The 3rd Victim (47 page)

But Carlson was shaking his head. ‘Why would he? He was the best. He had the top end clients and the ego to match. He believed I was as narcissistic as he was, and bottom line I was giving him a chance to continue his business. In the end, as clever as these criminals are, David, they often see what they want to see.’

David understood what Carlson was saying – Hunt was indeed a gift horse for Walker who, at that stage, had no reason to suspect the FBI were onto him. ‘So who were these agents you manned your fake company with?’ he asked then.

‘They were FBI technicians skilled in cyber crime,’ replied Carlson. ‘They were the ones who managed to hack into Walker's complex client communications system. It took time, but in the end they managed to crack Walker's order codes – codes for product specifics like intellect, creative talents, physical attributes, cultural heritage – disguised in complicated spreadsheets and graphs tabling everything from futures trades, equity acquisitions, stock purchases and sales, market fluctuation tracking, CPI index predictions and so forth.’

‘And this is how you identified Markus Dudek and Judge Baker?’ asked Sara.

Carlson nodded. ‘We saw this as a major breakthrough, except we still had a problem when it came to proving that the aforementioned financial data was indeed code for the order of genetically manufactured children. In other words, what we had was a theory and we needed something concrete to back it up.’

‘Like Sienna's DNA combined with another of Davenport's unwitting male patients?’ said Sara, piecing it together.

Carlson nodded again. ‘We needed the physical evidence,’ he said, before taking a sip of his water and shifting in his seat as he waited for David to fire off his next question.

‘How did Walker find out that somebody was on to him?’ asked David then.

Carlson's brow furrowed. ‘We don't know,’ admitted Carlson. ‘And this is where we hit a major problem. You see, we suspected they were onto us being onto them when Davenport started blocking Special Officer Loxley, as Esther Wallace, from his computer patient lists. And while that told us they may have been onto Special Officer Loxley, it did not tell us whether or not they knew about myself as Hunt, or Sienna.’

‘So you two had to continue with the charade,’ said David.

‘Yes, that was vital. We were close to nabbing them from my end, so we needed to string it out.’

But Sara was shaking her head. ‘Wasn't that incredibly dangerous? I mean, if you suspected Walker and Davenport were onto you …’ She bit her lip as she tried to put her argument into words. ‘Jim Walker's faking his own death – that was proof they knew they were being investigated, right?’

‘Right,’ replied Carlson.

‘But his supposed death still didn't tell you whether or not you and Sienna were under suspicion.’

‘Right again.’

‘So what did you expect to happen after Walker's disappearance?’ continued Sara. ‘That Davenport would run also?’

‘It was their obvious next move. But it never happened and we guessed this was because there were a few deals to wrap up before they made a run for it. Admittedly, by this stage our situation was precarious given Special Officer Loxley was still working in Davenport's office under very strained conditions, and Sienna was close to giving birth, and I still didn't have quite enough evidence to tie Walker to Judge Baker and Markus Dudek.’ Carlson took a breath. ‘So when Walker staged his own death we went into damage control – mainly because there were no other options left to us.’

‘Your evidence was close but not close enough,’ said David.

‘Yes.’

‘So you had to contain the situation by continuing with your charades and controlling others who became part of this investigation by default – people like Marco De Lorenzo.’

Carlson nodded. ‘The information the truck driver held had to be contained. In many ways we got lucky in the way it all went down given that De Lorenzo confirmed our suspicions that the death was a fake and that he was working illegally, and as such could disappear and leave his brother to cover his tracks.’

‘Two more lives you could screw,’ said Joe, unable to help himself.

Carlson let that go, perhaps sensing Joe needed to vent.

‘Susan Leigh helped me find De Lorenzo,’ continued Joe when Carlson did not bite. ‘Was she in on this too?’

David looked at Joe. He knew how close Joe and Susan were and sensed her involvement would sting. But David knew Susan also, and as such guessed that she had been in the dark as much as they had.

‘Agent Leigh was not privy to our investigations into Winter and Cameron.’ This came from Leo.

‘Did you know she was helping us?’

Simba swallowed. ‘We knew you two were close. We kept an eye on her.’

‘So now you are spying on your own people?’ said Joe. He placed his palms on the table and flexed his fingers as if trying to push through the wood.

‘As Special Agent Carlson said, Joe, it was imperative the investigation be contained.’

‘
Contained
?’ said Joe, the irony of Simba's words apparent to all in the room. ‘Contained, Leo?’ he repeated. ‘Seriously, do you hear what you are saying? Your investigation was so far out of control that you depended on the three of us to do it for you. All this cloak and dagger bullshit, all this “with or without you” crap you have been dishing out for over six months.’ Joe shook his head. ‘Marco De Lorenzo is a case in point. If you wanted us to learn the truth, why in the hell did you hide him from us? He knew that car was empty, he understood that Walker wasn't dead … and you needed us to work this out also, for David's investigation to blossom into something all clean and shiny and new. So why hold the man back, why have us running around like headless chickens with nothing better to do than chase shadows around the coop?’

‘Oh come on, Joe,’ said Simba then, his voice now tinged with frustration. ‘You know it wasn't as simple as all that. We held Marco De Lorenzo back for a myriad of reasons – because we feared if he talked he might put his life in danger, because we needed time to investigate the collision and confirm the presence of accelerants that obliterated any chance of us identifying any human DNA.’

‘That wasn't in the police report,’ said Joe.

Leo rolled his eyes and held out his hands in a gesture that said,
Well, fancy that!
‘We're the FB fucking I, Joe. We get to pull rank if we want to. And you're forgetting one important fact, my friend, that even if you
had
interviewed De Lorenzo earlier, even if you
had
worked out that Walker wasn't in that car, wouldn't you still have concluded that Walker was dead but that Hunt had killed him elsewhere and covered up his murder by staging the head-on collision? Wouldn't you just have used De Lorenzo's eyewitness report to confirm your estimation of Hunt as the true culprit in all of this?’

David looked at Joe. Leo was right.

‘We're sorry for how that played out, Joe,’ Simba continued. ‘We're sorry for what this mess did to Marco De Lorenzo and his brother. But it was
Walker
, not the FBI, who pulled them into this case in the first place.’ Leo's eyes flicked toward the clock in the corner. ‘But if you want to use what's left of our time here to beat me up then …’

Joe shook his head, his cheeks still flushed with resentment. But then he dragged his hands from the table and sat back in his chair, the gesture signalling to David that it was okay to move on.

David turned back to Carlson. ‘So Walker was dead, which meant you faced even bigger problems, because after that, you and Sienna couldn't keep track of his movements.’

‘We were facing off against a ghost, yes.’ Carlson resettled into the story. ‘So we were left with no choice but to bide our time until Walker made his next move, which we believed would be his and Davenport's attempt to exit the country.’

‘So you put the airports on high alert,’ said Sara.

‘Yes.’

‘And kept Special Officer Loxley in her post at Davenport's surgery despite the fact you thought her cover had been compromised.’

Carlson took a breath. ‘Yes.’

‘But they weren't about to run, at least not yet,’ she said.

Carlson did not answer.

‘And that was one of your biggest mistakes, because you underestimated how far Walker was willing to go to protect himself, and exact revenge on those stupid enough to cross him.’

Carlson hesitated before agreeing. ‘As we have explained, we seriously underestimated them.’

‘And the next thing you knew, Eliza was dead and Sienna was arrested …’

Carlson took a breath. ‘We had no choice but to bring you guys in to finish the job for us,’ Carlson finally admitted before looking at David. ‘It wasn't a knee-jerk reaction, we suspected we'd need help before Eliza was murdered, which is why I introduced myself to you that night at the banquet.’ He ran his fingers through his short brown hair. ‘Believe me, we thought on it long and hard – if there had been any other way …’

‘There's always another way, Carlson,’ said David, his thoughts going to Lauren. ‘You left it way too late. A baby girl was murdered.’

‘Not just any little girl, David, my daughter,’ Carlson reminded him.

David met his eye, seeing nothing but the deepest of regret. ‘The price was too high,’ he said.

And a weary-faced Carlson opened his mouth to answer, before closing it once again.

*

They all poured themselves more water. The room felt hot and thick and heavy and tight, despite the cool breeze pushing out of the airconditioning vent above them. David knew they were close to understanding it all now, but there were still a few very important issues to explore. While he was desperate to learn the last of the details from the group that sat before him, he understood that scooping out the dregs from the very bottom of the dark and deadly pit that was Jim Walker and Dick Davenport's sick and twisted business would mean revisiting not just what he and Sara had suffered, but also the life-shattering consequences of Sienna Walker and Michael Carlson's decision to act on the attraction they felt for each other. David knew that if Sienna and Carlson had their time again, they might not have let their feelings interfere with their purpose – or, alternatively, they would have let the two men go in the hope that they would catch them later, in some other foreign city some time down the track. But they stuck to it and made the mistakes they made, and it was these mistakes that David needed to explore now, before their time was over and the truth of it was lost forever, hidden in some warehouse of boxes marked ‘confidential’ and in Sienna and Carlson's hearts.

‘You fell in love,’ he said, stating it as plainly as he could.

‘Yes,’ said Sienna. ‘At first I hated Special Agent Carlson – for telling me the truth. And then … then I began to work with him and see that his motivations were noble and pure and …’ She took a breath. ‘I could sit here and say it was because of the pressure we were under, but that would not be true. Yes, we were working closely together, yes, it was intense – the daily necessity of upholding our charades, of working and living with a man who was capable of doing what he did. But Special Agent Carlson … he is the opposite of everything my husband turned out to be, a man I respected for who he was, and what he fought for, on behalf of me – and on behalf of our daughter.’

But Sara was shaking her head. ‘I understand, Sienna, but acting on it, on those feelings – it was so … irresponsible, so dangerous.’

‘I know,’ agreed Sienna. ‘But I need you to understand that we weren't …’ she hesitated, searching for the words … ‘it was not as if we sought every opportunity to express our feelings physically. On the contrary, apart from a single night when Jim was away on business, when I thought I'd heard an intruder and I called Special Agent Carlson …’

‘It was my fault,’ said Carlson, ‘and I have taken full responsibility, professionally, personally. I reported it to Special Agent King the morning after it happened and while in normal circumstances I would have been taken off the case and reprimanded, in this case it was vital that I remained on point – as Hunt. Of course, at that stage we didn't understand the full repercussions of our decision.’

David knew what he was saying, that that one night resulted in the child who was slaughtered by the very man who wrongly believed he had ‘created’ her. And while this would need to be addressed, David sensed that this is where the story had to be told backwards – at the end and not the beginning – for in a way Eliza's death was decided in spite of her conception, and not because of it.

‘The night she was killed,’ David began. ‘You kept Davenport close, despite the fact that you knew he …?’

‘Yes.’ Sienna was the first to answer, perhaps sensing this final part of the story belonged to her. ‘We had no choice. As soon as I found her missing, I …’ Sienna blinked, ‘… I rang Special Agent Carlson and he came immediately, and I was hysterical but he … we …
we
knew it was Dick or my husband who had killed her but …’ She shook her head.

‘I called Davenport,’ said Carlson, coming to Sienna's aid. ‘I had no choice. His actions suggested that they suspected Sienna had been compromised, but there was a chance my cover was still intact – which was all we had to hold on to at this point. So I had to think like Hunt, I had to act like Hunt. Hunt was Davenport's friend. He knew Davenport was Sienna's doctor. Calling him, watching as her sedated her,’ Carlson's left eye twitched, ‘it was the only way I could maintain my cover and keep him close. I was afraid he would run, and that we would have lost Walker and Davenport forever.’ Carlson looked at Joe. ‘That night, you believed that I saw Davenport as an ally.’

Joe paused before nodding.

‘Well,’ said Carlson, ‘I needed Davenport to do the same.’

There was another pause then as David gave Joe the room to comment further, but he didn't, so David moved on. ‘So within days of the murder you were well and truly flying solo,’ he said. ‘Because Sienna was arrested and Special Officer Loxley had already left?’ David looked at Loxley, prompting her to continue, but once again Sienna broke in, no doubt for the same reason she had earlier, because this part of the story belonged to her.