by John Case
She hoped Caroline wouldn’t answer. She didn’t want to be grilled about where she was. And she got lucky.
“Hello, Hello.”
Relief darted through her. “Carl! Hi, it’s Adrienne Cope.”
“Hey, Scout. What’s up? I suppose you know: they’re taking your name in vain down at work.”
“I’m sure they are.” There was a long pause that she made no attempt to fill.
Finally, Dobkin asked, “So what can I do for ya?”
“You could be a genius for me.”
Carl laughed, his lazy chuckle. “No problem. It’s what I do best.”
She described her attempts to investigate Nikki’s travels in cyberspace. “And I got to this one site that she seems to have visited almost every day—sometimes, several times a day—and it won’t boot up.”
“What do you mean, ‘it won’t boot up’?”
“I get an error-message. ‘Unknown host.’”
He thought about it for a moment. “Were one of you using Unix? Maybe there’s a compatibility problem.”
“I’m using the same computer she was. And it’s pure vanilla. She had an AOL account—nothing exotic.”
“Tell you what—can you get online and talk to me at the same time?”
“No,” she replied. “I’ve only got a single line.”
“Lemme put you on hold. I’ll go into my study.” A little later, he came back on the phone. “You there?”
“Still here.”
“Okay, now we’re cruisin’.” She heard the clack of the keyboard, Carl typing at warp speed. “Let me log on here… okay, give me this site’s address.”
She spelled it out for him. “The program—one word—dot org.”
“Hang on. It’s bootin’.”
“It’s always bootin’. Then it doesn’t go anywhere.”
“Hunh!” Dobkin exclaimed. “You’re right. Look at that!” He was silent for a moment.
“Carl?”
“The weird thing is, it’s loading that page.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not an error-message,” Dobkin explained. “It’s the actual Web site. You go there, and that’s what you get.”
The two of them sat on the phone for upwards of a minute, saying nothing, thinking about the problem.
Finally, Dobkin asked: “Was your sister into anything… ummm, kinky?”
Adrienne thought of the gun. And lied. “I don’t know—why?”
“Well, there are some locked and hidden sites on the Web, sites you can’t get into without a password or key.”
“You mean, like—one of those porno sites?”
“No, because with those, you know what they are. I’m talking about sites that put up an innocuous front—”
“Like what?”
“Like a quote from the Bible—or an error-message. You just have to know how to get behind it.”
Adrienne considered what Dobkin was telling her. “But… why would someone do that?” she asked.
“Could be a joke. Could be hackers, screwing around, doing it because they can do it. Or it could be something illegal.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know… child pornography.” As Adrienne began to protest, he hurried on, “Hey, I’m just throwing things out. I don’t know what it is.”
She was quiet for a moment, then told him about the overlay. “Could that be something?” she asked.
“Yeah! Sure, it could. You play with it at all?”
“A little. But I didn’t get anywhere.”
“Well, you might want to give it another ride,” he suggested. Then he thought for a moment, and asked: “Would it help to know whose Web site it is?”
“What?”
“The Web site,” he repeated. “Would it help if you knew where it was, and who it’s registered to?”
She couldn’t believe he was asking that. What did he think? “Well, yeah!” she said. “I mean—that would really float my boat.”
“Well, maybe I can help you with that,” he told her. “We’ve been getting a lot of spam at work, and I’ve gotten pretty good at tracking them down. I’ve got a program that runs a high-speed graphical trace route, working backwards from one computer to another, pinging the nodes—”
“Uhhh, Carl—you’re beginning to break up.”
“I’m… what? Oh, I get it—very funny. Tell you what: how long are you going to be awake?”
“I don’t know… an hour?” The truth was, she wasn’t at all sleepy.
“Give me your number. I’ll get back to you when I’ve pinged it.”
When she’d hung up, she detached the flexible plastic sheet from the computer’s screen and put it carefully back in its case. Then she thought about it, and decided to put the overlay somewhere that Duran couldn’t get at it. Rolling it up, she stuck it in her purse—which she’d keep with her in her room.
Then she laid out what she’d need in the morning, and set it by the front door. Somehow, without consciously thinking about it, she’d reached a decision about her job: in the morning, she’d go to Washington. Not to work (after what had happened at the Comfort Inn, there was no way she could go to the office). But if she got up early enough—at six, say—she could catch Slough at home. He never got to work before 10:15, so if she got there by nine or nine-thirty, she might be able to explain things. And save her job.
That, at least, was the plan, and it was certainly better than sitting around in Bethany Beach, waiting for Duran to go off.
When she’d finished getting her things together, she scrubbed the kitchen sink and wiped down the counters, emptied all the trash into a garbage bag and carried it outside to the Dumpster. Then the telephone rang, and she ran back in to answer it.
“Scout?” It was Carl.
“Hi!”
“I got it for you. The site with the error message.”
“Oooh! What a good boy! Tell me, tell me, tell me—”
“Believe me, this was not a piece of cake.”
“I believe you.”
“For some reason, there’s a lot of insulation—”
“Tell me.”
“It’s in Switzerland. Something called the Prudhomme Clinic.” He spelled it for her. “It’s in a town called Spiez.” He spelled that, too. “Any of this mean anything to you?”
“Not exactly. Although my sister—she had… well, she had a head injury in Europe, and part of the time—she was in Switzerland. But I’m not sure where.”
“Well, I looked the place up. It’s been in business since ‘52. Specializes in eating disorders. Your sister anorexic?”
“No. She was in a coma for a while. And when she woke up… she had amnesia.”
Carl grunted his disappointment. “So it’s probably not this place, then.” His voice brightened. “Wait—did she have a drug problem? Because this place does drug rehab, too, what they call addiction services.”
“Well… I don’t think she was an addict, but… yes.”
“Yeah? Well, there you go.”
She thanked him for all the help he’d been, and hung up, thinking that she’d better get to bed if she was going to be up at six.
Going from room to room, she locked the doors, turned down the heat and shut off the lights. Then she set the alarm and climbed into bed, where she lay beneath the covers, thinking about the Prudhomme Clinic. Maybe the fact that the Web site had all that “insulation,” as Carl put it, had to do with medical privacy. Could it be an aftercare protocol of some sort, where former patients checked in for support? She sighed. If so, Nikki had never mentioned it. And what about that weird stuff with Duran? What was his connection to the clinic? The Web site was interactive in some way, and in his case, it had induced a trance state. And what about those images, flipping and rolling like that?
It didn’t make sense. None of it did.
Chapter 28
She left a note for Duran in the morning, explaining that she’d gotten up early and gone
to Washington to get Nikki’s mail—the checks Nikki had written and her credit card records. She’d be back by five with a couple of steaks and a bag of hardwood charcoal for the grill. She remembered that he didn’t have any cash, and left him a twenty.
Buy a bottle of cabernet, okay?
A.
What she didn’t mention, because she knew that Duran wouldn’t approve, was that she was going to see Curtis Slough, first. Not that she’d given much thought to what she’d say. But something had to be done. She couldn’t just disappear. And neither could she go to the office—that much was for certain after what had happened at the Comfort Inn. At any rate, he wouldn’t even be at the office today. It was Sunday, and she was going to catch him at home. At least she hoped so.
Driving through the flat Delmarva farmland, the sky brightening in her rearview mirror, Adrienne thought about what she might say—and rehearsed it as she drove, babbling at the windshield, making fun of herself.
In point of fact, Curtis, the most remarkable thing occurred the other night: as I slept on my cot at the hospice, where I’ve been caring for the elderly and infirm… No. Slough didn’t give a damn about the elderly or infirm. But he did make a big deal about people in the office giving to Catholic charities, so how about: Curtis, I’ve had a vision of the Blessed Virgin, and need a leave of absence to communicate her message. No. That wouldn’t do either.
It lifted her spirits to joke like this, but the truth was, a lot was riding on the meeting she was about to have—and whatever she said, it had better be good. I need a lawyer, she told herself. And not just any lawyer, but a trial lawyer—Johnny Cochran, or Racehorse Haynes. A real advocate. But she didn’t have one. Which put her in the awkward position of having to fall back on the truth.
It wasn’t her fault, after all. On the contrary, she’d risked her life to go to work last week, and it had almost gotten her killed. And it wasn’t as if she’d taken a lot of time off before her sister died. On the contrary, she’d worked sixty-hour weeks for nearly a year, with no vacation or sick-days, coming in on weekends and holidays. Admittedly, she’d blown the deposition, but hey—depositions could be rescheduled. At most, she’d inconvenienced people—for which she was sorry, but it wasn’t as if she’d had any choice.
So it went, from 7 to 8 and 8 to 9, rehearsing her spiel through farmland, suburbs and, finally, the Beltway and city traffic—by which time, she had her story down pat.
Curtis Slough’s house was a million-dollar pile in Spring Valley, an Edenic woodland in the heart of the city, just off Rock Creek Park. Adrienne had only been there once before, and that was on an errand, bringing Slough his briefcase from the office. She didn’t remember the number, but there weren’t that many homes in this most expensive of Washington subdivisions—and Slough’s house was an eyeful that one didn’t forget.
According to Jiri Kovac, who worked in the firm’s L.A. office and came to Washington once a month for meetings, the house was a dead ringer for Marshall Tito’s villa at Lake Bled. Three stories tall, with stucco walls and Palladian windows, it sat on a low rise behind boxwood hedges and a circular drive with a small fountain at its center. Parking behind Slough’s 700-series Bimmer, Adrienne got out and crossed the driveway to the front door, feeling like a kid at the top of the drop on the Rebel Yell at King’s Dominion.
Yikes, she thought, as she knocked softly on the hard, wooden door. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, maybe—
“Adrienne!” Slough appeared in the doorway—in brown cords and an olive sweater—with a look of emphatic surprise. “What the… ? Come on in—it’s freezing out there!” Holding the door open, he let her in and led her down the hall to the living room, where a pair of wing chairs faced each other across a sprawling Chinese rug in front of a limestone fireplace. “Is everything all right? Hang on a minute, and I’ll have Amorita bring us some coffee…”
She waited nervously, studying Slough’s collection of Russian icons, until a pretty Latina came in with a silver tray and a coffee service. Adrienne poured herself a cup, and was sipping it when Slough returned, fastening his huge Breitling wristwatch.
“Whut up?” he asked, in a crazed attempt to be one of the boys (or something).
“Well, it’s complicated,” she told him, “but I think I’m going to need a leave of absence.”
Slough dropped into a wing chair, and frowned. “‘A leave of… ‘ Isn’t this something we could talk about at the office?”
“Well,” Adrienne replied, “that’s the point. We really can’t.”
Slough’s face contorted into a kind of skeptical and puzzled grimace. “What!?”
“I can’t go there. If you’ll let me explain…”
And so she did. She told the story as economically as possible, reprising her childhood in thirty seconds, then segueing into her sister’s illness in Europe. Slough listened thoughtfully beneath furrowed brows, sipping his coffee and wincing sympathetically as Adrienne recounted the discovery of her sister’s body. He was clearly fascinated. But lest he jump to the conclusion that she wanted time off to grieve (which, she knew, would be “unlawyerly”), she went on to recount her sister’s sinister relationship to Duran, Bonilla’s retainer, his subsequent murder, the skepticism of the police and… well, the whole nine yards, including the incident at the Comfort Inn and Duran’s impending surgery. When she was done, she set her cup down and said, “So you see: I really need to stay away from work for a while. Because—I know how melodramatic it sounds, but—someone’s trying to kill me.”
Slough sat back in his chair, nodding his head and looking thoughtful. Finally, he set his cup and saucer down, leaned forward, and said, “So… you’re shacked up with this guy?”
Adrienne’s jaw dropped.
“Is that what you’re saying?” Slough asked.
“No,” she protested, “that’s not it at all. That’s—”
The lawyer grunted. “Let me explain something: I don’t think there’s a law firm in this town that’s more considerate of the people who work for it than Slough, Hawley. If someone’s going through the grieving process, we don’t take a backseat to anyone: we’ll cut you all the slack you need. But this… this goes way beyond ‘slack.’ The police? The ‘Comfort Inn’? My God, woman—what’s next? A trailer park?” Slough shook his head in a regretful and disbelieving way, then got to his feet.
“But,” Adrienne began, “you don’t understand—”
“Oh, I think I do,” Slough told her. “Details aside, you’re ‘accident-prone.’“ He wagged a finger at her to emphasize a point. “Not a good trait in a lawyer.” He paused. “I’ve got some thinking to do,” he told her, and clapped his hands, signaling the conversation was at an end.
And not just the conversation, she sensed. Despite herself, she was afraid she was going to cry. Fighting back the tears, she followed her boss to the front door, where he turned to her as he opened it.
“Maybe a leave of absence is a good idea,” he suggested. “Take a little time to sort things out. Get your ducks in a row. After that… we’ll see where we stand.”
Adrienne nodded, sinking her eyeteeth into her lower lip, suppressing a tidal wave of candor with a burst of well-timed pain. “Thanks,” she said, bathing him in a bright smile.
“I’ll have Bette take over the asphalt brief. She’s not the sharpest pin in the cushion, but… she’s there. And right now, I’ll settle for that.”
Adrienne’s dry eyes and smile survived to the end of the driveway, at which point she burst into tears. She’d worked so hard, for so long. And now, she was… what? What had he called it? Beyond slack.
Like someone dangling at the end of a rope.
She followed Rock Creek Park down to P Street, and exited into Georgetown. Parking in the lot next to Dean & DeLuca’s, she stopped for a latte, drinking it at one of the little tables in the long, glass room that runs beside the grocery. As depressed as she was from the meeting with Slough—she was obviously not going to be a
t the firm next year—she was relieved to have it over with, and out of the way. Relieved, too, not to have to think about asphalt anymore, or covering for Curtis Slough. In fact, when you thought about it, maybe she was better off. There were other jobs, she told herself.
When she’d finished her coffee, she went inside and bought a bag of hardwood charcoal and a couple of strip steaks, which the butcher packed in ice. She stowed the groceries in the back of her car, and walked to her sister’s apartment, two blocks away.
Ramon was standing in the foyer in his doorman’s uniform, hands behind his back, rocking on his heels. Seeing Adrienne, he broke into a broad smile and held open the door. “Heyyy,” he exclaimed, “it’s good to see you. You come for the mail?”
She shook off the cold with a shiver, stamped her feet for warmth, and said, “That, and to clean up a little. How’s Jacko?”
“Never better! And guess what? I ‘followed my bliss.’ Like Nikki said.”
“She did?”
“Yeah. We had a talk—just before… what happened. And I took the part.”
“What part?”
“In the Scorsese movie. I’m ‘Doorman #2—Ramon Castro de Vega.’ How ‘bout that?”
“Wow!”
“So now, I’m thinking: maybe I’ll do some community theater, y’know?”
“Why not?”
“Anyway… the mail’s on the kitchen counter in the apartment. I put it there for you. You need the key?”
“No,” Adrienne told him. “I’ve got one.”
Ramon guided her to the elevator, pressed the button, and touched the brim of his hat. “I’ll tell Jacko you were askin’ after him!”
“I’d like that,” she said.
And then she was upstairs, moving toward her sister’s apartment, thinking, I have to do something about her ashes. I have to—
As she entered the apartment, she was hit by a gust of grief that was as strong as it was unexpected. Maybe it was all the stress she’d been under, or maybe it was the apartment, with its dead plants and listless air. Whatever the source, the sadness hit her like a truck. Tears shot into her eyes for the second time that morning. Walking out to the balcony, she stood in the freezing cold and wept for Nikki, the high-rises across the river fracturing behind her sadness.