THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3)

by Jake Needham

  Then another idea occurred to Tay. John August was obviously plugged into the American intelligence establishment. Surely August would know someone who could interpret the files. But how long would that take? No doubt longer than Tay had if he was going to get this finished by Tuesday morning.

  The more Tay thought about the files on Tyler’s disk drive, the less certain he became they were going to do him any good regardless of who looked at them. There were too many hurdles to clear just to read what was on the drive. Forget about figuring out what it meant once he could read it. That wasn’t a three-day job, and three days was all he had.

  Thinking about that damned disk drive was giving him indigestion. Tay banished all thought of it from his mind and gave his full attention to his fish and chips.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  TAY HAD JUST left the Alley Bar when he glanced up Emerald Hill Road and saw the motorcycle parked by the curb a little way from his house.

  Someone was sitting astride it, waiting, and as Tay came closer, the rider slowly rotated his helmeted head toward him. Tay’s hand crept underneath his jacket and settled against his gun. When the rider’s own hand disappeared into the messenger bag slung across his chest, Tay felt his stomach clench. His fingers closed on the butt of his .38 and he began to lift it out of its holster.

  The rider’s hand emerged from the bag, but rather than holding a weapon it held a thin, silver-colored laptop computer. The rider flipped up the faceplate of his helmet and Tay saw the rider wasn’t a man at all. It was a woman who looked vaguely familiar. Tay relaxed his grip on the pistol and let it slip back into its holster.

  “Inspector Tay,” the woman said. “Julie asked me to bring this laptop to you.”

  Then Tay realized where he had seen her before. She had been working at one of the computer terminals in the front room of Julie’s office.

  “I rang your bell,” the woman added, “but you didn’t answer.”

  “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

  “That’s okay. I didn’t mind waiting. It’s nice to get out of the office for a change.”

  Tay took the laptop in both hands to guard against dropping it and was surprised to discover how light it was. It was no thicker than a pad of paper and didn’t weigh much more either.

  “It’s a MacBook Air,” the woman said. “Do you want me to show you how to use it?”

  “I’m sure I won’t have any problem,” Tay said.

  He was pretty sure he would have a problem, but he was tired of admitting to women how technologically inept he was.

  “Okay,” she said. “Julie asked me to tell you that she put all four of the files on the desktop.”

  Tay nodded as if that made all the sense in the world. He knew he ought to scream, what the hell is the desktop? But he didn’t.

  The woman flipped her faceplate down and kicked the bike into life. Then abruptly she lowered the idle to quiet the engine and flipped her faceplate back up again.

  “I thought about leaving the laptop with your friends, but I figured Julie would want me to give it directly to you.”

  “What friends?”

  “The three men at your house.”

  Tay’s expression must have made it plain that he had no idea what the woman was talking about, because she added, “They went into your house about a half hour ago. They had a key. At least it looked to me like they did. They just walked up to the gate, opened it, and went in. Weren’t you expecting them?”

  Tay was sure the woman could see on his face that he wasn’t expecting anybody, or at least not quite in the way she meant, but he saw no reason to say it.

  “Oh yes, I forgot,” he said instead. “Thanks for bringing the laptop. Tell Julie I’ll call her.”

  The woman looked at Tay a bit strangely. He couldn’t blame her one bit. Then she apparently decided whatever he was hiding was none of her business, and she nodded, flipped down her faceplate, and rode away.

  Tay stood there on the street and tried to decide what to do. Could Julie’s messenger have been mistaken? That seemed unlikely. She had seen what she had seen and, if she had seen three men go in through his front gate, then she had. And if she hadn’t seen them come back out again, then she hadn’t. He didn’t have a back door. If the three men hadn’t come out through the front gate, they were still inside his house.

  But who could they be? Burglars? Not likely since Tay knew burglars seldom came in sets of three. And then there was how they had gotten in. No one else had a key to his house so they must have picked both the gate lock and the front door lock, and they had done both locks so quickly Julie’s messenger thought they were using a key. If they could manage that, they weren’t junkies looking to steal a couple of television sets. They were professional break and enter guys.

  Tay knew he ought to stay right where he was and call the police, but he didn’t want to raise an alarm until he had a better idea what was really going on. If he had to guess, and come to think of it he supposed he did have to guess, his best surmising would be that Zachery Goodnight-Jones had sent people around to search his house for Tyler’s disk drive. And that gave him an idea. If he was right about that and he caught them in the act, maybe he would have something he could use against Goodnight-Jones.

  Or maybe they would just kill him like they probably did Tyler and Emma.

  Tay slid his hand under his jacket and felt for his gun. It gave him some comfort to have it, but not a great deal. A five shot revolver with a two-inch barrel wasn’t going to be much help in confronting three men, was it?

  And how was he going to go about doing that confronting anyway? Walk right in through his front door? That didn’t seem like a very good idea. Surely they would be smart enough to have an eye out for him to return. At three against one, his little revolver wasn’t going to do much to even the odds.

  Okay, Tay told himself, this is silly. You should just call the police and be done with it.

  Yes, of course, you should, Tay answered himself, but that’s not what you’re going to do, is it?

  Instead of walking up Emerald Hill Road to his front gate, Tay turned left into a narrow lane that ran along the side of Number 5. The tables out front were filled with drinkers as they usually were and Tay’s eyes lingered for a moment on the table where he and Emma sat one evening not so long ago. It seemed now like that must have been years ago, but it hadn’t been. He could count the number of days that had passed since then on his fingers. If he wanted to. Which he didn’t.

  Behind Number 5, Tay turned right and worked his way through a succession of narrow streets and alleyways until he came to the house that backed up to his. He didn’t know his back neighbors very well. He hardly knew them at all really, but he had left his house through their garden on more than one occasion when he didn’t want to be seen going out through his own front door, so he knew the gate from his neighbor’s back garden to the street was always unlocked. He also remembered several large rubber garbage bins stored just inside it.

  Tay let himself in through the gate, picked up one of the bins, and carried it to the end of the garden where he placed it up against the fence. It was awkward carrying the trash bin and the laptop at the same time, but what else was he going to do? Bury the laptop somewhere? If his neighbors came out and asked him what he was doing there, he would just tell them he had forgotten his keys and locked himself out. It was a stupid story, and worse it sounded stupid, but what were they going to do? Call the cops and tell them their neighbor was crawling over his own garden wall?

  Tay hoisted himself up on the garbage bin and paused for a moment to be sure it would take his weight. It did.

  He raised his head very slowly until his eyes cleared the top of the fence and he could see into his garden. It was quiet and dark so he straightened up, swung first one leg and then the other over the fence, and balanced for a moment on top. Then he turned loose and dropped down behind the thick crape myrtle bushes that lined the wall at the back of his garden.


  He remained completely still, straining his ears for any hint that someone had come into the garden to investigate the sound of him crawling over the wall. But he hadn’t made very much noise, and no one came out.

  When Tay was sure he was alone, he slipped between two of the crape myrtles and crept toward the glass-paned French doors that led to his living room. He paused at the table where he had breakfast most morning, laid the laptop on one of the chairs, and pushed the chair all the way in so the laptop wouldn’t be visible unless the chair was pulled out again. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, but it would have to do.

  He could see no sign of light or movement on the other side of the French doors and he felt safe enough to creep right up to the wall beside them. Moving his head very slowly, he peered inside.

  His living room was empty.

  So where were the three men?

  Could Julie’s messenger have been wrong after all? Could she have seen people going into another house and only thought it was his? No, that seemed unlikely. Tay had no doubt the men were searching through his house for Tyler’s disk drive so they were all probably upstairs now. When people hid things, they usually hid them near what they thought of as private spaces like their bedroom. It was just human nature. That was the first place he would look, too.

  Tay often left the French doors unlocked since he went into his garden so frequently, but he couldn’t remember whether they were unlocked now or not. If they weren’t, he was pretty much screwed. What was he going to do? Knock and ask the men searching his house to let him in?

  He placed his hand on the handle and applied gentle pressure. The handle traveled all the way down and retracted the bolt. Sure enough, the doors were unlocked. He pulled very slowly and the door swung silently outward.

  Tay slipped inside his living room, closed the door behind him, and squatted behind the brown leather loveseat. Very slowly he raised his eyes above its back.

  Nothing. The room was empty.

  That was when Tay heard the footsteps on the stairs.

  One set. Coming down. Moving quickly.

  Tay crouched until he was sure he was completely concealed behind the loveseat. He slid his hand under his jacket, drew the .38, and waited.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  THE FOOTSTEPS CROSSED the entry foyer, entered the living room, and stopped. The lights flared on and the footsteps started up again. Whoever it was, they were making straight for Tay.

  Tay held his revolver at shoulder level with the muzzle pointing toward the ceiling. He had checked the cylinder when he took it out of the drawer in his bedroom. It had been loaded with five rounds, but how long had they been in the gun? He couldn’t remember the last time he had shot it. Would it even fire now?

  Tay was still trying to decide if it was possible for the rounds in a gun to be too old to use when the footsteps stopped in front of the loveseat and somebody sat down. Tay looked up and saw the back of a head directly above him. Short, dark hair, neatly trimmed, but that was all that he could see.

  More footsteps on the stairs. Two sets this time. They crossed the entry foyer and stopped at the entrance to the living room.

  “Nothing,” a man’s voice said from somewhere across the room. Whoever he was, he spoke English with a pronounced Chinese accent. A youngish voice, not at all familiar to Tay.

  The other man said something, too, but he spoke Chinese. A dialect Tay didn’t recognize. The first man responded in Chinese, and the second man grunted.

  “He must have it somewhere,” the man sitting on the loveseat said, ignoring the exchange in Chinese.

  His voice was older and more distinguished. It conveyed an air of being in charge. This was the boss and the other two were the muscle. Tay wasn’t completely certain, but he was pretty sure—

  “I mean, for fuck’s sake,” the man went on in obvious annoyance, “she didn’t have it so he must have it. Look harder!”

  One of the men standing at the entrance to the living room cleared his throat. “If the cop comes home—”

  “How many times do I have to tell you? He’s not a cop. Not anymore.”

  “But if he comes home—”

  “If he comes home, I’ll take care of him. Now get back upstairs and tear the place apart if you have to.”

  Tay no longer had any doubt. He knew exactly who was sitting on the loveseat right above him.

  It was Zachery Goodnight-Jones.

  Tay listened as two sets of footsteps retreated across his foyer and headed back upstairs. They were only a minute or two gone when Goodnight-Jones suddenly got to his feet. Tay tightened his grip on the revolver, but Goodnight-Jones took two steps away from the loveseat, hesitated, then turned back and sat down again. The springs creaked as he shifted his weight, and then the room went quiet again.

  Crouched there on the floor behind the loveseat, Tay decided that sneaking into his house to surprise the three men searching it was pretty much the worst idea he had ever had.

  What did he think he was going to do? Shoot them? No, of course, he wasn’t going to shoot them. Even if he wanted to shoot them, which he didn’t, he only had five rounds in his revolver. As bad a shot as he was, that was about fifty rounds fewer than he really needed.

  So what now? He wasn’t going to crouch there until they wrecked his house and left, was he? Doing nothing would make him feel even more foolish than he already did. He was armed, and he had surprise on his side, and Goodnight-Jones was sitting with his back to him. The advantage was his. There was no doubt about that. He just had to figure out what to do with it.

  Tay knew he was overthinking things again. He did that all the time. Sometimes he wished he were someone who just did things without thinking every step to death first, but that wasn’t who he was. Maybe he could be though, if he put his mind to it. He had to think about that.

  Oh for Christ’s sake, Tay thought, there I go again. Well, fuck that!

  Tay rose to his feet, jammed the muzzle of his .38 into Goodnight-Jones’s right ear, and cocked the hammer with his thumb. In the silence of the room, the sound was unmistakable.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  Goodnight-Jones was silent for a moment, then, “Tay? Is that you?”

  Tay said nothing.

  “Of course it’s you. Who else would be hiding behind your couch?”

  Tay said nothing.

  “We’re not going to harm you. I know Bartlett had a backup disk drive and I also know that you somehow wound up with it. I want it. Simple as that. The data on it by rights belongs to us anyway, and I’m entitled to get it back.”

  Tay said nothing.

  “The drive is all we’re here for, Tay. Give it to me and we’re gone.”

  “Don’t you think you have that backwards?” Tay asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the one with a gun stuck in your ear, and I’m the one with my finger on the trigger. I think it’s pretty much up to me to say what we do now.”

  “Not really. I have two armed men upstairs, and I hear you’re a lousy shot.”

  Tay pushed on the gun and he felt Goodnight-Jones flinch as the front sight dug into the soft flesh of his ear.

  “It would be pretty hard to miss from here. Even for me.”

  “Oh for God’s sake, Tay, you’re not going to shoot me. I know that and you know that, so let’s just work this out and we’ll be on our way.”

  “Why are you so interested in Tyler Bartlett’s disk drive?”

  “So you do have it?”

  “Actually, no, I don’t. But I know about it. I just don’t understand why you’re so desperate to get your hands on it.”

  “I already told you, Tay. We think Bartlett backed up his work to that drive. If he did, it has proprietary information on it. Information our company developed at great expense. That information belongs to us and we’re entitled to have it back.”

  “Information about the design of driverless cars?”

  “Ye
s, exactly.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Goodnight-Jones chuckled. Tay had the muzzle of a gun pushed into his ear so hard that the front sight had probably drawn blood and Goodnight-Jones was chuckling at him. That wasn’t the way this was supposed to be going. Maybe he was doing this man-of-action stuff wrong.

  “Okay then, Tay, you tell me. What’s on the disk drive?”

  Tay said nothing.

  “You don’t have a fucking clue, do you? It’s encrypted and you can’t read it.”

  “I can read some of it.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Because we’ve decrypted it.”

  Tay felt Goodnight-Jones stiffen. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to convince you of anything.”

  “What do you know about decryption protocols?”

  “Absolutely nothing. But I know people who know all kinds of things about them. Or I suppose they do. I can’t make any sense of what they’re telling me, but then they started sending me copies of Tyler’s decrypted files and so I figure they must know what they’re doing.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You already said that. It doesn’t really bother me.”

  “If you really did decrypt that drive, tell me what you learned.”

  Tay took a shot. He figured he had nothing to lose.

  “I learned you aren’t really building driverless cars.”

  Tay was certain Goodnight-Jones was trying not to react, but he could feel his body tensing anyway.

  “Bullshit, Tay. You’re just guessing. If that’s true, tell me what we’re really doing.”

  “If you don’t know, I’m certainly not going to explain it to you.”

  Goodnight-Jones snorted. “Give me the gun, Tay. Give me the gun or I’ll call my men down here.”

  “You do that and I’ll shoot you.”

  “No, I don’t think you will.”

  “And you’d bet your life on that?”