Bodily Harm (28 page)

BLUES ALLEY APARTMENTS

GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Anne LeRoy stepped from the elevator and strode down the hall, key in hand, backpack slung over one shoulder, and utterly exhausted and disheartened. Maybe Peggy had been right. Maybe quitting had not been the smartest thing to do in the current economy. LeRoy unlocked the dead bolt, and then the lock embedded in the handle while Matilda mewed from behind the door.

“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she said.

She pushed in, using her foot to keep her orange-and-white tabby from darting down the hall. Inside, she dropped her backpack on the carpet. Matilda weaved in and out of her legs as she crossed the small living area to the even smaller kitchen—more of a nook. As LeRoy pulled open the refrigerator Matilda jumped up onto the bar counter. Neither had many options; LeRoy had the choice of milk or the last can of Fresca. Matilda’s choices were better, chicken and rice or salmon and rice. She chose the salmon for Matilda and the Fresca for herself. Something was wrong when the cat was eating better than the owner. But after
another day of failed interviews, that didn’t look like it was about to change anytime soon.

After feeding Matilda, LeRoy took the Fresca to the living room, popped open the can, and drank in gulps. The effervescence shot a beeline to her nose, and she grimaced while allowing the sensation to pass. Too bad the Fresca wasn’t something stronger. Three job interviews, three polite handshakes, and three dismissive remarks like “Thank you for coming in.”

Another day like today and she’d have to move. That was the least of her problems. She wasn’t exactly wedded to her tiny apartment, and living in Georgetown hadn’t exactly suited her budget when she was working for the PSA. On her current salary, which was zero, it would be even less manageable. She could tap into her trust fund, but living with the guilt of having done so would be worse than moving. She had sworn to her grandmother she would not use the funds unless absolutely necessary. She wondered if eating was an absolute necessity.

LeRoy placed the soda can on the counter and walked to the shelving unit in the corner of the living area opposite the couch and weathered coffee table she had inherited from her college roommate, who had moved back home to Nebraska and didn’t want to pay to ship it. The shelves held a small television, a couple of potted plants, paperbacks, and tiny speakers. LeRoy plugged her iPod into the speakers and hit the
ON
button. The band Coldplay had barely sung its first lyric when Mrs. Garibaldi banged on the adjoining wall.

“All right, Mrs. Garibaldi,” she shouted as she lowered the volume, adding under her breath, “you old bitch.”

LeRoy walked to her bedroom to change. “Bedroom” was never a more fitting name for a room, given that her queen-size bed was the
only
thing that fit in the space. She had to put her dresser in the closet.

She traded her interview suit, a traditional blue jacket and matching skirt—hemline below the knee—for sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and tossed her white blouse in the bathroom sink, filling the bowl with cold water and a squirt of Woolite. Dry cleaning was not in the budget for a while.

After filling the sink and soaking the shirt, she turned on the hot water in the combo shower and tub, shut the drain, and poured a capful of the bubble bath powder under the splash. She owed herself this much. As the room filled with a fragrant aroma, LeRoy retrieved her latest novel from her backpack and also found the newspaper article Peggy Seeley had given her at dinner the night before. LeRoy sat on the edge of the bed, reconsidering the photograph of the good-looking attorney. “Why couldn’t you live in Virginia? You are GU,” she said, meaning geographically undesirable. “Not to mention too old. What would Grandma say if I brought you home?”

As she reread the article, LeRoy experienced the same sense of dread that had been haunting her for two days. She just couldn’t shake the thought that there was more to Albert Payne’s pulling the plug on her report than a lack of funding. What were the odds of him killing her project and shortly thereafter two children dying from the very hazard LeRoy had been investigating? It just couldn’t be coincidence, no matter what Peggy Seeley thought. Payne would not be pressing so hard to get back the report unless there was something else going on, and that realization had made LeRoy a wreck. She spent the last two days looking over her shoulder, certain that people were following her.

Reading further than she had the night before, LeRoy learned that Sloane had recently been in the news himself when his wife was murdered in their home.

LeRoy stood. “Oh my God.”

She flipped to the jump on an inside page and bit her
fingernail as she continued reading. Sloane had been wounded in the attack but survived, and police had no leads on a suspect. Feeling sick to her stomach, LeRoy paced her apartment, taking deep breaths and telling herself to calm down. “Don’t let your imagination run wild.”

She’d return the report to Payne in the morning. She’d deliver it personally and be done with it. Seeley was right. She couldn’t very well afford to get in a legal battle over it.

She dropped the article on her comforter and retrieved the Fresca from the counter in the kitchen, drinking as she went back to the bathroom and used a toe to test the water temperature in the tub, now half full. Not hot enough, she cranked the hot water handle another turn, walked back to her bedroom, and sat on the edge of the bed while the tub continued to fill. She told herself she would feel better after she’d soaked for half an hour.

She looked down at the article. Her report was solid. She had worked her ass off talking with experts and pulling past investigations of manufacturing plants in China. And now there was confirmation. The magnets were dangerous. How could they just bury the report?

How can you?

LeRoy suddenly realized what had been bothering her. Maybe her report couldn’t have saved the two kids in the article, but what if maybe it could save other kids? This was no longer just a hypothetical situation. There was proof, solid proof that the concerns she had investigated were very real. Payne certainly couldn’t dispute that now, could he? And what could the agency really do to her? Would it risk punishing her for a report that could save children’s lives? Did they really want to start down that path? And she found it hard to believe the Justice Department didn’t have better things to do with its time than go after a low-level ex–federal employee for releasing a report on a very real problem.

But did she really want to spend her grandmother’s trust hiring a lawyer to defend her?

LeRoy reconsidered David Sloane’s picture beside the article. The idea and the smile formed together.

Maybe she wouldn’t have to.

REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA

AS HE DISCONNECTED his call with Charles Jenkins to coordinate where to meet, Sloane’s phone rang, the screen indicating his office. He’d left them in a lurch after advising Barclay Reid that his clients had declined Kendall’s settlement offer and would not be making a counteroffer. Reid wasted little time serving an onerous document request, interrogatories, and notices of depositions for both sets of parents. Sloane felt guilty about leaving, but Kannin had nearly pushed him out the door.

“You know me; this is the kind of stuff that gets me out of bed in the morning,” he had said. “Bring it on.”

“How was the flight?” Carolyn asked. Since Tina’s death, Carolyn had mellowed. Her comments had been far less caustic and at times even maternal.

“The way I like it, boring.”

“That might change.”

“How so?”

“You just got a phone call. A young woman wants to speak to you.”

“Can John handle it?”

“Probably, he’s walking around here like MacArthur on the deck of the
Missouri
, but this is one I think you’ll want to take yourself. She said she read an article in the
Washington Post
about
the lawsuit and that she had some information for you about magnets.”

“I really think John can handle it, Carolyn.”

“So did I, but then she said she used to work at the Product Safety Agency.”

Sloane stopped his progress down the battered hallway to the airport exit. Travelers veered to avoid him. “Did she leave a number?”

“I thought that might interest you. She did, and I checked it. The area code is for Washington, D.C. She’s legit.”

Retrieving a pen and piece of paper from his briefcase, Sloane wrote down the name and number. Ten minutes later, he hurried outside into a muggy evening and found Jenkins talking with a police officer who held a book of tickets and a pen in his hand.

“Here he is.” Jenkins hurried inside the car as Sloane slid into the passenger seat. “What took you so long?”

“Change of plans,” Sloane said. “We need to get to an apartment in Georgetown.”

HE CONSIDERED EACH assortment inside the refrigerated glass cases, seeking something large, but not ostentatious. His goal was to distract, not to cause suspicion. Finally he came upon what he was looking for.

“Did you find one you like?” the woman asked.

He pointed. “I’ll take that one.”

“Excellent choice.”

She took the bundle to the front of the store, speaking as she cut the stems and wrapped them in paper. Stenopolis had chosen a spring mix of purple, white, yellow, and lavender hydrangea with spray roses and chrysanthemums. He picked out a small card from a stand on the counter to accompany the arrangement.

Earlier that evening, after a call from his client, he had popped the door lock on a white van and hot-wired the ignition. It took less than sixty seconds. When he returned the van later that evening he would smash the driver’s-side window to make it look like an amateur had failed in an attempt to steal the vehicle. The owner might make a police report, but since the insurance company would pay for the repairs the owner wouldn’t pursue it, and the police had better things to do with their time. After stealing the van he had purchased a pair of blue coveralls and nondescript matching hat.

This would be his last stop.

He regretted having to further postpone his inevitable confrontation with David Sloane and his private investigator, but business was business, and his client emphasized that the current task took priority.

“There you go.” The woman behind the counter handed him the bouquet, which she had adorned with baby’s breath and fern leaves and wrapped in a purple paper. “These are going to make someone very happy,” she said.

Stenopolis slipped the card in the small plastic pitchfork sticking out from the flowers. “She’ll be surprised,” he said.

BLUES ALLEY APARTMENTS
GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.

LEROY STEPPED FROM the bathwater with one towel wrapped around her head like a turban, and another covering her body. It had not been the relaxing soak she had hoped for, barely ten minutes, but it was all the time she could afford. Ten minutes after she had called the law offices of David Sloane and had lowered herself into the soothing bubbles, her cell phone rang.
The caller ID indicated a private number, and she almost didn’t answer, but her intuition told her to do so. She was glad she did. David Sloane said he had received her message and was calling her back. That Sloane called so quickly was surprising in and of itself, but what shocked LeRoy was when Sloane advised that he was in D.C. on an “unrelated matter” and anxious to meet with her.

“My secretary indicated you had some information on magnets,” Sloane had said.

LeRoy explained her former position at the PSA as well as the contents of the report she had been preparing, which definitely caught Sloane’s interest, but not as much as when she told him that her boss, Albert Payne, had suddenly pulled the plug on her investigation. She told Sloane how Payne had initially been excited about her report and that he had intended to present it to Senator Joe Wallace, who had called for a congressional hearing on the rash of product recalls and the potential danger of Chinese manufactured products to American consumers. When LeRoy told Sloane that she had kept a copy of the report he asked to meet with her immediately.

Though eager to find an ally, LeRoy was more eager to find an attorney. “Listen, I don’t want to get in any trouble. The agency said they’ll press criminal charges if I don’t return the report. I really can’t afford to be sued.”

“I understand.”

“But I also spent a lot of time on the research, and it’s a good investigation. There are some real problems with these magnets, like what happened to the two children in the article. I just felt like this is something I had to do. The thing is, I don’t have a lot of money, so I was thinking that maybe, you know, if I give you the report and I get in trouble, maybe you could represent me.”

Sloane asked for her address and said he would be right over.

LeRoy used her fingertips to wipe a hole in the steam on the mirror and studied her face. Unzipping her cosmetic bag, she ran the tiny mascara brush over her lashes then traced the contours of her eyelids with the liner. She spotted her cheeks with blusher and wiped away the excess with a piece of tissue. Satisfied, she put a dab of perfume on each wrist and touched her wrists to her neck. As with the contents of her refrigerator, the options in her closet were limited, especially with her interview shirt in the sink, but if she didn’t pick out something soon she’d be meeting David Sloane in her bra and underwear.

AS HE DROVE, Jenkins advised Sloane on what he had learned about Stenopolis, and how they might be able to contact him.

“He’s been at this for a while, which means he pays attention to the details and is thorough. He’s not likely to make a mistake, and he’ll be suspicious of any new client calling him out of the blue.”

“So how do we do it?”

“Hotchkin said he never met Stenopolis; he gave him the name of the target, and the target disappeared. His payment was made to a drop box. That means we need a target. And that would be me.”