Double Exposure (4 page)

"Hardy?" Liehm echoed, surprise in his voice. "Are you related to Chris?" , Joe started to say no, but Frank's voice stopped him.

"He's our brother — I'm Frank Hardy," he added.

"What has he told you about us? He never mentioned any brothers to me."

"Shut up, Doctor," Gregor said, tossing Joe's wallet on the floor next to them. He ripped one piece of cloth off an overturned couch, then another, and used them to gag the Hardys.

He knelt down beside them again. "You follow us to avenge your brother — admirable." He shook his head. "But stupid. Don't do it anymore." He stood and turned to go, but stopped at the door.

"Remember what I said." He met Joe's eyes. "Because the next time I see you, I will kill you."

The door slammed shut behind him.

It took Frank and Joe almost an hour before they were free.

"That's another one I owe that Gregor," Joe said, gingerly touching the spot on his side where Gregor had kicked him. He felt the bruise starting to form already.

"Did you notice Gregor said 'avenge your brother'?" Frank asked, getting to his feet and stretching. His head still hurt where he'd been slugged with the phone. "They think they killed Chris."

"Well, that's an advantage for him," Joe said. "I only wish it was one for us."

"So what were they looking for here?" Frank asked. "The videotape Chris had with him?" "That's a good guess," Frank said. "But I don't see a VCR. Or a computer, for that matter. Remember when Chris told me I should see his system, because it was so big?" Joe nodded. "Yeah. So where is it?" "Maybe he keeps it somewhere else." Frank went to the desk they'd found Liehm rifling through and began looking through some papers. "Here's a stack of printouts—and an electric bill from a few months ago for over a hundred dollars! You don't pay that kind of money to keep your refrigerator running. That equipment's here somewhere."

They searched the house from top to bottom but found nothing. Finally, they retraced their steps to the front hall and surveyed the wreckage in the living room.

"Maybe Gregor and Liehm found his equipment and took it," Joe said.

"I don't think so," Frank said. "I think they decided there wasn't anything here." He walked through the living room slowly, studying the overturned furniture, the scattered papers, the ripped carpet. Finally, he stopped by a section of bare wood floor the torn carpet had exposed. He knelt down, staring intently.

"What is it?"

"Am I crazy, or does the wood here have a lighter varnish than that in the hall?" Frank asked, pulling up more of the carpet. He looked at Joe. "Give me a hand with this, will you?"

They peeled back the entire carpet to the right of the staircase till an area about ten feet square had been exposed.

Joe nodded. "This whole section of the floor is new — but so what?"

"I'm not sure." Frank paced back and forth several times between the living room and the front hall, stopping to gaze up the staircase and then back at the exposed floor.

He snapped his fingers.

"A basement," he said.

Joe looked at him. "A basement?"

Frank nodded. "That's where Chris's equipment is."

Joe scrutinized the floor carefully. "You mean a trap door? I don't see anything."

"Maybe not," Frank said. "I think they moved the whole staircase to cover it."

"Sure," Joe said, shaking his head. "I think you've been watching too many spy movies."

"No, look." Frank stood squarely in the center of the brighter section of floor. "The stairs used to start here, and took a ninety-degree turn halfway up. All they had to do was knock out the old basement entrance, and swing that bottom half of the staircase around to cover it."

" 'All they had to do.' " Joe shook his head and stared at Frank dubiously for a minute. "All right," he said. "So there's a hidden basement. How do we get down there?"

"Simple enough," Frank said. "There ought to be a hidden entrance." He walked around in front of the staircase again and reached below the edge of the first step. "Aha!" he said, lifting up. The first six steps were hinged. They raised up to reveal a set of stairs leading down.

Frank grinned up at Joe's frowning face. "Just like in the spy movies." He held the entranceway up for his brother. "See if you can find a light down there."

Joe took several tentative steps down the dark stairway. "Got it," he said. Frank lowered the hinged steps, and followed him. Joe stopped on the bottom step.

"You're not going to believe this till you see it," Joe called up.

Frank joined his brother on the bottom step and caught his breath.

The basement was filled with electronic gear. There were five separate computers, two large-screen televisions, four videotape recorders, and several machines he barely recognized at all.

"This is incredible," Frank said. "There's more computer memory down here than in our entire school." He moved to one of the unfamiliar machines and hesitantly touched it.

"One of the new laser imagers," he said wonderingly. "I didn't even know they were on the market yet." He touched another next to it. "And this modem — it's even more advanced than the one we have at home."

Joe stared. The modem on their computer system didn't just let them use telephone lines to communicate with other computers. It was a highly sophisticated piece of gear, to keep them in contact with the Network, a super secret government agency.

"I think this is what Gregor and Liehm were looking for."

"But what's it all for?"

"Beats me." Frank took another look around the room. "It's not your standard business computing setup, or anything like that. No one would need all this video equipment." He walked around and finally sat down in front of one of the computers with a keyboard. "Let's try asking the machine what it's doing here."

He switched the machine on and began typing commands into the computer. Joe came and stood behind his shoulder.

Frank shook his head. "He's got the whole system keyed to a password."

"Are you trying to guess it?"

"That would take forever. No, I'm trying to bypass his program and talk to the machine directly." He typed instructions too fast for Joe to understand. Suddenly the screen lit up.

Frank grinned. "We're in," he said. Joe clapped him on the shoulder. "Now let's find out what he's got on file here."

He called up a directory and let the names of the files scroll by. Nothing looked familiar, until ... "Hold it!" Joe said. "What's that one say?"

"I see it," Frank replied. " 'Janosik'—and it's not just one file, it's a whole directory of them," He called up one of the files onscreen. A whole array of symbols appeared.

"This is weird," Frank said, studying the monitor. "I don't know what this is — looks like a very complicated series of printing commands."

"What does it mean?" Joe asked.

"I don't know," Frank said. "Let's try another file." He called up one called "Itinerary."

"At least this one's in English," Joe said. The screen showed a listing of place names and times.

"Yeah," Frank said, reading off the screen. " 'Arrive Hotel Charles—' " He shook his head. "Let's look at the other one again for a second." He called up the directory again and stared at it for a moment.

"Hey!" Joe exclaimed. "What's going on? What are you doing?

The list of files in the directory was shrinking, disappearing one by one.

"I'm not doing anything," Frank said. "Someone else is in the system—and destroying all the files!"

"Do SOMETHING! STOP iT!" Joe yelled.

"I'm trying to!" Frank frantically typed in new instructions to the computer. Before his eyes, the files were disappearing.

"What's happening?"

"I don't know — maybe I triggered some kind of self-destruct program, or — " He glanced up quickly and looked across the basement. "No! It's got to be the modem! Somebody must be tying in by phone and telling the computer to erase these files!" He dashed across the room, Joe a step behind him.

"Can we stop it?" Joe asked.

"That's what I'm trying to do," Frank said, staring intently at the modem. He knelt behind it and found the wire connecting it to the main system.

"Here it is," he said, holding the wire in his hand. "If I disconnect this, we should be able to cut off whoever's on the modem."

Joe stared at him. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

Frank hesitated. "We may not only disconnect the modem, we may crash the whole system. That way, we'll lose all the files."

Joe yanked the wire out of Frank's hand. "We're definitely going to lose them if we don't."

Frank nodded.

Joe pulled the wire free.

Across the room, the monitor went suddenly dark. The computer made a soft humming noise that gradually faded away, like a car running out of gas. Then the basement was completely silent.

Joe cleared his throat and looked at Frank questioningly. Frank shook his head. "I think — "

"Don't say it," Joe said, leaning back against a wall of equipment.

Frank sighed. Whatever had been in the computer, whatever Chris had known about Janosik — all that information was gone.

"There's nothing more we can get here," Frank said. Joe nodded reluctantly.

They went upstairs again, carefully lowering the stairs on the secret entrance to Chris's basement.

In spite of all the equipment in the basement, they'd found nothing — no computer disks, no videocassettes, no records of any kind—to indicate what had gone on there. Erasing the computer's files was apparently the last step in a very thorough housecleaning operation.

"Nothing is what we've got," Joe said in disgust.

"Not quite," Frank said. He picked up the phone and dialed. "Yes. I'd like the number of the Charles. It's a hotel in Cambridge." He covered the mouthpiece with one hand. "Let's check and see if that little bit of itinerary we saw was really Janosik's."

Lifting his hand, he spoke into the receiver again. "I see—yes, thank you, operator." He hung up quickly and looked at his watch. 1000. Not too late to call.

"I'm going to see if he's there," he told Joe, dialing the number the operator had given him.

"This is the Charles, Bonnie speaking. How may I help you this evening?" The woman who answered had a distinct Boston accent and the efficient, practiced voice of a well-trained receptionist. The Charles was clearly a classy hotel.

"May I have Mr. Janosik's room?"

"Ah — yes, one minute please." A note of uncertainty crept into her voice. "I'll connect you." Frank recognized the hesitation and covered the receiver again. "Something's going on," he told Joe. "They put me on hold."

Joe moved in closer and stood by his side, leaning over his shoulder to listen in on the conversation.

The next voice that came on the phone was not the receptionist's, but a man's—deep, powerful, and authoritative.

"This is Lieutenant Considine — to whom am I speaking, please?"

"I'm sorry. I was looking for Alexander Janosik." Frank mouthed the word police to Joe.

"How did you know Mr. Janosik was staying here? Who is this?"

Frank replaced the receiver quietly. He didn't have anything he could tell the police—yet.

"He's there, all right."

Joe nodded. "We ought to be there, too."

"I think you're right, but we have to take care of a few loose ends first."

They phoned the local police anonymously to let them know that Chris's house had been broken into, and climbed in the van to start the long drive back to Bayport.

No sooner had they gotten onto the highway than it started to rain—lightly at first, then harder. The rhythm of the raindrops beating on the windshield and the swish of the wipers as they cleared the glass quickly lulled Frank to sleep, and he didn't wake up until they were almost home.

"How are you doing?" he asked Joe, peering out through the windshield. He could barely see the road, it was raining so heavily. "Want me to drive?"

"No, it's all right," Joe said. "I'm fine." He paused for a moment. "Who do you think was on the other end of that modem? Chris?"

"Probably," Frank said, stifling a yawn. "But why would he destroy his own information?"

"Because there was something in there he didn't want anyone to See," Joe replied. "Something that connected him with Gregor and Liehm — maybe what they were going to use to frame Janosik. Maybe after he ran away from us, Chris got cold feet about turning them in."

Frank was silent for a moment. What his brother was saying made sense. He wanted to like Chris, but more and more, it was impossible to see his role in this as innocent.

"Frank?" Joe asked quietly. "You don't really think he's our brother, do you?"

"Of course not," he said, trying to hide the lingering doubts in his voice. Watching the road ahead of them flash by, he thought of the birth certificate he'd seen that morning and the smiling young man who had seemed so comfortable in their house.

He shook his head. "It's impossible."

They finally got home at three in the morning and found a small package waiting for them in the mailbox.

"I'll bet I know what this is," Frank said, holding it in his hand. "Chris's videotape, in a brand-new case, courtesy of Phil Cohen."

He unlocked the front door and stepped inside, turning on the hall light. Joe rushed in behind him, running to escape the downpour.

"Whew — that's the hardest it's rained in a long time!" Joe said, taking off his coat and kicking off his wet shoes.

"It'll be good for Mom's garden," Frank said, hanging up his own coat.

"If you like vegetables." Joe blew on his hands and walked toward the kitchen. "How about some hot chocolate?"

"Sounds good." Frank ripped the package open. It was the videotape, with a brief note from Phil.

"Frank/Joe," it read. "Here's the tape. Part did get damaged—about two seconds, total. I watched it. Call me tomorrow after you do. Phil."

Frank smiled. "It's the tape, all right. I'll go slip it in the VCR."

"Be there in a minute," Joe called back.

Frank went into the den and turned on the TV, then the VCR. He checked that the tape was rewound to the beginning and inserted it in the machine.