Page 19 of View from Above
A soft laugh reached through the hum of the freezer, and she slowly backed out and closed the door. Swiping invisible wrinkles from his jersey, she closed the door behind her. “Sorry. About the peas.”
“Worth it.” His mouth strained under his attempt not to laugh. He set the paper down and slid it toward her. “Seems the media’s already caught onto the story. Two dead women, mother and daughter, who jumped to their deaths yesterday. As far as the press is concerned, it was a suicide pact.”
Mallory retrieved a bottled water from the fridge and swallowed a gulp to get her senses back into normal ranges. She peeled the corner of the paper from the countertop and skimmed through the front page. “Does it say anything about my father?”
“No, and we’re going to keep it that way as long as we can.” Payton shoved away from the island. “If the public gets wind we may be looking for another serial killer, it’ll cause a panic. There’s been three this year already. People are going to start accusing the department of failing to keep them safe, and once that floodgate opens, we’ll all be under water.”
There was a fine line between chaos and order. If the one organization responsible for keeping the city safe lost the people’s confidence, there was a potential for riots, protests, lootings, and more violence. She wasn’t sure Seattle would be the same. She discarded the paper. “Give me a few minutes to change then we can head to my office.”
“You sure you’re ready for whatever we might find, Doc?” he asked.
The question should’ve grated against her nerves, but she’d interacted with Payton long enough to understand real concern drove him to ask. It was her job to ask the questions, to offer solutions, and help her patients through the difficult waves in their lives, but he’d somehow taken the responsibility of guiding her through this investigation without her realizing. “Do I have a choice?”
Payton gathered his keys from the counter where he’d dropped them the evening before, exposing his sidearm at his hip. “I’m not sure you do.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mallory’s downtown office space resided among a large collection of day offices, meeting rooms, virtual offices, and workspaces available for lease on any given day. After leading him past the massive front desk and a maze of minimalistic cubicles, she targeted a corner office and inserted her key. “This is it.”
“You lease the space from the building owners on a day-to-day basis?” He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d expected. Maybe a workspace where she met clients out of her home. This, on the other hand, complicated matters. “No contracts or proof you’re the only one using this office?”
“I know it sounds temporary and flakey, but it was the best I could afford after I left law school while I took the time to build my practice.” She hit the light switch and strode across the room to twist a standing light to life. “The rates are great, and as long as I keep up on the payments, the space is mine indefinitely or until I find something more permanent.”
He scanned the incredible views through the floor-to-ceiling windows demanding attention from the northwest corner of the office. Elliot Bay, the Space Needle, Lake Union, Mount Baker, the Cascade Mountains, Downtown Seattle. Hard to imagine she’d been able to solve anyone’s problems in this office with nothing more than an inch of glass separating her from the city she loved.
A light gray accent chair complete with a small pillow had been positioned across from another, more modern, chair on the other side of the small space. Books took up a large portion of a single side table with an array of fake flowers and trees trying to bring the outdoors in. A Swedish-style desk with a clean surface had been pushed into one corner. A single monitor reflected their outlines back behind a wireless keyboard and mouse. “All of your clients have been here?”
“Most of them.” She diverted her attention out the window. “In this particular office or the last one they set me up in until a couple months ago.”
“Who else has access?” He straightened a book at the top of the stack on the side table.
“The building owners. I imagine the onsite management staff would have a key in case there were any problems. Maybe the administrators who stock the break room, collect mail and packages, and coordinate with the cleaning crew.” She motioned toward the door. “I keep wracking my brain for something—anything—that could tell me who drugged me, but I’m drawing a blank.”
“Let’s just start with the dates you think it happened,” he said.
“Right.” She took a seat at the desk and brought the monitor to life with a few taps of the keyboard. Logging in, she brought up a calendar filled with coordinating colors he assumed were appointments. “The first day I cancelled my appointments was about three weeks ago. The second four days from that, and there was one day last week.”
What was so special about those days? “And you’re sure nothing else impacted your energy levels around those dates?”
“I told you.” She shook her head but continued scrolling through her appointments. “I can’t think of anything that would’ve made me feel hungover like I did on these days.”
“All right. Who else has access to your calendar? An assistant or maybe another therapist?” he asked.
“No. It’s just me. I keep all my appointments and files here.” She scrolled through the calendar, shaking her head.
Payton settled a hand on the back of her chair and earned a full inhale of shampoo and breakfast. “How easy would it be for someone to get a hold of your login and password?”
“This is a public server.” Mallory clicked away from the calendar and swung her legs out to one side to raise her gaze to his. “I mean, anyone who’s leased an office here gets their own logins to store their files, calendars, projects. Anything they need to run their business. It’s possible someone could’ve accessed it, but I don’t know why they would want to. If whoever lured Virginia and Angie Green off those rooftops is targeting me, they could’ve worked out my routine by easier means.”
Payton noted each appointment she’d logged into her calendar had been assigned a separate color. “Maybe it wasn’t your routine they were interested in.” He pointed at the monitor. “You color coordinate all of your appointments, but I didn’t see any names attached to them in your calendar.”
“Oh.” She shifted her attention back to the screen. “It’s an added measure I took for doctor-patient confidentiality. I schedule each patient I treat by a specific color rather than their name in my calendar in case my files are breached. I do the same for their patient files.”
“So anyone looking at your calendar wouldn’t know which patient was scheduled when. Only that you would be in the office.” He couldn’t bury his admiration right then. “That’s got to be at least thirty different colors.”
“If there was one thing I took from two semesters of law school, it was how to memorize anything.” She single-clicked on the first day her hangover symptoms had appeared. “Someday I’ll show you how I can recall a deck of freshly shuffled cards in ten minutes without any mistakes.”
“Wait.” Payton leaned in close. “Go back to the three days you ended up cancelling your appointments.” He scanned through the three weeks splayed across the screen. “That dark blue color. You have that patient scheduled as your last appointment the days before you experienced the drug’s effects.” He tapped the screen, and the pixels waved away from his finger. “Who is that?”