The Answer Man

by Roy Johansen

  Mark should be here, making love to her or maybe just doing his homework. She found one of his shirts on the floor, a big Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirt. She pulled off her shirt and slipped on Mark’s. It felt good. It smelled like him.

  She found his gym bag and packed a change of clothes, remembering to take his address book. She had to call his friends and family.

  She looked around the trailer again. She couldn’t see that anything had been stolen, but it was obvious the burglar was looking for something.

  For what?

  She didn’t want to believe it had anything to do with Myth Daniels. If that were the case, what had happened to Mark was her fault. She couldn’t live with that.

  But why hadn’t anything been stolen? The intruder had obviously taken a lot of time to search the place. Time that could have been spent carting off the television, stereo system, and the silver candlesticks that had belonged to Mark’s mother. Anything of value was untouched.

  Only the papers and photographs were disturbed.

  What if Ken was right?

  She went to her darkroom bench, pulled up the tarp, and looked underneath. There, sitting where she had put them the night before, were the photographs she took of Sabini’s murder scene, plus the faxed Madeleine Walton picture.

  She picked up the photos, put them into the gym bag, and left the trailer.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ken took careful aim with his Smith & Wesson N-Frame .44 special. He squeezed the trigger, and the gun kicked back as the roar echoed off a hillside.

  He was at a rural dump site, where locals deposited old refrigerators, water heaters, and other junk. Forty feet in front of him was a row of beer cans set up on an overturned refrigerator for target practice. His first shot was a miss.

  It was an overcast day, and a sprinkling rain began as he lined up his next shot. Staring through the sight, he shut one eye, even though that would have meant points off in marksmanship class. Any gunslinger worth his salt keeps both eyes open. Maybe later.

  He squeezed off the shot, blowing away the second can.

  He quickly aimed for the next one, squeezed, and it, too, was shredded.

  He readjusted his grip on the handgun. It had a heavier kick than others he had used. The man he bought it from was a little guy, slight of build, whose main achievement in life was having gone to high school with Julia Roberts. He sold the gun for two hundred and twenty-five dollars. Ken had no idea if it was a good deal or not.

  He aimed for the next target, pulled the trigger, and nicked the can, causing it to spin wildly on the refrigerator.

  He tried firing after a few quick draws. Not only did he miss the cans, but had there been a barn in front of him, he doubted he would have hit its side.

  “The Sundance Kid I ain’t,” he said out loud, his voice ringing eerily in the deserted field.

  He discarded the empty shell casings and reloaded.

  As he continued his target practice, he was struck by an odd sensation. He thought holding and firing the gun would give him a feeling of power, of control. But he felt just the opposite. Relying on this gun made him feel weak, and therefore strangely vulnerable. Maybe this was why he had never owned one before.

  After thirty minutes, he felt reasonably secure in his marksmanship abilities. So he could hit a few tin cans. But could he hit a moving, breathing target?

  —

  It was dusk as Ken climbed the stairs to his apartment. With the cardboard box containing the gun tucked under his left arm, all he could think about was getting to bed. His right leg still hurt, and his back was stinging. It had been a rough few days.

  He unlocked the door, stepped inside, and stopped.

  He heard something.

  A whisper. Some shuffling.

  He turned to see several figures huddled in the darkness, silhouetted against his living room window.

  They were moving toward him.

  Ken knelt low and tore into the box, struggling to pull out his new revolver. He clawed at the Styrofoam packing material, breaking and crumbling it as the pieces wedged under his fingernails. The figures moved closer. He gripped the gun and waved it in front of him.

  “Stand back! Move and I’ll splatter your goddamned brains. You hear me? I got a gun!”

  The gun’s shiny barrel caught what little light there was in the room.

  The figures were still advancing, and he took aim at the one closest to him. He gripped the gun harder, and…

  The lights came on.

  “Holy shit…”

  The room was decorated with balloons and streamers.

  The first person he saw was Margot. She was coming from his kitchen with a candle-laden cake.

  As he looked around, he saw almost everyone he knew. Twenty-five friends wearing party hats and holding noise-makers. His flag football buddies, their spouses, and friends from Elwood’s.

  “Happy birthday to you…” the guests started to sing, but their voices trailed off as they saw Ken kneeling with the gun.

  Dead silence.

  Some of the guests started to laugh. Just a chuckle at first, but it built until almost everyone was roaring.

  Colby, whom Ken had squarely in his sights, stepped forward. “How did you know?” he whined. “Aw, crap. Bill leaked it, didn’t he?”

  Ken shrugged as he looked at Bill. “You never could keep a secret, Fred.”

  Bill went along. “I sure tried, Barney.” Bill looked around at the group and cut loose with a near-perfect imitation of Ken. “I’ll splatter your goddamned brains!”

  The gang roared again.

  As Ken stood up, he glanced at Margot. She wasn’t laughing.

  —

  In the next two hours, more guests arrived and the party went into high gear. The refrigerator was soon overflowing with beer and wine, and eardrum-shattering music threatened to raise the neighbors’ ire. Ken, drinking both beer and Jägermeister, proceeded to get wasted. It was the only way he could get through the evening; he wasn’t in the mood for a party, particularly not one in his honor.

  Margot was avoiding him, even shunning eye contact from across the room.

  Bill finally approached him in a reasonably secluded corner of the apartment. “That was a grand entrance.”

  Ken smiled. He hadn’t been this drunk in a long time.

  “You didn’t know about the party,” Bill whispered. “Not from me or anyone. What the hell’s going on?”

  “I didn’t know who was in here. I just wanted to defend myself.”

  “Since when do you carry a gun?”

  “Since today. A birthday present to myself.”

  “Why?”

  Ken didn’t respond. He finished his drink and surveyed the party. “This is cruel. You know how much I hate birthdays.”

  “Talk to me. Before you get totally hammered.”

  “Too late.”

  “Are you dealing drugs? Something like that?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then what? Why are you so jumpy? Are you still upset about what happened with the boat the other night?”

  Ken looked at Margot through the crowd. “Your wife’s avoiding me. She knows something’s up.”

  “Nah. She thought you were joking around with the gun, like everyone else.”

  “She didn’t believe that.”

  “Sure she did. If she didn’t, she’d be here talking to you like I am.”

  Ken shook his head. “She doesn’t want to talk to me because she doesn’t want to hear me lie. You know, Bill, that’s why I lost her.”

  “You lied to her?”

  “No. I lied to myself. All the time. It’s a bad habit.”

  He leaned back against the counter, struggling to maintain his balance. He managed a crooked grin.

  “A habit I need to break…if I want to stay alive.”

  —

  Squirt.

  Ken woke up on the sofa with a nasty hangover. And was that water squirting in his face?

&nb
sp; Squirt.

  Ouch.

  His whole body ached. His head throbbed.

  The morning sun blinded him even though his shades were drawn.

  Squirt.

  He looked up to see Hound Dog standing over him, aiming a water-filled Windex bottle at his face.

  “Are you awake?” she said.

  “No.”

  Squirt.

  “Stop. Please.”

  “Are you awake?” she repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “Good answer.”

  Ken sat up. He glanced around the apartment. It was amazingly clean, considering that a party had been there only hours before. Margot probably led the cleanup crew.

  He turned to Hound Dog. “How the hell did you get in here?”

  “I knocked, and you said, ‘Come in!’ The door was unlocked.”

  “Oh. I guess I wasn’t quite awake yet.” He rubbed his cheeks. “I had a birthday party here last night, and things got out of control.”

  “Belated happy birthday.”

  “Thanks. How’s your boyfriend?”

  “Hanging on. No more, no less. No one can tell me if he’s going to make it. They have my cellular number if he wakes up…or anything.”

  “Try not to dwell on the ‘or anything.’ ”

  “I won’t. That’s why I’m here. I want to find who did this to him.”

  Ken looked at her. She was dead serious. She carried herself with such strength and confidence, yet she had a face that was so youthful and delicate.

  “What makes you think I can help you find who shot him?” Ken rubbed his temples. Dull, throbbing pain.

  “I’ve had some time to think about it. Maybe you were right. Maybe it did have something to do with Myth Daniels. You know her and I don’t, and you must have some reason for suspecting her.”

  “I just offered her up as a possibility. You were digging around in something she’d rather keep hidden.”

  “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  Ken didn’t answer.

  She shoved his legs aside and sat on the sofa. “I want to know everything, Ken. I let you slide by on that half-assed story about hiring her for a case. We both know that was a lie. I think I deserve to know the truth. Don’t you?”

  He was silent for a moment. Since this whole mess began, he hadn’t discussed it with anyone but Myth. Not with Margot. Not with Bill. Not with Bobby. Now this young woman wanted some answers.

  She was entitled, he thought. She had suffered for it.

  He told her everything. About Myth, about Burton Sabini, about the money.

  Hound Dog listened intently, nodding occasionally.

  “Do you think Myth Daniels is behind your firebombing and boat attack?”

  “I don’t know. I’m watching my back though.”

  She sighed. “Mark told me not to do this. I wish I had listened to him.”

  “You can’t think that way. No matter what, it’s not your fault.”

  “I’ve been in scary situations before. I’ve seen some pretty wild things. But it was always my neck on the line, no one else’s. It didn’t even occur to me that I might cause someone else to be hurt, least of all Mark.”

  She sat down on the couch as tears welled in her eyes. She was reverting to that scared kid in the hospital waiting room.

  Ken quickly changed the subject. “Why do you do it?”

  “You mean the scanner surfing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. Why do some people jog seventy miles a week? Why are some people addicted to the Net?”

  “Is it something you have to do?”

  “Like an obsession? I don’t think so. It started when I was in high school. I used to listen to a police scanner my grandfather gave me. When I moved away from home, I started going to the places I’d hear about. Then I started taking pictures, and it kind of grew from there.”

  “Unusual hobby.”

  “It gives my life…texture. I grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago. My family always had a lot of money, and they used it to shelter me from everything that didn’t belong in their charmed little world. I never even saw a cemetery until I was in high school.”

  “You’re lucky.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I was a boring, insipid little girl turning into a boring, insipid young adult. There are enough of those around already.”

  “ ‘Boring’ is not a word I’d use to describe you.” He added, “ ‘Insipid’ neither.”

  “Thanks for tacking that on. I’m grateful for what my parents gave me. I love them, but I need to go my own way right now.”

  “You’re certainly doing that. Just how do you make your parents believe that you’re a college student in North Carolina?”

  She smiled. “What a tangled web we weave…When I decided to leave, I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. They would have freaked. I was there on scholarship, so money isn’t an issue. I lived in a house off-campus, and my old roommates take my parents’ calls, phone me with the messages, and forward any mail from them. And my family has never expressed any desire to visit me at school. It’s been amazingly easy to pull off.”

  “If you say so.”

  Hound Dog thought for a moment. “It seems to me you’re already doing a good job of checking Myth Daniels’s paper history. What if I take it a step further? Talk to some people, maybe follow her a bit, see who she’s talking to?”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “You’re not letting me do anything. It’s my decision. If she’s the reason Mark is in that hospital room, I want to know. I’ll share whatever I find with you, and you can do the same with me. We’ll be partners.”

  Ken felt uneasy, but a part of him liked having someone to work with. He suddenly felt less alone, less isolated. “You could go to the police,” he said.

  “And tell them what? I’ll wait until I have proof.”

  She stood and bounded toward his kitchen.

  “What are you doing?”

  She opened his refrigerator. “I know a great hangover cure. Got any relish?”

  —

  Breaking and entering.

  That’s exactly what he was going to do, Ken realized. He was parked across the street from Don Browne’s house, which had been for sale even before the man’s death. A call to the Realtor had told him that the house was unoccupied, and a quick glance through a window told him that the house was still fully furnished. And now he was going to break in like a common thief.

  Ken spent a few moments trying to talk himself out of it. What did he expect to find? Surely the police had already investigated.

  But the police didn’t know about Sabini’s stolen data files. Maybe there was something in that house that would tell him why Don Browne was killed, while the other executives with Sabini’s data were spared.

  It was worth the risk.

  Ken walked toward Browne’s house with the Super Soaker squirt rifle he had just purchased at Target. He glanced around as he approached the garage doors. No one was watching.

  He inserted the Super Soaker barrel into the garage door opener’s key receptacle. As he squeezed the trigger, water blasted into the key mechanism and conducted a charge between contact switches. The motor kicked on and the door rose to a fully opened position.

  Wow. Ken looked at the squirt rifle with newfound respect. He had seen the trick on the evening news, but he wasn’t sure it would actually work. How many burglars had learned the trick the same way?

  He threw down the Super Soaker and walked through the garage. He tried the door into the house. Unlocked, just as he had hoped. Real estate agents hadn’t bothered to secure it, probably assuming the locked garage doors would be enough. Ken pushed a wall switch and brought the garage door back down.

  He stepped inside the house. The air was still and musty. The kitchen was first on his tour, and he proceeded to check out the dining room, living room, and two of the bedrooms. He moved quietly, as if the s
lightest sound might alert the neighbors. Even the carpet rustling beneath his feet unsettled him.

  Finally he found a home office, or what could be better described as half an office. The other half was a mini-museum of data processing equipment, dating from the dawn of the personal computer. Ken recognized a mid-seventies Altair and an early-eighties Apple II, but Browne’s most recent system seemed to be an IBM. Ken turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up. Would Browne have opened Sabini’s data files on his home computer? There was a chance, Ken thought. It would probably be safer than loading them onto his system at work.

  Ken pointed and clicked his way to the directory. There were 1700 files in the system, and he didn’t know the name of the one he wanted. He scrolled through the list, looking for any names that would ring a bell. There was no appearance of Sabini, Vikkers, or other likely possibilities.

  But there was a file named POCKET.PGM.

  Pocket program? That was the phrase Keogler had used.

  Ken clicked on it. Hundreds of lines of programming code appeared, annotated by yellow boxes of text. The code itself was indecipherable, but the annotations were fairly clear. They were Browne’s step-by-step analysis of the programming code, and several conclusions. As Ken read, he saw a few key words: VIKKERS PRO-FORMA. IMPLANTED DATA. ERRONEOUS INFORMATION.

  Browne had known about the pocket program.

  He knew the figures were wrong.

  But there was more. It wasn’t just financial figures that were faked, but test results. According to Browne’s notations, lab reports were also inserted by the pocket program. The reports suggested that Lyceum Metals’ highly anticipated new alloy formulation, RC-7, would become brittle in subzero temperatures.

  It was one of the many items Browne had labeled “ERRONEOUS?” with a yellow text box.

  Maybe Browne was trying to take the question mark away from the notation.

  Maybe the metal sample in his file drawer was RC-7.

  Maybe that’s what got him killed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Hound Dog sat in an oak-paneled phone booth on the hospital’s first floor, waiting for Dorothy Weiss to answer the phone. Weiss was the mother of the young man Myth Daniels had shot in Denver. Hound Dog knew she should have called from home, where she could have recorded the conversation on her answering machine. But after an uneventful day of tracking Myth Daniels, she decided to call on her way to visit Mark.