STATE OF BETRAYAL: A Virgil Jones Mystery (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 2) (24 page)

“What is this about?” When no one
answered her question she brushed past them and stood next to her open door. “This
place where all of you are standing? It’s a crappy little apartment with secondhand
furniture and wilted plants and thin carpet and thinner walls and a hot water
heater that has the work ethic of a spoiled rich kid. That means it works when
it wants to, which isn’t all that often. Whatever is going on here has nothing
to do with me. This is my home. It’s not your crime scene, or your office and
clearly I’m not your victim. Goodbye, gentlemen.”

Couldn’t argue that logic, Virgil
thought.

__________

Wu turned the laptop
on and
brought up the video. Not a video, though. Not really. It was a series of
stills taken from a security camera mounted on a light pole just outside the
entrance of a mini-mart on the city’s east side. Wu knew the camera well
because he was the one who installed it six days ago. It was the same mini-mart
where Bradley Pearson stopped every morning for his coffee and newspapers.

“Wu create program. Program detect
winning ticket and trigger security camera.” It was all bullshit, but Wu knew
they’d buy it.

Pate and Hector leaned in and
looked at the screen. “Let’s see them, Wu.”

A little wheel spun on the screen.
“Still loading. Few more seconds. Maybe Wu should upgrade your Wi-Fi.” Before
anyone could say anything about that, Wu’s phone began to vibrate on the table
next to his computer.

“Aren’t you going to answer your
phone, Wu?” Hector said. “Wow, look at that picture. She’s hot. Who is that?”

Wu looked at his phone. “Wife. Wu
call back.”

They all stared at the little wheel
for a few more seconds, waiting for the pictures to show up. Wu’s phone began
to vibrate again. “For God’s sake,” Pate said. “Answer the damn phone already.”

Wu picked up the phone, swiped his
thumb across the screen, held it to his ear and said, “Wu.”

__________

The woman with
the
secondhand furniture and wilting plants and thin carpet and thinner walls and a
hot water heater that had the work ethic of a spoiled rich kid had a name, but
it wasn’t Darla Walker. Her real name was Linda and she was Wu’s wife. Linda Wu
watched from the window until the police all got in their vehicles and drove
away, then she waited ten agonizing minutes to make sure that they weren’t
coming back. When they did not, she took out her phone and called her husband.

“It worked, Wu. Just like you said
it would.”

“Good, good. Perhaps you should go
now. Pizza will be fine.”

“Can’t talk, huh?”

“No, perhaps one hour. With traffic
I would say go now. Yes, Domino’s.”

“Gotcha. See you on the beach, big
boy.”

__________

“Domino’s?” Hector
said.
“Jesus Christ, Wu, that’s not pizza.”

“Wu still like.”

“They deliver, you know.”

“Wu not trust delivery people. They
steal toppings. Here come pictures.” The little wheel on the screen had
disappeared and the first picture popped up. This was the critical part, Wu
thought. If they didn’t believe the pictures, he wouldn’t make it out of the
house alive.

“I thought you said it was video,”
Pate said.

“Hmm, like video, but not video. Pictures
taken at rapid intervals. Five per second. Like choppy video.”

Yes, yes, Wu. Let’s see them.”

Wu pressed the play button and the
pictures began stuttering along in sequence. He didn’t need to look at the pictures;
he’d spent all day manipulating them on Photoshop, bringing out the clarity,
tweaking the contrast, adjusting the brightness and so on. He instead watched
the look on Pate’s face when he saw the pictures of Bradley Pearson and Nichole
Pope walking out of the mini-mart, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm.
They stopped just outside the door, just like Nichole had intended, their faces
were framed perfectly for the camera. Then they looked at each other and Pearson
said something. There was no audio of course, but the visual was perfect.
Nichole tipped her head back, the laughter obvious. Then she placed her other
hand on Pearson’s chest, both of them smiling like idiots just before they
walked out of the frame.

They looked, Wu thought, like two
people who might have just won three hundred million dollars.

__________

Pate turned away
from
the laptop, walked over to the bar and poured himself a drink. He downed it in
two large gulps and poured another before walking back over to Wu. “Play it
again.” Wu played the slideshow again and when it was finished Pate threw his
glass against the stone fireplace, the cut crystal tinkling around the room.
“Hector?”

“Yes, Boss?”

“Get the car.”

“Yes, Boss.”

Pate looked at Wu. “Print me one of
the pictures with Pearson and the woman.”

Wu pressed a few keys and Pate’s
printer began to hum. When the printer was finished, Pate picked up the
photograph and studied the image.

“What you going to do?”

“I’m going to have a little chat
with our Mr. Pearson and find out who this woman is.”

“Not need.”

“What?”

“Not need. Wu know who. Name
Nichole Pope. Nicky Pope’s sister.”

When Pate heard that it sent him
right over the edge and right out the door.

Wu closed his computer, wiped down
everything he’d touched—there wasn’t much so that little detail took all
of twenty seconds—put the laptop in his bag and walked away.

His part was over.

27

__________

V
irgil
and Murton ended up back at the bar for a late Saturday dinner. The house band
had already started playing, there weren’t many seats available and the noise was
so loud they could barely talk to each other. They went upstairs to the office
and found Becky working at the desk. The office itself looked like a train had
derailed. Empty computer boxes were scattered everywhere and little pieces of
crumbled Styrofoam were stuck to the carpet, chairs and virtually everything in
the room. Murton walked behind the desk, kissed the top of her head and told
her that they needed everything she could get on Nichole Pope.

“You want me to stop working on
this code thing?”

“No,” Virgil said.

“Good, because I think I’m close.
What happened with Nichole?”

They spent about fifteen minutes
filling her in and when they finished she shooed them out of the office so she
could work in peace. They ended up sitting down to eat at the only spot
available…the employee picnic bench just outside the kitchen entrance at the
back of the bar. Robert brought two plates of food out and a few minutes later
Delroy stepped through the back door with two glasses of juice. He set them on
the table, lit a cigarette and then sat down. “Busy, mon?”

“Not as busy as you from the looks
of it,” Virgil said. “Everything going okay?”

“Yeah mon, everyting irie.” Then he
looked at Murton and said, ‘“Irie’ Jamaican slang. It mean ‘everything all right.”’

“I know that.”

“Uh huh.” Delroy winked at Virgil.

“You and Robert are coming tomorrow
afternoon, right?”

“Yeah mon, yeah.”

“Coming where?” Murton said.

Shit
. “Uh, I almost forgot.
Sandy and I wanted to invite you and Becky over tomorrow afternoon. Little get
together. No big deal.”

“I guess not since you’re only now
just mentioning it.”

“How does one o’clock sound?”

“Like you forgot.”

Becky burst through the back door.
She waved a piece of paper at us. “I think I’ve got it…the code. You guys
better come and take a look.”

__________

Pate had the cut-down
20-guage with a pistol grip and Hector had a throw-away .32 fitted with a
suppressor. They’d leave the .32 behind, minus the suppressor, of course. They’d
worked out the plan—impromptu as it was—on the way over. In a way,
Pate was disappointed. He had it in the back of his head that Pearson could be
saved, that they could continue working together, except no one had ever fucked
him out of three cents, much less three hundred million bucks and Pearson
wasn’t going to be the exception.

They walked up to Pearson’s door
and Hector gave a polite little knock, the kind a neighbor, or perhaps a FedEx
driver or pizza delivery person might make.
Tap, tap, tap.

When Pearson opened the door a few seconds
later, Hector was on him like malnourished pit-bull. He grabbed him by the
throat, stuck the gun against his forehead and backed him right down the hall.
Pate closed the door and followed them in.

__________

“It’s Octal,” Becky
said.
“The code. It was right there the whole time. I just now figured
it out.”

“What the hell is Octal?” Virgil
said.

“It’s a numerical numbering system
built on a base eight platform using the digits zero through seven,” Murton
said.

Virgil and Becky stared at him.

“What? I’m educated.”

Virgil looked at Becky for
verification. “He’s right,” she said. “Boy, that makes me a little wet.”

“Becky…”

“Yeah, yeah. So I was completely
stumped at first. I mean, it’s nothing more than a random set of numbers right?
So I started thinking, what if the numbers corresponded to map or grid
coordinates. Let me tell you, it didn’t take long to figure out that that
wasn’t right, unless the meaning of the code has something to do with the Sea
of Japan at thirty thousand feet. Then I thought, maybe it’s as simple as the
numbers matching up with letters of the alphabet, you know, like the numeral
one is equal to the letter ‘A’ and the numeral two is equal to ‘B’ and so on.
Except that didn’t work either because there were too many zero’s in there
unless you factor in that zero was equal to ‘a’ and one was equal to ‘B’ but
that didn’t work out either, so I went back to the basics. Pope was a
programmer. A coder, right? So I looked at all the basic coding systems like ASCII,
HEX, and Octal. ASCII and HEX didn’t pan out, but when I got to Octal—”

“Becky?”

She tilted her head to the side and
batted her eyelashes. “Yes, Virgie?”

“What does it mean?”

She pointed at the paper and said,
“I broke the number sequence down into groups of three. The first three
numbers…one, zero, and two? It’s actually the number one hundred and two. In
the Octal system, that number corresponds to the letter ‘B.’ the sequence
breaks down to five letters: B, P, C, o, S.”

Virgil took the paper from her and
looked at the letters. “Is that a zero, right there between the ‘C’ and the
‘S,’ or is it the letter ‘O.’”

“It’s the lower case letter.”

“That’s what I thought.” Virgil
pulled out his phone and called Pearson’s number.

“What is it, Jones-man?”

“It’s Pearson. Those letters stand
for Bradley Pearson, Chief of Staff.”

“How do you know?” Murton said.

“He notices things like that,” Becky
said.

__________

Virgil listened to
Pearson’s
phone ring five times before it clicked over to voice mail. He
hung up without leaving a message.

Murton was skeptical. “You know
those letters could mean just about anything. Maybe they stand for British
Petroleum Community outreach Services. Or, Borrow Plunger, Commode over
Stuffed.”

Virgil ignored him and dialed
Pearson’s number again. As the phone was ringing he heard him say, “Baked
Pretzel Cheese on Side…”

__________

Abby had a full bottle
of Bordeaux—the good stuff from the rack, not the cheap kind Pearson kept
in the kitchen cabinet—and when she came around the corner and saw Hector
holding the gun to Bradley’s head she let out a yelp, dropped the bottle and
ran for the back door. Pate said, “Go,” leveled the pistol grip on Pearson and
backed him right onto the living room sofa. “If you say one fucking word, make
one fucking noise, you will die right here and right now. Look into my eyes and
tell me I’m lying. Nod if you understand.”

Pearson swallowed, then nodded.

__________

Virgil looked at
Murton.
“Let’s take a ride.”

“Let me guess,” he said. “Over to
Pearson’s?”

“It’s about five minutes from
here.”

“Only three if I drive. That leaves
me two minutes to eat my dinner.”

“Murt…”

“Yeah, yeah.” He looked at Becky.
“I love him, I really do, but everything’s always an emergency. Get used to
it.”

“Be nice,” Becky said. “Besides,
it’s kind of exciting. Can I come?”

“No,” Murton said as he stood up.

“Why not? I can handle myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But it’s going
to take us three minutes to get there, thirty seconds to see that there is
nothing to see and three minutes to get back.”

“So?”

“So I need you to guard my dinner.
I’m starving.”

“Can we go now?” Virgil said.

“Yeah,” Murton said. “I’m waiting
on you.”

__________

Hector followed Monroe
out the back, saw her scramble over the neighbor’s fencing two houses away and
took off after her. He got to the fence just as she was turning the corner next
to a detached garaged that backed up to an alleyway. When she tripped over a
downspout extension and went down, Hector leveled the .32 across the top of the
fence rail, aimed in the fading light at the spot where she would be when she
stood and waited no more than a half second before he pulled the trigger three
times.

Abby stood and when she did she
felt the slugs hit her in the back. She didn’t know that she’d been shot, only
that something had hit her from behind—hard—pushing her into the
side of the garage. Her knees gave out and she slid face first against the
siding and when her head slipped past chest level on the way down she saw her
own blood, but it didn’t register with her.

A dog began to bark not far away.
Porch lights from the house on the far side of the garage lit up. Somebody
opened a back door and shouted “Hey!” but Hector was already gone.

__________

“I’m going to allow
you to
speak now, Bradley. Do not disappoint me with your answers. There may be a way
out of this for you. If I’m being honest with you, I’m having a little trouble
seeing that particular scenario, but I don’t deny the possibility of its
existence. With me so far?”

Pearson nodded, his brain working
almost as hard as his heart. “Gus, I don’t know what’s happening here. Why are
you—”

“Don’t think, Bradley. Thinking
right now would be a mistake. I’m going to ask you some very simple questions
and you’re going to give me some very simple and truthful answers.”

Hector came through the back door
and into the living room. “We’re out of time, Boss.”

“This should only take a moment.”

“We don’t have a moment.”

Pate ignored Hector and kept his
focus on Pearson.

“Boss…”

“I said just a moment, Hector.
We’re almost finished here.”

“Interesting choice of words.”

“Bradley, where is the lottery
ticket?”

“What? What ticket? Gus, I don’t
know what you’re talking about.”

Pate took the picture from his coat
pocket and handed it to Pearson. “This is a security camera photo of you and
Nichole Pope leaving a convenience store together just seconds after the
winning ticket was electronically verified. Don’t make me ask you again,
Bradley. Where is the ticket?”

Pearson looked at the photo and
when he saw the woman on his arm, her smiling face, they way they’d looked at
each other for just that split second, he knew he’d been played by the Pope
twins. Had she been in possession of the ticket the entire time? How was that
possible? Wu would have told him.
Ah, that fucking Wu.
He was with the
twins. Jesus, how long had they been working him? He shook his head. Knew he’d
never get  the answer to that even as he played his last card. What did
they call that in Vegas? Going out?

“Nichole has it. She fucked us
over, Gus. You and me both.”

Pate gave Hector a quick look.
“That may or may not be true, but you know what the difference is between you
and me, Bradley?”

“What’s that, Gus?”

“I’m going to live to agonize over
it.”

Pate stepped back and when he did,
Hector put the gun to the side of Pearson’s head and pulled the trigger.

__________

They took
Sandy’s car
and headed for Pearson’s
house. “Maybe it stands for Bring Pastries. Croissants or Strudels.”

Virgil didn’t answer.

“Bad Puppy Chewed on Sofa.”

“Would you give it a rest, please?”

“I’m just saying, it could mean
anything, like, Bug Problem Caterpillars on Screen.”

“I get it. Don’t make me pull this
car over. I will let you out.”

“You drive like an old lady. I would
have had us there by now. “Bowel Problems, Can’t order Sushi…”

__________

Pearson lay dead
on
the couch. His body was slumped sideways, like he’d fallen asleep, or passed
out drunk, except for the blood and brain tissue, that is. “Quickly now,”
Hector said. “Stand back.” Pate moved out of the way and Hector folded
Pearson’s hand around the grip of the pistol, then fired into the wall opposite
the sofa. The suppressor worked well. The loudest sound was the cycling action
of the gun. He let Pearson’s arm fall to his side. “I am certain the police are
already on their way. There was some noise from the woman. Not from the gun,
but from when she went down. What have you touched?”

“Nothing. Not one single thing.
Wait, that’s not right. I closed the front door. The inside handle.”

“What else?”

“Nothing, I’m sure.”

“The picture. Leave it or take it?”

Pate thought for a moment. “Leave
it. It points away from us. Adds confusion.”

Hector took a cloth napkin from the
table and wiped the photo then let it fall to the floor. “Let’s go then. Right
now. Do not touch anything on your way out.”

“This isn’t my first party,
Hector.”

“Still, touch nothing.” Hector
wiped the door handle, first inside and then after pulling the door shut, the
outside. He tried turning the knob to make sure the door was locked—it
was. They walked to the car, got in and drove away. They saw no one and no one
saw them.

“We may need alibis, just to be
safe,” Pate said.

“It is already taken care of.”

“We have to find this woman,
Hector. This Nichole Pope. And it has to happen before Monday morning.”

“Yes, Boss. I’m taking care of
that, too.”

__________

Virgil pulled the car
to
a stop in front of Pearson’s house and saw that there were a
number of lights on inside. It looked like he was home. He heard sirens in the
distance. Murton looked at the clock on the dash and did the math. “Seven and a
half minutes. I should probably call Becky. She might be getting worried.”