“That’s enough!” Luke ordered, pulling Chad away from her. “Back off and calm down!”
The rage in Chad’s face was frightening, but he backed off and vented his anger on the library wall instead.
***
Luke studied the woman. She did look more like a terrified co-ed than a middle-aged novelist. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?” he asked as he led her to a chair.
“I’m fine, but I don’t understand. Why is he so angry?”
“When we thought you were dead, I obtained a copy of the latest novel you were writing. I let him read it.”
Now Carla was even more confused. “Why?”
“To watch his expression, so I could determine if he already knew its content.” Luke could tell she still didn’t understand, so he tried again. “Your current novel made Chad Tyler our number one suspect for your murder.”
Carla shook her head. “Chad wouldn’t kill anybody. He’s incredibly kind and gentle. The man who wants me dead is Gary Eder.”
Luke didn’t think Chad had been very kind or gentle a minute ago. “A man can be driven to do desperate things when you’re destroying his life.”
“Destroying…” Finally, she seemed to understand. “You think my novel is about Chad Tyler.”
Luke stared at her in surprise. “Yes,” he finally replied.
“But it’s not. Jeremiah Taylor is a character I created. It’s not Chad Tyler.”
Chad turned around and approached her. “Is that how you live with yourself? You say it’s fiction because you’ve put an extra letter in a person’s name? Is that how you excuse the lives you destroy with your malicious words?”
“It wasn’t you. It was someone named Jeremiah,” she insisted, tears swelling in her eyes.
“I’m Jeremiah! Chad Jeremiah Tyler. All you did was add a goddamn A to my last name.”
“But the story, it’s not about you.”
“It is about me, but worse, it’s about my family—my sister, and my mother. Damn you! Damn you to hell! Do you have any idea what this story will do to them? My sister has tried to end her life three times because she cannot get past the shame of that rape. What chance do I have of keeping her from killing herself once you publish her story for all to see?”
Carla dropped the laptop onto the couch and ran to Chad, wrapping her arms around him. “I won’t publish it. I swear. I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t know.”
He pushed her away in disgust. “How can you lie with such an angel’s face? I don’t know how you got your information, but you obviously did extensive research. And you can’t do research without knowing the topic.”
“I don’t!” she screamed in frustration. She turned to Luke. “You said you searched my house. Did you find any information on this or any of my other books?”
“No,” Luke admitted.
She turned back to Chad. “It’s because there isn’t any. I just write what comes into my head. I used to think it was my imagination. No one was more surprised than me when my story about the religious sect turned out to be about the Temple and the events true.”
Chad raised his hand as if to slap her, but turned away and walked to the corner. “Stop lying! If you’re going to make a living from destroying people’s lives, then, at least, have the decency to own up to what you’re doing.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I am owning up. I am now convinced these characters are not from my imagination. They are real people with real lives. My editor kept telling me the lawsuits were just part of the business, something all novelists must endure. I let him convince me. But I knew. In my heart, I knew that my stories were real. And he knew as well. In our last meeting, he yelled at me for not changing the names…”
He remained untouched by her words, staring into the corner, his stance rigid with fury.
“Don’t you remember that I told you I hated my job and I wasn’t going to do it anymore? You thought I was talking about computer programming, but I was talking about writing. Now that I’ve accepted these are real people, I can’t continue. I won’t do it. I’ll destroy your story. Nor will I ever write again.”
Luke thought her dramatic plea intriguing. She would have been more persuasive, however, if her claim weren’t so absurd. “I’m curious, Ms. Simon. How do you actually get these real stories if not by research? Do you hold a séance?”
***
Carla didn’t miss the mocking disbelief in the FBI agent’s voice. “You want to know?” she asked, seething in rage. “Then let me show you.” She grabbed the laptop off the couch and sat down at the desk. After booting it up and logging in, she went into the character directory. “First I choose a main character from one of the characterizations I’ve created over the last twenty years. This one looks promising: Luke Gallagher.” She hit enter. “Now for a heroine: Julie Ogden.” Again she hit the key.
“That’s enough!” Luke snapped, slamming the lid of the computer down. “I don’t know how you—”
“No, you wanted to see how I write, so I’m going to show you. Carla pushed the screen back up. “Now we need secondary characters…” She randomly selected names from both the men and women lists, not even paying attention to the selection. “Finally, I’ll bring up a blank page and begin my story.”
***
Luke watched her fingers fly across the keyboard. On the screen, the story of his life began to unfold, starting in his senior year of college. He read the details of how he’d met and fallen in love with a junior named Julie Ogden. Carla’s description of his feelings the first time he’d seen her enter English lit was more precise than his own memories. She portrayed their breakup six months later with frightening exactness, except there were details about Julie he had never known. Reasons for her anger and unjust accusations. Reliving his responses to her questions, now knowing what she knew, he understood why she had called him a liar and struck him across the face. God, had he really been that stupid back then?
Then the story split: her in New York City and him in California. Both were successful in work but complete failures in love. No one was ever quite right. He watched the power struggle in his office from the perspective of a reader, and suddenly actions that had seemed incomprehensible now made sense. All these years he had thought George Scott was his friend when in fact the bastard had been playing him and Tom off against each other.
“Chad, come look at this,” Luke whispered, not wanting to disturb Carla’s flow but wanting a witness to the story unfolding before him.
With reluctance, Chad stood behind Luke and read over his shoulder. Carla described the scene between Chad and Luke in his room exactly as it had happened, except in her version, Davis was listening at the adjoining door between their rooms.
She followed Luke as he interviewed people at the bank, the jewelry store, the gas station and finally at River Rats. When Luke left River Rats, the action remained at the site and a new character entered. He was only referred to as “the man”, but Carla whispered his name as he forced the lock and entered the room.
“It’s Eder.”
He obtained Luke’s room number from the hotel desk and waited for Luke to go out. When Luke drove to the mansion, so did Eder. He stopped and watched in a red car half a block up the hill.
Luke moved away from the screen and looked out the window. A red car was parked halfway up the road with a single occupant sitting inside. “This is fucking weird,” he murmured.
“This is a fucking mind game.” Chad glared at Carla. “And I’m not buying it for a second. You and Davis are working this together, aren’t you? That’s how you got the information. That’s how you came to be seated next to me on the plane.”
Carla turned off the computer and closed it up. “I swear I didn’t know it was you.”
Luke turned around in a flash. “But you were working with Davis?”
“No, of course not.”
“But you just said you were,” Luke countered, swinging her chair around to f
ace him. He leaned in, his hands resting on the arms of the chair. “Is that who’s in the car outside?”
“No. It’s Eder.” She sighed in frustration. “You have to believe me. You saw me write your story. How could I have done that? Where would I have gotten those details? I’d never met you until a half hour ago.”
“Impressive research, I’ll grant you that.”
Suddenly Chad threw a lamp across the room, smashing it directly in front of her, sending shards of porcelain upon their legs. “You lying, manipulative bitch!” Chad screamed. “You think with a flash of a tit and leg you can get whatever you want?”
Luke was confused by Chad’s outburst until he noticed that her robe had loosened and the view was rather alluring. His eyes had been locked on her face, looking hard for a sign of deception, so he had failed to notice her state of dress. “That’s enough, Mr. Tyler,” he warned as he brushed the legs of his pants free of the embedded shards of porcelain. “You need to step out of the room.”
“The hell I will. If I step out of here, she’ll have you eating out of her fucking little hands in no time at all. You’re ready to jump her bones now.”
Luke walked towards the pacing quarterback, hoping he wasn’t going to have to cuff the man because he was quite certain such an effort would not be easy. “I’m trying to cut you some slack here. I realize that you’re very emotional right now. And your anger is perfectly reasonable. However, I need to ask Ms. Simon some questions, and your current state of mind is impeding my investigation. So I’m asking you, once again, to step outside.” Luke held the door open.
Chad looked as if he were going to refuse. He first glared at Luke in defiance, then at Carla with malice. “To hell with it. To hell with you both,” he muttered as he stormed from the room.
Luke closed the library door, sighing in relief. When he turned, Carla was tending to several cuts on her legs.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, stepping closer to see if any of the cuts were serious.
“I’m fine,” she replied, pressing the edge of her robe against the deepest cut, trying to stop it from bleeding.
Luke reached for a box of tissues on the desk and folded several into a small square. “Here, let me,” he insisted, pushing her hand and robe away from the wound. He dabbed away the blood and studied the cut. “You’ll live. Just hold the tissue on the cut for a few moments.” He returned to the window and studied the man in the red car.
“So where did you and Davis meet?” he asked casually.
“I’ve never met Davis.”
“Was it blackmail? Is that the scam? Give me a million dollars or I’ll write a bestseller all about your life?” He kept his voice calm and soft. When she didn’t reply, he turned and moved in front of her, squatting on his heels so he could study her face straight on. “But it all went wrong this time, didn’t it? And a woman has died because of it.”
He could see her fear. It emanated from her. “A woman who should have been you,” he added. He laid his hand sympathetically on her knee. “You had no idea it would come to this, did you?”
She shook her head, tears welling in her eyes.
“You want to stop this nightmare, don’t you? Stop it now?” he asked with only the gentlest of squeezes from his hand.
“I don’t know how,” she whispered, no longer able to hold back the tears.
“Then let me help you.” He stood and pulled her to her feet.
As she stood, she cried in pain, lifting up a barefoot and pulling a small shard from her heel.
“Well, that’s a fine start,” Luke murmured to himself. Before she further injured herself, he caught her in his arms and lifted her off her feet, carrying her to the couch, safely away from the porcelain shards. Setting her down, he studied her cut heel. “Just a scratch,” he assured her as he patted her foot.
Her robe had become dislodged again, exposing a very beautiful leg that seemed to go on forever. He was quite certain that she wore nothing beneath her loosely tied silk wrap, and suddenly the idea of her nakedness ran amuck in his senses.
He stood and walked away. God, Chad was right. The woman was seductive! Once steadied, he forced himself to return to her side. He was too close to getting a confession to give up now.
Sitting down on the edge of the wooden coffee table, he faced her. She’d taken advantage of his momentary escape to retighten her robe. He leaned forward, with his elbows resting on his legs. “You want out of this, right?”
Carla nodded.
“You want protection?”
She nodded again.
He captured her clenched hand in both of his. “We can do that, but you’re going to have to be totally honest with me. You have to answer all my questions to the best of your ability. Are you willing to do that?”
“Of course.”
“First of all, how are you connected to Davis?”
She pulled her hand from his grasp and pushed herself up into a seated position. “I told you, I’ve never met Davis!”
Luke shook his head in disappointment. “So if I go look in that computer, I won’t find a profile on the fellow?”
Carla didn’t reply. Nor would she look in his eyes.
Luke stood and walked over to the computer, turning it on. “Name….Carla. Password…Publicsecrets.”
Carla looked up, stunned.
Luke smiled at her shock at his knowing her password. “You forget. We thought you were dead and the secret of your killer might reside on the computer in your office. So I got a warrant and had a professional hack into your password. Fortunately, you’ve used the same one here.”
Chapter Eighteen
Luke located the profile directory and selected Davis. He scanned the document, amazed at the detail. She had items on Davis that the FBI wasn’t even aware he had done. “Impressive. I can’t imagine Davis would intentionally reveal this much about himself. You must be very persuasive.”
He returned to the profile list and skimmed the names. Most meant nothing to him, but a few were known. Juan Coralles, Columbian drug lord—that might be worth reading. He clicked on it. He was again amazed at the detail. No doubt the CIA would love to get this. When he finished reading, he approached her and sat down on the coffee table. “Does Juan Coralles know you have that much information on him?”
“Who?”
“Juan Coralles. He’s in your profiles. Columbian drug lord.”
She looked up in concern. “He’s real as well?”
Luke let a slight smile cross his face. “Quite. And if he discovers what you know, I don’t think you’ll be safe anywhere on Earth.” He turned her head, forcing her to look at him. “Be honest with me. Have you attempted any contact with the drug lord?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I swear to you. What can I do to make you believe me?” She leaned forward and grabbed his hands.
Her movements once again loosened the robe, exposing more cleavage than he would have wished.
“I wrote your story. How could I have done that? Who knew those details other than yourself?”
“It’s impressive research, I’ll give you that,” Luke replied.
“It’s impossible research! Who besides you knew what you were thinking and feeling when you first saw her? No one. You never told anyone how much you loved her. You kept it all locked up inside.”
He suddenly broke free of her hands and stood, as he declared, “Enough.”
“The truth frightens you, doesn’t it?” she asked, her voice filled with bitterness.
“The truth?” Luke scoffed. “I have no idea what the truth is.”
“How can you possibly help me when you’re too much of a coward to accept reality just because it doesn’t fit into the nice little world you’ve created for yourself?”
Luke turned towards her. “Very well, then—tell me your version of the truth. Let me understand the strange little world you’ve created for us all.”
He paced and listened as C
arla explained how she had written novels most of her life, solely for her own enjoyment. Her undergrad work had been in computer science, and for a while, she had dated a fellow student named Carl Gates. He’d been extraordinarily brilliant and keenly focused on developing software programs with artificial intelligence. He’d been trying to create programs that could learn from history and improve its future performance. At the same time, Carla had been working on her own project, which had been a word program that would correct spelling and grammar automatically as one wrote.
“Carl needed a program to test his. Since he was certain mine was full of bugs, he decided my program would be his first test. Without my knowledge, he embedded his program into mine. I wasn’t aware he’d done anything. It ran exactly as I had hoped. Mistype a word, and before your eyes, it would correct itself. Type ‘I are going to town” and it would change the sentence to ‘I am going to town’. And if it determined the story was in past tense, it would change it to ‘was going’.”
Luke had stopped pacing at this point and sat in a chair across from her. “Sounds like a useful program. Why didn’t you sell it to XCaliber Software? Oh, I know, they already have one.”
“Not then, they didn’t. And I did show them a demo. They didn’t seem terribly impressed, but they did ask me to sign a billion pages of legal documents so I could send them an electronic copy of the program.” Carla shook her head. “Now that I’m older, I realize they were just trying to play it cool. They must have been chomping at the bit for my code. A few years later, they even came out with their own, lesser version.”
“So what happened to yours?”
“When I told Carl I was going to send them a copy, he went ballistic. Said I was stupid to ever think XCaliber Software would buy such a piece of crap. Before I knew what he intended, he had erased my hard drive and my program with it. He said he was doing the world a fucking favor.”
“Couldn’t you rewrite it?”
“It’s harder than you’d think to recreate all those inspired moments of brilliance. I tried. I spent all my time working on it. All my time. Didn’t attend classes, didn’t do assignments. Finally, the school had no choice but to kick me out, and I still couldn’t get it to work.”
Public Secrets (Artificial Intelligence Book 1) Page 9
