The Baker Street Letters (17 page)

“Pizza Premieres.”

“Yes. I checked out of the Roosevelt Arms and bribed a driver to let me take his route. I spent half a day scouring the lot and delivering pizza—but I didn't see any sign of Lance or his car. So now I was at a loss; I couldn't think of anything else to do except keep watching her place. I went back to the café. But when they closed, I had to find another spot.”

“And you chose the warehouse for that?”

“It was the only possibility. I needed a sight line on the alley. The place stank, and I had to pay a vagrant to use his space—but I set up there that evening, and eventually I see the bloke return. In the dead of night. He goes to the alley entrance like he did before, and looks in. Then he takes out a mobile phone, calls somebody, talks for a minute—and only then, after all that, does he go into his own flat.

“There's no phone near the warehouse; just a late-night pharmacy with a fax machine three blocks west. I know, I should get a mobile. But if I had rung you at that point, you would have just told me to turn things over to the police. And I didn't really have anything to give them yet. So I ran to the pharmacy and sent you the fax to meet me at the overpass, where we'd have a clear line of sight and I could keep an eye on Mara's fire escape.

“In the meantime, I waited and watched from the warehouse. I couldn't see the fire escape clearly from there, but I could see the entrance to the alley—and I didn't expect anything to happen before you and I had a chance to meet. But I was wrong. At half-past one in the morning, I saw him come out of the entrance to the flats and go round into that alley.

“I was caught off guard. I got out of the warehouse as quickly as I could, but it takes a while, with all the rubbish and derelicts lying about—and I couldn't see the alley while I was exiting. By the time I got a line of sight again . . . well, whatever happened had happened. I didn't know someone would kill the
neighbor and wheel his body up right where I had asked you to meet me.”

“The police think it was you, Nigel. They think you're an obsessed stalker and that you killed her neighbor out of jealousy.”

“They'll never make that stick.”

“And on our own side of the pond, Wembley's building a nice theory about how you bashed Ocher with your Remington.”

Nigel seemed genuinely puzzled. “My Remington?” Then, “What do you mean, bashed Ocher?”

“I found his body in your office, Nigel.”

Nigel took that in for a moment, looking as though he truly had no idea. And then he half stood out of his chair.

“You're saying someone killed Ocher?”

“Yes.”

“In my office?”

“Yes. You didn't know this when you ran out? Sit down, the guard is watching.”

“Reggie, Ocher passed me in the corridor as I was leaving that morning. He checked his watch in that ‘amazed to see you here at this hour' sort of way.”

Reggie wanted to evaluate the implications this had for the order of events, but now Nigel suddenly leaned forward.

“When can you get me out of here?” he said urgently.

“After arraignment, assuming they allow bail,” said Reggie. “But that's just for the wanker under the overpass. If Wembley has begun extradition proceedings—”

“Then we can't wait,” said Nigel. “If I can't go to Mara, you must.”

“Nigel, if the police find either of us hanging about—”

“She is in danger now!”

Nigel stood again as he said this, leaning forward with his
hands pressed on the partition table between them, and Reggie saw that the guard was beginning to take notice.

“Keep calm,” he said. “I'll do it. Just sit down.”

“Good,” said Nigel. He sat down, and then, after just an instant's hesitation: “Good,” he said again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reggie exited the jail, called for a cab from the steps, and then rang Laura at her New York hotel.

Finally someone picked up.

It was Buxton.

“Heath! Good to hear from you!”

When Reggie asked for Laura, she was on the phone immediately—close at hand, apparently; in the same room, if not on the same piece of furniture.

“Catch you at a bad time?” said Reggie.

“Of course not,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason.”

Reggie told her about finding Nigel. And there being a dead body under an overpass. And Nigel being arrested for it.

Reggie heard an intake of breath and then a pause on the other end of the line. Then Laura said, “How do we get your brother out of jail?”

“Arraignment is tomorrow morning,” said Reggie, “but bail is problematic.”

“Why so?”

“Nigel is a foreign national accused of a capital offense.”

“Isn't there someone you can ring?”

Reggie didn't answer immediately. The answer he was obliged to give was embarrassing.

“No,” he said after a moment. “I don't know anyone in such places here.”

“Oh,” said Laura.

There was another pause, and then she said, “Shall I ask Robert? Perhaps he might have more effect. I mean, he might know someone—”

“No, don't. I'll manage it.”

“Right, then.”

There was an awkward pause.

“I have to go,” said Reggie. “Nigel assigned me a task.”

“Right, then,” Laura said again, with no apparent disappointment. “But ring. Let me know.”

“Of course,” said Reggie.

Reggie shut off his phone, waited for the cab to arrive, and then rode to Mara's flat. He knocked on her door, waited, then knocked again.

No one answered.

But, significantly, there was no sound from Mookie, either. So she might just be out walking the dog again.

Reggie crossed the street to Joe's Deli and settled in to wait. He got a late breakfast—what passed for eggs and bangers, once he'd made himself understood.

He sat at the table and watched her flat through the café window. An hour passed. Then another. More time went by, the coffee was eating a hole in his stomach, and still no sign of Mara.

And now Reggie's mobile beeped.

It was Anne from the geological institute.

“I have news,” she said. “But it's sort of complicated. Can you come out?”

“I may have to stay put for a bit. Can you give me a hint?”

“Well . . . bottom line is, something's not right. I can't explain it clearly over the phone. I'll need to show it to you in person. I've got a couple hours open until my evening seminar.”

There was a tenor to her voice that made Reggie take notice.

He looked across at Mara's flat again. It was a weekday, still early in the afternoon, and she most probably was at work at the gallery she had mentioned. She might not be back for several hours more. And wherever she was, Nigel's concerns notwithstanding, she had her 150-pound dog to protect her.

“I'll see you in one hour,” he said.

It took somewhat longer than that. This city needed more cab ranks. And apparently it had a morning rush hour, and a lunch rush hour, and presumably another at the end of the workday.

Or perhaps, like London, one long one from dawn till after midnight.

Finally, Reggie reached the campus. Anne was in the lab, eating while she worked in front of a computer terminal.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” said Reggie.

“Want half? Peanut butter.”

“No, thank you.”

“You won't believe what I found for you. Or maybe you will—but I don't.”

“Did you find the page?”

“No. And that's a little spooky.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your fragment has a partial identifier—right here in the corner—that says it has to be somewhere in the L.A. or San
Fernando basin. The other corner is missing, so we don't know exactly where, but when you have enough data, it's just like a fingerprint—all I have to do is enter the data you've already got and find the report in the database that has that exact same sequence of values.”

“Right. So where is it?”

“Bring that chair over, I'll show you the problem.”

Reggie did so, and he watched as she punched numbers into the terminal.

“I'm entering the measurements from that fragment of yours, in sequence, and I'm searching for one exact match in all the recorded surveys for the area within the last twenty-five years. Look at what I get.”

Reggie looked at the display. “It says, ‘No Match.' ”

“Right. No match at all.”

“Thanks for trying,” said Reggie, getting up. “I wish I could have given you more to go on.”

“What? No, you don't get it. This can't be. These things all get recorded. The set of measurements on the sheet you gave me has to have an exact match in our database. But it doesn't.”

Reggie sat back down. “What sort of measurements are we talking about?” he said.

“Everything you need to know if you're thinking about drilling or digging or tunneling into a specific location. The water table. The concentrations of gases. The composition—granite, clay, sand.”

“But the set of measurements I gave you doesn't match anything in your database?”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Possibly just an input error when the data was recorded?”

“If it was just one error, my wild-card search would have picked it up,” she said. “This is multiple discrepancies.”

Reggie considered it. “This means that either someone deliberately falsified the entries in the database, or . . .”

“Or the database entries are correct, and that piece of paper you gave me is forged data,” said Anne.

“Why would someone do that?”

She sat back in her chair, put on an air of suspicious authority that made Reggie want to smile, and said, “You tell me.”

“It's hard to see,” Reggie said respectfully, “what advantage someone would gain by trying to present an altered original after the data has already been recorded.”

“I guess,” she said. “But this thing you brought me is torn from a copy, not from an original. I didn't notice at first, because I've never seen this kind of copying paper. Before my time. But this is a twenty-year-old photostat.”

“Fair enough,” said Reggie. “But even so, I think we need to look at this the other way around. What if this is an accurate copy of the original document—and the official database is what someone altered? Would there be a reason for someone doing that?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Well, sure, lots of reasons, if you want to make that assumption. This valley is so highly developed, no matter which way you turn, there's nothing anywhere that doesn't have tons of money involved. So, yeah, I could think of some reasons why someone might want to alter one of these things—if they thought they could get away with it. You'd alter the data so that someone would dig and build where you want them to dig and build.”

“What sort of change would you make—I mean, to influence the choice of one location over another?”

“If you wanted someone to dig, you'd show more clay and less water and gas. If you wanted them not to dig, you'd show just the opposite.”

“Is there any way you can tell where this site is?”

“Not from just this,” she said, pushing her chair back from the terminal. “Bottom line is, you need to find the rest of your survey map. And you need the original—the original showing two signatures, one being the guy who did the survey, and the other being the supervisor who signed off on his work—if you want anybody to take this seriously.”

“I'm working on it,” said Reggie.

“When you find it, you better let me know,” she said, gathering her things. “Might be it will matter somewhere.”

“I'll do that,” said Reggie.

“Last chance,” she said, showing Reggie the last bit of her sandwich.

Reggie shook his head.

“Going, going, gone,” she said, and she popped the rest of it into her mouth.