Mike Faricy - Russian Roulette

I entered a slightly larger, windowless office, Kerri’s, I guessed. There wasn’t a thing to suggest the office had actually been occupied by anyone with a personality in the last year. A couple of cords ran across the desk where a computer used to sit. There was a printer on the corner of the desk, still plugged in and on. It meshed with Da’nita’s version of things. Kerri running in, taking about a minute to unplug her computer, push Da’nita out the door, and drive off. The desk revealed nothing of interest as I went through the drawers. I was looking around the room hoping something might jump out at me but nothing did. I was probably frowning when I heard the hallway doorknob jiggle. I could see the shadow of two feet through the crack at the bottom of the door. I quickly turned the office light off, then stood there in total darkness with my hand on my right hip, taking a little comfort from my pistol. The handle jiggled again, then the shadows beneath the door disappeared, and a muttered voice faded down the hallway.

I remained still for what seemed like four or five hours, probably five minutes in reality. Heart pounding in my ears, willing myself to take normal breaths I eventually made my way in the dark to Da’nita’s desk. I shut down her computer, unplugged it, and walked out the door. I scanned the dismal parking lot for a long minute but didn’t spot anyone sitting in a car and watching. As a matter of fact I didn’t see a living soul. I walked back to my car, checking the reflection in the storefront windows for signs of anyone behind me. I didn’t spot anyone.

I took a roundabout route home, didn’t notice a tail. Just to play it safe I drove into a pay parking ramp downtown, circled up to the top floor, then drove back out on a side-street exit, still no one behind me.

I can do a lot of things on the computer: write letters, invoice clients, email, download i-tunes, and watch porn. I had no business thinking I could get into the files on Da’nita’s laptop so I took the thing over to Sunnie Einer.

Sunnie’s done some projects for me over the years. If she had been a guy she had a great name for a gangster, maybe someone who ran with Tony Soprano. Sunnie wasn’t a gangster. She had a doctorate in Education and another one in Computer Science. She was a tenured professor at the University of St. Catherine’s and had a sixteen-year-old son, named Josh, who was driving her nuts. I phoned her enroute.

“Hey Sunnie, Dev Haskell. You interested in a little project?”

“Possibly, is it legal?”

“Sort of,” I hedged. “I can be over in about ten minutes.”

She gave an audible sigh.

“Yeah sure, okay. We’ll talk about it when you get here. Can you stay for dinner?”

“What are you serving?”

“Like you care, I’ll see you in ten,” she said and hung up.

I was there in closer to twenty once I stopped and picked up a bottle of wine. As I pulled in I couldn’t help but notice her car, a black Prius, her pride and joy, sporting a broken headlight and smashed right front-quarter panel.

“Hey Dev, come on in,” she said opening the door and sounding genuinely glad to see me. She gave me a slight kiss on the check. She wasn’t good looking, she was beautiful and a friend. Oddly, given my history, the friendship was really important and I’d never attempted to try and work the sexual end of things.

“Gorgeous as always, Sunnie. How are you?”

The home smelled delicious. There was a bell ringing somewhere.

“Come on back to the kitchen, my timer’s going off. Lasagna, I’m just taking it out, we’ll eat in about ten minutes, which should give me time for a glass of your wine and you can tell me about this opportunity.” She stressed the word opportunity like it was anything but as she nodded at the laptop under my arm.

“Now be positive,” I encouraged. “Hey, what happened to your Prius?”

“Oh God, Mr. Grounded For The Rest of His Life, did that, the little idiot. Only one friend in the car is my rule. Of course five of the little deadbeats are driving out to the Mall of America, Josh doing everything but paying attention. He rammed someone in the parking ramp.”

“The parking ramp? How’d he do that?”

“Exactly! You have that wine opened up yet? I could sure use it.”

Ten minutes later we were at the dining-room table, a contrite Josh seated across from me rolling his eyes as Sunnie carried the pan of lasagna into the room and said, “Dev, will you lead us in grace, please?” Not really a request, more of a directive.

Josh rolled his eyes again.

I winked back.

After dinner Josh dutifully cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. As he headed upstairs to his room Sunnie gave a final instruction.

“No computer, no TV.”

He gave an exasperated sigh, similar to his mother’s earlier on the phone with me, but had enough sense not to offer further protest. After he’d gone upstairs she said, “God, I really want to kill him right now. Is that bad? Do you think they’d catch me?”

“I think it’s normal. Look, at least no one was hurt, were they?”

She shook her head no, then changed the subject, “So, tell me what you have there?”

“Oh this,” I said reaching for the laptop resting on her coffee table.

“Yes, the reason you came in the first place.” She smiled coldly, then sipped some wine. She was curled up in the corner of the couch, her legs tucked beneath her, the gas fireplace was on even though the evening wasn’t cold. She brushed her blond hair off her shoulders, looked me in the eye, and raised her eyebrows as if to say get to the point.

I took out the page I had printed off, handed it to her and told her most of what I knew, which wasn’t a lot. I couldn’t see much point in worrying her about the murders of Leo Tate, Dennis Dundee, or little Mai. I didn’t bring up being grazed by a bullet. I neglected to mention what I assumed was Da’nita’s hit-and-run murder. Skipped the part about Tibor or actually breaking into the Lee Dee office. Then wound up my request by saying, “So anyway, I’m just trying to figure out what was going on. I’m guessing based on that page,” I nodded at the page I printed off now resting on her lap, “all this is coded. I don’t have passwords to get in there, and once I did I probably wouldn’t know what I was looking at anyway. I’m trying to find out how to contact Kerri, or her sister, Nikki. If there’s anything obviously illegal, I’ll take it to the police. I’ll most likely do that anyway, but I just want to see if you can find anything out.”

She poured herself another glass of wine, sat back, and thought for a moment.

“Okay, it might take a bit. I’ve got some programs and algorithms I can work. You know what might help. The woman you mentioned, what’s her name?”

“Da’nita Bell?”

“Yes, if you could get her date of birth, her son’s full name, his date of birth. Those are standard password sources. It’s at least a starting point,” she said.

“I think I can get that for you.”

“You didn’t happen to see a Rolodex or Post-it notes around the desk in the office, did you?”

“No, there wasn’t, well actually there was a Rolodex, why?”

“Amazingly it’s not uncommon for people to put their passwords in their Rolodex or tape it right to their computer. If you could ask to borrow that Rolodex it might help.”

“I’ll ask them,” I said not even blinking.

“All right then. I’ll get started tomorrow.”

My phone rang before eight the following morning. Although I was awake I had to crawl out of bed to answer it.

“Hello,” I couldn’t read the phone number displayed on the cell-phone screen.