Донна Эндрюс - Access denied

He settled back into the seat, wiggled until he'd found a comfortable position, and took another sip of his soda. As an experiment, he tried staring at the house with one eye at a

time while closing the other one, to see if it made his eyes less tired.

He never noticed as the eyelid that should have been at attention gradually sank down and the soda can slipped from his limp fingers.

WEDNESDAY EVENING-. T:1Q:35 p . n .

I understand why Tim hates surveillance. Trapped in one place, unable to do anything but observe, with no idea how long you will have to wait or when something will happen . . . even whether something will happen.

My whole life is one long surveillance. And unlike Tim, I don't ever have the option of going home.

All right, a bit melodramatic. But sometimes waiting for things to happen really gets on whatever I have instead of nerves. I can feel my thoughts growing less organized.

I distracted myself with the garden. I can see why humans love gardens. There's something wonderfully restful and calming about them. Probably because plants appear perfectly content to do nothing for hours on end. Although obviously they are busy respiring and performing photosynthesis and growing. If I watch long enough, sometimes I can see a visible change in the length of a tendril or the progress of a leaf or flower unfolding. But it's a slow process. Calming.

Usually calming. Tonight, I find myself fretting. Wondering when Maude will plant some of the plants that I know have arrived. Checking the weather to see if any rain is predicted — some of the plants look slightly dry. Checking how long until sunset, because the moon is full tonight; perfect for observing the night-blooming plants. I'm so glad I suggested planting them. Even over my cameras, they make the garden more interesting at night. I can imagine how much more enjoyable they make it for Maude. Many are reputed to have intoxicating odors.

Another human sensation forever closed to me.

Ah, well. If I cannot smell the flowers, at least I can enjoy watching them in the moonlight.

I decided not to mention watering to Maude until I was absolutely sure we wouldn't get any rain.

Odd that Tim hasn't checked in to tell me that he's going home. Or that he is home.

Tim winced as a sharp pain shot down his neck and into his back. He started to open his eyes, and then screwed them shut again when he realized that a bright light was shining directly into them. What was going on?

"Keep your hands in plain sight and step out of the car."

Tim opened his eyes, squinted, and moved his head to the left, so the light wasn't directly in his eyes. He saw the barrel of a gun. His eyes traveled up the arm holding it to find a uniformed police officer staring at him.

"Sir, keep your hands in plain sight and step out of the car."

Tim raised his hands, upsetting his Diet Coke can in the process. He yelped and started slightly as the can landed in his lap, pouring out its still-cool contents.

The officer backed away several feet as Tim opened the door and stepped out.

"What's going on?" Tim asked.

"Put your hands against the car and spread your legs," the officer said.

Amazing, Tim thought. Just like on TV. The policeman patted him down for weapons, extracted his wallet, and called his name in to the station. It was a good thing they weren't reading him his rights, wasn't it? He wasn't sure whether the private investigator's license in his wallet helped or hurt him. The officers looked stern, even grim. Apparently they took trespassing quite seriously in Fairfax County.

"Can you tell us what you're doing here?" one officer asked.

"I was hired to do surveillance on that house," he said turning to point.

He saw several vehicles in the driveway, most with flashing lights on the top. He could see people moving purposefully around the yard.

"Hired by who?" the officer asked.

Just then, Tim saw a gurney roll along the sidewalk in front of the house, carrying a body bag. He felt suddenly lightheaded, as if he were going to faint, but instead of fading away his senses grew sharper. He found himself noticing small details like the rasp of metal against metal as the silhouetted figures loaded the body bag into an ambulance, and the gnats that swirled through the beams of all the headlights and floodlights illuminating the yard.

"Hired by who?" the officer repeated.

"Samantha P. Jordan, attorney-at-law," Tim said, and rattled off Sam's phone number, blessing the day when Maude and Turing made him memorize it.

Maude fumbled for her glasses firsti

and then for the ringing phone. She expected to see Turing's number on the caller ID. The number she saw instead was vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it.

"Hello?" she said, and then winced at how froggy her voice sounded.

"I woke you up, didn't I?" said a familiar voice with an ever-so-slight tinge of southern accent. "Sorry—it's Sam Jordan. We've got a problem."

"What kind of problem?" Maude asked, sitting upright and reaching for the notepad and pen she kept on her bedside table.

"I left a message on Turing's machine, but I wanted to get a live body. Does that girl ever answer her phone?"

"Once in a blue moon." Though only when caller ID

MO Donna Andrews

showed it was Tim or Maude. Not that she was going to tell Sam that. "What's the problem?"

"Tim's been taken in for questioning by the police," Sam said.

"Oh, my God. What's he done?"

"Well, nothing, he says. But apparently wherever you had him doing surveillance was worth watching. He stumbled into a murder scene."

"So he's a witness? Or do they suspect him?"

"I don't know yet. I just got the call a few minutes ago. Still en route to the police station. So while I'm driving, why don't you fill me in? Just what was Tim doing watching that house? And if you even thought there was going to be a murder out there, why the hell didn't you tell the cops?"

"We had no expectation of a murder," Maude said. "He was there to watch a house we thought some petty thieves might be using for a small-time credit card scam."

"And you didn't take this to the cops because . . .?"

"Because we didn't even suspect it was happening until today and we still don't have a lot of information. We wanted to have something a little more concrete before we tried to convince the police to investigate."

"Well, that problem's solved," Sam said. "You can bet they're going to do a whole lot of investigating. Let's start at the beginning. How did you find out about this scam?"

Maude grabbed another pillow for a backrest, took a deep breath, and began telling Sam as much of what happened as she could. Which included the parts that were, she knew, technically illegal. The only thing she left out was the real story on Turing.

THURSDAY HORNING-, 1 E : M 5 : 5 1 A.ft.

Tim's in trouble and it's my fault- I

should have suspected that if Garcia was involved, it could get

Access Denied m

dangerous. I should never have involved Tim. At least I shouldn't have sent him out until he had backup.

Of course, I still have no proof that Garcia is involved. Perhaps he's no longer using the credit card the thieves stole, wasn't watching it, and has no idea it was used. And perhaps it's merely an unfortunate coincidence that a murder happened at a site connected to that card less then twenty-four hours after we began watching it.

"I don't believe in coincidences." Maude said, when I shared this thought with her. "Garcia had something to do with it. But what?''

"Perhaps he saw the charges appear on his card, resented the thieves' presumption, tracked them, and killed them." I said.

"Hm," Maude said. She was pacing up and down: in and out of camera range. "You keep saying thieves, but we still don't know if there was more than one. Perhaps it was a solo operation and Garcia has just shut it down."