Defense for the Devil (8 page)

“Hold on, Mr. Waters—” She hit the CALLER ID button and quickly jotted down the number that came on the display.

“I can’t. I have to run to make that flight. In the lounge at Valley River Inn, at four. Please be there.” He hung up.

“Shit,” she said under her breath. The number she had written down had a Seattle area code. She tore the page off the pad and took it to her office, where she compared it with the numbers they had found in the notebook from Mitch’s bag. It didn’t match any of them. More Bailey work.

Barbara walked into the lounge at exactly four. “I believe Mr. Wa
ters has a table already,” she said to the woman at the reservation stand.

The woman checked her list and smiled. “Oh, yes. He’s here.” She beckoned a waiter. “Mr. Waters’s table.”

The waiter led Barbara to one of the dimly lighted tables on the upper tier, not down by the wide windows overlooking the Willamette River. The lounge was very busy, every table filled on both tiers. Waters was sitting facing the wall. He rose instantly when she drew near.

“Ms. Holloway? Brad Waters.”

There was not enough room for the waiter to get behind her chair to adjust it, but he hovered. “Can I bring you anything?”

“Iced coffee,” she said. She shook hands with Waters, then seated herself.

The light was dim, especially after the brilliant sunshine outside, but as her eyes adjusted, she could see
that Brad Waters had dark hair and was smooth-shaven, and from what little she had seen, he was athletic, with broad shoulders. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes, just dark. A tall glass of beer was in front of him; it looked untouched.

“No trouble getting on a flight?” she asked. “Sometimes, this time of year, it’s difficult.”

“No problem. I checked in here at two. Then I did a Web search on Barbara Holloway. I’m glad I had time to do that.”

“How did you come across my name in the first place?”

“I called Ms. Folsum’s inn early this morning, and someone there gave me another number to try. Then Ms. Folsum referred me to you and gave me your number.”

She understood that they would kill time waiting for her coffee, and he seemed to have the same understanding, but it was irksome.

He was saying, “—afraid you might be tied up with a client at the diner—” when the waiter reappeared and placed the coffee before her.

As soon as the waiter was gone, Waters leaned forward. “Ms. Holloway, I’m the head of security for a large computer company. What I’d like to do is give you a little background and then make a serious request, so please, be patient for just a few minutes. And please be understanding if I don’t mention real names just yet, including my own.” He was watching her closely. She nodded. “All right. My company is big, not as big as Microsoft, but big, and the principals, a man and a woman, are, or were, the company. The two of them started it as partners, and they produced some very important programs over the years, working as a team. A few years ago, we had a major theft of a program in development; a rival company introduced it weeks before we were ready. We were able to track down the guy who sold us out and promised him immunity if he would tell us how the theft had been worked.” He leaned back and began to move his glass of beer in circles.

“It was a simple scheme,” he said flatly. “How they worked it was to have a lawyer draw up papers to have a car brokered and delivered to the guy. The driver was to deliver a large sum of money along with the car, and he was to receive the program. Simple. The transfer of an automobile was aboveboard, not suspicious in any way. How much the broker knew, anyone’s guess, but the lawyer was in on it, and so was the driver. That driver was Mitch Arno. We pieced it together bit by bit, and tried to track down Arno, with no luck. And there was no way to prove a theft had taken place, that it hadn’t been parallel research. We tightened security, did what we could to prevent it happening again.”

He finally tasted the beer and set the glass down again, as if the taste had not registered. “Okay,” he said then. “That’s the history, the background you need in order to understand what comes next. My two bosses had a big falling-out; they had been lovers for more than fifteen years, but they fought and split in a very public and very ugly way. It was bad. He started to date pretty young things. She was not a pretty young thing, and it hit her hard. She got back by stealing the new program that was in development and selling out. She had access to everything I had found out about the first incident, including the lawyer’s name.”

He drew in a long breath and shook his head. “They were both my friends. I saw how hurt she had been, but I never imagined this. Anyway, the last day she showed up at work, she left with a new fancy briefcase with a keypad lock and she got on a plane for the States. The next day she was found dead, murdered. The police said she had ordered a car, a Lexus, and the broker furnished the names of two delivery men; one of them was found dead in a motel room, the other one vanished. He was using a different name, but the description fits Mitch Arno. The briefcase did not turn up, and neither did the suitcase. The police think the missing man killed them both for the car, and for the cashier’s check for the balance due—forty-two thousand dollars. What we think happened is that Arno grabbed our programs and the check, as well as the suitcase of money, and took off, probably planning to get bids on what he had. Other research groups have bits and pieces of the program; she had it all.”

As he spoke, Barbara felt as if the chill from her iced coffee had entered her hand and traveled throughout her body, until she was chilled all over. He continued to push his glass back and forth in a distracted way.

“Why are you here now?” she asked. “How did you track Mitch Arno here?”

He rubbed his eyes. “As soon as we learned she was dead, and a Lexus was involved, we started a continuous-search program for him. His name came up when he was reported murdered. His name, his former wife’s name, the trashing of her inn.”

“Why do you think the other company doesn’t already have the program?”

“Because Trassi’s hanging around. I’ve been having him followed. I knew when he flew into Portland, rented a car, and came here to Eugene. I just didn’t know why, until we got Arno’s name. The stuff hasn’t come to light, or Trassi wouldn’t be here. Folsum still has it, or turned it over to a third party. If there’s a suitcase like the one they used before, it has a fancy keypad lock on it. The briefcase has another one. I hope and pray the program is still intact, hidden away where it’s safe.” He added, “But whoever has it isn’t safe, Ms. Holloway. If Maggie Folsum and her kids had been home when her place was torn up, they’d all be dead.”

Carefully Barbara asked, “If what you believe is actually true, would these people be less dangerous if they learned the program was in your company’s hands once more? Wouldn’t they go after the suitcase?”

He shook his head. “Such men will kill if they have to; they killed Mitch Arno, but they don’t kill out of revenge. Once they know we have the program back, they’ll vanish into the slime and move on to a different project. The last thing any of us wants is an official investigation and publicity. As soon as they know we have the program, this matter will wind down,
finis
. You know the saying ‘All’s well that ends.’’’

“Maybe,” Barbara said. “I understand why they wouldn’t want an investigation, but what about you, your company? Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

He began sliding his glass around again. “I can’t. My boss is shattered. He takes complete responsibility for what she did, blames himself for everything up to and including her death. He said if her reputation is damaged, he’ll give away everything he has, kill me and then himself.

“Ms. Holloway, I said that I had a request. Two, actually. All we want from you is the program. We’re not interested in the suitcase, or anything else Arno might have had, just the briefcase, our program. That program is the biggest and most important thing they ever produced together, and that’s the only complete program in existence; she destroyed the tapes, the backups, everything else. If our competitor brings it out as his, that will be the last straw for my boss.”

“The other request?”

“Your silence. An agreement of confidentiality. If a single question arises, my boss will deny everything—the original theft, any knowledge of a new program, everything.”

“I see. Are you going to be staying here at the hotel?”

“Yes. I doubt anyone would recognize me; I keep a very low profile. But they might. I’ll hang out around here. You have to understand that they are very clever. They’ll get to you through Folsum, threaten her children, force her to back out of whatever arrangement you have with her. And you have to understand that it’s not just Folsum who might be in danger. Anyone with that program is at risk, and if they learn that I’m around, the risk would become uninsurable. I know you have to discuss this with your client, but don’t take too long to reach a decision, Ms. Holloway.”

Abruptly she stood up. “I have a lot to think about, as you are aware. I’ll be in touch, Mr. Waters.” She left him signing the tab for the drinks neither of them had wanted.

She walked out into the blinding sunshine. Maggie’s children at risk? She had thought of them safely tucked away in Southern California, but how safe were they?

8

The next morning
she sipped coffee in Frank’s kitchen, watching him eat a bran muffin that looked terribly healthful. “Wait for Bailey and tell us together,” he had said when she told him there was a new wrinkle.

One of the coon cats approached, rose to its hind feet, and put its paws on the table to look over breakfast. “My God, how big do they intend to get?”

“I’ve been reading up on them,” Frank said complacently, ignoring the cat. “Don’t reach full growth, fill in bulk and such, until the second year. He’s still a kitten.” The kitten weighed in at eighteen pounds now.

The Thing rubbed his cheek against Frank’s arm, dropped lightly to the floor, and strolled away to his own food.

When Bailey arrived, Frank motioned toward the coffee. Bailey helped himself and joined them at the table. “Got the prints separated out,” he said. “I’ll send them in when I leave here. You know it’s going to take two, three weeks to get a report back?”

She knew. “What about the murder? What do you have?”

“Thought I’d wait until your dad finishes eating,” he said.

Frank pushed his plate away with a half-eaten muffin still on it. “Done,” he said.

“Someone really worked him over,” Bailey said gloomily. “Good old blunt instrument. They’re saying maybe a baseball bat, something like that. One arm broken, some fingers broken. Back of his head caved in, that’s what killed him. And someone doused both his hands with lighter fluid or gas or something and set him on fire.”

“Christ,” Frank muttered. He stood up and went to gaze out the sliding glass door.

“Time of death?” Barbara asked after a moment.

“No word yet. Maybe Sunday, no later than Tuesday. They’re working on it.”

She was silent, thinking, when Bailey added, “Thing is, he should have stayed buried. The hole was deep enough to cover him, but one foot was poking out of the ground. They’re saying an animal started to dig him up and got spooked or something.”

“Shoes?” she asked, remembering the barefoot print he had recovered at Ray’s house.

“No shoes. They roughed him up in the cabin and burned him inside. Maybe they meant to burn down the cabin itself, but he kept going out.”

Barbara glared at him. He shrugged. “Sorry. He managed to scrape the letters
A-R-N-O
in blood on the floor.”

Frank sat down again. “Was he burned before or after death?”

“Don’t know. Maybe they don’t know yet.”

“They’ll go for aggravated murder,” Frank said. “Maybe torture and murder.”

Bailey said he might be getting information about Trassi later on, then Barbara told them about her meeting with Brad Waters. “It shouldn’t be too hard to find names,” she said. “How many female partners in a computer company got killed recently?”

“Barbara,” Bailey said, “you realize that if Mitch Arno killed his partner and the woman, they probably have his prints on file. And if I send in my batch of unknowns, they’re going to find his among them.”

“Shit.” She thought a moment. “I’ll see
if Maggie has anything with Mitch’s prints on it. About the car, we know a little something about it now. A forty-two-thousand-dollar black Lexus. The other day you said maybe it was stolen. If some kids took it joyriding, what next?”

“They finally wreck it, or take it to a chop shop,” he said promptly.

“If they wrecked it, someone must have found it. See what you can dig up. Especially what was in it. And the broker who arranged the deal. Who is he, where?”

He was eyeing her with a detached expression. He never questioned strategy or asked why about anything; they had their jobs, he had his. But he always asked if the client was prepared to pay his expenses. He asked now.

“I’ll find out,” Barbara said. “But for now, the answer is yes.”

“Okey dokey.” A few minutes later he left her and Frank at the table.

Frank began to clear the few dishes, and she went to stand at the door. The two cats were engaged in what looked like a battle to the finish; they were distracted by a hummingbird and started a new game of catch-me-if-you-can. “Do they stray off?” she asked.

“Some. But they come back when I whistle. Bobby, what are you planning? What’s on your mind?”

She turned around. Almost helplessly she said, “I don’t know. I feel as if I’ve been sucked into a whirlpool and more and more junk gets pulled in with me until I can’t tell flotsam from jetsam. I haven’t had time to think.”

“You’re just reacting. Things are happening too fast, and all you can do is react. Find yourself a quiet spot and sit there and think a long time.”

“Okay. I can take the money and the program in to the police right now. Today. Then what? Even if we knew the names of the companies fighting over the program, they’d both deny everything. Trassi would be horrified that Mitch had a sideline that no one else knew about. Waters would disappear back into his high-security cubbyhole, which he can prove he never left. Nope, he was never in Eugene, never met me or discussed anything with me. All I would give the police is a whole lot of money and a program that no one seems to know anything about.” She drew in a breath, then added, “And a powerful motive for either Ray or Maggie or both working together to have murdered Mitch. A motive everyone understands.”