Dead Matter

by M. K. Wren

Wills nodded, ignoring Conan. “Sonny, what we ’re looking for is some manuscripts for a book named…” He had to check the search warrant. “Named Odyssey. The other thing we ’re looking for is a small handgun, probably twenty-two caliber. ”

  Sonny Hoffsted was not a man to waste words. He only nodded, and Wills opened the gate and led the way to the quiet house. The front door was open, but the aluminum-framed screen was closed. He knocked, and within seconds, Angie appeared behind the screen. She examined the official deputation waiting on the stoop, one eyebrow going up when she saw Conan standing behind them.

  “Well, have you come to arrest me, too, Sheriff? ” she asked.

  “I’ve got a search warrant here, Angie, ” Wills said irritably. He offered the warrant, and she opened the screen enough to prop it with her hip while she scanned the document.

  Finally she looked past Wills to Conan. “What about this, Conan? ”

  He shrugged. “There ’s nothing you can do to stop him, Angie. ”

  She stood aside, and Wills, the deputies, and Conan filed into the living room, a comfortably prosaic room with its overstuffed couch cluttered with comic books and plastic aliens and dinosaurs. Judge Wapner was dispraising Solomonic justice from the television.

  Wills made a fast tour of the house, then returned to pass out assignments. He would begin in Angie and Cady ’s bedroom, Hoffsted would take Michael ’s room, and Neely would take the kitchen. And Angie could go on with her project in the kitchen. “Looks like you got a real nice potata salad going, Angie. ” She ignored that overture, and Wills didn ’t add that Neely was to watch her to make sure she didn ’t dispose of any evidence. Conan had no doubt that Angie understood that as well as Neely did. Angie was, after all, a policeman ’s daughter.

  Finally Wills recognized Conan ’s presence. “Flagg, don ’t you have nothing better to do than hang around here? ”

  “No, Sheriff, can ’t think of a thing. ”

  “I’ll just bet you can ’t. Well, you stick with me! I want you where I can keep an eye on you. ”

  Since Conan was equally determined to keep an eye on Wills, he only nodded and followed him as he strode through an arch to the right of the front door that gave access to a hallway on which four doors opened. The room at the front of the house was undoubtedly Angie ’s office. Conan caught a glimpse of file cabinets. The next was Michael ’s room, wallpapered in Trail Blazer posters. Next was a bathroom, and at the end of the hall, a bedroom. The furnishings there were Sears Ornate, the color scheme brown and beige, accept for a quilted bedspread covered with pink flowers. Angie ’s influence, no doubt. Cady ’s influence was evident in the gun rack over the chest of drawers. Two shotguns and three rifles, one with telescopic sights.

  Conan stood in the doorway and watched Wills attack the room with frenzied thoroughness, leaving behind a chaos of emptied drawers, boxes with their contents strewn on the floor, clothing heaped at the bottom of the closet, the bed a tangle. But Wills was doomed to disappointment, and after twenty minutes, he was apparently beginning to recognize that possibility, and his temper flared when Sonny Hoffsted came in to report that he ’d found nothing in Michael ’s room or in the bathroom, and should he start in Angie ’s office?

  Wills was on his knees pawing through a drawer full of Angie ’s lingerie. “Damn it, get on with it, Sonny! ”

  Ten minutes later, Wills gave up on the bedroom, passed Conan as if he didn ’t exist, and stormed into the office. Conan followed him. Hoffsted was peering into a file cabinet, lamenting, “Well, I never seen a manuscript, Giff. Makes it hard to know what I ’m looking for. ”

  “The gun! ” Wills snapped. “Forget the damned manuscripts. It ’s that gun we ’re after. ” Then seeing Conan at the door, he demanded, “What do you want? ”

  Conan shrugged. “You told me to stick with you. ”

  “Sonny, I ’ll be in the living room. Come on, Flagg. ” While Wills began wreaking havoc in the living room, with Donahue and an avid audience arguing the fine points of date rape as background, Conan took up a position at the kitchen door. Neely was on a stepstool checking the contents of the cupboard over the refrigerator, and Angie was standing at the kitchen table stirring mayonnaise into a bowl of potato salad with vigorous strokes that suggested she might prefer to put the wooden spoon to better use. She nodded at Conan, then glared into the living room. “What ’s he doing in there? ”

  Neely climbed down from the stepstool, shaking her head. “That ’s just Hurricane Giff, Angie. ”

  Wills ’s search of the living room was also fruitless, as were Neely ’s and Hoffsted ’s searches. Finally Wills stood at the kitchen door and shouted, “The garage! Come on, Sonny. ”

  “Sheriff, we don ’t have a garage, ” Angie pointed out.

  He glowered at her as if she were personally responsible for the missing garage, then gestured toward a closed door. “What ’s in there? ”

  It was Neely who answered, “It ’s a utility room, sir. I’ve already —”

  But Wills wasn ’t listening. “Let ’s go, Sonny. ”

  Hoffsted dutifully went, and for a few minutes the sounds of havoc in the wreaking were audible. Angie beat at the potato salad, said bitterly, “Neely, it ’s too bad you can ’t teach Giff how to do a search. Look at this kitchen, Conan. You ’d hardly know she ’d been here. ”

  Neely laughed. “Well, I don ’t think anybody ’s likely to teach Giff anything. ” The she sobered abruptly as Wills and Hoffsted emerged from the utility room.

  Wills crossed to the back door, gazed out at a weedy lawn where a swing set and inflatable wading pool in the shade of a willow tree were all that was visible to the fence lines. Wills said, “He probably buried the damn thing. Or threw it in the ocean. Or maybe you got rid of it, Angie. You had plenty of time. But if you think this is going to get MacGill off the hook, you ’ve got another think coming! ”

  Angie gripped the potato-salad-smeared spoon like a bludgeon, her wide blue eyes startling against her flushed skin. “Giff Wills, it ’s you that ’s got another think coming! You didn ’t find one thing to prove Cady killed Ravin, did you? Did you? ”

  Wills eyed the shaking spoon and sidled toward the living room. “Just because I didn ’t find anything doesn ’t mean there ’s nothing to find! ”

  “Oh! You —you —” Angie moved menacingly toward him, sputtering incoherently, and Wills went pale as he backed into the living room, with Angie in hot pursuit, while Neely and Hoffsted turned eyes heavenward and hurried after him. But suddenly Angie halted, distracted by the chaos Wills had left in the wake of his search. From the television, a frizzy-haired woman insisted, “Some men just don ’t know when to stop. ”

  Angie screeched, “What happened here? ”

  “Now, Angie, ” Wills began, one hand raised, palm out, presumably in a gesture of peace. “Angie, just calm down —”

  “Calm down! It looks like a bull elephant was let loose in here, and I just got through cleaning house! ”

  She lunged for Wills, and Conan grabbed her around the waist, for which he was rewarded with a dollop of potato salad in his right eye, while Wills about-faced and ran for the front door, with Neely and Hoffsted right behind him. As they tumbled out onto the stoop, the spoon hurtled through the air, but before it could connect with Wills ’s head, Hoffsted slammed the screen door shut, and the spoon and its gelatinous burden collided with the screen with a mushy twang, stuck for a long moment, then clattered to the floor.

  Angie let out a long, heartrending wail and burst into tears.

  Conan put an arm around her shoulders, and when he heard the departing roar of Wills ’s patrol car, followed by the quieter rumble of Hoffsted ’s, he led her back to the kitchen, settled her in one of the chairs at the table, and found a paper towel to wipe away the potato salad adorning his face. By the time he pulled up another chair and sat down, her tears had run their course. She dabbed at her reddened eyes with a Kleenex. “Oh, I hate this! Every time I get
mad, I start crying. ”

  Conan nodded. “Well, you had provocation enough. ” His sympathy almost started a new bout of weeping, but she firmed her quivering lips and went to the sink to splash water on her face. When she returned to her chair, she seemed in control of herself.

  “Angie, has anyone told you that Gould ’s manuscripts —all three drafts plus his working notebooks —are missing? ”

  “What? ” She sniffed and blinked, then shook her head. “No, nobody told me. Neely asked if I had copies or printouts. But I don ’t. All I have is the first forty pages of the fourth draft on disk. That envelope I took to the bookshop Saturday when…” She looked down at her hands knotted in her lap. “That was the printout of those pages. ”

  “What happened to them? ”

  “I…well, I tore them up when I got home from the bookshop. ”

  Conan frowned. “Why so few pages? Was that just what you happened to grab at the moment? ”

  “That was all I had right then. The way Ravin worked, he ’d go over a chapter or two and mark it up —and sometimes I could hardly read it when he got through —then he ’d give me a bunch of pages to type, anywhere from thirty to a hundred at a time. ”

  “How did he give them to you? ”

  “He ’d call me, and I ’d…go down to his house to pick them up and bring him whatever I ’d been working on. ”

  No doubt those exchanges were made when Savanna was in Portland shopping or otherwise occupied outside the house.

  “Angie, did you type any of the third draft? ”

  “Oh, yes. All of it. ”

  “All of it? But you didn ’t keep a copy of any sort? ”

  Her eyes widened. “Me? Oh Ravin would ’ve killed me if I kept copies of any of it. Of course, while I was working I made backup disks, but when I finished the third draft, he asked for the original disks —there were two of them —and told me to erase the backups. ”

  Conan leaned toward her. “Did you erase them? ”

  “Yes. That was just last week. ”

  He sagged back in his chair. “Do you know what Gould did with the original disks? ”

  “No. Weren ’t they at his house? ”

  “Apparently not. Were they marked? ”

  “Oh, yes. With Ravin ’s name and the title of the book. ”

  Conan nodded. If the disks were well marked, Neely or one of Giff ’s crime scene team would have found them. Of course, it was possible that whoever stole the manuscripts also stole the disks. If they were at the house. And Conan was thinking about the safety deposit box Savanna had cleared out.

  “Angie, do you still have the disks you erased? ”

  “Yes. I started the fourth draft on one of them. Well, they were already marked with Ravin ’s name, so I just put them aside for him. ”

  “Is there any way you can…unerase them? ”

  She shook her head. “No. At least, I can ’t. I guess maybe it could be done if you had the right programs and you really knew what you were doing, but I ’m not much of an expert when it comes to computers. ”

  “You didn ’t erase the forty pages of the last draft? ”

  “Not yet. ”

  “Can you give me a printout? ”

  “Sure. ” She rose, led him to her office. The small room had been intended as a bedroom, but now it was furnished with file cabinets, shelves of accounting manuals and printed forms, and a computer. There was a tiny, rainbow-striped apple on the front, but otherwise it and its accoutrements were a neutral beige, and he wondered if computer manufacturers hadn ’t early on paraphrased Henry Ford and said, “You can paint them any color you like as long as it ’s beige. ”

  Angie looked around the office and breathed a sigh of relief. “Sonny must ’ve searched this room. Thank goodness Giff didn ’t get at it, or I wouldn ’t be able to find anything for a week. ” She patted the computer as if to reassure herself that it was still intact, then had another fond pat for the machine next to it, which Conan assumed was a small copier until Angie said, “This is my pride and joy. It ’s a laser printer. Awfully expensive, but it puts out fabulous copy. Looks like it was printed, and my clients like that, even if it ’s just office accounts. Here, I ’ll run off those pages for you. ”

  While Conan watched with the daunted amazement of one in the presence of arcane skill, she turned on switches, and the screen lighted, then she opened a small file filled with three-and-a-half-inch plastic squares bearing stickers on which she had written identifying notes. She slid one into a slot, waited while the machine made discreet, electronic burps, then when symbols enclosed in rectangles appeared on the screen, she manipulated a palm-sized box and, magically, lines of words appeared. Then another rectangle, more manipulation, after which she rose, leaving the machine to its own devices. The printer began softly whining as typed pages emerged from a slot on top.

  But forty pages did not a manuscript make. “Would you be willing to part with the disks you erased? ” Conan asked. “Maybe I can find an expert who can recover that third draft. ”

  In fact, he had in mind an expert who could recover the third draft if anyone could. Manny Chavez, who lived in a log house fifty miles south in the Coast Range, a house furnished primarily with Manny ’s toys, his computers, on which he sometimes produced games, but more often industrial-strength computer programs that had made him a millionaire. Not that Manny had ever aspired to wealth. It just seemed to happen to him, and one of the beneficiaries of that happenstance was The Earth Conservancy, which was how Conan had first met him.

  Angie took a tremulous breath. “I promised Ravin I ’d never let anybody read his manuscript or even talk to anybody about it. But that doesn ’t matter anymore, does it? ”

  “No. What do you remember about the third draft? About the story. ”

  “Not much, ” Angie replied, frowning. “The trouble is, when you ’re trying to figure out all the little notes and arrows and mark-outs, it ’s hard to keep track of what you ’re typing. What it really means, you know. And besides, I worked on it in bunches in between a lot of typing and accounting for other people. ”

  “But you must remember something about it. ” At least, he fervently hoped so.

  “It was about a guy named Jimmy Silver. Funny name, I thought. It was the story of his life, except it wasn ’t told straight through. ”

  “Gould used flashbacks, then? ” And when she only looked at him blankly, he said, “Never mind. Go on. ”

  “Well, this Jimmy Silver was a writer, and he traveled a lot and got into all kinds of trouble. He was into drugs in California, but that was back when they were doing stuff like LSD. He was a draft dodger, too, but they never caught him. Or did they? He was in jail for a while. In Texas, I think. Or maybe Alaska. And wherever he went, he kept meeting these gorgeous women and, well, going to bed with them. Ravin was…kind of specific about that. Sometimes I ’d be sitting at my Mac just blushing. But sometimes when he wrote about places he ’d been, it was beautiful. Made you feel like you were right there. ”

  “Did Jimmy Silver spend any time on the Oregon coast? In Holliday Beach? ”

  “The Oregon coast, yes, but there wasn ’t anything about Holliday Beach. He grew up in a town called Forsuch Beach. Only, half the time Ravin spelled it Forsook. I asked him about that, and he said it was supposed to be spelled Forsuch, but it was pronounced Forsook. ” She shook her head at that evidence of creative inconsistency.

  “What can you remember about that part of the story? ”

  “Oh, I don ’t know, Conan. I mean, it was scattered through everything else. ” A long sigh, then, “I remember Jimmy ’s father was a logger and a real lowlife. Treated Jimmy and his mother like dirt. ”

  “Can you remember anything about the mother? ”

  “I can ’t even remember what name Ravin used for her. Something terrible happened to her, I think, but that was later. Of course, something terrible happened to nearly everybody. People got beat up or shot or knifed in
just about every chapter. ”

  “What about the father? ”

  “He got killed, too. Or maybe he killed somebody. Or did he just get run out of town? I’m sorry, Conan, I can ’t remember anything else. Like I said, I saw it in pieces, and I wasn ’t reading it like a book, and it was so confusing, the way he wrote it. ”

  Conan stared at the lines of words on the screen. If the writer had been less paranoid, if the typist had been more attentive…

  But at least there was still some hope. The erased disks. He understood only vaguely how information was encoded on those disks. For all he knew, once it was electronically erased, it was gone forever.

  Manny Chavez would know —assuming Conan could get his attention long enough to ask the question.

  “Angie, did you ever hear Gould use the phrase ‘Doctor, lawyer, po-lice chief ’?”

  “No. Police chief? Could that mean Dad? ”

  “I don ’t know. ”

  The printer swished out one last page, then stopped, waiting with machine patience to be commanded into action again. Angie picked up the sheets, and Conan asked, “May I see one of those? ”

  “Sure. ” She handed him a page, and he had to agree that the laser printer put out beautiful copy. It did not, however, produce copy at all like the manuscript fragment he ’d found in the fireplace at the Eyrie. This was a sans serif type, for one thing.

  “Will this thing print in different typefaces, Angie? ”

  “You mean fonts? Yes, I have eight different fonts, but most of the time I use Geneva. That ’s what this one is called. ”

  He returned the page to her. “You used Geneva on the third draft? ”

  “Yes. I think it looks nice. Sort of modern-looking. ” She found a paper clip to fasten the sheets together and gave them to him.

  “Thanks, Angie. Oh —the disks? ”

  “I almost forgot. ” She turned to the computer, maneuvered the small box, and a moment later a disk spewed out of its slot, then she flipped through the file and came up with another. “Here. Oh, Conan, I hope you will find what you ’re looking for on them. ”