by AR Simmons
He gritted his teeth, hoping that the monitor had simply pulled the plug from the wall when it fell into the tub. The whirring of the fan in the tower told him otherwise. Untangling himself, he got up and found the light switch. He picked up the monitor, relieved that the CRT wasn’t broken and that the power cord had merely become disconnected. He picked it up, balanced it on the stool again, set the tower upright, and reattached the cord connecting them. He waited in vain for the monitor to light again.
Cursing under his breath, and feeling like a fool, he carried the various components of the computer back through the dark house to the closet. As he wiped each down carefully, he wondered what additional charges his unintentional vandalism would add to “breaking and entering,” and “interfering with a crime scene.” Maybe it wasn’t too bad. He didn’t think he had destroyed any evidence. Neither the hard drive nor the data on the disks was damaged. At least, he hoped not. With the monitor out, however, he had no way of confirming that. He almost left without taking the CD’s he had created.
“Now you’re only guilty of petty theft, breaking and entering, and interfering in a criminal investigation,” he muttered as he checked the street to make sure that no one was outside.
He slipped out and walked quickly toward the park, with each step he felt more and more convinced that he was getting away unobserved—until he got to his truck. Through the dim twilight, he saw someone leaning against his vehicle and watching him. As he got closer, he saw a woman in a jogging suit.
“Do you have any idea how many laws you’ve just broken?” asked Rafferty calmly as he got within comfortable speaking range.
“What? Did I leave my vehicle in a no parking zone? Or is the park closed after dark?” he bluffed.
A sinking feeling hit the pit of his stomach.
“Probably,” she said softly, no hint of rancor in her voice, only curiosity touched with incredulity. “Add those to your list. You could actually do time for this, Carter.”
Rafferty hadn’t just recognized his truck while jogging.
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s see: tampering with evidence, hindering an investigation, obstructing justice, not to mention breaking and entering—and at a crime scene, no less.”
“Crime scene? McComb killed himself at the motel.”
“His house still contains evidence that might shed light on a suspicious death.”
“It was suicide,” he said as he unlocked the truck, preparing to leave. “Nothing suspicious there.”
“Don’t think you can just brush me off, Carter.”
So she hadn’t called Adams yet, which meant that she probably only wanted to know what he had discovered.
“Did you take anything?” she asked.
He winced, but didn’t respond.
“Why were you inside so long?” she persisted.
“How do you know how long I was wherever you think I was?”
“I’ve been following you since you left the realtor’s office. I’ve got you logged. I could turn my notes over to Adams.”
The threat was delivered matter-of-factly. When he turned, she shifted her weight slightly. He recognized the movement as preparation for a sudden move on his part. It didn’t surprise him. Martial arts training was only prudent for a woman in her profession. Besides, Rafferty was Corps. The baggy jump suit probably concealed a weapon too.
“Relax, Rafferty,” he said. “I’m not going to try anything. And you’re not going to turn me in to Adams either, so what do you want?”
“I want to know why you were in the house so long. What did you find so interesting?”
“It takes time to conduct a search, especially if you don’t want to just toss the house. You should know that. I’m sure you’ve done it more than once.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Did you find anything interesting?”
“If McComb had answers, he took them with him. Do you know why he killed himself?”
“No idea. It’s the last thing I would expect considering the circumstances.”
“Circumstances? Oh, I see. Peele was about to give up trying to prove an illicit relationship between him and Lyla.”
“We know it. I can prove it to Mr. Peele’s satisfaction. We just can’t get it court ready.”
“How much were they about to get?”
“About forty percent of Mr. Peele’s net worth.”
“I thought she was going to get half.”
“Half of everything he gained since they got married.”
“Too bad about the land transfers,” he said. “Capital gains being counted as new wealth, how unfair and how unlucky?”
Rafferty shrugged. “Switching assets seemed like a good idea at the time, but technically it put Lyla in line to get a lot more than she deserves.”
“So he’s going to settle out of court now?”
“The lawyers are working on it.”
Rafferty wasn’t just passing the time, and despite her apparent candor, she wasn’t treating him as a colleague out of admiration for his investigative skill. She thought he had something, and she wanted it.
“Tell me about the house,” she said.
“Are you going to search it?”
“Just tell me what’s there.”
Since there was no good reason not to, Richard told her about the layout and the meager amount of possessions still there but boxed up. He mentioned the computer in the closet last as an aside, as if it were something that had almost slipped his mind. If she booted it up and found a dead monitor, she would assume that he couldn’t have examined it either. When finished, he hazarded a question of his own as a quid pro quo.
“Rafferty, why did McComb sell his interest in the bar to Lyla?”
“I got no idea, Carter, but if he was in a financial bind, she put him there. That woman spends money like a sailor coming off a six-month tour.”
He smiled at the analogy as he studied Rafferty. The physical confidence, her apparent comfort in what was traditionally a man’s profession, her get-the-job-done approach, and her masculine toughness all came from her Marine experience.
“Were you G-2?”
She shook her head.
“Intelligence? No. Shore patrol. I got out because it was too much routine and not enough pay. Why did you get out after only one tour?”
He wished he hadn’t brought the subject up. “Because I wasn’t very good at it,” he said.
“You’ve got an interesting biography, Carter. Care to tell me the real story of what happened up in Michigan?”
It shouldn’t have surprised him that she had uncovered his recent past, but it did, perhaps because he had tried successfully to push it out of his own thoughts.
“You’re the detective. Find out for yourself.”
“He was a pretty bad guy, wasn’t he? A real piece of work.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Rafferty,” he said, getting in and starting the truck.
She pecked on the window, and he rolled it down reluctantly. “Look, Carter. If you know anything or find out anything that I can use to prove an illicit relationship, let me know, okay. I’m running out of time here.”
“Why should I?”
She smiled. “Because Jarheads stick together.”
He thought about the redacted logs she’d pawned off on him. “We’re not in the Corps anymore.”
“You know better than that,” she said, still smiling. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”
He rolled up the window and started to back out. Then he changed his mind. Rafferty had gone out of her way to establish rapport. Of course that was only because she wanted to know what he had found in McComb’s house. It could work both ways, however. He stopped and rolled down the window again.
“I’ll let you know if I run into anything that might help you.”
“If?” she said, picking up on the idea that he wanted something.
He thought about it only a minute. “You could lose your licen
se if you got caught doing what I did, couldn’t you?”
“Breaking into a house that could be a crime scene? Sure.”
“But talking to me about what I found there is a different story, as long as you had nothing to do with me going in there in the first place, right?”
“What are you getting at, Carter?”
“I copied some stuff off his computer,” he said.
“What?”
“His computer has a CD burner. I burned off copies of his files. Would you like to have a look at them?”
She was wary. “Why are you offering?”
“Because I want to know about Bobby McComb as much as you do, only for a different reason. I’m looking for Mancie Allsop, remember?”
“I wish I could tell you something, but I honestly don’t know anything about that.”
“Then tell me what you do know about him.”
“The same as you. He contacted Lyla kind of frequently, but they didn’t say …” Rafferty paused for only a moment before continuing. “I have no knowledge of anything related to your missing kid.”
“You were about to say that they didn’t say anything about a child, right? You had a tap on their phones.”
Rafferty shook her head. “They used cell phones. You don’t need a tap. With the right equipment, you can just listen in if you’re close enough. We never heard anything about a child, at least not your missing child. She had a kid of her own, but come to think of it, I don’t remember them saying anything about her either.”
We? Then Rafferty had someone helping her. That wasn’t surprising. “How was their relationship going?” he asked.
“Bobby and Lyla had a long-standing affair, but they’ve kept their distance lately. We recorded enough to show what they were up to, but you can’t use that stuff in court.”
“Looking back on it, was there anything that would indicate that he was about to kill himself?”
“She was brushing him off, and he wasn’t taking it real well.”
“So they were in regular contact?”
“Actually, she spent more time talking to her agent. She was in like daily contact with him. She wants him to get a recording studio ready for her.”
“Wait. I thought McComb was her agent.”
“History. Got a professional now,” she said impatiently. “Are you going to let me see those files you copied?”
“Get in the truck and I’ll take you to the house.”
“Your house? No. I’ve got a car. I’ll just follow.”
•••
“Where have you …” Jill stopped in mid query as Richard held the door open for the athletic young woman accompanying him.
“Jill, this is Rafferty, the detective I told you about.”
“I see,” she said, trying to process the situation.
“Sorry to barge in on you, ma’am,” said Rafferty, extending her hand. “Glad to meet you. Call me Sarah.”
“Would either of you mind telling me what is going on?” she asked, making no move to shake hands.
Taken aback, Richard didn’t respond immediately. Rafferty took charge.
“I ran into your husband about fifteen minutes ago,” she said. “He told me he had something I should see.”
Jill nodded as if the explanation were perfectly reasonable.
“Let’s just see what it is he has to show you then,” she said with an icy smile before turning to Richard again. “You found something linking the Peele’s nasty divorce with Molly’s baby, I take it.”
“I really don’t know. I copied some computer files from McComb’s computer,” he said. “Rafferty and I are going to look through them to see if there’s anything that will help either of us. It probably wouldn’t interest you, dear.”
“I’m interested in everything my husband does,” she said without budging.
Richard smiled foolishly at each of them in turn. No cat fight was about to break out, but he suddenly wished he hadn’t brought Rafferty to the house.
“Maybe I should just let you have the disks for the night,” he suggested. “You can give them back to me tomorrow.”
“Sounds good to me,” Rafferty said quickly.
“No,” said Jill. “Let’s go through them together. That way, nothing will get accidentally deleted.”
“These disks can’t be edited, Jill,” said Richard. “They’re writeable, not rewriteable.”
“Oh, you mean someone would have to deliberately remove information and then save a redacted version?”
“I shouldn’t have done that with the appointments log,” said Rafferty. “That was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” said Jill. “How can you call that a mistake?”
“It was a mistaken … tactic. I didn’t want your husband stumbling onto the fact that Lyla and Wilson were having an affair. I was afraid she’d find out I suspected it.”
“Well, let’s just look at the information here anyway,” said Jill. “Richard, let’s let Miss Rafferty get started while we go to make some coffee and maybe some cookies or something in the kitchen.”
“I don’t need anything,” said Rafferty, taking the disks as Richard handed them over.
“Me neither,” he said.
“I do,” insisted Jill. “Come and help me, Richard.”
•••
When they got into the kitchen, Richard whispered, “Good grief, Jill. There’s nothing going on between me and Rafferty. Why are you acting like this?”
“Of course not,” she said, waving him off. “How did you get those disks?”
“Oh. I sort of … broke into McComb’s house,” he mumbled.
“You what?” she said, keeping her voice low.
“I got a real estate agent to show me the place and fixed the door so that I could get back in.”
“Did that woman talk you into this?”
“She had nothing to do with it, but she followed me. I figured she could help me make sense of the stuff from the computer if there is anything there.”
“I don’t like this,” she said.
“You mean her. Look, you know there’s nothing going on between us.”
“I know she’s not interested in you, if that’s what you mean.”
Jill’s confident pronouncement surprised him. Then he thought he understood its root. “You mean she’s … like not interested in … men in general?”
“How would I know that?”
“I thought maybe you picked up on something that I didn’t. Like maybe the way she looked at you or something.”
“No. She’s just not possessive of you. She’s only interested in those disks.”
“She’s really not a bad sort, Jill,” he said with relief.
“She’s using you,” she said flatly. “Find out what’s on the disks, and then get her out of our house.”
•••
Rafferty was taking a disk out of the tower when they came into the living room.
“You copied some files created by a music program of some kind,” she said without turning, “You need a program disk called Tunepro to open them. Probably a bunch of lousy lyrics. Lord, save us from amateurs—present company excepted.”
“What?” asked Richard. “Were there any markings on it?”
“You mean on the disk?” Rafferty examined the disk. “No, why?”
“Never mind,” he said irritably. “Check the other one.”
She was already in the process of doing so. He pulled up a chair and sat to read over her shoulder. Jill stood behind them, arms folded. Rafferty and Richard, concentrating intently on the screen, took no notice of her.
“That’s what ate up so much memory,” said Richard as Rafferty opened a photo of Lyla.
“I’ve seen pictures like this before,” she said. “She wore her hair like that when she first met Mr. Peele.”
She quickly opened and closed half a dozen similar JPEG files so rapidly that Richard had no time to examine them other than to see that they were all of Ly
la and that no one else was in the photos.
“Rats! Not even a nude shot. It would have been nice to get something really compromising—not that we could ever get it into court,” she said.
She closed the folder and opened one labeled “H-C” that contained four databases, a spreadsheet, and a subfolder labeled “Old.”
“Let’s take a look at the money,” she said as she opened the spreadsheet.
Rafferty scrolled to the right and then down rapidly, stopping momentarily to read something before moving on. Apparently, she knew what she was doing, but it was too quick for Richard. Eventually, he understood that she was looking at monthly balances.
“He was doing a decent business,” he said, trying to elicit confirmation from Rafferty, but she didn’t respond.
Reaching the end of the file, she closed out before he could catch the date of the last entry.
“When does the record stop?” he asked,
“A week ago,” she said distractedly as she opened the first of the databases.
“Sports’ stats?” he asked.
“Win-loss and who beat who by how much,” she said. “Looks like he was trying to calculate spreads. Good idea, but you can’t beat the line. Chumps lay bets. The only way to win is to take them. He didn’t.”
“He didn’t win or he didn’t take bets?”
“Neither. Bobby McComb was your basic loser,” she said as she quickly opened and closed the other databases. “I’ll say one thing for him though. He was a thorough loser, at least until he lost interest. He had division one foot and round ball as well as NBA and NFL.”
“What are the chances that he was using Lyla’s money to gamble with?”
“I’d say none. Lyla’s a taker, not a giver,” she replied as she closed out the folder and sat staring at the screen. “Are you sure you copied everything on the drive?”
“I copied everything,” he said.
“Then you wasted your time, and I’m wasting mine,” she said. “Got a spare disk so that I can burn a copy?”
“No problem.”
•••
Jill went to the door to watch Peele’s investigator leave.
“So what do you think of her?” asked Richard.
“That she’s task oriented and rude,” replied Jill without turning.