The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  She wrapped her feet around the stool legs and folded her arms on the edge of the bar. “I drink. Sometimes. I like—”

  “If you say white zinfandel I’m having you dragged out into the street.”

  She shook her head. “What if I say beer? Just a simple flogging?”

  The bartender slid their drinks before them. Choo-Choo took the stem in his long, elegant fingers. “Let’s not find out, shall we? A toast.” She raised her bubbling drink to his. “To civilized drinks—an eye in the storm of the worst fucking day on earth.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” One of the phones between them on the bar beeped. Dani tried not to bite through the crystal flute. “That’s mine, isn’t it?”

  Choo-Choo nodded, thumbing the screen. They leaned in together to read the text.

  HER DEATH WILL BE YOUR FAULT TOO. The words captioned a photo of a scowling Mrs. O’Donnell.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Choo-Choo signed for their drinks and guided Dani up the narrow staircase to their room. She watched landings pass, she was dimly aware of people around her, but all she could really focus on was the ever-growing urge to scream. How was this her life? How could this be real? Once the door was locked behind them, Choo-Choo opened a beer and pressed the cold bottle into her hands.

  “I don’t want to drink. I don’t think well when I drink.”

  “How are you thinking now?”

  She looked up into his worried face and took a deep drink. She liked the taste better than the sweet champagne drink that had somehow disappeared from her grasp. She took another drink and let out a soft burp.

  Choo-Choo settled onto the settee beside her, kicking his long legs out on the coffee table. “Technically it’s considered wrong to serve Stella Artois beer from the bottle. Some say it can only be appreciated when poured correctly from the tap into the proper glasses.”

  She tipped her bottle against his. “I’m glad we’re not standing on ceremony.”

  “Well if you can’t let your guard down on a day like this, when can you?”

  They sat in silence for several minutes.

  “What are we going to do, Choo-Choo?” Dani whispered.

  “I don’t know.” He spoke no louder than she did. “I don’t know anything.”

  “We know that the hit came when we were called in for an unscheduled meeting. It was almost only our team on-site, right?” He nodded. “We were hit when the Swan job was called, so it’s not a huge leap of logic to assume this is linked to Swan. I mean, if someone just wanted to grab Mrs. O’Donnell, there had to be a million easier and less noticeable ways of doing it.”

  “True.” He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Dani glanced at his elegant profile, seeing the way his brow tensed just slightly (never enough to cause a wrinkle, she knew). She’d seen that look a thousand times although usually when she saw it, he was wearing headphones. “But why take Mrs. O’Donnell? If they wanted materials—and we know they did because they made a point of humping every box out of the building—why did they need Mrs. O’Donnell? If they knew they were going to kill everyone and blow up the building, what good is she?”

  “A hostage? Ransom?”

  “From whom? Why go through the trouble of a hit like that only to leave a link? If you’re going to kill twenty people, what’s one more?” Choo-Choo’s voice grew softer, more detached, and Dani could see him mentally removing himself from the situation. He was supposed to be one of those dead bodies. They both were.

  “Insurance?” Dani felt her body relaxing, the beer and the familiar discussion of analysis soothing her adrenaline-abused body. “Maybe they had to be absolutely certain all leaks were sealed. Maybe they, whoever they are, want a completely contained information bubble. They knew they were missing someone from the building and so took Mrs. O’Donnell as insurance the missing person would cooperate.”

  “Or maybe they need to keep Mrs. O’Donnell alive because she has information they need. Maybe she knows something about Swan that they don’t.”

  Dani dinged her fingernail against the glass bottle. “Then why send me her picture? Why threaten to blame her death on me? What threat am I to anybody? I don’t know who these people are. I can’t finger anybody. All I could possibly do is tell the police that Mrs. O’Donnell is missing, which would be pretty obvious to anyone looking for her.”

  “Maybe you have something they need.”

  “Like what? Evelyn’s real name? Your secret love getaway? I don’t know anything. I don’t have anything.”

  They stared at each other, unspeaking, until they both turned to stare at the pouch.

  “Would they know you have this?” Choo-Choo whispered.

  “Probably. I sort of held it up to the camera when I came in.”

  She unzipped the blue canvas pouch. “This is all we have. This is the only Swan material that wasn’t in the building when the job got called. If they think they’re missing something, it’s going to be in here.” She pulled out the white papers first, stacking them on the corner of the table and dumping the miscellany out in a heap. Choo-Choo poked around the debris and grabbed a shiny piece of cellophane.

  “If it turns out that I get killed because of a Ho Ho wrapper, I’m gonna be pissed.”

  She couldn’t help but giggle. “Duly noted.” She bumped her shoulder against his and set about sorting the debris into piles. “These are the materials Hickman collected from Dr. Marcher. They kind of got tossed around in the running-for-my-life thing.”

  “Mayhem can be so messy. What is that?” Choo-Choo picked through the papers on the corner.

  “Those are mostly phone records and receipts, all the personal information redacted. I can’t take any client material off-site that has personal information. Plus too much information can skew the big picture. It can trap you into alleys of thought so you don’t see things. Like this guy eats a shit ton of fois gras—good stuff, too. Look how much he pays for it.”

  “And that tells you what? Beside his good taste and penchant for cruelty to animals?”

  “Well it could mean a couple of things. But look at the rest of the receipt.” She ran her finger down the faded print. “Nothing else on the list is high-end. I mean, even the saltines are generic. Beer in a can, generic dish soap, shampoo, store-brand dry-roasted peanuts? Kind of a weird match for the fois gras, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe he likes the combination?” Choo-Choo asked doubtfully.

  “Maybe. I personally love those peanuts. But if you look at the other receipts, it’s obvious this guy is treating himself with the fois gras. He’s busting his own budget with this one incredibly expensive indulgence. And he’s not doling it out either. He’s bought several packages of it.” She rifled through some pages and caught her friend looking at her sideways, his chin resting in the palm of his hand. “You think I’m crazy?”

  “No, I think I’d love to figure out how your mind works. What is your conclusion?”

  “I don’t have a conclusion as such, but since Swan was worried someone was stealing and selling information, this guy pings for me. This serial indulgence could say a couple of things. Maybe he’s become financially embarrassed and fois gras is the one delicacy he refuses to relinquish. That makes him a prime candidate for being tempted to make money on the side. Or he could be ambitious, trying to groom himself to step into a higher financial level and lifestyle. Who knows? He could have read in some douchey upscale magazine that fois gras is the food to eat among the landed gentry and those in the know.”

  Choo-Choo shook his head. “But you don’t think that either, do you?”

  “No. This says self-comfort to me. This is someone rewarding himself, pampering himself, when he feels miserable. Either he’s done something wonderful and is rewarding himself or—and I think this is more likely—something is really bothering him, he’s struggling with it, and this is his reward to himself to keep up whatever agreement he’s made with himself.”

  “You can tell that from fois
gras and saltines?”

  “And generic shampoo and the fact that he paid for parking eight blocks from Swan when there is a closer but more expensive lot. Also he bought no less than six greeting cards over the past two months. Six greeting cards. I don’t buy six greeting cards a year but this guy bought six of them. If he paid for postage, he used cash, because we don’t have a receipt for it. Maybe he bought the cards for coworkers. Birthdays, anniversaries, get well, could be anything.”

  “We’ve got a guy who’s worried and buys greeting cards.” Choo-Choo reached across her and stopped the finger she had twisting in her hair. He had to tug gently until she got her finger free and he smoothed the hair down. “And what does this tell you?”

  “It’s a pattern. It’s not always clear what it means but things are consistent. People tend to behave consistently. It’s what we do. Even I do in my own weird way.”

  He turned back to the pages, pulling up a phone record. “Well hats off to you, Dani Britton. The bad news is that if we need this guy, we’re screwed. He died in that car wreck a few days ago. Fell asleep at the wheel.”

  Dani glanced over the bits of Dr. Marcher’s life that she’d strewn across the coffee table. She could never explain it to Choo-Choo but she felt a bond to the stranger whose stuff she’d been pawing through. She’d gotten to know him from an oblique angle, making judgments and predictions based on the most fleeting of evidence. To learn that now she’d never really know if she’d been right or exactly why he’d been eating all that goose liver pâté made her feel a thick, thumping sadness. Or maybe she was just raw from the day.

  “Maybe Ev was right. Maybe Marcher was dealing and whoever he was in bed with killed him. But to go from hitting a lone scientist to taking out a facility like Rasmund? And to kidnap Mrs. O’Donnell? What the hell could they be looking for?” She waved her hand over the materials. “Not this garbage.”

  Choo-Choo stared at her for a moment before asking quietly, “And just who got you all this garbage?”

  “Hickman.”

  “Hickman.” He leaned in closer to her. “And in the five years you’ve been running analysis for Rasmund, have you ever worked with anyone who was better at zeroing in on the focus of the problem faster than Todd Hickman?”

  Dani shook her head.

  “Hickman had instincts like none I’ve ever seen. He could read a room faster than anyone I’ve ever known. And he knew what you were capable of. He always insisted that you be on his team, did you know that?” Choo-Choo’s voice lowered almost to a whisper and Dani leaned into him without thinking. “He used to brag about you, about how you could take things apart and put them back together in ways nobody would ever have imagined. He used to make bets with the other Faces, take pieces of their materials and slip them to you as side jobs and bet that you could find out what they were looking for faster than their Paints could. And he never lost.”

  Dani didn’t realize she was crying until a tear dripped onto her hand. “This guy was Hickman’s friend. Why did he keep bringing me materials on him? Even after he died?”

  “Because he wanted you to keep looking. You were close, weren’t you?” Choo-Choo swiped his thumb over a tear that hung off her chin. “You knew this guy was important. You were starting to get… what do you call it?”

  “The shape of him.”

  “The shape of him.” Choo-Choo trailed his long fingers over the piles of odds and ends. “You were starting to get the shape of him and Hickman knew that when you told him what you learned, he’d have an answer for Swan. Swan thought there was an information leak in the lab. Hickman obviously thought it centered on Marcher. But he didn’t think Marcher was guilty. Didn’t you get the feeling he thought Marcher was a victim?

  “Swan thought that leak was important enough to pay Rasmund’s enormous fees to unearth it,” Choo-Choo went on, still in almost a whisper. “And these killers think this leak is worth enough to kill dozens of people. Including Hickman. And Fay.” His voice broke on the last word and Dani bit her lip to keep from crying out loud. “Now, don’t you think it’s worth it for us to figure out what is in here, what Hickman passed to you, that is important enough to kill for?”

  “But if it was so important, why did Swan call the job? If it’s so freaking important that Fay had to die—”

  Choo-Choo grabbed her hands. “Maybe that’s why he called the job. Maybe he found out that Marcher’s death wasn’t an accident. Who knows? Maybe they threatened him too. His family. Maybe he thought the information wasn’t more important than human life. But whoever these sons of bitches are who killed our friends,” he squeezed her fingers, “they made it that important. Now you and I have to do what you and I do best. Only we have to do it alone.”

  “Alone together,” Dani said, feeling about six years old.

  “Alone together.” He let go of her hands and smiled. “It’s not like we had anything else to do on a Saturday night, right?”

  “Oh shit. Ben!”

  “Ben?”

  “It’s Saturday night,” she said, slapping the cushion around her. “Where’s my phone? It’s Saturday night. Ben usually comes over on Saturdays. I have to tell him. It’s going to be on the news, the explosion, and if they’re putting my picture up there…”

  Choo-Choo grabbed her phone from the side table but stopped her from taking it. “What are you going to tell him, Dani? If you tell him you’re being set up, will he believe you?”

  “What?” She hesitated before taking the phone. “Of course he will. Who would believe I could do that? He’s my boyfriend.”

  “What if the police have already contacted him? And told him a different story?”

  She thumbed the screen to life and brought up Ben’s number but didn’t dial. “It’s only been a couple of hours, right? I mean, even if the police think I did do it, they wouldn’t know about Ben. We’re not married or anything. We don’t even technically live together. It’s not like they could ask anyone.” She tried to force the image of her dead friends from the front of her mind. “It’s not like they could ask Mrs. O’Donnell.”

  “What are you going to say to him?”

  “That I’m okay? That no matter what he hears on the news, I’m okay.” She saw the look of worry on her friend’s face. “I’m going to wind up dragging him into this, aren’t I? You’re thinking I’m going to get him killed too.”

  Choo-Choo didn’t disagree. “I think maybe you should just tell him not to come over.”

  “He’s going to see it on the news.”

  She dialed his number. It went right to voice mail. “He doesn’t have his phone on, as usual.”

  “Says the girl whose phone is never charged,” Choo-Choo said. “And who still takes notes with a ballpoint pen on her wrists. Why don’t you leave him a message?”

  She shook her head. “Because when he comes over to my place he keeps his phone off. He makes a big show of tossing it onto the counter like it’s nothing. He always expects me to do the same. He says that when we’re together, we’re together, just the two of us.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Dani smiled at his sympathetic tone. “He’s not a total dick. Really, he isn’t. And he doesn’t deserve to get dragged into this. If he’s at my place, I’ve got to get him a message.”

  Choo-Choo’s eyes widened. “We are not going to your place.”

  “No,” Dani grabbed her phone once more. “But I know who can.”

  Booker got Dani’s lock open in less than a minute. From the other apartments in the hallway he heard the sounds of televisions and stereos but, as expected, Dani’s apartment was silent. He shut the door carefully.

  “Knock-knock. Anyone home?”

  Nobody answered as he moved down the narrow hallway. He loved empty apartments. Even if he wasn’t tracking someone, he loved to riffle through a stranger’s life. It felt so intimate without any of the sticky realities of human interaction. The old woman had been disappointingly short on information about this D
anielle Kathleen Britton of Flat Road, Oklahoma. Twenty-eight, single, short, quiet. What kind of bio was that? He’d figure little Dani out by himself.

  Not too tidy, he thought, as he strolled into her kitchen. He liked that. Extreme tidiness bespoke a cheapness of character. He wouldn’t have been delighted to find piles of dog poop or a sink full of stinking dishes, but the trails of toast crumbs glued to the counter by intersecting coffee cup rings charmed him a little. He tried to picture Dani standing in the sunny room before work, hair mussed, coffee steaming as she buttered her toast. He peered into the sink. He grabbed the knife he knew he’d find there and gave the greasy end a kitten lick. Yep, butter. Real butter. He wondered if Dani was a morning person or if she stood there grumpy and thick with sleep. He imagined she would be cute grumpy.

  The refrigerator yielded no surprises. Takeout containers, wilted celery, a half-finished bottle of wine and two beers. A glance into the cabinets made him laugh. SpaghettiOs. Lots of them. He couldn’t resist. He grabbed a can, pulled off the pop top, and opened a drawer he knew would have spoons. He didn’t even need to look; they were right where his fingers landed. He shoveled a spoonful of the salty-sweet pasta into his mouth just like he used to when he was a boy. They tasted better now, better in Dani’s apartment, better off of her spoon.

  He stood in the middle of the living room. Cheap furniture, the temporary stuff that gets passed to college students and kids leaving home, getting gradually more broken down and more threadbare until it finds its graveyard in floorless trailers and abandoned houses for whores and meth addicts and pedophiles to find their ease. He dropped with an oof onto the last cushion. Dani. This is where Dani sits, he thought, taking up more room than she would but fitting all the same. A blue and white—well, almost white—afghan covered part of the back of the couch, as if flung off. He took another mouthful of the canned pasta, dropped the spoon into the can, and surveyed the room. The TV sat on a crooked pressed-wood table in the corner. He felt around with his right hand, under the afghan, toward the seam of the couch. There it was—the remote. He clicked the power button once, twice. Nothing happened. He slid off the plastic panel on the rear of the remote and smiled. No batteries. Dani Britton wasn’t much of a TV watcher.