B007GFGTIY EBOK (5 page)

Though Hayden didn’t trust Santiago, he also blamed himself for his treatment at Santiago’s and Rice’s hands. They’d picked up on his reticence and misread his unwillingness to tell them why he’d called Shane so late as a drug issue. Hiding the file was a stupid move on his part, but he wanted to protect Shane’s name. Shane deserved privacy. If something embarrassing lay at the heart of his suicide, the world didn’t have to know about it. He’d open the file when he got home. If the contents were relevant to Santiago’s investigation, then he’d hand it over. If they weren’t, then it wasn’t any of their business.

He tried to blot it all out and focus on not falling asleep at the wheel. He found himself on autopilot, replaying the interview. He couldn’t shake Santiago’s point. He hadn’t seen Shane in three years. What made him think he knew Shane the way he knew him in college? They were close back then. Best buds. Hayden had been there at the lowest point in Shane’s life, when his parents had been killed. But that was then. Their lives had taken them in different directions and their relationship had drifted. If they’d really been close, that wouldn’t have happened. The truth of the matter was that he knew the Shane of old, not the Shane who took his life. The admission left him feeling sick to his stomach.

He pulled over onto the shoulder and broke down. He cried for a friend he couldn’t save. He cried for how frightened he’d been when Shane pressed the butcher knife against his stomach. He cried because he was tired, confused, and grieving and he couldn’t think straight anymore. He cried himself out. He didn’t feel better for it. He still felt nauseated and his head was pounding, but he was good enough to drive.

It was just after five when he pulled off I-80 and pointed his car in the direction of his home. His skin crawled against his soiled clothes and his brain felt stuffed with cotton balls. He just wanted to go to bed to blot out the last six hours. He’d call the office and tell them he’d be in late.

Hayden hit the remote and parked in the garage. He was dead on his feet as he slipped from the car, but a preternatural sense snapped him out of his daze. As soon as he pushed open the connecting door from the garage to the house, he pulled up short. He detected a disturbance in his home. He didn’t smell or hear anything. It was much subtler than that. Someone had been inside his home. He knew that as surely as he knew Shane was dead.

He inched inside, not bothering to close the door behind him. He stood very still and listened. He heard nothing but the hum of the refrigerator. Whoever had been inside wasn’t there anymore. He went to the front door and found the lock intact. The same couldn’t be said of the sliding door in the kitchen. Its lock had been drilled out. Not surprising. The front door with its dead bolt would have taken time, but not the kitchen door. It shared the same security technology as a desk drawer. Still, the kitchen itself appeared untouched. Hayden braced himself to check out the rest of the house.

He switched on the hallway lights and waited. No shuffling of startled housebreakers greeted him. He went into the living room, turning on lights as he went. The room was a mess—furniture overturned, breakables broken and his TV and DVD player missing. Just what he expected. His house looked as if Shane had dropped by.

The bedrooms were a similar story. Finally, he checked his office. Drawings, papers, and CDs carpeted the floor. Most devastating to Hayden, his computer and laptop were gone. Someone had his work, his files, and now they had Shane’s attachment.

A
Fairfield police officer woke Hayden up. When he hadn’t answered the door, the officer had entered the house the same way as the thieves, through the kitchen slider. The officer found him stretched out on the living room floor. Hayden would have crashed on his bed or sofa, but seeing as both of those were overturned and the dispatcher had told him not to disturb the crime scene, the floor made for the next best thing. He hadn’t expected to fall asleep, since he had to use his crossed arms for a pillow, but exhaustion had proved him wrong. It took a brisk shove from the officer to rouse him. Hayden checked his watch. It was six.

“Hayden Duke?” the officer asked.

Hayden nodded.

“Can we see some ID?”

Hayden dug out his driver’s license and handed it over. The officer examined it and handed it back. “I’m Officer Rick White.”

White surveyed the disarray. “You came home to this?”

“Yeah.” Hayden ran a hand through his hair.

White sighed. “At least you weren’t home. One thing homeowner’s insurance can’t replace is you.”

Hayden didn’t respond to the homegrown philosophy. It was too early for that.

White looked Hayden over, then went on an unguided tour of the house. He looked over the kitchen slider’s damaged lock before walking through the house, tiptoeing around the mess. Hayden had no option but to follow.

“I’ll be honest with you. I doubt we’ll recover any of your possessions unless something specific or rare was taken,” White said while standing in Hayden’s hardest-hit room, his office. “Do you know what’s been taken?”

“Pretty much, but it’s all replaceable stuff. Nothing you’d find on
Antiques Roadshow
.”

“Could you make a list for me?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Hayden picked up a legal pad from the floor and White handed him a pen. He looked at the gaps where his possessions used to sit and outlined the stolen items.

“I’m going to call this one in,” White said. “Like I say, I doubt we’ll find any prints that’ll track back to anyone, but you never know your luck. I’ll get some more people to work the scene and canvas the area.”

“Thanks. I appreciate the effort. I realize this is pretty much a lost cause.”

White smiled and left the room while talking into his radio.

Hayden completed cataloging the missing items in his office and extended his search back into the living room. White stood perfectly positioned between the front door and the open slider in the kitchen.

“OK if I get your statement?” White asked.

Hayden nodded and walked White through events while White wrote it up. Unlike his statement to Santiago and Rice, this one was short. He had come home and found the house ransacked and called the police.

“Why home so late?”

After seeing Shane die and spending the subsequent hours being interviewed, Hayden wasn’t in the mood to get tangled up in explaining everything again. “I was visiting friends.”

“The stamina of youth. You can’t beat it.” White smiled, but the smile quickly turned into an accusing grimace. “Were you and your friends fighting?”

Hayden followed White’s gaze to his torn and bloody shirt. He couldn’t believe his stupidity. He hadn’t changed out of his clothes. He cursed under his breath.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Hayden now understood White’s reason for calling for backup for a burglary with no chance of an arrest. White was bringing in reinforcements for something much larger. Hayden saw any chance of keeping Shane’s death and Santiago out of the conversation disappear. If he didn’t want to end up spending the day explaining himself, he had to come clean.

“My friend committed suicide. I’ve been with the Marin County Sheriff’s Department all night.” He removed Santiago’s business card from his wallet and gave it to White. “He can tell you all about it.”

White wrote Santiago’s details down. Hayden hoped White wouldn’t pursue Santiago beyond confirmation purposes. He could do without being squeezed between two sets of cops.

White handed the business card back. “And the blood?”

“My friend assaulted me before killing himself. I’d prefer not to talk about it. I haven’t slept all night and it has nothing to do with what happened here.”

“I’ll make that determination, Mr. Duke.” White’s tone had turned abrasive. No one was going to tell him who ran this investigation. Hayden nodded his apology. Antagonizing White was only going to complicate things. He might talk the case up with Santiago and rile him up. Hayden didn’t need the detective seeing things that weren’t there. Santiago already viewed him as suspect.

White got a brief statement out of Hayden about Shane’s suicide just as a second officer and a crime tech arrived. White left the house to check Hayden’s account while the second cop watched over him and the crime tech went over the house for prints.

The shift in mood was palpable. No one viewed Hayden as a victim anymore. He was a person of interest now, which was a polite way of saying he was a suspect until proven innocent. Hayden detected a strong sense of glee coming from White’s fellow officer when they fingerprinted him “for elimination purposes.” He didn’t get upset. Despite what anyone thought, he wasn’t the bad guy here. The best thing to do was let them come to that conclusion on their own.

White returned after a few minutes. Whoever he’d talked to had confirmed Hayden’s account. His affable nature didn’t return along with him, but neither did any itchiness to reach for his cuffs. The backup cop and technician wrapped things up and filed out while White stayed behind.

“We’ll be interviewing your neighbors to see if they heard anything,” the officer said, “but at a more reasonable hour.”

A more reasonable hour wasn’t far away. It was fully morning. His neighbors with longer commutes were already leaving for work.

White saw himself out. Hayden followed him to the threshold.

“I’ll be in touch very soon.”

Hayden wondered what it was he’d be in touch about. The theft or his conversation with Santiago?

Hayden had ruffled the cop’s feathers enough, so he thanked him and closed the door.

His ravaged home was his again to do with as he pleased. He reattached the wall phone in the kitchen and dialed his dad’s cell. From the background noise, he could tell he’d caught his father on his way to work.

Hayden said, “My house was broken into.”

“I’ll be right over, buddy.”

“But don’t tell Mom.”

He didn’t want to worry her. She’d fuss and he loved her for it, but fuss and worry weren’t what he needed right now. The last thing he needed was to be told how it would have been different if he’d just…

John Duke arrived fifteen minutes later. He let himself in as Hayden came out from his bedroom. Hayden had removed the bandages covering the knife cuts.

John Duke stopped short when he saw the wounds. “Jesus. You didn’t say they worked you over.”

“No, that’s from something else.” Hayden pulled on a T-shirt. “When’s Tommy coming?”

Tommy had been one of the reasons Hayden had called his father. Tommy was John Duke’s friend and a twenty-four-hour locksmith. Hayden couldn’t leave his home until he had a new lock on the door, unless he wanted to see the rest of his belongings disappear.

“Should be here within the hour. He’s on another job. You’re not the only one suffering from a nasty case of thieves.”

John Duke ignored the war zone, went over to his son, and lifted his shirt. “You want to tell me about this?”

Hayden didn’t. It was another reason he hadn’t wanted his mom around. Shane’s death would send her fussing and worrying into overdrive. His father was different. John Duke would worry and he would fuss—a parental prerogative—but he’d keep it hidden from Hayden. Still, he didn’t want to talk about Shane. He hadn’t processed it himself. But his father stood waiting for an answer to his question.

They flipped the sofa the right way and sat. Hayden told his father about Shane. When he was finished, John Duke said, “I’m sorry, son. Your mom is going to want to hear about this.”

“I know.”

“Then you’d better call her, or better still, visit.” John Duke smiled. “You’d be making your old dad’s life easier.”

Before Hayden could agree or disagree, a middle-aged man with dirty-blond curly hair and an equally curly mustache pushed the door open. “By the looks of this fuster cluck, I would say that you need new locks. I might have one or three.”

Hayden left his dad and Tommy to replace the locks and called Dave O’Brien, his boss at Macpherson Water. He explained he wouldn’t be coming in because of the burglary. O’Brien was sympathetic, but made it clear Hayden was expected in the next day. Hayden couldn’t afford to lose a second day’s pay and promised he would be there.

Now came the more difficult call to Trevor Bellis.

“Hi, Hayden. What can I do for you?”

“I’ve got bad news.”

“Bad news? Hayden, I was very clear about our timeline.”

That told Hayden that the police hadn’t contacted him about Shane. “Shane died last night.”

“Oh my God. How?”

Hayden told him about the suicide, doing his best to minimize Shane’s drugged and crazed state. As odd as the night’s event were, he didn’t want his friend’s reputation tarnished any further. “I’m sure the police will give you the full details.”

“I…I…I don’t know what to say.”

You and me both, brother.

“Unfortunately, I have more bad news. I came home to find my house robbed. They took my computers with the MDE files on them.”

“Jesus, Hayden, how could you let this happen? This project is classified. We had you sign a confidentiality agreement for a reason. Do you realize the position you’ve put me in with our client? It makes us look unprofessional and incompetent.”

It looked as if the mourning period for Shane was over. “You’re not happy about this and neither am I,” Hayden said. “It wasn’t like I invited them in. The theft just happened. Besides, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. The thieves won’t know what they have. I’m sure they just took the stuff to sell for some quick cash.”

Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he believed that. The break-in didn’t feel like bad luck. Something didn’t feel right. Was it just coincidence that his place got robbed when he just so happened to have files belonging to a secret industrial project? Maybe he was a victim of industrial espionage. It was unlikely, but possible.

“I don’t have time for this now, Hayden. I have to inform the staff about Shane. I’ll get back to you about this theft.”

Hayden hung up the phone and went to check on Tommy’s progress.

It didn’t take Tommy long to replace the locks throughout the house. Even though the slider lock was the only one broken, Hayden wasn’t taking any chances. Tommy handed Hayden a new set of keys. Hayden tried to give Tommy some cash, but he refused.

“You can pay me when you’ve got your life in order.”

Hayden had heard this line from Tommy before. No bill would be forthcoming. Hayden would have to give his dad the cash to take Tommy out for a drink sometime. At least one nice thing had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

Lockhart watched Beckerman pick through the contents of Hayden’s computers. Beckerman was a skilled technician on a number of levels. Computers were one such level. Lockhart didn’t need to observe Beckerman’s every move, but fear compelled him to remain rooted at his side. He had to know the extent of the breach and whether he’d caught it in time. Beckerman closed a program and pushed his chair back from the laptop.

“Done?”

Beckerman nodded.

“What’s the verdict?”

Lockhart kept the agitation from his voice. He could be as anxious as he liked on the inside, but he couldn’t show it, especially to Beckerman. The moment someone like Beckerman recognized that his boss was a liability, he’d take action to protect his own interests.

“I think we’re in pretty good shape. I found the e-mail attachment Fallon sent Duke.”

The moment things turned shaky at Marin Design Engineering, Lockhart had instructed Beckerman to monitor Chaudhary’s phone lines. When the calls kicked up a relationship with Shane Fallon, Beckerman bugged Fallon’s line. That decision proved to be worth its weight in gold as the bug caught the call between Fallon and Duke. Fallon’s suicide provided the perfect opportunity to reclaim anything sent to Duke.

“What about Fallon’s computer?”

“He destroyed it in his frenzy. I did take the precaution of removing the hard drive, even though it’s toast.”

“You should have taken the computer.”

“It would have been missed, but no one will notice the missing hard drive among all the damage.”

“Do you think Duke opened the file Fallon sent him?”

“No. There’s nothing in the temporary files or memory cache to support that. Besides, the file is password protected, and I don’t see any evidence that he gave Duke the password.”

“Fallon just saved his friend’s life.”

“I’d like to monitor Hayden’s phone line for a few days. I don’t think he knows anything, but Fallon could have sent him something else.”

Lockhart nodded his approval.