Читать книгу In Plain Sight - Tara Quinn Taylor - Страница 8

The phone rang moments before the first bus was due to drop off Simon’s youngest group of neighbors on Tuesday afternoon. He glanced at caller ID and then back at the screen in front of him. With a click, he maximized the manuscript he’d minimized in order to play freecell, covering the game he hadn’t won yet rather than closing it. He had a ninety-one-percent win ratio and he wasn’t about to see that drop because he’d quit a game.

Going rate for methamphetamine in Arizona (prices vary by state).

Simon read what he’d written half an hour before and waited for the ringing to stop. He checked the time in the lower right corner of his screen. Two minutes until the bus. Fingers on the keyboard, he deliberated over bullet choices. Made a decision. A pointing finger.

1/4 gram—$25.

One minute until the bus. The phone sounded again. Same number. The FBI agent was persistent. He picked up.

“Hello, Olsen. What can I do for you?” Simon said, eyes focused on the corner outside, waiting for the bus. After all, what else did he have to do with his day but munch on carrot sticks and watch other peoples’ kids get safely home from school?

“A map found at the Snowbowl corroborates the girlfriend’s story.”

Simon didn’t say the choice words he was thinking. “Who found it?” How legitimate was it?

“Full-time custodian. An older guy who’s been there close to ten years. Keeps to himself. He was cleaning a locker and found the folded sheet caught between two pieces of metal at the bottom.”

“Like it was planted there?”

“Like it dropped out of something.”

The better of the two scenarios.

“Someone lost it and doesn’t know where.”

“That’d be my guess.”

“Who used the locker last?” Not that it mattered to him. He hadn’t agreed to anything.

“A student of Leonard Diamond.”

The white man with the background that was apparently untraceable, or was traceable to contradicting places, who privately trained cross-country skiers and paid the Snowbowl for use of the facilities. Or so he’d said. The FBI had a tip that suggested something different.

“Was the student male or female?”

“Male.”

“An old piece of paper obviously left behind. Why did the custodian keep it? Turn it in? Why not just throw it away?” Those questions belonged to the agents and local police detective on the case, not to Simon. He didn’t want them.

“It incorporated every inch of the Snowbowl property, but it wasn’t like any other map of the Snowbowl he’d ever seen. The trails on the map aren’t standard Snowbowl trails. The way they’re engineered, only the most proficient skier could hope to master them or even make it over them alive. Turns out they aren’t sanctioned, which means they shouldn’t exist. The map was detailed, computer-generated, possibly one of many. Snowbowl officials contacted us.”

“Someone spoke to Diamond?”

“Never saw the map before in his life.” Scott Olsen’s mimicking voice made clear his lack of trust in the other man’s word.

“And the student?”

“Quit the class.”

“Let me guess,” Simon said. “The guy left no forwarding address and Diamond had no personal information on him.”

“Correct.”

“So how does a map of nonexistent trails tie in with a disgruntled girlfriend’s tale of hearing about terrorist training?”

Simon didn’t want to know. Deep in his soul, if he still had a soul, he didn’t want to know.

“Marking the beginning and ending of each trail was an emblem. A circle with three crosses in the top half and a blackened dagger at the bottom.”

Just as Amanda Blake—the disgrunteld ex-girlfriend of an acquaintance of Diamond’s—had told it.

“I’m not the right man for this job.”

“You had a master’s degree in law enforcement at twenty-three and you were one of the youngest under-cover agents the FBI ever had. You have antiterrorist training.”

“That was a long time ago.” And ultimately all that preparation had been useless.

“I have no idea how far this thing reaches, how many people could be hurt. This gets out now, and the local police have a city in panic. I need a very discreet professional look-see. You’re the only one I trust.”

Simon closed his eyes, consumed with remorse. And then opened them again, seeing nothing but the clean notepad he’d pulled out of the bottom drawer. “You said Amanda Blake is a waitress at the Museum Club?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go tonight.”

“Glad to hear it,” Scott Olsen said. “Anything you need, Simon, anything at all, you just let me know….”

Simon nodded, his throat tight. “As always, awareness of my role here is on a life-or-death, need-to-know basis only.”

“Of course,” Olsen said. “Not even the local police will know.” And then he added, “Thank you.”

“I’m a thankless guy, Scott. I thought you were smart enough to figure that out.”

He hung up. Glanced out the window. He’d missed the bus.

“Andrew, where’s the Zeidel file?” Sitting at her desk, Jan called to the attorney she’d hired straight out of law school several years before. He’d been her most trusted assistant and colleague ever since.

“I left it on the corner of your desk,” the red-haired young man said, appearing at her door. As usual, they were the only two people left in the office at almost six o’clock on this Tuesday evening. “Right where I always leave everything.” He came over, his brown slacks loose on his slim body, his tie perfectly knotted and dropping forward as he leaned down to sift through the pile he’d left in the box on her desk.

“I’ve already been through it twice,” Jan told him. She’d figured out a way to get Danny Ruple to cooperate with her. And as soon as she had that piece of business taken care of, she could go home. Check her mail. And if she wasn’t too late, enjoy some of her neighbor’s nonsense before dinner.

“I pulled it before lunch,” Andrew told her, frowning. “Right after we talked about making the deal with Ruple.”

Jan was going to do something she’d never done before; charge and prosecute a defendant solely on a detective’s hunch—and the circumstantial evidence she’d collected when she’d tried to bring the case to justice two years before. She’d probably lose and waste the state’s money on a long and grueling jury trial. But if bringing in the man Ruple was sure had raped and brutally murdered U of A student Lorna Zeidel, a couple of years before would get her Hall’s conviction, she figured the state would be getting its money’s worth.

Andrew continued to rifle through the files.

“Maybe someone put it back,” Jan suggested. Files did not disappear in the county attorney’s office. And Andrew was too obsessive to admit that he might only have thought he’d put the file on her desk. He was usually too efficient to have forgotten. But he was also an exhausted first-time father—to a newborn who wasn’t sleeping through the night.

“Who would’ve done that?” He had the entire box in one arm as he sorted through it, piece by piece.

“I don’t know.” She didn’t. Nancy, her secretary, would never take a file from her desk. Nor would anyone else. “But could you check?”

“Maybe it fell in the trash.”

From the far right corner of her desk to the near left one? Andrew’s statement validated her exhaustion theory. She would’ve teased him, if she’d thought he had enough energy left to get the joke. Or if she wasn’t bothered by his apparent carelessness.

“You check the file room and I’ll go through the trash,” she said instead, pulling the metal bin out from beneath her desk.

Half an hour later, Jan accompanied Andrew from their third-story office, past the potted plants on the ground-floor atrium, to their cars in the parking lot by Cherry Avenue. It was a nightly ritual, one Andrew insisted upon.

The file, containing all the notes Jan had collected on Lorna Zeidel, was still missing.

And Ruple had not been called. Jan was looking forward to the frozen dinner waiting at home for her.

Jan almost stopped at the mailbox as she drove in, rather than parking her car in the garage first. Not because she thought it would be safer or because she was turning over a new time-management leaf, but because she was thinking of Simon and he’d suggested she do so. Not that she expected anything from her friendly neighbor, ever, but tonight she was kind of depleted and could use some of his easy humor. Easy, because he expected nothing in return. No borrowed cups of flour. Or chats on the lawn. Or dates.

Of course, the cup of flour she’d be happy to give him. Jan grinned, as she waited for the automatic garage door to rise a few slow inches at a time, picturing him in the kitchen, making cookies with as much sloppiness as he showed in the way he dressed. She’d hate to have to clean up that mess.

The overhead light popped on as the door opened and Jan started to pull forward, but then stopped. What was that shiny substance on her garage floor? It hadn’t been there that morning.

Putting the car in Park, she got out, not frightened but tense as she moved closer. It looked like glass. There were shards everywhere. A glance at the window showed her where it had come from—there was a hole the size of a softball through the middle of the pane. Had some neighbor kid thrown a wild pitch? It happened. And it could be fixed.

Then she saw the brick on the opposite side of the garage and her heart began to pound. No way could this be part of a ball game. Whoever had thrown the heavy object through her window had done so with enough force to embed it in the drywall on the far side.

“Don’t touch it.”

Yelping as she swung around, Jan almost dropped with relief when she realized the voice was Simon’s. “I wasn’t planning to,” she told him. “This doesn’t look like an accident, and I know better than to tamper with evidence.”

“You want me to call the police?”

She shook her head. “I’ve got this cop friend downtown,” she quoted an old play, making light of the fact that she’d just come home and found her property vandalized. It was a brick through a garage window, she told herself. Certainly not life-threatening. Or even particularly damaging.

Her nervous system was overreacting. Dialing the downtown precinct, Jan told them what had happened and was grateful when they said they’d send someone right over.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Simon said, as soon as Jan got off the phone. “When you didn’t show up at the mailbox and I saw your car in the garage, I got curious.”

“I’m glad you did,” she admitted, a little shaky. “It’s creepy standing here alone, knowing someone was here while I was gone, vandalizing my stuff.”

A window wasn’t all that much. But the guy couldn’t have known what else might be in the garage.

Of course, if he’d meant to do real damage, he’d have thrown the thing into the house, making all her possessions fair game.

“You been working on anything in particular that would piss someone off?” Simon asked, sitting beside her on the stoop in front of her house as they waited for the police. She’d called from her cell phone and was still holding it in her hand. Just in case.

A vision of the way Hall had looked at her the day before flashed through her mind. She shook her head. Twice. “Nothing out of the ordinary,” she told her neighbor. No sense in giving life to fear. It only became truly dangerous when it was given the power of acknowledgment.

Besides, the Jacob Halls of the world used things that were far more dangerous than bricks. Even as warnings.

Didn’t they?

“This ever happen before?”

Simon’s slacks were wrinkled. She liked them that way. Unlike most of the men she dealt with on a day-to-day basis, being with him felt comfortable. Relaxed.

Safe.

Now, where had that word come from?

“Uh, no,” she stammered, when she realized he was still waiting for her answer. “I’ve had letters at the office. Threats. But nothing that ever amounted to anything.”

She glanced down the street, met Simon’s gaze, and focused on the phone between her hands. “I doubt this had anything to do with my job.”

“Probably not.”

She looked back at him. Was he serious? With Simon it was hard to tell. “You really don’t think so?”

The shake of his head was decisive. “I’d guess it’s a neighborhood thing.”

She took a slightly easier breath. He was probably right. It made sense. Except that she couldn’t think of anyone nearby who might be mad at her, let alone angry enough to vandalize her house.

“Did you see anything?” She should’ve asked before. Simon was always around. Aware. How else could he know when she was at her mailbox most nights?

“Nope.”

“You sound as if you think you should have,” Jan said. There was something different about him tonight. Something deeper; more serious. Or maybe she was just coloring everything with the uneasiness she’d begun to feel. “You certainly aren’t responsible for what goes on at my house,” she told him.

“Five days out of five, my life consists of sitting at my computer staring out at an empty street. There’s a school bus that comes and goes with boring regularity, and that’s about it. Today, I’m not watching, and I might actually have seen something that could’ve been useful.” He sounded disgusted with himself.

Interesting. The man was a self-supporting published author—something a lot of people aspired to but few ever managed. He was his own boss, set his own hours, dressed however he wanted, worked from home—a dream job. His work educated thousands of people. And he thought he was useless? Who’d have figured?

Route 66 was a lot like Flagstaff itself—an innocuous two-lane road without a high-class establishment in sight, and famous anyway. And the Museum Club, with its low-grade gravel parking lot and attention-getting giant guitar sign out front, followed suit. A comfortable laid-back hangout for locals, the bar was also on many tourist lists as a famous historical site, and according to the signs Simon read as he pulled open the door, the roadhouse hosted live country-and-western bands and dancing on Friday and Saturday nights.

He neither liked country music nor dancing.

Tuesday night was karaoke night.

Simon loathed karaoke.

Slouching on a hard wooden chair at a table as far away from the microphone as he could get, Simon glanced around the half-filled room. Not a bad Tuesday-night turnout—mostly middle-aged folks in jeans, a family in one corner, a couple dressed in matching country-and-western attire doing fancy steps on the dance floor to off-key music. And a lone woman at the bar, holding her glass as if it were her only friend. She’d had a face-lift—the line behind her jaw told him that. And she dyed her own hair; she’d missed a spot on the back of her head with the platinum solution. He’d bet his computer there was no wedding ring on her finger, but that if he looked, he’d find an oversize turquoise there.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

Amanda, according to the name tag of the young woman standing at the edge of his table. Sometimes a man just got lucky.

“What’s on tap?” He gave her the slow, covertly appreciative grin that had closed more than one investigation.

With her tray balanced on a hip, Amanda listed both foreign and domestic beers. Her perfectly painted red lips moved easily, as she told him about the night’s specials. “So what’ll you have?” she ended, with a smile that would’ve locked many men’s knees—including his, nine or ten years ago.

Domestic. Simon named his brand, or rather the brand he used to prefer on tap, back when he used to go out. And watched Amanda’s butt in the tight, faded blue denim, as she made her way toward the friendly-looking blond woman behind the bar.

Nice ass.

Nice girl. He hoped. Ex-boyfriend with possible terrorist connections notwithstanding.

Pushing his glasses up, Simon pretended to look around with interest, while keeping Amanda in sight at all times. Not a hard job, as things went. Though at twenty-five she was a bit young for his taste, the woman’s slim figure and rounded breasts were visually pleasing. She was a good waitress, too—quick. She walked up to tables with a full tray and delivered everything without pausing to question who got what; friendly, but not really flirty.

“So, what’s the most famous thing about this place?” he asked, when she brought his beer.

“Hmm.” She paused as if she had all night, frowned and peered around. “I’d say the fireplace.” The silver butterfly clip that secured her long amber-streaked hair, glinted as she turned back to him. “Some of those stones were dug up hundreds of years ago. And there’s lava formations and petrified wood there, too.”

More than he’d ever wanted to know. “No kidding.” Simon gave the structure a good, long look. “You been here long?”

“Four years,” she told him. “Since I was an undergrad at NAU.”

“You dropped out?”

She shook her head. “I graduated. With a degree in English. I’m working on a master’s now.”

Bright girl. And determined enough to work while she studied.

“Got a boyfriend?”

He’d asked Jan the same question earlier that evening, when he’d insisted they look through her home while the cop was there—although he’d asked her for entirely different reasons. With Jan, even though he’d agreed with the beat cop’s assessment of a neighborhood gang-related dare, he’d been hoping to find out that she had some extra protection. She didn’t.

“Yeah, I got one,” Amanda said. And Simon took a sip of beer, batting zero for zero.

“Been together long?”

“Three years.” She grinned as she said it, letting him know that she was flattered by his interest—but not interested. Scott needed a better information source. This wasn’t a disgruntled ex.

“Too bad,” he told her with a warm glance. So much for getting her to spill her guts after work.

“Enjoy your beer,” she said, swinging around toward the bar.

“You know anywhere a guy can get some good physical training around here?” he called after her.

Simon always had plans B, C and D, as backup.

She stopped. “What kind of training?”

“I’m getting ready for level-three alpine certification from the Professional Ski Instructors of America.” He could have been. If he’d had any desire to spend his days in the cold and snow doing something he used to enjoy. Which he didn’t.

He patted his belly beneath the loosely hanging wrinkled shirt, making it clear that his garment was not hiding surplus flesh. “I’ve got great abs,” he said sheepishly, “and I can bench press twice my weight. I work out at the gym every morning.” If you could call the equipment in his spare bedroom a gym. “But I need more. Something that’ll put me above the rest.”

An asshole at a table by the dance floor whistled, and Amanda looked over her shoulder. “I might know of someone who could help,” she said, as she walked away. “Give me a couple of days.”

With that, she was gone. And so was Simon. He’d gotten what he’d come for.