by R Weir
I stood next to my bike, cursing silently. I needed something to hit, but nothing was around that wouldn’t break bones in my hands. I was seething at myself for losing it and for the pain I’d caused Melissa. Getting over her was difficult. Forgiving myself even harder. I was getting nowhere when my cell phone rang. It was Mallard and he was angry.
“You need to get down here right now!” he growled. “You promised Internal Affairs a statement, and Montero is getting impatient. Been calling me asking where you were. I told him I’m not your mother but he didn’t care. If you don’t show soon he will be putting out an arrest warrant.”
“How was your fishing trip? Catch anything good?”
“What are we, best buddies? You are a piece of work. Are you coming down here or not?”
With all that was going on I’d forgotten about going down. Some days I wondered if I could keep my schedule straight in my head. I wasn’t in the best of mood to deal with IA, but I didn’t care to spend the night in jail.
“Tell him I’m on my way,” I said. “I’m downtown, so give me an hour.”
“If you don’t show, I’ll be the one slapping the cuffs on.”
He hung up before I could tell him “good luck with that.” I strapped on my helmet and rode back towards my side of town, stopping for a late lunch at a sandwich shop before entering the police station. It was longer than an hour, but I didn’t really care.
When I arrived, Luis Montero was sitting in his office, a perturbed look on his face. I’d dealt with him on the previous incident outside of Boone’s, and he did seem like a fairly reasonable person. Internal Affairs often got a bad rap in fiction, as being out to get cops at any cost. He didn’t come across that way, though now that I’d angered him, maybe that would change.
“Jarvis, have a seat,” he said, in a sour tone.
“Sorry I’m late. Case work went longer that I expected.”
He grunted, as if to say he really didn’t care. He took his drinking cup and swallowed down what appeared to be water. His dark brown eyes looked down at some paperwork. His tight curly hair was darker than his skin, and matched his neatly trimmed mustache. He was shorter than I was by a couple of inches, and slender in his black suit. He squinted at the printed words, not wanting to grab the reading glasses sitting to his left. I wasn’t sure if it was vanity or laziness.
“Give me all the details of what happened last night?” he demanded. “I want to be very clear this is the second incident involving you and April. So I need you to tell me everything that happened and leave nothing out.”
“Have you gotten April’s statement yet?” I asked.
“No. She is still under too much sedation to speak. That is why we need details now. A second instance of her pulling her gun, and this time killing someone, demands answers. The top brass want a report ASAP.”
“April and I pulled up to her place in my car,” I said. “As we got out and approached her building, Jasha Platov stepped out and shot April…” I continued on, giving him all the facts as I remembered then. He listened intently, making notes as he went along. I concluded with the point where April killed him, saving my life in the process.
“Why were April and you together?” he asked.
“We had gone out to dinner.”
“Are you two dating or involved in any way?”
That was a tough question to answer. It was sort of a date, but we weren’t dating per se.
“We are good friends. I was taking her to dinner to say thanks for saving my neck outside of Boone’s.”
“Were you planning on thanking in her in ways beyond buying her dinner?”
I didn’t like the question, though there had been that possibility. But I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“I bought her dinner and was walking her to her door to make sure she got in safely. Nothing else beyond that.”
“Apparently the plan of getting her in safe didn’t work.”
“You are correct. I wasn’t as alert as I should have been. I’ve been kicking myself about being sloppy.”
“Maybe because your mind was on something else. Possibly something pleasurable on the horizon.”
“I already answered that wasn’t the case. Why are you pursuing this line of questioning?”
“A witness said they saw you walking arm in arm. Looking pretty chummy and close.”
I didn’t care to get into the “what could have happened” game with him.
“Look, Montero, this is getting you nowhere. April and I are close friends. What may have happened is irrelevant. She fired on a man who had shot her twice, killing him to keep him from killing me. She saved my life and I will be forever grateful.”
“Where did she get the gun?” he asked, now going a different route. “Her service revolver was taken away from her in lieu of the investigation of the previous incident you two were involved with.”
“I was concerned for her safety and she didn’t have a personal weapon of her own. So I loaned her one of mine.”
He let out a low whistle.
“That could create a problem for her and you.”
“She is a licensed police officer, with training on using a weapon. The gun is registered in my name with a clean history. I doubt there would be any issue here unless you care to make a federal case out of it.”
He nodded his head, still taking notes. I wondered if any of this was being recorded in any way. Seemed odd if it wasn’t, but he certainly would or should have told me this up front.
“Let’s go over this again from the beginning…” Which we did two more times, each one the questioning took a similar path, though with some variations. Normal technique to catch me in a lie. But I never varied, and in the end he had to be satisfied I was telling the truth.
“How many times are we going to go through this?” I asked.
“We are done. I’ve heard what I’ve needed to hear. I don’t see there will be any issue for you or her, depending on what she says once we can talk. It sounds like a bad situation that neither of you could avoid.”
I was grinning on the inside, but stoic on the outside. He dismissed me and as I walked towards the door, I turned around and made a statement.
“For the record, I want to say April is a hell of a cop. And her talents are wasted sitting behind a desk. When her wounds are healed and she is physically able, she should be out on the streets where every good cop should be. I don’t know if you have any say in the matter, but I wanted to make that clear.”
Montero looked up from his notes after finishing whatever he was writing, a serious look on his face.
“I don’t have much input, but I agree wholeheartedly. And I’ll be certain to put that in my report.”
I walked out of there feeling good about what I’d said. With little else to do, and the afternoon turning to evening I rode on down to Swedish Medical Center to check on April. When I arrived I was told she was still in ICU and only family was allowed. So I called Clay to see if he could get me in. He was actually there and walked up to get me.
“She is still pretty doped up, but has been asking about you. Wanting to make sure you were safe.”
When I got down there, she was lying down with all kinds of wires and tubes attached. Her eyes were closed when I touched her hand. She gave me a weak smile and closed her eyes again. I leaned down and gave her a soft peck on the forehead and then sat down in a chair next to her for about thirty minutes. I told her about what I’d been doing since the shooting and what my next steps were. Her head turned over to look at me from time to time, so I was pretty certain she could hear me. After I talked myself out I said goodbye, kissed her again and rode my bike back home, feeling good and bad at the same time, knowing she would be fine but it would be some time before her life became normal again.
As I got to the front door of my place, I found a sealed envelope tucked into the door frame. I looked around for some reason, wondering if someone was there watching me. I opened the door,
walked in and tore open the letter. Inside on plain paper was handwritten, “Chief Security Officer Kyle Lambert hired Don.” I looked at both sides and that was all that was written. Simple and to the point. But it was enough. And I recognized the handwriting.
“Thank you, Melissa,” I said out loud, with a warmth in my heart I’d not experienced in some time.
Chapter 25
Being apprehensive and wanting to protect Melissa, I shredded the paper after memorizing the name. With a simple search of the Web using the term Chief Security Officer Kyle Lambert, I found out he was the company head of security for surprise, surprise: WANN Systems. He was based out of their main headquarters in the Silicon Valley, which was located in the southern portion of the San Francisco Bay Area, as were most of the world’s high-tech corporations.
After consulting with my client, I found the cheapest flight I could find on short notice, and the next day was landing at Mineta San Jose International Airport. It was late morning and I was so happy to have my feet firmly on the ground, surviving jet travel, which I dreaded. With a small carry-on in hand, I got my rental car, a little Toyota Corolla, and was off on my day. Since I didn’t know the city, I navigated by GPS on my phone to a sandwich shop to fill the void in my stomach from not eating before the flight, a necessity to keep me from getting airsick. San Jose was not too far from Sunnyvale, where their offices were located, and the hotel I booked was nearby. I didn’t need much, a place to sleep and shower, so I went as cheap as I could find. But cheap in this area was over two-hundred dollars per night. Thankfully, my client was not hurting for money and floated me upfront cash to cover expenses.
I was able to check in early and unpacked. Testing the bed and finding it acceptable, I started plotting out my day. The plan was to stay for two nights and see what type of trouble I could stir up. I would call the WANN office and see if I could get a meeting. When I contacted their main number I found out that their CSO was in today, but totally booked. Undeterred, I asked to talk with someone directly under Lambert and found that a Bronwen Pearson, Director of Security for the Western Region, would have some time at 3 p.m. to talk. When asked what I needed to meet with her for, I made up a story about possible breaches in credit card information for my small retail company, Smithfield Wearables, from using their security firewalls. Since I wasn’t all that tech savvy, Mandy had provided technical information from a friend. This I needed to use to get in the front door, the handwritten notes I was referring to and attempting to memorize, so I’d get the tech slang correct. I was convincing enough to get on her schedule. Once inside I would play it by ear on what I would do.
Since I had some time I decided to take a quick nap, since sleep never came easy for me in a different bed. I set the alarm and nodded off briefly, long enough to dream about April getting shot. It was short and graphic, and I awoke not all that rested when the buzzer went off. But it did get me fired up to get inside of WANN and hopefully stir the drink.
Thanks to GPS technology I parked in a visitor space outside their shiny glass and chrome box-shaped headquarters. After entering and passing through security, I came to the main information desk, which directed me to the fifth floor, which was the Cyber Security level. There I was greeted by a gruff male receptionist, who eyed me closely when I gave him my information and why I was there. I was told to take a seat and someone would be with me shortly. I found a Time Magazine among all the tech periodicals, which had an article on WANN covering the two owners. I read through the piece learning nothing I’d not already known, beyond the self-promotion and we are changing the world self-rhetoric. I’d stomached enough and was about to open a copy of Wired when a slim, short Asian woman came forward, putting out her hand.
“Mr. Smithfield,” she said. “So nice to meet you. I’m Ms. Pearson’s assistant, Suki Nagano. She wanted me to come and get you, and bring you to her meeting room. She is on a call but should be finished soon.”
We walked side by side, as she made chit-chat about the weather. She brought me to a small conference room, with an oval table and six chairs, while offering me something to drink. I answered water, and she pulled a Perrier out of the small refrigerator, removed the twist-off cap, and sat it on a coaster on the shiny dark wood table before leaving me, saying if I needed anything, to dial 8222 on the nearby phone and she’d be there to assist.
After leaving me alone I looked around the room. Being a detective, snooping was part of my MO. But there wasn’t much to snoop for. Table, chairs, fridge, TV and video conference, and a view of the neighboring buildings out the Mecco Shade–covered window. There were a couple of paintings on the walls of beaches and boats. So unless there were hidden safes behind the pictures, the room held out little hope of clues.
After ten minutes and half a glass bottle of Perrier, in walked Bronwen Pearson. She was a tall lady, with broad shoulders, round face with a ruddy complexion, short dark hair and caterpillar eyebrows. When she stuck out her thick-fingered hand, she shook mine like a man would, firm and strong. Her slacks were black, polo top red, shoes flat, black and extremely plain. If it weren’t for her large bosom I’d swear she was a man. If she’d not been in the military at one time or another I would have been surprised. She looked firm, strong and stout, and I’d hate to have met her in a dark alley.
“Mr. Smithfield,” she said with the handshake that blocked blood flow. “I understand you had some concerns about our equipment and its security. How can I help you on this matter?”
Thanks to the information Mandy’s friend had sent over, I had rehearsed over and over again so I would sound like I knew what I was talking about. The details were good, and explanation provided made me sound knowledgeable enough. But I decided to throw it all out and play myself to see what type of information I could pry out of her.
“I have to admit, I’m not who I claimed I was when making the appointment,” I said with a wry smile.
She did not look happy with my first words, always a bad sign.
“Who exactly would you be?” she stated with a hint of anger.
“My name is Jarvis Mann. I’m a private detective.”
She didn’t seem surprised. She had heard the name before.
“I’m aware of you. It has been spoken in some of our meetings.”
“So I’m famous!” I said with a chuckle.
She didn’t think I was funny.
“Hardly. More of an annoyance.”
I smiled even wider.
“That is my motto. Annoy and pester until the truth is discovered.”
“What truth are you searching for?”
“Who killed Aaron Bailey?”
“Who has hired you to bring clarity to this situation?”
She sounded almost poetic. I tried to match her words.
“The answer to that query is to remain a mystery of the ages.”
Not quite Kipling, but not bad.
“I believe the police have determined it to be a random robbery.”
“The police are not infallible in their deductions. I have reason to fathom there is more to the story.”
“So what have you so far deduced?”
“That someone in your company may have had him killed.”
She leaned back in her chair, the vein in her neck bulging out ever so slightly. I don’t think she cared for my accusation.
“Those are damning words. Words which could get you sued.”
I leaned back as well, crossing my arms, flexing my muscles, trying to look tough. Next to her, though, I wasn’t as brutish.
“I’ve only made them to you, yet you seem uncomfortable with me saying them. Which leads me to believe there may be some truth to them, that you would prefer not be uncovered.”
“There is nothing to reveal. The death of the young man had nothing to do with us. Spreading rumors as such will only lead to us taking action against you.”
“I believe you already have. Three Russian men paid me a visit, which did not go well. Leading to your co
mpany having local lawyers in Denver bailing them out.”
“You have no proof of this.”
“I know your boss, Kyle Lambert, made a call to Bristol & Bristol, who promptly got them released.”
The vein in her neck tightened even more. Her fisted right hand began to turn red, as her fingers squeezed tighter and tighter. She rocked back forward in her chair, her eyes boring into me.
“I’m not sure where you got your information from, but it means nothing and can’t be proven.”
“I would like to speak to Mr. Lambert and get his thoughts.”
“He isn’t available nor has time to talk with someone as insignificant as yourself. And neither do I. So take your claims and walk away now, before I call security up here and have them throw you out.”
“Mighty testy for someone with nothing to hide. You can have your goons come up and drag me out, but it won’t change my investigation one iota. I will get answers and if it leads to someone within your corporation, they will be brought to justice.”
She got out of her chair and went to the phone, dialing for Suki. I could only hear parts of what she said, but it encompassed a few expletives.
“Do you know what happened to Aaron’s notebook computer?” I asked.
“I’m done listening and talking to you.”
I really didn’t care if she said another word. I was working her for even the slightest reaction.
“There is no mention of his computer at the crime scene. From what I understand, he took it everywhere with him. Why wasn’t it recovered from the scene?”
She did her best not to look at me.
“Not even a mention or concern it was missing from WANN.”
Pestering her was making her nervous.
“Stolen, like everything else,” she finally said. “It was a robbery, plain and simple.”
“I don’t think so. My working theory is, those in your company who were involved retrieved and wiped it clean, then passed it onto another employee. Did you put in a claim with your insurance it was lost? Or maybe you didn’t care, since nothing was lost and you found what you wanted!”