He took a long breath and then turned and walked out.
Slowly she sank back into her chair, closed her eyes, and waited for the noise to start up around her. Instead just dead silence. So she knew her team members were either shocked or pissed.
She rose, walked out of the bullpen with her cup, and filled it up with coffee. When she came back in again, they were talking normally.
Lilliana stood. “That won’t get you any brownie points.”
“If I was looking for brownie points, I would have become a chef. As it is, I’m helping the victims, and I don’t give a damn who is friends with who.” And she sat back down again.
Rodney leaned over. “He’s a good man, you know.”
“Fine. He needs to remember who his friends are and who they are not,” she said.
A few minutes later her phone buzzed. It was Colby with an order. “Get in here.”
She got up, and, pocketing her phone, she grabbed her coffee and walked to his office, where she leaned against the open doorway. It wasn’t so much insolence as it was trying to appear casual.
He motioned at the chair across from him. “Close the door, Morgan.”
She walked in, closed the door, then sat down and sipped her coffee.
“Why the hell aren’t you quaking in your boots?”
“Because I’m right, and I know it. So do you, Sergeant,” she said calmly. “You could protect your friends, and I could protect mine, but, at the end of the day, the truth has to come out.”
He glared at her, and then his shoulders slumped. “I just talked to him. He was yelling and screaming at me pretty hard.”
“I don’t care. He’s not being cooperative. We’ve got three dead kids, not even in a week, and, for all we know, this has been going on for ten years up there.”
“He’s sending over the files by courier.”
“That’s not good enough, sir. For all we know, he’s not letting us see way more, protecting his rich donors. He wanted to go through the complaints first. I was supposed to have them last night, and, forsomereason, he’s stalling.”
Colby stared at her in shock.
“Yeah, I assume he’s pulling out the complaints that might reflect badly on any of the wealthy donors’fine upstanding offspring.”
Colby picked up the phone, while she sat here, and called Dr. Agress back. “Hey, make sure you sendallcomplaints. No cleaning of this pile is allowed.”
She heard the dean’s loud protest on the other end of the line.
“No. Listen to me. The warrant is already being issued, and Detective Morgan is coming up there. No courier. You should have been sending copies to another department as well. The legal department if nothing else. This is no longer secret. It needs to be dealt with. You give those complaints to her, all of them, or we’ll have a bigger problem than you’re prepared to deal with. If there’s nothing to hide, then we won’t need to keep them.” With that, he hung up. “Go get them.”
She nodded and walked out. As she returned to the squad room, she put down her coffee and grabbed her keys and her jacket.
Rodney immediately hopped to his feet. “And?”
“I’m going to getallthe files from the damn Dr. Agress.” And she walked out.
Rodney raced behind her. “I’m coming.”
“You can, but I’ll also stop and see where Pamela is.”
“Did you find out?”
“Nope, but I’ll go to her husband’s house and then her mother’s house. Pamela’s got to be at one of those two places, or else she’s been locked up somewhere. We need to find her because now that’s become a critical issue too.” She walked like a woman on a mission, but, when she got outside, she swore and threw up her hands.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.