Catalyst

by Steve Winshel

  Enough time had passed that Allison should have made it to George’s by now. Before she left, Allison said George sounded happy to have her visit, though he suspected this wasn’t a vacation. She promised Josh she wouldn’t tell him what was going on, but Josh was pretty sure she’d eventually tell him there was danger. That would get George’s attention and he would be even more vigilant, if that were possible. Josh stopped at one of the dwindling number of pay phones on the street and shoved in enough change to reach George’s cell phone. It didn’t ring, going straight into voicemail. There was no introductory message, no voice, just a beep. Paranoid George.

  “Hey, George. It’s Josh, Josh Barnes. I wanted to be sure Allison got there safely. I appreciate you giving her a chance to see what it’s like to, uh, spend some time in the woods. Anyway, when you get this, don’t call me back…I…I won’t be home and my cell is, um, not working. I’ll try you back.”

  Josh hung up, feeling foolish. He hadn’t planned this part out. George shouldn’t call him just in case Helen had tapped Josh’s line or somehow could get a copy of his phone records. She’d see George’s number or hear the conversation and Josh didn’t want any link to George. He’d have to figure something out, use a friend’s phone or buy one of those disposable cell phones you can get at a vending machine at the airport. His stomach hurt and the bright sunlight made his head pound. Josh stopped and leaned against the corner of the brick building in front of him. His headache was getting worse and the smell of urine on the side of the building didn’t help. He began to walk to his car again when the pay phone he had just used rang. Josh bolted back and grabbed the phone.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Drive north out of Los Angeles on the Golden State Freeway/Highway 5, known to Southern Californians simply as the Five, and fifty miles later you’d never know eight million people lived in your rearview mirror. The Five connects northern and southern California and provides sun-bound LA residents with their closest, though not most compelling, opportunity to see snow during the winter. The highest altitude on the entire 500+ miles of highway Five is at Gorman, an hour’s drive from downtown Los Angeles and in the middle of the Angeles National Forest. Many unknowing motorists have skidded off the road as they ascended to Gorman, leaving 70-degree late-fall weather behind and hitting the high 30s and icy roads a mile before the tiny drive-through truck stop that is Gorman. Allison had driven the highway a few times on previous visits to her brother, plus growing up on the East coast she was used to bad weather. She easily maneuvered the thin film of ice on the freeway. The four-wheel drive of the BMW SUV made it a non-issue anyway. She pulled into the Mobil gas station in Gorman. Filling the tank, she looked around for a familiar face. Nothing. Hers was the only car in the filling station and there was only a pick-up truck and a police cruiser at the convenience store across the way. She topped off the tank and twisted the cap back on and went to the convenience store to buy a soda from the machine outside. The car was never out of her sight. She walked back to the front of the car and opened the driver’s door. Her heart jumped to her throat. A man was sitting in the passenger seat. Instinct and anger kept her from pulling back. After the events of last night, she was on edge and wanted an outlet for her anger. This was an intruder, or a carjacker, or whatever, and there was going to be hell to pay. She leaped into the car toward him, key in hand, reaching out to rake his face as she prepared to shout as loud as she could to get the attention of whoever was in the convenience store, maybe the cop from the cruiser. The man didn’t flinch. Allison’s shoulder hit the steering wheel, slowing her down for an instant. It was long enough for her to recognize George.

  “Jesus, George, you scared the hell out of me!”

  “You need to be more careful, Allison. I’ve been in the car for three minutes. Anything could have happened.”

  “It’s good to see you too, George.” She gave him a peck on his clean-shaven cheek. George was impeccably groomed, graying hair slicked back and held in place with gel. He was wearing a lumberjack shirt and jeans neatly pressed and cleaned. Despite his heavy beard, which Allison remembered requiring twice-a-day shaving, his skin was soft. “Survivalism is treating you well.”

  Despite the circumstances, Allison said this with humor. She had always liked George, even when his mild craziness was restricted only to new-age mumbo-jumbo. Now that he was into conspiracy theories, she suspected he hadn’t really changed all that much. Living in the woods but finding a way to use moisturizer and keep his clothes clean was all George.

  He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “You’re in trouble. This is a classic big-industry Triad maneuver to cover up its manipulation of the economy to restrict our freedoms using any means necessary to…”

  Allison squeezed his hand. “George, I can’t wait to hear all about it. Right now, I just want to get settled. Show me this hut you’re so proud of.”

  George was disappointed but accepted that the indoctrination could wait. “Right. Let’s go – I think you’re going to like this.”

  * * *

  Josh’s hand shook as he put the phone to his ear. He needn’t have worried; it was George’s voice on the other end of the pay phone.

  “She’s here and she’s safe. Call me from another pay phone later tonight. I’ll leave the cell on.”

  George hung up. He must have used caller ID to get the pay phone. Or maybe he had a satellite following Josh around and could read the number on the phone from 26,000 miles up. Or maybe he was psychic. Josh didn’t care. Allison was there and he would protect her, whether from wild chipmunks or Helen. Josh had a few more hours until the meeting with her. Now that Allison was safe for the moment and Josh had a semblance of a plan, he felt a strange emptiness. Like soldiers must feel when they know a battle is coming. Only he wasn’t a soldier, he wasn’t trained for this. For the moment, he needed to kill a few hours. Habit, and obsession, pointed him toward the gym. Josh felt as though he were in training. He pushed all other thoughts from his mind.

  Chapter Twenty

  Sitting at her desk Saturday afternoon, Rigas sorted through the case file on Agnes and Bernard Mills. She looked at photos of the crime scene, the marks around Agnes neck. The similarities were clear. Whatever was used to strangle Agnes was similar to what had been wrapped around Josh Barnes’ neck last night. He was lucky to be alive. He must have fought back hard with the dead guy. Nothing like protecting a family member to give you a little extra motivation, she thought. Her partner Crevins stopped by her desk.

  “What’re you looking at that for? Something new come up?” He had become her partner just as the Mills case was put away as unsolved, so it wouldn’t hurt his close rate because he hadn’t caught the case at the beginning. Even though he’d get credit if it ever got resolved, he didn’t want his partner wasting time on a dead case when there were plenty of live ones to go around.

  Crevins was no fool, though. He looked at the photos while Rigas continued to ignore him; he was used to her moods and put up with them because she was a good cop. A little prickly, a little hard to read, but reliable and fearless.

  He made the connection right away. “You think the dead guy at Barnes’ house did the Mills woman?”

  Rigas tossed the picture on her desk and looked up. “Maybe. No way to know. No physical evidence at the scene of the Mills murder.”

  She wasn’t sure why she didn’t tell Crevins about her intuition that Barnes knew the guy he’d beaten to death. She wanted to play out her hunch, and Crevins liked to stick to the book. It was enough that he saw there might be a connection. It would make it easier to get his help.

  “Go back and check the autopsy report on the Mills woman. The samples are still around. Maybe the DNA work didn’t run everything and the bozos in the lab missed something. If this guy was involved, we can do a match if anything turns up. Have them go over everything again, the scrapings from the fingernails, all the blood, whatever. Maybe a few drops weren’t hers.”

  Crevins nodded
. He was an experienced cop, but still junior to Rigas. He didn’t have a problem taking orders from a woman, but preferred them to be by-the-book. He could sink his teeth into reexamining the evidence. A visit to the Barnes’ would make sense, too, to see if the Josh knew anything else. And it would be better if he did it alone, given Rigas’ notorious bedside manner on display the previous night.

  “It’s quiet on Saturdays over there. I can get the weekend guy to put some time into it right away. Let’s meet up around 8.”

  Rigas nodded without looking up. Something had caught her eye in the file, something she hadn’t seen before. There was a request for information from another jurisdiction. It had come in a month or so after Bernard Mills’ suicide. The Pasadena cops wanted to know if there was a connection between Bernard Mills and a young woman name Gwen Pelletier. Pelletier had been found murdered in an apartment in Old Pasadena, a gentrified and fairly expensive part of town. Some cancelled checks from Bernard Mills had been found in the apartment, but no other connection. They were just following up on all leads. Rigas had not seen the note because it went in the file after she had moved on and no one had followed up.

  Two murders and a suicide all the same week. Looked bad for Bernard Mills. Killed his wife, then his girlfriend, then himself. Hat trick. But how did the dead guy in Barnes’ house tie in? Worth a look into Bernard Mills and a chat with Josh Barnes, she thought. She flipped through the notes on Mills and got the name of his supervisor at his workplace. It was a software company in Glendale. Start with work; see how he had been performing, how he had been acting, then go back to the neighbors. Civilians like Mills were normal, not used to dealing with heavy stress. If something big were on his mind, it would’ve shown. She picked up the phone, but decided a visit would be better. She took out an aspirin bottle out of her desk drawer and dry-chewed three tablets. Allergies or a slight hangover, she felt like crap. The drive to Glendale would be a pain in the ass with weekend traffic being as bad as workday rush-hour and she wasn’t looking forward to it. She just hoped these guys put in Saturday hours.

  * * *

  Rigas pulled up to the address in her notes and thought she had gotten it wrong. She was parked in front of a large residential house a few blocks off the main drag in Glendale. A woman walking one of those tall, narrow dogs that looked like they’d disappear if you faced them head-on went by with a plastic bag in her hand, in case the anemic-looking beast pooped. Residential neighborhood. She looked up at the house and noticed grates on all the windows, matching the heavy wrought-iron fence running the full length of the house. There was a buzzer at the 8-foot gate that made no sound when she pressed it, but must have alerted someone inside of her presence. One of six visible cameras on top of the fence was trained on her face. A voice sounding like a cop trying to be polite came from the speaker next to the buzzer:

  “May I help you?”

  Rigas kept looking at the camera and held up her badge.

  “Here to see Lou Tyson. Detective Joann Rigas.”

  “Please hold the badge steady.”

  Two minutes passed without a sound. After thirty seconds she put away the badge. Rigas knew what was happening, but couldn’t understand why – they were calling her squad to verify her identity. Obviously they worked on the weekends and were pretty careful about security. Not something you normally run into when visiting a place of business in Glendale. The soft click and whir of a motor pulling back a deadbolt confirmed the high security and the gate opened outward. Rigas had to step back, but noted the thoughtfulness of this small feature – it’s harder to break down a gate that opens outward. She stepped through and went to the door. Heavy, reinforced, and with similar electronically controlled bolts. The place was like a bank vault. She noticed a small rectangular plate where the doorbell would have been. It was smooth and metallic but had a liquid quality to its surface. The door opened as she reached out to touch the plate and she found herself looking at the face of a retired military man. Early fifties, hair still cut short and tight to his head, rigid bearing in the blue blazer and khaki pants that were probably the uniform for the company’s security. He did not hide the slight bulge under his armpit that showed through the coat and told Rigas he was armed. His smile, though, was incongruously pleasant.

  “Good afternoon, Detective. Michael Hanratty. I run security for Calypso Software.”

  Rigas shook the extended hand and followed him into the foyer.

  “Lots of security for a little company in a three-bedroom house that ought to have a bunch of kids and yuppies running around…”

  Hanratty laughed. “Easy to defend an isolated position. Easier to identify hostiles.”

  He didn’t say anything about the need for such a company to have so much security. He led her into a large waiting room with a receptionist and several very hip couches. Rigas didn’t need a tour of the place to see it had been completely re-done on the inside. The foyer she had entered was blocked from the rest of the house by a large, steel wall. The reception area she sat in had a metal door behind a heavy glass divider – probably bullet-proof –and was no doubt all controlled electronically by Hanratty or his colleagues from a secure room where screens contained images from all the external cameras she had seen and the many more inside, like the one focused on her now in the reception area. The house had been gutted and fully refitted; two stories above ground and at least one, maybe two, below. Nice setup. She wondered about the kind of software they made.

  Hanratty nodded at the camera and a door in the glass divider popped open. Only after it was closed did the metal door whoosh open on a hydraulic that suggested heaviness. Hanratty directed her to a room on the left. It had a metal plate similar to the one on the front door. Hanratty put his left thumb against the plate. A few seconds later the door’s lock released. Fingerprint ID for biometric security screening. Very fancy. They entered the security center. It was not what she had expected. Brightly lit and with three other men wearing the same blazer-khaki uniform, all with the bearing of military or police training, the room had several dozen plasma monitors and the look and feel of an entertainment center. Hanratty offered her a seat. She chose to stand.

  “Mr. Tyson will be here in a moment; he’s wrapping up a call. Can I be of any help?” It was his job to know what was going on and he didn’t want to be out of the loop, Rigas could tell. She didn’t care about what he wanted, but he may have information.

  “Bernard Mills.”

  Hanratty’s brow wrinkled slightly and his lips thinned. It looked like disapproval. That was interesting information right there. “That was unfortunate. He must have been very distraught over the death of his wife.”

  Rigas wasn’t impressed with his condolences. Hanratty didn’t like Mills and she wanted to know why. “What kind of work did he do here?”

  “He was a skilled engineer.”

  That didn’t really tell her much. Skilled engineers build bridges or software programs; they don’t blow their brains out.

  “Why don’t you like him?” Rigas took the direct approach.

  Hanratty smiled, but didn’t seem taken aback by her directness or her implied observation. “I neither liked nor disliked him. I’m sorry for his passing. Has there been a development in the case? It’s been over a year and I assumed it was a straightforward suicide.”

  “I’m just filling in some blanks. Did Mills have any financial problems? Was he cheating on his wife? Using one of the extra bedrooms here for a little fling with one of the other ‘skilled engineers’?”

  Hanratty almost snorted. “Not likely. He was…well, he wasn’t that kind of man. Not the daring sort.”

  That was it. Hanratty thought Mills weak for some reason. Rigas waited. Hanratty waited. She held his gaze. A door on the opposite side of the room from where they had entered opened and in came Lou Tyson. She did not break eye contact with the silent security chief. Tyson stepped between them, seemingly oblivious, and clasped Hanratty on the shoulder while looking dir
ectly at Rigas.

  “Lou Tyson, Vice President of Sales for Calypso, Detective Rigas. I’m sure you’re here to talk about Bernard Mills.”

  Bleach-whitened teeth, beach tan, coiffed, slicked-back hair, twinkle in his eye, expensive, very good-looking suit and flawlessly knotted tie. He was smooth and confident as he led her out of the security office, up a short flight of stairs, and into his own office. Corner, with two windows – both covered by bars – and all the shiny, high-tech furniture and technology you’d expect. Rigas hadn’t said a word yet. Tyson knew it was about Mills and not something else, meaning the call Hanratty made to check up on her was pretty thorough. Tyson ushered her into the office with a hand on her elbow and had her sitting on an embarrassingly comfortable chair in the blink of an eye. He sat next to her, in an equally comfortable chair, instead of across the desk. Building rapport. Clasping his hands on his knees, he leaned in and asked:

  “It was a terrible tragedy, but Bernard seemed to have been under a great deal of personal stress around that time. I seem to recall his being agitated, very upset. Maybe it was a personal matter. But that was some time ago. How can I help you now, Detective?”

  Rigas had interviewed a thousand people. When someone volunteered something, especially a confident guy like Lou Tyson, it meant there was something he knew you wanted to know but wasn’t going to tell you. And this one looked at her like she was the token female detective sent out to follow up on a cold case. She wasn’t a threat. Rigas knew the only way to get what he knew was to play that up. She was going to be the sweet little thing sent by the real cops to follow up on a dead end lead. When Rigas was with someone she liked, felt comfortable with, she would let the guard down and be that other person. The one who didn’t worry about whether the guy she was with was sizing her up for whether to respect her or not. When it happened, though it was rare, she felt refreshed, renewed. She wished it would happen more often. But here and now, it had to be an act, a manipulation.