Page 93 of The Family Cross

“You are so helpful, Randi. You have yourself a first-class day, now, you hear?” She hung up before Randi could reply and immediately punched in Lear’s cell number. He answered on the second ring.

“This is David,” he said.

“Bree Stone, Mr. Lear,” she said. “I am an investigator for Bluestone Group out of Arlington, Virginia, and we’re doing some due diligence work for one of our clients.”

After a long pause, Lear said, “Okay? What’s this about?”

“Frost and Lear projects in the Washington, DC, area.”

“I’m no longer affiliated with the company, and I am not at liberty to discuss its projects. I signed a nondisclosure agreement when I sold my stake in the firm. Sorry, Ms. Stone, but—”

“Can I tell you why I called?”

After a pause, he replied, “Unless you’ve signed an NDA of some sort.”

“Let’s say we have a hypothetical client—we’ll call her Rosalynn,” Bree said, and then pretty much repeated what Elena Martin had said. “Is Rosalynn wrong? Are her instincts off, Mr. Lear?”

“I can’t say.”

“Not even hypothetically?”

After the longest pause yet, Lear said, “Let’s say a hypothetical person, Jack, works for years with a hypothetical partner, Bill, only to find out that Bill’s ethics are not what they appeared to be. Bill brings in new investors who are… questionable. Jack did not like it, even after Bill told him there was nothing to worry about. But there was something to worry about, which led to Jack having a mild heart attack. So Jack sold his stake and retired to play golf in Texas, where he is said to be very happy, not least because he is no longer involved with Bill.”

Bree said, “Rosalynn met investors named Tatiana Volt and Egon Bijan.”

“Then Rosalynn met two of the questionable folks.”

“Egon Bijan appears to be an alias of some sort.”

“It would not surprise me,” Lear said. “And now, Rosalynn or whatever your name is, I have to go. Tee time calls.”

He hung up before Bree could respond.

80

WHEN WE ARRIVED BACK at our office downtown, we were tired but determined to push forward on all fronts. We learned that Homeland Security had finally given us the CCTV footage from the cameras near Rock Creek Park on the night that Georgetown professor Drake Conway was murdered.

We pulled up the footage from a camera close to the Reservation 630 trail entrance near the Wilshire Park Condos. Two people went down the hiking path from that point that night.

The first person who entered from that angle was tall and wearing a dark floppy hat and a long, black trench coat over baggy black pants. He ducked off the sidewalk on Connecticut Avenue, avoiding the overhead camera, and vanished into the shadows at 12:40 a.m.

Sampson ran through the footage of cameras north and south of the access on Connecticut and caught the same figure cutting across the street and heading into the park.

The second person who went down that path was Professor Conway. He appeared about two a.m. over by the Wilshire Park Condos. He carried the pack I discovered later and a cell phone we had not found. The professor used the phone’s flashlight as he went down the path, then disappeared into the darkness of Rock Creek Park and the Reservation 630 trail.

No one else came from or went into the park by that entrance for the rest of the night. But Homeland Security had also given us footage from several other cameras in a half-mile radius of the Wilshire access to the trail, which crossed beneath Connecticut Avenue through a tunnel.

We got lucky looking at a camera on Rodman Street near the intersection with Quebec Place. It turned out that there was another way onto the Reservation 630 trail on the north side of that intersection.

Around ten o’clock the night that Professor Conway was killed, a big, athletic guy wearing a black ball cap, a dark windbreaker, black running shorts, and a gray hydration pack crossed Quebec Place and went down the trail.

“That pack could be carrying gas instead of water,” Sampson said.

Just before we lost sight of him, the guy flipped on a headlamp, and there was the barest suggestion of his face in silhouette before he was gone, heading toward the tunnel under Connecticut Avenue.

“Back up,” I said. “Does that look like Colin O’Hare?”

“Iffy,” Sampson said after he’d reversed the footage and frozen it.