Assumed Identity (1993) (52 page)

Or maybe the man's suspicion was only something that Buchanan imagined.

On the computer screen, the cursor flashed where a symbol asked the user what program was to be activated.

'What's your name?' the killer asked.

'Brian MacDonald.' Buchanan immediately reverted to that identity, the one he'd assumed prior to becoming ex-DEA operative Ed Potter and going to Cancun, where all his recent troubles had started.

Brian MacDonald was supposed to have been a computer programmer, and in support of that identity, Buchanan had received instruction in that subject.

'Having trouble getting into the computer?' the killer asked. 'It didn't give me any trouble when they ordered me to erase a couple of files. You know about that, right? They told you I erased a couple of files?'

'Yes, but those files aren't what interest me.'

The cursor kept flashing next to the program-prompt sign. Juana's printed-out files had not been in a spreadsheet format but rather in standard prose paragraphs.

A word-processing program. But which one?

Buchanan-MacDonald typed DIR. At once the disc drive made clicking sounds, and a list of the symbols for the computer's programs appeared on the screen.

One of those symbols was WS, the abbreviation for a word-processing program known as WordStar.

Buchanan-MacDonald exited the list of the computer's programs and typed WS after the symbol that asked him what program he wanted. The computer's hard-disc drive made more clicking sounds. A list of other files appeared on the screen.

DIRECTORY OF DRIVE C:

A 't B't C't D't E't F't G't H't I't J'tK'tL'tM'tN't0'tP'tQ'tR't S't T't U't V 't W't X't Y't Z't AUTOEXEC.BAK.Ik AUTOEXEC.BAT.lk

Buchanan-MacDonald knew that AUTOEXEC.BAK was a precautionary backup for AUTOEXEC.BAT, a program that allowed the computer's user to switch from one file to another. The designation '.Ik' merely indicated the small amount of memory space that this program used. As for the alphabetical series, Juana had evidently subdivided her clients' files into subdirectories governed by the first letter of each client's last name.

Or so Buchanan guessed. At the moment, he was intensely preoccupied by the presence of the man in the doorway. The killer's breathing seemed to have become loud, strident, as if he were disturbed by something.

'Having problems?' the killer asked. 'Don't you know what to do next? Do I have to show you?'

'No,' Buchanan said. If he'd been alone, he would have accessed the subdirectories for D and T. But he didn't dare. If the killer had erased files in those subdirectories as he'd earlier mentioned, the man would wonder why Buchanan was interested in those same groups of names.

'But what I want to do next,' Buchanan said, 'is get something for this damned headache.' Slowly he stood, using his left hand to massage the back of his neck. 'Does the woman have any aspirin around here?'

The killer stepped slightly backward. He still kept both hands at his sides, not yet fully alarmed. But Buchanan, his heart pounding, had a sense that a crisis was about to explode.

Or it might have been that the man wasn't stepping backward defensively but rather to let Buchanan go past him and into the bathroom.

It was extremely hard to know.

'Bufferin,' the killer said. 'The medicine cabinet. Top shelf.'

'Great.'

But the man stepped out of the way yet again as Buchanan approached him, and obviously this time he was making sure that Buchanan didn't come within an arm's length of him.

The bathroom - across from the computer room - was dusty. White walls. White floor. White shower curtain. Simple. Basic.

Buchanan had no choice except to pretend to look for the aspirins, even though his headache was the last thing he now cared about. He opened the medicine cabinet, found the aspirin, swallowed two and returned to the computer room. It was empty.

He heard a buzz. Surprised, he stared down at the cellular phone that he had taken from the van and attached to the left side of his belt. He'd taken that phone instead of the one in the jeep because the jeep's phone wasn't portable. This way, if Pedro and Anita needed to get in touch with Buchanan, they could use a second phone, a nonportable one, that was part of the surveillance van's instrument panel. Now Pedro or Anita was evidently calling him to warn him about something.

Or maybe the call was from the surveillance team's controllers in Philadelphia.

Buchanan couldn't just let it keep ringing. That would arouse even more suspicion.

But as he reached to unhook the phone from his belt, he saw motion in the hallway. The killer appeared, and now he, too, had a cellular phone. He must have gotten it from the room where he'd been hiding.

He didn't look happy.

'Funny thing,' the killer said. 'I never heard of Brian MacDonald. I just called Duncan's van to make sure everything about you is on the up and up, and damned if your phone doesn't respond to his number, which tends to suggest that your phone is actually Duncan's phone, which makes me wonder why in hell-'

While the killer talked, keeping his left hand around the cellular phone, he moved his right hand beneath his jeans jacket. As Buchanan had noticed, the jacket was slightly too large, a logical reason for which would be that the killer had a holstered handgun beneath it.

'A coincidence,' Buchanan said. 'You're calling Duncan while somebody else is calling me. I'll show you.' He used his left hand to reach for the phone.

The killer's eyes focused on that gesture.

Simultaneously Buchanan shoved his right hand back beneath his sport coat, drawing his pistol from behind his belt at his spine.

The killer's eyes widened as he yanked his own pistol from beneath his jeans jacket.

Buchanan shot.

The bullet hit the man's chest.

Although the man was jolted backward, he still kept raising his weapon.

Buchanan's second bullet hit the man's throat.

Blood flew.

The man was jolted farther backward.

But his reflexes made his gunhand keep rising.

Buchanan's third bullet hit the man's forehead.

The impact knocked the man over. His gunhand jerked toward the ceiling. His spastic finger pulled the trigger. The pistol discharged, blowing a hole in the hallway ceiling. Plaster fell.

The man struck the hardwood floor in the computer room. He shuddered, wheezed, and stopped moving. Blood pooled around him.

Buchanan hurried toward the fallen man, aimed his pistol toward the man's head, kicked his gun away, and checked for life signs.

The man's eyes were open. The pupils were dilated. They didn't respond when Buchanan shoved his fingers toward them.

Quickly, Buchanan searched the man's clothes. All he found were a comb, coins, a handkerchief, and a wallet. He set the wallet on the table and hurried to get a small rug that he'd seen in the living room. After rolling the body onto the rug, he pulled the rug along the hallway, through the living room, and toward a back door in the kitchen.

The oppressive night concealed him. Shivering, his skin prickling from the river's dampness, Buchanan tugged the body across a screened porch, down three steps, and toward this deserted section of the river. He eased down the bank, found a log, hunched the body over it, shoved the log into the current, and watched as the body slipped off as soon as the current grabbed the log. The two objects drifted away, at once out of sight in the darkness. Buchanan threw the rug as far as he could into the river. He took out the man's gun, which he'd put beneath his belt, and threw it out into the river as well, obeying the rule of never keeping a weapon whose history you don't know. Finally he took out the killer's cellular phone along with the three empty shell casings from Buchanan's semiautomatic - he'd picked them up as he left the house - and threw them toward where the gun had splashed. He stared toward nothing, took several deep breaths to calm himself, and hurried back to the house.

Chapter 16.

His ears rang from the roar of the gunshots. His nostrils widened from the stench of cordite and blood. Drawing his weapon had pulled the stitches in his side and strained the muscles in his injured shoulder. Tugging the body had further strained his side and shoulder. His head continued to feel as if a spike had been driven through it.

He locked the back door behind him, found another rug, took it into the computer room, and set it over the pool of blood. Then he opened a window to clear the smells of violence. Next, he searched the man's wallet, found close to three hundred dollars in various denominations, a driver's license for Charles Duffy of Philadelphia and a credit card for that name. Charles Duffy might be an alias. It probably was. It didn't matter. If these credentials had been good enough for the killer, they were good enough for Buchanan. He shoved the wallet into his pocket. He now had a new identity. On the unlikely chance that anybody in this remote area had heard the shots and came to investigate, everything looked normal, except for the finger-sized hole in the hallway ceiling, which by itself wouldn't arouse suspicion, although the pieces of plaster on the floor would. Buchanan picked them up and shoved them into a pocket.

With haste, he sat before the computer, glanced at the file directory on the screen, A B C D. moved the flashing cursor from A to D, and pressed RETURN.

The disc drive made a clicking sound. A new list of files appeared on the screen, a subdirectory for all the headings under D.

'tDARNEL 3k

DARNELL.BAK 3k

DAYTON 2k

DAYTON.BAK 2k

DIAZ 4k

DIAZ.BAK 4k

DIEGO 5k

DIEGO.BAK 5k

DOMINGUEZ 4k

DOMINGUEZ.BAK 4k

DRUMMER 5k

DRUMMOND.BAK 5k

DURAN 3k

DURAN.BAK 3k

DURANGO 5k

DURANGO.BAK 5k

Quickly, Buchanan opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and took out the printed documents for D. The only way he could think of to learn whether someone had removed any of the files was to compare the names on the files with those in the computer's subdirectory. Even so, he didn't have much hope. The man who'd been hiding here to kill Juana had said that he'd erased some files in the computer, presumably to stop an investigator from doing what Buchanan was trying to do. Almost certainly the computer's list would match the names on the printed files. He wouldn't be able to tell which documents were missing.

Each computer file had a companion file marked BAK, the short form for BACKUP, signifying that the computer's memory retained the previous version of a newly updated file. DARNELL. DARNELL.BAK. Comparing, Buchanan found a printed file for that name.

He continued. DAYTON. DAYTON.BAK. Check. DIAZ. DIAZ.BAK. Check. DIEGO. DIEGO.BAK. Check. He was finding printed files for every name on the computer screen. DOMINGUEZ. DOMINGUEZ.BAK. DRUMMER. DRUMMER.BAK. DURAN. DURAN.BAK. DURANGO. DURANGO.BAK. Every name was accounted for.

He leaned back, exhausted. He'd wasted his time. There'd been no point in risking his life to come here. All he'd learned was that someone was determined to kill Juana, which he'd known already.

And for that, he himself had nearly been killed.

He rubbed his swollen eyelids, glanced at the computer screen, reached to turn off the computer, but at the final instant, stopped his trembling hand, telling himself that no matter how hopeless, he had to keep trying. Even though the subdirectory for the files that began with 'I would probably be as uninformative as the subdirectory for D, he couldn't ignore it.

He shifted his hand from the OFF button to the keyboard, about to switch subdirectories, when something about the image on the screen made him feel cold. He'd been aware that a detail had been troubling the edge of his consciousness, but he'd attributed his unease to apprehension and the disturbing aftermath of violence.

Now he realized what had been troubling him. His eyes had played a trick on him. DRUMMER. DRUMMER.BAK. Like hell. Drummer didn't have a backup file. The backup file was for DRUMMOND. Buchanan was certain that he hadn't seen a file for Drummond, but by now exhaustion so controlled him that he couldn't trust what he thought he was sure of. His hands shook as he sorted through the printed files. DRUMMER. DURAN. DURANGO. No Drummond.

Christ, he thought. When the killer erased the Drummond file, he hadn't thought to erase the backup file, or maybe he'd considered doing so but had been stopped because his eyes played the same trick on him that Buchanan's eyes had played, creating the impression that DRUMMOND.BAK was actually DRUMMER.BAK. The names looked so much alike.

Drummond.

Buchanan didn't know what the name signified, and when he accessed the DRUMMOND.BAK file, he found to his dismay that it was empty. Either Juana had created the file but never put information into it, or else the assassin had erased it from the inside.

Buchanan accessed the subdirectory for T, and now that he knew what to look for, he checked the backup files rather than the primary ones, comparing the names to those on the printed 'I documents that he took from the filing cabinet.

TAYLOR.BAK. TAMAYO.BAK. TANBERG.BAK. TERRA-ZA.BAK. TOLSA.BAK. He was becoming more aware of the considerable number of Hispanic names. TOMEZ.BAK. Buchanan's pulse increased.