That seemed to satisfy the little boy, who turned without another word and headed back into the living room. When he was out of earshot, Seth Larson frowned at them.
“I don’t remember seeing either of you from the time I was at the DCO, but I’m guessing that’s where you know me from,” he said.
“Yes,” Trevor said, his tone softer than Alina would have expected. “I’m Trevor Maxwell, and this is my partner, Alina Bosch. We’d like to ask you a couple of questions about the morning the bombing happened.”
Larson threw a quick glance at his son, as if he was afraid Cody might have heard, but Cody was lying on the floor coloring and didn’t even look up. “Sure, I can talk. Just…don’t use that word—bomb. I don’t think Cody knows what it means, and I really don’t want him to. He’s autistic, and sometimes he gets upset easily.”
Alina nodded. Beside her, Trevor did the same.
Larson led them into the small, tidy apartment, past an eat-in kitchen, and into the living room. There was a couch against one wall, with a TV and bookshelves opposite it. A fancy computer sat on the coffee table, some kind of accounting spreadsheet showing on the screen, but Alina barely took notice of any of it. Cody was far more fascinating.
Spread out on the floor around him must have been nearly a hundred completed pictures torn out of coloring books. Every one of them was absolutely amazing. While the colors were unusual—trees in blues and purples, people in every shade of the rainbow, skies in yellow with orange clouds—there wasn’t a single crayon mark out of place or outside the lines. In a word, they were breathtaking.
Seemingly oblivious to them, Cody finished the picture he was working on, then carefully pulled it out of the book and set it aside before starting the next one.
Larson motioned them toward the couch. “You two want a soda…or water? Sorry, but that’s all I have in the house.”
Alina shook her head as she sat. “No, I’m good.”
Trevor declined the offer as well, moving carefully around the pictures on the floor as he grabbed a place beside her on the couch and pulled out a pen and spiral notepad from a cargo pocket. Larson sat down on the floor with Cody, making sure to move his son’s artwork aside first.
“To be honest, I’m kind of surprised no one stopped by before this,” he said.
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 except his grandma, and she’s too old to care for him full time. 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.”
