Conspiracy

21

Lia let Dean ask the questions. Mrs. Forester seemed to respond better to him. She was almost flirting, in fact.

Mrs. Forester readily admitted that she and her husband had been in the pro cess of getting a divorce. Nor did she hide the fact that they hadn’t gotten along for several years.

“Does it make sense to you that he killed himself?” asked Dean. They were all sitting in the small dining room, around a battered, colonial-style dinette set.

She picked a non ex is tent piece of lint from her sweater before answering. “No, Mr. Dean, it doesn’t.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know. I suppose he did kill himself. But honestly, it wouldn’t have been over the divorce. Jerry wasn’t emotional like that. We didn’t get along, and this was the logical next step. Divorce, not suicide.”

“Was he concerned about custody or money?”

“He was always concerned about money. As for custody, he could care less about the boys.”

“When will they be home?” Dean asked.

“I’d prefer if you left them alone,” said Mrs. Forester. “I’d greatly prefer it.”

“All right,” said Dean.

The boys’ impressions — and their mother’s, for that matter — weren’t what he and Lia had come for. Still, she found it interesting that no one thought Special Agent Forester was the sort of man who would take his own life. She glanced at the photographs on the wall next to the buffet. They were old family shots; Agent Forester was in several. He looked happy enough.

So did his wife.

If he had died the day after the photos were taken, would she have seemed more affected by it? Would she be crying instead of waving her hand dismissively?

“One thing that we would like to do,” said Dean, getting to the point, “is look at the hard drives on the computers in your house. We’re hoping there might be some information there that would help us.”

“If you’re looking for a suicide note, you won’t—”

“Actually, we’re interested in seeing if there might have been a connection to a case that we don’t know about,” said Lia. “We just have to rule everything out.” Mrs. Forester sighed. “You know, I’ve spoken to investigators twice already.”

“We understand. But we need to dot every i, ” said Dean.

His voice seemed more soothing than normal; Lia couldn’t tell if he was consciously making an effort to be nice or reacted that way to damsels in distress.

Not that Mrs. Forester appeared in distress.

“My sons need the computers for their homework,” she told Lia and Dean.

“We don’t need to take the computers,” said Dean. “If you have an Internet connection, the whole pro cess can be done in a few minutes.”

Mrs. Forester frowned, then studied Dean’s face. Obviously, she liked something she saw there, because finally she said OK and got up from the chair.

“My son Gerald got his computer from his father, so it’s probably the one you should check first,” said Mrs. Forester.

Lia felt a twinge of anger when their hostess touched Dean’s hand as she showed them toward the short flight of stairs to the split level’s top floor. She knew that was foolish — if anything, Dean should use the attraction to help them get what they wanted. But still she felt jealous.

The house had been built in the early 1970s. The wood floors were scuffed and yellowed, and there were other signs of age, like painted-over gouges on the baseboards and fixtures that had gone out of style decades before. But it was clean and well kept; even the boys’ bedrooms were well-ordered. To judge from the pennants and photographs on the wall, the fifteen-year-old was a fan of the Nationals and the Washington Redskins. A pair of tickets to an upcoming NASCAR event were tacked to the edge of the shelf over the computer monitor.

Lia wondered if the boy had been planning to go with his father.

“Is there a password?” Dean asked as the computer booted.

“No. Do we need one?”

“Nah. I don’t use one, either,” said Dean.

Mrs. Forester leaned close to Dean, her hand resting on his shoulder. Lia stepped around to the other side, watching as Dean brought up the Web browser and signed onto a special page set up by the Art Room. Within a few seconds, the techies back at the NSA were dumping the contents of the computer’s hard drive into their own computers.

“Did your husband leave any papers behind when he moved out?” Lia asked Mrs. Forester.

“Just our finances. Nothing to do with work.”

“Could I look at them?”

“My finances?” Mrs. Forester straightened. “Why?”

“Maybe there’s something there.”

“I really don’t feel like having you snoop through my personal records.”

“Are you hiding something?”

Mrs. Forester’s lower lip quivered as she suppressed her anger. Lia held her stare.

“You don’t have to show us anything you don’t want to,” interrupted Dean.

Shut up, Charlie, thought Lia to herself.

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Forester.

“It might be useful,” said Lia. “Knowing about money issues that might have driven—”

“There were no money issues in our marriage,” said Mrs.

Forester frostily. “Jerry was the issue. And you won’t find that in our checkbook. When it came to providing, he did an adequate job.”

“Did your husband like to travel a lot?” asked Dean.

“Just for work.”

“Did he ever go to Vietnam?” asked Lia.

Mrs. Forester made a face and shook her head.

“You’re sure?”

“I think I’d remember something like that.”

“Did he know anyone who was Vietnamese?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Was his father in the Vietnam War?” Lia asked.

“Not that I know.”

“Could we see the other computers?” asked Dean, rising.

Mrs. Forester’s tone immediately softened. “There’s only one more. In my bedroom.”

“Let’s take a look then.”

“Why’d you get nasty?” Dean asked as soon as they were outside on the driveway.

“I wasn’t nasty.”

“You were a little rough, asking for her finances.”

“Maybe there’s something in there.”

“The Secret Service and the FBI would have checked that out.”

“Why are you making excuses for her?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re going pretty easy on her.”

“Her husband just died.”

“She didn’t seem that broken up about it. My guess—” Dean cut her off by putting his hand in front of her, physically stopping her a few yards from the street. A teenager had stopped on the sidewalk nearby. He looked like a much younger version of Gerald Forester.

Dean nodded in the boy’s direction, then began walking again. Lia stared to follow.

“Hey, are you here about my dad?” asked the boy. His voice mixed bravado with anger; he was partly challenging them, and partly pleading for information.

“We were just checking up on a few things,” said Dean.

“He didn’t kill himself.”

The young man held his arms straight down, fists clenched.

For a moment Lia thought that he was going to leap at Dean and pummel him.

“We’d like to prove you’re right,” said Dean. “Can you think of anything that would help us?” The question seemed to catch the kid in the stomach, a punch that grabbed his breath.

Lia misinterpreted the reaction, thinking he had something he’d been wanting to point out but hadn’t until now. Before she realized that he was only trying to hide his grief, she asked if he knew of anyone who had threatened his dad. Tears began rolling from the corners of the young man’s eyes. He pressed his lips together so tightly they turned white. Then he bent his head forward and walked past them, his pace growing brisker until he reached the house.