by Todd Borg
“I’m just afraid.” The only close light was the one coming from within her scope. Yet even the dim light from the scope reflected in the wetness of her eyes.
“Of what?” I asked.
“Of losing you,” she said, shaking her head. “Of coming up against darkness. Of revisiting the fears of my childhood. I see Ryan, who by all rights should have a perfect life. He’s done nothing but work, nothing but pursue his genius, and look what happens. And I’m afraid for Lily.”
I stepped close to hug her. She turned her face and put her cheek against my chest, and I held her head, caressing her hair.
Street continued. “It’s impossible not to fall in love with her. But it’s like her childhood is on an edge that no child should face. Of course, she doesn’t go hungry, and she has clothes and shelter. But she has no parents, and her brother is overwhelmed, and her surrogate grandfather dies in a strange circumstance, and some twisted monster is pursuing them. She can’t even have a bicycle that isn’t crushed by a billionaire jerk who has no awareness of what it means to respect another person’s life. A life that may be over soon.”
Street pushed her head back and looked up at me.
“Do you know anything more?” she asked. “Are you any closer to finding out what is happening?”
“I’ve learned that Preston is trying to pressure Ryan into selling his company. But it appears that Preston’s man Stefan isn’t doing the sick stuff. Maybe one of his other men is.”
Street searched my eyes, tears brimming her own. “They’re just kids,” she said. “People think money makes you invulnerable. But they’re just kids.”
I pulled Street to me and held her. “I know,” I said.
Ten minutes later, I left and drove to my office, a block up and across Kingsbury Grade to check messages. There were two.
The first was from Diamond about the lab that Douglas County used for DNA testing. They’d analyzed the hair samples on the brush that belonged to Jeanie Samples, and found a match with the remains on the mountain.
The second message was from the lab to which I’d sent the tiny, bright red leather piece that I’d found on the cliff above the remains. The lab couldn’t tell me anything about the color dye or the source. But they had determined that the leather was made from kangaroo hide.
I drove back to Ryan’s house.
Carol said hi, Lily and Spot were excited to see me, and Ryan looked so weary that it seemed he’d lost his will to live.
Eventually, I got him alone. I told him about the DNA match on Jeanie. He swallowed and said that Diamond had already called him.
“What do you know about the renter at the Village Green who was evicted and then died?”
Ryan’s eyes got very wide. “Nothing. Someone died?”
So I told him, and he looked like he was about to collapse. It was clear that he was just the kid that Street referred to. A kind of a business version of an ivory tower recluse who was so focused on his science that he didn’t grasp what else was going on in his life.
“And you haven’t told me the truth,” I said, trying not to sound too stern, but not succeeding. “I can’t help you if you don’t give me all of the relevant information.”
Ryan’s perpetual look of worry turned to fear. “What do you mean? I’ve told you everything.”
“What about the discovery at your research facility? The high-altitude breakthrough, or whatever it is?”
Ryan looked horrified.
“What discovery?” he said.
FORTY-FOUR
“In Venice I enjoyed a little incident with Preston’s bodyguard,” I said. “Under my encouragement, the man told me that Preston wanted controlling interest in your company. The reason why is that CBT has made a discovery at your facility on the mountain. He said if Preston couldn’t buy sufficient stock to take control, then he would steal your research and start his own company. Apparently, something with a huge potential value is going on up on Mt. Rose.”
Ryan stared at me as if I’d just announced mutiny in his company.
“I can’t believe it. This can’t happen. Our scientists are loyal to me. They know that I provide very well for them.”
“Does Preston have access to the company facilities?”
“He’s not invited, but he’s not forbidden access, either.”
“Do any of your people know that he owns forty percent?”
“I suppose so,” Ryan said. “I haven’t kept it secret.”
“And your first big cash infusion came from his investment.”
Another nod.
“Which probably allowed you to purchase some of the equipment that your employees use,” I said. “Maybe even the building up on the mountain.”
“Yeah, but...”
“So it could be that your employees feel that they owe their jobs and their sophisticated tools to Preston. And if they know that you only own twenty percent of the stock, they may feel as much, or even more, allegiance to Preston as they have toward you. Maybe he’s been popping into your mountain lab, bringing people hot pizza for lunch, the occasional gift and such, after-work beers. It’s easy to imagine that they would tell him of any discovery. After all, they would think of him almost as their boss.”
“That’s outrageous! He’s an investor, nothing more.” Ryan was purple with anger.
“Is there someone at the mountain lab who you could call and ask if Preston has been around?”
“I’m pretty close to Selena. I’ll call her.”
He looked at his phone, pressed some keys, found the number, dialed.
“Um, Selena? This is Ryan Lear. Hi. Is this an okay time? Oh. Could you call me back? Also, could you call from your car or something? It’s private. Thanks.” He hung up.
Ryan sat on one of his kitchen barstools. His skinny shoulders slumped. His back rounded so much that it looked like it would break. He put his elbows on the counter and leaned his chin into his hands.
We get an idea of the corporate executive, a person with a big ego and enormous self-confidence. A person who is in charge of hundreds of employees and is responsible for their livelihoods, yet can still go to sleep with ease, speak before large audiences, and go to dinners with powerful politicians.
The kid before me appeared overwhelmed, and he telegraphed imminent collapse.
His phone rang, and he answered it. He tried to sound upbeat at first, asking her questions about Preston Laurence, but soon sounded dejected. A minute later, devastated. He thanked her and hung up.
“All this time I was worried about corporate spying. That was part of the reason we built the facility on the mountain instead of building a hypobaric chamber in the Bay Area. And it turns out that the spy is our largest shareholder.
“She said that he’s been by lots, and that he seems to have a special rapport with JJ. That’s Jason Johnson, and that in the last week JJ has been cataloging some rapid hypoxic adaptations in paramecium, a ciliate protozoa that we are using for research.”
Ryan slammed his palm down on the counter.
“And he never called me! I’m his mentor! I hired him even before we brought Bob on board! I gave him his big promotion!”
“I’m sorry, Ryan,” I said.
“What do you think I should do?” He was pleading.
“I should see your high altitude shop.”
“When do you want to go?”
“Now,” I said.
“Do you want me to drive?”
“I’ll drive. Is this a time when you would normally go there?”
Ryan shook his head. “No. I always get there early in the morning if I go there at all.”
“Then I’ll go in alone. Having the boss around always changes the tenor of things. I’ll get a more accurate read if you’re not there. If it makes sense for you to come in, I’ll let you know.
“You can’t just walk in,” Ryan said. “It’s a locked facility.”
“I can knock, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Before
we go, I need you to write a letter of authorization for me. Put it on your letterhead, and make it out to Jerry Burns of ETR Analysis, Inc. That will allow me to poke around once I’m inside.”
“Like, ‘This authorizes Jerry Burns of ETR Analysis entry into CalBioTechnica’s facility up above the Mt. Rose Meadows?’”
“Perfect.”
Ryan went into his office and brought it out a minute later.
We headed up to Incline Village, turned up the Mt. Rose Highway and drove up to the meadows at 9000 feet. Ryan pointed out the turn-off, and we followed a winding dirt trail that was marked as a Jeep road on my US Topographical map. The road went across to a rise, then started up, steep in places, switch-backing several times. We came to a Forest Service gate.
Ryan got out and unlocked it. I drove through.
Ten minutes after we’d left the highway, we came over a rise. The closest topo line on the map showed us at 10,200 feet. Mt. Rose loomed above to the northeast. Ryan pointed to a small building in the trees about a quarter mile away. It was as plain as he described it, a concrete block box, painted green.
I parked some distance away, in some trees that gave us cover.
I reached into my box of useful items, pulled out the clipboard, my recycled electronic device, my ETR baseball cap.
“What is that stuff?” Ryan asked.
“Just junk that gets me into places I don’t belong. The clipboard is standard stuff. I record dates and very important meaningless numbers and checkmarks. This other thing is pure wizardry. Got it from eBay.”
“What does it do?”
“I have no idea. I think it’s some kind of obsolete phone repairman computer. All I know is you turn on this button, here, then twist this dial, and a little graph comes up on the screen. Change the dial, the graph changes. If I take these wires and touch them together or to any metallic object, the thing beeps. And this yellow light blinks now and then in a random pattern, sometimes fast. It’s probably supposed to be on all the time. Works like magic. You stay here.”
I clipped the computer device onto my belt, walked through the trees, came out near four parked vehicles, and went up to the door that Ryan said was always locked. I turned the knob and stepped inside, shutting the door gently behind me.
The entry I was in was separated from the rest of the space by a wall of glass. Behind the glass was a large room. Everything was white on white, smooth hard surfaces, every corner bathed in bright light. There were techie-looking stainless steel appliances. Some counters were bare, others had pieces of equipment unlike anything I’d ever seen. In one corner was a washing station with a utility sink and what looked like an unusual dishwasher.
In the far corner of the large room was yet another, smaller glass room with a vestibule between double doors, some kind of air-lock. The entire building hummed with the loud whoosh of forced air, perhaps a system for filtering dust and other pollutants.
In the smaller air-lock room stood a woman at a counter. She wore a white coat and cap and a mask over her mouth and nose. She worked at a counter. Next to her was a cabinet with a glass front. The lights inside illuminated rows of glass containers that reminded me of Petri dishes from high school science.
In the main room, two men sat on stools in front of machines. They had touch-sensitive control panels, and computer screens with inscrutable numbers and letters on the display. I had no idea what they were.
To one side of the big room were two sets of low white counters with two built-in desk spaces each. Each space had a computer and telephone. The fourth scientist sat at one of the desks, his screen angled toward the wall so that the others couldn’t see it. His video game was visible to me. He was hitting the keys fast. I guessed that he was JJ.
I took a step forward onto the welcome grate, and it immediately came alive. A vacuum roar turned on as rows of oscillating brushes rose up to scrub the soles of my shoes.
At that sound, all but the woman in the air-lock room turned to look at me. I smiled, angled my shoes so that the brushes could do a thorough job, then stepped forward off the grate. The vacuum roar dropped from class 4 hurricane down to basic forced-air heating and cooling, and the brushes stopped moving.
The man at the desk hit a button as he stood up, and his video game was replaced by a work screen with writing. He walked over to an aluminum circle in the glass wall, and spoke.
“Can I help you?” His voice sounded tinny.
I pressed my fake Jerry Burns driver’s license and Ryan’s letter of authorization up against the glass.
He took the time to carefully read Ryan’s letter.
Then he pointed to a rack of white shop coats. I put on a coat, and he hit a button. The door buzzed and I walked in.
“What is the purpose of your visit?” he said, frowning.
“I’m the Sierra Corridor Field Officer for ETR. We’ve had reports of frequency interference from the Mt. Rose section. I’m here to check it out. Probably only take me about five minutes.”
I looked around the lab.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “There are broadcast radio towers and cell towers and microwave towers on the nearby peaks. This area is like the Los Angeles of electromagnetic traffic jams. What could our lab have to do with this?”
“We don’t know. That’s why they sent me out to check.” I looked around at the lab.
“What frequencies are you looking for?”
“Just the ones that this baby picks up.” I switched my belt computer on. “See?” I pointed at the blinking yellow light. “You’ve definitely got some leaky equipment, here.” I wrote down the date on my clipboard sheet, then fumbled my pencil into the air toward his desk. It bounced under his desk chair.
“Oops.” I got down on my knees, fetched the pencil, leaned on the chair and desk as I stood up and looked at his computer screen. In the short moment of standing up, I saw the word Preston in the address bar.
I pulled the two wire probes out from my belt computer, reached around and touched them to the metal backing on the man’s computer while I scanned the email on his computer screen. I saw nothing revealing except the word breakthrough. My belt computer beeped.
“Hmm,” I said. “That figures.” I twisted the dial, made the graph jump around.
I moved to another desk and repeated the process at another computer. “Uh, oh,” I said louder.
“What’s that mean?” the man said.
“Means we may have to require your boss to put on filters.”
“Who is it that made the report about this so-called interference?” he said.
“Got me. My orders come out of the Vegas Division. For all I know, their clients could be the government. Or the military.” I made some more marks, followed them with a checkmark.
I walked across the lab toward the other men. I nodded at them, held my little machine out, its yellow light blinking furiously. I touched my wire probes to one of their devices, and held it there. The beep sounded long and tortured.
Then I took a quick walk to each corner of the room, twisted my dial, made marks on my clipboard. At each stop and turn, I made a surreptitious study of the other three scientists, then thanked them and turned to go.
“Got what I need,” I said.
“Do you have a card?” the video gamer/emailer asked.
“No, sorry, ran out last week. Keep that authorization letter.”
I walked out, and went back to the Jeep. There was room to back out and turn around a couple of ways. I chose the one that would keep Ryan out of view from the lab windows.
“Did you find out anything?” Ryan asked.
“The woman in the air-lock room and the two men at the counters are probably good people who serve your best interests. The guy at the desk with the little goatee probably isn’t.”
“That’s JJ. Did you see something?”
“He’s playing video games and writing an email to Preston.”
“What? Preston?”
“Yeah. Even
more, my gut instinct tells me that he’s rotten. You know how you can walk into any business, and you can spot the bad fish? Sometimes it’s workers who are lazy, and have an attitude that says, ‘Why should I care?’ Other times they are brusque and telegraph that they are too important to be working in a place like this. That was JJ.”
Ryan rode in silence for a time, as if he were in shock.
“What do we do now?” he finally said.
“We need to know if Jason has sold you out,” I said, knowing to my own satisfaction that he already had.
“How do we do that?”
“The slow inefficient way is for you to check with your lawyer and discuss the legality and repercussions of gaining access to Jason’s emails, his computer, and his other papers. The fallout would be substantial. Other employees would find out. They would wonder if they were also under investigation. That would severely undermine their morale.”
“You imply that there is a faster, more efficient way.”
I nodded. “With your permission, I pay a private visit to JJ and encourage him to come clean about any activities that don’t square with taking a paycheck from CalBioTechnica.”
“Are you suggesting that you’d threaten him?”
“Words, first, is my motto. I’m often very persuasive. People like JJ usually see the logic of confessing their sins.”
“If words don’t work first, what comes second?”
“If that is a big concern to you, call your lawyer. For whatever it’s worth, if I pay JJ a visit, I believe that he’ll want to tell me the truth. I’ll explain to him that we’re looking to cut down much bigger trees than him. Unless of course he doesn’t ’fess up. In that case, we’ll charge him with stealing corporate secrets. He’ll never get another job in corporate America.”
Ryan thought about it most of the way back to his house.
“Okay,” he said. “Do what you think you should do.”
FORTY-FIVE
I waited on the side of the highway up on Mt. Rose Meadows, within sight of the dirt road that went to CBT’s research facility. Other cars and pickups were nearby, tourists out for hikes. I was calm, but I was angry. If you have a problem with your employer, tell him or her, and work to fix it, or quit. But selling him out behind his back is way over in the wrong column on my ethics checklist.