Stratagem

by Robin Caroll

  Knowing what he knew, Brandon didn’t doubt it. Most everything in their lives was acknowledged and used against them. Or, at least used to torment them.

  Colton continued. “Once everything was compiled, Grayson and his team began pulling out aspects of their lives that would show their predisposed behavior in a given situation. And that’s where the magic happens—the game creation.”

  “I don’t think I understand fully how that works,” Danielle said.

  “There’s no exact science, but Grayson’s got an uncanny ability to read a person, see what their fears are, put them in situations to face those fears, and give them the opportunity to come out victorious.” Colton smiled. “You know that. He consulted for the police for a couple of years. You had to see him work his magic before.”

  Brandon nodded, recalling one time in particular when Grayson’s input had made the hairs on Brandon’s neck stand up. A suspect denied being involved in his girlfriend’s disappearance and later murder. Even though every single piece of evidence, circumstantial though it was, pointed to him being involved, the man swore he wasn’t. Grayson had been called in, and after reviewing the man’s testimony and speaking to him, he agreed the man wasn’t involved. It had been one of the first times that Grayson sided with a suspect over the detectives, but he held his ground.

  A week later, a man confessed to murdering the woman. DNA confirmed his claims, and their original suspect was cleared.

  Brandon had a hard time doubting Grayson from then on.

  “So Grayson created the game for Deets PR by himself?” Danielle asked.

  Colton shook his head. “Grayson’s team. Mainly Grayson and Pam. I gave input based on my knowledge base of course, but overall it was Grayson and Pam. Primarily, Grayson.”

  Not what Brandon wanted to hear.

  Danielle, on the other hand, sounded sweet as sugar. “How long did it take Grayson to create this particular game?”

  Colton shrugged. “After we received all the data, about a month. That’s about the usual time it takes for either of us to create a game of that level of complexity.”

  Brandon still couldn’t believe his friend would agree to this. Not only personally, but professionally it was a bad call. “You never questioned giving Grayson access to Anna Belle in a game whose results affected her career? Never had some thought bump you with a Hey, this might not be the brightest idea?”

  “I told you, the money was good and it was just a business contract, just like the many we do every year.”

  “Yet Anna Belle Thibodeaux is dead now. That’s not just a business contract.” Brandon gripped his pen a little tighter.

  “No, it isn’t.” Colton sat up straight in the love seat and met Brandon’s stare. “But our business agreement can’t dictate what some people decide to do themselves. That’s on them personally, and they have to face the consequences of their actions.”

  “Are you saying you think Grayson Thibodeaux was involved in Anna Belle’s murder?” Danielle pushed.

  Colton shook his head. “No, of course not, but someone did. Their decision has no bearing on the business contract between Game’s On You and Deets PR.”

  “Maybe not,” Brandon said, “but now both companies are involved and everybody’s a suspect. Speaking of, I understand that your company runs video cameras during the course of your games?”

  Colton nodded. “We do. That’s how we monitor each game’s progress to make sure it’s running as planned.”

  “Are they just live feeds or recordings?”

  “Recordings.” He jumped to his feet. “I don’t know why I didn’t think about it. We can watch the video and see if there’s any evidence on it.”

  Brandon resisted the urge to groan. “Actually, Mr. York, if you’ll just give us the recordings, we’ll have our team review and analyze them.” He crossed his fingers that the man wouldn’t demand a warrant. They could get one of course, but—

  “Of course. They’re backed up on our servers so all our employees can access them.” He sat behind his desk and logged on to his computer. “I’ll make you a DVD you can take with you.”

  Brandon stood and looked over the bookcase as he waited. Several pictures in brass frames of Colton and Grayson, golfing and fishing. More of Colton with local celebrities. Mardi Gras group photos.

  The odd sound Colton made pulled Brandon back to the desk.

  The man typed, hitting the keys with more force than necessary. He frowned at the monitor. More typing. “That’s odd.”

  “What?” Danielle stood and joined Brandon.

  “It says the file isn’t here.”

  “What?” Brandon and Danielle spoke in unison.

  “I can’t find the file.” Colton typed more. “Hang on.” He reached for the phone on the corner of his desk.

  A phone rang somewhere outside the office.

  Brandon looked at his partner. This could be a problem. A very, very big problem.

  “I’m having trouble accessing the Deets PR video file on my system. Can you see if you can get into it?”

  Brandon slipped his notebook back into his pocket. His gut told him this wasn’t going to end the way he’d hoped.

  “I tried that.” Colton typed again. “Yeah, I’m getting the same thing. Okay, thanks.” He hung up the phone and stood. “I don’t know what to tell you. As best as I can tell, and my assistant said the same thing, it looks like the file was offloaded from our server today.”

  “Today?” Danielle glanced at her watch.

  Brandon glanced at the clock on the bookcase—5:47 p.m. “How can someone just offload the file?” Brandon asked.

  Colton sat on the edge of his desk. “All of our employees have full access to all the files. We’ve never had any reason to limit the access.”

  “So, an employee took the entire file?”

  Colton nodded. “Just took it off the server.”

  “Why would someone do that?” Brandon hoped there was a legitimate reason for doing so.

  “There could be many reasons.” But his face clearly said he was at a loss as well.

  “Such as?” Danielle asked.

  “Well, if the server kept timing out, or there was an error code, we would offload it, then run a scan on the file before uploading it back to the server.” Colton nodded. “I’ve had that happen before and had to do that. It wasn’t a virus or anything, just some strange little quirk in the data or something.”

  “Can you tell who took it off the server?” Danielle asked. “And when?”

  “Let me check.” Colton went back to his computer and typed away.

  Brandon could only hope it wasn’t Grayson. He could understand Grayson wanting answers and looking at the video file to see if he saw anything amiss. That was one thing, but if he removed the file—well, that said something else altogether.

  “Let’s see. Um, looks like it was pulled off around one or so this afternoon by…”

  Click. Click. Click.

  “Pam.”

  “That’s Grayson’s assistant, right?” Danielle asked.

  “Yes.” Colton straightened. “It’s odd, because she wasn’t in today.”

  Brandon glanced at his partner. They knew where Pam Huron had been. And who she’d been with.

  SEVENTEEN

  Crash!

  Grayson and Pam both jumped out of the dining room chairs and made toward the sound.

  “What was that?” Pam looked up and down the hallway to the side of Grayson’s foyer. “Sounded like glass breaking.”

  “I know.” Grayson rushed down the hall, glancing into each darkened room as he did, looking for any sign of something amiss. “Check the back of the house.”

  “Okay, but it sounded like it came from the front.”

  He moved to the other side of the front entrance, to his bedroom. The security light from across the street shot through the hole in the window. Lying on the floor was an object. He flipped on the light. “In here.”

  Grayson be
nt and picked up what he now recognized as a rock with a paper wrapped around it, held in place with a rubber band.

  “What’s that?” Pam walked into his bedroom and spotted the broken window. “Oh my. Kids?” She glanced over his shoulder as he removed the rubber band.

  He unwrapped the paper and read the bold, black, computer printout message:

  KEEP TRYING TO HIDE BEHIND YOUR

  GAMES, BUT I KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

  EVERYONE ELSE WILL TOO. SOON.

  “Oh. Not kids.” Pam moved to the window and peered through the hole. “If anyone was out here, they’re long gone now.”

  Of course they were. Grayson slumped onto the bed, not able to look away from the message. At least Monique had already left before this came flying through the window.

  “We need to get this taped up or something. I think I have some cardboard from a shipping box in my car. Do you have duct tape?” She turned away from the window and stopped. “Grayson?”

  “What does it mean? Hiding behind my games. Does that mean literally like when we sit in control rooms and monitor activity? Or is it meant figuratively like someone implying whatever they think I did to Anna Belle?” It could easily be either.

  “Maybe it’s both.” Pam stood over him, her hands fisted on her hips.

  “Both?”

  She nodded. “Anna Belle died during the course of a game in which she didn’t know she was even playing. Now that it’s come to light, you know people are thinking how awful it was.” She pushed a lock of her pink hair behind her ear. “You know this. People don’t understand that what we do often helps people by getting them to recognize things about themselves and deal with issues. From the outside looking in, it seems like we’re mean.” She shook her head. “You know all this.”

  “I do, but this.” He held up the paper. “And throwing it through my window. Someone knows where I live.”

  Pam shivered. “Yeah. We need to call the cops.”

  Grayson snorted. “Just what I need.”

  “You brush it off, but you need to call the police.”

  He could just hear Danielle now. “I don’t think so.” He stood, still holding the paper and rock.

  “Grayson, you have to file a report.”

  “I’m not. This is just someone messing with me.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and widened her stance. “Exactly. Who? And if someone’s willing to type and print a message, wrap it around a rock, drive over here, and throw it through your window, what will they be willing to do next?”

  He hated when she used logic like that, but he didn’t have to be logical at the moment. “I should, I know, but I’m not.” He held up a hand. “I’m not, Pam.”

  “You’ll need a police report for your homeowners insurance. To replace the window.” She jabbed her thumb in the direction of the broken glass.

  He smiled. “My deductible is more than that window will cost to replace. I won’t file a claim.”

  Pam stared at him through narrowed eyes, then let out a weary-sounding sigh. “Fine. Have it your way, stubborn goat. I’ll go grab the cardboard from my car. You have duct tape, right?”

  “I do. I’ll get it.” He led the way down the hall. Pam grabbed her keys. He flipped on the front outdoor light for her, and while she headed out to her car, he headed to the garage.

  Even though Anna Belle had been gone for months, the emptiness of the garage hit him. She had always parked her car in the garage, the small sedan taking up most all of the limited space. His truck was too large for the garage that was added on many years ago, and to modify now would mess with the design of the house, and the neighborhood, and he didn’t want that.

  His old family house was built back in the mid-1800s, originally part of the Livaudais plantation. The land of the plantation was sold off in parcels to wealthy people who didn’t want to live with the Creoles in the French Quarter. Most of the homes on Prytania Street boasted the original design for the neighborhood: only a couple of houses on each block of the street, but each one maintaining a lovely garden, thus the neighborhood’s name. Although, in the nineteenth century, several of the neighborhood’s lots were subdivided and late Victorian style houses were built. Now the garden district was more known for its architecture than the gardens.

  Grayson crossed the empty space to his tool chest standing against the other wall. He lifted the lid and grabbed the roll of duct tape. He’d just closed the garage door behind him when Pam slammed the front door.

  “Well, you’re going to have to call and file a police report anyway.” She set a flat packing box on the kitchen island.

  “Why’s that?” He’d have to call a glass company tomorrow and see if they could install a replacement window in the morning. Hopefully they would have his particular size in stock.

  “Because all four of your truck tires are slashed.”

  “What?” He headed to the front door.

  Pam followed. “I’m guessing they were slashed before the rock was thrown.”

  He stared at his truck sitting in the driveway. Not that he had doubted Pam, but all four tires? It was unbelievable yet true.

  “And, uh, there’s that.”

  He looked at her. Pam nodded toward the house. On the exterior walls, highlighted by the security light across the street and the front porch light, eggs stuck in the screens dripped.

  Who would do such a thing? Who hated him so much to do this? Or who loved Anna Belle that much?

  “Fine. I’ll call.” He dialed the nonemergency reporting number he knew by heart. He quickly gave his information to the dispatcher, then disconnected the call.

  “Now what?” Pam asked.

  “It usually takes the nonemergency calls quite a bit of time to get answered. I don’t want the eggs to dry and damage anything, so I’m going to go ahead and wash them off.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Just don’t spray in the broken window.”

  He nodded. “I’m going to take some pictures so I have a record.” Grayson took several with his iPhone, as did Pam. “That should be enough. Let me get the hose.” He stuck his phone in his pocket and grabbed the hose from behind the hedges in front of the house. The hedges his mother had loved, so he’d never let Anna Belle replace, even though she had complained many times over how ugly she thought they were.

  As he reached the spigot and turned on the water, something shining in the light caught his peripheral vision. It was trapped in the box hedge’s grip, almost directly in front of his broken bedroom window. He stretched to snag it between his fingers.

  A little metal pendant-type thing. Silver, but one side was blue with a design. A coat of arms. A fish around an anchor? He didn’t recognize it and certainly had no idea how it got stuck in his box hedge.

  “What’s taking you so long?” Pam came up behind him.

  He held it out to her. “It was caught in the bushes.”

  She turned it over in her palm. “It’s from a charm bracelet. Looks like the connector ring came loose. It was stuck in the hedge?”

  He nodded. “I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Odd. You know, maybe I can figure out what coat of arms this is on the internet. I’ll go look and see what I can find out.”

  Grayson chuckled. “You just don’t want to help me wash off the house.”

  “You got me there. I’ll see if I can find something before you finish here. How’s that?”

  “The race is on.” He started spraying before she’d even gotten into the house. It didn’t take long because the eggs hadn’t had a chance to dry, thank goodness. The whites of the eggs could degrade the paint on the house.

  And Grayson hated painting.

  Approaching headlights illuminated the side of the house.

  Grayson hurried and finished winding up the hose, then straightened as a car pulled into his driveway behind his truck. His heart sank as the car pulled into the light spilling from the porch and he recognized it.

  Brandon stepped out f
rom behind the wheel, Danielle from the passenger’s side.

  “That was quick.” He didn’t think the dispatcher would have thought to alert the detectives about his call. Guess he was wrong.

  “What do you mean?” Brandon walked around the front of the car toward the house.

  “My call? Report? Slashed tires and rock through my window?” Maybe dispatch hadn’t given them any details.

  “Wait, what?” Brandon spun to face the truck. “Your tires are slashed.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I called and asked to file a report.” Had his friend gone dense all of a sudden? Wait a minute… “You guys aren’t here to file the report, are you?”

  “What happened there?” Danielle nodded at his broken bedroom window.

  “That’s the other part of why I called. Someone threw a rock through my window. There was a message wrapped around the rock.” Grayson switched his gaze back to Brandon. “Why did you come here?”

  Pam opened the front door. “Oh. It’s them.”

  Danielle and Brandon locked stares. “We came to see her,” Brandon said.

  “Me?” Pam practically squeaked.

  “Yeah. About an offloaded video file.”

  “And the eighteen minutes that are missing were deleted before you opened the file?” Brandon sat at Grayson’s dining room table and stared at Pam. The lingering aroma of pizza filled the house.

  “Right.” Pam sat with her arms crossed over her chest and let out a breath in a puff. “Just like I told you. Twice now.”

  “We just have to verify every detail.” Brandon smiled. “To make sure we’re accurate in what you’ve told us.”

  “Because giving false statements to the police is a chargeable offense.” Danielle smiled from across the table, but Brandon knew it was fake.

  So, apparently, did Pam Huron. “And both times, I’ve told you the same answer. It’s accurate.” Unlike Danielle, Pam didn’t bother to try to hide her irritation.

  “Other than those eighteen minutes you’ve mentioned, the file is complete?” Brandon asked.

  “To the best of my knowledge, yes.”