The Guise of Another

by Allen Eskens

  With his plans for the next day ready, Alexander jumped into his unmarked car and started for home. He hadn't made it more than a few blocks when his cell phone rang.

  “Hey, Festus,” squawked Billie Rider. “You owe me a beer.”

  “Billie?”

  “Actually, you owe me a couple beers for what I got for you.” Alexander could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Hi, Billie,” Alexander said. “I take it the interview with Patrio went well?”

  “Garland tried to play stupid, but he slipped up. He knew Pope didn't die in the Lower Bay. He also hit on Drago's name.”

  “Tell me all about it—what'd he say?”

  “How about we discuss it over a beer? Your treat. Say, tomorrow night?”

  “Come again?”

  “My boss is sending me to the Twin Cities for a couple days. I'd like to interview Pope's girlfriend and pick up a copy of the hard drive from his computer. I also have a few updates for you.”

  “What updates?”

  “There's some strange shit going on here, Festus. Can you get me a copy of that hard drive?”

  Alexander thought about the deal he made with Ianna. The time had come for the hard drive to become part of the official case file. He was certain Ianna would consent. But he also knew that he had more than enough probable cause now to get the warrant if she didn't.

  “Sure, I can get that,” he said.

  “I have a federal source that gave me some dirt on our mysterious Mr. Prather. I'll tell you about it when I see you. If I'm reading this thing right, it could be big.”

  Alexander smiled. He needed big. “I had a feeling this case had legs,” he said. “I have a lead I'm working that might put a little flesh on the bones. If it pans out, I'll tell you about it when I see you tomorrow.”

  “And…well…since I'm going to be in Minneapolis,” Billie said, stumbling in her delivery the way a teenage boy might step on his tongue when asking out his first date. “You mentioned that you have a brother. I think you called him Max.”

  Alexander started to laugh but then caught himself. “Yeah, you'll like him. He's a beer man too—local brews, like me.”

  “Well, if he's like you, I look forward to meeting him.”

  “It'll be my treat. I'll rustle up a table and call you with the details.”

  Alexander said good-bye and pulled onto a side street. First he called Max and left a message that they were to meet up at Delancy's Pub after work tomorrow. Then his mind turned to a new thought. He needed to see Ianna to get her consent to share the hard drive—or get going on the warrant.

  He picked up his phone to call Ianna, but paused. He put the phone down, turned his car around. This would be a conversation to have in person.

  The security guard at the condo called up to announce Alexander's visit. When Ianna answered her door, Alexander could see that something was wrong. A thin trail of mascara showed the path where the tears had been running down her cheeks. Her stare carried a trace of confusion, like someone lost in her own home. Exhaustion pulled at her eyes, and her hair dangled around her face in a listless sprawl. No lipstick. No blush. She wore a man's shirt, white, collared, pressed, expensive, probably one of Jericho's, its sleeves rolled back to fit her arms, its tails hanging midway down her bare thighs.

  “Are you okay?” Alexander asked.

  “I don't think so.” She turned and paused as if not sure what to do next. Then she walked into the living room and sat on her couch. Alexander followed, closing the door behind him.

  On the coffee table in front of her lay a clutter of old photographs. She picked one up and held it with both hands, a picture of a woman in her early sixties. “My mother died yesterday.” Ianna stared at the picture in her hands, and Alexander saw her lip quiver as she spoke. “I have to go to Wisconsin tonight. I have to identify her.”

  Discarded tissues lay scattered around on the floor, showing that she'd been crying for some time. Alexander sat on the couch beside her. He wanted to put his arm around her and hold her—comfort her. Instead, he put his hand on her back. She didn't react, so he left it there. “What happened?”

  Ianna's words droned hollow and exhausted. “She had a heart attack. She died in her kitchen. She was all I had left.”

  Alexander picked up a photo, one of Ianna and her mother when Ianna must have been in her teens. “She was a beautiful woman,” he said. “You take after her.”

  Ianna blinked and looked at Alexander as though she'd just noticed his presence. She started to smile but then turned away. “I must look terrible.” She ran her fingers through her hair and wiped some of the tears and mascara onto her sleeve.

  “You look…” He wanted to tell her that she looked beautiful—that she looked soft and helpless and wounded. But he stopped himself before he said anything more.

  But then Ianna looked at him with calm expectation in her eyes and said, “I look…how?”

  Alexander paused before answering, then said, “You look like you could use a shoulder.”

  He started to put his arm around her, to offer up a shoulder for her to cry on, when she leaned in and kissed him on the lips. It happened suddenly, yet it seemed as natural as taking a breath. He could taste salt where her tears had crossed her lips. He could feel warmth where her hand came to rest on his chest, a warmth that reached deep inside of him, mending him. They kissed softly at first, then harder. She tugged at his shirt, pulling him closer. He twined his fingers in her soft, blond hair and pressed into her.

  But the kiss lasted only a matter of seconds before a shard of guilt stabbed at his chest, and he pulled back. Her look of confusion sent him stumbling for words.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “I shouldn't have…I don't know…”

  “No,” she said. “You were being kind. I'm the one in the wrong here.” She averted her gaze down to the floor again. “You're married.”

  “It's not that…I mean, yeah, I'm married, but that's not it…it's complicated.”

  “It's okay, Alexander. You don't need to explain. I wanted to kiss you, so I did. This is not on you.”

  “It's just that my life's a bit…messed up right now.”

  “Messed up?” Ianna gave a resigned chuckle. “More messed up than living with a man for three years who didn't even exist? More messed up than getting an eviction notice served on you the same day your mother dies? Honey, let me tell you about messed up.”

  “Eviction notice?”

  “From the condo's lawyer. If I'm not out by the end of the month, they're starting eviction proceedings.”

  “Why?”

  “It's not my apartment.” She shrugged her shoulders. “There's nothing I can do about it.”

  “They won't let you take over the lease?”

  “Probably, if I had the money, but I don't have that kind of cash. I don't know how to make money fall from the sky like James did.”

  “But…” Alexander looked around the apartment at the lavish furnishing. “You guys were rich.”

  “That's the thing. We weren't rich—he was rich. This apartment…these things…they were all his. Sure, he probably has millions in a bank somewhere, but he never made out a will. None of it was my money.”

  “It probably wouldn't have mattered if he made a will anyway,” Alexander said.

  “Why?”

  “Everything I've found out about Jericho Pope tells me that he was involved in blackmail. If that's the case, the government will seize his bank accounts.”

  Ianna smiled a sad smile and looked around the room. “So all this…” She waved a hand around, pointing at the apartment. “This was all bought with blackmail money?”

  Alexander shrugged his shoulders and nodded.

  “So much for the wisdom of Solomon,” she said.

  “Jericho Pope knew a secret that made him rich. That's not wisdom. Whatever he knew goes back to that yacht in New York. Whatever happened in New York is the key to this whole thing.”

  Suddenly Al
exander remembered why he'd come to Ianna's apartment to begin with—to get her consent to share the hard drive. Their kiss had wiped away so many thoughts, both good and bad, that he nearly forgot. He touched a finger to his forehead, tapped a couple times and said, “That reminds me. I need to get your permission to give a copy of Jericho's hard drive to Detective Rider…the investigator from New York.”

  Ianna gave a blank stare.

  “I told you I wouldn't share the hard drive with anyone without your consent, remember?”

  Ianna smiled. “So, you're a man of your word, are you? I'd forgotten what those looked like. Of course you can give it to Detective Rider.” Ianna picked up a pen and one of the pictures, a photo of her, alone, smiling at the camera. She turned the picture over and wrote “I consent to let you share my hard drive” on the back and then signed her name.

  Alexander tucked the photo into his pocket. “I think we're getting close to figuring this whole thing out. Detective Rider's flying in from New York tomorrow, and we're going to compare notes.”

  “Did you learn where he was going on those December trips? Was that part of this blackmail scheme?”

  “It's tied into it somehow. I'm running down a lead tomorrow. I think I found the person he met up with.”

  Ianna hesitated a bit, but then asked, “Man or woman?”

  “It's a woman. I don't know the relationship. I'll know more tomorrow. I could stop by and bring you up to speed.”

  “I'm not sure if I'll be back from Wisconsin tomorrow or not. I have to identify my mother's body so they can release her to the funeral home. I'm not staying long, maybe just overnight. Mom has a sister in Ohio who's driving up to take care of the funeral arrangements. She wants mom buried next to their parents in Canton.” Ianna rolled her eyes to suggest that she was skipping over a much longer story. “I'm not going to argue. I told her to tell me where and when and I'll be at the funeral.”

  Alexander mentally kicked himself. “I'm an idiot,” he muttered. “You have all this going on, and here I am prattling on about Jericho Pope.” Alexander stood. “I should go.”

  Ianna also rose and followed him as he walked to the door.

  Detective Rider said that this thing may be big. She didn't go in to detail, but…” Alexander stopped at the door and turned to Ianna. “Well, there's no way around it. Like it or not, you're in the middle of all this. I mean Jericho was the eye of that storm. Now that he's dead…I guess what I'm saying is be careful.”

  Alexander reached to open the door, his hand finding the doorknob the same moment that Ianna's hand found his. She folded her fingers around his and gave a light squeeze. Alexander squeezed back.

  “I mean it,” he said. “Take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” she whispered. “And you too.”

  “Call me when you get back.”

  “I'll call,” she said. “I promise.”

  Drago Basta sat in a chair in his hotel room, watching the screen of his laptop computer, waiting for the tiny blip of light—the tracking device—to move. The police would have found Magda's dead body, the phone he used to dial 911 lying next to her cold hand. If Drago had calculated correctly, Ianna's name would be on the next-of-kin form at their local hospital. They would call Ianna and, if Ianna had any feelings for her mother, she would go to her dead mother's side. The questions that remained unanswered were: when would she leave, and for how long would she be gone?

  The sun began to set in the west before the tiny red dot on Drago's computer screen moved. He watched it leave the Twin Cities and head east on Interstate 94. In an hour, Ianna Markova would be in Wisconsin, and he would be in her apartment. He packed his gear and drove to a parking ramp near Jericho's condo. Then he carried his computer and his rucksack full of supplies to the park bench across the street. He had figured out a way to use the condo's motion-detection system to his favor. All he needed was a vacant apartment. And to find one of those, he needed the night.

  He waited as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, and he watched for lights to come on in the living rooms and bedrooms of the apartments on the first floor. If an apartment remained dark, it would likely be empty.

  Once the dark of night had settled in, he picked up a piece of asphalt about the size of a softball, found a dark apartment, and gave a quick look around to see if anyone was watching him. Seeing no one, he chucked the asphalt through the sliding-glass door of the apartment. A light from inside snapped on simultaneous to the crash. Motion detectors, Drago thought, and that would trigger the silent alarm.

  Drago walked quickly to the condo entrance. From there, he watched the young security guard place a phone call, presumably to the apartment whose silent alarm had been tripped. When the boy received no answer, he hung up the phone and walked into the small office. Drago could see a red light flashing on a panel on the office wall—the apartment whose door he smashed. The security guard would need to investigate the disturbance. For that he would need their security code.

  Just as Drago expected, the security guard opened a drawer and pulled out a black book. Drago smiled. His plan depended on getting the code for Pope's apartment, and now he watched as the security guard ran a finger down what had to be the list of security passcodes. The boy closed the book, put it back into the drawer, and walked to the staircase, heading up to the apartment on the first floor.

  As soon as the staircase door closed, Drago walked into the vestibule, pulled Mr. Cutcher's key card out, and swiped it. The door clicked open. Keeping the bill of his cap low over his eyes to block the surveillance-camera shot, he crossed to the office and quickly found the black book with the security passcodes. He looked at the four-digit code for the penthouse unit, committed it to memory, and put the book back into the drawer.

  As he walked to the elevator, a blade of movement caught his peripheral vision. Someone was entering the vestibule. He didn't look for longer than a short glance to confirm that it was a man. The elevator door opened right away for Drago, and he stepped in. The man from the vestibule had gained entry into the lobby and was crossing to the elevator as the elevator doors began to shut.

  “Hey, buddy,” the man called out. “Hold the door.”

  Drago turned away from the man and slid his hand beneath his jacket, gripping the handle of his Glock. He heard the elevator doors shut behind him and the man yell, “What the hell!” The man would be diving for the button about now, hoping to catch the elevator before it left the lobby. Drago waited for the door to open. It didn't. The man should thank whichever god favored him for having missed the elevator that night.

  Drago Basta stepped off the elevator and into the antechamber between the elevator and the entrance to unit 2000—the penthouse of Jericho Pope. He pulled his lock-pick set from his pocket, slid the tension wrench into the keyhole, and then inserted the rake. The lock opened easily, and Drago stepped into the apartment. He pressed the four-digit code into the security pad on the wall and watched the flashing lights on the pad turn from red to green. No dogs and no cats, so no reason to expect any company. Drago took a moment to scan the area, and then got to work.

  The first thing Drago did in the apartment was to find the computer's Internet router in the office. If he could link into the apartment's router, he could examine Pope's search history. He lifted the router and looked underneath, and there, just as the manufacturer suggests, Jericho stored a small card with the router password on it. Once online, he accessed the tracking software, which showed Ianna's car still heading through Wisconsin.

  His search for the flash drive began in Jericho's office. He fired up Jericho's computer, and as the computer woke up, he collected CDs, cameras, cell phones, DVDs, flash drives—any vessel that could hold electronic video data—and stacked the media on the desk for inspection.

  Once the computer finished its boot sequence, he searched the hard drive for video files, finding a sampling of home movies and vacation videos, nothing he wanted to see. He expanded his search to look for p
ictures, flipping file after file as quickly as he could, looking for a familiar shot from the night on the Domuscuta. He paused for a minute when he stumbled upon some pictures of Ianna Markova in the nude. He admired the shots for their artful aesthetics, but quickly moved on.

  He finished searching the hard drive around midnight and came up empty. He clicked the web browser and delved into the browser preferences, finding no evidence of off-site data storage. He explored the computer's web history, not so much in search of the footage, but to get a feel for whom Pope had become. Wayne Garland's voice floated into Drago's thoughts, a lesson that Garland had imparted from the teachings of Sun Tzu. If you know your opponent and you know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. Drago wanted to know everything he could about Jericho Pope.

  Pope kept his Internet footprint small, knowing that Patrio would never stop looking for him. Ianna, on the other hand, had searches all over the Internet, mostly mind-numbing entertainment news and vapid fashion sites.

  Her most recent history, however, focused on a police detective named Alexander Rupert. Ianna had read stories about his career, his commendations for bravery, and a full feature on his time as an undercover cop. She also found his name in an article describing the disbanding of a Task Force he was on and the allegations of corruption that he and the others were facing.

  Her last history, a flurry of searches done just before she left for Wisconsin, was a series of links that revolved around Desiree Rupert: a professional profile on LinkedIn, a Facebook page, news articles, images. Ianna clicked onto multiple links that mentioned the detective's wife.

  What was it about this cop's wife that Ianna found so interesting—so urgent that she would delay her trip over it? Detective Rupert must have been working the Pope case from the Minnesota side. That made sense. He would have visited Ianna and asked her about Pope. But why spend so much time on the wife?