“She can be,” I say. “How do you know her?”

“I worked for her until today. They laid me off.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re the columnist. You’re taller than your photograph in the newspaper.” He says this without humor.

The bus is moving again and I decide to ride to one more stop before heading back to Seattle. Disgruntled former employees can be useful, although you have to account for their biases.

“So what did you do?”

“I was in charge of communications liaison between corporate and ODS.” He says the initials with a vague British accent. I feel my lower back tighten.

“An interesting subsidiary.” I try to keep my voice neutral. I have on my wide-open, talk-to-me reporter’s face.

“More than that.” He smiles. “Did you dig deeper, as I told you to?”

I almost visibly shiver. The mysterious emailer. “I’m trying,” I say. “I don’t understand the connections. The CIA, Troy Hardesty, Animal Spirits…eleven/eleven.”

He grips my arm painfully, his slight frame deceiving.

“Not here.” He releases my arm. Then he reaches into his jacket, retrieves a business card, and writes an address on the back of it with his left hand.

“Come see me at my house tomorrow at ten. The wife and kids are going early.” He hands me the card. I give him mine. He quickly slides it into his shirt pocket.

“In the meantime, I think it would be a good idea for you to move, and get off the bus before Issaquah.”

***

I call Amber and she says she can’t come over tonight. Maybe I imagine something in her voice, distance, a pulling back. Normally, it would give me relief—another bit of transitional fun. She got the best of me, and I the best of her. But this night her absence gnaws at me. The bed looks impossibly large.

For the first time in days, I go to the Conspiracy Grrl Web site, knowing I am probably being tracked. The screen shows “error 404.” The site is down. Even my Conspiracy Grrl has abandoned me tonight.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Saturday, October 30th

I have lit a fuse. It’s attached to my cell phone. I watch it sitting there on the nightstand, attached to the charger cord, as I wake during the night. Heidi Benson won’t let our encounter sit through the weekend. The only question is whether she and her big boss will think I’m bluffing. The Blackjack stays silent. I think about what Rachel said; her father’s reaction to my Olympic column. That’s how I got into this. And I wish I could claim to be the most prescient journalist on the planet, but the truth is that I picked the topic at random. I had made a list of companies we weren’t covering intensely because of the staff reductions. Olympic came up. I started asking questions. Now people are dead and missing and eleven/eleven. The street erupts with the sound of loud drunks at closing time. Then I only hear the occasional train whistle until I fall into a deep sleep.

I rise early, with no woman in bed to make coffee for. So I dress, walk down the street to Starbucks, then climb in the car and drive. Before I leave the curb, I study the business card: Olympic International Corp. James Mandir, Corporate Communications Business Partner. It has no mention of Olympic Defense Systems. On th

e back is his address, written in a neat, draftsmanlike hand. I check it against my worn street map in the car. There’s no way I’ll use Mapquest and give my minders a chance to see where I’m going. On the atlas page, the address looks like it sits amid a spaghetti splatter of streets. I leave the page open on the passenger seat as I let the car amble through downtown, then out to Magnolia, where I park and watch.

While the fit, well-off Maggies walk and jog past, I let my paranoia run wild. I check the car for a tracking device: in the glove box, under the seats and dash. I climb out and get on my knees, looking for anything amiss on the underside or the bumper. The sky is partly cloudy—their satellites can see me. I stand and brush myself off as a young woman pushes her stroller by: You are odd, her look says, you don’t fit in here. That’s true enough. I start the car again and take the long way back across Interbay Yard and around the backside of Queen Anne Hill, through the sleepy Saturday campus of Seattle Pacific University, down Westlake past the yacht brokers, before finally reaching the freeway and driving east.

I’m not being followed.

Across the lake, the car starts the long climb that will take me into the Cascade foothills. The mountains are jagged purple. It was a cool morning in the city, and I can feel it grow colder when I touch the car window. The interstate soars and sags as the wall of tall evergreens grows denser. The land undulates upward, showing hill upon hill, revealing sudden valleys. The signs promise I am near Lake Sammamish State Park, but then it’s time to exit. I have never been an east-sider. I am a city kid. But I can remember when there was nothing out here, just the highway to Snoqualmie Falls. My parents would take Jill and me there during the few calm periods in our family life. Now it’s suburbia, with a new parkway that gives way to new streets. It’s all calm and pleasant and would drive me insane.

I go through the same drill again, just driving and checking. I have given myself plenty of room to arrive on time. Finally, I make three turns and swing around a crescent street where Mandir’s address sits in neat black letters on a gray house with white trim. It’s a long, pleasant split-level with wide windows and a two-car garage that seems to overwhelm the rest of the house. Tall evergreens and aspen with their last gold stand behind the place and it’s surrounded by a perfect lawn and hedges. I pull into the driveway, to the side with the closed garage door. The other garage door sits open, presumably from the departure of his wife and children. The house has a red front door atop a short white staircase at the end of a flagstone walk. I scan the rearview mirrors one more time, wondering if my notepad will spook him. I decide to take it, grabbing an extra pen. I leave the gun in the car.

Outside, it is preternaturally quiet. I can’t hear even a distant leaf blower or lawn mower. The nearest houses look neatly uninhabited. The doorbell sounds deep within the house. James Mandir. I should have stopped at Kinko’s and used a computer to do a Google search. I don’t remember reading his name in the story about the flawed night-vision goggles. It will have to wait. I am here to listen to him. I ring the doorbell again.

The window glass seems slightly reflective. I can’t see anything inside, just the image of puffy autumn clouds passing quickly overhead. After the third time of ringing the doorbell and waiting, I grow edgy. Maybe this is a trap. But a slow scan around me shows nothing amiss. Not a car on the street. One white minivan parked in the driveway of the second house to the west. No humans. Maybe he just got cold feet and stood me up.

Perhaps he’s working in the garage. I walk down the wooden stairs again. They are sturdy and make no sound. The open door is nearest to the flagstone walk. It’s wide enough to accommodate a Hummer. Inside, I can see a silver BMW in the other bay. It’s a neat garage; no clutter of lawn mower, fertilizer spreader and long-unused children’s toys. The concrete floor is spotless and the lights are off. I stand on the side of the opening and call.

“Mr. Mandir?”

Tags: Jon Talton Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net