Power of Attorney (3 page)

Brett slammed the papers down on the waiting room coffee table. He had demanded his father’s medical records from the hospital staff and they had been delivered — not that they did him much good.

“How do they call this a record?” He stomped away from the table. “The information is full of holes, and half the time, it’s unreadable.” He stared out the window, his hands gripped tightly behind him. Mark was sitting with his head in his hands.

Jane slid onto the couch and began to sort through the papers, making stacks.

Jenny came back into the room and joined Nikki. “I just chatted up the charge nurse. She said the surgical staff was estimating that the scarring, and probably the shrapnel, dates from the seventies. She says the team assumed the old scarring was a Vietnam injury from some things he said and since a lot of vets medical records get misplaced.”

“Did she say anything else?” asked Nikki.

“Yeah, apparently Nephrology has to do with kidneys.”

“Nephrology?” repeated Nikki. It sometimes struck Nikki that her team dealt with stress by focusing on trivialities.

“I keep seeing it on the signs,” said Jenny. “I kept thinking it sounded sort of dirty. I wanted to know.”

“It is sort of dirty,” said Jane, still sorting through papers. “Kidneys filter impurities in your body,” she added, to their blank stares. “Cleans out the dirty stuff, you know?”

“Apparently, I should have just asked you, Jane. Although, we’re going to have to talk about how to appropriately use the word dirty.” Jenny lowered her voice and purred the last word out.

“It’s no use. I still can’t do ‘buns’ right,” said Jane, squinting at a form from the file before consigning it to a pile.

“Also,” Jenny added turning back to Nikki, with a shake of her head. “The nurse said he’ll be awake in a little bit, but they don’t want more than one person back at a time and for no more than fifteen minutes at a time.

“Duly noted,” said Nikki.

“1971,” said Jane, holding up a single sheet of paper. “He was released from the hospital at McChord Air Force base in…” She squinted at the paper. It was a carbon copy, dim and faint with age. “December, 1971. Doesn’t say what he was released from. Released for? I’m not sure how to make that sentence work.”

“That’s impossible,” said Mark, ignoring Jane’s syntax issues. “He wasn’t in Vietnam; he wasn’t even in the military. Grandma said he was a salesman when they were married. They weren’t even divorced until ’72. How is he supposed to have been in Vietnam?”

“A lot of people who weren’t military were in Vietnam,” said Nikki.

“You think he sold stuff to the Vietnamese?” asked Mark.

‘That’s not what she means,” said Brett.

“Well, I’m glad you two know you’re talking about. Does someone care to explain it to me?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Mark! I teach American history. Didn’t you listen to any of my lectures that summer I had to take you to work with me?”

“It’s called a GameBoy, Dad. They’re practically designed to assist kids in ignoring their parents.”

“Hmph. I would ground you if you didn’t carry a gun.”

“I’m a cop,” said Mark, to the sudden, fixated attention of the girls. “Much to the disappointment of my father’s liberal sensibilities,” he added and Brett snorted.

“Oh,” said Jane, rather sadly.

“Anyway, regardless of grounding, what are you saying about Grandpa? How could he have been in Vietnam?”

“There were plenty of non-military personnel in Vietnam,” said Brett. “Pilots. Nurses. CIA.”

“Oh, come on,” said Mark. “That seems a bit farfetched.”

Brett opened his mouth as if to argue, then shrugged. “It does seem farfetched. It’s more likely he was injured here in the states and treated at that military hospital for some reason.”

“Injured in a shrapnel-causing explosion?” asked Nikki, and Brett’s mouth twisted unhappily.

“Maybe he sold something to the military and was injured on base.”

“He knew what a Soviet T-72 was,” said Jane, softly. “He recognized it right away when we showed him the picture.”

“There, you see, maybe he sold… Soviet T-72’s or whatever,” Brett waved his hand at Jane, as if wishing for the facts to magically align themselves.

“The Soviet T-72 is a tank,” said Nikki. “I don’t think that’s it.”

“That has to be it,” snapped Brett. “Dad sold shit up and down the coast, for all kinds of companies. I got postcards from Oysterville to Darwin. He was never home. He never had the same job for more than a year! He probably sold some piece of shit war machine to the government and it blew up in his face — got what he deserved.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Nikki, through her teeth.

“And what would you know about it,” said Brett crossing the room in swift angry strides until he was nose to nose with Nikki, leaning down to do it.

“I know your father,” said Nikki, her toes clenching inside her shoes. “I know he didn’t ‘deserve’ to get shrapnel stuck in his chest. We’re not hearing the entire story.”

“I don’t need to hear the whole story,” said Brett, jabbing a thick finger into Nikki’s shoulder. “I lived it. Mark! Come on, we’re leaving.”

He walked from the room, his footsteps heavy and even on the carpet.

“I think you’re right. I think we’re not getting all the facts,” said Mark, standing up and collecting his jacket from the seat. “Just let him calm down, and we’ll see what we can’t figure out. I’ll call you later when he’s calmer. Maybe we can see if there’s any better records back at the house. There has to be a reasonable explanation of how he ended up with shrapnel in his chest.”

Nikki forced herself to nod, then smile. Some part of her brain pointed out that the disjointedness of those movements revealed them as lies. “Thanks, Mark,” she said, forcing her smile to be more natural.

He nodded and hurried after his father.

She waited until he was out of ear shot. “I don’t like this. I don’t like this much mystery and I don’t like Brett and Mark poking around.”

“What do you want to do?” asked Ellen. Nikki took a deep breath, trying to decide just how angry she wanted to make the Merrivel’s. She let out the air slowly. They were going to be annoyed no matter who started going through their past. If she was going to do it, she might as well go all the way.

“Jane, get back to the office. Start going through Mr. Merrivel’s financials. Brett said he never worked for a company longer than a year during that time period — that sounds…” She hesitated. “It sounds suspicious. Also, Oysterville is a ghost town in Washington. I don’t think Mr. M would be selling much or sending many postcards from there, even in the ‘70’s.”

“Oh sure,” said Jane, when Jenny looked impressed. “She gets to know about Oysterville, but I know Nephrology, and it’s weird?”

“That’s because Nikki knows how to make it sound casual,” said Jenny.

“But, guys,” said Nikki, ignoring the color commentary, “let’s keep this within the team, yes?”

“You got it,” said Jane, reaching for her things.

“Jenny, can you and Ellen head over to the law firm and take a look around his office?”

“Looking for anything in particular?” asked Jenny, hitching her purse onto her shoulder.

Nikki shook her head. “No.”  “Just look for things that don’t fit and anything from that time period. I know he has a safe in his office; he uses it for items he wants to protect in case of a home burglary or fire. Start there. The combination is probably Katie’s birthday.”

“Seriously?” demanded Jane. “Didn’t he hear my lecture on password and combination protection?”

Nikki gave her a look.

“Right, focusing. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to go to the source. I’m going to talk to Mr. M.”

Nikki leaned her forehead against the steering wheel of her car. It was raining again. The moisture always seemed to bring out the faintest scent of the car’s original owner; it smelled like cigarettes and J’Adore.

“This job makes you old, Val,” said Nikki to the empty car.

Which was a silly thing to do. Val was dead. And even if she hadn’t been, her response surely would have been to say something withering.

Stop being a whiner, Nancy Drew.

And then she would have blown smoke through her nose or something equally draconian. Because, if Val had been anything, it was tough.

“No second thoughts, huh, Val? Always moving forward like a shark?” Nikki sighed and sat up, fluffing her hair in the mirror and checking her forehead for a steering wheel imprint. “Only problem is that none of us can swim fast enough to leave the past behind.”

Her phone rang, and Nikki jumped, even as her hand reached to answer it.

“Lanier, go,” she said.

“Hello Miss Lanier, this is Marisa from Support Services. We’ve gotten a request from the German branch. An…” Nikki could practically hear Marisa scrolling down the screen. “Astriz Liebenz has just arrived on a cargo ship and is requesting a gun, a new phone, and that you should ‘get your sweet ass’ down to the docks ASAP.” Marisa sounded scandalized.

Nikki laughed. “Tell her she can’t have my ass. Deborah and Taylor have wrapped up, haven’t they?”

There was a pause. “Yes, I believe so. Not that they’ve filed their reports yet.” Marisa didn’t sniff in disapproval, but it was implied.

“Send them over to Astriz. Tell them to try not to let her shoot anyone. Tell Astriz they’re on their way and that I’ll be there as soon as I can. Meanwhile, get on with the German branch and find out why the hell she’s in my city.”

“Yes, Miss Lanier. Should I call immediately, once I receive the information?”

“No, it’s not top priority. We just can’t have the Germans thinking they can drop in without calling first. It’s rude.”

“Then I’ll send an email. Thank you for your time, Miss Lanier.”

“Thanks for calling Marisa,” said Nikki, pleased that the conversation was winding down in a normal fashion — a pleasure that was short lived as Marisa promptly cut contact. “Do they teach them to do that?” Nikki stared at her phone. “Is an abrupt hang up part of the manual?” She shook her head as she started the engine.

Mr. Merrivel’s law office was theoretically twenty minutes away. With traffic it took forty-five.

She walked in and smiled briefly at the front desk, who waved, but didn’t say anything as Nikki walked past her and up the stairs to Mr. Merrivel’s office. Jenny and Ellen looked up as Nikki entered.

“Nikki,” said Ellen, climbing down a ladder that stretched up a wall of books. “We’ve got a slight problem.”

“Couldn’t get into the safe?”

“That was the easy part,” said Jenny. She was sitting at the desk, looking gloomily at something on the computer screen. It was clear that Jenny and Ellen had been pulling books off the shelves. Books sat on the floor or leaned on shelves next to gaps in the line-up of books. “It was Katie’s birthday, just like you said.”

“Then what’s the problem?” asked Nikki, flopping down onto one of the leather wing chairs that faced the desk.

“His filing system,” said Jenny, sliding a piece of paper across the desk.

Nikki picked it up. It was a list of books with a string of numerical values next to them.

“We think the numbers either reference dates, file numbers, or encoded names. Or possibly all three.”

Each book contains a CD,” said Jenny, ejecting one from the computer and carefully replacing it in a book.

Ellen took the book and handed her a new one.

“And each CD may or may not be encrypted, password protected, be files on people we’ve never heard of, or have baby pictures of Katie.”

Nikki laughed.

“It’s going to take days to pull everything and go through it,” said Ellen. “And that’s if we haul it back to Rachel and have the IT squad go through it. Which, since we’re trying to keep this quiet, I’m not sure we want to do.”

Nikki sighed and looked at the list again. “Was Katie in the Winnie the Pooh book?”

“First addition. It’s charming,” said Ellen.

“OK… Pull The Day of the Jackal, Love Story, and um…”

“Aw, crap,” said Ellen, stealing Nikki’s favorite comment of dismay and snatching the list out of her hand at the same time. “Of course, he would cross reference them that way.”

“What way?” demanded Jenny.

“Day of the Jackal and Love Story both came out in the seventies,” said Ellen. “If Katie’s in Winnie the Pooh, then it’s a good bet that something associated with Vietnam is going to be in a time period novel or something about Vietnam.”

“That’s not a sure bet,” said Jenny. “He put a lot of effort into this system. He’s not going to want it to be that obvious. And besides, that file on the Sven guy was in a Harlequin.”

“Maybe it’s more subtle than that — maybe there’s something about the subject matter that reminds him of the file that’s in there. It’s worth a shot and we’ve got to start somewhere.”

“I remain unconvinced,” said Jenny.

“Five bucks,” said Ellen. “I’ll bet you five bucks we find something in one of the books we’ve just targeted.”

“Five bucks and fifty push-ups, and you’re on,” replied Jenny with a snort.

“Deal,” said Ellen. “Now, ok, what are we pulling here? Jackal — that’ll be under Forsyth. Love Story, who wrote that? Oooh, that’s going to hurt my head.”

“Segal,” said Jenny, having popped open the internet.

“Look up this one too,” said Ellen. “The New Centurions.  It’s about police officers in LA during the 1960’s.”

“Wrong era then, isn’t it?” asked Jenny as she typed.

“I think it came out in the early seventies. And it was… I read it for a class; we were studying the Watts Riots. Mr. Merrivel and I discussed it one time. It seemed to have made an impression.”

“Joseph Wambaugh, then,” said Jenny.

Nikki searched the wall and eventually located the W’s in the lower right corner. She pulled a CD out of the back and handed it to Jenny. As Ellen collected the other two books.

“Bingo!” exclaimed Jenny, as the CD whirred to life inside the computer. “I have CIA records.”

Ellen and Nikki crowded behind Jenny to see the screen.

“Photos of records,” said Ellen. “Thank God they invented palm scanners. Can you imagine if we had to photograph records now?”

“I just don’t know where we would keep the film,” said Jenny. “My boobs can only accommodate so much. I don’t know how those sixties spy girls managed it. Is this Mr. Merrivel’s file?” Jenny stopped scrolling and enlarged a page. Mr. Merrivel’s young face looked back from the page.”

“It’s his decommission file,” said Ellen, reading ahead. “He left the CIA in 1975. Nikki did you know about this?”

“He just told me,” said Nikki. “At the hospital.”

“But if he left in ’75… He would have been working during his marriage to Brett’s mom,” said Ellen. “And they never knew?”

“He never told them,” said Nikki.

“But…” Jenny said.

Nikki’s phone beeped in almost simultaneous harmony with Ellen and Jenny’s.

“Oh dear,” said Ellen, seeing the message first.

At the Merrivel’s. Locked in stuffy. Brett on rampage. Get here ASAP.

“Stuffy?” asked Jenny.

“Phone correction on study?” suggested Nikki, patting her pocket for her car keys. “Bring the CD.”

“What’s Jane doing at the Merrivel’s anyway?” demanded Jenny peevishly, tucking the CD into her purse.

“She wanted to find his divorce records,” said Nikki, holding open the door. “My car?”

“That’s fine,” said Ellen, leading the way. “You go get it started. Let me just tell the secretary not to bother with the mess, and that we’ll be back to clean it up. No need for her to start poking around.”

Nikki was waiting for Ellen in front of the office. She wanted to hurry, she had every intention of hurrying, but the truth was that it would take at least an hour for her to get from the office to house at this time of day.