Wolf in the Shadows

by Marcia Muller

  “… What do you mean?”

  “You’re not a woman who easily shares the details of her personal history. Was it you or Mike who decided this was a good way to play on my emotions?”

  “I would never—”

  “Sure you would. You’re an excellent attorney. So is Mike. Nothing wrong with working on the emotions of a jury, so why not mine?”

  She stood, too. “You’re right, Sharon. Why not? You do what you have to.”

  “That’s not the way we operate at All Souls.”

  “We. Meaning the old guard. The privileged. The ones who feel they can ignore the rules.”

  Maybe she had a point. We, the old guard, might have subtly excluded her, Mike, and any number of other new personnel. “I think we should talk more about that,” I said. “When we have some free time, why don’t we get together?”

  She shrugged and moved toward the door, but before she stepped into the hall, she turned. “Maybe you don’t know All Souls as well as you think you do, Sharon. You asked about who came up with the scheme to work on your emotions? Well, it was all of us—the partners. And maybe it wasn’t the best of schemes, but it was well intentioned. None of us want to see you leave.”

  As her footsteps tapped angrily down the hall, my spirits took a swift downward spiral. I didn’t know All Souls anymore. Didn’t know my old friends, the partners.

  Seven

  When I finally found Crazy Horse Road it was already four-ten. True to form, traffic had jammed at San Rafael, and then I’d missed a couple of turns coming out of downtown Novato. By now I felt irritable and concerned about catching a flight to San Diego in time to accomplish what I needed to do tonight.

  The road was narrow, winding through the countryside near the Indian Tree Open Space Preserve. I saw few houses, mainly mailboxes standing in groups at the ends of private drives. The land rose on either side of the pavement, covered with oak and tangled vegetation; an occasional red-tailed hawk swooped by, and a road sign warned of deer. After two-point-six miles I came to the steep pillar-flanked driveway that Gage Renshaw had described to me; when I identified myself through the security talk box, the gates swung open and I followed the winding blacktop up the hill.

  The Mourning house was of redwood and rustic stone, built so the lower story spilled down the slope. Several vehicles crowded the parking area at the top of the drive: a beat-up green Ford, two matching gray-and-maroon vans, which I assumed were RKI’s mobile units, and a BMW in an odd teal blue with a car phone antenna mounted on its trunk. I maneuvered the MG between the vans and got out. Stone steps led alongside the garage to a second gate; again I spoke into a talk box and was admitted. The house’s entrance was off a patio with a small swimming pool; as I passed the pool, I saw a dead mouse floating at the deep end; the container plants on the patio’s retaining wall were wilted and browning.

  The door of the house opened, and an armed guard in a gray uniform stepped outside and scrutinized me. Gage Renshaw appeared seconds later. “It’s okay,” he said to the guard. To me he added, “You’re late.”

  “Sorry.” I didn’t offer any excuse; he didn’t want to hear one.

  Renshaw motioned me into an entry area whose hardwood floor was partly covered by a blue Chinese rug. Directly behind it, across a mahogany table that held a single jade bowl, lay a living room with tall windows that looked out into the branches of the oak trees on the downward slope. I caught a motion to my left and glanced over there; in an adjacent formal dining room sat two men dressed in the same type of gray suit as the guard in the lobby of RKI’s building had worn. The table was covered with telephone monitoring devices; the men were smoking and looking bored.

  Renshaw said, “We’ve still got our communications technicians here, in case the kidnappers make contact again.”

  “There’s been nothing since we last spoke?”

  “No.”

  “And the letter of credit still hasn’t been drawn on?”

  He shook his head. “Come into the living room. Mrs. Mourning’ll be with us shortly.” He preceded me and flopped into a leather chair, propping his feet on its hassock and clawing at his tie. It was badly frayed around the knot, as if it took a similar beating with each wearing.

  I sat down in a matching chair, feeling the buttery softness of the leather. “Nice house,” I commented.

  Renshaw shrugged and glanced around; it was clear he hadn’t before given the house a thought.

  “I’m going to San Diego after I leave here,” I told him. “Will you give me the name and number of your woman friend who served as your contact with Ripinsky?”

  “Alicia Ferris. As in the wheel.” He closed his eyes briefly, dredged up the number, and repeated it to me. “You plan to contact our people in La Jolla?”

  “No—for the same reason Ripinsky didn’t.”

  He nodded. “You might need them in an emergency, though. Kessell’s back down there now, so go directly to him. You’ll need a code number to get through after hours; I’ll have one assigned and phone it in to you. Where’ll you be staying?”

  “The Bali Kai.”

  “Any lead you might pick up there’ll be damned cold by now. Besides, our people have already checked with the motel and taken a look at Ripinsky’s charges. Room, bar, restaurant, and the one local call to Alicia.”

  “And you say he rented a car down there?”

  “Yeah—Avis. Hasn’t been returned yet. We got the license number off the motel registration.”

  “What is the number?”

  He took a notebook from his inside suit coat pocket and read it to me. “Gold Honda Accord, this year’s model.”

  I wrote down the number and description.

  Renshaw asked, “You know San Diego?”

  I’d been prepared for the question. “Not so well anymore. I grew up there, but my parents have divorced, and the rest of the family’s scattered, too.”

  “You must have friends there.”

  “Not really. I doubt if I’d recognize most of them if I ran into them on the street. But don’t worry; I won’t have any trouble getting reacquainted with the territory.”

  “Well, anything you need— Ah, here’s Mrs. Mourning now.” He stood as she entered the room.

  Diane Mourning looked smaller and thinner than in the slide I’d seen—possibly an illusion fostered by her slim-legged black jeans and loose T-shirt. Her blond curls had been trimmed to chin length since the picture was taken, and new lines of strain pulled around her eyes and mouth. She nodded to me, motioned for Renshaw to sit, and curled into a corner of the sofa, drawing her bare feet up. The pose was not relaxed, however; she seemed coiled tight, ready to spring.

  “Gage tells me he’s hired you to look into the mismanagement of our ransom delivery,” she said.

  If her choice of words bothered Renshaw, he didn’t betray it. I said, “I plan to fly to San Diego tonight and begin an investigation into the whereabouts of your husband, the letter of credit, and the man who was to make the drop.”

  “You mean the whereabouts of my husband’s body.”

  “We have no proof he’s dead.”

  Diane Mourning brushed the statement aside with a flick of her hand. “The kidnappers have the L.C. They must, because there’ve been no further demands from them. Do you really think they’d let Timothy live?”

  “We also have no proof that they have the letter of credit.”

  “Then why haven’t we heard from them?”

  “Protracted silences are a common tactic with kidnappers; it’s their way of working on your nerves.”

  “Well, they’re doing a damned good job of it. I hate this, I hate the waiting. I can’t make any assumptions. I don’t know how to proceed.”

  “Proceed with what?”

  Abruptly she uncoiled her body and placed her feet flat on the floor, leaning toward me. “How much has Gage told you about the situation here? The professional, as opposed to the personal?”

  “Not a great d
eal. I know that the new drug Phoenix Labs is developing has angered animal-rights activists, and that you suspect a radical group of having kidnapped your husband. I know that you’ve withdrawn your initial public offering of stock.”

  Renshaw said, “I’ve given Sharon a file on the biotech industry.”

  Diane Mourning didn’t bother to look at him. “Forget the file. Most of it will be superfluous. I can tell you all you’ll ever need to know.”

  I glanced at Renshaw. He slouched in the chair, seemingly as relaxed as before, but his fingers were laced together as they would have been if he were strangling someone.

  “Our industry is a relatively new one,” Diane Mourning began. “Ten or twelve years ago there were only two biotech companies whose stock was offered publicly, now there are around two hundred and fifty, with a combined market value of over forty billion dollars. Most people still think of us as genetic engineers, but that’s only one of a whole range of avant-garde techniques—including rational drug design, which Phoenix Labs employs. Is this clear so far?”

  “So far,” I said, not thrilled with her patronizing tone.

  “Financing has always been a problem for the industry. We’re on a ten-year product cycle—meaning that’s how long it takes on the average to bring a drug to market. This doesn’t mesh with the stock market’s quarterly profit cycle; investors are wary of firms that don’t produce those regular dividends. At Phoenix we’ve been fortunate; a couple of major venture capitalists got interested in us early on and helped to privately raise most of the fifty million we needed for the initial phases of development. Now we’re beginning on the final phase, and those sources have dried up, so we need to raise an additional fifty million.”

  “Okay, I understand the financial problems involved, but what about the environmental—or animal-rights—issue?”

  “The drug we’re developing, Enterferon-One, belongs to a group called tat inhibitors. They have the potential to destroy the HIV virus’s ability to reproduce. We’re about two years away from knowing conclusively whether it works on humans, and the next phase is very critical. It’s also controversial because of the requirements for the experimentation. You see, the production of Enterferon-One relies on the use of a substance called Delphol, which is extracted from the cartilage of dolphins. And that’s what’s got the animal-rights advocates up in arms.”

  “They oppose your slaughtering dolphins.”

  “Animals before people.” Mourning shrugged one shoulder contemptuously. “Personally, I think it’s more important to prevent people from dying of AIDS. But, frankly, all this flap is so unnecessary. We don’t intend to harvest Delphol from dolphins except for experimentation; the amount needed for one treatment would require too many to be cost-effective, and besides, dolphins are protected under the Marine Mammal Act of ‘seventy-two. What we do intend is to synthesize the substance, and one of our scientists has already come up with the basic process. All we need now is the funds to proceed with testing. But try to tell that to these fringe groups. They don’t want to listen.”

  “But now you’ve withdrawn the stock offering.”

  “Yes, at exactly the time when we should be moving ahead rapidly. Do you follow the stock market, Ms. McCone?”

  “No.” I’ve seldom had enough surplus cash to care what the stock market is doing, but I doubt I’d follow it closely, anyway. Paper profits don’t confuse so much as bore me.

  “In nineteen ninety-one, biotech IPOs raised over a billion dollars. Analysts were worried by the boom; the companies showed very little in current earnings, but dazzled investors with promises of huge future profits. Dazzle lasts only so long before disillusionment sets in, and many of the stock issues were by marginal firms to begin with. Last year the speculative bubble burst. Recently there’s been a slight rally, but no one’s certain if it’ll hold or if the market will go into another blow-off stage.”

  “And now you’ve been forced to hold off because of the kidnapping.”

  “No one is going to invest in a firm whose future leadership is in serious jeopardy.”

  “Is that why you’ve been so adamant about not bringing in the police or the FBI? Because of the potential for adverse publicity?”

  “Partly out of a fear of publicity and partly because I thought we had a security firm that knew what it was doing.” She shot an icy glance at Renshaw.

  Renshaw didn’t respond, but now his fingertips tapped on the arm of his chair.

  I asked, “And you still don’t want to call in the authorities?”

  “No. Timothy’s dead—I’m certain of it—and the authorities can’t change that. Besides, if they were called in, they’d take over and hamper your investigation. Gage tells me you have inside information that may enable you to locate Mr. Ripinsky and recover our missing L.C. The two million dollars that we can’t put our hands on will make our financial position unattractive to potential investors—to say nothing of precarious for us.”

  “The L.C. hasn’t been drawn on. Why can’t you put your hands on the money?”

  “Because when an irrevocable L.C. is issued, the bank puts a lock on the funds, like an escrow account in a real-estate transaction. When the terms of the L.C. are met by the recipient, the funds are released, but until then neither party can touch them.”

  “What were the terms?”

  “Merely upon presentation of the L.C.”

  I said to Renshaw, “I’d like a copy of the L.C.”

  “I’ll fax one to you in San Diego.”

  I looked back at Diane Mourning, studying her more carefully. Was she actually as cold as she came across, or had she put her emotions on hold? Was she focused on the financial issue to the exclusion of the larger, human issue, or had she used it to divert her attention from the probability that her husband had suffered a horrible death?

  Mourning was also studying me, her gaze skimming over my face as if she were speed-reading it. After a moment she leaned forward, cupping her hands in front of her; her fingernails were bitten to the quick and made her look vulnerable, but I wondered if the cause of the biting had been fear for her husband or for her company.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said to me. “I know how I must sound. Timothy’s kidnapping is a personal tragedy, but there’s nothing I can do about it. All I can do is prevent it from becoming a tragedy for the labs as well. In a way, that’s the only thing I can do for Timothy—protect the company he built. I can’t let all his years of sacrifice go for nothing.”

  Renshaw snorted derisively.

  Mourning turned to him, suddenly furious. “What the hell is that supposed to mean, Gage?”

  “Pardon me for saying so, but you and Tim live a little high to support this self-sacrificial rhetoric. You may have given up the condo in the city and the beach house, but this place isn’t exactly chopped liver.”

  “For your information, this house, along with everything in it, is borrowed from one of our venture capitalists who chooses to live elsewhere. The cars? They’re leased by the company. If you want you can examine the labels in my clothes—they came from the Emporium. Frankly, Gage, we lost everything when the speculative bubble burst. We don’t have a pot to pee in.”

  He held up his hands in a placating gesture.

  Quickly I said, “Let’s talk about the kidnappers for a moment. You’re reasonably convinced they were members of a radical animal-rights group?”

  She nodded, but not before she gave Renshaw a last hard look. “Eco-terrorists, your Mr. Ripinsky called them—before he took off with our letter of credit.”

  “It couldn’t have been someone using the environmental issue as a cover? A disgruntled employee, for instance?”

  “As far as I know, our people are happy. For the most part they’re young, very challenged, and learning as they go. There’s a critical shortage of skilled workers for the biotech industry in the Bay Area, so Phoenix has hired and trained promising college graduates.”

  “What abou
t personal enemies?”

  “I’ve been over all this with Gage. Timothy and I have none.”

  “Well, that about does it.” I checked my watch. “It’s time I got back to the city.”

  Renshaw stood, looking glad to get out of there. “She’ll report to me periodically, Diane, and I’ll keep you informed.”

  Mourning nodded, still angry. Her nod to me was only a shade more cordial. As we left the room, she curled in a corner of the couch again—poised to strike, should she find a suitable target.

  Eight

  Renshaw said, “She’s full of shit, you know.”

  We were in the driveway of the Mourning house, leaning against his car—a green Ford that was as disreputable as his tie. I said, “People have different ways of handling their grief.”

  “I’m not talking about whether she’s hurting or not. That’s her business. But this crap about Tim being self-sacrificing … I knew Mourning fairly well. The guy loved to spend. They didn’t lose their money when the biotech market went flat; Tim piddled it away on boats, cars, an expensive wine cellar.”

  “So maybe Diane’s trying to sanitize his memory.”

  Renshaw brushed his white forelock off his brow and glared at me. “You know, you have a very naive streak.”

  “I call it an open mind.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I want to ask you about something you mentioned earlier today. There was some speculation before the kidnappers made contact that Mourning planned his disappearance?”

  “Right.”

  “On whose part?”

  “Mine. Kessell’s.”

  “Why?”

  He looked around before speaking in a lowered voice. “Mourning is one of those people who always have to be on the cutting edge. You know the type: If this was the old days, he’d be an explorer on the western frontier. If it was the sixties, he’d be beating down the door to get into the space program. In the eighties, there was biotech—tailor-made for Tim. But biotech’s practically establishment now; as Diane said, the bubble’s burst, and Tim’s looking at years and years of hard work. From talks I had with him, I got the feeling he was ready to move on to some other frontier, but I didn’t get the feeling he’d be taking Diane with him.”