X (Kinsey Millhone 24)

7

I sat down at my desk and dragged the banker’s box out of the knee-hole space. The lid was askew because the files were jutting up above the rim. It looked like someone had jammed the lid into place, trying to force a fit. Half the file tabs were bent and mangled in consequence. I lifted the box, using the handhold on either end, and set it on my desk.

This was the same cardboard carton in which I’d found Pete’s tape deck wedged some months before. I’d since moved the recorder to my bottom drawer. The old Sony was oversize and had the look of an antique compared to those currently in use. On the cassette he’d left in the machine, I’d found the illegally recorded phone conversation he’d used in the blackmail scheme that eventually got him killed. It really was a wonder he’d lived as long as he did.

I emptied the box, hauling out file after file: bulging accordion-style folders, correspondence, case notes, and written reports. Byrd-Shine had a document-retention policy of five years, so most were long out of date. The major portion would be duplicates of reports sent to the various attorneys for whom Ben and Morley had worked. My plan was to assess the contents, set aside anything sensitive, and deliver the remainder to a shredding company. I wasn’t sure what would qualify as “sensitive,” but occasionally lawsuits drag on for years, and it was always possible a case might still be active, though no longer under the purview of the now-defunct agency.

Pete must have cherry-picked these client files, perhaps hoping to generate business after the agency was dissolved. Given his questionable code of conduct, he would have felt no compunction about reaping the benefits of Ben and Morley’s split. The fifteen files I counted seemed randomly assembled. Pete probably had a game plan, but so far I hadn’t discerned the underlying strategy.

Among the cases, the only one I remembered was a lawsuit in which an attorney named Arnold Ruffner had hired Byrd-Shine to do a background check on a woman named Taryn Sizemore, who was suing his client for intentional infliction of emotional distress. The defendant, Ned Lowe, was accused of stalking, harassment, and threats. His attorney paid Byrd-Shine a big whack of money to find evidence that would undermine the plaintiff’s credibility. Morley Shine had handled the matter.

At the time, I was still in training, so I wasn’t involved. Eventually, the suit was dropped, so Morley must have delivered the goods.

Remembering Ruthie’s caution about Pete’s penchant for hiding cash, I turned each file upside down and riffled the pages. I wasn’t even halfway through the process when a piece of folded graph paper fell out. I opened it and found myself looking at handwritten columns of numbers, eight across and twelve down, the numbers grouped in subsets of four.

I checked the other side of the paper, which was blank. There were no torn edges, so it didn’t appear the page had been removed from a financial ledger. No dollar signs, no commas, and no decimal points. Many numbers were repeated. Eight of the twelve lines ended in sets of zeroes, which might have been place holders used to round out the grid. I couldn’t imagine what it was, but I assumed the data was significant, or why would he have hidden it? Knowing how devious he was, I didn’t want to underestimate his thinking process—but I also didn’t want to overestimate his smarts. I put the paper in the outer compartment of my shoulder bag and went back to the job at hand.

I thought the case names I came across would trigger memories, but it was the sight of Ben Byrd’s precise penmanship that called up images of the past. He’d used a fountain pen and a particular brand of ink, so his field notes were easily distinguished from the scribbles Morley had made with assorted ballpoint pens. All the final reports were neatly typed. The originals had gone to the clients’ attorneys and the carbons were filed in descending date order, the most recent on top. Ben had insisted on storing the rough draft notes with the finished versions, making sure both were retained. I could remember a couple of occasions when critical information hadn’t made it into the typed report, and it was Ben’s policy that had saved the agency embarrassment.

He and Morley had been a study in contrasts. Ben was a statesman and a gentleman, tall, elegant, and dignified, while Morley was the rumpled, overweight jack-of-all-trades who generally flew by the seat of his pants. Morley relied on intuitive leaps, where Ben operated by the methodical accretion of detail. Morley was quick off the mark and insights came to him intact. At the outset, he couldn’t always justify his position, but nine times out of ten he was right. Ben might come to the same conclusion, but his was a carefully rendered composition, where Morley’s was a quick sketch.