Speak For the Dead-A John Santana Novel by Christopher Valen

Author:Christopher Valen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, crime, suspense, hispanic, technology, latino, hacking, ntsb, colombia, spoofing
Publisher: Christopher Valen

Chapter 22

Paul Westbrook lived in a newer Capitol Hill condominium on Pennsylvania Avenue. The condo had hardwood floors, a floor-to-ceiling glass window, nine-foot ceilings, and lots of open space for a studio.

Santana took Westbrook’s bedroom. Grady took the living room and kitchen.

Sloppy. That was Santana’s first impression. Unmade bed. Clothes stuffed in the dresser drawers and tossed on the closet floor. The ones on hangers weren’t pressed.

He squatted in front of the open closet door and checked all the pants pockets. In one he found a crumpled ticket stub dated six months ago to a Hieronymus Bosch exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in DC, but nothing else.

If Westbrook had disappeared voluntarily, he hadn’t taken much with him. There were no scraps of paper in the wastebasket. Nothing related to the Blue Skies crash. No plane, train, or bus tickets. No brochures for foreign countries.

The medicine cabinet in the messy bathroom yielded no clues as to Westbrook’s whereabouts. A small wastebasket was empty.

He found Grady in the kitchen, going through the cabinets. “Anything?” Santana asked.

Grady shook his head. “How about you?”

Santana showed him the ticket stub from the Bosch exhibit. “You might want to tag and bag this.”

“You think it’s important?”

“I don’t know that it isn’t.”

Santana gave it to Grady and then looked under the sink for the proverbial plastic trashcan. It was there, but it, too, was completely empty.

He scanned the condo one more time. “Anything strike you as unusual, Grady?”

“Not much in the way of cooking utensils. Must not be much of a cook,” he said in a bewildered tone of voice.

“What I meant was,” Santana said, “you look around, you see quite a mess. Dirty dishes tossed in the sink. Stove top hasn’t been cleaned.”

“Yeah,” Grady said. “Westbrook sure wasn’t a neat freak.”

“And yet, you see any paper around?”

“You mean like newspaper?”

“I mean like any paper.”

“Can’t say I do.”

“I find that strange,” Santana said. “A guy this careless with his clothes, dishes, you’d think he’d be the same way with his trash.”

“A man thinking of dropping off the grid might not want to leave anything behind that could provide a clue as to his current location.”

“He might not,” Santana said.

* * *

Back in his hotel room, Santana called Barry McCarthy and got his voicemail. Then he called Cathy Herrera and discovered that she’d taken a leave of absence. Santana wondered if her leave had anything to do with his pursuit of the truth.

He called the investigator-in-charge of the Blue Skies crash, Terry Powell, and was surprised but pleased when Powell agreed to meet him later.

The clock in Santana’s hotel room read 5:15 p.m. when he heard a knock on the door. Looking through the peephole, he recognized the familiar face on the other side of the door. He opened it and said, “Hello, Rita.”

Rita Gamboni smiled.

“This is a surprise,” he said. But on further reflection he thought, Maybe it isn’t.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

“Sorry,” he said, gesturing for her to enter.

She strode into the room and gave him a hug.

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