Dead Air (Sammy Greene Thriller) (37 page)

True to form, Pappajohn simply nodded.

“How’s your arm holding up?”

“Still stiff after I sleep, but otherwise —” He shrugged again. “It’ll be fine.”

“I’m glad.” Sammy turned to him. “Any idea who did the bombing?”

“Can’t say.”

“You mean you’re still investigating.”

“I mean, I can’t say.”

“Surely you have a gut feeling.”

“Honey, I’ve stopped trusting my gut years ago.”

“Don’t call me honey.”

“Oh sorry, I forgot, it’s not politically correct.” Pappajohn studied her face. “I could be your father, you know.”

“You called your daughter ‘honey’?” challenged Sammy.

Pappajohn’s tone took a transient contemplative quality. “Not enough.” He poured the last of the ouzo bottle into his paper cup and repeated, “Not enough.”

Sammy didn’t miss the gesture. “What’s she like?”

“My daughter?” He looked directly at Sammy for a moment, then removed two dog-eared snapshots from his wallet. “She doesn’t look like me,” he said, handing her the pictures. “She’s a beauty — like her mother.”

Sammy considered the two dark-haired women in the photo. The older one radiated warmth with her broad smile, her features glowing, her eyes twinkling with laughter. The other, still in her teens, stood slouched facing the camera, sporting a sullen look. Sammy had one of those photos too. She was surprised to see how much Pappajohn’s daughter reminded her of herself at that age.

“But she isn’t happy,” Pappajohn was saying. “It worries me — her bottomless appetite for misery.”

“She’s not here, is she?” Sammy asked, looking around.

“Hardly.” Pappajohn snorted. “You’d never catch her at one of these things. Los Angeles.”

“That’s where they all go to find themselves, I guess. My dad moved there after my mom died.”

“I’m sorry,” Pappajohn said. “Has it been a while?”

“About thirteen, fourteen years. I grew up with my grandmother in New York.”

“I didn’t think that was an L.A. accent.” Then he turned serious. “Was it cancer?”

“My mom?” Sammy looked down for a moment. “No. Suicide.”

Pappajohn seemed genuinely saddened. “I didn’t know.”

She looked up again. “It’s okay. Either way, it’s still the pits.” She raised her soda and took a large gulp as a pseudo-toast. “To survival.”

Pappajohn’s paper cup was emptying fast.

“Is your daughter all right?”

“You’re asking me? I’m just her father.”

“That bad, huh?”

“She’s clean. That’s all I care about.” His response was unconvincing.

“Oh.” Sammy knew so many friends who’d fallen into that trap. “What’s she doing now?” she asked, before regretting the choice of words.

Pappajohn didn’t seem to catch the double meaning, answering honestly. “She told me she’d decided to return to school. Maybe one of these days it will happen.” His tone didn’t sound convinced. “I e-mail her every so often, but that’s about it.”

“You think she’ll ever come back East?”

Pappajohn shook his head. “No. No illusions. I guess if I ever have grandchildren, I’ll have to visit by computer.” He downed the last few swallows from the cup, crumpled it into a small ball, and pitched it perfectly into an almost-full trash bin. He was off to the beverage booth for a refill to fuel another round on the dance floor.

Larry Dupree sat in his apartment’s living room, examining the shoe-box-sized metal container the fire chief had given him yesterday, uncertain how to open it. The heat had twisted the metal and virtually melted the lock. He turned it over and over, about to give up when he finally noticed a buckled seam that had created a tiny space — probably less than half a centimeter — but room enough to insert a small screwdriver.

He rose from his chair and hurried into the kitchen where he stored his tools. Among the eclectic assortment of screwdrivers, he found just what he needed. Returning to the living room, he wedged the six-inch flathead under the metal, pushing down with all his strength until, at last, he pried the box open.

“Papers,” Larry muttered, disappointed. He was hoping for some salvaged program tapes — the classics, anything — to help restart the studio library they’d just lost.

Defeated, he rummaged through the pile of burned crisps of
paper mixed with black flakes of the scorched interior. Brian’s engineering license, FCC certification. A copy of his campus housing rental agreement. His car insurance. Brian was a real pack rat.

Then, a picture.

Larry blew the ash dust off the photo. It had been taken two years ago, right after they’d broken the facilities contracts story. Brian was sitting in his rickety chair, bookended by his two best friends, Larry himself and a grinning, almost childlike Sammy. His eyes welled up with tears.

He was about to close the container when he saw it — at the very bottom of the box, tucked underneath. Larry pulled it out and turned it over in his hand.

Well, ah’ll be! Though the label was torn, he could make out most of the letters written in Brian’s chicken-scratch penmanship:
Sammy’s tape
.

Sammy was relieved when she finally left Interstate 91 and drove onto quiet Route 15. The radio talked about a five-car pile up near Bellows Falls with traffic backed up all the way to Brattleboro. They’d stayed at St. Sophia’s well into the evening — only leaving after most of the revelers had called it a night. Pappajohn had had too much ouzo, so Sammy promised his sister she would drive them home.

Now snow fell like confetti and the roads were becoming more treacherous. Sammy was grateful Pappajohn owned a Land Cruiser. Though clumsy to steer, the behemoth four-wheel-drive vehicle rode solidly on the accumulating snow.

Sammy turned her head for a moment to look at her companion. Pappajohn was leaning against the opposite door, his head partially covered by a hunter’s cap, snoring loudly in an irregular pattern. Sammy felt obligated to play chauffeur on the trip home — not only because the chief had had too much to drink, but because Sammy felt that her conversational questions might have gotten him in that condition. The poor guy. He was a real teddy bear at heart. But with his wife’s death and his daughter’s leaving, he had to fight
his way alone. Sammy looked over at him again. It seemed she and Pappajohn actually had a lot in common.

“Damn it!” Sammy tugged hard at the wheel and the Land Cruiser swerved to the right, skidding smoothly in a circle, finally coming to rest in a small gully by the side of the road. She looked up to see the rear lights of a large limousine speeding down the roadway ahead in the distance. Her whole body shook as she took a few deep breaths to calm herself.

“Whutiz?” Pappajohn murmured, lifting up his cap.

“Nothing,” Sammy shook her head angrily. “Some son of a bitch in a limo practically ran me off the road.”

“Djgetalisuz?” he slurred.

“No. Didn’t have time. They’re gone.” She started rocking the car back and forth out of the gully. “Sorry I woke you, go back to sleep.”

“Rockabyebaby,” Pappajohn mumbled as he drifted back into slumber.

Sammy nudged the car back into traffic. Looking off in the distance where the limo’s taillights had been only a moment before, all she could see was the darkness, shielded by a curtain of snow.

P
EORIA
, I
LLINOIS
8:00 P.M.

Tom Nelson was exhausted. Not to mention hungry, horny, and freezing cold. He couldn’t decide which was the greatest of his miseries. The rookie cop had been on foot patrol for close to eight hours, and it had been snowing constantly. He glanced at his watch. Another twenty minutes and he could sign off duty. Then he’d grab a burger at Mickey D’s — his bride of only three weeks was no cook — before heading for home. He thought about Patti in bed, her naked body waiting to warm his, and he smiled. Whatever skills she lacked in the kitchen were more than compensated for by her expertise in the sack.

The Amtrak whistle blew in the distance as the train steamed
off toward its next stop. Nelson’s beat included the Peoria neighborhood abutting the railroad yard. All along the crisscrossing tracks, inside abandoned cars or beside them, homeless men, women, and even a few children had set up temporary camps. The cop approached one ragged group standing around a burning oil can and warmed his hands over the flame.

“Officer!”

Nelson turned to see a man pointing to something lying in a mound of snow. Although several feet away, the cop sensed trouble.

“Officer, come quick!”

Nelson hesitated, his first impulse to leave it for the next guy. Less than five minutes to go, damn it. If this were anything requiring a report, he’d be hours doing paperwork before savoring burger, wife, or bed.

“Officer!”

Sense of duty prevailed, and Nelson hurried over to where the man was frantically signaling.

“Jesus!” His exclamation was involuntary. Worse, he’d lost all his appetites as he stood staring down at the ripped and twisted, now totally unrecognizable body of Lucy Peters.

Sammy left Pappajohn snoring in his bedroom and tiptoed out to the living room. Before falling back into his semi-stupor, he’d mumbled something about her staying over that night — “too dang’rous,” he’d slurred — but as she checked out the sagging, food-stained sofa, she wasn’t sure she could comfortably manage even a few hours sleep there. Besides, if there were anything to fear, Pappajohn would be of no use. He’d be out of commission for a good five or six hours at least. Sammy peeked out the living room window. Only a couple of inches of white covered the ground; the snowfall seemed to be tapering off. She shouldn’t have too much trouble walking back home now that the worst of it was over.

Still wound up from the events of the past few days, Sammy couldn’t resist wandering around the rooms of the small cottage. She went through all of them in less than three minutes, then stopped in
the kitchen to wash a sink full of dirty dishes. When she was done, she walked back into the den and sat down in front of the computer sitting atop Pappajohn’s cluttered desk. Maybe she’d use the time to modify her list of fact and speculation, adding what she’d gleaned from Dr. Ortiz and Mrs. Nakamura, as well as the question of whether yesterday’s assailant might have been someone from Taft’s organization. She could print it out on Pappajohn’s dot matrix, then later fax it to Mr. Ishida in New York. It might help the Nitshi CEO focus on any missing pieces in his own investigation.

She retrieved the handwritten list from her purse and switched on the computer. Once the system booted up, she opened an untitled file and began typing, transcribing the original and adding the following:

Six deaths: Yitashi Nakamura, Barton Conrad, Sergio
Pinez, Katie Miller, Brian McKernan, and Seymour Hollis

Four “suicides”: Nakamura, Conrad, Pinez, and Hollis
One fire and resultant death: Brian
One bombing and resultant death: Katie Miller
One almost hit-and-run and one assault: Intended victim: Sammy Greene
Two missing: Luther Abbottt and Lucy Peters

Done. Sammy wadded up her handwritten sheet and tossed it in the trash can under Pappajohn’s desk. Then she returned her attention to the computer screen, convinced that Taft was behind all the violence and death. A man so determined to discredit the global enterprise that he was willing to sacrifice anyone — including Sammy herself — to accomplish that goal.

Conrad had warned her that something was going on at Ells-ford. He’d already discovered that Seymour Hollis, the third suicide on campus, was a Palmer patient and had been taking a new AIDS drug developed by a Nitshi subsidiary. Whatever other evidence he’d gathered must have been in the brown envelope addressed to Dean Jeffries. If in fact, Jeffries hadn’t received it, it was likely that
whoever visited Conrad Friday night, shot the professor and took the envelope. The tape would have proven that Conrad was murdered. That’s why Brian was killed. That’s why someone — someone sent by Taft — had been after her. Even in New York.

What if, as Lt. Williams suggested, the attacker knew her? Someone sent to kill her before she learned too much? Because she was starting to piece the puzzle together.

Sammy shut her eyes, absorbing this terrifying idea.

Eventually, her calm voice broke through. Unlikely that the Reverend would send his henchman after her all the way to New York. She opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Of course, it was absurd.

Relieved, Sammy punched the function keys for “Print.” A few minutes later, she had two hard copies, which she folded and placed in her purse. Turning back to the computer, she pushed “Save” and waited for instructions to name the document.
Let’s see. Guess “Greene” is as appropriate a name as any
.

“DO YOU WANT TO OVERWRITE? Y/N?” flashed on the screen.

What? Overwrite? There’s another file with my name? Why? Sammy tried to access it, but only succeeded in repeatedly getting a prompt for a password. She tried the names of Pappajohn and his relatives to no avail, finally banging the desk in frustration. Irritated, she went back to check the directory for a clue. Among the multiple listings of games, communications services, and home tax and budget programs, she found files titled “Conrad,” “Nakamura,” “Nitshi,” and “Taft.” They, too, were equally inaccessible.

Sammy bit her lower lip. What the hell was going on?

Her pulse quickened as she considered the worst possible scenario. Whoever shut down Conrad’s computer the night he died might not have realized that Conrad always turned his off and on using the master switch on the floor. But, he would have had to know how to use a computer.

And Pappajohn fit that profile, Sammy realized, feeling at once
angry and betrayed. She’d been a fool to begin trusting the man. After all, if you’re into university corruption, who better to have on your side than the campus chief of police?

A conspiracy.

Could she prove it?

She didn’t know.

All she did know was that the more she learned, the more frightened she became.

Impulsively, she hit the “Delete” button on the computer, instantly removing the document she’d just created. Then she switched off the computer, grabbed her purse and jacket, and headed out of the cottage. It was still snowing. Falling flakes soon filled in her footsteps as if they had never existed.