Storefronts were barely noticed blurs, pedestrians became flashes of cloth and costume jewelry as Sandy passed them. At least she wasn’t alone on the street. If he was following her, if he caught up to her before she reached Yonge Street, there would be witnesses.
Dio, she had to know. As she passed a china shop, she halted abruptly, as though her attention had been snagged by something in the display window, then cast a cautious glance sideways.
He wasn’t there. She turned and looked across Eglinton and didn’t see him on the north side of the street either. But he was watching her. She could feel the ghostly touch of his gaze on the margins of her awareness, could feel the hair at the nape of her neck lifting as she turned and resumed walking toward the subway station.
Somebody was following her. Earlier, Sandy had dismissed Sergeant Gaine’s warnings, figuring they were just a ploy to frighten her into cooperating, but now she wasn’t so sure. What if he was right? What if she’d become a target for murder? Dio, what if Mr. Vanish himself was stalking her? Just a couple of blocks from Yonge Street, she increased her speed, fighting not to break into a run.
At last, Sandy spotted the maroon-and-gold subway sign ahead of her; and in that instant, the swelling bubble of unease burst inside her head, showering her thoughts with tiny icicles of fear. She bolted for safety, sprinted through the entrance, paused only briefly to fumble in her handbag for her pass. Prancing impatiently, she waited for two other people to pass the ticket-taker’s booth ahead of her, hearing the long screeching hiss of a train pulling into the station below and praying it was a northbounder she was missing. At last she was through the turnstile and racing down the wide terrazoed stairs toward the platform.
Sandy pulled up short. The southbound side of the platform was empty, and a red light showed beside the outbound tunnel. She’d just missed her train. There wouldn’t be another one for three minutes. Uneasily, she glanced behind her at the scattered groups of people waiting for the northbound train. They stood chattering amongst themselves, hardly paying any attention to her at all.
A bus had unloaded at the terminal overhead. People began trickling down the stairs in twos and threes, some of them coming to stand beside her on the southbound side.
Suddenly Sandy noticed a Blue Jays cap bobbing at the far end of the subway platform, and a tentacle of anxiety seemed to wrap itself around her throat, cutting off her next breath. Had he seen her? Her heart pounding, she sidled past a couple of teenaged girls sharing a radio headset and put a heavy tiled post between herself and the man in the Blue Jays cap. If he’d seen her, of course, it was useless to hide. However…
Just then, with a rattle-screech of metal wheels on metal track, the southbound train slid into the station. Hesitating only a moment, Sandy stepped into the nearest car and sat down. She rode the subway to Union Station, fighting the urge to bolt each time the doors opened. As she’d expected, the platform was seething with travelers. If she couldn’t lose him here, then she had to be imagining him, she told herself.
Sandy spent the next half hour ducking around corners, deliberately mingling with crowds and fighting down a swelling wave of panic as her invisible pursuer followed her down stairs and up escalators, through tunnels and turnstiles and revolving doors, onto the railway platforms, into the brocaded satin lobby of the Royal Hotel, down the long corridor to the GO bus terminal and back. She merged with groups of travelers, using them as cover while she darted into cross-corridors and public washrooms.
At last, the moment came when Sandy knew he was gone. No elusive shadow tickled the edge of her peripheral vision; no more unseen eyes exerted their phantom pressure from hidden corners of the station. She’d either lost him or regained her grip on reality—she didn’t know which, nor at the moment did she care.
Standing at the hub of Union Station, grazed and jostled by the unending stampede of busy people in transit, Sandy drew in a long breath and felt relief and purpose flow like a cool, swift-running stream into every part of her. The best defense was a good offence. If she had become a target, then it was time to catch a northbound train back to the magazine office. Time to locate Bert’s file and do some pursuing of her own.
Shortly before eleven o’clock, Sandy hauled open the heavy glass door to Editorial, noting with some satisfaction the three rows of empty desks. She’d been hoping she would be alone here today.
Dropping her purse into her lower desk drawer, she kicked it closed and sat down in front of Frank Leslie’s computer terminal.
She had made a couple of phone calls yesterday after lunch. On the pretext of gathering information for a special memorial article for the magazine, she had contacted Bert Waldron’s grown daughter, Anne; and then, at Anne’s urging, she had phoned an old camping buddy of Bert’s and chatted with him for twenty minutes.
Thus armed with a list of her late colleague’s achievements and pastimes, Sandy now logged onto the computer and began trying passwords: Cessna, muskie, Yamaha, caribou…
This could take her a long, long time, Sandy realized as she got up an hour later to stretch her legs. Bert had been a “man’s man”, interested in virtually any activity that had an element of danger to it—auto racing, motocross, big-game hunting, skydiving, even private investigating. It boggled the mind to think of all the six-, seven- and eight-letter words from which Bert could have selected his password.
And Sandy now knew, from the research she had done on him, that Bert must have selected one. A man as accustomed as he was to calculated risk-taking would have realized when opening a file on Mr. Vanish that there was a possibility the hit man might get to him first, that a successor might have to conclude the investigation for him. Therefore, he would have ensured that a copy of his file survived him, by hiding it where only another investigative crime reporter, a fellow Police Digest staffer, could find it—deep inside the magazine’s computer system.
Trying to rub some of the tension out of her neck muscles, Sandy wandered over to the bulletin board beside the glass doors. People who had loaned photographs to the memorial collage had begun reclaiming them, she noticed, leaving spaces, and in some cases revealing details in other pictures that had been covered over before. Suddenly one of those details seemed to leap off the bulletin board at her—a hand-hewn wooden sign in the bottom half of a snapshot of Bert in front of someone’s cottage. The sign read Hideaway.
Sandy stared at the photo for a long moment, hardly daring to make the connection. The file was in a sort of hideaway, wasn’t it? And here was evidence of one of Bert’s personal memories. What passwords might it yield?
Racing back to Frank’s terminal, she began word associating. It was a cottage, of course. Where? Muskoka, maybe? Or Haliburton—no, too many letters. He probably went there on the weekend, or for a month in the summer, to rough it for a while. The place had a name, Hideaway—too obvious. What kinds of hideaways were there? she wondered.
Immediately, the song from Damn Yankees popped into her head, and on impulse she typed in Hernando.
Password Accepted, said the computer.
For a stunned moment, Sandy just sat and stared at the directory that came up on the screen. Then the magnitude of her accomplishment sank in and she had to clap a hand to her mouth to muffle her joyful shriek.
She’d found Bert’s file! She’d found the file on Mr. Vanish!
And it was huge. She had to scroll upward twice to read all the subfile names. The first batch all seemed to be lists: case.lst, weapon.lst, victim.lst, scene.lst, suspect.lst, source.lst. Then followed at least a dozen more that ended with the extension code .pol—possibly summaries of police investigations. Sandy scanned for a name she might recognize and found it almost immediately: Parmen.pol. The Parmentier case.
So Bert had suspected a connection between the councilman’s slaying and Mr. Vanish? Interesting. The Parmentier case was Ted Gaine’s investigation. If Bert had made a nuisance of
himself while pursuing the connection with Mr. Vanish, that could explain Gaine’s negative attitude towards reporters.
It occurred to Sandy as she stared at the long rows of subfiles that there was an enormous amount of information here, representing years of patient investigation. It would be foolhardy to attempt to digest it all by just reading it off the screen. She needed to print out the entire file and take it home for close study. Perhaps tomorrow, when Production only ran a half-shift and she wouldn’t have to worry about Paul finding out.
Her attention kept snagging on one subfile, the shortest one on the list, with a name that told her absolutely nothing about its contents. Sandy glanced around the room once more. She was still alone, and there was certainly time for a quick peek, a preview.
Rapidly she typed in the command to display the contents of comp1.xxx, and the screen cleared itself and showed her:
Dave Ragusz
Dragnet
Dundas at Ossington
Approach with caution
Puzzles within puzzles, thought Sandy, bemused, as she exited the subfile and then, reluctantly, exited from Hernando. Tomorrow she would read the rest of the file, she promised herself. Tomorrow everything would come clear. For now, she might as well get to work revising her second article for that Monday deadline.
Two hours and five paragraphs later, Sandy leaned back in her chair, groaning with frustration. Her imagination was in overdrive now, and the last thing it wanted to bother with was the properties of the poison Eliza Marchand had bought at the apothecary shop in Brewster’s Mill.
If she didn’t satisfy at least part of her curiosity about Dragnet, this article would never get written. Reluctantly, Sandy exited her file and logged off.
Dio, rose gardening and furniture antiquing had never affected her like this!
Dragnet turned out to be a smallish store with an opaqued front window on the old but still proud south side of Dundas Street, just east of Ossington Avenue. Whoever ran Dragnet hadn’t wanted it to be found easily—the only sign on the weather-beaten brick building was an unevenly cut rectangle of cardboard, with the single word hastily scribbled on it in felt marker, taped at eye level to the inside of a new aluminum screen door.
More puzzles. She’d come here to satisfy herself that there really was a Dragnet at this intersection; she’d fully intended to turn around and go straight home afterward. But now that she was standing just a few short steps from the door… She had to begin the investigation somewhere, didn’t she?
Sandy stood on the sidewalk for a moment, considering how to approach Dragnet. The name Dave Ragusz possibly referred to a contact, whom she might or might not find inside the store. The subfile had advised caution; maybe Dragnet was just a rendezvous point or a message drop, and only Bert and this Ragusz were supposed to know about it.
What would be the best way to find out? she wondered. Probably go inside the store, browse a bit, then engage the clerk in a few minutes of idle chatter, casually dropping the name Ragusz into the conversation to see whether it meant anything to him.
That didn’t sound so hard. In and out in a few minutes. Even a totally green rookie ought to be able to handle that, thought Sandy.
She pulled open the screen door, gripped the worn brass knob on the inner door and turned. It was locked.
Frowning, she glanced at her watch. It was just 3:30, too late for lunch and too early for the store to be closed on a Saturday. Suddenly she realized that there were noises filtering through the door. She stood quietly for a moment and listened. They were electronic sounds, like those at an arcade. And interspersed with the dinging and buzzing was the sound of a man’s voice. “C’mon, c’mon, okay, you sucker, now! Gotcha!”
Sandy looked around for a doorbell and, finding none, knocked loudly. The electronic chattering inside stopped. Heavy footsteps approached the door. Not until it swung open, revealing a darkly scowling man built like a bear, did it dawn on her that there might have been other reasons for Bert to warn a successor to “approach with caution”.
“Yeah?” growled the man standing in the doorway. He was Sandy’s height, maybe an inch or two taller, with dark hair curling around his ears, bulging arm and shoulder muscles beneath a tight, cropped T-shirt, and a well-nourished beer belly. And he looked thoroughly annoyed at having been dragged away from his game.
If Sandy had been holding a sales sample at that moment, she would have thrust it behind her back. She searched her mind for a lie that would excuse both her and the interruption without further angering him, but came up blank. So, she blurted out the truth. “I’m looking for Dave Ragusz.”
“I’m Ragusz,” he said, pronouncing it Rag-oosh. Dark eyes scanned her up and down, registering approval. “Come on inside.”
Mentally reviewing everything she’d ever learned about self-defense, Sandy followed him hesitantly into the store, only to find herself in the middle of a room that resembled a warehouse. From floor to ceiling and wall to wall, she saw nothing but stacks of cardboard boxes, all stamped with shipping numbers and foreign-sounding brand names. It even smelled like a warehouse—dust mingled with the aromas of sweat and stale coffee.
“What can I do for you today?” he asked, grinning to reveal a mouthful of yellow-stained teeth.
It was too late to plead mistaken identity, but Sandy could still “approach with caution”. Her mind racing, she smiled in what she hoped was a disarming manner. “Hi,” she began, “I’m a friend of Bert Waldron’s. I understand you knew him.”
Ragusz frowned. “Knew him? Not really. Why?”
“Why?” she repeated, her nervous confusion only half-feigned. “Oh, I was…given a list of people to interview for a memorial article about Bert, and your name was on the list. It must have been a mistake,” she added with a helpless shrug, then took a cautious step back toward the door. If he didn’t notice, she would take another one. And another one. Through the door and onto the street.
“Wait a minute,” barked Ragusz, his pointing finger riveting her to the floor. “A memorial article? That means you’ve gotta be with Police Digest.”
Dumbly, she nodded.
“So, you work for Police Digest.” He strolled around her, slowly sizing her up all over again. “Rudd’s never hired a woman before. I guess you must be pretty special.”
The leering emphasis he placed on the final word made Sandy’s skin crawl. “Look, I’m really sorry I wasted your…” The last word died in her throat. Ragusz was now standing between her and the door, his beefy arms folded across his chest.
Sandy went clammy all over. Dio, what had she gotten herself into?
“Did you work with Bert Waldron?” he asked quietly.
“Not with him, exactly,” she admitted uncomfortably. “I was hired to replace him.”
Ragusz cocked his head, eyeing her narrowly while he evidently considered this. Sandy’s pulse grew very loud in her ears. Then, several eternities later, he finally shrugged and dropped his arms to his sides.
“Okay, Miss…?”
“DiGianni,” she supplied.
“Miss DiGianni. Let’s quit snowing each other. Your editor didn’t give you my name for any memorial article. And maybe I did know Bert Waldron a little better than I said. So why are you really here?”
Sandy didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until it hissed out in a long sigh of relief. “I wanted to find out what your connection was to Bert.”
A pause, then, “What made you think there was a connection between us?”
“Your name…was on a piece of paper I found in Bert’s desk,” she lied.
“I see,” he said. “Well, Miss DiGianni, Bert and I did a little business occasionally.”
“And what kind of business would that be, Mr. Ragusz?”
He impaled her with another long stare. “Show me your press ID,” he said at last.
Obediently, she pulled the laminated card out of her handbag for him.
“Okay, I guess you’re legit.” He gestured toward the dim rear of the warehouse. “Come into the back room and I’ll show you.”
Sandy followed him between the stacks of cartons and through a doorway into a large, blessedly air-conditioned room lined with electronic equipment, with radios and televisions and video-game systems and computer gear, all out of their cartons, warmed up and ready to be used. She gazed around her, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at what had to be a half million dollars worth of electronics.
Unless Ragusz had rearranged things to suit a clientele who preferred entering by the back door, Dragnet was clearly not a store.
He dropped into a chair in front of one of the computer screens. “Okay,” he said briskly. “I am what large institutions and corporations sneeringly refer to as a hacker. You are familiar with the term?”
“Of course,” she retorted. “It means you break into their computer systems and steal or rearrange their data.”
“Wrong. Only a kid or a rank amateur would actually tamper with the information. I simply gain access to it as quietly and unobtrusively as possible. Then, for someone like Bert Waldron, who’s one of the good guys and has the right amount of cash, I copy certain information that can’t be obtained any other way—as long as it isn’t government-classified. Hey,” he said in answer to her skeptical stare, “I’m a loyal citizen. Even a hacker can have principles, y’know.”
“When was the last time you saw Bert?”
“Two, maybe three years ago,” he replied with a shrug.
An icy finger began stroking Sandy’s spine. Approach with caution. Bert had dropped Ragusz in favor of other sources of information, and then had placed that warning in his file for his successor. Obviously Dragnet wasn’t the safest place for a reporter on the trail of Mr. Vanish.
No Pain, No Gaine Page 5