by David Dun
She had Sam's interest. He looked to Haley for an explanation.
"We're worried about Ben," Haley said.
"How so?"
"Well," she said, "he is not acting like himself. He's keeping things secret. Actually, he's keeping everything secret. From me, from Sarah. We want to know if he's told you anything he didn't tell us."
Sarah nodded in agreement.
"Ben doesn't talk much about his work," said Sam. "What do you think is going on?"
"I think he's got more on his mind than his work. Or leaving Sanker."
"You might be right," Sam told Haley. "You know the rumors-that Ben's discovered some sort of longevity secret."
"You heard that?"
"Only vaguely," Sam said. "From everything you do know, do you believe Ben discovered some kind of magic bullet to slow aging? I mean, for significant lengths of time?"
Sherry had their coffees ready, but no one moved to get them.
"Let me put it this way," Haley said in a lower voice. "If you conquered cancer in North America-I mean completely conquered it-you would only increase average life expectancy about 3.5 years. Heart disease is better, but still only about seven years. Isn't it shocking that by eliminating these two big killers, cancer and heart disease, we're only talking a little over a decade of extra life? The real miracle, if someone could pull it off, would be 'youth retention.'"
Sam raised his eyebrows in question.
"Youth retention," Haley explained, "would be truly slowing aging, not just extending life and being old for a heck of a long time."
Sam nodded.
"It's a hot area in biology these days, and the fundamental problem is that so many bodily systems deteriorate with age," Haley said.
"I think he's discovered something about energy, and something about aging," Sarah said. "But it's complicated- I don't understand it, and I'll feel very guilty if I speculate. I think he might have a secret lab and that's all I'm saying. Period." She sat back.
"That's a shocker. What on earth do you mean by a 'secret lab'?" Haley sighed, obviously frustrated that she hadn't gotten much out of Sarah, but Sarah had obviously zipped her lip.
"He's spending time with a lot of different people, I think," Sam said.
"What people?"
"Science people?" Sam speculated.
"Yeah. That's all I know as well. Strange goings-on- people coming into town at night, and Ben hustling off to meetings," Haley said. "He's mum as a mummy about it all."
"To me too," Sarah said.
"Well," said Sam, "we all agree that he's leaving Sanker. It's just a matter of time, right?
Distance from Frick and the corporation has to be a good thing."
"Absolutely a good thing," Haley said. "If they let him leave."
CHAPTER 3
After Sarah left, Haley locked up the bikes, deep in thought. In the ocean when the fmgerlings or the herring were jumping and roiling at the surface, you knew there was something having dinner down below. She couldn't shake the feeling that Sanker was having dinner. Her worry over Ben was incessant. As with Ben's work, she had questions about Sam. After a fashion she had known him for twenty-three years, since she was nine. At that time he was nineteen and an impressive college jock.
Sam's father-a difficult, macho-type guy, to hear Ben tell it-had all the empathy of a wooden wall, but he had a sister who was the opposite. Her name was Helen, and she married Ben. Because of the rogue-male lifestyle led by Sam's dad, Sam would sometimes come to stay with Ben and Helen. That was mostly before Haley's time, and then after her time, he came out of gratitude and affection for Ben and Helen. Sam had a little of that family feeling in him despite the tough upbringing.
As far as Haley and everybody else was concerned, Sam's life after graduate school had been mostly secret; so when he came to visit, it was as if he walked right out of a dark closet and into these idyllic islands. As far as his life and his persona in the islands, she knew a lot. He was very strong and athletic, a good listener, never bragged, and didn't mind going unnoticed, although it was hard not to notice him.
She looked down toward the water and saw a big black man and some white guys walking down the waterfront street. They did not have the look of people from the island. Then they were gone.
A few moments later, Sam came along, headed for his chair. She developed the familiar nervous knot in her belly whenever they were alone.
She smiled at Sam, hoping it wasn't brittle. He smiled. Although he had been here first with his chair, starting nine months ago, somehow she felt he should move, since she had taken over the shop.
Apparently he wasn't moving and neither was she. She glanced up. Sam had gone back to his book, sitting only about twenty feet away.
Her phone rang and she jumped, casting about for the cordless contraption.
"It's in your back pocket," Sam said without even looking up.
Seeing it was Ben calling, she came back around the building to get better reception, but the call died. Then it came again.
"Haley," came a staticky voice, "this is Ben. Can you hear me?"
"Hey, how's it going?" The static worsened, and then it sounded like they were disconnected. It happened all the time on the island. "Hello, hello…" She tried for a minute and gave up.
"Was it Ben?" Sam asked.
He must be on a Russian spy ship.
"Yeah, but he disappeared. I just caught a few words, but he sounded stressed. Maybe things aren't going well in the lab. It's past lunch. I think I'll take him something to eat and see how he is. Maybe after, we can have a cup of coffee."
"I'll be here," Sam said, walking back to his chair.
Haley turned to leave.
"Say, Haley," he said as she left. She paused and turned. "Give me a call and let me know that everything's okay with Ben."
She nodded and left.
Haley parked in the lot behind Oaks, the building that housed Ben's office and lab.
Clouds were now starting to blow across the sky and making intermittent showers in the distance. At the moment the rain clouds formed a dark band up Lopez and all the way to Orcas, maybe beyond. Over on the far side of San Juan Channel, it looked like heavy rain.
She wrapped her coat around herself and walked through blowing leaves. Down the way, at the main building, she saw much more activity than she would have expected on the Sunday morning after Thanksgiving. At the gate she held a plastic card that Ben had given her up to the electronic detector and passed through a heavy revolving gate.
Months ago Garth Frick had taken her original key card with great fanfare. That had been the final humiliation.
Haley knew that she needed to be careful here. She didn't really like coming to Sanker.
Those old feelings of self-doubt threatened her every time she walked in the place.
Worse, if she were caught inside, Frick would seize the key card that Ben had loaned her for just such occasions. Fortunately, Ben's fellow scientists, although mostly against her, really weren't the sort of people to fight over entry privileges and they had ignored her on the few times that she had come. Their shunning only added to the pain.
She walked through some attractive gardens, with some artificial ponds and flowing water, and up to the glass revolving door, where she used the card again. Downstairs things appeared empty. As she mounted the stairs, she looked from a lower-floor lab's open door, through the window, and onto a small garden area. She saw a man running across the front of the building, apparently headed for the forest. That was strange.
Coming back down the stairs, she walked into the waterfront lab space and looked to the right, down the building. Sure enough, she saw a couple of men putting up yellow tape. Immediately she thought of the crime scenes seen on TV She went back and ran up the stairs. The halls were half-dark, the labs all silent. Turning around, she looked for a sign of someone, anyone. Nothing. As she walked down the hall toward Ben's office and lab, shadows and dark corners and the occasional watchman making the rounds re
placed her memories of cheery, collegial greetings and chats and the perpetual movement of people.
The lights were off in the organics lab too. She turned them on. What she saw was appalling, as if someone had gone on a rampage. Had something happened to Ben?
"Hello?"
She jumped, badly startled by a sound. It was Frick, behind her, leaning against the doorway.
Garth Frick looked the part of an unpleasant cop. He smoked small cigars and told jokes, but his cadaverously wiry body expressed menace that outweighed any efforts at geniality. Frick's hair was black, drawn back and tied in a small ponytail. His sallow skin matched the gaunt look of his frame and his crooked teeth-a man who looked fit, lethal, and unwell all at once.
"Where's Ben?" she asked.
"Come with me." He walked up to her and put his hand in the small of her back, as if she were a girlfriend. She removed his hand, but he only chuckled. He led her to the storage room.
She followed a short distance behind. "Where are we going?"
"Relax," Frick said. "I want to show you something."
"No." She stopped at the door.
He turned around, grabbed her arm, and yanked her into the storage room, putting his face into hers.
"You're under arrest. Now quit moving and give me your purse."
"No." She tried to get out.
He punched her in the stomach, doubling her over in extreme pain. He slipped the purse strap off her shoulder and touched his mouth to her ear.
"I'm very busy at the moment, so I can't attend to you right now."
He took her hands and handcuffed them behind her back. Then he sat her on a box of glassware and stuffed a small towel in her mouth, using duct tape to keep it there.
It took Haley several minutes to recover from the punch. When she felt able, she rose, turned, and tried to open the door. Because there were radioactive isotopes in this storage room, the door had an extra bolt lock on the outside. Frick evidently had locked it. She returned and sat on the box and considered screaming, even with the towel. It didn't take her long to conclude that, yes, she should definitely scream. But the volume she generated was not impressive.
Then the lights went out.
While she sat in the storage room, Haley's anger and fear grew as she wondered what Frick might be doing to her adoptive father, Ben. The crime scene tape… she couldn't complete the thought.
CHAPTER 4
Frick paced while Rolf, the hacker, hunched over his computer keyboard and worked to break into the escrow at Boston International Escrow Services.
"This was supposed to be done two days ago," Frick said. "It was supposed to be solved. Now we have nothing. Nothing."
"Leave me alone and let me think" was all Rolf would say.
Frick knew he had little time. He couldn't leave Haley in the closet for more than twenty minutes without major complications, be it the arrival of her mysterious friend, Sam, or some sort of mutiny among the county deputies.
They were in an office off the IT department especially set up for data transfers by visiting scientists. Rolf had converted it for his purposes over the weekend. It had been a simple task to make his PC look like Ben's from a data transfer standpoint, imitating the range of IP numbers used by Ben's office and his personal computer's Mac address. He had Ben's password and so had a much easier time breaking into the escrow than would a cold-calling hacker. Frick had just learned that the man also liked to work in semidarkness.
Ben Anderson and the Sanker Foundation had signed a contract that provided for an escrow service of national repute to hold electronic copies of all Ben Anderson's scientific research papers. Rolf had managed to break through the firewalls and get inside the escrow to examine those documents. Even though Ben could deposit files in the escrow account, he could not remove documents that had been on file more than sixty days without special authority. Nor could Sanker; hence the need for the hacker.
Rolf was a heavy fellow with puffy cheeks, a wispy beard, heavy glasses, and food-spotted clothes. Since he made plenty of money, obviously he had simply given up on his appearance as a lost cause. Frick detested the unkempt nature of the man and his body odor. Killing him would be an act of purity. Frick fantasized extensively about hanging him by one foot and slitting his throat. Rolf was a pig and Frick had experience in killing pigs.
On the first pass through the first set of files, they had found nothing that explained how to build five genetically engineered bacteria that would produce certain critical proteins and peptide hormones. They had one set of files left to go. Unless it contained the vital information, the old man had snookered them.
Then there was the mystery gene-something else they didn't understand, something not used in the organics lab to make products from transgenic bacteria. "How long now?" he asked.
"A while," Rolf answered. "Longer if you stand around looking over my shoulder."
"I gotta have something short typed out and printed fast."
"Will you leave me alone if I do it?"
"Just do it."
Rolf apparently decided not to defend his dignity and typed for Frick: I, Haley Walther, hereby admit that on this date I was trespassing at Sanker, having entered the premises unescorted by Ben Anderson and in violation of my agreement with Sanker; and that I was hiding in the radioisotope storeroom to avoid detection when someone locked the exterior bolt, inadvertently locking me inside. I was thereafter discovered by Deputy Frick. I am freely and voluntarily agreeing to answer questions posed by officers in their investigation, have been read my rights, and hereby waive my rights, including my right to remain silent. I have requested that I be allowed to remain on the premises during a portion of the investigation. I agree to answer all questions and to remain with a police officer at all times while on the premises, and I agree to surrender myself for arrest and booking for trespass upon request by any officer of the San Juan Island Sheriff's Department and I understand that a formal citation will be issued.
Acknowledged by Haley Walther
Rolf printed the document. "Now if I'm through with my secretarial duties, perhaps you can go entertain the lady while I work."
Smart-ass. Frick hurried back to the Oaks Building and to Ben's office, where he had the safecracker working on Ben's wall safe. The moment he saw the pissed-off expression on the man's face, he knew he had a problem.
"How long?" Frick asked.
"I gotta do invasive stuff. I just can't do this in a few minutes with a stethoscope, like in old movies."
"You can have ten more minutes," Frick said. "If you can't get it open in ten, I'll have to bring you back. I've got deputies out there-this is a crime scene-and there's no way I can hold people off much longer. It's already looking strange."
Old man Henry Gardner Sanker sat in the bar off the grand-gathering room, which in smaller homes would be akin to the formal living room.
His bar was nice, even by billionaire standards: gleaming hardwood and brass, with gorgeous mirrors to reflect the tawny colors of the various libations. He'd reserved the gold leaf for other areas. Sanker liked the warmth of all the fine wood-it spoke of comfort and class-and this was the place he chose to sit and hold court.
He kept a small desk in the corner with a phone, for business was never far from his mind, and tonight he wore an old tweed sport coat and sipped a glass of 1927 Fonseca port.
Sanker had a full head of silver gray hair and a long face that he thought looked like shattered safety glass, for all the wrinkles. His eyes, though, remained bright as new pennies, and his mind, in contrast to his body, was robust.
Stu Rossitter, the president of Sanker, had come in the other entry, let in by the help.
"I am concerned," Sanker said when Stu Rossitter approached the bar.
"I share your concern. Shocked, actually. I was sure we'd find the goods in the escrow.
We're lucky to have our Judas."
The old man's eyes moved over Rossitter, noting that the shoes had just been shin
ed. He wore a speckled gray cardigan and gray wool slacks-a little formal for Rossitter this time of night. Sometimes Rossitter didn't keep his shoes perfectly shined, but the old man had noticed that when Rossitter was worried, a new shine could be expected, sometimes even a new pair.
Garth Frick, by contrast, let scuff marks accumulate on the toes of his shoes. It was no wonder he was a murderer.
"Your Judas wanted a lot more than thirty pieces of silver, and even then I worry he'll stay bought," the old man said.
"I'm counting on it," said Rossitter.
"You're damn right you are. It's our families, the world, we're talking about."
Rossitter wisely kept his counsel.
"We all have a lot to lose." Sanker pressed the point. "Does Frick know the papers weren't left in the escrow yet?"
"Maybe. If he doesn't, should we figure a way to tell him so he won't waste time?"
"We don't dare," the old man said. "You don't tell a pigeon he's a pigeon. Let him think he's our eagle. What went wrong?"
"I don't know. The way Frick evidently had it planned the old man should have drowned, and we should have had the stuff out of escrow. It obviously was never there for any of us to find."
"I knew Anderson was double-crossing us. I had to swallow my bile just to make the deal, and I've never begged a man in my life. But he wouldn't breathe a word about his discovery, and it's half mine! Arrogant bastard goes behind my back, cheats his way out of the escrow…"
"He'll be dealt with," Rossitter said.
"We have to find him before anybody else does. And quick. Any hint that we have anything to do with his disappearance, never mind his death, and we'll be swinging in Wall Street's wind."
"Frick will catch him," Rossitter said. "But we may have to help. We could pass tips from Judas…"
"You think I want to hear any of this?"
"I'm sorry. I-"
"You know I would never stoop to this if I didn't have to," Sanker growled. "Never."
"Of course," Rossitter said.
"See that it's solved, my friend. Just see to it. It's more than what we own. It's the very balls of our existence. Our pride. I never should have gone down this path, never even thought about the merger with American Bayou. But that prick forced me and I will see his soul in hell."