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Chapter 16

Mike’s office, a modular-classroom-style prefab dropped in the middle of a dirt lot, had all the basics. Phone, fax, high-speed Internet. Aggressively competent gum-smacking ‘front-office girl,’ rounded out with high hair and bosom. Fire-sale desks shoved up against corkboard-covered walls, onto which were pinned various blueprints, permits, geological surveys, and Sears photos of family members. It was a humming little operation, twenty-five by thirty-eight feet of efficiency, the nuts and bolts behind the facades they constructed elsewhere.

Mike sat at his desk, massaging away an incipient migraine and pretending to review a bid for an insurance job. He’d been preoccupied all morning, adrift on sour thoughts. He couldn’t stop imagining William’s black-flecked lips, the reek of his gut breath, the way his face had appeared in the back window of the van, a disembodied head floating between the curtains. Then there was the image of that oil-stained polar bear, rocking in slow motion on the parking lot’s asphalt between Dodge’s massive feet.

He rose abruptly and headed for fresh air. Pacing the weeds of the yard, he tried Hank for the third time, and at last the PI picked up.

‘Want a distraction?’ Mike asked.

‘From dying?’ Hank said. ‘Whaddaya got?’

Mike told him about his run-in with Dodge and William and how oddly the sheriff’s deputies had acted back at the station.

‘Not much to go on,’ Hank said, ‘but I’ll nose around, see what I come up with.’

Unsatisfied, Mike headed back inside. Andrés was at the copy machine, frustrated and pushing buttons indiscriminately. He came over, sat sideways at the edge of Mike’s desk, and gazed across the office at Sheila’s cleavage as she argued an insurance adjuster into telephonic submission. Andrés clicked down on Mike’s desktop stapler with the heel of his hand a few times, just for fun. ‘A guy come by the site, asking about you.’

‘What do you mean, asking about me?’

‘When you around. When you at the office versus the jobs. That kind of stuff. Like he making conversation. Maybe he looking to hire you.’

Mike’s face grew hot. ‘What’d the guy look like?’

‘Dunno. Just a guy. Scruffy beard. Walk funny.’

Mike’s heartbeat vibrated in his ears. That headache, picking up steam. He tugged open the top desk drawer to grab some Tylenol. ‘What time was he-’ The question caught in his throat as he stared down into the drawer. His calendar was to the left. Because the drawer seam there had cracked, pushing up splinters, he always kept the calendar snug against the right side, the habit ossifying over the past few months.

‘Sheila?’ He waited until she covered the phone and looked over. ‘Did you need to go in my desk for anything this morning?’

She shook her head. He lifted the Tylenol bottle up, regarded it, then tossed it in the trash can. He rose abruptly, Andrés observing him with puzzlement.

Mike crossed to the front door, swung it open, and crouched to study the dead bolt. He’d selected the Medeco himself for its six tumblers and the fact that it took a multidimensional key that was hard as hell to duplicate with a pick set. He’d learned this, of course, from Shep. But he’d also seen Shep get one open with a can of spray lubricant and a pull-handle trigger pick gun that, in Shep’s expert hands, could get the pin stacks to hop into alignment.

He hesitated a moment, almost fearful to know, then smeared a thumb across the keyhole. Sure enough, his print came away glistening with spray lubricant.

Someone had prepped this lock for a pick gun. Dodge or William.

Mike’s mouth had gone dry. Getting through a Medeco was professional-level stuff, a job worthy of Shep. Which meant their coming through Kat’s bedroom window wasn’t as far-fetched as Mike had been trying to convince himself.

Why would they break into his office?

‘Sheila,’ Mike said, his voice gruff even to his own ears. Everyone in the office, he realized, was staring at him, crouched there in the front doorway. ‘Can you tell when certain computer files were looked at?’

‘Sure, Mr Wingate.’ No matter how many times he told her to call him Mike, she insisted on addressing him formally. ‘There’s a “last accessed” time-stamp feature on most documents, though people usually never pay it any mind.’

He beckoned her to his desk, pulling out his chair for her. As he leaned over her shoulder, she clicked around, Andrés looking on from the far side of the desk.

‘Was anything opened over the weekend?’ Mike asked.

‘I’m looking. But I have to go doc to doc. Anything in particular you want me to check?’

‘Green Valley,’ he said.

As she typed, Andrés tilted his head and said to Mike, ‘Our files are all clean on that.’

‘Why wouldn’t they be?’ Sheila asked, still focused on the monitor. Mike and Andrés exchanged a look. Before either could answer, she said, ‘No, those files haven’t been opened since twelve twenty-one P.M. last Thursday.’

That had been Mike, perusing the vitrified-clay invoice to torture himself over lunch break.

‘But wait,’ Sheila said. ‘This was opened Saturday night, one thirty-two A.M.’

‘What is it?’ Mike asked.

‘The personnel files.’

A chill ran across the back of his neck. ‘They looked through our personnel files?’

She clicked around some more. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just yours.’

He took a step back. Andrés and Sheila turned to him, their mouths moving but their words not registering. Dodge and William were digging for information not on some job but on him. Just as the sheriff’s deputies had been.

Dodge and William, it seemed, wanted to know who he was just as much as he did.

He became aware, slowly, of his cell phone vibrating in his pocket. He wiggled it out and glanced at the screen, which showed a text message from Annabel: HI HON WHERES THE KEY TO THE SAFE DEPOSIT BOX AGAIN I FORGOT NEED TO GRAB SOMETHING OUT.

He stared at the message, that timpani thrum in his skull urging his headache to loftier heights. He and Annabel never texted; they were old-fashioned and preferred to use phones for talking.

He called his wife right away. It rang through to voice mail. ‘Hi, it’s Annabel. I’m probably digging around for my phone in that tiny space between the car seat and the door, so-’

He signaled Andrés and Sheila to give him a minute and began pacing cramped circles around his desk as the home phone rang. Voice mail.

It took him a moment to realize that Sheila was talking to him. ‘Mr Wingate. Mr Wingate. You’re due to walk that undeveloped land in Chatsworth at two. Which means you have to leave now.’

‘Can’t do it, Sheila.’ He barreled toward the door. ‘I’ve got to get home.’

She pressed an irritated smile onto her face as he swept past, his jog turning to a sprint.