The Devil's Analyst (19 page)

“You know what they’re looking for, don’t you!”

Danny’s voice held a steeliness that as much surprised him as it comforted him. Francesca and Cynthia moved awkwardly as though to escape the scene; they only knew the weaker Danny. He was tired of letting others direct his life. It was time to be someone stronger.

Josh went on the offensive. “Who’s the ‘they,’ Danny? We don’t know who did this. We don’t even know that a broken window means something.”

Danny refused to accept these denials. “Okay, have it your way. Keep trying to tell me there’s nothing going on. You can tell Cynthia that Chip will reappear and that money hasn’t been stolen from the Lattigo Nation. You can try to convince Kenosha she’s crazy, imagining someone was sneaking into our house. You can even tell me over and over that I haven’t been followed. Guess what? It won’t do any good. Nothing you say is true, and we all know it. And you know what else? I believe the same person and car that followed me followed Chip. Our friend came here to help us, and now he’s gone. Someone breaks into our house, and you pretend it’s coincidence and that everything will be all right, and I won’t just go along anymore.”

Cynthia caught her breath, and Danny turned to her.

“I know Cynthia. We all want to believe that Chip’s okay. And none of us accept the police explanation that he’s a thief. We know your husband. He’s smart. He’s loyal. But we have to face reality. He must have found something he wasn’t supposed to. If he ran off, he would let us know he was alive. He cares too much to do any less. And it can’t be a kidnapping . . . because who would have done that and why hasn’t there been a ransom? He’s gone.”

Josh pulled Danny into a fierce hug that wasn’t meant to console but to control him. He whispered for only Danny to hear, “You need to stop this. You’re freaking out Cynthia. Calm down and support her. Then we can get rid of everyone, and I’ll tell you what I’ve tried to keep hidden.”

Suddenly Danny felt calm and totally sober. The danger was real; he wasn’t imagining it; and he needed to be in control.

He looked over Josh’s shoulder at a shaken Cynthia and his eyes tried to convey how sorry he was. Francesca was collapsed into a chair, staring at her glass. Then he saw Lopez. The man was barely holding back a self-satisfied smirk. Suddenly, everything made sense. He didn’t know where the thought came from, and it hardly seemed possible. Yet from all he knew of Lopez and after reading
The Dumping Ground
, he could believe anything was possible.

He wrestled free of Josh’s grasp to swing angrily at Lopez. “It’s fucking Oliver, isn’t it?”

Josh looked at him in amazement. “What the hell are you talking about? Oliver who?”

“Oliver Meyers! Our partner.”

Now Lopez was actually smiling, and Danny was again encircled with Josh’s arms. No matter how much Danny wanted to, Josh wouldn’t let him hit the professor.

Lopez said, “Seriously. You think a multi-millionaire investor is behind a minor break-in.”

“Why not? He’s already stolen my life and handed it over to you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Lopez wasn’t rattled, but Josh was upset. “Danny, what are you talking about?”

Danny felt drugged. Maybe he drank too much; yet all he could think of was that slim volume resting by his bedside. In that novel, names and locations may have been altered, but the book’s spirit spun the story of Oliver’s summer betrayal. Except that the story’s point of view cast a light that made Danny the villain, not the victim, of that adolescent web. If Oliver would stoop so low as to betray an entire summer of memories, then who could predict what else he might do. Despite his apology to Danny just days earlier, Danny considered the possibility that Oliver blamed Danny. Maybe he wanted to get into this house to attack Danny. Maybe the only reason his company had invested in Premios was because Danny was one of the owners. The world overflowed with psychopaths, and that long ago summer surely proved that Oliver was such a person.

“Danny, breathe deeply and tell me what you mean.” Josh continued to hold Danny tight, who felt comforted in Josh’s arms.

As though to apologize for her personal dilemma causing such anxiety, Cynthia lightly touched Danny on his arm.

Danny took that deep breath. He needed it. He realized he needed to disclose something hidden too long from Josh. While he never planned to discuss that summer with Oliver, there was no way out now. Where to start? Not even wanting to say the man’s name aloud, he nodded in Lopez’s direction.

“His newest novel. It’s about me. The whole thing covers a summer in my life. A summer with Oliver Meyers.” He almost choked on the last sentence.

Cynthia looked away. She knew what was to come. After their brief meeting with Oliver and his unexpected apology, Danny disclosed an abbreviated version of the summer’s events to Cynthia. He also told her he never wanted Josh to know.

Josh looked at him with incredulity. “Danny, this is Jesus Lopez we’re talking about. Like you always say, he only writes about horrible people and horrible things. Whatever could have happened in your life that he’d find interesting?”

Danny fell quiet. Josh and he always promised to be truthful with one another, and in many ways they lived up to that commitment. In the past, Danny spoke freely about the pain and loss of his mother’s suicide, and he even shared the story of the movies and Pete Peterson. In turn, Danny knew how guilt from his parents’ accidental deaths years ago plagued Josh. In a way, the two of them met because of the respective tragedies, and they became the people they were only because of the sadness in their lives. But sometimes the things you weren’t willing to tell anyone were the things that defined you. Some facts seemed so destructive that just a hint of them might force others to completely reexamine what they believed of you. Some truths were not worth the risk of being disclosed.

Lopez actually chuckled. “Thanks for that vote of confidence, Josh. I thought you placed higher value in my writing. But I guess not.

“As for you Danny. You were once my prize student. I had such hopes for what you could become. I tried to test you and make you strong, but you broke so easily, the way you wasted your talents with writing that silly ‘zine. As a teacher, it’s hard to watch someone fritter away their potential.”

Danny didn’t care what the man thought. “So you pay me back by letting Oliver talk you into absconding with my life.”

“Really, Danny, your thinking is so narrow. Why assume it was Oliver who told me your little secret? Do you really think no one else knew what was going on?”

Danny felt unable to say anything. Why would Lopez say such a thing? No one else could have known all the details. That summer was a secret between Oliver and Danny.

Francesca stirred in her chair. It was as though Danny’s outburst had sobered her up.

“Don’t you think we should call the police?” she asked.

Cynthia retreated
to her bedroom. The evening was all too much. She had known Danny and Josh for years and before tonight had never seen them so poised for a knockdown fight. She had no desire to be dragged into their differences. Her own problems were so huge. She glanced down at the wastebasket beside the lounge chair. The wrapping from the pregnancy kit was still there. After all this time trying to start a family, and now the test gave her the positive color that she wanted to see for so long, but she had no audience for her good news, and she feared that the small life growing inside of her could be all that remained of Chip.

Danny was right. Each of them was dancing around the precipice of truth. The only explanation for Chip’s disappearance—and she should accept it—was death. If she knew for certain that Chip was gone, she could deal with it. But lingering in limbo was too tortuous.

Through the window, the empty hills of a dark Griffith Park rolled northward. At night she could see little, but she noticed a circling police helicopter about a mile away. Its spotlight remained centered on a small area. For a moment she wondered if the police were already in pursuit of some suspicious vagrant in response to Josh’s incident call. That was the way life worked for Josh and Danny: one call to 911 and the Los Angeles Police Department was in full pursuit on their behalf.

On the other hand, she was forced to dig for the smallest bits of information. When she finally uncovered them, they proved unsatisfactory. Earlier in the day, her detective Samuel Denkey called from Thomas’s office in Lattigo. He had flown to Wisconsin to investigate the company’s accounts onsite. After examining the financials, Thomas and Denkey asked for the conference call to brief her, but it only left her with more questions.

During that entire phone meeting, she sat in the same chair that she sat in now. Throughout the detailed disclosures, she stared out the same window. In the daylight, the rain-fed hills seemed almost as green as Ireland. She longed to escape the detective’s drone by losing herself in the verdant grasses. Sometimes on this visit, she watched deer in the far hills of the park. Their presence always made her think of their Wisconsin home. Something about deer had always brought a smile to Chip and her, especially in the spring when they spotted a young fawn bounding through the brush with childish joy.

Thomas began the call. “The million dollars is definitely gone,” he said. “We can’t trace where the funds ultimately went and there seems no way to recover any of it.”

Denkey jumped in. “But I’m confident your husband didn’t take the money, and I would testify to that in court. I’ve talked to the local police, shared my reasons and they now hold the same view.”

“What’s changed?” Cynthia asked.

“We’ve looked at the details. They simply don’t support the idea of embezzlement. It’s a crack team working at this computer site, as one would expect in any well-run data-hosting center. Your husband hired the best, and together we’ve scoured the code. The hackers were clever, but they left enough crumbs that we can piece together what happened.

“It looks like this. The hackers used a weakness in the Premios firewalls to embed their malware in the company’s database. This is what happened back on New Year’s Eve. By itself, that was likely a diversion to mask their real attack on the Lattigo Industries enterprise resource planning system. The hackers buried another piece of code—the one that triggered the embezzlement. We’ve tracked both pieces of malware back to that server farm Chip discovered in the Valley, the one that was dismantled. We’re still trying to identify who rented that facility and when.” Denkey paused.

Cynthia found his accounting insufficient. “I don’t get it. What you describe seems a very complicated way to steal a million dollars. Why stop there? Lattigo Industries is nearly a billion dollar business. Once they did it, surely, they could have transferred more.”

Thomas murmured his agreement, and Cynthia sensed he was silently urging Denkey to say more.

“Mrs. Grant, you’re right. We know that we’re still missing something. I guess you would call it the motive, or the payoff. This whole computer virus thing seems too complex and thought out for the amount that was taken, but at the same time too simplistic if it was intended to be a repeat job. But examining the books makes one thing perfectly clear.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

His reply was quick. “There’s no way your husband would do this. I’m not saying that because I know anything about his character. But there’s no reason for him to steal anything. Thomas gave me full access not only to the files for Lattigo Industries, but also to the books of the Lattigo Nation for which Mr. Grant is the chief. He also connected me with the manager of your personal finances. I’ve seen all the books, and examined them in detail. It makes no sense that anyone would steal a million dollars when you already have so much.

“As I’m sure you know, your company is financially sound. There’s also no need to bolster the Lattigo Nation, which is likely one of the wealthiest Native American reservations in the country. It was among the first to offer Indian gambling. And on a personal level, Chip and you are extremely wealthy. Your personal assets are close to fifty times what went missing. If he wanted to disappear with a million dollars, there were far easier ways to accomplish it.

“In fact, recent activities show that Mr. Grant continues to be a very astute trader. Even though he long ago left his Wall Street firm, during the fall he placed major positions that anticipated the steep market decline this month. That investment alone has significantly increased your bottom line.

“Given all that, I am certain someone set him up.”

Cynthia was surprised—first by Denkey’s newfound confidence in Chip but also in his recounting of her family’s well being. She never paid much attention to their portfolio and seldom considered how wealthy they might be. Hearing it aloud made her somewhat uncomfortable. “I guess with Premios about to go public, we’ll be even richer,” she joked.

Both Denkey and Thomas remained silent a beat too long. “About that,” Thomas said, “the Premios stake is the only Internet investment in your family’s portfolio. It’s clear from your husband’s notes that he evaluated the firm as having significant weaknesses. Now, this is only my own opinion, but given the current market volatility, I don’t see any way Premios could successfully launch a public offering.”

Thomas suddenly halted, as though he felt he had gone too far in being frank.

“That’s not what Josh says,” Cynthia responded. She knew Danny well enough to be certain he too thought everything was good with their company.