Big Leagues (33 page)

Cat shined the light around the room and saw
the layout of the office was exactly the same as yesterday. The
doctor’s desk looked dreadfully normal—there was a computer on the
right, a lamp on the left, a picture frame holding a photo of a
happy toddler in the middle and a couple of paperweights on the
side. The entire back wall was a bookcase, crammed full of medical
journals and textbooks. Cat backed into something and jumped. At
the sight of the a large office copier, she frowned.

That’s nice. The entire fourth floor has to
share a tiny inkjet with clogged nozzles, but Dr. Feelgood gets his
own personal industrial-sized Ricoh.

She shimmied her way around the machine to his
desk and yanked the first handle she found. Cat shined her
flashlight into a pen drawer and shook her head.

What am I doing? He’s not going to hide his
deep, dark secrets next to the Sharpies.

She lifted up the inner tray to be sure.
Nothing. She pursed her lips and scanned the dark room. The little
pen light lit up a vertical file cabinet behind the
door.

Bingo.

Cat smiled. If she had something secret to
hide, she’d choose that locked, heavy duty, fireproof cabinet. She
examined the lock more closely. This would be a little easier than
the pin puzzle of a door lock.

There weren’t many benefits to having a felon
for a father. In fact, most days—if quizzed on the matter—she’d
have come up with a big honking zero. At this very moment, though,
Michael McDaniel was Father of the Year. Most dads taught their
daughters how to ride bicycles. Cat’s dear-old-dad taught her how
to steal them. Ten-speeds had been nothing; his real expertise was
breaking into cars.

Of course, then he liked to hotwire them
…

She reminded herself to make sure the next road
trip to Chicago included a stop in Joliet to thank him for this
useful skill.

Assuming I don’t wind up behind bars, too, or
worse.

She peered at the cabinet’s setup.
Mass-produced factory locks like those found on luggage, briefcases
and file cabinets were the easiest to pick. Dr. Kevin Goodall had
about a hundred makeshift keys sitting in a miniature ceramic
baseball glove on his desk, waiting for her a mere two feet away.
She grabbed two of the paper clips, straightened their metal loops,
and stuck the first through the meat of the keyhole. She slid the
metal of the other clip through the side and took a deep breath.
The most important thing was keeping a steady hand—not that staying
calm was the easiest task while committing a felony. She brought
her ear to the lock and jimmied the clips until she heard the
mechanical click of the catch.

Hello, sweet spot.

She grinned as the cabinet drawer rolled open.
It had been a few years, but she hadn’t lost her touch.

Like riding a bike. A stolen bike.

She shoved the paper clips deep into the
pockets of her sweaterdress; the sharp end went straight through
the thin cashmere and stabbed her leg.

“Ow! Son of a—”

Cat winced at her instinctive outburst and
clamped her right hand over her mouth. Taking a deep breath, she
put her focus back on the file cabinet. The first drawer was
labeled
CURRENT ROSTER, A-L
. She snagged Jamal Abercromby’s
file first and found his chart. She shined the pen light on the
doctor’s scribbles. His notes were unremarkable: a sinus infection
in April, a sore wrist in June. While flipping through the rest of
Jamal’s file, she found the same autopsy report she’d already
received. She sighed, slid the Abercromby folder back into the
cabinet and thumbed through the rest of the files. Drawer two
offered players M-Z and nothing else. She checked her watch and
sighed. The clock was running and she had no timeouts
left.

Cat squatted down to the bottom drawer, and her
vengeful thighs cursed her with a responding throb down to the
knees. The drawer was piled with folders of a light blue shade that
were labeled with the past three seasons. She pulled one out and
flipped it open. Just as before, nothing unusual, only a
spreadsheet of various injuries that had occurred over the season.
Her heart sank. The entire mission was a flop. She hung her head
for a couple of seconds of wallowing and reached for the cabinet’s
handle. As she scooted the folders back to accommodate the missing
one, she spied a black accordion organizer lying on the bottom of
the drawer, no longer camouflaged by the baby blue files hanging
above.

Cat yanked the dark rectangle out. She slowly
peeled the lid up and noted that Velcro sounded even louder in slow
motion. She opted for the Band-Aid route, jerked the flap open with
one noisy rip, and pulled out the loose papers inside. Her pen
light revealed models of structures and helixes surrounded by
paragraphs laced with chemical jargon.

Benji, where are you when I need
you?

She smiled slyly at the Ricoh. After looking at
the door and hesitating for only a second, she took the contents,
shoved them into the tray’s feeder and pressed the fluorescent
green START button. She scowled at the shimmying machine as it
beeped through the stack of paper and serenaded her with a loud
whirring.

Chiseling a copy into a slab of stone would be
quieter.

Her eyes fell back on Dr. Goodall’s door,
concentrating on the doorknob. Her mind began to wander into a
horrifying delusion of the brass knob turning. Slowly. Could be a
maid. Could be a guard. Her stomach curdled at the thought of being
caught. She was trapped in the corner office. Heat suffused her
skin as she contemplated her next hypothetical move. Should she
hide, perhaps crouch underneath the doctor’s desk and hope the
cleaning crew didn’t do floors? Or should she make a run for it,
push past the surprised guard and sprint for the door?

Cat snapped out of her grim trance and realized
that the copier was now still, having finally stopped its parade
down Bourbon Street. Placing the original documents back in the
folder, she nestled the accordion beneath the file façade of
innocent spreadsheets. She ripped her warm stack of stolen
information from the copier’s tray and held the papers to her
chest. She burst out the door and was halfway to Ernie’s desk when
she remembered.

The file cabinet.

Locked when she entered the office, unlocked
now. She paused for a moment and debated whether she needed to turn
around. Was it possible Dr. Goodall would find his files unsecured
but dismiss any suspicion for a simple oversight? She ran her
fingers over the sharp edges of the papers in her hands. This
wasn’t information a man like Dr. Goodall would forget to lock up.
She stepped into the hallway and retreated to the crime scene. She
tugged on the handle and the drawer pulled open. Cat pushed it back
in and studied the lock. She pressed on it, hoping to hear it click
shut like the fourth floor cabinets, but the lock didn’t oblige.
She sighed.

Guess he got the good printer; we got the good
file cabinets.

She pulled the paper clips from her pocket. Cat
had never actually picked a lock
shut
, but she supposed it
was the same principle as picking a lock open. She wiggled the
paper clips around. Nothing.

Maybe it’s not the same thing.

She moved her ear closer and frowned. The lock
refused to catch. She wiggled some more. Still nothing. She checked
her watch.

Five ’til nine.

The cleaners would be marching through the
tunnel any minute. She continued to twist the clips. Finally the
thud of success congratulated her as the lock met its steel clasp.
She pulled the paper clips out and once again jammed them in her
pocket. She hoped the lock didn’t show any telltale signs of abuse.
There was no time to reassure herself.

Not like I have a belt sander handy
anyway.

Cat dismissed the worry with a quick shrug and
hopped up. She was on borrowed time. She grabbed the stack of
papers and locked the doctor’s door. Racing over to Ernie’s desk,
she dropped the borrowed key ring back on its hook. She was running
now, darting out of the clubhouse and down the tunnel. The
messenger bag, slung across her shoulder, thumped against her hip
with every step. Her eyes darted from door to door in case a member
of the cleaning crew should appear.

All I need is a witnesses who can recall, under
oath, my getaway from Dr. Goodall’s office, loot in
hand!

She sprinted through the tunnel’s door with
Olympian speed, boots smacking the parking lot’s asphalt with a
rich galumph. She broke the ribbon of night air and took a deep
breath of the warm finish line. After Cat had nestled the documents
in the Jeep’s passenger seat and weighed them down with her laptop,
she whipped out her cell phone and texted Benji to let him know she
was out. She eyed the guard shack.

One last hurdle.

With a sigh of relief, Cat allowed her head to
rest against the back of the seat. Winston was sitting in his
chair, absorbed in a fishing magazine as she approached the
gate.

Not exactly the vigilant stance of a guard on
the alert for trespassers.

Winston opened his window and a blast of the
shack’s air-conditioning swirled through her open Jeep.

“Hi, Winston.”

“Another late night, dearie?”

She nodded. “Always.”

“You’re doing okay, I hope?”

“Much better. Thanks for asking.”

He gave her a nonchalant wave. “Well, you go
get some rest now, you hear?”

“You got it. See you tomorrow.”

She tossed him one last smile as he lifted the
gate. She glanced down at the passenger seat and frowned, thinking
of one more person whose life might be ruined by the fallout from
the documents she’d found.

Sorry, Winston. I truly am.

Cat gripped the steering wheel and brought her
focus back on the road. She put the pedal to the floor, anxious to
get home and let Benji’s giant brain decipher the records. As she
passed under a yellow stoplight, she mouthed a silent prayer that
the pages would prove the whole mess was a simple
misunderstanding.

Maybe the B-12 was past its expiration date,
and that’s why the vitamins hadn’t shown up in the lab’s magic
microwave.

Then Dr. Goodall’s worst crime would be
absentmindedness, and Erich König would simply wag his finger.
Together, they could devise a more modern method of monitoring the
vitamin’s shelf life, a computer program with e-mail alerts of
impending expiration dates. She smiled at the thought.

Just a silly misunderstanding.

The whole ordeal would go away, and Cat could
still spend the fall covering a championship team, gossiping with
Key and Tams, teasing Dustin and ending her evenings with a wave to
Winston.

The smile snuck away and left behind a grimace.
She sighed as she slammed down her left turn signal. She leaned
over the seat and straightened the documents while she waited for
the oncoming traffic to pass. She knew she wouldn’t be waving at
Winston anymore.

Misunderstandings aren’t buried in locked file
cabinets.

“Plans changed. No commish, got evidence, need
your brain.”

That’s all the text message said. Benji paced
back and forth on his tile floor and contemplated its meaning. As a
young comic book aficionado, he’d been drawn to Brainiac and that
was when his fascination with the mind had been born. Fascination
evolved to passion when, as a student, his experiment on human
brain synapses won him first place at the Southwest Science Fair
and a full ride through college. As a professor, he became the
Nevada Science Foundation’s youngest grant recipient for his work
on brain stem neurons.

He had a hunch that exploring what made Cat
McDaniel tick could win him a Nobel Prize. The ceramic chilled his
bare feet, but his brainstem couldn’t be bothered with the message
while his nervous system was so busy sending his heart rate into
hyperdrive. He grabbed a box of fish flakes from the bookshelf and
sprinkled a pinch into the freshwater tank while he vented to his
gilled roommates.

“Got it? Got what? I don’t know how I got
myself into this, Arthur. One minute my cute, so cute it hurts, new
neighbor is returning a piece of misdelivered mail.” He picked up
another container and sprinkled it for the yellow puffer darting
back and forth. “Don’t worry, Curry, I didn’t forget about your
brine shrimp, either.” He closed the lid and watched the fish
gobble up their dinner. “The next, I’m waiting for her to bring
home evidence that could possibly be the catalyst in, what? A
takedown of the city’s beloved baseball team?”

The sound of boots clomping in the hallway
interrupted his one-sided conversation. Benji left the aquarium and
ran to the door at the familiar sound. Sure enough, there she was,
looking even prettier than he remembered. Her copper hair shimmered
down to her shoulders, its color even richer than he remembered
against the gold sweaterdress she wore over knee-high brown
boots.

Ah, yes. Now I recall how I got into
this.

“Hi.”

“Hey.” She gave a soft half smile that coated
his nerves with a soothing syrup. However, the calming elixir was
washed away with her next sentence.