“People.”
“What about Dawn Herbert? Was she in on it?”
“I don’t know what her game was,” he said. “Don’t know if she
hadone.”
His frustration seemed real.
I said, “Then why’d you chase down her computer disks?”
“Because Ashmore was interested in them. After we started to decode
his files, her name came up.”
“In what context?”
“He’d made a coded notation to take her seriously. Called her a
negative integer’-his term for someone suspicious. But she was already
dead.”
“What else did he say about her?”
“That’s all we’ve gotten so far. He put everything in codecomplex
codes. It’s taking time to unravel them.
“He was your boy,” I said. “Didn’t he leave you the keys?”
“Only some of them.” Anger narrowed the round eyes.
“So you stole her disks.”
“Not stole, appropriated. They were mine. She compiled them while
working for Ashmore, and Ashmore worked for me, so legally they’re my
property.”
He blurted the last øtwo words. The possessiveness of a kid with a new
toy.
I said, “This isn’t just a job with you, is it?”
His gaze flicked across the room and back to me. “That’s exactly what
it is. I just happen to love my work.”
“So you have no idea why Herbert was murdered.”
He shrugged. “The police say it was a sex killing.”
“Do you think it was?”
“I’m not a policeman.”
“No?” I said, and the look in his eyes made me go on. “I’ll bet you
were some kind of cop before you went back to school. Before you
learned to talk like a business school professor.”
He gave another eye-flick, quick and sharp as a switchblade.
“What’s this, free psychoanalysis?”
“Business administration,” I said. “Or maybe economics.”
“I’m a humble civil servant, Doctor. Your taxes pay my salary.”
“Humble civil servant with a false identity and over a million dollars
of phony grant money,” I said. “You’re Zimberg, aren’t you?
But that’s probably not your real name, either. What does the B’ on
Stephanie’s note pad stand for?”
He stared at me, stood, walked around the room. Touched a picture
frame. The hair on his crown was thinning.
“Four and a half years,” I said. “You’ve given up a lot to catch
him.”
He didn’t answer but his neck tightened.
“What’s Stephanie’s involvement in all this?” I said. “Besides true
love.” He turned and faced me, flushed again. Not anger this
timeembarrassment. A teenager caught necking.
“Why don’t you ask her?” he said softly.
She was in a car parked at the mouth of my driveway, dark Buick Regal,
just behind the hedges, out of sight from the terrace. A dot of light
darted around the interior like a trapped firefly.
Penlight. Stephanie sat in the front passenger seat, using it to
read.
Her window was open. She wore a gold choker that caught starlight, and
had put on perfume.
“Evening,” I said.
She looked up, closed the book, and pushed the door open. As the
penlight clicked off, the dome-light switched on, highlighting her as
if she were a soloist on stage. Her dress was shorter than usual. I
thought: heavy date. Her beeper sat on the dashboard.
She scooted over into the driver’s seat. I sat where she’d just
been.
The vinyl was warm.
When the car was dark again, she said, “Sorry for not telling you, but
he needs secrecy.”
“What do you call him, Pres or Wally?”
She bit her lip. “Bill.”
As in Walter William.”
She frowned. “It’s his nickname-his friends call him that.”
“He didn’t tell me. Guess I’m not his friend.”
She looked out the windshield and took hold of the wheel.
“Look, I know I misled you a bit, but it’s personal. What I do with my
private life is really none of your concern, okay?”
“Misled me a bit? Mr. Spooky’s your main squeeze. What else haven’t
you told me about?”
“Nothing-nothing to do with the case.”
“That so? He says he can help Cassie. So why didn’t you get him to
pitch in sooner?”
She put her hands on the steering wheel. “Shit.”
A moment later: “It’s complicated.”
“I’ll bet it is.”
“Look,” she said, nearly shouting, “I told you he was spooky because