Suspect Lover

by Stephanie Doyle

  “The next step meaning finding where Denny hid his program?” Caroline assumed.

  Dominic nodded. “Our best chance is the office. Denny changed how he handled his backups. He got frustrated with the memory sticks because he was always losing them. Instead he set up a special mapped drive on the network that only he had access to. If I could get my hands on the network backup cartridge, it’s likely that Nora would be able to find and access his drive.”

  Caroline reached out to grab his hand. She squeezed it and waited until he turned his hand and squeezed hers back. “This is it. Let’s go.”

  He drove as carefully as a man who knew the entire police department was looking for him should. Eventually they made it to his office and he parked across the street from the lobby entrance.

  “Wait here” he said automatically.

  “No,” she said clutching his arm before he could leave the car. “You can’t go in. There will be security guards inside, not to mention cameras.”

  “I hired those guards.”

  “Then you know that you recruited quality people. People who wouldn’t hesitate to call the police given what they think they know about you.”

  He sighed and shut the door. “There might be a way in through the garage.”

  “There’s a way in through the front door. You just can’t go through it. I can.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Why? I’m not a suspect. I can tell them that I returned to town and that I suddenly decided I want a picture of us that you left in your office.”

  The idea seemed ridiculous.

  “I’ll cry when I tell them,” Caroline added. “Men never know what to do with a sobbing woman.”

  Great. He was turning his wife into a con artist. Unfortunately, she was right, and a few tears might work. “Okay. Let me draw you a map of where we keep the server. The backup cartridge that’s in there will work.” Dominic reached behind him for a brown fast-food bag that had been tossed in the backseat, and Caroline found a pen in the glove compartment.

  He indicated the floor, showed her the elevators and stair wells, and directed her through two turns, then put an X over the room where the network server was stored. “You’ll see a large black tower. It’s the only computer in the room. There’s a small blue button that will eject the cartridge. Get it and come back.”

  She nodded confidently and opened the passenger door. This time, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. He couldn’t say everything he wanted to say, not here in a car right before she was about to break into his office on his behalf. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed her. “Be careful.”

  She nodded again and scurried across the street and toward the building.

  “Okay, now I’m giving up,” Mark groaned. “We’ve been at this for hours.”

  Nora looked over her shoulder at him. He was sitting in one chair with his feet up on another that he’d taken from the office next door. He was halfway through a recent edition of Computer Science and a Snickers bar. Yeah, these past few hours had been really rough on him.

  “Do you want to find the program or not?”

  “I’m thinking I would have better luck finding Santos at this point. Are you sure you haven’t missed it?”

  “I haven’t missed it. There’s nothing of any significance on anything I checked.” It made her think, though. There was nothing of any significance at all. Not only couldn’t she find the “magic” program, all the standard encryption work he would have been doing wasn’t there, either. If Denny wasn’t saving any of his work on memory sticks, then it was a good bet that he was saving it somewhere else. She was about to suggest another course of action when a knock on Denny’s open door got their attention.

  The security officer from downstairs stood in the doorway with a pensive look on his face.

  “Can we help you?” Mark asked.

  “I don’t know if it matters to you but it seemed strange,” the older man began. “Mrs. Santos came in to get a picture from Mr. Santos’s office.”

  “Caroline Santos,” Mark said pushing one chair back and leaping to his feet. “She’s here?”

  “Yes, she said she wanted a picture. She was really upset. I thought it would be okay. But Mr. Santos’s office is on the fifteenth floor and the elevator stopped at the tenth.”

  Mark and Nora exchanged a glance. Instantly Nora rolled back from the workstation and followed Mark at dead run down the hall.

  Which really wasn’t easy in three-inch platform heels.

  Caroline checked the map hastily drawn on the bag. She stopped in front of a closed metal door and used the security code Dominic had given her. A light on the panel flashed green. She opened the door to find a small room with a tower of what appeared to be stacked computers enclosed behind glass. Lights flickered and wires ran from every orifice, but as Dominic said it was the only one in the room.

  She opened the glass door and spotted the Eject button. She hit it and immediately heard a whirling noise until the cartridge popped out.

  She snatched it up and quickly left following the hall back to the elevators when the click, click sound of someone running stopped her. Turning, she saw two forms at the other end of the corridor. A man and a shorter woman.

  “What are you doing here, Caroline?” Mark shouted down the long hallway.

  There wasn’t a good answer to that. Logic told her to walk toward them, hand them the cartridge and let them find what they were looking for, but instinct had her rooted to where she stood.

  Adrenaline flooded her system. This wasn’t supposed to happen, she and Dominic needed the answers first and then they could go to the police. If they were caught now Dominic would be put in a cell. A cell he’d already told her that he didn’t know if could handle. She had to protect him. Had to try.

  Panicked and uncertain, she bolted.

  Clutching the small tape in her hand, she turned and sprinted in the opposite direction. She found another corridor and turned, having no real idea where she was going. But when she reached the end of the hallway she spotted a red sign marked EXIT. She pushed against the door and immediately started down the metal stairs as fast as she could. She’d made it three flights, then stopped to catch her breath. She could hear clicking from above now.

  “Caroline, you don’t have to run. We’re trying to help,” Nora shouted down to her, her voice a little wheezy.

  Caroline looked up and saw Nora leaning over the rail, gasping for breath.

  “You have to let me get him out of here,” Caroline shouted, hearing the desperation in her voice echo in the stairwell. “Then I’ll give you what you need. All of it, but you can’t bring him in.”

  “He doesn’t have a choice,” Nora said. “Not now. He needs to talk to us so we can end this.”

  No. Caroline couldn’t let it happen. She needed to get to Dominic, needed to make him go, then she would hand over the tape and tell Nora what to do. She picked up her speed, taking the stairs two at a time and heard a loud curse as someone fell over above her.

  “Damn heels!”

  The large L printed on the door came into view and Caroline reached for the metal bar that ran across it. Hurtling into the lobby, she was ready to outrun the security guard, too, if he’d still been there. She threw the glass doors to the building open and stopped as soon as she hit the sidewalk.

  The rain poured down around her and instinctively, she shoved the cartridge down the front of her jeans to protect it.

  Too late. She was too late.

  Dominic was spread-eagled over the hood of her BMW. Mark stood behind him, snapping a second cuff into place. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she saw Mark’s lips moving and she knew Dominic had just been read his Miranda rights.

  Something inside her snapped. This was wrong. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. He was innocent and she couldn’t let him go to jail. She wouldn’t let him go to jail. She wouldn’t lose him again.

  He was her family.
/>   “Let him go!”

  Taken aback by her shrill scream, Mark lifted his head and stepped away from the car. He felt two flat palms hit his chest with a power that stunned him and sent him stumbling back another few feet. He had to work to keep from falling on his butt.

  “What the hell?” He hadn’t expected this from Caroline. Nora, maybe, but not Caroline.

  “Caroline, stop it!” Dominic shouted at her as she geared up for another attack.

  “Take the cuffs off!” she screamed, so ferociously that Mark considered reaching for his weapon.

  “Caroline!” Dominic yelled again. He managed to lift himself from the hood of the car and positioned himself in front of his wife.

  “They can’t do this,” she said, her eyes closed and her fists clenched. “I won’t let them.”

  Mark raised his eyebrows. He wondered how she thought she was going to pull that off, but let it go since it seemed Dominic was talking her down from the ledge.

  “It’s all right. You’ll follow me to the station.”

  She reached for his face, ridiculously trying to wipe away the rain from his cheeks. The look on her face. Damn, Mark thought. When he got married, in like thirty or forty years, he wanted his wife to gaze at him just like that.

  “I got the tape,” she whispered to him.

  “Good,” he said. “We’ll give it to the police. It will be okay.”

  “He doesn’t have to be handcuffed,” she snapped at him.

  Mark blinked. “Yeah, but I’m thinking you do. Look, I have to take him in for questioning. He’s wanted. He shouldn’t have run and he knows it. Now back off and let me do my job. The sooner all this is settled, the better it will be. For both of you.”

  By that time Nora had managed to puff her way across the street, her shoes now smartly in her hands instead of on her feet.

  “Wow, you’re really out of shape. You need to work out more,” Mark told her while she bent over to suck in air.

  “Are you kidding me?” She huffed. “You took the elevator!”

  Chapter 17

  “You can’t put him in a cell.”

  Nora pushed a disposable cup into her sort-of sister-in-law’s hand. “Mark isn’t the enemy. He wants to find the person who did it, not just make an arrest. He’s good police.”

  Caroline took the drink but didn’t respond. The two wet women sat on a bench in the precinct’s lobby. Cops and criminals, lawyers and victims, came and went. It was late at night, but it could have been the middle of the afternoon so busy was the station.

  “Can I ask a question?” Nora wasn’t big on long silences.

  Caroline nodded once.

  “What made you stick with him? I mean, I was there when you found out about his past. And then you took off for Virginia and I figured I couldn’t blame you, but something must have brought you back.”

  “I didn’t come back alone,” Caroline corrected her. “Dominic was waiting for me at my house. That’s where he was hiding. He called me, told me to go home. I thought he was sending me away, but he wasn’t.”

  “So you came back with him. You didn’t have to.”

  “No. I insisted. I came with him because I wanted to prove his innocence.” Caroline shifted in her seat. “I came because I love him.”

  Nora smiled. She wasn’t sure why because she and Dominic really weren’t that close, but it made her glad to know that this woman would stick by him. “I thought so. You looked like a woman in love.”

  Caroline snorted. “I’m not the sort of person who falls in love at first sight. Too cowardly to ever take a risk like that. But there was something about him. I don’t know. When I saw his picture for the first time, I thought he looked lonely. Don’t tell him I said that. I think he would hate it. I stared at the photo for hours. I had this idea that I could be good for him.”

  “You will be. When all this is straightened out. Dominic needs someone. He’s always needed someone. He certainly wouldn’t let it be me…” Nora stopped. “Oh, I didn’t mean… We weren’t an item or anything we just worked together.”

  “I know you’re his sister,” Caroline said.

  “Wow. He told you.” Nora felt a rush of something swamp her. She always understood why he’d wanted to keep their secret. He needed to guard the links to his past. He gave her a job, a life really, so she couldn’t begrudge him it. But keeping the secret had made her feel marginal to him. Nora doubted he had a choice in telling Caroline, but still she felt connected to him now. More than she ever had before.

  “So I guess this means we’re like sisters.”

  Slowly they turned toward each other. “I never had a sister,” Caroline whispered, her eyes watering.

  “Me, neither,” Nora concurred feeling choked up herself. “Maybe we can go shopping together. For shoes or something.”

  “I would like that.”

  “Okay, then. It’s a date.” Nora smiled. “You know, right after we prove Dominic’s innocence.”

  Suddenly the good feelings were gone as the enormity of the situation reasserted itself.

  “He can’t go to jail,” Caroline muttered. Nora reached out and took her hand. “He can’t.”

  Dominic sat in a hard metal chair in the interrogation room. The room was spartan. Two chairs, one table and the standard two-way mirror. There were no windows.

  He knew he was being made to wait to increase his feelings of isolation and fear, and already the claustrophobia was creeping up on him. He fought it off. He couldn’t be afraid for himself. Not any longer.

  Only Caroline occupied his thoughts. If he couldn’t fix this, if he couldn’t prove Steven had killed Denny, then his only choices were to run or go to jail. Either way, Caroline would suffer.

  Because she loved him. Whether she wanted to or not.

  That fact sure as hell bothered him more than any small room.

  The door opened and the detective who had introduced himself as Mark Hernandez entered.

  “How are you holding up?” Hernandez asked.

  Good cop, Dominic identified immediately. “How do you think I’m holding up?”

  “You need anything to drink?”

  “No.”

  “You kill Denny Haskell?”

  Dominic stared at the detective. “No.”

  “Who did?”

  “You’re the detective, you tell me.”

  “I think you did it.”

  Dominic met the man’s eyes again. “No, you don’t.”

  Mark pulled the empty chair away from the table, the sound of the metal skidding along the floor echoed. He straddled it and folded his arms against the back. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t.”

  “I sent an e-mail…”

  “I know all about the e-mail to Nora. That means jack in my book. She’s a computer whiz and she’s doing everything to convince me that you’re innocent. Do you know about your secretary?”

  Dominic’s brow furrowed. “Serena? What about her?”

  “She’s dead.”

  The news was too sudden, told too quickly, without enough preparation. Dominic sucked air into his lungs and tried to wrap his mind around the idea of what that actually meant. Serena dead. Serena. Dead.

  “Who? How?”

  “Well, conventional wisdom around this place says it happened like this. You were stealing money from your own company. Haskell found out about it and confronted you, so you sneaked out of your office. You followed him in your Mercedes, pushed him off the cliff, dumped the car somewhere, then snuck back into your own office so the cameras could tag you leaving in the morning. But then you got nervous, decided to take some ready cash out of the bank and went into hiding. After a time, you realized that your secretary might also be aware of or have proof of your embezzlement scheme so you offed her, too. It was another car accident and there were more paint chips from the same Mercedes.”

  “Why would I steal money from a profitable company I owned?”

  “I’m supposed to be asking the q
uestions.”

  “You haven’t asked me anything yet,” Dominic pointed out.

  “I’m getting to it,” Mark snapped. “You know I’m starting to see a resemblance between you and that sister of yours.”

  Dominic’s brow lifted.

  “Yeah, I know about that, too. I know about your record. I know about your father. And I know what you did for Nora.”

  There was nothing to say, so Dominic remained silent.

  “Were you planning to embezzle two million dollars but got caught before you could?”

  “No.”

  “When did you discover the books had been altered?”

  “That night. When I saw that the figures had been changed, I thought it was a mistake. Or a joke. I didn’t know what the hell it was. After Steven called me, I quickly understood that I was being set up. Because of my past I couldn’t take the chance that anyone, especially the police, would believe me. I ran.”

  “Tell me about this program you needed to come back here to get your hands on. The one you told Nora about.”

  “It’s very dangerous. In the wrong hands it could mean disaster.”

  “You think Denny was killed because of it.”

  “It’s the only explanation,” Dominic answered. “He told somebody about it. I know that much. I think he was killed to stop him from telling anyone else.”

  Mark shook his head. “Haskell’s killing wasn’t spur of the moment. The financial statements were changed before Denny was killed. Whoever did this had a plan. Two birds. One stone.”

  And now Dominic knew that Serena had been involved in that setup. She would have had access to his files. She could have replaced the real statements with the doctored ones. It hurt him to know that she had betrayed him, almost as much as the news of her death.

  “I bet you think that person is Steven Ford,” Mark suggested.

  “Yes,” Dominic said tightly, the word sticking like a chicken bone in his throat.

  “Why?”

  “A third of the company wasn’t enough for him. He must have wanted it all. I would never have approved the development of Denny’s program. Never. If he knew that and wanted to get me and Denny out of the picture, this was the way to do it. Two birds. One stone. His company.”