That confirmed what Alina had thought. It shocked the heck out of her at the same time. She was an agent, not a cop, but talking to every single person who’d been in the complex at the time of the bombing seemed like common sense.
“On the day of the…incident…you showed up for work two and a half hours before your normal duty time,” Trevor said. “Mind if I ask why?”
Larson’s gaze went to his son, a smile curving his mouth. “I went in early so I could grab a few hours before Cody got out of bed. He loves his grandma—she watches him for me when I’m at work—but he can be a handful sometimes.” He frowned at them. “My boss—Lisa Marino—said it was okay. I’m sure she’ll confirm that if you ask her.”
Beside her, Trevor visibly relaxed. “Lisa left the DCO two weeks ago. I’ll try to get in contact with her, but that could take a while.”
“How about Karl Thomas? Is he still there?” Larson asked. “He knew about me going in early.”
Trevor nodded. “I think he’s still there. I’ll check.”
Larson looked at Cody again, his expression thoughtful this time. “I guess a lot of people left after what happened.”
“Is that why you quit when you did?” Alina asked. “Because of the…incident?”
Larson was silent for a moment as he watched his son color. Tears formed in his eyes, and he blinked.
“I had to,” he said, turning back to them. “I loved the work, and the people there were amazing, but the hours were already getting tough on Cody…and his grandma. Trying to go to work early might have helped a little, but a full day at work was still too long to be away from him. When the other stuff happened, I realized that if I’d walked past the admin building forty-five minutes later to get that cup of coffee from the cafeteria, I could have been caught up in…in everything that happened. Then Cody wouldn’t have anyone. I couldn’t take that risk.”
“How long have you been taking care of Cody on your own?” Trevor asked.
“About a year,” he said, then cleared his throat. “I guess Kristy just couldn’t deal anymore. She bailed one day while I was at work. I was mad at her for a long time, but I finally gave up on that. I know now that she did the best she could.”
Alina glanced at Cody to see if he’d react to the mention of his mother, but he continued to color like he hadn’t heard a thing.
“Do you stay home with him full-time?” she asked Larson.
Larson nodded. “Pretty much. Like I said, my mom comes over to take care of him now and then, but he doesn’t like me to be out of his sight for long.” He gestured to the laptop on the coffee table. “I do a little consulting work long distance to help pay the bills, but it’s tough. I really thought I’d struck gold landing that job with the DCO.”
Alina remembered thinking something very similar when Dick had offered her a job there. That reminded her of what Trevor had said before they’d knocked on the door, about there being an extremely powerful man involved in getting Larson hired at the DCO.
“Can I ask how you heard about the job at the DCO?” she asked Larson.
“I’d done some work for a subsidiary of Chadwick-Thorn back before Kristy left, then some consulting work in April for the main corporate office over near Anacostia-Bolling, installing and networking a fancy security system,” Larson said. “While I was there, I got the opportunity to meet with Thomas Thorn, and after the security gig was done, he offered me an IT job at the DCO. It had everything I was looking for—good hours, great pay, amazing medical benefits, challenging work. It was mostly internal security stuff like monitoring DCO employees to make sure none of them were inadvertently sending classified material over unclassified computer systems. Things like that.”
Interesting. Was Thomas Thorn the man Trevor had been talking about? The one John Loughlin had been trying to put in jail for years? If so, no wonder Trevor hadn’t wanted to say anything. The previous director of the DCO had been chasing a man who was not only the CEO of one of the biggest and most politically connected defense contractors in the world, but also a former senator? There was something scary big going on here.
She was still thinking about that interesting tidbit of information when she realized Trevor was asking something else. Alina forced herself to focus on what her partner was saying.
“You mentioned that you were near the admin building forty-five minutes before the…incident…getting coffee. Did you see anyone else around at that time?”
Larson thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah. I mean, it was still dark at that time, but I saw three or four people around the main building.”
“Did you recognize them?” Trevor asked.
“I hadn’t worked there long enough to learn almost anyone’s name outside the IT section,” the man said. “Sorry.”
Trevor frowned, but Alina wasn’t ready to walk away from the potential clue just yet. “Do you think you could ID the people you saw if we gave you some photos to look through?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Larson said. “But do you think you can bring the photos here or email them to me so I don’t have to leave Cody with my mom?”
“Of course,” she agreed.
While Alina added his name and email to the contact list in her phone, Trevor scribbled something in his notepad. She thought he was writing down notes on what they’d talked about, but then he tore the paper out of the pad and held it out to Larson.
“Give this guy a call in a few days,” Trevor said. “I think he can set you up with some IT work you can do from home. Tell him I sent you. I put my number on there, too, just in case you need anything.”
Alina glanced at Larson’s little boy as she stood. “Bye, Cody.”
