Forgotten Place (45 page)

"Don't be absurd.  CSD is downstairs,"
Maya said.  "Ken can open the files on that disk before you
could drive out of the parking lot."

"Dev, why don't you call Crevan and find out
if he knows anything about the arrival of our other party tonight,"
I said.  "Ned and I will go downstairs and see what Forsythe
can do with this disk, and Maya's going to put security on high
alert." 

~

Everyone congregated within a quarter hour
to hover over Forsythe's shoulder.  The disk contained
numerous files, but not as infinite a number as we'd find on say a
hard disk drive from that era.  The floppy disk only held
about one and a half megabytes of data, roughly a little more than
the average novel in Pages format.  I doubted that when
Forsythe was able to open the files, we'd find anything as neat as
a narrative account of Datello's evil deeds with dates and
locations offered into evidence.

"Dates and locations," I said.

"Huh?"  Devlin refocused his attention
on me with a wariness that made skin crawl.

Ned heard the soft utterance too.  He'd
spent more time with the boxes from Ireland's office than any of
us.  Even though not privy to the conversation Orion and I
shared with my mentor David Levine, he was one sharp guy in his own
right.

"Oh my God.  It's been staring us in
the face all week long, hasn't it?  Dates.  Times. 
Locations.  All documented in numeric format alone."

"Did you go through that last box?"

"I found them the first night, while you
were sleeping and put them aside.  It looked like stacks of
self-tests off an old printer.  I couldn't fathom what they
meant, if anything but intended to ask you what you thought about
them later."

"What are you two talking about?" Devlin
asked.

"We need to get those pages out of my office
at home," I said.  "Forsythe, keep working on finding software
that'll open those files."

"What made you think of dates and
locations?" Ned fell into step beside me with Devlin on our
heels.

"I was thinking about what we'd find on the
disk, realizing that it wasn't going to be some narrative
confession of whatever it is David Ireland uncovered. 
Something clicked in my head.  When Orion and I were in
Washington, my friend from the FBI told us that Southerby had been
teasing the bureau along with promises of dates and locations for
where Sully Marcos buried the bodies so to speak.  He
disappeared shortly after the FBI determined that he was the
anonymous tipster.  They were never able to talk to him and
get the information."

"So Southerby is something more than the bad
guy in this?  How does that make sense, Helen?"  Devlin
paced the small box as it rose two floors to the lobby level of the
Bay County building.  "He seemed pretty into the job he had,
be it for Marcos or Datello."

"You're right, Dev.  I don't think
Mitch Southerby was this so-called deep throat character at
all.  Think about it, about the clue that Ireland left
splattered from office notes to his gravestone."

"Honor thy father.  The clippings about
his dad's murder," Dev slammed one fist into the palm of the
opposite hand.  "Why would he kill somebody to keep the truth
about who planned to rat out the big bad uncle to the feds?"

Ned quelled his partners agitation with a
stare that was the equivalent of a thumb tack pinning him to the
wall.  "Are you serious?  Family doesn't mean to these
losers what it does to the real world.  Anybody that steps out
of line gets the same treatment, blood or no blood.  If
Datello thought Uncle Sully killed Daddy, why wouldn't he believe
he'd suffer the same fate if he ratted out the big bad boss
too?"

"So why bring all of this up now?" Devlin
started to postulate an answer I already knew.

My heart lodged somewhere in the vicinity of
my left ankle.  It was because of me, whether indirectly or
not, my actions last spring had triggered something in Datello, a
ruthlessness that maybe he had suppressed over the years following
David Ireland's murder.  Maybe he realized on some level that
his actions, the murder of Ireland, the follow up with McNamara and
subsequent replacement by Lowe was a step too far.  Putting
Lowe in a position of power had been a mistake that Datello had to
realize when Jerry bluffed his way into convincing Datello that he
had possession of the disk all along.

Then my ex-husband, another beloved Datello
family member was murdered, and who shows up in town to arrest the
man who could prove to Uncle Sully – if no one else – that
Danny-boy had been on the verge of perpetuating the greatest
betrayal of all?  None other than the one who killed his
cousin, the one who would arrest Jerry Lowe and potentially expose
the whole mess.

I cursed expansively.

The elevator chimed.

The doors opened.

Nobody moved.

They closed again.

"Helen?"

Ned looked as worried as Devlin.  Don't
get me wrong.  I can gutter-mouth with the best of them, but
it's usually reserved for the silent dialogue of the mind.  I
don't think anyone has heard me utter the words that fell out of my
mouth. 

One finger jabbed the open door button on
the elevator.  "We need to get to my house.  Journey is
there.  I realize that OSI has guys guarding the place, but I
really don't want to think about rebuilding a second time."

"He'd go as far as Lowe did?" Ned asked.

"Danny Datello is..." 
My eyes met Dev's.  He was shaking his head no.  As
in,
don't go there, you don't have to go
there, Helen.  Your secret is safe with me.

"He's ruthless enough to bring Southerby
back to Darkwater Bay to find evidence that Ireland literally took
to his grave.  Let's just say I don't want to take any more
chances."

I pressed the keys to my Expedition into
Devlin's hand.

"Are you all right?"

"A little sore."

Ned shook his head like he wondered why it
took me so long to notice that I'd been through hell over the past
eight hours and change. 

"Take something for pain when we get to the
house," Devlin said. 

"Helen, there's still the matter of
deciphering those printouts," Ned dragged all heads back into the
case with a single undeniable truth.  We were looking at
dozens of pages of nothing but numbers.  "Maybe the disk has
some sort of key code on it, yes?"

"Possibly," but my brain wasn't so
sure.  Ireland had left cryptic clues at best.  I didn't
expect a sort of wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am easy resolution and said
so.  "I'd like to know how a guy that prosecuted fraud cases
for the district managed to get his hands on any of this
information in the first place."

"One of his investigations in the months
leading up to his death involved complaints from the service
employee's union that funds were being funneled into personal
accounts instead of being used to represent the workers," Ned
said.  "There's a loose link to Datello, in that he's been
very buddy-buddy with all the unions in the area since day
one."

"So Ireland was in contact with counsel for
the union?" Dev maneuvered through heavy fog and headed west
through Downey toward Beach Cliffs.

I had climbed into my normal position of
taking the back seat when riding with partners and perched in the
middle, a hand draped over each bucket seat in the front.  I
leaned forward.  "Theoretically, that could've been what put
Datello on his radar," I said.  "What did his notes say about
the investigation?"

"He asked for information, the union
supplied it.  Ireland thoroughly reviewed it and found no
evidence of criminal activity."

"So he closed the investigation?"

Ned turned his head and frowned. 
"No."

"So it was still open, even though he found
nothing fraudulent in the union's practices?"

"Weird, huh?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions.  What
else was on his docket?"

Ned unfastened his seatbelt and readjusted
for a more direct view.  "That union thing was one of two
embezzlement investigations.  The other was a case of
insurance fraud.  Somebody in the company collected premiums
and only paid out on a minimal number of claims.  That case
had chops.  He had a court date set on it and a strong case
against the financial officer of the company."

"Do you know the outcome?"

A head shake, and, "Fraud cases aren't so
glamorous, Helen.  We'd have to wait for the DA's office to
open Tuesday morning if you want the particulars on that one."

"Or," I pulled out my still slightly muddy
iPhone and dialed.

"Conall."

"It's Helen.  Remember when you used
Belle's password to do a little digging into the Sentinel's
archives?"

"Yeah."

"Are you near a computer right now?"

"Tony and I are back at Downey.  What
do you need?"

I explained and listened to his fingers
flying over the keyboard while I filled in the blanks with what
little we knew about the case.

"Got it," Crevan said.  "They did a
small article after the sentencing.  The guy was found guilty
on all charges and went to white collar prison for the country club
set.  The insurance company went belly up after a spate of
civil suits from clients determined to be paid for their
inconvenience."

"Don't think I'm crazy for asking this, but
was Danny Datello linked to that insurance company in any way?"

"If he was, it never came out in the course
of the prosecution's case.  You want me to do a little
digging?"

"How's the thing going with our alias boys?"
I asked.

"What do you think?  They want their
phone call.  They want their lawyer.  We're not gonna get
anywhere with these geniuses.  It would seem the brain cell
the two of them share is the one that knows when to shut up."

"Did you find any information on the flight
manifests?"

"No," Crevan said.  "Tony found some
information on that topic.  Let me put him on the line, he's
right –"

"You tell me.  I'd rather not talk to
him right now."

A blast of air hissed across the
connection.  "Datello's private jet left Hawaii at around ten
thirty our time last night.  It landed a couple of hours
ago."

"Do we know where he is?"

"Tony made a call to the division office out
on Hennessey Island.  They've got guys watching the Island
Hotel Resort and Casino."

"He lives out there, right?"

"Whole top floor is home sweet home to Danny
and the little missus."  Crevan's pause was heavy.  "I
wish you would've stuck around at the hospital, Helen."

"Can't talk about that now.  Call me if
something changes with Datello or his employees have a change of
heart."

I clicked off and tried to discern our
location through the murky vichyssoise of pre-dawn.

"Nothing on the insurance case?"

Ned was still twisted around in his
seat. 

"No overt link to Datello.  What were
the other cases Ireland had?"

"Mail fraud, pyramid schemes, credit card
stuff."

"So the most reasonable link between his
work and Danny Datello was the union.  Do you remember who the
legal counsel for it was?"

"The union?"

"Yeah, the union.  Did Ireland say who
he was speaking to regarding the investigation?"

"Sure I remember.  The guy was
disbarred a couple of years after Ireland died.  His name was
Dayton Stefano.  His brother was his partner.  The
brother's still got a criminal law practice here in the city," Ned
said. 

"What's Dayton doing with himself these
days?"

"No clue," Ned said.  "But I can tell
you, a lawyer getting smacked down in this city was a rare event
even back in the day."

"And you can't remember why he was
disbarred?"

"I remember it well enough," Ned said. 
"He violated privilege.  As I recall, it was a case from
central, some guy accused of diddling the little daughter, and
Stefano went to the DA and revealed that the guy confessed to his
family therapist. Stirred up a ruckus when the prosecution went
after the guy's medical records based on a tip from his own
attorney."

"A defense attorney with ethics.  Stop
the presses," I muttered.  My experience with those in the
legal profession had left me feeling less than impressed with them
as a whole, even those tasked with prosecuting cases.  My
dearly departed ex-husband came to mind again, and the US
Attorney's office, the grotesque reluctance to prosecute him based
on the mountain of evidence they had incriminating him in Sully's
money laundering operation.  It was always a matter of
extremes in that profession.  Either the defense guys were
lying through willful ignorance to exonerate the guilty or the
prosecutors resisted doing their jobs with anything less than a
slam dunk win. 

Therein was the problem.  It was all
about the win on the side of angels, which gave the demons of
defense their greatest weapon.

"They should've given the guy a medal
instead of disbarring him."

I reached over the seat and bumped Devlin's
shoulder with a fist.  "You're my kinda guy, Dev."

"As I recall, the perp in that case tried to
file a civil suit.  It was a mess," Ned continued.  "I
think it was dismissed or some sort of sealed settlement was
reached.  Carlos was none too pleased.  I heard his
business took a bit of a hit over the whole deal."

"Carlos?"

"The other brother," Ned told me. 
"He's the one who still has the practice in Darkwater proper."

"Why would a union lawyer be handling a
criminal case?" Devlin connected a couple of dots that hadn't
occurred to me yet.

"Court appointment," Ned said.  "After
that case, the judges were very picky about nabbing someone with a
license to practice law who happened to have the misfortune of
standing around in the right place at the wrong time.  Poor
old Dayton didn't know the hornet's nest he stepped into on that
one."