Gemini Series Boxset

by Ty Patterson

  Not Cali’s. Those were the only words ringing in her mind.

  ‘Maybe you were right all along,’ Beth acknowledged as she heated bowls of soup for the two of them. Dinner in the office. Just them and Werner who eschewed human food. Zeb had disappeared somewhere on one of his errands.

  ‘Doesn’t mean much. Our investigation just got more complicated.’ Meghan closed her eyes as the warm liquid filled her mouth and teased her taste buds.

  ‘No idea where to–’ She froze as a synapse fired in her mind, a connection was made, and something at the edge of her memory became clearer.

  She slammed the spoon down with a clatter, grabbed her jacket, pocketed the SUV’s keys and shouted over her shoulder, ‘Come on.’

  The drive didn’t take long, but connecting to Chang on the way took more time. He sounded as if he’d woken from sleep when Meghan posed her question.

  ‘No.’ Just that one word from him before he crashed his phone shut.

  That one word was enough for Meghan to floor it and minutes later, she came to a skidding stop in front of her destination.

  ‘Why’re we here again?’ Beth gasped as she recognized the building and hurried after her sister.

  Meghan didn’t reply. She jabbed a finger in the elevator button and crossed her arms and looked at the numbers as they sped up, as it carried them.

  ‘Surely we should ask permission,’ Beth protested when Meghan bent to pick the lock expertly.

  Meghan swung open the door in reply and entered the apartment. She went immediately to the bedroom and rummaged through stacks of clothes, notebooks, and binders.

  She dragged out the notebooks and riffled through them one by one after seating herself on the bed.

  ‘Can I help, or is this a one woman show?’ Beth mocked her as she watched her sister discard one book and pick up another.

  Meghan tossed her a handful of books and ordered, ‘Search for any reference to Cali and her group of researchers.’

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ Beth saluted her and started flicking through the first book. ‘Can this humble servant ask why?’

  She sighed and got to reading when no reply came.

  An hour went past. From the hallway outside the apartment, they heard noises of people coming, a few raucous folks shouting. No one came to their apartment. The pile of notebooks grew and when it had finished, Meghan started on the folders.

  She controlled the sinking feeling growing in her and flipped through the first one, the pages moving in a blur. The folders didn’t have any answer.

  She rose, disheveled, and surveyed the mess in the room. There was a desk in one corner which once had housed a computer. In its place was clean white space that dust hadn’t covered yet.

  Next to it were more papers and a thick binder. There were work related notes in it and just as she was tossing it away, several entries caught her eye. She ran her finger down them and stopped at the third from the last.

  Beth started when Meghan whooped loudly and fist pumped. ‘What? What is it?’

  Her mouth turned into an O when she read the entry. ‘You think…?”’

  ‘It’s worth a try. Let me call Chang.’

  Chang wasn’t a happy cop when he picked up after the third ring. ‘New York’s Finest aren’t at their best at one am,’ he snapped.

  ‘Take this down,’ Meghan ordered peremptorily.

  Chang swore softly and called out to a female voice, ‘It’s alright, honey, just some pesky do-gooders.’

  ‘This had better be worth it,’ he warned when he found a notepad.

  It was.

  The next morning, he confirmed the body they’d found was Lian Cheng Vaughn’s.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘How did you know?’

  Meghan took her time in getting back to her sister, as she threaded their SUV through the city, the next day.

  ‘It was something Tiemann said to the cops. About keeping records, knowing everything about his clients. I thought there was an off chance that he might have DNA records for those he was closest to. Like, Cali, or Lian.’

  In the notes Meghan had found in Tiemann’s apartment, was the address to a downtown locker. In that locker were cheek swabs for the researchers he worked with. The DNA from those swabs had led to the identification of Lian’s body.

  Beth frowned at Meghan’s profile, knowing there was more to her twin’s deduction. ‘Why did you even think of him? What made you think of Lian?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Meghan honked angrily at a cab which cut too close in overtaking her and returned the driver’s uplifted finger salute. ‘It was just a random guess. You know how I have those light bulb moments.’

  Meghan sensed Beth wasn’t convinced, but her sister didn’t push it. Meghan did have flashes of inspiration, as did Beth. They were like curveballs, unexpected, coming from nowhere, bearing no link to their suppositions. They had helped crack many a case.

  I’d been wondering about Lian for a while. Her going to Hong Kong didn’t sound right to me. However, with her now turning up dead, all my assumptions have been hit out of the park. I’d better not lead us down any more rabbit holes.

  Chang was beaming when he met them and even Pizaka was sporting a small smile. ‘Got any more hunches for us?’ the taller cop asked them. ‘Maybe you’ve an inkling where Cali is?’

  ‘I’m done with hunches,’ Meghan declared. ‘It’s time you both did some real cop work.’

  She described her hunch again, to a larger group of cops, a couple of whom drifted off afterwards to question Tiemann again. Maybe he knew more than he let on about Lian, and Cain.

  Meghan knew the part-time drug peddler didn’t, but she didn’t dissuade the cops. ‘You might want to ask him why he took the swabs in the first place,’ she told them.

  ‘We did. He said he’s an OCD type. He’s got their blood groups as well. He said one never knew when they would become useful.’

  ‘How did he persuade them? It’s not something that comes up in most conversation.’ Beth asked curiously. It was a question Meghan and she had debated at length on the drive. Neither of them had come up with any convincing answers.

  ‘The three of them were smoking weed one time in Tiemann’s apartment. That was when. He joked about keeping their DNA samples, just in case. They obliged.’

  Beth slid down from the sill when it became uncomfortable and sat in a chair and wheeled it closer to the table. ‘I thought he said Lian wasn’t a user.’

  The two cops didn’t know all that. They were relaying what Tiemann had told them. They answered a few more questions and left the room along with the other cops.

  Chang thanked them, shut the door behind them, and was almost bouncing with energy as he walked back to the table.

  ‘Hattexon Research. They lied to us all along. We have a conference call with them later today. Burke is flying out in the evening to interview them. You ladies want to sit in on the call?

  The ladies did.

  Jason ‘Call me Jase’ Ipanema had founded his first business, computer repair, in the bedroom of his parents’ home, when he was sixteen years old. He made as good as new his dad’s machine, an eight-year-old box that his father stubbornly refused to replace.

  Jason offered to help his neighbors and when word spread of the kid who seemed to know what he was doing, and was cheap, a neighborhood beat a path to the Ipanema home.

  While in Stanford, Jason got the idea of starting a semiconductor research company, one that wouldn’t manufacture much, but would design and would license its design to manufacturers.

  He and a few friends got together one evening and over dinner, with the accompaniment of a steady flow of alcohol, named their fledgling company Hattexon. They woke the next day with massive hangovers but decided they liked the name.

  Hattexon landed its first customer six months after formally going into business in Palo Alto. The customer, a small defense manufacturer of missile guidance systems liked the way the start-up wo
rked. It especially liked their price point, and recommended the start up at an industry conference which eight-hundred-pound-gorillas attended.

  Hattexon grew rapidly and established research facilities in Malaysia and Hong Kong.

  Their global workforce numbered well over a thousand, spread across the three facilities. They recruited only PhDs and when Lian Cheng Vaughn appeared for an interview, they snapped her up.

  Ipanema wore a light blue shirt over cream-colored trousers, an expensive brown leather belt snugly cinched around his narrow waist. He had a formally dressed, white-haired man to his left for the video conference that Chang had set up. To his right was a blonde woman in a bright red suit. A third woman, in a white shirt and dark trousers, sat further apart.

  The suited man was Hattexon’s lawyer, the blonde was his Head of People, and the third woman was his personal counsel.

  ‘How can I help you, folks?’ Ipanema waved at the camera, smiling widely displaying strong white teeth, his voice warm and reassuring.

  Chang hadn’t given the company a reason for the call; the NYPD wanted to talk to Ipanema, that was reason enough. Hattexon had protested, their CEO was a busy man. He didn’t attend meetings without a reason.

  Tough, Chang had responded. Maybe the meeting with Sarah Burke of the FBI would go easier if he first spoke to the NYPD. This’s most unusual, protested Ipanema’s EA.

  The NYPD don’t do usual, Chang responded smugly. He held up a palm to high-five his partner; he had stored that line for months for just such a moment. Pizaka looked at his palm, sighed, and pulled out his shades and polished them.

  The EA finally relented and warned her CEO wouldn’t be alone. He could bring the entire workforce along, Chang told her.

  ‘You can start by telling us why your company lied to us,’ Pizaka leaned forward and pierced the CEO with his shades. Pizaka was dressed for the occasion, a finely tailored black suit, pin-striped, mirror-polished black shoes, hair styled and in place, and the ubiquitous sunglasses.

  ‘Whoa, hoss, hold up,’ Ipanema exclaimed. ‘How did Hattexon lie to you?’

  ‘Lian Cheng Vaughn. You said she was in your employ. In Palo Alto and then in Hong Kong. She wasn’t. She was in New York all along. She was killed by Cain. Her body turned up just yesterday.’

  Pizaka and Chang had decided to go hard at Hattexon. They knew Lian Cheng Vaughn was Hattexon’s employee. There was sufficient evidence to back that up. What they didn’t know was whether she had still been an employee when she died, and how she’d come to be in New York. However, they didn’t want to cut any slack for Hattexon.

  Ipanema flinched, the blonde reared back, and the white-shirted woman fidgeted. The lawyer didn’t react. He was a bruiser and was used to aggressive tactics.

  ‘Who’s she?’ Ipanema struggled to contain himself. He turned to the blonde who recovered and tapped into a tablet.

  An inaudible murmur passed between the two as the blonde passed him the device. Ipanema scanned the screen swiftly and handed it back with a ‘I remember seeing her.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ Ipanema looked genuinely shaken, bewildered. ‘Why do you say Hattexon lied to you? She was an employee.’

  The blonde tapped more keys on her screen and leaned forward without waiting for Pizaka’s answer, ‘When was she killed?’

  ‘A month ago, going by the state of the body.’

  ‘She took a break, a couple of months back. Said she wanted to destress. We don’t track our staff’s whereabouts when they’re on vacation,’ the blonde turned her screen triumphantly to the camera on which was an email from Lian Cheng Vaughn. It was her request for downtime, to her manager, who had approved it.

  The video link continued for another hour during which the company forwarded transcripts of the dead woman’s emails and CCTV images of her regularly entering and leaving their premises in Palo Alto and Hong Kong. They provided an employee contract, shared a video Lian Cheng Vaughn had made on joining, and provided flight ticket receipts for her departure to Hong Kong.

  ‘You know her family has links to the Triads in Hong Kong?’

  The lawyer blinked and stepped in. His client didn’t know that. They had nothing to do with criminal organizations. The blonde woman had proved that the company hadn’t lied. The firm didn’t know about the dead woman’s New York travel. Where she went when on vacation wasn’t their business. Hattexon protested strongly at the NYPD’s insinuations and would take legal action if baseless accusations were made.

  The call ended with threats and counter threats from both parties. Chang had the last laugh. ‘Enjoy your meeting with the FBI,’ he chortled.

  ‘That wasn’t very grown up, was it?’ Meghan rolled her eyes at Chang who hadn’t stopped chuckling long after the call ended.

  ‘It got the job done. We got the details we wanted in quick time.’

  ‘Except that we didn’t. We still don’t know why she came to New York, and how Cain got her.’

  ‘And we still don’t know where Cali is,’ Beth added.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The semi was in no doubt about the whys and wheres of its schedule. It had picked up its load from a manufacturing firm in Northlyn, Chelan County, Washington, and was on its way to deliver it to a warehouse in New York City.

  Quincy Steinke, owner-operator of Quincy Steinke Trucking, an original name he had coined all by himself, had pushed back his Wenatchee Chiefs hat and had scratched his balding head when he had received the call from Northlyn.

  Quincy had been driving a semi for well over three decades, and had been an owner-operator for the last eighteen years. Quincy stood five eight in his socks and his bald head, thick mustache, and toothy grin were familiar sights in Chelan County. Well, he thought he was familiar, and was always puzzled when people failed to recognize him. He didn’t believe Debbie, his wife of thirty years, who constantly chided him and said he wasn’t as well-known as he thought he was.

  Quincy’s home was just outside Wenatchee, the largest city in the county, but heck, he hardly spent any time home. An average trucker spent something like hundred days away from home. Quincy was on the highways for twice as much. Debbie often complained that he was practically a stranger. That’s what kept the marriage going, Quincy used to quip.

  Quincy knew he was lucky, privileged. He had come out of the Army after serving his minimum eight with the Transportation Corps, and had come out with qualifications well suited to being a trucker. As a Motor Transport Operator, he had moved personnel and heavy duty equipment in the deserts of the Middle East. He had then driven military trucks through the high altitudes of Afghanistan.

  On returning to the States, a then young Quincy married his sweetheart, Debbie, and signed up as a trucker with a carrier in the state. Working for someone else hadn’t suited the entrepreneurial Quincy, and after years of careful living, Debbie and he had taken the plunge and bought his fire-engine red Peterbilt.

  Life was good for Quincy, especially in the last decade. He had gone to load boards when starting his business and had quickly realized that was a race to the bottom, a price war.

  Quincy had spent several years cultivating shippers - local supermarkets, meat packers, manufacturers – and that effort paid off. Quincy now had a select clientele who paid well, who did quick-pays, who shipped to convenient locations, and who valued service.

  Quincy had paid off his truck four years back and Debbie and he had a neat little nest egg tucked away. He was now approaching his sixtieth birthday and Debbie had started making noises about his retiring.

  Thing was, Quincy still liked driving. Loved it. He loved the feel of the wheel in his hands, the growl of his Peterbilt, the sound of concrete slipping under his tires. He felt free when he looked out of the window of his truck and saw blue mountains in the far distance.

  In his thirty years of driving, he had crisscrossed the country several times and yet each time, he discovered something new on a route. A stream that bubbled just off the highway, a s
ervice stop that had the cleanest bathrooms.

  No sir, Quincy Steinke wasn’t ready to hang up his hat yet. He had stomped off to his office after a minor argument on that topic with Debbie, when he had received the call from the shipper in Northlyn.

  Quincy wasn’t surprised that he got a call from a shipper who wasn’t a client. His clients referred him sometimes and he did get calls from other shippers. He usually turned them down since he had his hands full with his current clients.

  The Northlyn call was different, however. One of his shippers had just cancelled a regular load, something to do with poor quality product that couldn’t go out. He had a hole in his schedule as a result, a gap that the Northlyn load would easily cover.

  The new shipper’s requirement was different in another couple of respects. Northlyn to New York City was a long route and when Quincy had wondered aloud why they didn’t use larger, national carriers, the freight manager at the client had laughed and asked whether Quincy wanted their business. He had been recommended by another firm, a client of Quincy’s and an administration mixup meant that they had a load to ship and no carrier, as yet. Would Quincy be interested?

  Yeah, Quincy replied, though more formally, and then the second point of interest came up. New York was a good two thousand eight hundred miles away and with five hundred miles of driving a day, Quincy reckoned he could deliver the load on the sixth day. Maybe the fifth, if he pushed it.

  The sixth was fine, the manager said, if he could pick up the load the next day.

  ‘Come again,’ Quincy asked, thinking he hadn’t heard properly. Shippers wanted quick delivery. The same day if it was humanly possible. He hadn’t come across many shippers who implied there was no great hurry. Northlyn just had.

  ‘The sixth day from tomorrow is good for us,’ the Northlyn man repeated. ‘The warehouse won’t have space before then.’