That whole little scene had been quite interesting. I wasn’t sure exactly what the hell had been going down, but the undercurrent had been strong enough to drown an Olympic swimmer. Our lad Everet was some piece of work, as the expression goes, and there was more to him and what he did at the bank, and who he did it for, than met the eye. He was obviously quite a character, but the thing is I like people with character. It makes life a bit more tolerable during the dull bits. There was something going on between Fred and Everet, but what? And did it relate in any way to the job I was trying to do for Marsh? And if Marsh went by the name of Barry, why hadn’t anyone mentioned him in that context as of yet? And if Marsh wasn’t Barry, why did Everet say I was working for Barry, when Fred had just said I was working for Marsh? Questions, questions. I turned back to the problem at hand.
Midori was studying a poster on the wall over the workbench across the room, depicting the innermost secrets of modern Winchester hard disk drive technology. It seemed to have been done by someone who actually knew a lot about it, and had tried to impart every last scrap of knowledge through the medium of annotated graphic art. Either she was avoiding the whole issue we were dealing with here, or she was a closet ‘techie’. You never know with people.
Fred had started sorting out the gear, pulling stuff off of the top of the pile and laying it about the bench. The system components marked with the red dot were obvious. It was a fairly large sticker with a fluorescent colour, apparently put there by Everet for our benefit. I dug in.
In a few minutes, we had J.D.’s system separated from the rest of the junk. What we were left with was a clone mini-tower type system that looked loaded, even from the outside, but wouldn’t boot at all when we hooked it up and applied power. In fact, the power light didn’t even come on.
Midori was sitting on the stool at the workbench across from us, reading an old bank newsletter that someone had left on the desk. I think boredom had set in. She wasn’t commenting at this point, or looking on in wonder, or any of that other helpful stuff. Fred seemed to be taking it in stride.
“Well Mr. Claxton, it doesn’t seem to be operational. I really can’t think why, because it was working when it was… uh, returned to stock. I guess we’ll have to get Everet to look at it when he has a chance. Maybe he can tell you what you need to know.” Fred gave me that ‘Well that’s that, let’s wrap it up’ kind of look, expectant and all.
I smiled politely. “Well Fred, I don’t think it’ll be necessary to bother Everet over this. Just bear with me for about ninety seconds, Okay?”
Not waiting for an answer, I pulled my genuine Swiss Army pocketknife out of my jacket pocket and opened up the flat screwdriver section. I love my pocketknife, and I take it everywhere I go. It’s not one of those million and one gizmo versions, it’s the real thing. The kind they issue to the Swiss Army. I know that for a fact, because it was given to me by someone who was in the Swiss Army at the time.
All of the tools on it are made of fine quality steel. It only has one blade, about 2¾ inch long, but of course it’s as sharp as a razor. Then it has a can opener, with a small flat-blade screwdriver on the end. It also has a bottle opener, with a medium flat-blade screwdriver on the end. Last, but not least, is the tool that I still haven’t been able to name properly. It’s stubby, tapering to an evil point, and only about an inch and a half long. I’m sure you could puncture the steel casing of a fifty-gallon steel drum with it in a pinch. The whole package folds up into a handy ⅞ inch thick by 3⅝ inch long. Its cover is made from knurled stainless steel, and it’s a fair bet that it could survive being run over by a careless tank commander. I just love stuff when it’s the real thing.
A couple of screws were all that were holding the cover on, and they were loose to start with. Clue number one. I had it opened up in about thirty seconds. I laid the tower frame on its side and perused the interior. From the side of my eye I watched Fred watching me, not looking at the opened PC. I did my level best to ignore him for the moment. What I was seeing was too interesting to tear my attention away. It appeared that our dearly departed had been quite the computer nut, because this system was in no way a routine desktop, even for a company with money to burn, such as a bank. Not even a big bank.
I turned and looked Fred directly in the eye. “What’s your next move?” Fred asked.
His question came in on the tail of his answer to mine, fast enough to irritate me. Maybe it was just the headache I was getting from the drinks at the Nag’s Head earlier on. I ignored him some more. I quickly put the power cable back on the motherboard, connected the monitor and turned the system on. As soon as it started to go through the power on self-test, I hit the delete key, which took me directly to the BIOS setup. I wrote down the parameters listed for the missing hard drive, and turned off the power. Then I turned my attention back to Fred.
“What I’d like from you now Fred, is the hard drive that was in this system. See if you have a record of where it went. I would also like to see the requisition papers for the upgrade that’s been done on this machine. The asset number on the case matches, but what’s inside doesn’t conform to the listed configuration. By a long shot. When you find out, please give Midori a call. She’ll pass it on.”
At the mention of her name Midori dropped her pretense of reading and stood up from the workbench.
“Time to go, maybe?” Her look was hopeful, and I obliged her.
Fred fawned over us both on the way out, while I held on to my irritation, and Midori continued to show her lack of interest. Our exit was uneventful.
Once out on the street, she looked up at me and smiled quickly. “I’m sort of tired, and I have more work to do for the morning. I’d better be on my way. You have my number, of course.”
I admitted that I did indeed have her number, and hailed her a cab. The sky was grey, and darkening with twilight. It wasn’t cool yet, but the humidity made the air feel heavy and damp. I flagged a cab of my own and went home to think.
~
Chapter Four
T
he apartment was very quiet when I came in. This is actually quite normal, as I don’t live with anyone else, and I don’t have pets. Ordinarily, it’s not something that strikes me when I come home. ‘Oh, my house is so quiet.’ It was a strange feeling, but not very strong, just there enough to bug me. I started thinking about Midori, the way she looked walking into the Nags’ Head. That just seemed to make the background headache act up a little more, so I went and got two aspirins from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and swallowed them with some tap water.
I put my cell-phone into the charger, threw my jacket onto the printer table, and rolled up my sleeves as I walked into the office. It was time to make some notes. I have a system of sorts when it comes to detection. It involves a first step where I put everything I know or want to know onto a master document. Then I sort, cut, and paste until it’s in a controllable format. I turned on the computer, opened a new document file and started notating, pulling bits and pieces from the file I had started the day before, trying to build something sensible out of the whole thing. It’s not always easy to get a feel for the proper direction I need to pursue right off the bat, but it’s important to identify the questions that will eventually lead me there.
The cerebral twilight zone I had put myself into eventually weakened, and I glanced at my watch. It had been an hour and forty-five minutes since I started writing, and I had a couple of dozen pages filled with minor facts, major questions, and scads of speculations. I pushed away from the desk and stretched, feeling the day in my bones. I would have to condense this down to about one page of pertinent points to follow up on. That would wait until I heard from George, who no doubt would have as much or more to add, knowing him. I got up and went into the kitchen to look for a snack. It had been too long since I had eaten, and the hunger I felt had hit me all at once. I was ravenous.
I put together a sandwich from what was there, which wasn’t much. Some rathe
r firm Emmental cheese and a rather soft tomato, which would have given me some trouble with the slicing if I didn’t keep such a keen edge on all my kitchen knives. When you’re well prepared, the little things don’t catch you. It fit neatly on fresh rye, and I topped it off with a touch of hot English mustard, grabbed a cold bottle of Heineken from the ‘fridge and headed back to the office.
My hands were full of sandwich, paper napkins, and beer, and I was looking forward to scoffing it all. So, of course the telephone rang. There was no point in hurrying, that’s why I had an answering machine. I set my dinner down on the desk and checked my watch just as the machine kicked in on the fourth ring. It was 8:40 PM, and unless it was George, I was going to eat first and talk later. George’s voice piped out of the small speaker in the tape deck.
“Jeff, pickup!” So it goes. I picked up.
“High George, I was just going to have a bite to eat. How did you make out today?”
“We have more than we want to know about already, and I think it just gets worse from here on in. Come on over. Let’s trade notes, and decide whether or not you should continue to be active on this.” There was an odd tone to his voice, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit. George had never even hinted at backing off in the past, and he was always searching for cases to turn over to me. He believed in my work, and my ability to do it well. I didn’t know what to say, so I agreed. “Alright, I’ll be there in a half hour.” I looked down at my sad little sandwich, and added, “Uh… has Sarah got something decent I could nibble on while we work?”
“Jeff, just get your butt over here, OK? She’ll find you something, she always does.” The line went dead.
I hadn’t liked the tone of George’s voice when he’d hung up the telephone, and I was anxious to hear what he had to tell me. I shut down the office and picked up my jacket and keys as I left the apartment. It only took me twenty-two minutes to pull up across the street from their place. The new V6’s can actually hold their own if you give them a chance.
George opened the door immediately when I rang the bell, which meant that he had been entertaining guests in the living room, or he had been waiting for me by the door. I could tell from his face that he didn’t have guests. He stepped back as I came in and commented, “Sarah’s got a plate of shepherd's pie warming in the oven. She’ll bring it up when it’s done. Come on.” He turned and headed up the stairs. I followed, but I didn’t like it. This felt strange to me. There was a mood in the air that I couldn’t define, and was making me tense.
We settled down in the office, with me in my usual chair. George made sure we both had a cold beer from the office fridge, then sat at his desk, half facing me, half away from me, looking at something far away. He didn’t say anything right away, so I did.
“Will you tell me what’s going on in that head of yours, or do I have to guess?”
He sighed and sat back in his chair. “Ok, look. Things have gotten a little complicated. Well, more than a little I suppose. Let me lay it out for you.” I sat there wondering what was coming next, and letting George have the floor so I could find out, while he took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet.
“First of all, let’s talk about the poison. As I mentioned the other day, the lab says it was a rare toxin of some sort. Now that they’ve had a few days to work at it, they’re saying that it’s so rare they still can’t tell us exactly what it is, because they’ve never seen anything quite like it before. What they can tell us though…” At this point he picked a small notebook up off the desktop and flipped it open. He read me the facts…” is that it’s self-neutralizing. At least in a medium of human blood. If the body had been undiscovered for another seven to eight hours there wouldn’t have been a trace left in his system. Which wouldn’t have mattered because the flechette, or dart if you will, was left in his neck. There would still have been traces on the dart at that time, but, if the dart had been removed, chances are that even finding him when we did, we might not have known how he really died, because heart failure was so obvious. Anyway, the toxin itself is of some interest. It’s related in some small way to a type of fish-toxin that’s used by the Voodoo cult in Haiti. Its initial effect would be immediate if not instantaneous paralysis, slowing down the body’s’ metabolism to an almost death-like state. That’s where the similarity ends though. Whereas in Haiti the purpose of the drug they have is used for ‘faking’ death, this one has a two-stage effect, the second stage of which is death. In all cases, even with a dose so small you’d need glasses to see it. After it enters the system, you get paralysis, then while that’s going on, which can last for hours, the central nervous system is being ravaged to the point of final, and permanent, collapse. Hence, death. This confirms for us only that we cannot be sure exactly when the poison was administered. The dart, get this, was made from the bone of a bird, and the tiny feathers on it were a sort of down feather, most likely from a Parrot, or tropical bird of some sort.”
I couldn’t help myself. “A Parrot?”
George just nodded. “That’s what I said. Anyway, there’s more, so settle down, OK?” This time I nodded.
“Right, now for the rest. It turns out that Dawson’s girlfriend is missing. His fiancée, actually. And his brother. The family was to be notified prior to any release of names to the Press, as is usual in this type of situation. So. We start looking for family, and we come up empty. He was engaged to be married, to a woman from Montreal.” He glanced at the notebook. “Fiancée, Therese Madelaine Sauvé. Age: twenty-three. Current occupation: ballerina. Current employer: The National Ballet of Canada. Current place of residence: Dawson’s apartment in north Scarborough. Current whereabouts: unknown. Last seen: the day Dawson died.” He paused, glancing up momentarily before continuing. Maybe just to see if I was taking this all in.
“Brother: Thomas Ryan Dawson. Age: forty-one. Current occupation: pilot. Current employer: The Brazilian Ministry of Industry & Natural Resources. Current place of residence: Government bachelor quarters, in Sao Paolo. That’s Sao Paolo in Brazil. Current whereabouts: unknown. Last seen: Rio De Janeiro, international airport. Taking a flight to Amsterdam for a weekend leave. He had a return ticket. Four days prior to the death of John Dawson.” He gave me another quick look. “Parents: deceased. Other surviving relatives: unknown at this time.” George closed the notebook and tossed it back onto the desktop with a sigh. He was massaging the bridge of his nose with closed eyes, when Sarah walked in with a plate for me. She looked at me, then looked at George. He nodded to her briefly. She set the tray down on the side table next to my chair, all the while managing not to look directly at me. As she walked out of the room, she said, “Watch the plate, it’s hot.”
The air was thick enough to cut with a knife. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to feel when I was in my sister’s house. I had no desire to eat suddenly, as I gave George a severe stare, and waited for the punchline. He didn’t oblige me, but instead leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his stomach. I got the feeling there was more to come, so I settled back myself, and we both ignored the tray of food. George took a moment to catch his breath, and then started in again.
“There was some confusion in the Department about this case as soon as we were called in, but it just compounds itself the deeper we delve. Dawson’s’ apartment was checked initially, and Therese wasn’t home. Under the circumstances, we were granted an entry & search permit, and… well, it looked quite normal. Nobody home, everything in the place looked like it was where it should be, there were no signs of violence, nothing out of the ordinary. As I said quite normal. We put a uniform on the door, to wait for Therese Sauvé to come home, and carried on with the case. At the time, it was assumed that she might be out shopping, or whatever. The Director of the National Ballet was contacted, and her schedule confirmed. She had finished a rehearsal, or workout session, whatever, at 2:00 PM that same afternoon, and headed for home. All confirmed by the uniforms assigned to follow it up. Then nothing. The one t
hing that seemed odd when I was going over the preliminary report, was that the stereo was on. When the apartment was first entered. Martin Craine was the ranking Constable on the scene, and he picked up on it. He’s always been pretty sharp, and he can’t wait to make Detective. Seeing that Lieutenant Courtney was on the scene too, and he didn’t catch it, I might have to consider giving Craine a shot at the exams this fall when he becomes eligible.” I broke into his monologue sharply.
“George, for God’s sake, man. Don’t dodge the issue, just get on with it.” I was beginning to run out of patience, and I was famous for my patience. The story George was unfolding for me had started out on an ominous tone, then he’d rambled off into Department politics. I was ready to forego my dinner to find out why the tension around here was so high, but not to catch up on office gossip.
He recovered quickly, paying no mind to my irritation. “Right, then, where were we…”
“The stereo.” I think I was starting to growl a bit. This time he seemed a bit more apologetic.
“Sorry, yes the stereo.” He picked up his notebook again, and flipped it open. “It was set on continuous play, like, uh, it keeps playing, until you stop it, right?”
“Right. I am familiar with the concept of continuous play.” I added helpfully. Then a thought struck me, and I asked the question, knowing I would regret it. “Wait, if the stereo was playing when the guys went into the apartment, why was it such a big bloody deal that Craine noticed it? And why didn’t anyone else notice? That doesn’t make sense.” Even to myself I sounded a bit whiney now. George never went about his business in anything but the most professional of manner, and this seemingly long-winded briefing had to be leading somewhere very interesting. The problem was, that the thought was crossing my mind even as I asked the obvious that we had arrived at the interesting bit. George wasn’t just rambling on; he was about to tell me what I hadn’t been able to see yet. I started to relax a bit, and try to catch the flow of it all. I held up my hand to him as he started to reply.
The Diamond Dust on Dragonfly Wings: A Jeffry Claxton Mystery Novel Page 10
