The Outsider (James Bishop 4) (39 page)

‘That’s one thirsty animal,’ Strickland said.

‘Check the basement,’ Bishop said, as he began searching the kitchen cabinets for dog food. ‘See what else is down there.’

‘Right.’ Strickland went away and Bishop finally found a cabinet full of tinned goods, including about half a dozen cans of Lamb and Chicken Pedigree. Bishop opened two of the tins, grabbed a soup bowl from another cabinet, and emptied both tins into it. He placed the soup bowl next to the water and Biff immediately switched his attention to the food, lapping up the chunks with great enthusiasm.

Bishop turned to see Strickland emerging from the basement stairs.

‘Some kind of office space down there,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty pokey, but there’s a desk with a PC and stuff. Not much else except a few boxes of old clothes and books they must have been saving for Goodwill or something. Some of the clothes are torn to shit, thanks to your new friend there. He had a few accidents down there too, so it doesn’t smell too good.’

‘What about the other rooms?’

‘Well, there’s two bedrooms at the front. The big one’s got its own bathroom and a double bed that looks slept in on one side. The smaller one’s been converted into some kind of office for the wife, with computer, printer, and all the usual stuff.’

‘You sure it’s her office area, and not his?’

‘Pretty sure. The room’s got pink drapes, and there’s flowers on the desk.’

Bishop nodded and watched the dog eat, wondering how he’d got locked down in the basement in the first place, without food or water. On the surface, it suggested his suspicions had been correct, that some of Hartnell’s boys had paid Karen Lomax a visit recently. And since they would have simply shot the animal rather than risk being ravaged, it seemed likely Karen was the one who locked Biff down there. Maybe she’d planned to put some food and water in there, too, but didn’t have time before she was taken away. But taken to where?

‘It’s eleven twenty,’ Strickland said, pocketing his cell phone.

Bishop blinked at him. ‘Okay.’

‘I mean, it’s eleven twenty so let’s get
moving
. We got a date, remember?’

‘We’ve still got time. It’ll take us less than three hours to reach the Ohio state line.’

‘But then we still have to drive to whatever location Callaway gives us when he calls at five, and that could be anywhere.’

‘He already said it’ll be somewhere like Greenville or Sidney, which are both cities in the western part of the state, so it’s likely to be somewhere around there. And besides, I’ve already got something in mind that might improve our odds on that score.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Later. But for now, we’re staying until I can get a handle on what happened here.’

‘What’s the point? If Hartnell’s people grabbed Lomax’s wife then she could be just about anywhere now. We don’t have time for a search and rescue mission.’

‘I already told you I’m not going down for something I didn’t do,’ Bishop said, ruffling Biff’s fur. The dog ignored him and continued eating. ‘That’s why we’re here, remember. To find something that tells me for sure it was Lomax behind the leak. Finding Mrs Lomax also falls under that category. Now just be quiet for a minute and let me think.’

Without waiting for a response, Bishop thought back to Delaney’s comments regarding Lomax. About how he was convinced his wife was screwing around behind his back, despite there being no evidence to the contrary. But maybe there
was
evidence to the contrary. Or signs, at least. Maybe Lomax wasn’t just creating imaginary problems out of nothing. Maybe he had reason to be suspicious, and maybe he’d done something about it. Because that PC in the basement puzzled Bishop. If the computer in the converted office was Karen’s, then the one in the cellar had to be Lomax’s. But why stick it in a tiny hovel?

Unless he was using it for purposes he didn’t want his wife to know about. And not internet porn either. Maybe he had another reason to keep it from her. And Bishop had a faint idea what that reason might be.

Conscious of the seconds ticking away, Bishop pushed off from the kitchen counter and marched back to the living room, where he turned right and then entered the open doorway on the left. He turned on the light and saw it was a fairly large bedroom. As Strickland had said, only one side of the double bed had been slept in, which at least suggested that Lomax’s suspicions about his wife were of his own making. But that didn’t matter now. Bishop was just hoping Lomax had acted on his paranoia.

Sticking close to the walls, he walked slowly around the room, studying the ornamental moulding near the ceiling. Looking for any kind of anomaly at all. But after completing a full circuit he found nothing. He stood in the middle of the bed and stared up at the light fixture inches above his head. It was a recessed downlight, like the one in the living room, with four small Phillips screws in the circular metal trim to hold the housing above in place.

But everything looked as it should be. He couldn’t see anything out of place.

Exiting the bedroom, he tried the converted office opposite, which was a much smaller room and clearly feminine in nature. If nothing else, the pale mauve wallpaper was a dead giveaway. Bishop paced the room, checked the cornice plastering and the light trim as before, but once again saw nothing of any interest.

The living room was next.

After a complete circuit of the main living area, he once again looked up at the light fixture. Keeping his eyes averted from the bulb itself, Bishop stared up at the trim and tilted his head, frowning deeply. All the screws had Phillips heads as before, but one of them didn’t look quite right. It looked as though somebody had placed a tiny drop of black paint in the centre of the head.

Except Bishop knew it wasn’t paint.

Strickland was standing a few feet away, watching him. ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ he asked.

‘The man in the moon.’

‘Yeah? Well, I don’t think you’ll find him up there.’

Bishop smiled. ‘You’d be surprised.’

Bishop descended the stairs to the basement, where the smell of urine and faeces was so strong he had to breathe through his mouth.

Strickland was right. It was a tiny space. Maybe ten foot by twelve, with a low ceiling and brick walls, more a storage room than an actual basement. There was a naked bulb in the centre of the ceiling. Against one wall was a cheap wooden work desk containing three drawers, and a Samsung PC, tower hard drive, and keyboard on top. In front of the desk was a basic office chair on casters. Set against the opposite wall were three large boxes full of old clothes and books. There was a pile of excrement in one corner, and probably elsewhere too. The floor was also covered with torn clothes, some stained with urine.

‘Didn’t I warn you about the smell?’ Strickland said from the doorway above.

Bishop turned towards the desk. Next to the tower hard drive was a modem, out of which three cables ran down the back of the desk. Bishop grabbed the edge of the desk, slid it away from the wall, and saw one of the modem cables was plugged into a double wall socket, while a second plug led back to the tower hard drive. But more interestingly, in amongst the wealth of cables back there he noticed a thin one running from the back of the hard drive into a hole at the rear of the middle desk drawer. He also traced the route of another one that ran from the back of the hard drive and up the wall, disappearing into a hole in the ceiling.

After sliding the desk back against the wall, Bishop opened the middle desk drawer. There was a mass of official-looking paperwork inside. Most of it was loose, although some batches were held together with large paper clips. He reached in, grabbed hold of all the paperwork and placed it on the desk. And there at the bottom of the drawer he saw the same cable connected up with a small black external hard drive.

‘What did you find?’ Strickland asked from behind him.

Bishop turned to him. ‘How good are you with computers?’

Strickland shrugged. ‘I can hold my own. Why? What do you need?’

‘I think Lomax has a fibre-optic surveillance camera installed in the living-room light. Probably motion-activated.’ He pointed at the wire that disappeared into the ceiling. ‘I think that leads to the camera, and I think the footage is stored on this little hard drive here.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Strickland was frowning. ‘This isn’t exactly a high crime area, is it? Plus there’s that huge dog upstairs, too.’

‘I think he was less concerned with matters of security and more concerned with keeping an eye on his wife. Delaney said he had major trust issues. Anyway, it won’t take long to check, will it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Strickland said, switching on the monitor and hard drive as he sat down. ‘Don’t PCs usually need a password? Because if this one does, we’re screwed.’

Bishop had been thinking the same thing. But they had nothing to lose by trying.

The hard drive made a few electronic clicking noises, while the monitor showed a Microsoft logo on a black screen with a message informing them that Windows was starting. Soon, the display changed to a blue background and a password prompt appeared in the centre.

‘Like I said,’ Strickland said gloomily. ‘It wants a password.’

Bishop leaned in closer. The screen showed an icon of Scooby-Doo next to a user name,
FrankL
, with a space underneath for the password. Which could be anything. But on the other hand, people often came up with pretty lame passwords for their computers. He recalled his sister Amy, who was an otherwise highly intelligent woman, had simply joined up her son’s and daughter’s first names for hers. And it seemed fairly obvious that Lomax was a man who loved dogs. Even cartoon ones. Bishop looked over to the stairwell and saw the family German shepherd lying at the base of the doorway with his head resting on his outstretched paws, watching them both.

‘Try
Biff
,’ Bishop said, and the dog began wagging his tail at the sound of his name.

Strickland turned to him. ‘Huh?’

‘The dog’s name is Biff. B-I-F-F. Try that.’

Strickland faced the screen and keyed in the four letters and hit Enter. Nothing happened. He then typed in the same four letters and added
1
at the end. He pressed Enter again.

This time the password prompt was immediately replaced by a green-tinted shot of the Pyramids of Giza, with two columns of icons running down the left-hand side.

‘How about that,’ Strickland said, pulling his head back. ‘We’re in.’

‘People should take more care with their passwords.’ Bishop checked the icons until he found the hard drive one on the second column. He pointed and said, ‘Open that.’

Strickland moved the mouse and clicked on the icon and a folder opened up. Inside the folder were twenty-two .mkv video files. The title of the first one was
000243
and it was recorded three weeks before on October sixteenth. The next one,
000244,
was recorded a day later, and so it went down the line, which meant the footage was automatically saved in twenty-four-hour chunks. And since there was only file for each day, it also meant there was only the one camera. The files all varied greatly in size too, although that made sense if the camera was motion-activated.

The largest file was 756 MB while the lowest was yesterday’s instalment, at only 4 KB. Obviously, with the dog in the basement and Karen Lomax absent, there’d been nothing for the camera to record. Today’s recording was only 17.3 MB, and would contain a few minutes of Bishop and Strickland’s entrance along with a few seconds of Bishop looking right into the camera lens. But he was more interested in the file from two days before, the day of the massacre.

The file size for that one was 34.7 MB. Bishop pointed at it and said, ‘Let’s take a look at this.’

Strickland double-clicked on the file, which automatically launched the VLC Media Player. A video screen with basic navigation controls appeared in the top left corner of the screen. In the lower right corner of the video screen was the date and a time counter. The time read
00.01.24
.

Strickland moved the cursor to the navigation controls and clicked the Play button.

The video screen showed a black-and-white, fish-eye aerial shot of the living room. The camera was at a very slight angle, so the view also included the lower part of the archway entrance leading to the front of the house. Bishop guessed it was the living-room light coming on that must have activated it. As the seconds ticked away on the time counter, all Bishop saw was a static view of the couch and the chairs and the coffee table.

‘Isn’t there any sound?’ he asked.

Strickland edged closer. ‘Should be. The volume’s on max.’ He pressed a button on the control panel and the video enlarged to completely fill the screen. The video quality wasn’t too bad. Hardly high definition, but then you couldn’t expect too much detail from a fibre-optic.

All of a sudden there was a series of loud barks, and a few seconds later Bishop saw a dark-haired female figure in a knee-length dressing gown backing into the living room from the direction of the front door. She had both arms around Biff’s neck and was dragging him back with her. Then Bishop saw the reason why. Two men followed them into the room, each holding a gun. The man on the left – stocky, black, with close-cropped hair, wearing a leather bomber jacket and light pants – kept his gun on Karen Lomax, while his Caucasian partner – leaner, fair-haired, wearing army jacket and jeans – kept his piece aimed at the dog. Biff kept on barking at the two intruders, even with Karen talking into his ear.

‘
Get away from the mutt, lady
,’ Army Jacket shouted, still aiming the gun at the dog.

Biff’s barking began to tail off. Karen, still holding onto him, said, ‘Please don’t shoot. I’ll lock him away in the basement if you want, but please don’t kill him.’