Replaceable: An Alan Lamb Thriller

by Bouchard, J. W.

  “You were right about him being the patsy. Sounds like they’re going to nail him for all of it.”

  “Something tells me that doesn’t sit well with you.”

  “It doesn’t. He’s no angel, but he isn’t a murderer. If they put him away for it, it’s about as close as you can get to convicting an innocent man. And the bad shit will keep on going.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “I don’t see any reason for them to stop,” Alan said. He could feel his thoughts starting to swim around in his head the slightest bit. He had mentioned to Frank Knowles that he was a lightweight, but he was beginning to think that that had been an understatement.

  “That’s not what I was saying,” Guy said. “We both know the guy was a patsy. They’re looking at putting him away because everything that’s on paper leads back to him. You take that, along with the fact he committed corporate espionage against Sagent, and there’s not a whole lot of room left for reasonable doubt.”

  “I’ve been over that already. We both knew they’d set it up in a way where everything could be pinned on McKay, but I didn’t think our side would take it and run with it. Not after McKay’s testimony.”

  “I share your disdain.” Guy puffed on his cigar, staring off into the distance, past the neighboring buildings, to where the sun was being crowded out by a series of thick, dark clouds. “At a certain tier of the ladder, the law dissolves and all you’re left with is politics. That’s why I left law enforcement and hung my own shingle. I was never any good at playing the game and I knew it.”

  “These crimes will keep on happening though. Even after they send McKay down the river, they’ll keep on going, and more lives will be lost.”

  “Will they? Will they keep happening, I mean? I figured this was exactly the way they planned it. Have McKay take the fall and then slink off into the shadows without anyone being the wiser.”

  “I don’t know. That just doesn’t add up for me. This guy, whoever he is, he enjoys the game. I think he gets a kick out of pulling the wool over our eyes, of being at least one step ahead. He’s the one that’s been leaving us clues.”

  “But that was before McKay was apprehended. Have you received any clues since then?”

  “Maybe.”

  Alan went on to explain how all but one of the storage devices they had confiscated from the warehouse in San Francisco had been wiped and infected with a virus. He told Guy about the Sherlock Holmes story, and finished with, “And in the story, this guy posing as her fiancé has her address all her correspondence to the local post office. My thinking was that the next attack would focus on a post office, but we have no way of knowing which one.”

  The clouds had blocked out the sun. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

  “I think that’s a sign telling us to bring this party indoors,” Guy said, stamping out his cigar and leading them into his motel room.

  The files that had previously been strewn about on the bed were gone now, and Alan sat down on the edge of it while he finished the rest of his drink.

  “Bruno, our guest has gone dry.”

  As Bruno brought over the bottle of Jack Daniels to refill Alan’s empty glass, Guy sat down at his desk and began shuffling through papers.

  “You’re sure the next one is going to be a post office?”

  “Not a hundred percent, but the story was obviously left as a clue, and that’s all I could get out of it.”

  Guy said, “Or the other possibility is that with McKay in the clink, they’ve concluded their business and all is quiet on the western front.” He kept sifting through a stack of papers until he seemed to find the one he was looking for. “Let me check one thing quick.” His fingers tapped at the keyboard for a moment. “Yeah, like I thought. Look at this.”

  Alan leaned in closer. “What?”

  Guy tapped the screen. “This. Odin LLC. The other day when I checked it was in good standing with the California SOS. Now look.”

  Alan read the words on the screen. “Dissolved?”

  “Yep. That would indicate they’re winding down the business.”

  “Can we see who signed the dissolution?”

  “I can’t bring it up online myself, but I can make a call to an agent I know out there that can get us a copy. But I think we’d just be verifying the obvious.”

  “Which is?”

  “I think the dissolution will have Graham McKay’s name all over it.”

  Alan felt that familiar sense of hopelessness return, and even the whiskey buzz couldn’t cut through it. “They thought of everything.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Then there’s this,” Guy said, and handed Alan the page he had taken from the stack. “Notice anything?”

  Alan studied the paper. “This is just a printout of the SOS’s info on Odin LLC. Showing McKay as the registered agent.”

  “Bruno, cut this man off. I think the drink is going to his head. Either that, or he’s asleep at the wheel. How long has it been since you’ve slept?”

  “I lost track.”

  “You said you think the next attack is going to be on a post office.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Take a look at the mailing address,” Guy said.

  Alan focused on the sheet of paper. Under the principal office address, it listed Graham McKay’s home address. Under the mailing address it listed…

  “Jesus Christ, it’s a P.O. Box,” Alan said.

  He left Guy saying he owed him one. Again. His indebtedness to the private investigator seemed to be growing by the day.

  When he returned to his own motel room, the first thing he did was phone Gant. There was a good chance that Gant was already in bed, but Alan didn’t want to sleep on this one. The clock was ticking, or so he assumed, and no one had provided them with a timeline. If something was set to happen, it could happen a day from now or five minutes from now.

  Gant answered on the third ring. It didn’t sound like he had been pulled out of a deep slumber.

  “It’s Alan. I think I’ve got a lead on our post office angle. Do you have something to write with?”

  Gant told him to hold on, and Alan waited, hearing a brief rustling sound until Gant said, “Go ahead.”

  “It’s a P.O. Box in San Francisco.”

  Alan gave him the address. Gant said he’d put in a call and then asked Alan how sure he was that the lead was a credible one.

  “Fifty-fifty, but it’s all we’ve got,” Alan said.

  Gant grumbled something unintelligible and hung up.

  Alan plugged his cell phone into the charger, stripped off his slacks and shirt, and then lay down on the bed. He didn’t expect to hear anything back until the morning. The fatigue that had gradually built up over the last several days hit him all at once.

  He glanced over to the end table where the digital alarm clock sat and read the glowing green numbers on the clock’s face. That was the last thing he would remember doing before he woke up the next morning.

  Chapter 18

  He awoke to his phone ringing at 8:32 A.M. His neck was stiff and he felt intense pressure in the back of his eyeballs. It had been the deep, comatose-like sleep that was probably as close to being dead as one could possibly be while still having a pulse. Despite all that, he didn’t feel particularly well rested. He hadn’t even heard the alarm go off.

  Alan had dreamed. He remembered that much.

  He had dreamed about the car accident. He had been in such a state that he had known while the events of the dream had played out that he was dreaming, but had delved too deep into unconsciousness to be able to control the events of the dream. All he had been able to do was to watch the familiar scene unfold.

  A passenger sitting in the dark interior of the car, on the road one second, veering rapidly toward the ditch in the next. The sick screech of twisting metal, exploding glass, and then silence.

  The silence was the worst part. The car having come to a tangled rest on its side, Alan having been thro
wn into the backseat, his body lying broken against what should have been the backseat, but was actually the door behind the driver’s seat. He remembered staring up through the shattered rear passenger side window, seeing a clear sky of stars and a sliver of moon.

  His insides were on fire. It felt like the weight of the entire car was resting on his back. And at that moment, he had been certain he was dying. That his organs had suffered a rapid and fatal rearrangement. He had screamed in pain, wondering how long it would be before he slipped into unconsciousness.

  But unconsciousness had never come. He had been awake for all of it. The onset of shock had probably been the only thing keeping the intense pain from being incapacitating. He had felt liquid warmth on his forehead, and when he slid his fingers over his temple, they had come into contact with something wet and sticky. He could feel a flap of skin hanging there. He had done his best to fold the flap up, pressing against it, as if he was sealing an envelope shut.

  In the dream, he was on a deserted gravel road, surrounded by nothing but darkness. He had picked himself up, reaching for the overhead door, searing pain shooting through his stomach as he pressed his outstretched hands against it until it finally groaned open. He had pulled himself up and climbed over and then fallen to the ground, sending up a cloud of dust.

  Then he had walked. Despite the fiery pain, he had walked. Without a sense of direction, he had followed the gravel road for what seemed like miles, until he had come to a farmhouse. He had dropped to his ass and slid down into a ditch that had seemed much too deep and climbed up the other side, staggering toward the farmhouse, barely aware that the flap of skin at his temple had come loose again, flapping this way and that, the coolness of the gentle breeze hitting the open wound.

  Alan had knocked on the front door, hoping the house wasn’t abandoned, almost fainting when lights came on inside, and an older woman answered the door, her eyes going wide in horror as she stared at this would-be intruder standing battered and bleeding on her front doorstep.

  The memory grew vague after that. He knew that an ambulance had arrived shortly thereafter, that he had been gurneyed into it and had ridden in silence to the hospital, where a man with gloved hands had grabbed his penis and inserted the catheter tube into it, Alan making jokes because he was in shock and it was the first time another grown man had touched his junk.

  He remembered blinding white lights and then nothingness. After that, time had passed, but he had no idea how much. Only that he had woken up in a hospital bed, his head wound sutured shut and cords and IVs snaking from his body to any number of machines. They had given him morphine for the pain, which he could administer himself every so often via a small clicker he held in his hand with a red button at the top.

  What had followed was surgery on his fractured back, which consisted of placing six titanium screws between his 3rd and 4th lumbar vertebrae, and had also meant the return to pain.

  At the end of it, he had had to learn to walk all over again, and he had marveled at the fact that in less than a month a person’s legs could become so weak that it took time to regain the ability to hold their owner’s weight again.

  The dream always haunted him. He had wondered for a long time why this was, and had settled on the idea that it was mostly due to it being a mystery. The movie of that incident that he had recorded in his mind was incomplete; there were large sections where there was only blackness, as though the movie had been edited to shield him from the worst parts. He still couldn’t recall what had caused the car to lose control, or how fast they had been going, or what they had collided with that had left the car a misshapen sculpture of twisted metal. His hospital stay was also incomplete. He had almost no memory of what had taken place shortly after his arrival or of the surgery that had followed. The incident had been one long lesson in pain. Out of everything, he remembered the pain most vividly. There were no missing pieces when it came to that.

  Alan answered his phone. Lucy was on the other end.

  “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “Well, you better get in here. Pronto.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “Just come. You’ll find out when you get here.”

  He dressed hurriedly, skipping the shower and shave, cursing Lucy under his breath for not telling him what this was all about. He hated mystery, and the mystery that awaited him reminded him again of his dream about the car accident. The dreams were occurring more frequently these days, but the blank spots remained blank spots, and the images that flashed in his brain were the same as they had always been.

  Alan tried to put the dream out of his head. It was a memory (and not a very good one at that) and that was how it needed to stay.

  As he was getting into his car, Bruno came down the stairs from the second floor.

  “How are you this fine morning, Agent Lamb?” Bruno asked. He wasn’t smiling, but he seemed to be in a good mood.

  “Too early to tell,” Alan said. “You?”

  “Not bad. Not too bad at all. I asked my therapist out on a date.”

  “Yeah?” Alan had his hand on the door handle, wanting nothing more than get in and drive away, but didn’t want to seem rude. He prayed this polite morning conversation wouldn’t take long. “How’d that go?”

  Bruno didn’t answer right away. He cocked his head slightly to the side and thought about it for a minute. “It left me confused.”

  “Did she say yes?”

  Bruno shook his head. “No. She didn’t. But she didn’t say no, either. That’s what has me confused. I’m not really sure she gave me an answer at all.”

  “That’s the job of any good therapist.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To leave you more confused than you were to begin with.”

  “That’s a good one. I think you might be right. Doesn’t solve my current dilemma though.”

  “Just be direct,” Alan said.

  “You think?”

  “Couldn’t hurt. Ask her for clarification.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that. I appreciate the advice.”

  “Bill’s in the mail,” Alan said, smiling.

  He jumped into his car and headed for the office.

  Chapter 19

  Alan was sporting a five o’clock shadow when the elevator doors opened and he walked through the bullpen to his office.

  Both Lucy and Gant were waiting for him. Gant was holding an envelope in his hand. The back was facing outward. Alan couldn’t read whatever was written on the front.

  “You slept,” Lucy said. “That’s good. Now you just need to shower and shave.”

  “Can’t have everything. So…what have we got? Was it the post office?”

  “It was clean,” Gant said. “They had the bomb squad check it out. Nothing.”

  “I was wrong.”

  “Not quite.”

  Gant handed him the envelope.

  “What’s this?” Alan turned the envelope over and read what was written there. His stomach sank. “Where’d this come from?”

  “The postal inspector was kind enough to check the contents of McKay’s post office box for us,” Gant said. “There was only a single letter. And you’re holding it.”

  “The post office was clean?” he asked, already knowing the answer, but wanting to hear it again anyway.

  “What the guys in San Fran are saying.”

  Alan’s gaze dropped to the envelope, reading the words again.

  Typed on the front of the envelope were two words in all caps: ALAN LAMB.

  His name.

  And how could that be? How could a piece of mail with his name on it end up in Graham McKay’s P.O. Box in San Francisco?

  Because someone is keeping tabs on you, Alan thought.

  “The whole time you thought he was leaving us clues,” Lucy said. “But that wasn’t right. He was leaving them for you.”

  “Are you going to open it anytime today?” Gant aske
d.

  “What if it’s booby trapped?” Lucy asked. “Or maybe there’s poison inside of it. Anthrax or something.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Alan said and tore the envelope open.

  Inside, there was a folded piece of paper. Alan fished it out and unfolded it.

  YOU DID NOT KNOW WHERE TO LOOK, AND SO YOU MISSED ALL THAT WAS IMPORTANT.

  And below that:

  YOURS TRULY,

  MORRIE ARTIE

  “Remember that?” Lucy said. “That’s exactly the part I pointed out in the Sherlock Holmes story.”

  “You were right,” Alan said. “It was me who got it wrong. A post office wasn’t the clue.”

  Lucy said, “Sure it was. You were right, too. The clue was a post office. He was telling you where to go so you could find this letter. This must be the next clue.”

  “It doesn’t tell us anything,” Alan said, but didn’t believe it.

  “It tells us,” Gant said, “that this guy has chosen to single you out for some reason.”

  “It’s like you said. He’s playing a game, but it isn’t with all of us like we thought,” Lucy said. “He’s playing it with you.”

  “Why me? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “When does it ever make sense?” Gant said. “I’m late for my meeting with Deputy Director Strickland. He wants my final disposition on the case.”

  “What are you going to tell him?”

  Gant shrugged. “I’ll tell him what you told me. That it isn’t over yet. Not that it’ll make any difference. He’s just going through the motions at this point. His mind’s already made up.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Do what I’ve been telling you from the beginning. Work the case.”

  Gant left them.

  Lucy snatched the note out of Alan’s hands and read it over. “It’s so cryptic,” she said. “What’s Mr. Arti trying to tell us.”

  “He’s not telling us anything. He’s rubbing our noses in it.”

  Lucy took the note and sat down behind her desk, smoothing the paper out. She stared at it for a long time.