“It’s a weapon,” I marveled.
Niilo shrugged. And I pictured the lightweight block I’d thrown into the drink at the Capitol Columns fitted up with the components he’d shown me in his lab, such as Mylar solar panels for auxiliary power and high-pressure gas cartridges to reposition the device. Stuff like that could turn a CubeSat into a stealth satellite.
Low-cost, privately launched, and placed in orbit near larger satellites belonging to corporations—or, God forbid, our own Department of Defense—I could see such a stolen stealth CubeSat knocking out communications, GPS, and war-fighting systems. And we were talking about more than a temporary disruption where you couldn’t stream Netflix one evening. This would mean a complete paralysis of every system ruling everything we turned on, powered up, or logged in to.
Our small towns and megacities wouldn’t be able to dispatch ambulances, operate their power grid, purify their tap water, or in many cases, even regulate their traffic lights. We’d have no ability to communicate aside from shouting on street corners. There would be no paychecks issued, no quick trips to the ATM, and consequently, no cash to pick up milk, bread, or meat, if any even made it to the store. Of course, that could be okay for a day or two—but not if it lasted for weeks. And while we were scrambling to buy the basics and to get from Point A to Point B, we’d have no first-warning systems, and no timely military defense. We’d be completely at the mercy of whatever came our way, from severe weather to intercontinental ballistic missiles.
All in all, it was no wonder Madeline had schemed to steal it—and no surprise the creepy guy with the Kevlar and 1911 had come after me to get his hands on it. Because Niilo’s use of the word prototype implied there were more of these CubeSats in development at that same government lab. And those CubeSats could become a fleet to be used against our enemies—unless those enemies learned the secrets of our CubeSats first.
“Now you know the value of this particular CubeSat.” Niilo’s voice sizzled over my headset. “And now you must find Mads for me. Money is no barrier to me, Jamie. I will pay you to learn what other Stellar Unlimited secrets she has sold.”
“The FBI’ll ask her.”
And Barrett would be in on the conversation. But I’d give just about anything to talk to Madeline before he and McIlvoy did. Because I still didn’t know why she’d sought me out, why she’d left me holding the CubeSat in the arboretum with a trio of heavies breathing down my neck, or why my face had been splashed all over the news as Fraley’s murderer before the police arrived or anyone knew that a man had been killed.
“You’ll get what you need to know,” I told Niilo. “Once federal prosecutors chat with Mads, odds are she’ll start talking to save her skin.”
“Do you mean she’ll be forced to give information in exchange for leniency before the court?”
“Something like that.”
Niilo gripped the throttle until his knuckles turned bone white.
“I will keep her from prison,” he pledged.
“Why,” I demanded, “would you want to do a thing like that?”
Of course, I already knew the answer. Niilo had fibbed to McIlvoy about barely knowing Madeline, but he’d brought me all this way to track her down. In short, he was worried about more than burning his clients. He was worried for her. Because Niilo Järvinen was in love with Madeline Donahue.
Or, at least, he thought he was.
Chapter 18
I didn’t dare tell Niilo that Madeline was supposedly two-timing him with Robert Fraley, the robotics engineer who’d helped develop that government CubeSat in the first place. For one thing, I couldn’t be sure her connection to Fraley was any more than technical since I’d heard about it third-hand from Nathan Rappaport. And for another—and this was the main point—I didn’t want to tell Niilo about Madeline’s potential infidelity because I didn’t want to upset him—at least, not before he set our helicopter down.
I kept that bombshell to myself, even back at Stellar Unlimited’s compound.
Niilo’s Koti was quiet and cool after the heat and roar of the ride through the desert. We retrieved the file folders he’d given me. I had a fast flip through them.
He’d been thorough.
But Madeline had been more so.
In my business, a money trail often leads you where you need to go. However, Madeline hadn’t left much of one. According to Niilo’s data, she drove a 2014 Ford Focus that she bought for cash. Similarly, she’d refused direct deposit for her salary, preferring instead to collect a paper check and hand-carry it to Stellar Unlimited’s bank for cashing there. Even her Social Security number proved to be a dead end. As it turned out, it belonged to a woman who’d lived and died in North Attleborough, Massachusetts. Madeline, it seemed, even paid her rent in cold, hard dollars and cents.
“You’ve gone to Madeline’s apartment in Pasadena?” I asked, thumbing past her address and the particulars for two references. One of them was Niilo himself. The other was Enid.
“Yes. I do not believe she intends to return.”
“Did you boost the lock, bribe the building manager to let you in, or use a key that Madeline had given you?”
Niilo’s high cheekbones flushed. He hauled a bead-chain necklace from beneath the collar of his T-shirt. A perfectly ordinary steel key dangled from it.
“I went there only once, before Mads’s things arrived.” He detached the key and handed it to me. “Lately, she preferred to be with me here.”
I bet she did.
Niilo’s Koti was the flip side of Southern California living. In a region that appreciated flash and cash, his retreat was soothing, Scandinavian simplicity even if it was expensive. Plus, by coming to the Koti, Madeline wouldn’t have had to worry about tucking away incriminating evidence about her real identity before he arrived on her doorstep.
“You should get McIlvoy in here,” I told Niilo. “Let him dust for her prints.”
“Mads was meticulous. She detested the sight of fingerprints on surfaces, or so she said. She polished them away, here and in her office. She was extremely cautious, yes?”
“Yes. She wore gloves when she came to call on me.”
But that didn’t mean she’d been as careful at her apartment. And odds were good that McIlvoy had already searched it. There could be little for me to find there—but if I were going to find her, it was the best place for me to start.
“I’ll need a car,” I said.
“My driver will take you anywhere you wish to go.”
“I’d rather go alone,” I told him. “If I end up under arrest, you’ll prefer it that way.”
“In that case, Enid will arrange what you need.”
As soon as Niilo spoke her name, a chime sounded at the elevator. Enid appeared in its opening doors. She stepped from the lift, but waited beside it, hands folded over that cellphone of hers.
“Request anything, Jamie. Enid will see to it. Now, if you will excuse me, I must meet with Agent McIlvoy and the lieutenant colonel again, yes?”
“Yes,” I said.
Keep them busy, I thought.
And for his own good, keep Barrett far away from me.
* * *
—
Niilo wasn’t kidding when he said Enid would provide anything I requested. From the Koti, she and I descended through the building onboard its elevator and stepped into the garage that stabled Niilo’s cars. The Maybach and its driver must’ve been out and about, but one of the other vehicles proved to be a racy red Tesla Roadster. The second one was a midnight-blue Maserati Levante. Both were rare enough to turn heads, especially in Southern Cal’s car-loving culture.
“I don’t think either of these is quite up to the task,” I said, my voice echoing off the sealed and speckled concrete in what had to be the cleanest garage I’d ever seen.
“Well,” Enid re
plied, “the Levante’s cargo area has a capacity of…Oh. You’re not concerned about the inside of the car. You’re concerned about the outside.”
“Exactly.”
“Take my car, then.” She dug into the pocket of her torn jeans, came up with a key fob sporting a hot-pink patent-leather daisy hanging from it.
“I don’t think that’s such a good—”
“Trust me.” Enid grinned. “If you crash it, Niilo will probably replace it with something better.”
And just like that, I found myself behind the wheel of Enid’s modest Prius, headed into Pasadena.
Pasadena is a collection of broad boulevards and curving side streets. New and old come together here, with Jazz Age homes built in the Storybook style, and stucco houses reminiscent of Mediterranean villas put up just last year. Modern mid-rise apartments are meant to withstand the biggest earthquake, whenever it may come. Used bookstores and the latest in tech stores exist side-by-side. Fashion is what anyone wants it to be. Fresh food and fast food might be the same thing. Rosebushes grow in abundance.
In short, Pasadena is like nowhere else.
And it’s a far cry from Washington, DC.
Madeline Donahue’s abode was on the third floor of a mid-rise that had to date back to the 1950s. Styled to look like a Spanish hacienda, it smacked of America’s crush on Ricky Ricardo, Havana nightlife, and the mystique of the Mexican Riviera. Its red-clay roof was authentic enough, and so were the patterned cobalt-and-yellow tiles facing the staircases’ risers. But unlike an actual hacienda, there were two staircases, one on the left side of the façade and another on the right. Each angled its way, turn by turn, to a second-floor apartment and on to a third.
In keeping with the supposedly authentic theme, a low stucco wall and decorative wrought-iron gate pretended to separate the building from the sidewalk out front. A Chihuahua could’ve jumped either. The property’s side yards dead-ended against plank privacy fencing that separated it from the green spaces of the building behind. More wrought-iron framed balconies jutted from the second- and third-floor apartments. On one of them, a Saturday night party was in full swing.
I drove past the property, saw nothing amiss, but went around twice more for good measure. Finding a parking spot was a feat. I ended up on the street on the backside of the block, but that was okay with me.
I strolled the adjacent sidewalk like I had someplace to be, turned the corner to approach Madeline’s building from the front. Inside the masonry wall, fragrant rosemary hedges bordered the walkway to the stairs. The party I’d spied from the street rocked and rolled directly below Madeline’s apartment.
A half dozen men in jeans and tight T-shirts, and women in spaghetti-strap tank tops, had spilled out onto the second-floor landing by the time I started up the steps. They talked and laughed and clung to red plastic cups brimming with adult beverages. I judged them to be grad students from the university a few blocks away.
Someone had abandoned a half-empty bottle of beer on the stucco ledge that served as a handrail. A pair of boxer shorts lay forgotten next to it. My own clothes were a little worse for wear at this point, but by comparison, I still must’ve looked like a junior high hall monitor coming up the stairs, because a ripple ran through the little crowd as I approached.
“Connor!” one of the guys shouted over the stuttering shudder of pop music pouring out of the apartment. “I think your neighbor’s home!”
“Madge?”
A young buck with wavy sun-bleached locks bounded from the apartment just in time to meet me on the top step. His T-shirt might’ve been orange at one time, and his jeans were faded and comfortably frayed at the hem. He skidded to a stop in his flip-flops when he saw me standing on the landing, disappointment crossing his face.
“Sorry. Thought you might be Madge.”
“Donahue?” I asked, hooking a thumb toward Madeline’s floor as if that clarified anything.
The guy gave me a skeptical squint. “You a friend of hers?”
I understood his hesitation. “I take it everybody and their brother has been looking for Madge today.”
“Boy, you can say that again.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Week ago, maybe. She travels a lot.” Connor frowned. “You sure you’re a friend of hers?”
Close enough.
Out loud, I said, “She came to see me Thursday. I haven’t seen her since. I think she’s in trouble.”
Connor snorted. “I know she is. When I got home from the gym today, this place was crawling with cops. There were dudes in plastic overalls and everything. They spent all afternoon in Madge’s apartment.”
“Did they take anything when they left? A laptop, maybe? Paperwork?”
“Nothing like that. Nothing that I could see, anyway. Some of those guys carried those big, heavy suitcase things, though. You know, like actors on those cop shows.”
That made sense. McIlvoy and Barrett had to know Madeline’s professional history and Social Security number were bogus by now. Fingerprints, provided they already existed in somebody’s system, would be a surefire way to draw a bead on her.
“Speaking of those cop shows,” Connor said, “you look familiar.”
I probably did—if he’d seen the news lately.
I tried to laugh at his comment, tried to wave it away.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not an actress.”
“I know I’ve seen you. You’re a producer, right? A casting director? You’ve got to meet my friend Melinda—”
I did laugh this time.
After all these years, I probably had the Beltway in my blood, and consequently, I couldn’t quite imagine working in the shade of the Hollywood sign.
“I hate to disappoint you,” I said, “but I’m really just looking for your neighbor. Still, it was good to meet you, Connor.”
I turned, started up the stairs toward the third-floor landing.
But that’s when Connor said, “You wanna take Madge’s mail with you?”
Chapter 19
“Mail?”
I blurted the word as if I’d never heard it before.
Connor flushed bright pink. “Well, yeah. The envelope looks important and I just thought since you’re Madge’s friend you might see her before…You are her friend, aren’t you?”
“I’ll see her,” I promised.
“I figure she needs it kinda quick. It’s from one of those courier services.”
“Which courier service? FedEx?” My pulse pounded louder than the music pouring from Connor’s apartment. Because just such a service would have a record of pickup and delivery. With the name of the person who’d sent Madeline this package, I’d have another line on her. “UPS? DHL?”
“Don’t know. Some dude in baggy cargo shorts dropped it off. Saw him hanging around when I left for class Thursday.”
Thursday. Madeline had flown east on Thursday. And Thursday night she’d sold me on the story that had drawn me into a federal crime and a fabricated murder charge.
“The envelope wouldn’t fit in the mailbox downstairs and the dude couldn’t slide it under Madge’s door,” Connor explained, “so I offered to hold on to it.”
“Can I see it?” I asked.
“You can have it if you think you’ll run into her soon.”
Connor led the way into his apartment. With all the panache of a shoe box, the layout was a straight shot, all the way to the balcony at the back of the place. Out there, more grad students relaxed around a portable fire ring that couldn’t be up to code. Inside and off to the right, three young women clustered at the kitchenette’s counter. There, they whipped up a batch of margaritas in the blender while the music morphed into plucky guitar strings and a poppy ballad. Meanwhile, at my side, a group of guys had crowded onto a futon. Beers in hand, they egged on
the Dodgers as the team faced down the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Connor opened a narrow hall closet behind me, snagged a backpack from the tile floor. He dug into it, came up with an envelope the size of a wall calendar. He handed the envelope to me.
The envelope was the cardboard kind, meant for mailing photographs or documents that shouldn’t be creased. Madeline’s name wasn’t on it. But her address was front and center, printed by a steady hand and an indelible marker.
The thing bore no return address, no identifying tracking number, and no bar codes of any kind. It felt light and could’ve been empty for all I knew. Except a rectangle a little larger than a tea bag made an indentation in the cardboard from the inside out.
“Thanks,” I told Connor, hardly able to take my eyes off the thing.
“No prob. Tell Madge I hope everything works out, all right?”
“I’ll do that,” I agreed.
But I’d have to find her first.
And with the envelope clutched tightly in my hand, I climbed the stairs to Madeline’s apartment to do just that.
The wide landing with its terra-cotta tiles that served as her doorstep might’ve seen some traffic lately, but it was a vacant now. Nothing—no potted palm, no rustic rocking chair, and no welcome mat—was on hand to greet me. Fine dust the color of cake flour smeared the dark, sienna doorjamb and the bronze lock set, however. This was evidence that the FBI or some other law enforcement agency had indeed sent a specialist to search for prints, just like on those cop shows Connor had mentioned. I leaned close to the lock set to see any telltale sign—like a clean strip where the dust had been carried away by collection tape—that they’d lifted some.
I found nothing like that.
Because Madeline Donahue, it seemed, kept even her front door clean.
Creasing the envelope I’d acquired from Connor into quarters, I stuffed it into the fancy green handbag Rain had given me, slipped Niilo’s key from my pants pocket, and inserted it into the lock. The mechanism turned easily. With the cuff of my silk sweater over the heel of my hand, I depressed the thumb latch. It gave way, just as it should. I toed the door wide with my boot and stepped inside.
The Kill Chain Page 11
