William Rabkin - The Call of the Mild

“Except for Ellen Svaco,” Henry said. “She stayed here one day too many.” He looked at Lassiter. “Did you find anything in the house?”

Lassiter sighed. “Got to give the kid credit for that one,” he said. “It doesn’t look like he missed anything at all. And he did come up with Fluffy, which my people might have missed entirely.”

Juliet O’Hara appeared in the doorway holding a cordless phone. “Officer Rasmussen, in your background investigation did you happen to notice if Ellen Svaco had any legal troubles?”

“There was no record of any,” Rasmussen said. “I would have mentioned it if there were.”

“Then did it occur to you to wonder why her last phone call was to the most prestigious law firm in town?” O’Hara pressed the REDIAL button, and the phone beeped itself through seven digits. After two rings, a voice on the other end said, “Rushton, Morelock, and Weiss.” O’Hara disconnected the call.

“This might have been nice to know about,” Lassiter said to Rasmussen. “You didn’t think it was worth sharing?”

“I didn’t know,” Rasmussen stammered. “I didn’t think to hit the redial. No one ever told me.”

Henry shook his head in disgust. Shawn might be infuriating, but he’d never have made a rookie mistake like that. “Junior high is where you start learning, not where you stop.”

“What do we do now?” O’Hara said.

“Let’s go back and talk to the chief,” Lassiter said. “If Rushton, Morelock is involved, everything just got a lot more complicated.”

“No, it didn’t,” Rasmussen said. “It’s a murder investigation. We proceed like we would with anyone else.”

Henry clapped a hand on Rasmussen’s shoulder. “It’s been fun, kid. But it seems like we’re looking at a criminal conspiracy that could possibly involve one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in Santa Barbara. Even if I were still on the force, this would be above my level. As a civilian, I can’t have anything to do with it. Isn’t that right, Detective Lassiter?”

“I don’t want to make any decisions before we bring the chief in on this,” Lassiter said. “She’s the one who’s going to have to take the heat, so she’ll have to let us know how she wants us to play it. But it’s safe to say that this is no longer a case for a retired cop-or the Foot Patrol.”

“But justice is supposed to be blind,” Rasmussen said. “ ‘As officers of the law we’re supposed to follow the case wherever it takes us, without fear or favor.’ ”

“It’s a nice thought,” Henry said. “Too bad we all have to grow up sometime.”

Henry climbed in his car and drove away. The last thing he saw in his rearview was Rasmussen staring after him, looking like he was going to cry.

Somebody had been putting rocks in Gus’ backpack. Which was odd, because he’d spent most of the day’s hike at the end of the line of lawyers, and there was rarely anyone behind him to play that kind of trick. But the pack that had seemed so light and perfectly balanced only a few hours earlier now felt like the anvil Wile E. Coyote always ended up clutching as he plummeted off a cliff. Gus could feel it pulling him down, its straps abrading his shoulders through the lightweight T-shirt he was wearing.

Whoever had been loading Gus’ pack with rocks had apparently also been slipping nails into his shoes. They had seemed so comfortable the first few miles he’d walked in them, but now every step sent jagged bursts of pain through his feet.

Looking ahead at the lawyers spread out in front of him, Gus could see that most of them were suffering the same kinds of pain. Gwendolyn, who’d taken the lead right away, was still in front, but her long, confident stride had stiffened into an awkward, straight-legged march. Balowsky’s entire body seemed to convulse with every third step and when he turned around to make sure he wasn’t falling behind the rest of the pack, Gus could see him licking his lips compulsively, as if he might have stored a few drops of last night’s vodka there. Savage was dragging, too, which would have surprised Gus more if the lawyer hadn’t spent the first three hours of the hike zipping down the trail to see where they were going and then running back to report like a Labrador retriever off leash in the mountains for the first time. Jade looked like she had completely exhausted her store of pixie dust: She staggered forward as if the only thing keeping her going was the force of gravity.

And then there was Mathis. He was more of a surprise to Gus than Savage. Because Morton Mathis didn’t seem to be physically exhausted. Gus was becoming an expert on analyzing people’s walks from behind, and he could see the way Mathis’ feet pushed hard off the stony ground with every step.

That wasn’t what struck Gus as odd. Even though Mathis was a transplant from a large city, with no apparent wilderness experience, there was no reason to believe he didn’t spend huge amounts of time working out, despite a physical appearance that seemed to give the lie to that idea. But what did seem inexplicably strange was the way he was pretending to be as weary as the others. His shoulders slumped under his pack, his head hung down almost to his chest. He was in every way the picture of exhaustion. A picture contradicted by the reality of his legs.

Of course it was possible that Mathis was faking fatigue simply to get away from Shawn, who had spent the last few hours hiking alongside one lawyer after another, and who was now glued to Mathis’ side.

That had been the key to Shawn’s plan for the day. While Gus kept an eye on the entire pack from the end of the line, Shawn would use the time to get to know the lawyers better. Not that either of the detectives had any desire to forge the strong ties of friendship that Rushton had prescribed for the entire group. All Shawn and Gus really needed was a little confirmation of what they already knew: that Mathis was behind not only the murders of Ellen Svaco and mime Archie Kane, but also the espionage plot Archie had been trying to stop.

At the beginning of the hike, Gus had managed to tell Shawn everything he’d learned from the employee files, and Shawn agreed that this was all but proof that Mathis was their guy. By the time they reached their first night’s stopping point, they were certain that Shawn would have been able to get the last bits they’d need to put their murderer away for good.

But Mathis turned out to be a harder nut to crack than they’d expected. Shawn had tried to start a dozen conversations with the man, but they had never risen above the smallest of small talk, and each time, Shawn had had to move on to another lawyer without having learned anything.

Shawn slowed his pace enough to let Mathis move ahead, and then he stopped to let Gus catch up with him.

“Anything?” Gus said.

“He’s smart,” Shawn said. “He may be onto us.”

“What makes you say that?” Gus said, a feeling of dread managing to bubble up through the cracks in his exhaustion. He forced it back down quickly. He couldn’t afford to let fear get a foothold. There wouldn’t be a snack bar selling ice-cream sandwiches to bring him out of it here.

“I’ve tossed out enough bait to land a hundred sharks, but he hasn’t even nibbled,” Shawn said. “I’ve tried to engage him on the subject of Archie Kane, but all he says is that it’s a great loss to the firm and ‘to us all personally.’ I tried to get him to talk about the tech stuff he handles, but he insisted that so much of it was confidential that he makes a practice of never discussing any of it so as not to make a mistake. I even mentioned the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-which isn’t easy to casually drop into conversation. He acted like he’d never given the place a thought.”