The Inner Sanctum

by Stephen W. Frey

  “Now comes the hard part,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked, pulling herself up onto the landing next to him.

  He flicked on the light again and flashed it out over the railing along the brick wall. “We have to go out there.” Stretching out below was a huge empty Dumpster. “We need to walk along the rim of the Dumpster to get to that window.” He flashed the light up to a small window five feet above the top of the Dumpster. “It’s a bathroom window. I came down here this afternoon to volunteer my services to LFA. After I finished filling out the application, I asked to use the bathroom. I opened the lock while I was in there.”

  “You volunteered for LFA?” Jesse almost laughed aloud.

  “They seemed a little surprised too.” Todd smiled. “I’m probably the only white guy ever to apply for work here, but as the receptionist said, LFA is an equal opportunity employer. So she gave me an application.”

  “What about this window here?” Jesse nodded at the window next to the landing.

  “I tried it this afternoon. It’s nailed shut. I guess the fire inspector hasn’t bothered to visit LFA lately.”

  “Okay, let’s go.” She stepped carefully over the railing onto the upper rim of the Dumpster, which ran parallel to the building.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “Going to the window,” she said as she balanced herself precariously on the thin edge of the huge trash container.

  “I’ll go first, Jess.”

  But she was already several feet out onto the Dumpster, sliding her feet carefully along the inch-wide metal frame toward the window, balancing herself by holding her hands flat against the side of the building two feet away. “Just keep the light on the frame in front of me.” It was like walking the train tracks near her house in Glyndon as a little girl, she thought to herself as she kept inching forward. Except that a train rail was at most six inches off the ground. Here the drop would be ten feet.

  Finally she reached the window. She placed her palms beneath the wooden frame of the lower panes and pushed. Instantly the window rose up. In one deft motion she grasped the bottom of the window frame, pushed off the Dumpster, and pulled herself into the building. She picked herself up quickly from the floor and leaned back out the window. “Come on,” she beckoned. “It’s not hard at all.”

  “Uh huh.” Todd stepped gingerly over the fire escape railing onto the Dumpster. He had never liked heights. Not even ten feet.

  “Hurry!” Jesse was growing impatient.

  “Easy!” He had thought she would be the hesitant one.

  Slowly Todd made his way out onto the Dumpster rim until he reached the window. He handed Jesse the flashlight, then grabbed the bottom of the window frame and pulled. But as he pushed off, his foot slipped and for a moment he hung by his fingers, unable to regain his balance on the Dumpster’s rim. Jesse grabbed him roughly by the shirt as he slowly pulled himself up. Seconds later they fell in a heap together on the tile floor.

  “That was graceful, Mr. Private Investigator,” Jesse groaned.

  “Yeah, well, I missed Dumpster-climbing class in PI school, all right?” He was annoyed. “I assume we need to go to the executive offices,” he said, rising to one knee.

  “I think that’s the best place to start.”

  They moved out of the bathroom and into a narrow hallway paneled with cheap veneer. The carpet was worn and the air was dusty and heavy with the scent of furniture polish. They came to a locked wooden door, but Todd negotiated it easily with a pick set. It popped open and they were in.

  “Not a very secure building,” Jesse observed.

  “It’s a goddamn renovated warehouse, Jess. What do you expect, laser beams and heat sensors? They’ve probably put this whole organization together on a wing and a prayer. They aren’t going to spend very much on security because there isn’t anything to protect.”

  She could tell by his sharp tone that he was still embarrassed by his clumsy entry into the building. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled, rubbing a knee. “Unfortunately.”

  She ignored his complaint and moved to the file cabinets against the wall. They too were locked. “Can that pick set handle file cabinets as well?”

  “Sure.” Todd moved to the first one and popped it quickly, then moved on to the next.

  Jesse pulled a tiny flashlight from her jeans pocket, opened the cabinet’s top drawer, and began her search. To avoid leaving fingerprints, she and Todd wore clear latex gloves he had purchased at a local hardware store that afternoon. As she pulled out the first file with her gloved hand, she was reminded of the leather glove she had lost at Neil’s river house the night she’d been chased. She had borrowed the gloves from Sara’s desk drawer that night after everyone had left the branch. She didn’t have any at the office—after all, it was the end of summer—and didn’t want to waste time going to the store. But Sara was a pack rat and seemed to keep one of everything at the office no matter the season.

  “What now?” Todd had opened all five cabinets.

  “Start looking for personnel files. When you find them, let me know.”

  “Right.”

  For several minutes Jesse combed the files, culling through invoices, copies of correspondence, and internal memoranda. And then her eyes caught something—a file marked “Funding/Doub Steel.”

  “Hey, here we go,” Todd murmured. “Employee records.”

  “Good.” Jesse held up her hand. “Hold on a second, I’ll be right there.” Her pulse jumped as she looked at the name on the file again. Doub Steel. It sounded so familiar. Where had she heard the name before?

  She opened the thin file and held the flashlight over the pages. Suddenly she brought a hand to her mouth. The page was a copy of both sides of a million-dollar check—a check signed by David J. Mitchell. She would recognize that distinctive M anywhere. She had seen it as he signed the check at Café Royal and at the marina when he had signed for the sailboat. “Oh my God.” Doub Steel. Now she remembered. David had mentioned the company as one of his primary investments when they had been out in the sailboat that night on the Corsica River. She leaned against the cabinets for support.

  “What’s the matter, Jess?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” She closed the file quickly and placed it on a small table next to the cabinet. “Where are the employee records?” Her voice was shaking.

  “Right here. Come on, Jess, what’s the—”

  “Nothing!” She cut him off as she moved to the next set of files.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  Jesse pulled a small piece of paper from her shirt pocket. Scrawled on it was the Social Security number she had matched to the list of LFA employees and the list of Elbridge Coleman campaign workers. “Just make certain no one surprises us.”

  “Okay.”

  Carefully she read through each file, checking the Social Security number of each. Finally she came to a file without a number, a file on which the number had been whited out. She touched the dried fluid gently, then glanced to the upper left and the employee picture. For a moment she gazed at it. The face was so familiar. Then it hit her, and another icy chill raced up her back. It was the man who had been coming out of her office at the branch last week looking for Sara. This man had short hair and no beard or mustache, but as Todd had pointed out, disguises were easy to manufacture. She glanced at the name. Gordon Smith.

  This was what she had come for. And she had stumbled onto the check from Doub Steel. It was time to get out. “Let’s go, Todd.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Jesse put the Smith file under her arm, closed and locked the file cabinets, picked up the Doub file from the table, and headed back toward the hallway. In seconds she was hanging from the bathroom window, feeling for the rim of the Dumpster
with her tennis shoes. Her nerves were on fire. As on the night she entered Robinson’s river home, something was telling her to get the hell out of here. That danger was close. Finally her feet touched the metal of the trash container.

  Through the window Todd handed Jesse the two thin files, and she began to move quickly toward the fire escape. But in her haste to get back to the landing her foot slipped, and a short scream escaped her lips. For a moment she hung in the air, arms reaching for anything to grab. But as she began to fall backward into the metal Dumpster, she felt Todd’s strong hand wrap around her wrist like a vise, and she regained her balance. Carefully she made her way back to the fire escape.

  In a moment Todd was there too. She placed a hand on his shoulder as he stepped onto the landing. “Thanks,” she murmured.

  “No problem,” he whispered. “Maybe we should have just tried to find a door on the first floor.”

  “No,” she whispered back. “There would be alarms on the doors.”

  “So what? We would have been gone before anyone could have gotten here.”

  “I don’t want anyone to know there was a break-in.” Jesse handed the two files to Todd as she began to climb down the ladder. “Drop them to me when I get to the ground.”

  “Right.”

  She descended the ladder agilely, jumping the last several feet to the pavement.

  “Hold it right there!” a voice barked as a brilliant light suddenly illuminated the entire area beneath the fire escape.

  Instinctively she put her hands before her face. She had been caught. Fear surged through her as she pictured the headlines: REVENUE AGENT NABBED IN LFA BURGLARY. That could not happen.

  She turned to run, but the private security officers anticipated her move and were on her instantly, wrestling her to the ground, pulling her hands behind her back.

  “Look what we got here.” One of the men pointed the brilliant light directly into her eyes as he rested with his knee in the small of her back.

  “Not your typical warehouse district thief,” the other laughed, pulling handcuffs from his belt. “You’re awfully pretty, ma’am, but we treat everybody the same down here. Cuff ’em and turn ’em in.”

  Jesse closed her eyes and turned her face from the light. This was the nightmare scenario. The one she had so worried about.

  “Yup, we—” But as the second man began to cuff Jesse, two gunshots tore through the still of the night, stifling his words.

  The two men tumbled away, scrambling for cover behind the Dumpster. Almost immediately two more gunshots exploded into the darkness, followed instantly by the sound of shattering glass as the slugs hit the security vehicle’s windshield.

  Jesse jumped to her feet and began to sprint. She knew exactly what had happened. The security officers hadn’t seen Todd, and now he was creating a diversion—and she was going to take advantage of it.

  Two more shots rang out. She heard the men yelling at each other, and then she was around the corner of the building and their screams faded. But she kept running.

  Finally, as she neared the rental car, Jesse slowed to a trot, then stopped and bent over, gasping for air. She knew it was not a good idea to stay with a vehicle that looked so out of place in this area of town at this time of night. The car was an obvious inspection target for the police, who would be crawling all over this neighborhood in a matter of minutes—police carrying a detailed description of her. She began to move unsteadily back into the shadows, uncertain what to do. She couldn’t leave Todd here, but she couldn’t stay either. Then she heard the sirens.

  “Come on!”

  Jesse felt a sudden tap on her shoulder, screamed, and whipped about. Todd had already raced past her and reached the car.

  “Come on!” he yelled again. “Let’s get the hell out of here! We don’t have much time!” He was pounding on the car’s roof.

  She darted to the car, shoved the key in the door, unlocked it, and jumped in. “Do you have the files?” she yelled as he fell into the passenger seat beside her.

  “Right here.” He held them out.

  “Beautiful.” She grabbed the folders and thrust them beneath the driver’s seat, then guided the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine revved loudly as she pressed the accelerator to the floor. “Hold on.”

  A half hour later, Jesse whipped the car into a spot in her apartment complex, turned off the engine and the lights, reclined against the headrest and closed her eyes. She had been so certain that one of the several police cruisers they had passed on the way home was going to turn around suddenly and give chase. But none had. Now she was glad they had brought her plain rental car instead of Todd’s flashy Corvette.

  “You’re a helluva driver.” Todd laughed.

  “My brothers taught me.” Todd had really come through for her tonight, she suddenly realized. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.”

  “No sweat.”

  Jesse reached up and pulled out the large pin keeping her hair up in a bun. It fell to her shoulders as she shook her head from side to side.

  Todd nodded approvingly. “Much better.”

  “Thanks.” Suddenly she remembered the gunshots breaking the quiet of the night as she had lain prone on the asphalt about to be handcuffed. “I didn’t know you carry a gun, Todd.”

  “All the time.” He reached beneath his shirt and withdrew a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver. “Say hello to Mary. She’s all out of bullets right now, but she did a nice job tonight.”

  Jesse eyed the gun. “Yes, she did.”

  Todd replaced the revolver in the shoulder holster, then pulled a paper from his pants pocket. “I almost forgot about this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Remember we talked about a broker friend of mine who checked out the Coleman Technology initial public offering for me? About how three of the companies that invested in the deal all had the same parent company?”

  “Yes.”

  “The guy did a little more research.”

  “And?”

  “Every company that invested in the Coleman Technology IPO is ultimately controlled by Sagamore Investment Management. Can you believe it? Looks like you were exactly right. The Coleman offering was manipulated by a small group of senior brokers at some very out-of-the-way investment banks, on orders from Sagamore.” He rubbed his stomach for a moment. It was still sore from Harry’s fist. “But I can’t tell you why they did it.”

  Jesse could. Elbridge Coleman had funded his campaign—and the massive advertising blitz accompanying it—with money from the public offering. With money from Sagamore, it seemed safe to assume now.

  “Didn’t you go out to Sagamore the other day, Jess?”

  And there was that huge check from Doub Steel to LFA. Signed by David. Her eyesight blurred. And there was a man who had been paid by both Coleman and the LFA. Gordon Smith, if that was his real name. This was getting crazy.

  “Jess?”

  She glanced at him. For a moment she thought about confiding in him, telling him what she suspected. But then he’d probably go after David immediately. And she didn’t want that. Not yet, anyway. “I’ve got to go, Todd. I’ll walk you to your car.” She turned and pulled the door handle.

  “But…”

  “Come on,” she insisted, shutting the door.

  “All right.” Todd jumped from the car.

  “Where’s your Corvette?”

  “Over there.”

  She spotted the white Corvette parked directly beneath one of the large overhead lights and began walking toward it.

  “Hey, wait.” But he did not catch up to her until they had reached the Corvette. “What’s your rush?”

  “I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m exhausted.” In the light she suddenly noticed the damage to the front and back of the Corvette. “What happened?”
/>
  “Vandals got to it the other night while I was food shopping,” he lied. “I guess some people just get jealous when they see a nice car.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. It’ll be as good as new soon.”

  An odd expression crossed her face. “When did you start food shopping? I thought you ate out every night.”

  “Did I say food shopping? I was picking up beer.”

  “Uh huh. Can you drive it like this?”

  He nodded. “I replaced the bulbs. It’s fine. I’ll get the body repaired at some point.”

  “You and I aren’t having much luck with cars lately.” She smiled.

  “That’s the truth.” Suddenly the impulse struck him. “Jess, why don’t you spend the night with me out at the farmhouse?”

  “What?” She glanced at him quickly.

  “Come with me to the house. It’s nice out there.”

  She shook her head.

  “You’ll feel safer out there tonight. With me. Besides, I need to tell you some things.”

  “Todd, please.” This was something she couldn’t handle right now.

  He moved closer and touched her cheek with his fingers. “I’m not kidding.” He hesitated, looked down at the pavement and then back up at her. “I really care about you.”

  She touched his hand with hers. “I care about you too, it’s just that…”

  “Come to the house with me then. I don’t mean we’re going to sleep together, just talk, like we used to.” He took her cheeks gently in his large hands. “Take tomorrow off. God, think about what we’ve been through tonight. You deserve a day off.”

  “I’d love to, I really would. It’s just that I’ve got things to do.”

  “Is it that guy, David Mitchell?” Todd was suddenly angry. “Are you going to see him now?”

  “Of course not.” Jesse felt Todd’s grip tighten as she tried to pull away. “Todd!”

  “Kiss me, Jess.” He slid his hands down her back and pulled her body to his roughly.

  “Todd, what are you doing?” She tried to push him away, but it was useless. He was much too strong.