One Must Wait

by Penny Mickelbury

  How could she have been so unaware, so unconscious? Grief was one thing; stupidity was another, and she'd behaved stupidly.

  She asked Tommy to arrange for her to meet with Homicide Detective Jacob Graham. He refused to meet her face to face, though he did agree to a telephone conversation, during which he told her everything he recalled about his investigation in to Alain Langston Crandall's murder, including the fact that, in his expert opinion, "Mr. Crandall was not the victim of a random street crime." She called him on the private line—homage to Tommy's admitted paranoia—and recorded the conversation, with Graham's griping, grudging permission. Then, armed with Graham's information, she paid a visit to Park Police Headquarters, where she received a polite but chilly dismissal and the recommendation that she wait for the investigating officer to contact her. She paid two visits to Pierre's where Al had dined that night, once at lunch and once for dinner, with Tommy and Valerie. "You're buying, right?" Tommy had asked quickly when she'd invited him. In the interim, she'd visited the crime scene twice as well. Again, once during the day, and once at night, at the time of Al's murder. She made a third trip the night of dinner with Tommy and Valerie, the three of them walking the route Graham speculated Al had taken. The following day she returned to Park Police headquarters, determined to see an investigator. She waited for three hours, after which time she was informed that her status as the wife of a victim did not entitle her to investigative officers or their reports, whether or not she was a lawyer.

  Furious, exhausted, humiliated, and more powerless than she'd ever been in her life, Carole Ann walked home via the route Al would have walked the last night of his life and was in tears when she arrived. That night, the victim was not the victim but her husband. She envisioned her lanky, lean, wonderful man hurting and bleeding and, life slipping away, perhaps calling for her. And she'd been asleep on the couch. She drank an entire bottle of chardonnay and cried herself to sleep that night. The following day, a Saturday, she spent converting the den/office into an office/office.

  With silent apologies to Al, she moved the television, the VCR, and the private line telephone and answering machine into the bedroom. She left the couch, but moved it to the other side of the room, to the wall adjacent to the desk. She brought the two file cabinets out of the closet and placed them where the sofa had been. Then she cleaned out the drawers, forcing herself to take the time to sift through the contents. Most of what the drawers contained could be disposed of, she concluded, because Dave and Mitch already had taken with them the relevant financial and business documents.

  Next she retrieved the laptop from the desk drawer and plugged in the cables. "There's a printer and a fax machine around here somewhere," she muttered to herself as she searched the closet. And sure enough, neatly boxed on the top shelf, she found them. She hauled in the stool from the kitchen, remembering the day that she and Al decided that they spent enough time at their respective offices. They didn't want to work at home or have home resemble work. The small computer was a convenience for Al—he didn't care to have his personal finances and other information on his office computer. Work was work, personal was personal, and never the twain did meet. She unboxed the fax machine and printer and placed one on top of each of the file cabinets. Then she realized that she'd have to return the couch to its original position on the back wall, beneath the window, so that the fax machine and printer could be nearer to the desk, which was a built-in. She was sweating by the time all was arranged according to satisfaction.

  This was her new office. She tried on the feeling and was surprised to find it more intimidating than she'd expected. When she quit her job, she'd expected that she and Al would do something that wouldn't involve the practice of law. But whatever it was, she wouldn't be doing it alone. "What a difference a day makes," she hummed to herself, then laughed, imagining Al saying to her, "Don't quit your day job." Well, she had quit her day job. And now she had it back...sort of. She had no support, no assistance, and no back-up. She also had no rules and regulations to follow, no executive committee to answer to, no quota of billable hours to maintain. She also had no client—unless she herself was her own client. She let that notion roll around inside for a while, feeling the vibrations. It was not a comfortable feeling. Not a correct feeling. But she needed a client to work a case. Who was her client? Of course. Al. She was working for him. She would find out for him what had happened to him, and why...unless, of course, he’d already known.

  Tommy's fingers flew over the computer keyboard with the gentle but certain agility and authority of a concert pianist. Carole Ann watched, amazed that the large, square digits consistently found their mark on the compact space of the keyboard, impressed with his obviously extensive knowledge of computer software programs. Why hadn't she known that he was, in the common parlance, a hacker?

  "You never asked me," he retorted, his eyes never leaving the screen, his fingers never slowing their rhythmic tap-tap-tapping. Tommy was trying to unlock Al's secret file. There was a way to do it, he said. There always was a way to access a file. It just required time and patience—and the proper motivation. And Tommy was motivated by the fact that the locked file could contain clues to the mystery of Al's murder. They tried all the obvious keys: The names of family members and closest friends; Al's fraternity; her sorority; their birth dates and the date of their marriage; the time and place of their birth. Then Tommy tried breaking and entering—the questionable if not outright illegal methods. Then he tried the patently illegal stuff He got close a couple of times; close enough to call a Technical Support Service number once and, lying through his teeth, extract enough information that he should have been able to unlock the file.

  "This is really giving me a pain in my ass," he muttered to himself, and Carole Ann giggled in spite of herself. Then she stopped because she felt him stiffen, felt his energy shift. He was tapping in a series of apparently repetitive commands and responses. He'd moved to the edge of the chair, his eyes boring into the tiny computer screen. “Gotcha, you son of a bitch!" he exclaimed, as, simultaneously, the file opened on the screen.

  Carole Ann leaned in closer and, peering over his shoulder at the screen, she read the words, LOUISIANA CONTACTS, and below, a series of names, addresses and telephone numbers. She read through rapidly, looking for something familiar. There was nothing. Were any of these, she wondered, people who had disappeared after contact with Al? She read the names again, more slowly. Still no hint of recognition.

  Tommy scrolled down the screen and pointed to an entry at mid-page. "What's that mean?" he asked, pointing to a paragraph that contained a mish-mash of what appeared to be aeronautical terms, Spanish, French, and what Carole Ann would have sworn was pig Latin.

  "I have no idea, Tommy. How much is there?" she asked, and he scrolled down further. Beneath the mish-mash paragraph there was a description of what Al labeled "a swamp village" and of an elderly woman he called the "conjure woman" with a notation to himself not to attempt again to speak with her without "the proper introduction." Then, in parentheses, he'd typed "But WHO??" Beneath that, there was another paragraph describing the smell that hung over an entire town, which emanated from the Chicken Shit River. Carole Ann read the sentence again, to make sure she'd read it correctly. "Chicken Shit River? Can that be a real name?"

  "From what I hear about Louisiana, anything can be real. Or unreal, if you get my meaning."

  But Carole Ann wasn't listening to Tommy. She was reading the next paragraph, a description of people—apparently of a family of people—half of whom were white and half of whom were Black and nobody knew who was what but the family members themselves because they all looked white. There were tales, Al had written, about several of these family members—all from the Black side—who’d escaped the swamp and gone to the city to be educated and who'd never returned. One of them, a girl, had been gang-raped when her true identity was discovered on the all-white campus where she'd been elected homecoming queen. She'd lost her mind and had
been committed to a mental institution. Another was a big shot somewhere, still alive and well and passing for white.

  Carole Ann felt a chill run through her. What in the name of God could any of this have to do with Al, with the case he'd been working on, with his murder? The feeling of disquiet settled over her like a shroud. Who were these people? She looked at the screen again, searching for a name. "Is that all of it, Tommy?"

  He scrolled down further, to the next page, which was, in its entirety, descriptions of toxic waste dumps and dead and dying bodies of water; descriptions of shriveled, diseased people; descriptions of towns and factories that were no longer in existence. "What could be worse than this," Al had written at the bottom of the page. "What could be more than dead?"

  "What could be more than dead," Carole Ann whispered, still covered by the shroud of disquiet that had not lifted. "What was Al doing?"

  "This has a bad smell to it, C.A.," Tommy muttered, "and I'm not just talking about swamp water. You want me to lock this file back up?"

  She nodded at him. "But can you make it easier to access next time? I'll never be able to do what you did."

  "No problem," he said, fingers flying once again across the keys. "OK. Now type in a password. Nothing too simple, though."

  Carole Ann typed in a word and Tommy closed the file. "Don't forget your word, OK?"

  "If I forget, you'll remember," Carole Ann said.

  "No, I won't," he said, alarmed. "I wasn't watching what you typed in. My eyes were closed."

  "Oh, God, Fish," she groaned. Nobody's as honest as that."

  "Just don't you forget that word," he commanded, standing and stretching. "You need to get yourself on line," he added, an afterthought.

  "Don't trust it," Carole Ann replied.

  "That's silly," Tommy scoffed. "It's perfectly safe. Millions log on every day."

  "And every day some software company invents a new program to thwart unauthorized access paths invented by the genius who believes, as does a certain unnamed police officer, that there's always a way to access a file." She mimicked him with these last words and he had the good sense to blush.

  "There's a lot of useful stuff on line," he argued.

  "I know," she agreed. "I just don't want to expose what's important to me to prying eyes. Besides, I like paper. Anybody wants to send me a message can send a fax. And if I need some on-line info, I'll go to the library."

  "Suppose you need it a three in the morning?"

  She shot him a look. "Then I'll call you and ask you to look it up for me."

  "Then Valerie won't think you're so walk-on-water wonderful if you wake her up at that time of the morning." He was still grinning when she pounced.

  "Oh ho and ah ha! Our living arrangements have changed have they? In a domestic partnership are we?" She laughed at his blushing discomfort and was preparing to really lay it on when the phone rang. "Carole Ann Gibson," she said into the instrument, then frowned when there was no response. "Hello?" Still no response, and then she was listening to a dial tone. She stared at the instrument buzzing in her hand, acutely conscious of each of the thoughts and emotions that swept through her psyche, the most salient being that someone was checking to determine whether or not she was home, followed by a helpless rage that quickly turned into a pure rage. She cursed and slammed the phone down.

  "What?" Tommy asked, eyes narrowed, shoulders squared, hands balled into fists at his sides.

  "Phantom of the penthouse," she snarled in response.

  "You had many of those?" Tommy asked, a frown creasing his brow.

  "Yeah, and it's starting to bug me." Carole Ann frowned, recalling at least three other such calls, though she didn't recall the exact dates, just that there'd been occasions recently when she'd answered the phone and, after a pause, had found herself listening to a dial tone.

  "I don't like this shit at all," Tommy muttered, clinching and unclenching his fists. "You know this is different from what you're used to," he said, sounding like a Jake Graham clone

  "And what am I used to?" she asked dryly.

  "Chilled-out crooks," he replied, equally dryly. He then explained that she encountered her bad guys after they'd been arrested and charged. "They know they're not on their own turf where they can be bad asses. They know they have to chill out for you. But these dudes we're dealing with now? They can be as bad as they want to. Who's gonna stop 'em? We don't even know who they are."

  Carole Ann studied him closely. She had thought she knew him, knew how his mind functioned. A new and different facet of Tommy Griffin was on display, and it was a revealing performance. Not only was he a real cop, she saw, but he had a real feel for the ugly side of crime and criminals. This was no kid playing cops and robbers. She accepted the accuracy of his assessment of her criminal contact. "Point made, point taken," she said.

  Her husband had been murdered. Someone had tried to break into her home. And who the hell had let a stranger up to the penthouse anyway? Where was the doorman when somebody was playing with the code on her keypad?! Perhaps her telephone was tapped and perhaps she was being followed. For the first time she felt real fear.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Jake Graham opened the door to her and then turned his back on her, rolling himself through the immaculate living and dining rooms and toward what appeared to be a screened-in porch. Carole Ann closed the front door and followed him, assuming that his leaving the door open was an invitation to enter. She had begged—almost forced—him to see her, so she couldn't, in reality, expect a gracious welcome. When she reached the porch he was already in his place—in the corner nearest the table where the remote controls to the television and VCR and stereo system sat; near the water cooler; near the telephone—and was locking the wheels into place. He turned hostile eyes on her.

  "What do you want?"

  "Somebody tried to break into my apartment..." she began, but he cut her off with a snarl.

  "You already told me that. What else do you want?"

  "I want to ask you some questions," Carole Ann answered.

  "I already answered 'em," he cut her off again.

  "I want to pick your brain," she returned quickly, accurately predicting his response: His eyes narrowed and in them she saw just a hint of interest.

  "And what is it you lookin' to find in my brain?"

  "Answers, perhaps. More than likely, more questions," she said with a casual shrug; too casual, because she saw that he caught on.

  "Give me one good reason I oughta tell you anything," he hissed at her.

  "Because you can't help it," she hissed back, meeting and holding his hostile glare. And she knew she was right. Good homicide detectives were puzzle addicts. The satisfaction, for them, was in the putting together of the pieces. If a crime got solved and perp brought to justice, fine. But it was the gathering and sifting and assessing of those little bits and pieces of nothing that became evidence that satiated the good homicide detective, and Jacob Graham was reputed to be the best the Metropolitan Police Department had to offer.

  He was a wiry little man. If he could have stood, he'd have been about five-eight—shorter than she by an inch—a fact she hadn't remembered from their last encounter. He was dark brown with sparse hair and a skinny mustache, and she guessed him to be in his late forties, perhaps early fifties. He was not exactly handsome, but he had wonderfully expressive eyes, and a very sensuous mouth beneath the sinister little mustache. The mouth twitched and the eyes narrowed again but he did not speak, and she didn't push him to do so. She knew that he knew that she was both threatened and frightened by the break-in attempt at her home. She knew that he also knew that she wanted information about Al's murder—if it was murder. So she sat and waited for him to decide what he would do. What he did was flip off the wheelchair locks and propel himself past her and into the dining room.

  She sat there for a long moment, actually enjoying the view from the porch. The back yard was as immaculately groomed as the interior of the house, with
every imaginable color of flower in full bloom. Carole Ann couldn't identify by name anything but roses and sunflowers and, from her native Los Angeles, Birds of Paradise, none of which blossomed in Detective Graham's back yard. She wondered briefly if the yard and garden had been his pleasure or was his wife's. Then she realized that her pleasure in the yard was due to her proximity to it. Her own home was twelve stories in the air, so when she sat on her balcony, her eye-level pleasure was sky. She found that she very much liked sitting on a porch and looking at grass and flowers. Bright, green grass and purple, yellow, red, orange, white flowers. But it wasn't her porch and they weren't her flowers and she was an intruder in the home of the man to whom these pleasures belonged. A man who didn't want her here, perhaps because he blamed her for his predicament. She stood quickly and retraced her steps to the front door. Her hand was on the knob when she heard Jake Graham's voice.

  "Where the hell you goin'?" His rough growl challenged her to turn and face him. He gestured with his head that she was to follow him back to the porch, which she did, reclaiming her place on the wicker couch as he reclaimed his in the corner.

  Carole Ann watched a long, lean black-and-white cat skulk across the yard and smiled as she imagined Patch enjoying such a playground. Then she turned to face Graham. Before she could speak he tossed a stuffed manila envelope at her, which she barely caught. Since he hadn’t spoken, she didn't, either. Instead she opened the envelope. It didn't take long to understand the nature and significance of the contents. He still didn't speak, but asked her question with a lift of her eyebrows.

  "You like cats?" he asked instead of replying.

  "Love 'em," she answered, giving him the freedom to take his time.