The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

  As he traveled north he left the Mission behind and cruised into SoMa, the silly urbanized abbreviation of “South of Market.” It was also known—mostly among the old-timers—by the more interesting nic “South of the Slots,” after a now-defunct cable car that had run along Market. Like the Mission, SoMa had a colorful history but now that color was giving way to enterprise. This was home to scores of corporate headquarters, museums, galleries and traditional performing venues. What would the punksters have said?

  Shaw soon arrived at the library, which was located on the north border of SoMa, the more affluent portion of the neighborhood. This portion of SoMa was close to the financial district and the legal firms and corporations that would use the services of a university business library.

  Shaw pulled to the curb and idled his bike across the street from the library, which was a functional two-story structure constructed of glass and aluminum framing. Architecturally, the place didn’t approach interesting. But Shaw observed it closely. He saw people were coming and going, dressed in conservative business attire for the most part. Some messengers, a few delivery people.

  He pretended to make a phone call as he observed the entry procedures.

  There was one entrance into a large lobby and inside were two doorways. One, to the left facing the guard station, was for visitors. The other, to the right, was members only. Visitors to the public side had to walk through a metal detector and dump pocket litter into a basket for examination. You also needed to display an ID, and your name was jotted down on a clipboard sheet, but there was no confirmation of your identity.

  He dropped the bike into gear and drove up the block to a space reserved for cycles and scooters. He locked the Yamaha to a post with a snaky cable. He affixed his helmet too. Looking around, he slipped the holstered gun and blade into a locked compartment, under the seat, he’d built for this purpose. He’d made sure the hidden GPS transmit system, like a LoJack, was active—even a double-chained motorcycle can be stolen by a determined thief.

  Colter Shaw didn’t like leaving the weapons but there was no option. Then he reminded himself not to let his father’s paranoia enwrap him entirely. After all, how much trouble could he possibly get himself into in a library?

  8

  He had his story ready.

  Legal associate Carter Skye, of the law firm Dorion & Dove, had been sent by his firm to look up an insurance law issue. This cover was not made up entirely out of whole cloth. When he was a legal assistant years ago, he’d had to do some research on the topic for one of the partners. It was a tricky question of subrogation—when an insurance company pays off a claim and then earns the right to sue in the insured’s name.

  The pleasant Latino guard, however, had no interest in what Skye/Shaw’s purpose might be, and Shaw had been undercover enough times to know never to make an otherwise innocent story seem suspicious by volunteering information.

  “There a charge?” he asked.

  The man explained that if you weren’t affiliated with a school, entrance was ten dollars, which Shaw handed over in cash. Then, on request, he displayed his ID, which happened to feature his picture, height, weight and eye color, but the name, Skye, was his cover from his most recent undercover role. Mack was an expert at ginning up new identities. (This was completely legal as long as you didn’t try to trick the law or scam someone.)

  A machine hummed and out eased a sticky-backed badge with his picture on it. He plastered it onto his chest.

  Shaw debated about showing the picture of Amos Gahl—he’d taken a shot with his phone from the article about the man’s death—and asking if the guard remembered his being in here. The man, though, was young and if Gahl had used the library it would have been years ago.

  “What’s over there?” Shaw pointed to the double doors to the right.

  Members Only

  “Historical documents mostly.”

  “Legal?”

  “Some. And planning and zoning, real estate, government filings.”

  “That right? My partners’re handling a case with some issues going back thirty, forty years. I’m looking for some old housing rulings that city hall doesn’t have. Is there any way I can get in?”

  He hoped a senior librarian wouldn’t pop out and ask what, specifically, he wanted.

  “You gotta make an appointment. Call this number.” The man handed Shaw a card, which vanished into his jeans pocket. It was more likely that his father or Gahl had used the public side of the place. If he found nothing there, maybe he’d bone up on old California real estate law and try to get inside the private portion.

  Shaw thanked the man and then walked through the unresponsive metal detector into the spacious and well-lit open-to-the-public portion of the library.

  Now, where to go from here?

  It was an upscale facility, as you might expect, being attached to one of the best endowed universities in the country. In the center was a librarian’s station, circular. A Black man of about thirty-five in a beige suit sat there, focused on his computer monitor.

  Radiating outward from the center were rows of tables and spacious computer workstations with large monitors. The screen saver—a moving block of the name of the library—ricocheted in a leisurely fashion around each monitor. The desks and cubicles offered office supplies: pens, pads of paper, Post-it notes and paper clips. Ringing this open space were the stacks, containing books and periodicals. There were floor-to-ceiling windows in the front and on the side. Against the back wall were what seemed to be a dozen offices or conference rooms. Circling the second-floor balcony was a series of stacks and rooms, just as down here.

  There weren’t many patrons in this portion of the first floor. Two older businessmen who’d doffed their suit jackets pored over old books. A young woman in a plaid dress and a slim man in a dark suit and white shirt—both looked to be mid-thirties—were on computers.

  Instinctively Shaw examined the library for escape routes. He sensed no threat, of course, but scanning for exits was a survival thing. He did it everywhere he went, automatically.

  Never lose your orientation . . .

  There was the front door, of course, and a stairway that led to the second floor. An elevator. A glass door in the back of the stacks led to the members-only side of the library. It opened onto a conference room, which might lead to other exits in the back of the structure, though it was presently occupied; a middle-aged businesswoman in a suit and a lean man in dark casual jacket sat with their backs to the glass door. A somber-faced man with bright blond hair sat across the table from them. The door had a latch but Shaw had no way of knowing whether or not it was now locked.

  The left-side floor-to-ceiling windows featured a fire door, fitted with an alarm. It exited onto a side street. There were men’s and women’s restrooms, and a door on which was a sign: supplies.

  He tucked this information away and got to work. Assuming that his father had identified the library as a place where Gahl might have hidden the evidence, where would the man have concealed it?

  Shaw guessed that he probably had not stashed the entire courier bag, which he guessed from the name was not a slim piece of luggage; it would be conspicuous. He would probably have emptied it and put the contents—copies of incriminating emails, correspondence, spreadsheets, computer drives or disks, whatever it might be—in an out-of-the-way place. Maybe in the pages of a book or journal, maybe in the shadowy areas behind the volumes in the stacks or on top of the racks, maybe in the spaces beneath drawers in a workstation.

  He strolled through the stacks, filled with such titles as Liability in Maritime Collision Claims: Bays and Harbors; Piercing the Corporate Veil; Incorporation Guide for Nonprofits. Easily four or five thousand books. He noted that many were outdated, like Who’s Who of San Francisco Commerce: 1948. What better hiding place for documents or a CD or thumb drive than a book of that sort? In plain
sight, yet inside a volume that no one would possibly need to refer to.

  Yet Shaw calculated it would take a month to go through all the volumes. And it would be impossible to do that without arousing suspicion . . . No, Gahl was not a stupid man. He hid the evidence because he knew there was a chance he would be killed. It would be hidden in a place that somebody, a colleague, the police, could deduce.

  Shaw noticed the librarian was looking his way.

  He nodded a friendly greeting to the man, walked to one of the workstations and sat down. A swipe of the mouse revealed the main screen to be an internal database of the library’s contents. Just what he wanted. He typed in Gahl, Amos. Nothing. Then Shaw, Ashton. Negative on that too.

  But with BlackBridge, he had a hit.

  The reference was to a book titled California Corporate Licenses, Volume I.

  Had Gahl reasoned that Ashton Shaw or someone would do this very thing, run a computer search for the company, and accordingly hidden the evidence in the book?

  An elegant and simple clue.

  The listing sent Shaw to a stack near the librarian station. Yes, there was the book: thick and bound in dark red faux leather. He lifted the tome off the shelf and set it on the floor. Then he removed the adjoining volumes and examined the space behind them. Seeing nothing, he reached in and felt along the cool metal. Nothing. He returned the other books and took Corporate Licenses back to the workstation.

  He began his examination, first opening up the book to see if Gahl had hollowed out a portion and slipped a thumb drive or chip inside. No, he hadn’t. Nor were there any folded documents or notes between pages. The book was simply a listing of corporations with licenses to do business in the state. Shaw turned next to the BlackBridge entry, thinking that would be a logical place to hide something or to leave a message about where the material was. Nothing. Shaw read the listing. The company was merely mentioned by name, without any other information. The headquarters was given as being in Los Angeles, which Shaw already knew, with offices in San Francisco and other cities.

  He examined the hefty volume page by page. No evidence, no notes, no margin jottings. He probed into the spine too.

  Nothing.

  Hell. He re-shelved it and returned once more to the computer.

  More searches. The councilman who’d been killed by BlackBridge: Zaleski, Todd. No hits there. Had Gahl been clever with anagrams or other subtle clues? He typed in variations on the search terms.

  He tried UIP and Urban Improvement Plan.

  Without success.

  He deleted his search history then swiped the computer to sleep, deciding that it was likely the library wasn’t a possible hiding space for Gahl’s materials after all. Maybe Shaw’s other theory was correct. His father simply had used the library’s computers to do online searches.

  So, a waste of time.

  Colter Shaw, however, corrected himself. No, that wasn’t true; eliminating a possible lead is never a waste; the visit had gotten him one step closer to his goal. He’d learned to embrace this attitude in the reward-seeking business. Step by step by step.

  It was time to get to the warehouse in the Embarcadero and the home in Burlingame, the last best chances for finding the evidence.

  Before he left, though, he pulled out his phone and called up the tracking app, receiving data from the device he’d hidden in the copy of Walden, which Braxton and Droon presumably still had with them.

  He was disappointed to see that the tracker was malfunctioning. The map that popped up showed Shaw’s, not the book’s, location. Well, he hadn’t believed the device would last forever. He then frowned and noticed that the pinging circle indicating the whereabouts of the tracker was coming not exactly from where Shaw sat but about thirty or so feet away.

  A refresh of the system. The ping remained in the exact position it had been a moment ago.

  No, impossible . . .

  His breathing coming quickly, pulse tapping hard, he sent a text to Mack, including the code they used for immediate attention, asking her about the library.

  In sixty seconds—the woman seemed always to be on duty—her response was:

  Library has no affiliation with Stanford or any other university. Owned by an offshore corporation. CEO is Ian Helms, head of BlackBridge. R U there now?

  He texted:

  Yes.

  Two seconds later his phone hummed with her reply.

  GTFO.

  This was a variation on the emergency plan all survivalists have, to escape when an enemy is coming for you. The more common, and less coarse, version is: Get the Hell Out.

  9

  The library was a cover.

  It was the members-only portion of the building and not the high-rise on Sutter Street downtown that was BlackBridge’s base of operation in San Francisco.

  Shaw gazed in the direction where the tracker indicated the book was, and he realized that Irena Braxton and Ebbitt Droon were the very people whose backs he’d noted through the glass door that opened onto the other side of the building.

  He glanced once more that way and saw a fourth man in the conference room. He was pacing, arms crossed, as he appeared to be debating something. He posed a question, it seemed—his hands were raised and his face appeared irritated. Then, when someone must have answered, he nodded and he paced some more, gazing absently into the public side of the library.

  It was the CEO, Ian Helms. The athletic, handsome man wore a well-tailored suit and a Rolex on one wrist, a bracelet on the other, both gold.

  This was the first time Colter Shaw had glimpsed the man responsible for his father’s death.

  Helms would probably have no idea what Shaw looked like but it was not the time to take any chances. He slipped from the workstation and disappeared into the far reaches of the stacks.

  GTFO . . .

  He started to circle around the perimeter of the library to the front door. He kept his head down, moving steadily but not too fast through the stacks.

  Only twenty feet later he stopped.

  He’d been busted.

  From the shadows of the rows of books, Shaw saw a large security guard in a dark suit enter the public side of the building from the lobby. The well-tanned man’s head was cocked and he appeared to be listening to the Secret Service–type earpiece with a curly wire that disappeared into his jacket. He walked to the librarian at the central station. They shared some words, both of them looking around. The guard’s jacket parted and the grip of a pistol showed. A second guard joined them. He was slimmer and more pale than the first, but tall too. Also armed. Shaw noted his hand was near his own pistol.

  How would they have learned about him?

  Then he got his answer:

  The taller guard, more a bouncer than your average rent-a-cop, strode forward to the terminal where Shaw had sat and gazed about. The slimmer one joined him.

  Shaw had just typed in a smorgasbord of words that would turn the bots within the system into frenzied hounds.

  Shaw . . . Gahl . . . BlackBridge.

  Some software had been programmed to report in when keywords were searched. The computer had dimed him out.

  And it got even better, Shaw thought sardonically. Peering through the stacks, he noted that right above the volume in which he’d found BlackBridge’s name was a security camera. The book might’ve been placed there for that very reason: to get a picture of anyone with an interest in the company. The bigger guard was now looking at a monitor at the librarian’s station. Both security people turned to the spot where the volume had been shelved.

  Okay, escape plans.

  Toss a book in the opposite direction and when the guards moved toward it, just sprint out the front?

  No, that wouldn’t work. Droon, Braxton and the BlackBridge op with the bleached blond hair had now joined in. They were in the lobby and headed for
the public section of the library. Alarm showed in Braxton’s face. Droon and Blond were as focused as hunters closing in on an elk. They were accompanied by Ian Helms.

  Shaw slipped toward the back wall, hidden by the rows upon rows of books. As he moved to the rear of the facility he noted that many of the titles were duplicated. Two, three, a dozen times. This added to the supposition that while one might do some legitimate research in this portion of the library it was also a trap.

  BlackBridge security people would have come up with the tactic. Anyone with an interest in the company—investigators, competitors, those with a grudge or out for revenge—might find clues that led to the library. There would be minimal security to get inside. Then the interloper would ask some questions of the librarian or, like Shaw, type in a computer search, and he’d get tagged as a threat.

  They would then use sophisticated facial recognition and other techniques to identify the person and decide what kind of risk they were, or—depending on what they browsed—that they were no threat at all. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find that BlackBridge had some DNA scanner on doorknobs and computer keypads. Certainly devices would be capturing fingerprints and retinal patterns.

  The offenders would then leave, having conveniently deposited their names in the database that BlackBridge was sure to maintain.

  Or, perhaps, the inquisitive customers would not leave at all.

  Maybe Ashton had suspected this was a BlackBridge facility and was going to check it out but was killed before he had a chance. That might have been how his father came by the business card Shaw had found in the secret room on Alvarez Street.

  The bigger guard was glancing back at Irena Braxton and pointing his finger directly at the chair in front of the computer where Shaw had been sitting a few minutes ago.