so as to keep their employer informed. He was on the East Coast now but was demanding he be kept up to date with every move made by McRyan.
“Here comes Ring,” Foucault reported, now familiar with the Milwaukee detective, having watched his every move the day following their taking out of Martin. The sharp dressed Milwaukee cop came out the front door, talking on a cell phone, looking at a notepad, occasionally surveying the surroundings all while standing under the awning covering the entrance to DataPoint.
“It would be nice if we had another team with us,” Vigneault noted. He was worried about their exposure. He’d have much preferred to have another team so that they could be running a rotating tail, relieving each other if need be and allowing for shifting positions while monitoring. None of that was possible in this instance. “I feel like we’re a little exposed here. We might have to consider moving back.”
* * *
Wire peered through the shades.
“Still there?” Mac asked, walking up behind her.
“Uh huh.”
There was a knock on the door and Bruzinski came back into the small conference room with Ginger Bloom. Ginger was aptly named, with light red hair falling around her narrow face and to her slender shoulders. Ms. Bloom was carrying balled up tissue in her hand. She’d been crying. Her eyes were red and her mascara was smeared. In the matter of three days, she’d lost the two people she worked for, one of whom was her boyfriend.
Ring pulled out the chair for her to sit down. Typically, Mac would have wanted Bruzinski out of the room, but Bloom looked like she wanted the familiar face with her so he was allowed to stay, for now. Ring made some quick introductions of Wire and McRyan.
“Ms. Bloom,” Wire started, “were you aware of the financial difficulties that Mr. Checketts was having?”
Ginger shook her head, “No I wasn’t. He never shared that with me. He rarely talked about anything outside of work with me.”
“Strictly professional?” Mac asked.
Bloom nodded.
“But that was different with Gabriel Martin?” Wire led and Mac let her go. This was a natural line of questioning for some female bonding. “That wasn’t strictly professional.”
Bloom sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with the tissue, “N.. n.. no,” she stammered. “We were dating for a while. I don’t think anybody knew, at least not until he was killed.”
“How long have you worked for Martin and Checketts?”
“Just over three years.”
“How long were you dating Martin?”
“About five months or so, ever since early June,” Bloom answered.
“Was it all of the sudden or …”
“… had it been coming?” The secretary offered a slight smile. “Ms. Wire, our relationship was something of a slow burn. He was my boss at first, then friends and then over time an attraction started to build. You spend an extra minute or two in each other’s work space. Then you start texting each other. Of course, then we started sharing lingering looks with each other, holding eye contact that extra second. Gabe called it eye sex. You ever have that happen to you?”
“No comment,” Wire replied with a slight embarrassed smile. Mac wasn’t sure if Wire was putting on a little act to develop rapport or if she’d experienced what Bloom had.
“Well, it happened to me.”
“Were you in love with him?”
The question caused Bloom to choke up and the tears started anew for her as she stammered, “Y…y… yes. I was and he was as well.”
“Did he ever share with you any problems he was having here at work?”
“Not really. The only work problem I remember was the issue we had with the new machines.”
“Mr. Bruzinski, you mentioned that earlier. What was the malfunction?” Mac asked.
“The memory cards were not computing properly,” Bruzinski answered. “Gabe had to go out and analyze the problem and he was relieved, I remember, that it wasn’t so much a programming issue as a production one from one of our subcontractors, so we hired a new subcontractor to manufacture the cards and then we had our crews go out and install them, test them and make sure everything was working.”
Mac and Wire shared a look, “When did the fix take place?” Mac asked.
“We finished it about ten days ago. It was a pretty big project. We had to replace the memory cards in our machines in those three states. From my perspective it was nerve racking only because the fix was at our cost. We’re going to pursue compensation from our old subcontractor for