Jeffery Deaver - The Broken Window

And the day they’d graduated. The swearing-in ceremony too, his mother crying, the look he and his father shared. Those were among the best moments of his life.

Would all that be wasted? Goddamnit. Okay, Rhyme’s brilliant and no one cared more about collaring perps than he did. But breaking the law like this? Hell, he was home sitting in that chair of his, being waited on. Nothing would happen to him.

Why should Pulaski be the sacrificial lamb?

Nonetheless he concentrated on his furtive task. Come on, come on, he urged the collection program. But it continued to churn away slowly, assuring him only that it was on the job. No bar easing to the right, no countdown, like in the movies.

Working…

“What was that, Pulaski?” Rhyme asked.

“Some employees. They’re gone.”

“How’s it going?”

“Okay, I think.”

“You think?”

“It-” A new message popped up: Completed. Do you want to write to a file?

“Okay, it’s finished. It wants me to write to a file.”

Szarnek came on the line. “This is critical. Do exactly what I tell you.” He gave instructions on how to create the files, compress them and move them to the hard drive. Hands shaking, Pulaski did as instructed. He was covered in sweat. In a few minutes the job was done.

“Now you’re going to have to erase your tracks, put everything back the way it was. To make sure nobody does what you just did and finds you.” Szarnek sent the officer into the log files and had him type more commands. Finally he got these taken care of.

“That’s it.”

“Okay, get out of there, rookie,” Rhyme urged.

Pulaski hung up, unplugged the hard drive and slipped it back into his pocket, then logged off. He rose and walked outside, blinking in surprise to see that the security guard had moved closer. Pulaski realized he was the same one who’d escorted Amelia through the data pens, walking just behind her-as if he were taking a shoplifter to a store manager’s office to await the police.

Had the man seen anything?

“Officer Pulaski. I’ll take you back to Andrew’s office.” His face was unsmiling and his eyes didn’t reveal a thing. He led the officer up the hall. With every step the hard drive chafed against his leg and felt as if it were red hot. More glances at the ceiling. It was acoustic tile; he couldn’t see any damn cameras.

Paranoia filled the halls, brighter than the stark white lighting.

When they arrived Sterling waved him into the office, turning over several sheets of paper he was working on. “Officer, you got what you needed?”

“I did, yes.” Pulaski held up the client list CD like a kid at show-and-tell in school.

“Ah, good.” The CEO’s bright green eyes looked him over. “And how’s the investigation going?”

“It’s going okay.” These were the first words that came to Pulaski’s mind. He felt like an idiot. What would Amelia Sachs have said? He had no clue.

“Is it now? Anything helpful in the client list?”

“I just looked through it to make sure we could read it okay. We’ll go over it back at the lab.”

“The lab. In Queens? Is that where you’re based?”

“We do work there, a few other places too.”

Sterling gave no response to Pulaski’s evasion, just smiled pleasantly. The CEO was about four or five inches shorter but the young officer felt he was the one looking up. Sterling walked with him into the outer office. “Well, if there’s anything else, just let us know. We’re one hundred percent behind you.”

“Thanks.”

“Martin, make those arrangements we talked about earlier. Then take Officer Pulaski downstairs.”

“Oh, I can find my way.”

“He’ll show you out. You have a good night.” Sterling returned to his office. The door closed.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” Martin said to the policeman and picked up the phone and turned slightly, out of earshot.

Pulaski strolled to the door and looked up and down the hall. A figure emerged from an office. He was speaking in hushed tones on his mobile. Apparently in this part of the building cell phones worked fine. He squinted at Pulaski, said a brief farewell and flipped the phone shut.

“Excuse me, Officer Pulaski?”

He nodded.

“I’m Andy Sterling.”

Sure, Mr. Sterling’s son.

The young man’s dark eyes confidently looked right into Pulaski’s, though his handshake seemed tentative. “I think you called me. And my father left a message that I was supposed to talk to you.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You have a minute?”

“What do you need to know?”

“We’re checking into certain people’s whereabouts on Sunday afternoon.”

“I went hiking up in Westchester. I drove up there about noon and got back-”

“Oh, no, it’s not you we’re interested in. I’m just checking where your father was. He said he called you at around two from Long Island.”

“Well, yes, he did. I didn’t take the call, though. I didn’t want to stop on my hike.” He lowered his voice. “Andrew has trouble separating business from pleasure and I thought he might want me to come into the office and I didn’t want to screw up my day off. I called him back later, about three-thirty.”

“Do you mind if I take a look at your phone?”

“No, not at all.” He opened the phone and displayed the incoming-call list. He’d received and made several calls on Sunday morning but in the afternoon only one call was on the screen: from the number Sachs had given him-Sterling’s Long Island house. “Okay. That’ll do it. Appreciate it.”

The young man’s face was troubled. “It’s terrible, from what I’ve heard. Someone was raped and murdered?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you close to catching him?”

“We have a number of leads.”

“Well, good. People like that should be lined up and shot.”

“Thanks for your time.”

As the young man walked off, Martin appeared and glanced at Andy’s receding back. “If you’d follow me, Officer Pulaski.” With a smile that might as well have been a frown, he walked toward the elevator.

Pulaski was being eaten alive by nervous energy, the disk drive filling his thoughts. He was sure everybody could see it outlined in his pocket. He began rambling. “So, Martin…you been with the company long?”

“Yes.”

“You a computer person too?”

A different smile, which meant nothing more than the other one. “Not really.”

Walking down the hallway, black and white, sterile. Pulaski hated it here. He felt strangled, claustrophobic. He wanted the streets, he wanted Queens, the South Bronx. Even the danger didn’t matter. He wanted to leave, just put his head down and run.

A tickle of panic.

The reporter not only lost his job but was prosecuted under criminal trespass statutes. He served six months in state prison.

Pulaski was also disoriented. This was a different route from the one he’d taken to get to Sterling’s office. Now Martin turned a corner and pushed through a thick door.

The patrolman hesitated when he saw what was ahead: a station manned by three unsmiling security guards, along with a metal detector and an X-ray unit. These weren’t the data pens, so there was no data-erasing system, as in the other part of the building, but he couldn’t smuggle out the portable hard drive without being detected. When he’d been here earlier with Amelia Sachs they hadn’t passed through any security stations like these. He hadn’t even seen any.

“Don’t think we went through one of these last time,” he said to the assistant, trying to sound casual.

“Depends on whether people’ve been unattended for any period of time,” Martin explained. “A computer makes the assessment and lets us know.” He smiled. “Don’t take it personally.”