William Bernhardt - Deadly Justice

“Here, I’ll put a yellow Post-it on it that says TURN ME ON.” The monitor was illuminated with a blue screen. “This is your menu. It tells you what programs the corporation has already stored in your hard disk. What do you want to do?”

“Oh…I don’t know. What are my choices?”

Jones rolled his eyes. “Sheesh.” He brought the cursor to the top of the screen. “How about word processing? Lawyers do a lot of writing, right?”

“I’ve heard of that. That sounds good.”

“Push W , and you’ve entered the word processing program, already installed on your hard disk. Now, you want to be able to store any documents you create. You can probably store them on the hard disk, but you should also keep an extra copy on diskette. Where do you keep your diskettes?”

“My what?”

Jones shook his head. “Lucky I came when I did. You’re in sad shape, Boss.” He rifled through Ben’s desk drawers, eventually finding a box full of preformatted diskettes. He removed one small, square plastic 3 x 5-inch disk. “This,” Jones said, “is a diskette.”

Ben stared at the object in his hand. “That’s it.”

“I know it is. That’s what I just told you. Ben, you’re not paying attention.”

“No, you misunderstand. That’s it —that’s what I saw but couldn’t remember. That’s what Hamel had in his hand when his body fell on top of me.”

“Boss, are you on any medication?”

Quickly, Ben filled Jones in on what had happened during the past few days—finding Hamel’s body in his office, then losing it, then finding it again in the alley behind his house.

“Boss, you’re becoming the Typhoid Mary of premeditated murder.”

“This is a major breakthrough,” Ben said, ignoring him. “Why was Hamel clutching a diskette? And what was on the diskette? Was someone trying to get it?”

“But the police searched the area after the body disappeared, right?”

“Right.”

“And there was no diskette?”

“Right.”

“So whoever took the body also took the diskette.”

“I suppose so. What kind of information can be stored on one of these, Jones?”

“Just about anything you want. Financial data, documents, lists, even entire publications.”

Ben snapped his fingers. “Didn’t you say documents could be saved on a computer’s hard disk, then transferred onto a diskette?”

“That’s the usual procedure. It’s not mandatory.”

“Then there’s a possibility that whatever was in Hamel’s hand is also stored on a computer somewhere.”

“True. But where?”

“Well, we did find Hamel in my office….”

Quickly, Jones punched a few buttons and brought up the document file on Ben’s word processing program. It was empty. Jones spent the next ten minutes punching buttons, bringing up files from other programs. “Sorry, Boss. There’s nothing here.”

“If it isn’t here, maybe it’s stored in the main office computer. That would make more sense anyway—easier access for Hamel—and the computer room is just across the hall from my office.” Ben snapped his fingers again. “Maybe Hamel was actually working in there. Then, when he heard Herb and Candice leaving, or when he heard Rob and me coming, he ran across the hall and hid in my office.”

“Well,” Jones said, wiggling his fingers, “shall I cross the hall and commence a search?”

“Not now. The computer room is well-staffed during the day. I don’t think they’ll let you sit down and start reading their confidential files. Besides, I don’t want to tip anyone off. Remember, my theory is that Hamel’s killer is someone in this corporation.”

“What a pleasant thought. Well, I don’t want to overstay my welcome….”

“Okay. I’ll call you later. Maybe we can arrange for a clandestine examination of the computer files. I’ll need your help, obviously.”

“You know where to call.” Jones flashed a smile and headed out the door.

Ben pondered this new information. It seemed to confirm his theory that the killer was someone closely tied to the Apollo Consortium. Someone who had killed one person and tried to kill a second, if the attempt on Crichton’s life was what he thought it was. Someone who in all likelihood would try to kill again, especially if he thought Ben was getting close.

Ben stood up and closed the door. Suddenly, his office seemed very small. The entire building seemed to be shrinking, as if the walls were slowly moving in on him. There he was, enclosed in a strange world filled with backstabbers, buttkissers—and someone who had killed one man and targeted a second.

And Ben could be next.

30

BEN DROVE HIS HONDA Accord down the dirt road and parked well behind the bleachers, where he hoped his car would be safe from errant foul balls—mostly his, in all likelihood.

Everyone else was already on the softball diamond in Johnson Park, at the corner of Sixty-first and Riverside. Apollo’s team was warming up. Each member was wearing an identical gray and red softball uniform with the Apollo logo on the back.

Christina tossed Ben a mitt and an official Apollo baseball cap. “Glad you could make it,” she said. “I was afraid we’d have to hire a ringer to take second base.”

“You’d have been better off,” Ben replied. “I’m awful. I don’t want to be here.”

“Don’t be such a grump. Show some esprit de corps .”

Herb passed Ben while practice-swinging three bats forcefully through the air. Chuck and Candice lined up beside Ben and Christina and tossed a ball back and forth. Doug was rustling about, lining up the bats in order of length. Ben wondered where he had stowed his computer. Shelly was there, too, although she was sitting on the bench, quiet as always.

Crichton was behind the plate, making goo-goo faces through the chain-link screen. Goo-goo faces? Ben took a closer look. Yes, and goo-goo noises as well. The woman on the other side of the screen was holding a chubby toddler, maybe a year old, while a small girl a few years older sat beside them. Crichton was doing his best to entertain, and the whole family was laughing.

What do you know? Ben thought. The workaholic sexist pig really was soft on his family. Of course, Mussolini was a family man, too, he reflected. Still, it’s hard to utterly detest someone after you’ve heard him sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Ben noticed that he and Christina were conveniently positioned in the center of the group warming up. This presented an opportunity for schmoozing he thought he’d best not pass up.

“I hear the police are going to be visiting us in the next day or two,” Ben said.

Chuck’s ears pricked up. “The police?” He tossed the softball to Candice. “What would they want with us?”

“They’re still trying to figure out who killed poor Howard.”

“Christ,” Candice said. “If they can’t figure out who’s mutilating all those teenage girls, they’re never going to track down Howard’s killer.”

“Oh?” Ben said. “Why do you say that?”

“It’s just a question of priorities, and it’s obvious that the mutilation-murders have a higher one right now. I haven’t heard Howard’s name mentioned on the news once, but I hear an update every night about the latest grisly development in the teen serial slayings. The slaughter of little girls has so much more tragic appeal to middle America.”

“I’d like to know what kind of questions the police are going to ask,” Chuck said, reverting the conversation to the previous topic.

“The usual, I expect,” Ben said nonchalantly. “Where were you the night Howard was killed? Did you know him? Did you have any reason to want him dead?”