The Bricklayer - Boyd Noah - Страница 65
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Kaulcrick’s dismissive offer to let Vail keep the money if he could find it replayed itself hauntingly. He said to himself, “Well, Don, if you insist.” He unzipped the suitcase lids and flipped them open. Then with a certain degree of sensual pleasure he dug both his hands into the thick, cool bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills.
THIRTY-FIVE
EVEN THOUGH THE SUN HADN’T FULLY RISEN, TYE DELSON DIDN’T switch on the light in her office as she entered. She went over to the window and raised it as far as she could. The air outside was warmer than in the room, and it felt good. She turned around, took a cigarette from her purse, and lit it. In the flaring light, she was startled to find Vail sitting against the back wall. “Steve, you scared me.”
“Sorry,” he said with intentional insincerity.
“What are you doing here?”
He stood up and carefully placed a handcuff key on the desk.
She calmly took a drag from her cigarette and studied him for a few seconds. His demeanor was somber yet composed, convincing her of the reason for his visit. A smirk tightened her features.
“I didn’t really think I would fool you, not for long anyhow. I haven’t slept since I set you up to kill Radek. I would apologize for that, but I’d be surprised if you felt bad about killing someone like him.” She took another drag, and as she drew it in deeply, a small sob rattled down her throat, revealing she was not as calm as she was trying to appear. “How did you figure it out?”
“I didn’t until I found the key hidden in the radiator. A dozen possibilities occurred to me how it got there, but only one of them made sense. Then when I ran all the little inconsistencies through my head, every one of them made perfect sense.”
“Such as?”
“When Kate and I searched Bertok’s apartment, we found those documents in the bathroom because of the finger smudges on the side of the vanity. I thought maybe the Evidence Recovery Team just wasn’t very good, but since then I’ve worked with them and realized they wouldn’t have missed that. Only a few people knew we were going in a second time, and of course you were one of them. You even delayed us from going in that night, citing not enough probable cause, giving yourself enough time to get in there and plant the evidence. At that point you had Bertok and his keys, so entry was no problem. Then the call to his phone that led us to being on hand for his suicide. That trail was just too textbook. Again, you were one of the few people who knew about the pen register. From the beginning there were indications of insider information. At first I thought it was the Pentad trying to give off that illusion. There were a dozen other things that didn’t make sense until I found that key. You needed it because you had to be locked up when you sent me that video, but then had to get free to get Radek to try to kill me. And then lock yourself up again and hide the key while I was breaking down the door. You had to have it available if something went wrong like a fire starting or both of us lying there dead.”
“It seems like you’ve figured out most of it. But have you asked yourself why I was involved?”
“There are usually only a few basic motives: money or love immediately come to mind.”
“I certainly didn’t love Radek, if that’s what you’re thinking. And the money is in that salvage yard next to where you found Bertok. Under an old car. If that were my motive, would I be telling you that now? In fact, I gave you a way to find it when you asked me where the handcuff key was and I directed you to Radek’s key ring. It was to steer you to the money. You would have figured it out eventually. I even stashed Radek’s phony driver’s license in his car where you’d find it. It would have led you to everything. You didn’t find it?”
“If it wasn’t Radek or the money, what was it?”
“Has the name Michael Vashon come up in your investigation?”
Vail thought for a second. “Is that the inmate they suspected Salton of killing?”
“Salton, Radek, one of them. Michael and I were in love. I had just started with the United States attorney’s office when he was sent to prison for insider trading. It was something he had been involved in briefly a couple of years before we met, and he had forgotten about it. He wasn’t the main subject of the case but a good friend of his was, a guy named Danzinger. Because the trades had been made in Michael’s name, he was the easiest one to charge. They offered him a deal if he’d give up Danzinger, but Michael was a loyal friend and went to prison instead. Don’t get me wrong. Michael saw a way to make some easy money and he broke the law, but he was not a hardened criminal. He was sent to Marion for three years to see if the place wouldn’t change his mind about talking. Unfortunately, it didn’t.”
“What was Radek and Salton’s problem with him?”
She took another drag. “The prison pecking order being what it is, Radek and his crew immediately try to find out what they can get out of Michael. They just smack him around the first time and tell him they’re going to lease him out to other inmates unless he can come up with a better idea. After Michael was involved in the insider-trading stuff, but before he got arrested, was a little more than two years. He was a genius with computers and had gone to work for a company called Investcomp. It was an online investment service and they were designing software for investors. I don’t pretend to understand the technical aspects, but Michael was tasked with testing the finished product, actually to look for flaws in it. What it was supposed to do for the investors was when they brought up a stock on the monitor, it showed a chart of its progress. More important, it provided a green arrow indicating the time to buy and a red arrow when they should sell. Michael found a flaw by which the red arrows could be delayed for a couple of hours. He said it would have taken a major code change to correct it, and since it would have no effect on the software performance for the investors, he never told anyone. He just forgot about it until Radek threatened him. To save himself, he told Radek about the glitch and that if they delayed the red arrow by a couple of hours and then shorted the stock when it went down in response to the Investcomp customers selling off, they would make money.”
“Let me guess. They needed someone on the outside to buy and sell the stocks, and Michael convinced you to do it.”
“He had left a ‘back door’ in the Investcomp system, if you know what that is.”
“A way to circumvent security.”
“That’s right. At first I refused to do it, because I was an assistant United States attorney. It was why we never told anyone about our relationship. But his situation in prison became more desperate by the day, so I gave in and we started shorting the stocks. Nothing big. A couple of thousand here and there. Enough to keep them off his back. He had less than a year to go for parole.”
“Why did they kill him if he was their golden goose?”
“I don’t know if Investcomp picked up on the delaying trend, or whether as a routine update of the software, they found the flaw or his back door. All of a sudden, Michael couldn’t get in. When he told Radek, Michael said that he went nuts. That was the last time I talked to him.”
“That’s when he was killed,” Vail said.
“Yes. Of course, I had no way of knowing since I wasn’t listed anywhere in the prison records. A couple of days after our last conversation, the phone rings. It’s Radek. He’s vague, but he’s talking to me like I’m his girlfriend, telling me he’ll be out soon, and he’s looking forward to seeing me. I’m freaked out, but I keep my cool and ask him to have Michael call me. The last thing he said to me was ‘Oh, by the way, Michael was beaten to death today,’ and hangs up. Just like that.”
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