Pierce crossed his arms.
“You’re in business.” Jack slowed down. “If you had an employee who did what was right but didn’t do what you said, would you fire him?”
“I wouldn’t be happy.”
Jack clicked his tongue. “Law enforcement’s a hard business. The sheriff asked me to let someone else handle things. I’m not that type of guy. I kept coloring outside the lines. The sheriff couldn’t figure out what else to do with me, so I was asked to go. Simple as that.”
“And your license to carry?”
“After I left the force, Alice and I caught the Giant Killer and the sheriff didn’t. It didn’t make him look good. The only thing he could really do to get back at me was pulling my license, so he did it.”
Pierce stared out the windshield for a moment and then turned to look at Jack. “I had to ask.”
“I would’ve asked too.” Jack stopped at the light. “I just would’ve done it before I hired you.”
Chapter 32
~
An Unanswered Question
Replacement’s fingers flew over the keyboard. Pierce set her up in Weston’s systems, and she was printing out the HR files. Jack preferred paper, and it drove her crazy.
She started separate folders for Leon, Roger, Mrs. Maier, Nancy, Sophia, Bruce, and Phillip. She was surprised when she found résumés for Bruce, Phillip, and herself. Gerald must’ve had to provide them to corporate. She was even more surprised to find notes; security had done a very thorough background check on everyone.
Everyone had been cleared. All Weston employees had passed drug tests too.
She connected to the Net and headed to her online background checkers. Since she’d started the private investigator business, online searches had made up the bulk of her cases. Now she was even more adept at discovering secrets hiding in the virtual cloud.
Cheating spouses. It seemed every other case she got was one of those. Replacement’s shoulders slumped. She usually found evidence of infidelity in less than a day, but she never celebrated. Marriages were destroyed. She remembered her last case when she told a man about his wife’s trysts. She shook her head and tried to drive the memory of the sound of the man’s sobs out of her head.
She grabbed a name and pulled out Bruce to start with. She only knew a little about him. He was thirty-two. He’d worked technical support for fifteen years at the university but left to start his own support company. It never took off.
Once she started looking on the Web, things got interesting fast. Besides an online dating profile that made him sound like the CEO of a tech company and a poorly Photoshopped picture to make him look thinner, he was very vocal on the Net. From computer forums to political groups, he let his opinions be known. His biggest beef was open source code. Replacement wasn’t surprised—a lot of computer geeks were big on open source—but Bruce was very opinionated about it. She gathered up some of the main links and moved them to Bruce’s folder.
Phillip was the opposite. His blog had tech entries posted every couple months, mostly reviews and how-to guides. His résumé listed his most recent employment as a hospital in California, working at their help desk. His social media was by invite only.
Replacement tied her hair in a ponytail and forced herself to move on. She wanted to make a first pass at everyone and get the thirty-thousand-foot view. Later they’d narrow it down but right now was not the time to dig deep, she reminded herself.
The next résumé that came up was Gerald’s. She frowned when she saw his smiling picture. She forced herself not to look at the floor, but an image of him lying there, injured, flashed in her mind. She bowed her head and said a quick prayer.
The next document in Weston’s database on Gerald was a system access form. Replacement went to scroll to the next page but her hand hesitated over the mouse. She scanned the form again. It was a request for an access code for Gerald to the server room.
She looked at the server room door. “Who else has access to this room?” she muttered as her fingers glided over the keyboard. She opened the program that controlled the access to the server room door. She clicked on the event tab.
Dates, times, and names filled the screen.
She looked at the latest entries.
PASSCODE – CAMPBELL
DOOR OPEN
DOOR OPEN
The log showed one entry when someone entered in their passcode and two entries when they opened the door—one when they entered the room and one when they left. She scanned the log. It followed the same pattern. She scrolled down the page, looking for who accessed the room, but a break in the pattern made her take her hand off the mouse.
PASSCODE – MATHIS
DOOROPEN
PASSCODE – MATHIS
DOOROPEN
DOOROPEN
Replacement looked at the line where there was only one event for opening the door. She highlighted the line and checked the date. It was the night Gerald was hurt. She blinked at the screen. She read the entries again. The hair on the back of her neck tingled and her skin got colder. She tried to picture what happened in her mind.
Gerald entered his passcode and came into the server room. But Gerald couldn’t enter his passcode again without leaving the room unless…someone else entered Gerald’s passcode first and came into the room. They were still in here when Gerald came and entered his code.
Her heart sped up and her mouth went dry. Gazing up and down the server rack, she remembered Jack’s unanswered question: How did this thing fall over?
“It didn’t fall,” she whispered. “Someone pushed it over. It wasn’t an accident.”
Replacement looked at the door and realized whoever hurt Gerald could come right in. When she turned back to the server, she disabled Gerald’s code.
Her fingers shook as she took out her phone and called Jack.
Chapter 33
~
He’s Buying
Jack put the two silver cases down on the counter. The one in the package was identical to the original. He gave the original back to Pierce and looked up at the teenager behind the counter.
“He’s buying.” Jack nodded at Pierce.
Pierce paid for the case and they headed back to the Porsche. Jack held his hands out for the keys.
“You drove here,” Pierce said.
“I’m thinking about picking one up for myself.” Jack smirked. “But it would look odd if we switched now.”
Pierce tossed him the keys.
Traffic was light, and they made quick time getting to the lake. Once Jack hit the long straightaway, he sped up. “Why did you hire Gerald for this job?”
“I’ve know Mr. Mathis since I was a kid.”
“But why hire him? You have an IT company. Why not use them?”
“It was easier that way.”
Jack kept the gas down as they approached the turn ahead. Pierce looked back and forth between him and the rocks. Jack took his foot off the gas, came halfway around the turn, and pressed the pedal down. The dials on the dash all started to rise.
“Did anyone vet Gerald?”
“What? Mr. Mathis? Leon did. He vets everyone. Why do you ask?”
“It’s what you want me to do. Turn over every rock. What happened to his son?”
Pierce stared out the windshield. “He died.”
“When?”
“Seven years ago.”
“How?”
“Why is that important?”
Jack flew into the next turn. The tires gripped the road, but the tail end shimmied.
“I thought you didn’t drive fast,” Pierce said.
“I can see the whole road because of the curve of the lake. There’s no traffic,” Jack explained. “What happened?”
“He died in an accident.”
Jack took his foot off the gas. They approached the spillway, and Jack put his window down. Above the wind and engine noise, he could hear the water rushing under the road and into a waterfall on the other s
ide. Pierce looked past the guardrail to the water just over the edge of the road.
“Take a left up here,” Pierce said.
Jack slowed down as he turned down the small road. A large pond appeared as they rounded another bend. A small wooden sign along the road read: SOUTH POND.
South Pond was about the size of three football fields side by side. It sat nestled at the bottom of two hills. All around the bank were little cottage homes. A sandy beach area was on the left with a horseshoe dock. The beach was closed, and no one was around.
“Pull over and park there,” Pierce said.
Jack did, and Pierce got out. Jack followed Pierce as he headed toward the beach. Pierce went to the dock and walked all the way to the end.
Jack stopped and looked across the pond. The water was clear, and he could see the sandy bottom. Small fish swam by.
“Tyler lived there.” Pierce pointed to a little cottage house. “That was mine.”
Jack looked at the two-story colonial with a bit of surprise. He expected Pierce’s summer house to have been a lot larger.
“Why do you keep asking about Mr. Mathis?” Pierce asked. “There’s no way he had something to do with this.”
“I don’t think he did.”
The muscles in Pierce’s neck stood out. “Then why do you keep asking?”
“Because you keep giving me half the story.”
Pierce looked down at the water. “It has nothing to do with anything.”
“Look. I’m not asking just to ask. You hired Gerald. Right now, that case is what everything’s revolving around. He ended up with it in his pocket. I need to know everything, even if it’s just to rule it out.”
“I’ve known Mr. Mathis since I was six. My parents used to come here for summers. My father was an accountant, and my mother’s a biologist. They both had hard upbringings. The Mathises, on the other hand...they were laid-back. Every summer for me was a trip to normal.” He pointed back to the colonial. “That’s my house,” then he nodded to the Mathises’ cottage, “but I lived there.”
A cold wind blew across the pond. Jack looked up at the gray clouds rolling in.
“Tyler was like my brother. He was into sports, but I was into computers. Mr. Mathis was too. He made me my first computer. During the school year, that’s all I did. I wrote code. Mr. Mathis helped me when I came back every summer. My parents thought I was some protégé, so they put me in college early. I was fifteen. It sucked. I didn’t know anyone, and no one wants to be around a geek, let alone a young geek. Mr. Mathis let Tyler come out to visit me.”
Jack looked down at the water, but it had clouded up like the sky overhead. He watched the little waves while he waited for Pierce to continue.
“Tyler was up and we were hanging out. This lady’s car got stuck in the snow. We started pushing the car when this truck came skidding right at us. I slipped. Tyler shoved me out of the way but…he died. I lost touch with Mr. Mathis. Until recently.”
“When did you get back in touch with Gerald?”
“Six months ago. I found out he had cancer. It’s in remission now, but I wanted to do something. He refused. He said he couldn’t take charity.”
“That’s why you gave him the job, networking the house?”
Pierce leaned against the post. “I didn’t think he’d take it.”
“Does Gerald blame you?”
Pierce looked down at his reflection and scowled. “No. He doesn’t, but…I owe Mr. Mathis. I don’t know if you can understand that.”
“Yeah, I can.”
Somewhere a fish jumped. Jack gazed up at the sky. The hills now felt too close. Pierce’s pain reminded Jack of his own.
“When did the leaks start happening?”
“We’ve had little ones in the past but nothing like this. It’s making me crazy. Everything’s virtual. It’s all about data, Jack. Information about what Weston is doing makes stocks rise and fall. Someone’s making a fortune, but they’re hurting my company. And I can’t stop them.”
“You must’ve hired someone else to look into the leaks before.”
“I have. A few different investigators, but they came up with nothing. Their investigation did narrow down the list of which employees knew what.”
“What was your plan?” Jack asked.
Pierce crossed his arms. “I was going to tell each person a different story. Plant a false fact. Then I’d wait and see what happens.”
“When is this meeting scheduled?”
“The day after tomorrow.”
Jack frowned. “We’ll need to hurry to catch the guy. I have an idea but the more information we have on them, the better. The biggest thing we need is for whoever it is to not get freaked. When we go back to the mansion, I’m going to go back and work with Bruce and Phillip.”
“What should I do?”
“You’ve been working with Alice in the server room, right? Go back in there. We need her to look for everything she can find on the people who were there when she said she had your case.”
Jack’s phone rang. He looked down and saw Replacement’s number. “Hey.”
“You need to get back here right away.”
Chapter 34
~
Double-Scumbag
As Jack pulled the Porsche in the garage, Leon and Mrs. Maier hurried in.
“Mr. Weston.” Leon’s voice echoed off the cement as he came to attention. “We had a ten o’clock.”
“My apologies.” Pierce shut the door.
“Mr. Weston?” Mrs. Maier frowned at Leon. “The hospital just called. Mr. Mathis is more alert. They’ve upgraded his condition and he can have visitors.”
“I’m sorry, Leon, but we’ll need to reschedule. We’ll be leaving.” Pierce turned to Jack. “I assume that Alice would want to come?”
“I’ll go get her.” Jack headed for the server room. He hurried down the hallway and then knocked at the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Jack.”
Replacement whipped the door open. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Gerald can have visitors and—”
“I’ll get my stuff.” She zipped back into the server room and then hurried back into the hallway. “Is he okay?”
“They upgraded his condition.”
“Did they move him out of ICU?”
Jack picked up his pace as he followed her to the garage. “All I heard was he could have visitors.”
“I have to talk to you and Pierce. I found something.”
“Wait until the car.”
Replacement frowned as she started to text into her phone. “I’ll let Bruce and Phillip know that we’re leaving.”
When they entered the garage, Pierce stood next to the key rack. Leon and Mrs. Maier were gone.
Jack looked at the assortment of cars and exhaled. “You have quite the showroom.”
“I like cars.” Pierce held up his hand to the key rack and looked to Replacement. “Do you have a preference?”
Replacement raised herself up on her toes, and her hands clasped together behind her back. “How about the red convertible?”
“It’s a two-seater.”
Replacement hopped over to a silver Maserati Quattroporte. “This has a backseat.” She opened the rear door.
“The Maserati it is.” Pierce took the keys off the rack.
Jack headed for the passenger side. “Everyone knows we’re going to see Gerald, right?”
“I texted Phillip and Bruce,” Replacement said.
“I covered the rest.” Pierce got behind the wheel.
As they approached the guardhouse, Manuel was already behind the wheel of a dark sedan. Jack nodded, and Replacement waved.
Pierce pulled out of the driveway and headed for Darrington. Jack rolled down the passenger window and glanced back at Replacement. “What did you want to tell us?”
Replacement grabbed the back of the seat and pulled herself forward. “I got totally freaked out. I was pullin
g background on everyone and remembered the server records passcodes and door events.”
“Door events?” Jack asked.
“When the door opens, if it stays propped open, stuff like that.” She undid her seat belt, and both Jack and Pierce frowned. “It’s just for a second. I need to explain.”
“And you can’t explain one foot back?” Jack asked.
“Shh, listen. The night Gerald was hurt, someone used his passcode.”
“They used Mr. Mathis’s code? Are you sure?” Pierce asked.
Replacement nodded. “They entered in his code, came in the server room, and then Gerald came in.”
“You’re sure?” Jack asked.
“One hundred percent. When Gerald entered the server room, someone else was inside. The pattern should go you enter your passcode, open the door, do what you got to do and then open the door again.”
“But that night was different?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. Someone entered in the passcode and opened the door. But then someone entered in the same passcode and entered the room again.”
“Wait a second.” Pierce pulled down the rearview mirror so he could see her. “That doesn’t mean someone was in the server room. What if Mr. Mathis opened the door and didn’t go in?”
Replacement’s lips mashed together. “When have you ever entered your passcode, opened the door and then not walked through?”
“He could’ve forgotten something,” Pierce said.
Replacement opened her mouth but Jack held up his hand. “Someone was waiting for Gerald.”
“You can’t be sure.” Pierce shook his head.
“That server rack falling over never made sense to me,” Jack said. “The rack’s bottom heavy. It doesn’t want to fall. Someone had to pull it over.”
“That’s why you had me tug on it!” Replacement whacked Jack’s shoulder. “I thought of that the minute I saw the entry.”
Jack nodded. “I should’ve listened to my gut. The whole scenario didn’t feel right.”
“Maybe Gerald surprised him!” Replacement sat bolt upright. “The guy was already in the computer room, trying to get the case.”
“Slow down.” Pierce waved his hand. “You think that the case and Gerald getting hurt are somehow linked?”
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