Trapped

TWENTY-THREE

A nudge from a colleague woke David Tennon up.

His head was on his arm which was on his desk. He picked his head up too quick and it hurt. He winced.

"Wakey, wakey, Dave," Springer, a young clean-cut detective, said. "Saw your empty coffee mug there, thought it looked pretty lonely." He placed an unlabeled to-go cup on Tennon's desk.

"Thanks." Tennon stretched. He went for his drawer, popped a few Aspirin that he took down with the coffee. He looked at the wall clock and saw that it was four AM. He hadn't been down too long. He looked back up at Springer, who looked far too good and too peppy for this hour. His shirt was perfectly starched, and buttoned all the way to the top with the tie snug and centered. He even had a tie clip.

"What do you got?" Tennon said.

"Nothing. Pretty quiet night out there, actually. Came back to here to catch up on a few things. Didn't know if you wanted to be asleep or not."

"No. Thank you."

"Well, let me know if you need anything. Might make a breakfast run later."

"Keep up that go-getter attitude," Tennon said. "Don't ever change."

"I won't, Mr. Special Assignment." He jerked his head toward the federal seal from the file Harvey McKenna had given him.

"Thanks for the coffee." Tennon hid that file under some others.

"I got you."

Springer went across the room to his desk and Tennon looked again at all his work. He sighed heavily. If the file on NTX's private security team was supposed to illuminate anything, it didn't.

He had wasted a lot of time, and fallen asleep it seemed, reading up on these guys and searching for any red flags. There were a few little domestic and DUI things here and there, but nothing too crazy.

He gave them all another once-over now, and spent a little extra time looking at the photograph of one young guy. What got Tennon's attention was that his paperwork said he worked third shift at the NTX building. He was the lone officer there covering the NTX floors, or at least the only one that the files mentioned.

He had no priors, in fact had an honorable discharge from the Army and even went to college.

Tennon thought about calling him.

Maybe.

He'd have to play that one careful, and prepare for it. He couldn't come right out with questions like McKenna had and not expect this guard to clam up and then warn the rest of the crew that someone was snooping around.

Tennon let the guard's paper fall and closed that whole file up.

He went back to Julian Maxwell. That was the murder. That was his job.

He had the facts all but memorized. Maybe at this point he had look at things on a more abstract level.

Call it revenge. Okay. Maxwell got NTX off when they were in fact guilty, and somebody wanted him to pay. Fine.

But why no one else? Why not more murders of other big names involved? Like the federal judge that ruled in NTX's favor, who was also all over the papers back then? And why not the top dog himself, Chairman Manley?

If only Maxwell was dead, there had to be a reason for that. A reason it was him and not the others.

Unless—unless this was just the beginning.

And if that was the case, there were going to be more.

A serial job.

And that got Tennon thinking.

So he searched Jerrold Manley. No record. Most of his police-related contact had come during those protest years. His current address was listed as a penthouse apartment in the very-same NTX building in which he worked. He had stayed mostly quiet publicity-wise since the chemical plant days, though his name was popping up more with the construction of the new building.

Next up he ran the name Richard H. Dawes. This was the federal judge cited in the decision of United States v. NTX Industries, Inc. (1980).

The word DECEASED caught his eye, flashing in bold green letters after his name. Some research into that told Tennon that it had happened six months ago and that the M.E.'s office had ruled it a suicide.

Suicide by drinking a mixture of industrial-grade chemicals.

There had been no note left.

Tennon sat back in his chair, hand on his chin, and stared at the screen. He thought about all of that.

Then he shifted his gaze to the potential bad actors in the Maxwell case he had jotted down. He had a list of names and addresses and a little bit of night left to work them. He took the piles of folders and notes and got up.

Tennon looked around the office. His eyes hurt from the computer, from looking down into files all night. He blinked several times and then stretched again, took another sip of coffee.

It was still dark, but it would be morning soon. People would be awake, getting off to work. And he had some more work to do himself.