The Stranger Beside You (21 page)

37

I had nowhere to run, so I simply stayed put and watched him march right toward me.  The fat guy wedged himself back into his tiny seat.  For a moment my view was blocked.  I panicked, trying to think what to do, but there was no getting around the fact that I would have to face him.

Suddenly he was there beside me.  He stared down at me for only a few seconds, and then made a quick flourish of hand movements and removed the hat and sunglasses.  The results stunned me.  I was looking into the face of a woman, not a man.  She had startling green eyes and short, spiky, red hair.  The name came to me immediately.  She was Alana Armstrong, the FBI agent who had visited Mr. Hogan and had been at my home the night of Tom’s arrest and death. 

I was literally speechless.

She said, “Not what you expected?”

I shook my head.

She gestured at the open seat beside me.  “Move over.”

She sat beside me and pressed her face close to mine.

“I’m Special Agent Armstrong.”

I nodded.  “Yeah, I know.”

She glanced around nervously.  “I don’t think you were followed.  I’ve been shadowing you for most of the past few days.”

“I spotted you on the way to Long Island.”

“I figured as much when you made that nifty exit.”

“What do you want?”

She shook her head and glanced around again.  “There is no time for questions right now.”  Then without prelude she placed a nylon case in my lap.  “Do you have the flash drive with you?”

It took a moment for her question to register.  She was talking about the memory stick.  I nodded and touched the pocket of my jeans.  “It’s right here.”

“Good.  You’ll need it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

“Why are you here?”

“Like I said, no questions.  Take this case to the lavatory and lock the door.  The rest will be self-explanatory.”

I looked down at the case.  It was flat and rectangular.

She spoke in a hush.  “I’ll be gone when you return to your seat.  Do not approach me for the remainder of the flight.  Do not speak to me.  It’s still too dangerous for us to be seen together.  Do you understand?”

My mind was spinning.  “Yes.”

“You’ve done well to get this far, but they are still watching.”

“Who are they?”

But she was already up and gone.

•  •  •

I locked the lavatory door and sat on the toilet seat.  I turned the nylon case over in my hands and found the zipper.  There was a small computer inside with a Post-it note stuck to the keyboard with two words typed in neat block text. 

MARAUDER / WATERCRESS

The words meant nothing to me but I remembered Alana Armstrong’s instructions and fished out my keys from my pocket.  The flash drive memory stick was still safely attached to the key ring.  I rotated the compact laptop in my hands, studying the ports on either end.  It had two USB connection ports.  I plugged the memory stick into one of them.

It took a few seconds for the laptop’s interface to acknowledge the USB device, then an icon appeared onscreen and I clicked it.  A tiny light on the memory stick turned yellow, showing that it was in use.  Then a window opened onscreen showing the contents of the flash drive.  I recognized it from the previous day.  There were two files.  The first was the text file with Tom’s message.  The second was the encrypted file requiring a user ID and password.  The tumblers in my brain fell into place and I began to understand.  I clicked the curser into the user ID field and typed MARAUDER.  Then in the password field, I typed WATERCRESS.

I took a deep breath, then pressed the ENTER key.

The encryption logo disappeared.  The screen went black for a moment, then the screen redrew and a new window opened.  A video file began to play, and suddenly my husband’s face appeared.  When he began to speak to me, my heart melted.

38

 “You’re worried about Brynn, aren’t you?” Daphne asked.

 “Hell yes, of course.”

They were seated at a table in a coffee shop.

“You know she hates you right now.  She believes you’re dead, but she is forced to hate you because of what she thinks she knows.”

He glanced away.  “There was no other way.”

Daphne touched his hand.  “Do you think she has listened to your message yet?”

“I don’t know, but I hope so.  If she has, that means we are right on schedule and she is as smart as I thought she was.”

Daphne held his hand a beat too long.  He set his eyes on her and the moment lingered.  She was silhouetted by the glow of morning light like an angel.  Tom understood the look in her eyes, and he knew he could never let that happen.  She had developed feelings for him that he simply didn’t share.  It had started with the kiss in the photograph.  That moment had sparked something inside of her but he had not reciprocated.

Tom opened the map and spread it out on a table.  He pinpointed their present location then traced an index finger across the Potomac and into Virginia, following 395 to Alexandria.

“Do you remember the address I gave you?” he asked.

She nodded.  “I’ve been there only once, about a week ago.  I took a bus and stood across the street.  Mostly I just wanted to know that the place really existed, and we weren’t going to be totally wasting our time.  I spoke to no one, and no one saw me, but the building is there, exactly as Marcus described it to you.”

Tom folded the map.  “Let’s go,” he said.

•  •  •

A taxi dropped them several blocks away on a street corner across an intersection from a strip mall in Alexandria, Virginia.  Tom took off his sunglasses and wiped his eyes with his forearm. 

“That’s the place,” said.

There was a sign on a tall pole in the parking lot with a partial listing of company names.  It was ridiculous to think that Mr. Z might still be running his business out of such an exposed location all these many months after making his initial contact with Marcus Jones.  It was just a cheap commercial space with a temporary name stenciled on the door.  Marcus Jones had been a desperate man, and his desperation had led him to a pathetic strip mall in suburban D.C.

Tom glanced around.  There was a McDonald’s nearby.

He pointed.  “I want you to wait in there.”

She shook her head.  “I’m coming with you.”

“I’m only doing a drive-by.  I’ll be in there ten minutes, maximum, but I don’t want you standing here alone in the heat.  Buy a water and wait for me.  If it’s safe, we’ll poke around a little and ask questions, but let me test the waters first.”

She glared at him.  “Remember something, Kojak.  I’m an FBI agent.  I’m the one carrying a gun.  Don’t try to protect me like I’m some kind of fragile little flower.”

Tom couldn’t help but grin.  “I’ll admit you’ve got balls.”

“I’ll take that in the spirit in which it was intended.”

“Okay, so we’re equal partners.  I’ll watch your back, and you watch mine.”

“Fine,” she said.  “Let’s go.”

They crossed at a red light.  The parking lot hadn’t been resurfaced in a least a decade.  The asphalt was faded and cracked.  Any effort at landscaping had been abandoned.  The strip mall was laid out in the shape of an L, with a long leg and a short leg.  Marcus had said that the door to Mr. Z’s office had been located where the two legs joined.  A shaded sidewalk ran the entire length of the L.  Tom and Daphne took their time drifting past a dozen or more vacant windows.  The property had to be a money pit.

They paused several doors away and exchanged a look.  The street address Marcus had given him matched the number above the door.  This was the place.  The door was locked, the front window partially soaped over.  Tom cupped his hands around his eyes to look through the glass.  It was dark inside.  He shook his head.

“It’s a ghost town,” he said.

“We knew they’d be long gone.”

Tom took a long last look through the grimy window.  It was nothing more than a generic commercial space.  No furniture, peeling paper on the walls, bare electrical outlets, a few holes in the sheetrock, several layers of dust on everything.  Whatever had once been stenciled on the door and windows had been carefully removed with a razor.

He tried the door again.  Same result.

“Strike one,” she said.

Tom nodded.  “Let’s try next door.”

The business next door was a low-end beauty salon.  A bell rattled over the door when they entered.  A/C was blowing.  There were mirrors along two walls.  A stylist was clipping the hair of an overweight blonde.  A woman behind the register was flipping through an old issue of
People
magazine.

“Need a cut?” the woman asked without looking up from the magazine.

“I’ll pass,” Tom said.  “But I have a question.”

“Fire away.”

“The vacant space next door.  How long has it been empty?”

She turned a page, chewed on her lip.  “Six months.”

Tom and Daphne exchanged a look.

“You’re positive?” Daphne asked.

“You asked, so I told you.  Are we done here?”

“Almost.”

“Well, I’m on the clock.”

Tom said, “How much for a cut?”

“Fifteen bucks.”

Tom took out his wallet and slapped three fives down on the counter.

“That should buy a few answers.”

She closed her magazine and folded the three bills into her palm.

“Okay,” she said.  “I’m listening.”

“You remember the last crew to occupy that space?”

“Vaguely.  I couldn’t tell you who they were or pick them out of a police lineup.”

“Did you see them much?”

“There was only the one guy, and he was only there for a day.  When I came in the next morning he was gone and the place was shut down.  Never saw him again.  I’d say he was around for less than a full eight hours.”

“Did you talk to him at all?”

She thought a moment, then she nodded. 

“He came over to use the phone.  He said the battery in his cell was dead and the landline hadn’t been hooked up yet.  He made one call and then he was out the door.  Don’t take this wrong or anything, but the dude was a wee bit on the creepy side.  I don’t miss him.”

“Who manages this property?”

She turned on her stool and whisked a hand under the counter.

“Here’s a card.  His name is Barry.  Don’t expect much help out of him.  He’s a crook.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

They returned to the sidewalk.  Daphne handed him her pay-as-you-go cell and he dialed the number on the business card.  The conversation was brief and terse.  The woman in the salon had not lied, Barry was indeed a prick. 

“Any ideas?” she asked.

“Yes, but it’s going to cost me another fifteen bucks.”

Daphne followed him back inside the hair salon.  The woman was still perched upon her stool at the register. 

“Any luck with Barry?”

Tom nodded.  “I’m sorry you have to pay that man rent.”  He flattened a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.  “That’s for another ten minutes of your time.”

The woman smiled.  “What’s on your mind?”

“Does the phone company bill you directly here at this address?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do you keep your old statements?  Are they stored here?”

“Honey, I’ve got so much crap back in that office you wouldn’t believe it.”

“How far back do you think your records go?”

She snickered.  “Years.”

“Mind if we take a look?”

She led them through a door in the back.  There was a tiny office with old copy paper boxes and hundreds of out-of-date magazines stacked along the walls.  A fiberboard desk from Wal-Mart stood in the middle of it all.  Thin drapes covered a narrow window. 

“Pardon the clutter.”

“Where do you file your old phone bill statements?”

She hitched her hands on her hips.  She had long fake fingernails.  “Over here somewhere.”  She went to a corner and started moving boxes around.  “Take these, would you?”  She lifted several battered-looking copy paper boxes from a stack and handed them to Tom.  “Put them anywhere.”

He frowned.  The place was an organizational disaster.  “How do you keep track of anything?”

“I have a system.”

She squatted on the tile floor and pulled a box from a leaning heap.  “Ah, there you are.”  She tugged on the box lid.  AT&T was handwritten on three sides in magic marker.  She popped the lid off and they huddled around the box.  It was stuffed with billing statements.

“Okay, how far back do you need to look?”

Daphne glanced at Tom.  “What month was Marcus here?”

He thought a moment.  “November.”

The salon owner nodded.  She skimmed the tip of a lacquered fingernail along the tops of the paper statements.  It made flicking sounds.  The years and months were not labeled.  She had to pull them up one at a time to check the dates.

“There’s April,” she said, then stuffed one back down.  “March.”

Tom and Daphne waited impatiently.  They could here the faint snipping sound of scissors outside the door.

 “November, there we go.”  She stood with a fold of pages in her hand.  “Now what?”

Tom said, “We need to find an outgoing call to a number that you don’t recognize.”

“Long distance or local?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

She flipped through the pages, tracing her fingernail down the long columns of phone records.  Hundreds of outgoing calls had been made.  “No wonder my bill is so high.”

“Does anything stand out?”

“Give me a minute.  There are several here that don’t mean anything to me.”

“You said the guy next door made only one call?”

“As best as I can remember, yeah.”

“What about the time of day?”

“He was here in the afternoon.”

“Does that narrow it down?”

She shrugged.  “Not really.”

“When you make calls to confirm appointments, those are usually local numbers, right?”

“Sure, I guess.  I mean, women aren’t exactly driving in from far and wide to have us style their hair.”