Nest

by Terry Goodkind

  He gave her a friendly wink. “I got your back.”

  Kate smiled. “You always do.”

  She glanced past him, out the tall glass doors, to the confection shop at street level in the office building across the street. Painted in arched gold lettering on the window it said “Baker and Chocolatier.”

  At the elevators she pushed the button for the eleventh floor. As she waited in silence with a few other people, she looked at herself in the smoked mirror between the elevators. She looked crisp and professional in a black skirt and jacket paired with a pale yellow top, but she groaned inwardly at the way her jet-black hair looked. She hadn’t had time to wash it for several days and it hung limp to her shoulders. She used her fingers to comb the long bangs to the side a little, trying to make them look naturally disordered, rather than simply dull and disordered.

  About a year before, she had dated a man who one day asked her if she would consider coloring her hair to a lighter shade. She had been more than a little surprised and had asked him why, and if he didn’t like the way she looked. He had hemmed and hawed and said that he only meant that maybe she wouldn’t look quite so intimidating if her hair were a lighter color. Kate didn’t know what he was talking about. He said that her black hair made her look like the Angel of Death. If nothing else, it had been the death of their brief relationship.

  The gold-toned eye shadow she liked because it went well with her green eyes helped hide how tired she was. It was good enough. Her hair and fatigue were only passing concerns in a roiling sea of grief, confusion, and questions. In between those cascading thoughts, she tried her best to go over in her mind the report her boss, Theodore Harper, would need.

  Standing in the back of the elevator, she looked at each person’s eyes as they walked in after her. If anyone met her gaze she flashed a brief, polite smile.

  Walking down the main aisle on the eleventh floor, past the walls of shoulder-high workstations, each with a computer terminal, she slowed to a stop beside Wilma’s empty station.

  Karen, the woman working at the next station over, turned her chair around to lean out and look up at Kate. “Wilma died early this morning.”

  Kate swallowed. “That’s terrible. I feel so sorry for her family.”

  Karen nodded. “We’re passing around a card for her kids.”

  “Let me know when you get it back, will you? I’d like to sign it.”

  Kate could tell by the woman’s stricken expression what she already knew. “I’m sorry about your brother, Miss Bishop.”

  Kate forced a perfunctory smile. “Thanks, Karen. John was a gentle person and I’ll miss him.”

  Not wanting to invite conversation, Kate glanced back at Wilma’s desk. Karen seemed to understand and nodded before swiveling her chair back around to her computer.

  In Wilma’s work area, partially deflated foil balloons saying “Get Well Soon” still floated at the ends of drooping strings tied to the handle of a mug with the words “World’s Best Mom” on it. The computer screen was dark. Flowers in simple paper cones had been laid over the keyboard and desk while vases with cut flowers stood to the back. Unlit candles with ribbons and bows sat among the multicolored flowers and stands of cards. Three teddy bears rested among the items left on the desk.

  Kate wondered what the hell a dead woman was supposed to do with teddy bears.

  Everyone likely knew that Wilma had not been expected to live. All of the flowers and candles and cards were the modern equivalent of grave goods.

  The thought came with the memory of a TV program on early humans and how it was believed they had lived. The program had shown a grave from the early Bronze Age.

  The archaeological and forensic investigation had revealed evidence that the remains had been covered with flowers and beads. One of the curiosities found in the grave along with some stone tools had been the remains of a small figure made of bones, possibly fleshed out with straw, and dressed in a bit of sewn leather. It struck Kate how much Wilma’s desk was not so very different, in spirit, from those early human graves.

  Like John, Wilma was gone. Her life snuffed out by a monster who killed people. In Wilma’s case, a monster who killed for the fun of it. And teddy bears were somehow supposed to soothe her family’s sense of anguish and loss?

  It unexpectedly angered Kate that teddy bears seemed to have come to take the place of a burning rage for retribution. They had become civilization’s impotent response to senseless murder.

  She supposed that there was really no way people could fight back, and this was the only way in which they could express their sorrow and sense of loss. They were trying to cover over something that was nakedly savage with something that would seem kind and gentle. Kate would rather the guy who did it have his skull crushed in.

  Along with the guy who had killed her brother.

  With a deep breath, she tried to let go of the sudden flash of raw anger.

  Down the broad hallway at the far end of the room, Kate went into her office and set her purse in a bottom drawer. She stood over her desk, surveying the collection of yellow sticky notes. They were a map of sorts, a visualization of problems, intended to help reveal any connections. She was the only one in the company who did it that way. Other people kept lists on their computers. Kate liked something more tangible, something she could look at, touch, and move.

  She often tried rearranging pieces of the sticky-note puzzle to give herself a fresh view of the problems, to see them in a different way, in order to help pick up on any connections. Sometimes security issues had connections. Multiple components made problems exponentially more difficult to solve.

  With a variety of things vying for her thoughts, Kate had trouble focusing on what the notes said. She knew, though, that none of the issues on them were urgent. Unlike the problems she had encountered in Dallas, they were relatively petty. They needed to be dealt with, but none were security emergencies.

  Before she got involved with her report to her boss, she sat and picked up the desk phone. After she dialed the funeral home she leaned back in her tall leather chair. Eyes closed, she swallowed, steeling herself as the phone rang.

  When a man answered, she sat up. He remembered her from when they had buried her parents. He expressed his sympathy for her recent loss. It sounded sincere, and probably was. She couldn’t imagine a job where every customer was grieving.

  She explained the life insurance policy she had taken out on John after her parents had both died, naming the funeral home as the beneficiary. Kate couldn’t bear the thought of benefiting from the death of a loved one, so it had deliberately been set at enough to cover the expenses and no more. They told her not to worry and promised that they would handle everything. He said the funeral could be the following week. She requested that he let the people at the Clarkson Center know about it.

  After replacing the receiver, she sat for a time with her hand still resting on it. It was a relief to have such a painful task out of the way. It had been a call she had been dreading making, but now it was done. With her parents gone, and now her brother, Kate realized that she no longer had any living relatives. Even her Uncle Everett was dead.

  While John’s death was a painfully fresh wound, at the same time, like the deaths of her parents, it was already beginning to seem like ancient history. John’s life was done. It made her feel a little guilty to be still among the living, moving on with the mundane matters of life while leaving the dead behind.

  But as much as it hurt, there was nothing else the living could do.

  She turned her mind back to work.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  Several offices down the hall, Kate walked through an open door with the words THEODORE HARPER, PRESIDENT engraved in white letters on a black plaque. Inside, his secretary looked up from behind her tidy desk.

  “Kate!” the woman said with a sudden, broad smile. “He already heard that you’re here.” She pointed a thumb back over her shoulder. “He’s wai
ting for you.”

  When she heard him call her name from the next room, she went into the inner office and closed the door behind herself. The rich wood panels around the office were raised away from the wall with a gap between each panel, creating a black grid in the background. It always reminded her of the clean designs of the Art Deco era. She had always suspected that it was a deliberate juxtaposition to the nature of their business.

  He rose up on the other side of his broad mahogany desk as she crossed the carpet. “Kate, what are you doing here?”

  She showed him a frown. “I work here, Theo. At least, last I knew I worked here.”

  “Of course you work here, don’t be silly,” he said with a whisk of his hand. His expression took on a pained look. “What I mean is … well, we all heard about John. I’m so sorry, Kate. You don’t need to be coming into work right now. You should take some time to—”

  “Thanks,” she said, cutting him off as her gaze fell away from his. “But I think the best thing for me right now is to keep busy.”

  He rested a hand on a hip for a moment. “I understand.” He lifted the hand to gesture. “I heard you weren’t supposed to be back in town until late today.”

  Kate knew him well enough to know that despite his sincere sorrow for her personal tragedy, he would be eager to find out what had happened in Dallas. While he wasn’t yet aware of the details, he would already know it had been serious.

  “I wrapped things up ahead of schedule and was able to switch to an earlier flight. Besides, the head of their operations, Tony Sexton, wasn’t too pleased having me around.”

  Theo Harper arched an eyebrow. “So he told me.”

  “Really,” Kate said. “He never mentioned that he had called you. What did he have to say?”

  The corners of Theodore Harper’s eyes pinched into branches of small wrinkles as he squinted at her. “He started out telling me that I needed to fire that stupid bitch I’d sent down to his office because—and I quote—she didn’t know her pretty little ass from a hole in the ground.”

  Ordinarily she would have had a flippant remark, but she wasn’t in the mood and instead said, “I’m sorry he dragged you into it, Theo.”

  He didn’t show what he thought of it one way or the other. “That’s what I’m here for.”

  “When was this that he called?” Kate asked.

  “It was about a week after you first got down there. I told him to let you do your job. He said that he couldn’t go along with that kind of interference. I told him that in that case, if he didn’t feel that he could cooperate with your security audit, I would reluctantly accept his resignation.

  “That surprised the hell out of him. He started backpedaling, making excuses. He said he’d only meant that he didn’t think I was aware of what you were up to. He said he was only trying to spare the company any embarrassment. He tried to tell me that if I really knew what was going on he didn’t think I would have so much confidence in you.

  “When he finished babbling, I told him I had complete confidence. He stammered that what he meant was that he knew his operation and his people and he wanted to make sure I was aware of everything.” Theo waved a hand. “All that kind of crap.”

  That explained a few things. Kate couldn’t help smiling. “Thanks, Theo. I appreciate the support.”

  He shrugged, dismissing it as a small thing. “So what happened down there, anyway? I thought it was a simple security audit. It shouldn’t have taken more than a few days, a week at most. What’s been going on all this time?”

  Kate took a deep breath, ordering her thoughts, trying to keep them off the memory of pools of blood in her brother’s house. “Well, when I started looking over things, I thought that something with the orders versus production didn’t look right.”

  Theo’s frown deepened. “There are meticulous production records and our shipping procedures require delivery confirmation of those parts. That means they have to tally.”

  Kate spread her hands. “Well, they did tally—as long as you took into account lost shipments that had been replaced.”

  “Replacing lost or damaged shipments is a contractual requirement. We always take care of such issues in the course of business. The production figures would include replacements, so everything should tally.”

  “I know, and they did, but with the exception of one mounting rig the lost shipments were all sensitive equipment. To double-check, I called Corrine Industries, one of the companies that had gotten replacements for several lost shipments. We had production records for the guidance components and confirmed delivery receipts for those components. It looked for all the world like Corrine Industries had received the guidance systems and dropped the ball, like something was very wrong in their operation. The problem was, the guy I talked to, Gerard Laza, is the guy who checks in, looks over, and signs for the shipments.”

  “So?”

  “So, he said he never received the original shipments, so, assuming they had been lost, he had requested replacements.”

  “Maybe he has a faulty memory. Maybe they actually lost track of them after they received them. Maybe they never went to the proper production department. Maybe they have security issues. More likely he screwed up and was covering his ass.”

  “I thought the same thing at first, but I went back through the shipments going to Corrine Industries and this guy—Gerard Laza—was indeed the one who had signed for all of the shipments, including the ones he said he never received.”

  “So he really did receive them.” Theo was giving her a questioning look. “So he’s dirty?”

  “The signatures on the deliveries in question looked off to me,” she told him.

  He squinted with one eye. “Off?”

  “Yes, like someone had forged his signature.”

  Theo, a big, thick-boned man, straightened and peered down at her. “So now you’re a handwriting expert?”

  Kate shook her head. “No, but there was something about it that didn’t feel right.”

  “What do you mean?

  “Laza was emphatic that he had a good memory and he insisted that he had never received those original shipments. So I flew in to Corrine Industries with the signed bills of lading and confronted him with them in person. I didn’t want him to get them in an email or a scan. I wanted to see the look on his face when I showed him his signature.

  “He stammered and admitted that it was his signature. The guy was completely confused. He didn’t try to lie his way out of it. He seemed crushed that he didn’t remember signing those bills of lading.”

  “So he didn’t remember them, screwed up, and lost track of them in their system. It could even be that he’s simply undependable. The guy even admitted recognizing his own signature, so what made you still think it was a forgery?”

  Kate made a face. “I don’t know how to explain it, Theo, but something about the whole thing didn’t feel right. Since all but one of the replacement shipments were sensitive guidance components—not some of the more innocuous stuff—that alone made me suspicious. It was too much of a coincidence that with only one exception it was guidance components that were lost, not gyro frames or simple machined mounting blocks.

  “Besides, the guy in charge of scheduling in our Dallas office, Matt Fenton, just gave me the creeps.”

  Theo shot her a suspicious look. “What do you mean, he gave you the creeps?”

  “I don’t know.” Kate’s mouth twisted as she tried to think of how to explain it. “When I first arrived, I asked Tony Sexton to introduce me to the heads of all of his departments. I always do that when I go to a place I haven’t been before. It sets up an expectation of cooperation.

  “So Sexton called them all in and said that I was there from the head office to confirm that they were all doing a superb job for KDEX Systems. Sexton told me—in front of the dozen or so people he had called into the conference room—that they were all proud of their operation and were looking forward to showing me how well everythin
g was run. He almost made it sound like I was there to give them all awards, rather than to do a security audit.

  “As each person was introduced to me I shook their hand. When Matt Fenton shook my hand, he looked me in the eye and smiled. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

  Theo’s brow twitched. “Why would you have that reaction?”

  Kate shrugged. “Doesn’t that ever happen to you?”

  Theo snorted a laugh. “No, can’t say that it does.”

  “Maybe it’s just me,” Kate said, dismissing it with a flick of her hand. “Anyway, after I started reviewing everything and then talked to Gerard Laza at Corrine Industries, I wanted to dig deeper into the shipping department.

  “I wanted to go over things with this Matt Fenton character and ask him some questions about the details of his procedures, but if he wasn’t out sick, he was always too busy. Every time I wanted to meet with him he just so happened to be unable to make the meeting because coincidentally a problem had cropped up that he needed to resolve. Every time. I don’t like coincidences.

  “Of course, there are other ways of looking into the things I wanted to know. As I looked deeper into the details of the plant and their operation, I was able to eliminate a whole series of possibilities. From the pattern of the problems I strongly suspected that it wasn’t accidental.

  “It began to look to me like a scheme to sell guidance systems on the black market.”

  Theo wiped a hand across his mouth. His tone turned grave. “That would be bad.”

  Kate agreed with a nod. “So, I went to Tony Sexton and told him that I had come across some matters of significant concern. I told him that whatever was going on, it was serious and it was deliberate.

  “I told him that there were a number of sensitive guidance systems that I believed were unaccounted for, and I suspected Matt Fenton.”

  “What did Tony have to say to that?”

  “He didn’t believe me, or I should say he refused to believe me. He told me that my accusations were baseless and insulting. He said that I had it all wrong, that Matt Fenton was an active flight officer in the National Guard and he was a great asset to the company. Sexton had personally recruited Fenton and was positive that he was golden.