The Answer Man

by Roy Johansen

  Gant sensed hesitancy in her voice. “But…?”

  Liz stopped and turned toward Gant. For the first time, she seemed to be giving him her full attention. “Something interesting has happened. Something I should tell you about.”

  —

  What do you say to a thief?

  Ken shoved a quarter into the pay phone and punched Don Browne’s office number. He still wasn’t sure what he was going to say.

  Hey, how ‘bout those stolen data files?

  A secretary answered, and Ken identified himself only as a friend of Burton Sabini’s. She put him on hold, and Browne picked up almost immediately.

  “Don Browne.”

  “Hello, Mr. Browne.”

  “Who is this?”

  “I want to talk to you about some computer data you purchased. They belonged to Burton Sabini.”

  “What?”

  “Let me guess. You don’t know what I’m talking about.”

  “No.” Browne practically choked out the word.

  “Don’t bullshit me. Let’s get together and talk about it.”

  “Not until I know who this is.”

  “We’ll talk about that later too.”

  “Are you trying to blackmail me?”

  “All I want is information.”

  Browne paused. “Like what?”

  “We’ll talk about that when we meet. I’d like to see you today.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause. “I’ll meet you tonight,” he said. “Call back here at seven-thirty. I’ll tell you where I’ll meet you.”

  “Seven-thirty.” Before Ken finished speaking, Browne hung up the phone.

  —

  The fax machine hummed and shuddered as the halftone transmission slowly uncurled into the tray. Hound Dog held the end as she cut the thermal paper loose with a pair of scissors. It was a photograph from a fellow scanner geek in Colorado, sent in response to her query a few nights before. A handwritten note came with it. Hound Dog held the photo up as Mark looked over her shoulder.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s her. The same woman. I knew I’d seen that face before. She’s younger here, but it’s definitely the same one.”

  The photo was a crime shot of Myth Daniels being led away by police from what looked like a condominium complex. She appeared to be in her early twenties. Hound Dog almost shuddered. She now remembered the photo, and what had struck her about it.

  The woman’s cold, unforgiving face. There was no pity, no regret, despite the fact that she had just killed someone.

  Hound Dog picked up the accompanying note. It read simply, “Call me.”

  “Who sent it?” Mark asked.

  “A guy named Gary Conway. He lives in Colorado. I met him at a photography convention about a year and a half ago. I guess that’s where I saw this photo of her.”

  She omitted the fact that the scanner geek had made several overt passes during the course of the convention, all rebuffed.

  Mark returned to the kitchen table, where he was doing his homework. He was almost half finished with a bachelor’s degree in accounting, accumulating credits through correspondence courses. By the time he would have to attend actual classes, he hoped to have enough money saved so he could quit his job as a bouncer.

  Still holding the fax, Hound Dog picked up the phone and dialed Conway’s number.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hi, Hound Dog.”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I just sent you the fax. I figured you’d want the scoop on it.”

  “And you knew nobody else would be calling? Get a life, Conway.” Hound Dog looked at the picture again. “Well, that’s definitely her. What is the scoop?”

  “This was a while back, maybe twelve or thirteen years ago. In Denver. That woman had just shot a man in cold blood. Killed him.”

  “I remember that.”

  “Yeah. She had tried to charge the guy with rape a few weeks before, but it didn’t stick. The next thing everyone knew, he was dead on her doorstep. She said he’d broken the door and was coming in with a knife.”

  “So she blew him away.”

  “You got it.”

  “You get any shots of the stiff?”

  “Nah. It was all taped off by the time I got there. This made some headlines, though. There was some question whether or not it was really self-defense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It could have been a setup. She knew the guy, she could have asked him to come over. You know what she looks like, I would have gone over.”

  “Was she ever charged?”

  “No. Just a lot of speculation. What’s the story with your Madeleine Walton shot?”

  “Who?”

  “Madeleine Walton. Isn’t that who we’re talking about?”

  Hound Dog flipped through her pocket notebook. “The name I got was Myth Daniels.”

  “Check it again.”

  Hound Dog crinkled her nose as she looked at Conway’s photo next to her own. It was unmistakably the same person. She wrote the name “Madeleine Walton” in her pad with a large question mark beside it.

  “I’ll look into this. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. When are you gonna dump that big, dumb brute of a boyfriend of yours and give me a chance?” He paused, then added, “I’m not on a speakerphone, am I?”

  “Lucky for you, no. Thanks, Conway. I’ll be in touch.”

  She hung up and stared at the two pictures for a moment longer. Mark stood, approached her from behind, and massaged her shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, still staring at the photos. “But it’s time I found out.”

  —

  Ken walked down a long ramp in the building that housed Crown Metals, Don Browne’s company. It was seven-twenty P.M., and his telephone appointment with Browne was only ten minutes away. It was an appointment Ken was going to miss.

  He decided to drop in on Browne instead. There was no way to tell how deeply involved Browne was, and it didn’t seem like a smart move to let him call the shots and arrange their meeting. Surprise was the best strategy.

  Ken made his way past the empty attendant booths until he found himself in the building’s subterranean parking garage. Cool. Dark. Not particularly inviting. He could have walked through the front door, but he wanted to avoid the guard desk in the lobby. He preferred to arrive unannounced. Ken’s footsteps echoed in the nearly empty parking level.

  He found the elevators and rode up to the eighth floor, where most of Crown’s corporate offices were located. The reception area was empty. Good. No one to intercept him. Ken scanned the directory and found Browne’s office number. Suite 8023.

  He walked down the hallway as if he had a legitimate reason to be there. It was a stellar performance, but there was no audience to appreciate it. Surely there were a few workaholics still toiling in their cubicles. But with each turn of a corner, Ken could see only vacant corridors. He followed the numbers toward Browne’s office.

  The lights turned off.

  Ken stopped. He wasn’t in total darkness; traces of sunlight were still coming through windows in a few of the open offices. He squinted to see his watch. Seven-thirty sharp. The hallway lights were probably on a timer.

  Ken saw a ribbon of fluorescent light spilling from a doorway. Browne’s office. Ken stopped to listen.

  There was a continuous rapid-fire clicking coming from behind the door. It was a familiar sound, but Ken couldn’t quite place it. He crept closer to the door and peeked through the crack.

  All he could see were bookshelves.

  He placed his fingertips on the door and shoved. It swung inward, revealing more bookshelves, a window, a desk…

  And a man slumped over the desk.

  No way in hell.

  Ken froze. This couldn’t be happening.

  The man’s face was lying on his comput
er keyboard, causing line after line of letters to scroll down the monitor screen. It was making the clicking sound.

  Ken still hesitated. Then he heard a sound. Voices in the hallway. Coming his way, naturally.

  Ken stepped inside and pressed himself against the wall. The voices came closer, as did the sound of casters rolling across the carpeted corridor. A vacuum cleaner. Cleaning people.

  The voices faded as the workers turned the corner.

  Ken stepped away from the wall. What now? Maybe the man wasn’t dead. Maybe he’d had a heart attack and was just unconscious. He should check.

  He walked over—and saw a tiny bullet hole in the man’s forehead, with only the tiniest trace of blood. Jesus.

  Should he report the murder? No. He was already linked with two murders. How would this look?

  As he was pondering what to do next, he noticed the lock on a file drawer in the desk. He had come here for information, and the stubborn part of him refused to leave without it. He reached for the drawer. It didn’t open.

  He had a good idea where to find the key. He pushed back Browne’s chair and thought for a moment. Did he really want to do this?

  No. Yes. Maybe.

  Hell no, he didn’t want to do this.

  But the stubborn part took over again. He jammed his hand into the corpse’s right pants pocket. Wet. Browne had pissed in his pants at the moment of death.

  Ken fished for the keys, finally hooking them with his middle finger. He pulled them out and unlocked the desk drawer. It was jammed with files. He thumbed through the tabs until he found one labeled V.I.

  Vikkers Industries?

  He reached inside. No paper. Shit. But as he pulled out the folder, a thin, rectangular piece of metal slid out. He picked it up. It appeared to be an aluminum sample cast with a dark purple hue. A series of numbers and letters were etched on one side. He pocketed the sample and put the folder back into the drawer. There didn’t appear to be any other relevant files.

  Ken held up the keys. Was it absolutely necessary to put them back where he found them? Yeah, probably so. He once against stuck his hand into Browne’s damp pocket and deposited the keys.

  He looked at the computer. It could be holding more information, but there wasn’t time to guess at the password. It was time to get out.

  He leaned into the doorway, checked both directions, and walked down the corridor. He reached the elevator bank and punched the button. It didn’t stay lit. He tried it again. Again, the light didn’t stay on.

  Damn. It must have switched over to key access only, probably at the same time the lights went off.

  Ken followed the glowing green exit signs to the stairwell. He ran down to the sixth floor, where he found the covered walkway that crossed Spring Street to another office building. He crossed the bridge, took the other building’s elevator, and emerged on the street below.

  As Ken walked to his car, he cast a glance up at Browne’s lighted office. First Carlos Valez, then Sabini, now this guy. Three people he had recently come into contact with. No way was it a coincidence.

  What had he stumbled into?

  Christ. If he didn’t wind up in jail, he might just end up as corpse number four.

  —

  “I have some news for you.”

  Early the next morning, Ken was walking across his office parking lot, when he heard Gant’s voice.

  Lieutenant Gant.

  Again.

  Ken felt the metal strip in his pocket. Shit. If Gant somehow found out that he had been in Don Browne’s office, the hunk of metal might be evidence enough to bury him. It had been a sleepless night, and the morning obviously wasn’t going to be any better. He was still shaken from the experience of finding Browne’s body.

  Did it show? Could Gant see that he was half out of his mind? “What do you have?” Ken asked.

  “I’m afraid you botched a test.”

  “What test?”

  “The test you gave Carlos Valez. He didn’t steal the VCR.”

  Ice water surged through Ken’s veins. “How do you know?”

  “The mall manager told me. Someone tipped her off, and they found the unit at another guy’s house. Did you test someone by the name of Robert Finlayson?”

  This wasn’t happening. Christ almighty.

  “Yes,” Ken answered in a low rasp.

  “That was the guy.”

  Ken nodded. One of his worst fears had finally come true. He had been proven wrong. Shit.

  “I guess it happens,” Gant said. “You can’t be right all the time.”

  How about half the time?

  Was he right even that much?

  Carlos had said he lost his job, his home, and his family because of that damned machine. No, not because of the machine. Because of the examiner.

  “Thanks for making my day,” Ken said. “Is that what you came to tell me?”

  “That and the fact that this gave Carlos Valez even more reason to have been angry at you. If you want to admit anything, your position would be stronger than ever. He was obviously furious with you.”

  “There’s nothing to admit!”

  Gant said nothing.

  “Do you want to arrest me? Huh? Jesus. Okay, so I screwed up his exam. I have to live with that. I didn’t kill him though. What more do I have to say?”

  “Nothing,” Gant said. “You don’t have to say another word.”

  Ken half expected handcuffs to be snapped around his wrists, but instead Gant turned on his heel and walked away.

  Ken entered his building, sailing past the smirking receptionist on the way to his office. Did she know what a fraud he was?

  Probably.

  Ken flew into his office, slammed the door behind him, and kicked the polygraph stand. The machine crashed to the ground. A knob flew off and spun furiously on the floor.

  That felt good.

  Ken settled into his desk chair and looked at the mess. Why had Gant come? The fact that the exam was botched didn’t have any real bearing on the case; it didn’t suggest that he was responsible for Carlos’s death. No, Gant wanted to throw him off balance, hoping to upset him and get a confession out of him. That was it.

  The man was just doing his job.

  The way he had been doing his job when he screwed over Carlos Valez.

  Ken rubbed his face with his hands. What the hell was happening? Don Browne’s murder was reported on the morning TV news, but there was no apparent motive, no suspects, no anything.

  Was he fooling himself by thinking he could find that money?

  Maybe.

  But the money, Ken realized, wasn’t all he was after. With the police breathing down his neck for a pair of murders he didn’t commit, he was driven to discover what was happening around him. He suspected that the twelve-million-dollar booty was in the eye of this storm, and if he could find it, a lot of other answers would follow. Answers he just might need to stay out of jail.

  But the quest was getting more risky by the moment.

  —

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Myth pushed her way into Ken’s apartment. It was two thirty-five A.M., and Ken, in his grogginess, had answered his door without checking the peephole first.

  “I’m trying to sleep,” Ken replied. “You’re not helping.”

  She glared at him. “I was talking to Sabini’s widow, and she said an insurance investigator was there to see her. I checked around, and none of the agencies would admit to it. Then she described the car he was driving. Your car.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “Looking for Sabini’s money will only attract attention from the police.”

  “We also agreed not to see each other. That didn’t stop you from coming over to my place the other night.”

  “I admitted that was a mistake.”

  “Fine. You make your mistakes, I’ll make mine.”

  “This involves both of us, Ken. If you blunder into that police investigation, you risk exposing ev
erything we’ve done.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  She sat on the sofa. “It’s a waste of time. Tell me, are you any closer to finding the money?”

  Ken wiped the sleep out of his eyes. “Maybe,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know that some information from Sabini’s laptop was copied and sold by a data recovery guy.”

  This got her attention. “When?”

  “A few weeks before they found the money missing. It was sold to an executive at a competing company, who happened to have been murdered last night.”

  Myth stared at Ken for a moment. “Are you talking about the man at Crown Metals?”

  “One and the same.”

  “How did you find this out?”

  “I asked around.”

  “Do the police know all this?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She sat still, thinking in silence. “I wonder if Vikkers Industries knows.”

  “Sabini’s company? How would they know?”

  She hesitated before speaking. “Did you know Vikkers Industries is under investigation?”

  “For what?”

  “They recently completed a very lucrative merger with Lyceum Metals. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating charges of misconduct on the company’s part.”

  “What kind of misconduct?”

  “I’m not sure. The investigation is still in the preliminary stages. The SEC doesn’t like to publicize these things because it can have an adverse effect on the company’s stock.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?”

  “Maybe nothing. But if someone is murdered just a few weeks after obtaining Vikkers’ privileged information…”

  “You think Vikkers may be involved.”

  “Was the murdered executive the only one who had access to this data?”

  “As far as I know. Why?”

  “I’ve heard this strictly off the record, but several executives around town are reputed to have received Vikkers’ sensitive financial data in the weeks prior to the merger. It actually discouraged other companies from trying to ace Vikkers out of the merger with Lyceum Metals.”

  “Why?”

  “It didn’t paint a pretty picture of Lyceum. Vikkers completed the merger with no other bidders in the running. The top Vikkers guys made out like bandits.”