Bad Judgment

by Sidney Bell

  “Thanks,” he said, and hung up. There was no way in hell Embry would sign an ROI for him, and Brogan wasn’t interested in committing fraud today. He was concerned about the situation now that Coop was looking at him, yeah, but he wasn’t that concerned, and besides, fraud seemed like more of a weekend activity.

  But there might be another way.

  He found the number for the physics department office secretary then changed his spiel, pouring on the charm and asking her name.

  “Hi, Wendy. I’m a reporter doing a piece on a local guy who was a student in your department.”

  Her natural friendliness hesitated. “I can’t tell you anything about grades...”

  “Oh, I’ve already got most of that,” he replied jovially. “It’s a positive story, anyway, a profile, really. Somebody’s giving the kid a grant. I’m just trying to get some local color to round out the story. You know, a few quotes about how smart he is. That sort of thing.”

  “That seems okay,” she said, sounding more comfortable.

  “So he spent most of his time with the condensed matter faculty, if that helps,” he added, remembering the topic of the paper Embry had written.

  “Who’s the student?” she asked.

  “Adam Evans.”

  Wendy laughed. “Oh, you mean Embry!”

  Brogan chuckled, keeping it friendly and relaxed, even though he was doing a fist pump on the inside. “I do, indeed. I take it you know him?”

  “I do. He gave my car a jump once, actually.”

  “Did he now? That sounds like a story.” It would have to be, Brogan thought. For a secretary to remember a specific student as many as five or six years later?

  “Oh, not really. I was one of the last to leave for the night and my stupid Tahoe wouldn’t start. Went back in to call a tow truck and he was in the department reading room, surrounded by books, just like always. He got his car and spent thirty minutes in the cold helping me. Made me feel better having him around, since campus can get a little creepy that time of night. Silly SUV still didn’t work, so he gave me a ride home. I live a ways from campus, so we had plenty of time to chat.”

  “Nice of him.”

  “It really was. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t known him particularly well before then. He was always sort of...”

  “Brusque?” Brogan asked dryly. “That’s the one that comes up the most often.”

  “Quiet, I’d say.” Wendy paused, then hurried to add, “But that’s just how he came across. He was very sweet. And smart, too! I mean, we get some impressive kids here, but he was something else, especially for being only sixteen when he came.”

  “Just a baby.”

  “Yes. He didn’t have many friends, but the staff and his teachers all adored him. I think he was just shy, because once you got him talking about his work, he was like a completely different person. He was so excited about learning. It’s a real shame that he had to leave.”

  “You know, he hasn’t talked much about that,” Brogan said. “It’s part of why I wanted to speak to someone in the department. I didn’t want to pry too much with him.”

  “I’d like to help you, but I don’t really know the reasons for it. Just one day he was in the office, getting signatures to withdraw from all his classes, looking like he’d been hit by a bus.”

  “Huh.”

  “And he didn’t come back. I’ve always wondered what happened to him. He’s all right, though, you said?”

  “Well, you know Embry,” Brogan told her, hoping she wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t really answered her question. “Last thing. Do you know when he withdrew? It’ll save me bugging him again.”

  “I can look it up,” she said. “Give me a second.” Then after a minute, she said, “That’s weird.”

  “What?”

  “He’s not in my system.”

  Brogan huffed a breath, somehow not even a little bit surprised.

  “Let me try something else,” she said, but only a second later she added, “Well, that’s just odd. He should be right here, in the previous students’ database, but I can’t find him. It’s like he vanished.”

  “Can you give me a guess as to when he would have left?”

  Hesitantly, she said, “It was late in February of 2011 I believe. I remember thinking it was too early for midterms to be responsible for putting that misery on his face—that’s how wrecked he looked.”

  Brogan didn’t bother calling any of the other professors when he hung up. He was too busy tapping the end of the pen against the date he’d scrawled on a napkin.

  He was willing to bet that whatever prompted Embry to withdraw from Harvard was part of Embry’s grudge against Henniton, although Brogan couldn’t imagine how Henniton could’ve been involved in something that happened clear across the country. Assuming, of course, that whatever it was had happened in Boston in the first place.

  Chapter Thirteen

  That was pretty much when Brogan crossed over into stalker territory. He knew it, and he even felt guilty about it, truly, but not enough to stop. He kept going for the same reason that he didn’t mention any of this to Timmerson: he needed to know everything before he made any decisions, because anything less might get someone hurt.

  Brogan couldn’t let that happen.

  His next step was researching which martial arts studios in Oregon taught Krav Maga, because one of the few things he knew for a fact was that Embry’d had formal training. He ran down the list and hit pay dirt in Gresham, thirty minutes from Portland.

  As soon as he got out of work on Thursday afternoon, Brogan drove upstate. He put Gizmo in his skull-and-bones doggie sweater—greyhounds got chilled easily—and took him along, which meant Brogan spent the hour-long drive strong-arming the shithead back into the passenger seat.

  “You are the worst,” he told Gizmo when they were sitting at a red light. Gizmo lapped at his cheek, then farted.

  At the studio, the floppy-haired guy at the desk took one look at the picture Brogan handed him (culled from Embry’s HR file) and nodded. “Yup, he used to come here. Did he do something wrong?”

  “No,” Brogan said. He’d told the guy he was a private detective, and judging from the way he’d bought it so easily, Brogan didn’t need to worry about piling on further lies. “He’s gone missing.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah,” Brogan said dryly. “So you remember him pretty well?”

  “Oh, I remember that little dude, all right,” the clerk said, nodding. “Made me nervous to talk to him.”

  Brogan gave the guy a second study. He was rail-thin, sort of dumb looking, but friendly and laid back, not the type to be turned against someone without cause. “Why’s that?”

  “Scary bastard.” The clerk shivered, a reaction that should’ve been melodramatic but seemed sincere. “Quiet, you know? But the word is in-tens-ity, right? I mean, he was in here for hours at a time, four or five times a week, throwing people around like it was all he could do to keep himself from breaking some teeth. Little dude had a lot of anger in him. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so. Made some of the girls nervous, too.”

  “Did he ever do anything?”

  “To the girls?”

  “To anyone,” Brogan said. “Any incidents you can think of?”

  The clerk reflected on it for a long second. “Nah. Kept to himself. Paid in cash every single time, one lesson at a time. That’s weird, actually, because we offer a discount if you set up a membership and buy lessons in bulk. It’ll save you, like, twenty-five bucks a month, man. And he was here for about a year, so he could’ve saved some serious bucks. But nope. Cash, every time, guest status.”

  Brogan hummed. It made sense. No paper trail that way. “Was he any good?”

  The clerk huffed a breath. “Are you
kidding? Guy was the fucking Terminator by the time he walked out. Krav Maga mostly, but we teach Jiu-jitsu, too, and some MMA, and he ate it all up. He was wiping the floor with guys twice his size. ’’Course, if you practice anything for four hours a day you’ll get good, right? I read this article about how it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become an expert at anything. That’s a lot of hours, right?”

  Brogan smiled. “It really is. About when was all of this?”

  “He started in...huh, would’ve been like, the middle of 2011 through the following summer, I think? He was here for the holidays, for sure, because he arranged to have the keys to the studio so he could practice on Christmas Day.”

  The thought of Embry alone in a dojo on Christmas made Brogan’s chest ache.

  “‘’’Course, then he started asking about guns,” the clerk said.

  “What?”

  “Oh, sure. Couple of our instructors are ex-military, and he started hounding them about where to get weapons training. Took some private lessons with Kevin for a while, I think—Kevin said he was teaching him guns and knives and stuff, but at some point the little dude freaked him out, because Kevin said he wasn’t gonna work with him anymore. I was like, ‘he better not come in here mad at the place,’ you know? But he didn’t come back. Relief, really. He was out to hurt somebody.”

  “Any chance I can talk to Kevin?”

  “Sorry, man. Kevin got cancer. He died a couple years ago.” The clerk dipped his head, his eyebrows meeting over his nose.

  “Damn,” Brogan said. Kevin would’ve been a good source.

  “Yeah, he was a nice guy,” the clerk replied, misunderstanding him. Then he perked up. “Hey, I just thought of something, though.”

  Brogan waited for him to go on, but eventually had to ask, “Yes?”

  “Well, little dude only ever wanted guest status for regular lessons, but Kevin never let people do that. He said he didn’t feel comfortable putting a weapon in the hands of a guy he couldn’t track down later, so he definitely would’ve gotten contact info. Lemme check the computer. It might still be in here.” The clerk wandered over to the computer, mumbling to himself about newsletter lists. And a moment later: “O-ho, I am a-good. Here you go, man.”

  Brogan accepted the print out, and winced when he saw that the clerk had printed out everyone’s names and addresses. Confidentiality was apparently a foreign concept here. But Brogan wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it looked like a dopey surfer guy.

  “Thanks very much,” he said, and the guy beamed, saying, “No prob! Hey, you want to buy a lesson?”

  * * *

  The address led him to a run-down area in Gresham not far from the studio. The landlord, an overweight lady in a flowered housedress, recognized Embry from the picture.

  “Yes, that young man was...a trial.”

  “How so?”

  “Made the other residents very nervous. Had a couple younger women living here at the time, and they were not shy about voicing their concerns. Not that I blamed them. He made me uncomfortable, too.”

  “Did he do anything specific that you can think of?”

  “No,” she said, squinting as if she’d only now realized the fact. “But you know how some people give off a vibe? Well, he had it in spades. Every time I collected his rent check, part of me wondered if something I said would set him off.”

  “I don’t suppose you can tell me what he was doing back then? Job? Hobbies? Did he have anyone staying with him?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” the woman said, eyeing him. “You said you’re a private detective?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a badge?”

  “That’s cops, ma’am,” Brogan said, then added, “I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

  She considered that, her eyes narrowing, and then she said, “It could be that I have some of his things left over.”

  “You do?” Brogan was taken aback—it had been five years.

  “Well, I didn’t know if he was coming back, did I?” the landlady said. “I wasn’t about to throw his things away until I knew for sure. I’d probably end up murdered in my bed. And then, to be honest, I forgot about it. So it’s all down there in my basement somewhere.”

  “Could I—”

  She got a canny look on her face, one that she instantly smothered in false innocence. “You could have, but it’s buried somewhere in the far locker, and my back isn’t so good these days—”

  “Just say it,” Brogan said on a sigh.

  “Help me clean the basement out and you can have whatever you want,” she said briskly.

  “Deal.”

  Which was how Brogan ended up spending the next four hours lifting and carrying and killing spiders while she sat on the steps drinking coffee and directing him. At one point, Brogan told her, “There better be some worthwhile information in his stuff after all this.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Is your dog going to keep barking?”

  “If you’d let me bring him in—” Brogan said for the tenth time.

  “I won’t have dog hair on my furniture,” she replied for the tenth time. “Now squash that enormous bug over there.”

  “I’m gonna take Giz to pee again,” he said, and escaped.

  * * *

  Night had crept up, frigid, windy and mean, while Brogan had been helping the mercenary landlady, but he’d gotten his prize: a pile of mail that had arrived after Embry had given up the apartment. Before going through it, though, Brogan took Gizmo for another short walk and grabbed them both some burgers.

  “I should be a private detective,” he told Gizmo around a mouthful of fries. “I’m like, wicked good at this.”

  The dog was unimpressed.

  The envelopes were dusty and wrinkled from being jammed in a box for years. He put aside the obvious junk and then paged through the rest. Among them were a newsletter from a local acting school, a receipt for payment from a local gun club, and a notice for overdue library books. The newsletter was the sort of thing a place sent to someone on a mailing list of previous attendees. Explained why Embry didn’t give off creepy rage vibes anymore.

  The receipt from the gun club was pretty self-explanatory. He called the number and asked to speak with the manager, but didn’t hold out a lot of hope, and he wasn’t surprised. The manager said that they would release private member information only with a warrant.

  Dead end.

  When Brogan opened the notice from the library he almost swallowed his tongue, though. There were thirty-seven books listed as being more than a month overdue as of September 2, 2012, and the titles were diverse—and frightening.

  Books on crime scene investigation and blood evidence and ballistics. There were several on acting, a few more on guns, knives and self-defense, on computer hacking and computer crime, and five on crafting new identities and hiding from stalkers.

  Brogan flipped through the rest of the junk mail, but his fingers paused on a plain postcard. He’d thought it was trash at first—it was one of those generic card stock ones that small businesses used to cheaply disseminate ads—but as he looked closer, he saw that the message was handwritten and very simple. It was a phone number and five words: New number. Take care, love.

  Brogan pulled up his phone and did a quick search of the number online.

  Five minutes later, he was looking at an address in Salem, not twenty minutes away from Touring Industries.

  Brogan could’ve checked out the acting place, but he didn’t think it was necessary. It wouldn’t tell him about the incident that started all this, and he had enough of a picture now to know what Embry was up to after leaving Harvard and before reappearing as Embry Ford.

  He’d been preparing for war.

  * *
*

  When he got home, it was almost midnight, and Brogan sat for several minutes in his driveway in the dark, thinking.

  He wondered what could have happened to turn a kid who was shy, eager to learn, and kind enough to spend an hour helping a stranded woman he barely knew, into a man of such rage and hate that he scared people. He wondered about the knife Embry had talked about, the one that cut deepest when held in a trusted hand. He’d taken that as a metaphorical knife at the time, but now he wasn’t so sure.

  Brogan also wondered if he was going to end up taking a bullet fired by Embry’s gun.

  All he knew for sure was that he never wanted to make Embry mad, because this was some next level, Keyser Soze-quality shit. The time and planning and willpower required to engineer something like this?

  If Brogan weren’t so unnerved, he’d be impressed.

  * * *

  The next afternoon, as Brogan was clocking out for the weekend, he found Nora and Mario sitting at the support console, pretending to work but actually staring through the glass panes into the office Timmerson used when he was at Touring, where Timmerson and Coop were arguing.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Coop asked to look through one of the research files,” Mario said. “Timmerson told him to stick it. Nicely, but still.”

  “About who?” he asked, then tensed.

  Mario glanced at him. “Ford. Coop stalked in and said, ‘Timmerson, I want to look at the research you did on Ford.’ Right in front of all of us.”

  “He wants Ford to know he’s asking,” Brogan said. He had a mental picture of Coop following the same breadcrumbs Brogan had, and it rocked him. Brogan didn’t know the “why” of Embry’s actions yet, but he knew enough to be sure that Embry wouldn’t benefit from an enemy finding out. He wasn’t sure what Coop would do with the information, but he didn’t imagine it could be anything good. And the only reason to ask this way, so publicly, would be to intimidate Embry into making a mistake.

  Shit.

  “Unless he’s a blithering idiot, yes, I’d think so,” Nora said.