Pieces of the Puzzle (14 page)

Helen was out of breath when they reached the first floor and Scott was supporting her more than she was walking. He didn’t
tell her he was exhausted. He glanced to the lobby, to the emergency door at the end of the hall, to the stairs, to the elevators
not that far away.

One of the elevators was coming down. Fourth floor. Third floor. Second floor.

He pushed her back into the stairwell and edged back with her. He closed the door to the stairs against its will.

There was a laundry cart in the shadows under the stairwell. He pulled it out enough for them to hide behind. He heard the
elevator bell ring, saw a shadow move past the door and waited for a second shadow to pass. It didn’t.

He hunkered down and waited. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. He clamped a hand over her mouth, heard the faint echo of
footsteps from above.

The footsteps grew louder slowly.

He heard heavy breathing, wasn’t sure if it was hers, wasn’t sure if it was his own. He pressed his back against the wall,
pulled Helen closer, and waited.

He was sucking at warm air that wouldn’t quite fill his lungs when he saw a shadow framed in the doorway. The door opened.
He ducked down, for a moment he was sure the suit had stared straight at him.

He heard footsteps directly above his head. A moment later both suits were standing directly in front of him. He knew this
only by their voices.

One said to the other, “Did you see them?”

“Nothing.”

“We lost them.”

“I told you we didn’t need the camera anymore. Audio would have done just fine—”“We’re not supposed to be listening to the
audio in the first place, so how in the hell are we going to know what this guy is doing if we don’t have video?”

“But we were listening—”“Only because you repaired the transmitter. If we went to wires, you know the client would go nuts.
I don’t want to end up as gator bait, do you?”

“I told you this was mongo weird, told you from the start this wasn’t about some guy’s wife—”“They gave us the slip, arguing
isn’t going to help anything.”

“That camera cost nineteen grand. It’s coming out of your share.”

“It cost him nineteen grand, not us. You’re getting on my nerves.”

“We’ll wait. He’ll come back for the car, I know it.”

“No, we lost him.”

“Let’s get drunk and watch the recording of those chicks getting it on again.”

“And count on Harry the Wonder Clerk to tell us if they return? You’re not only a pervert, you’re stupid.”

“Up yours! I’m going to order a bottle of cognac and charge it to the room.”

“Sticking the client for two hundred bucks isn’t going to help anything.”

“Want to bet?”

Miami, Florida
Friday, 21 January

But what brought her back to the Ritz-Carlton? Why come back? What had she said about the camera—seeing it made her sure he
would return. Had she really planned to kill herself?

Scott eyed Helen. She was sitting on the bed, hugging her knees and sucking her finger like a little girl.

Yes, she would have killed herself. There was no question about it.

Why would she have wanted him to come back here? Was there something here she wanted him to find? Surely the suits would have
removed the camera if she had killed herself. What else was here?

It would have been a lot simpler if he could have asked her, but she wasn’t exactly coherent at the moment. She was babbling
to herself, nothing he could understand, and anytime he came near her, she started screaming.

What was here?

He saw her suitcase in the corner of the closet and dumped its contents onto the floor. And for a second time, he found himself
sifting through underwear, only this time it was Helen’s lingerie and not Jessica’s. But it all looked the same, frilly lace,
yards of red and black—slips, panties, bras, entire outfits. No dresses, why not any dresses?

“It’s not mine,” Helen said quietly.

Scott rose from his haunches. Helen was still clutching her knees, but she had stopped trembling.

She repeated, “It’s not mine.”

He looked up at her. She was wearing a thin cotton jacket over an oversized red sun dress. It was hard to tell what was under
the layers of baggy clothes, but he had never seen her wearing a bra. “These are Jessica’s?”

She moved her head back and forth slowly. “Nope, Pattie’s weekend specials.”

He walked toward the bed.

She started screaming. “Stay where you are, don’t touch me, never touch me. You promised you wouldn’t hurt me, you promised
you wouldn’t let anyone hurt me.”

He sat down on the bed, put his arms around her. “It was a promise I never should have made, but I can help you, if you help
me. Will you help me, Helen?”

She nodded.

“The truth, Helen,” he said firmly, “the whole truth. You knew the camera was there all along, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Words, Helen. I want to hear it.”

“He promised if I did everything he asked, he wouldn’t hurt Jessica.”

“He lied. How much of what you told me was a lie?”

She returned a candid stare. “Everything that counted was the truth. Everything. I didn’t know where Jessica was. I didn’t
know where the gizmo was. Why did he have to kill her?”

“Why don’t you tell me? How was Jessica involved in this, was she an agent like your father?”

“What do you know about my father?”

“Not much, a little about his agency employment, his death in 1989.”

She started crying. “My father never talked about his work.

He worked for the government, that’s all I knew—that’s all I wanted to know. But Jessica, she wanted to know everything. Her
business wasn’t enough, her degree wasn’t enough, nothing was ever enough.”

“Was she working for our government?”

“Our government, another government, what’s the difference? It’s all in her diary. She wasn’t going to give it to them. She
was just playing with whoever would play her game.”

He grabbed her shoulders, and the instant he did, he knew he shouldn’t have. “It wasn’t a game. People get killed for the
things they know. It’s that simple. You know too much, you become a liability… They were using her, Helen. She was playing
with her life and didn’t know it, but that’s the point. Make something look like nothing and get someone else to do the dirty
work for you. The bottom line is to put the hook in someone else’s mouth. They used her. Now I need you to tell me who they
are.”

“The calendar pages… The client was XWEH. May never wrote anything out.” Helen’s sobs intensified.

Scott sucked at the air. “All right, Helen. Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about the client. He brought the box to
Jessica?”

“No, Jessica was on her way to meet a client when he intercepted her. He wasn’t my sister’s client and Jessica never saw him
before that.”

“Tell me his name. You have no reason to protect him anymore, and every reason to want to get even. Tell me his name.”

“He told me his name was John. He gave me instructions on how to contact him and get him the things he asked for.”

“A phone number, an address, what?”

“A P.O. box in D.C. and a phone number.”

“What types of things did he ask for?”

“Little things at first. The names of Jessica’s clients, what project she was working on, things like that. I told him to
get rid of him, and if I told him the things he wanted to know, sometimes he wouldn’t come and sometimes he wouldn’t touch
me. I wanted to make him go away. I wanted to make him go away forever just like he promised.”

“What is WIH-2?”

“The project Jessica was supposed to be working on, but she said it didn’t have anything to do with the Internet and that
it was only supposed to look that way. She found something. She wrote about it in her diary, but didn’t say what she found.”

“You have her diary?”

“And her date book. The funny thing is, is that the book says the project came in as routine: Make a test port, test for FCC
compliance, help the client work it through the system so the product can be shipped off.”

He didn’t say that routine for Jessica was probably never routine, instead he said, “Shipped where?”

She put her head against his chest and sobbed. “I’m so tired. I just want to close my eyes and never wake up. There’s nothing
left to wake up for—”He hushed her and rocked her back and forth like her mother should have. He closed his eyes and thought
about what she had said, and later, he thought about the conversation he had overheard in the stairwell. He figured the suits
were staying in the hotel, and soon, at least one, and possibly both, would be dead drunk.

A pimple-faced teenager was walking toward the elevator. He was carrying a bottle, whistling and acting like he didn’t have
a care in the world. Scott watched him and waited until he was a few feet away. “Just another Friday night, hey Ernie?”

Ernie almost dropped the bottle as he jumped. “The service elevator is for employees. You’re supposed to use the main elevators.”

“It’s broke anyway.”

Ernie pushed the elevator button. The doors opened. “No it ain’t.”

Scott said to Helen, “Well look at that.”

Helen smiled at Ernie and walked into the elevator. Scott followed. Ernie hesitated then entered. He pushed 3. The doors closed.

“I remember you,” Ernie said, “I always remember big tippers. You want something, don’t you?”

“What room are you taking the bottle to?”

Ernie didn’t say anything. The elevator stopped on the third floor. Ernie got out. Scott and Helen followed. Scott waved an
Andrew Jackson in front of Ernie’s eyes and repeated, “What room are you taking the bottle to?”

“Forget it,” Ernie said coolly, “Some guy gave me a fifty just to let him deliver the bottle last time. The way I figure it,
someone big is staying in the room, a movie star maybe, and I oughta get an autograph.”

Scott glanced at Helen, put the twenty away. “Well then, we’ll just follow you and let you do all the work.”

Ernie stopped midstride. “Twenty is good.”

Scott took out his wallet again. Ernie reached for the money.

Scott said, “Not so fast. The room number first and the bottle.”

Ernie gave Scott the bottle. “Room 336.”

“Room 336?”

Ernie nodded. Scott waited for Ernie to get back in the elevator and for the elevator doors to close. Once Ernie was gone,
Scott started walking. Room 336 was the last room on the right at the end of the hall, near the stairs.

Scott touched a finger to his lips when he reached the door and pointed down the adjacent hall. The door to the room was ajar,
not enough to see into the room, but still not closed and locked. He didn’t like the looks of it. He continued past the room,
turned the corner, knowing that if Helen wasn’t with him, he wouldn’t have hesitated.

He gripped her shoulder to tell her to stop and took the .22

Beretta out of his boot. “Can you use this?” he whispered.

She grimaced. “The only thing my daddy ever taught me to do right.”

“Can you shoot a man if you have to?”

“Don’t carry unless you’re willing to kill because the other guy will see it in your eyes and know you can’t pull the trigger,
that was one of my daddy’s rules.”

He looked her in the eye. “Would you have shot to kill when you found me in your sister’s office?”

“No, not really.”

“You shoot this, you shoot to take someone down. You shoot so they don’t ever move again because if they get up, they’re going
to kill you. Do you understand?”

Helen gulped. “I don’t want to, but I do.”

He handed her the gun. “We’re going to go back to the room now and do this just like we talked about.”

“And if you don’t come out?”

“Don’t worry, I will.”

She kissed his cheek. He glared at her.

“For good luck,” she whispered.

Scott pushed her away, saying “I don’t need luck,” and moved her with his eyes to the place she was supposed to stand. He
took the gun out of the shoulder holster, tucked it into the back of his pants, then knocked on the door. The door slipped
open a bit more with every knock. He said, “Room service, someone here ordered a bottle of cognac.”

No one responded.

Scott continued to knock and as he did so, he nudged the door with his elbow and peered into the shadowy gloom of the room.
He repeated, “Room service.”

Nervously, he waited. He glanced to Helen, warning her to stay where she was with his eyes. A little voice in the back of
his mind told him something was wrong, very wrong.

He nudged the door again with his elbow and slipped into the room through the narrow opening. When no one shouted or screamed,
he set the bottle down next to the door and took the gun out of concealment.

He was suddenly glad the room was shadowed in darkness and also suddenly very aware that his figure was outlined in the lighted
doorway. He reached back with his foot and kicked the door closed, the soft thud of the closing door was loud enough that
it should have brought someone running but it didn’t.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and a while longer for him to realize that the stillness meant no
one was there. The room was laid out differently from his room upstairs. It looked larger for one thing, there were two beds
for another, and the door interconnecting the next room was wide open.

There was a light on in the next room. He crossed to the doorway, then peered inside.

A lamp was on beside the single, king-sized bed. The balcony doors were wide open and the wind was ruffling the drapery. The
bathroom door was closed, but he could see a finger of light under it.

He listened at the bathroom door for a long time, hearing only his heartbeats in his ears. Satisfied, he touched his hand
to the knob and slowly turned it.

As he prepared to push the door open, in one swift move, he played his index finger nervously across the trigger. He thrust
open the door, tensed as he sighted the gun from the sink to the tub and when he was looking down the barrel of the gun at
a Jacuzzi tub and bloodstained walls, he closed his eyes and sucked at air that wouldn’t fill his lungs.

He didn’t look into the tub. He didn’t need to. Two right arms dangling over the side of the tub said it all.

He raced back to the other room and brought Helen in from the hall. He closed the door behind her. “Did anyone see you standing
there?”

“No one. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He tucked the Browning into the back of his pants, took the Beretta from Helen and put it back into his boot.

He raised his hands to his head, trying to think. “Don’t touch anything. Just stay right there. You got that?”

“What’s wrong?”

He turned on the overhead lights. Nothing in the room caught his eye. He raced into the other room and turned on the lights.
A table and chairs pushed against the far wall next to the TV caught his eye; under the table was what he was looking for
He kneeled down, eyed the recording equipment and an empty rack for discs.

Helen said from behind him, “It’s still playing.”

He smacked the back of his head on the tabletop as he stood.

He spun around and glared at Helen. She was standing in the doorway between the rooms.

He turned on the TV, saw static, ejected the disc from the recorder. The disc was labeled: 12-8. He stuck the disc back into
the recorder, pressed Play. Helen came up behind him. He pushed her back with a gentle nudge and sat in one of the chairs.

The picture wasn’t very clear and just like the recording he had seen in the limo, there were a lot of shadows. The room was
empty and quiet. He saw an unmade bed, the nightstands beside the bed, and nothing else. He pushed Fast Forward.

Bright light from the balcony windows filtered into the room and lifted some of the gloom. Someone came into the room: A maid
with a cleaning cart. She cleaned the room, made the bed. He didn’t hear anything, turned up the sound, and still didn’t hear
anything.