective Bennett. Having the remote would allow our suspect easy entrance.”

“Which may mean that Sara interrupted a burglary.” Dana finished his thought.

“Possible,” Agent Lauden said. “Unless the reason for stealing the remote was to gain access in order to pull off a kidnapping.”

“Or a murder,” Dana said. “That's why I never leave my remote in the car or give my entire set of keys to the repair shops when they have my car. Remember that rapist a few months ago who worked as a mechanic here in town, Mac?”

“Yeah.” Mac remembered the case all too well.

The agents looked at them to elaborate, and Mac let Dana do the honors.

“We had a serial rapist/killer working the area, a few months back. It turned out he was a mechanic at a local car dealership. The guy would select his victims when they came in to have their cars serviced. He'd make a copy of their house keys on his break. The guy would then return the original set of keys to the customer and pay them a visit a few days later.”

“How'd you catch him?”

“We didn't,” Mac answered. “The guy picked the wrong victim. The woman who nailed him was a martial arts expert. She beat the guy within an inch of his life and called the police. Who knows how long the case might have dragged on without her? This guy was prolific and showed no signs of slowing down.”

“I'd like to think we'd have found him anyway,” Dana said. “Eventually we'd have come up with the mechanic as being the common denominator.”

“I hope that's not the case here,” Agent Lauden grumbled. “Your guy is off the street, isn't he?”

“Yep, he's in the county lockup awaiting trial,” Mac said. “That only leaves thirty-five hundred sex offenders here in the greater Portland metro area to eliminate.”

“Wonderful.”

MAC AND DANA SPENT THE NEXT HOUR looking over the scene and talking with their CSI techs, but they gained little more than what the FBI agents had told them. The techs found a couple of blood smears in the entry as well as a long, black hair. They would run DNA tests and call Mac and Dana with the results. They'd also determined that the garage door opener had not been stolen but was sitting in a drawer in the upstairs office. There was no sign of forced entry, so she may have known her abductor, or she'd been careless and left a door or window unlocked.

Before they left, Mac made it a point to introduce himself and Dana to the family: Scott Watson and his daughter, Chloe; Senator and Mrs. Wilde; Sara's cousin, Claire Montgomery; and her daughter, Allysa. While they were offering their condolences, Jackie Palmer, Watson's secretary, showed up. After the introductions, Jackie hugged Claire and Scott. From her apparent distress and the way she interacted with the family, Mac had the impression that she was a friend as well.

“If only I'd come home earlier,” Scott told the senator. “Maybe . . .”

“It's not your fault, son.” Senator Wilde patted the man's slumped shoulders.

Jackie dabbed at her eyes. “If anyone is to blame, it's me. I should have interrupted your meeting.”

“It doesn't do any good to blame ourselves.” Claire, who was holding Chloe, sat down beside Scott. Chloe immediately moved onto Scott's lap and snuggled into his arms. Mac nearly lost it when he thought about that little girl losing her mother. He swallowed back the lump in his throat and forced himself to look at the other child. Allysa, whom Mac guessed to be around ten, sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the television set playing a video game with the sound turned off.

Mac's gaze moved to each of them. His contact with them had been brief, but they seemed genuinely grief-stricken. He wanted to hang around longer and conduct the interviews himself, but with the feds in charge, that wasn't going to happen. Besides, they had a retirement party to go to.

The detectives left the scene at seven, making it to the Elks Lodge an hour late. Since the food service was just starting, all they had missed was happy hour. Russ signaled them, pointing to the two chairs between him and Philly. Mac glanced around, hoping to see Kristen, his sort-of girlfriend and the state's medical examiner. He spotted several people from the crime lab and finally saw her sitting with some of the deputy medical examiners and her indispensable assistant, Henry.

Mac sat down next to Russ and directed his attention to the front. Kevin stood at the podium, his now-thin frame evident under his sport coat. Kevin's bout with prostate cancer and chemo had not only stripped him of his hair, it seemed to have melted the muscles right off him. After asking everyone to take their seats, he waited until the noise subsided and led them in a prayer of thanks for their dinner.

The room was crammed full of Sergeant Evans's friends, coworkers, and family, with both retired and active officers scattered all over the room. The brass was there in full force, but Frank had asked Kevin to serve as the master of ceremonies. After dinner had been served and consumed, the hundreds of guests settled in for coffee and the awards presentation section of Sarge's retirement celebration.

Kevin read the usual list of letters from agency heads and commendation notes from Frank's career. He read a special letter to Frank's wife, Connie, thanking her for her service to the state and for sticking by her husband's side through it all. The letter was a small token for a spouse who had to endure hundreds of wake-up calls and cancelled personal plans through the years. Yet Connie didn't act like she minded one bit.