Joseph Finder - Vanished

“I think he’s going to fall all over himself to help you.”

The silence on the line was so long that I thought the call had been dropped. Then Dorothy said, “What the hell did you do, Nick?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Another long silence. Then, very softly, something I hardly ever heard her say: “Thanks.”

“No problem. So what about it? But would you be willing to go back to the office? To run a photo through FaceExaminer?” I explained quickly about the photo of Marjorie Ogonowski’s murderer, which she’d captured on her laptop computer.

“No,” she said. “But who says I have to?”

“Care to explain?”

“I’ve got a backdoor into all the Stoddard databases. Hardly ever use them. Didn’t want to. But I sure will, if you want.”

“Can you do it now?”

“Not this morning. I’ve got to head over to Ryder right now and get the truck.”

“Change of plans,” I said. “I’ll send you a picture on your cell phone, and you run it through, and I’ll get the truck. Then I’ll pick you up, and we’ll head over to Paladin together.”

“You think we have time?”

“We have to,” I said.

A LITTLE over two hours later, I pulled the rented Ryder truck up to the curb on K Street, where Dorothy was waiting for me.

“You were right,” she said as she got in. “I got a match on the photo. The guy works for Paladin Worldwide.”

“As I suspected.”

“And get this. You know he was one of the interrogators at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib?”

“Sounds like a one-man party,” I said, and I handed her my cell phone. “Do me a favor and hit the speed-dial entry for Arthur Garvin.”

“That’s the detective in the Washington police?”

“Right. He’s going to want to interview Carl Koblenz. So Garvin can help his buddies in Anne Arundel County Homicide clear a case. But tell him to wait until we’re finished.”

Leland was in a finance committee meeting on the sixth floor, where he’d be for at least another hour, maybe even two. Noreen was taking a long lunch: a doctor’s appointment.

Lauren entered Leland’s office and closed the door behind her.

Took a deep breath.

She found his battered old briefcase and located his BlackBerry in one of the front pockets. Slipped it out of its leather case, which she’d ordered for him, and pressed the power button. Why was the ON button red, she’d always wondered, and not green? Red was supposed to mean off, not on. When the screen lit up, she moved the track wheel until it highlighted his personal e-mail account, then she pressed down on the button.

Scrolled down until she found the e-mail from the Cayman Islands. Its subject line read, “Private.”

She clicked on the track wheel to open the message, then clicked again to reply.

And then she composed a message.

When she was finished, she hit SEND, then she stood still for a moment, breathing in and out, trying to remember whether Leland had left the thing on or off. If she left it on when he’d had it turned off, he’d know.

She heard a throat being cleared, and she looked up.

Noreen’s arms were folded on her bosom. “What are you doing?”

Lauren’s heart began jackhammering. “I’m doing my job,” she said. “What business is it of yours?”

Noreen took a few steps into the office. “You’re using his BlackBerry,” she said quietly. “Does he know what you’re doing?”

Lauren realized she was holding Leland’s BlackBerry up in the air as if it were an exhibit in a courtroom, and she was the prosecutor. She set it down on the desk. “I’m his administrative assistant,” she said. “I know you wish it was you, but it’s not. Now, don’t you have anything better to do?”

But Noreen wasn’t budging. “I think you’re reading his e-mails,” she said.

Lauren widened her eyes dramatically. “You caught me,” she said. “I confess. I’ve been reading his e-mails.” Then her voice became harsh and louder. “I read all his e-mail, Noreen. I also answer all of it. That’s my job. How about you-don’t you have a job to do?”

Noreen shook her head, a smug look on her face. “I mean his private e-mail. You don’t have access to his private e-mail accounts except when you use his BlackBerry.”

“Are you done?”

“No,” Noreen said. “A couple of days ago Leland asked me if I’d moved his BlackBerry. He said he remembered putting it in the left-hand front pocket of his briefcase, but it was in the right-hand pocket, and he was sure someone had moved it. So I said maybe you did. And you know what he said?”

Noreen paused, and Lauren said nothing. Her heart was thudding so loudly she wondered whether Noreen could hear it.

“He said, ‘Lauren doesn’t use my BlackBerry.’ He said, ‘I keep it password-protected.’ He said, ‘No one uses it but me.’ ”

“Why don’t you just turn around and get back to your desk,” Lauren said. Her mouth had gone dry.

“You see, he doesn’t know what you’re doing. And I wonder what he’s going to say when I tell him.”

Lauren came around from behind Leland’s desk and walked up to Noreen until she was right in her face. She could see the lines on her upper lip, the cracks in her lipstick. “Would you say the Katharine Gibbs School trained you well, Noreen?”

Noreen backed up a step. Her mouth came open just a fraction of an inch, then closed again. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“When you first got hired here, umpteen years ago, you lied on your application, and you lied in your interview. You told them you’d graduated from Katharine Gibbs. But you never went there, did you? You didn’t even graduate from high school.”

“Where are you getting this?” Her perfume, Lauren noticed, smelled a lot like Deep Woods Off bug spray.

“And when your boss found out the truth and asked HR about it, you begged and pleaded with him not to fire you, and he felt bad for you, and he decided he was willing to overlook your lie because you’d been so loyal to him, am I right? And he agreed to keep it quiet. Just a note in your personnel file confirming that the matter had been resolved. No one would ever know about it.”

“How-where are you-?”

Lauren had never seen Noreen at a loss like this, and she had to say she was enjoying it. “I see everything, Noreen,” she said. “I see all kinds of files. So let’s be clear, you and me. Next time you feel like threatening me, ask yourself whether it’s worth your job.”

Noreen turned and hurried out of Leland’s office.

The burnished-mahogany door to the Paladin office suite opened, and the receptionist stood there, looking at us with a puzzled expression.

For an instant I thought she might have remembered me from the day before. But I was barely visible, standing behind the hydraulic pallet truck on which a huge cardboard box rested.

Dorothy took the lead. She stepped up to the receptionist, holding her metal clipboard. She was wearing gray twill pants and a light blue shirt with a patch above her left breast pocket that said HVAC OF RESTON. My uniform was identical, except that I was wearing a dark blue trucker cap that also said HVAC OF RESTON on the front. The uniforms, the pallet truck, and the huge empty Trane carton had all been borrowed from the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning company owned by Dorothy’s second cousin.

“Can I help you?” the pretty blond receptionist said.

“You’ve got a defective fan-coil unit in one of your offices,” Dorothy said. “Building management wants it replaced pronto.”

“Fan-coil…?”

“Mind if we move this unit in and get to work? I’m going to need an authorized signature.” She held out the clipboard and pointed to a blank signature box.