Brave New World_A Sam Prichard Mystery

by David Archer

  The grimace on Landry’s face told her that she had struck pay dirt. “Okay, look,” he said. “I don’t know what your people were told, but I tried. How was I to know she was going to pull a shocker on me? I mean, come on, she looks like a sixth-grader. That chick is a lot meaner than anybody gives her credit for. I never even saw it coming.”

  Summer looked at him for a moment, then smiled again. “I’ll grant you, she has surprised us all. The question now is, how are we going to find her?”

  Landry’s eyes got wider. “Haven’t they found her already? It's my understanding that they tracked her down to a bus trip.”

  Summer shook her head. “She gave them the slip,” she said, glad she had spoken to Indie. “Apparently the bus was simply a ruse, because she wasn't on it.”

  “Damn,” Landry said. “I wouldn’t have thought she was that slick. The way Mac always talked, I got the impression she wasn’t all that bright.”

  “He was probably trying to protect her from you,” Summer said, smiling. “What we know right now is that she bought a ticket from Oakland to somewhere else, but she got off the bus in San Diego and passed the ticket off. I don’t know who they would find when they tried to grab her, but it’s not Rebecca McGill. My guess is that she bought another ticket out of San Diego. Any idea where she might be going?”

  “Me? How would I have any idea?”

  “As you said, Mac talked about her a lot. Did he ever mention where she was from, where she might have any family?”

  “No, nothing like that. According to him, he met her when she was working out of one of those places in Vegas, the whorehouses. He took a shine to her and offered to get her out of that life if she would marry him, and I guess she figured it was worth it. As far as her family goes, I doubt he even knew anything about them. I know he never mentioned them to me.”

  Summer leaned closer and used her fingertip to trace the veins on the back of his hand. “Are you sure? I mean, I’m going to find out everything you know one way or another. Do you want to know how it will go?”

  He just stared at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down a couple of times. “What do you mean?”

  “Look, Jonathan,” she said softly, “here’s the thing. I was sent here to find out what my bosses want to know. Now, I can either be your reward for loyalty and faithfulness, or I can be your punishment. I’m perfectly fine going either way, but I’m actually the easy option. The hard option is the guy who comes if I fail. Now, we don’t want him to have to come and talk to you, do we?”

  The Adam’s apple bobbed again. “But I don’t know anything else,” Landry said. “I honestly don’t. If I did, I promise I’d tell you.”

  Summer smiled again. “Do you promise? You promise you would tell me everything you know?”

  “I do, I really do. I mean, I’ll tell you anything I can, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  She sat there and looked at him for a moment, still tracing the veins on his hand with her finger. “Jonathan, is there somewhere else we can go? Somewhere that’s not so noisy?”

  “Well, I guess—where would you like to go?”

  She licked her lips. “Someplace nobody will hear me if I scream?”

  *

  Steve and Walter entered the restaurant at a couple of minutes after six, and the hostess asked them their names. When Steve answered, she nodded and led them straight to a table where Detective Sellars was waiting. He and Steve shook hands, while Walter simply took a chair and picked up a menu.

  “He doesn’t shake hands,” he said. “It’s just the way he is.”

  Sellars grinned. “No problem,” he said. “I brought the file. Thought you might just want to take a look at it while we wait for the food to get here.”

  “Good idea,” Steve said. A waitress appeared a moment later and took their orders, and then Steve picked up the file and opened it.

  He flipped through the pages inside and found the lab report on the poison that had been detected on Williamson’s hands. Luckily, the first police officers on the scene had not touched the body at all, and the crime scene techs had worn nitrile gloves. It was one of the technicians who first noticed the oily substance on the doctor’s hands, and he had bagged them so that they would not become contaminated. That precaution had quite possibly prevented anyone else from being affected.

  At the Medical Examiner’s lab, the substance had been swabbed and sent off for analysis. Results came back in less than three hours, because cyanide was among the first poisons that the tests would look for. When it was found, a second round of tests determined that the cyanide was mixed with a base of DMSO, and this led to the report that the poison was absorbed directly through the skin of his hands.

  The toxicology screen on the body came back confirming the hypothesis, and Doctor Williamson’s death was officially ruled a homicide. When the body of Barton Medell was brought in the following morning, it didn’t take long to realize that he had suffered the same fate.

  The next page Steve examined was the ballistics report on the bullet that killed McGill. McGill had been killed by a single shot to the head, which had been fired from a 7.62mm handgun. The bullet had taken off a large portion of his skull and blown most of his brains out the back of his head. Death had been instantaneous.

  McGill’s body had been found in an alley in a disreputable part of San Francisco. It was surrounded by rundown buildings, many of which were empty of occupants. Crime scene technicians had found no indication of the presence of others, and there was no foreign DNA on McGill’s body. Whoever had killed him and disposed of his body had done so carefully, making an effort not to leave any forensic evidence behind.

  “McGill died quick,” Steve said. “I can’t help but wonder if he even saw it coming.”

  “That was my thought,” Sellars replied. “It looked to me like it probably happened so fast he didn’t have time to prepare for it.”

  Steve continued flipping through the pages and found one that caught his interest. It showed that McGill’s cell phone had sent several text messages to Williamson’s, and received a few replies. They seemed to be directions to the alley where McGill’s body was found. There was even a time to meet, at just before midnight. Williamson was told to look for the flash of a cigarette lighter.

  “Almost looks like McGill thought of himself as some kind of secret agent,” Steve said. “Meet me in a dark alley, watch for my cigarette lighter—bring along a stolen chip worth millions and millions of dollars. This thing almost reads like a plot of a movie.”

  “Well, we’ve known about McGill for a while,” Sellars said. “Never had enough evidence to bring him in, but he’s been at the top of a number of suspect lists over different items that have been stolen around the country. It’s usually some kind of corporate secret stuff, but he’s been known to move stolen merchandise from time to time. About the only thing we never tied him to was drugs; I guess there’s some things even a criminal won’t do.”

  Steve glanced at a few other pages, then closed the file and passed it back. “Did you find anything on close associates of Doctor Williamson? We know that he had an accomplice at C-Link. Any idea who it might be?”

  “No, from what we could find, he didn’t seem to have any friends at all. The closest he ever came to that would be with the hookers down in the Tenderloin District. The guy had some pretty weird tastes, and the girls down there will do just about anything for money. When we figured out from his cell phone GPS that he went down there a lot, I actually took his picture down and showed it around. Quite a few of the girls looked like they were about to cry when I said he was dead. One of them told me her standard of living was going to go down without the money he always dropped on her.”

  “Well, I doubt he took any of them into the place. No other friends at all?”

  Sellars shook his head. “None that I ever found out about, no. Even at work, there were only a few people I talked to that seemed to be bothered by his death. Oh, they
all said it was too bad, but you know what I mean. Nobody really seemed all that upset. A few of the women even looked relieved, if you want to know the truth. I guess he’d been known to make some pretty rude comments.”

  The food arrived and they ate, and then Steve thanked the detective for letting him look at the file. They walked out together and said their goodbyes, and then Steve and Walter got into their car to head for the hotel they were staying at.

  “Well, that was a bust,” Steve said. “I was hoping to pick up some kind of a lead.”

  “We did,” Walter said. “7.62 millimeter. McGill was most likely killed by a Chinese gun.”

  11

  It was almost seven in the evening, and Sam was just about to leave his office. He had given Joel one of the guest rooms upstairs, and had been talking with Ron and Jeff about the case when Steve Beck called.

  He answered the phone quickly. “Steve, I’ve got you on speaker, Ron and Jeff are here. How’s it going out there?”

  “It's going pretty damn good,” Steve said. “Walter has already impressed people so much that they’re trying to hire him away. Don’t worry, he likes his job more than he likes money. And that’s probably a good thing, because if they offered me as much as they’re offering him, I’d tell you guys goodbye.”

  “Well, this is sounding pretty interesting. How did he impress them so much?”

  “Just doing his thing,” Steve said. “He walked around that clean room for a few minutes and then explained that Doctor Williamson wasn't the one who came in and took the chip. The actual thief was about the size of Walter, and Williamson weighed close to three hundred pounds. He also found out that the thief didn’t bother to follow protocols for the clean room, which means it got contaminated. Most of the stuff in it will be okay, because it’s all sealed into different types of storage casing to protect it, but their technicians are throwing fits. They claim it’s going to take a week to get the clean room back to its original state.”

  “And they hadn’t noticed? How is that?”

  “Well, it’s probably just that the contamination was so minor that it didn’t register on any of their sensors, or at least that’s what they’re saying. All I know is that I’m looking for an accomplice who could get his hands on a key card that doesn’t seem to exist. When I got here, they gave me one that can open any door or cabinet, so that I can do whatever I need to do, but apparently there are only a few of these and they’re all accounted for. Whatever card was used to open the room and the cabinet is not one that they have any record of.”

  “But wouldn’t it have been logged if he used his own card?”

  “Yeah, well, some people are dumb enough to put all their eggs in a single basket. The same computer that recorded the video is the one that records access and card usage. Only a master card or Williamson’s card could have opened that cabinet, and all the master cards were accounted for, as I said. Thing is, the individual cards issued to the staff all have biometric identification systems. In order to use it, you have to have your thumb print on a sensor built into the card. If the thumb print doesn’t match, the card will not work, so the thief couldn't have used Williamson’s card.”

  “Well, at least it means that you and I were right,” Sam said. “However Williamson was involved, there was an accomplice that actually pulled off the theft. Now all we have to do is figure out how, and that might lead us to who.” He looked at Ron and Jeff. “You guys got any questions?”

  Jeff nodded. “Steve, is there any way those cards could be hacked? Like, the way we can clone a cell phone by making another phone had the same electronic ID number?”

  “They tell me that’s not possible,” he said, “but when you’re dealing with technicians like these, who knows what is and is not possible? Just because nobody has done it before doesn’t mean it can’t be done, or the Wright brothers would still be trying to make something fly at Kitty Hawk. I’m going to be going through their personnel records tomorrow to see if I can narrow down the list of suspects. At the moment, only three of us out here have any idea what it is I’m looking for in that list, so hopefully nobody will be able to hide from me.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact. Walter and I are going to have dinner tonight with the detective who was assigned to the case by the local PD. I want to find out what they know, and I’ll send you an email once I have something to go on.”

  “Sounds good, Steve,” Sam said. “Let me know what you find out as soon as you can.”

  “You got it.” The line went dead and Sam turned off the speakerphone.

  “Well, at least we’re getting somewhere,” he said to Ron and Jeff. “Both Steve and I had already suspected there was an accomplice involved somewhere. Now it’s up to Steve to figure out who it could be, and then we can put the pressure on to find out just what happened to the chip.”

  “This is progress,” Jeff said. “See? We knew you were the right man for the job.”

  “I haven’t done anything,” Sam said. “You already had these people, remember?”

  “But none of them have your initiative, Sam,” Ron said. “None of them can look at things quite the way you do. They need a leader, and you’re it.”

  Sam sat there for another moment, then slapped his hands on his desk. “Okay, okay, I already took the job, remember? Speaking of which, it’s quitting time. Indie is holding dinner for me, so I've got to get home and play with my children.” He got to his feet, and the other men did likewise.

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, Sam,” Ron said, and Jeff echoed him. They all walked down the hall together and out to their cars, then waved goodbye as they each headed for home.

  Kenzie came running when Sam walked in the door, threw her arms wide and leapt into his. He managed to catch her without losing his grip on his cane, and then they both laughed as he hobbled over and fell onto the couch with her.

  “Daddy,” Kenzie said, “Bo really, really likes to watch me.”

  “He does? Wow, that’s awesome.”

  “It sure is,” Indie said. “I had him sitting up on the floor for a few minutes and the little turkey picked his head up and looked around and broke into a big smile when he spotted his sister, then kept his eyes on her while she ran around the room, laughing the whole time.”

  “I take it that’s a little early for that sort of thing?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, I wouldn't say it’s extremely early,” his wife replied, “but it’s probably a little ahead of the curve. I won’t be too surprised if he starts talking in the next couple of weeks.” She giggled. “Well, maybe not really talking, but trying to get his point across.”

  She sat down beside her husband and daughter with the baby boy in her arms. Bo looked directly at his daddy and his face erupted into a smile.

  “He’s certainly glad to see you,” Indie said. “You want to take him while I start getting dinner on the table?”

  “You betcha,” Sam said. He held out his hands toward the baby, who started flapping his arms as if he wanted to fly, but Sam just picked him up instead. He sat on the couch with both of his children and thought about just how wonderful his life had been since Indie had come into it.

  “So, how was your day at the office, honey?” Indie asked loudly from the kitchen. Sam picked up the baby as Kenzie slid off his lap onto the floor, and they walked into the kitchen to join her.

  “Well, I had to send three people to California,” Sam said, “but I think we may be making some progress already. Walter Rawlins, the crime scene expert, figured out that Doctor Williamson couldn't have been the one who actually stole the chip. There is an accomplice involved, somewhere, and Steve Beck is out there working on that.”

  “Yeah, Summer called me a while ago. She wanted me to help her track down that lawyer, Landry. I got his location from his cell phone and gave it to her a couple hours ago. He was hanging out in a bar, of course.”

  Sam shook his head with a mock frown.
“Poor Landry,” he said. “I suspect she’s going to tear him into little bitty pieces. She’s beautiful to look at, but I get the feeling she’s beautiful like a tiger. She might look good, but she’ll rip you to shreds and devour you if you aren’t careful. And she uses her looks to her advantage, says it’s nothing but a tool.”

  Indie glanced over at him, her eyes wide and innocent. “She’s beautiful?”

  “Well, she couldn’t hold a candle to you,” Sam said, “but she’s definitely the kind that most men think they want. Underneath, though, she’s all power and self-control. She’s figured out that she can manipulate most men into doing whatever she wants, and she’s apparently practiced it.” He smiled at Indie. “You’re not going to get jealous, are you?”

  “Do I need to be?”

  Sam leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Absolutely not,” he said. “You’re a beautiful woman, Indie, but beauty is more than just what you see on the outside. You’ve got it all the way through, and that’s why someone like Summer could never use those wiles on me. In fact, I warned her this morning that I intend to use her exactly the way she said it, with her looks being nothing but a tool in her arsenal. That’s why I sent her out to deal with Landry; he strikes me as the type of guy she can lead around on a string.”

  Indie looked at him from under her eyebrows. “Just as long as she can’t get that string on you,” she said. “She may be a tiger, but I can be a sabertooth.”

  Sam grinned. “I’d almost like to see that,” he said. “Indie, my beloved, you have nothing to worry about.”

  *

  “It's like I told you back at the club,” Summer said. “Give me what I want and I’m your reward. If you don’t, then I’m your punishment.”

  She was looking down at Landry as he lay on a bed in a motel room. She had brought him to one of the cheapest motels in the area, the kind that reeked of sleazy encounters and illicit sex. She had learned long ago that places like that seemed to excite certain kinds of men, and Landry was a perfect example. When she told him to get them a room, he had almost hurt himself getting out of the car as quickly as he could.