Indispensable Party (Sasha McCandless Legal Thriller No. 4) (9 page)

“I’m finishing off Jordan now. I’m
just getting her a box of ginger cookies and some preggie pops.”

Both of her brothers’ wives were pregnant.
Again. But, this time Jordan was carrying twins and having a difficult time of
it. Sasha’d gotten both Jordan and Riley gift certificates for pregnancy
massages at their favorite day spa, but she wanted to add something small for
Jordan’s stocking.

“Preggie pops?”

“I don’t know, Connelly. They’re
these special lollipops that are supposed to help with nausea.”

“Oh. Could you imagine having
twins?” Connelly asked.

The undercurrent in his voice
made her look up. “I can’t imagine having a cat, Connelly, let alone two human
beings who are utterly dependent on me.”

“Don’t you ever see yourself
having kids?”

Sasha wasn’t sure how to answer. “Maybe,
I guess. Sometimes. When I’m reading a book with Daniella or helping Liam work
on a science project, I think about how amazing it must be to have that
relationship. But, right now? How would that work?”

Connelly didn’t answer.

“What about you? Do you want
kids?” As she asked the question, she realized she had no idea what his answer
would be. They’d never discussed it.

“Yes.” He said it immediately and
decisively.

“Oh.”

She returned to filling her order
and turned this new information over in her head.

“What are you thinking?” he
pressed.

“I’m trying to decide whether to
get Naya a cashmere sweater or a boxed set of Law & Order DVDs,” she lied.

She felt his eyes on her but didn’t
look up.

“Watch the road, Connelly.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When they reached the office,
Naya was waiting for them with a tray of wraps from the coffee shop downstairs.
And, more importantly, a carafe of fresh coffee. Connelly beelined for the
food; Sasha went straight to the caffeine source.

Naya shook her head. “How about
some lunch, Mac? Jake had the kitchen make you a brie and green apple sandwich.”

“Brie and apple?” Connelly said
around a mouthful of roast beef.

Naya shrugged. “She claims it’s
good. I haven’t tried it.” She plucked a turkey and Swiss wrap from the tray.

“I’ll eat later,” Sasha said. She
couldn’t eat now—she’d never been able to eat when stress hormones were
flooding her body. It had made her first year of law school a bit of a
challenge.

“Suit yourself,” Naya said. She
handed Sasha a manila folder. “Here. This is what I’ve managed to find on your
girl. Well, maybe your girl.”

Sasha flipped the folder open. A
copy of the personnel file records were clipped to the front of the folder
along with a picture of an unsmiling Celia Gerig. Naya had crossed through the
information they knew to be inaccurate with a thick black marker. The social
security number was highlighted, along with the woman’s educational background.

“What’s the rest of this?” Sasha
asked, leafing through printouts of what appeared to be threads from an
Internet chatroom. “This Preppers Pennsylvania stuff?”

“I couldn’t find any property
records or other public records in her name or social, but I ran some Google
searches. She’s not on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, unless she uses a
pseudonym, but I found a ‘cgerig’ on a prepper forum, posting on a
Pennsylvania-specific sub-forum—Preppers PA. This ‘cgerig’ uses an avatar of
the American flag, not a profile picture, so I can’t say for sure it’s your
girl, but it if is…” Naya trailed off, shaking her head at the thought.

Sasha looked up at her. “What’s a
prepper?”

Connelly abandoned his sandwich
and came to peer over Sasha’s shoulder at the papers.

Naya’s voice lacked its usual
confidence when she answered. “I haven’t had a lot of time to dig into it, but
I think preppers are survivalists. They’re all about preparing for catastrophe
and being self-reliant if—or, I guess they think, when—the government
collapses.”

Connelly nodded his agreement.

Sasha remained confused. “So, I
have a case of bottled water and a flashlight in my hall closet. Am I a
prepper?”

Connelly shook his head. “These
people are a bit more enthusiastic about it than that. They have secure
locations set up in remote areas; they stockpile nonperishable food, clothes,
antibiotics, gasoline, ammunition and weapons, you name it.”

Naya chimed in, “Yeah, this
cgerig was posting looking for a good source for vacuum-packed heirloom seeds
in case she has to bug out and leave her vegetable garden behind.”

“Bug out?”

Naya laughed. “I picked up some
of the lingo. When SHTF—uh, that’d be when the shit hits the fan—a prepper
needs to decide whether to bug out or bug in. Bugging out is what Leo was
talking about. Grab your go bag, your family, and a container of extra fuel and
jump in your car, headed for your secure outpost, away from society and all the
chaos.”

“And bugging in, I assume, that’s
sheltering in place?” Sasha asked.

Naya nodded. “Bar the doors and
windows, fire up your generator, keep your weapon handy, and hunker down until
everyone else dies or whatever.”

Sasha considered this
information. “So, Celia Gerig may be affiliated with a group of preppers. Do we
think she’s dangerous?”

Naya shrugged. “It looks like any
other group, Mac. Some people really seem to be throwing themselves into it:
they’re organizing meet ups, making up secret passwords, and sending coded
messages. They talk about converting their currency into gold bars or silver
ingots and learning how to field dress deer. Some people are dabbling—they want
to plant a garden, can some vegetables, maybe learn how to purify water. I’d
say based on what I’ve seen, Celia Gerig, if this is even her, was in the second
group. But, I don’t know for sure. She could be skinning a rabbit somewhere as
we speak.”

Sasha grimaced.

Connelly cleared his throat. “There’s
nothing inherently bad in preparing for a disaster. That’s a good thing,
actually. But we need to find out, fast, if Celia Gerig was actually a member
of a fringe group.” The muscles under his cheeks twitched.

Sasha cocked her head and took in
his grim expression. “These preppers are on some kind of list, aren’t they?”

When Connelly had still been
working for the Department of Homeland Security, she and he had engaged in
several heated, ultimately unproductive, debates about whether it was
appropriate, or even useful, for the government to surreptitiously gather
information about private citizens based on, say, their membership in an
environmental group or their ethnic-sounding surname.

Sasha’s defense of the First
Amendment had repeatedly bumped up against Connelly’s commitment to national
security, and, finally, the subject became one of those topics that couples
just avoid. Only, in their case, it kept popping back up at really inopportune
times—like when a rogue employee disappeared with an indeterminate number of
government vaccines needed to prevent a pandemic.

Connelly exhaled and glanced down
at her. “Can I use Naya’s office? I have to make some calls,” he said, by way
of answer.

That was fine with Sasha. She had
some calls of her own to make. She nodded, and he walked across the hall,
stopping only to kiss the top of her head as he passed her.

As the door shut behind him, Naya
pounced.

“What’s going on, Mac? This is
obviously more than an employee helping a competitor.”

Sasha flung herself into her desk
chair. “That’s for sure, but, to tell you the truth, I have no idea what’s
going on. We think ViraGene’s behind it. But if Gerig is a prepper, who knows?
All we know is she’s missing, along with a bunch of vaccines.”

Naya pulled out the chair across
from her. “She stole vaccines?”

“We think so. Not just any
vaccines, though. The vaccine for the Doomsday flu. The government’s
stockpiling it at Fort Meade.”

Naya narrowed her eyes. “Well,
ViraGene makes an antiviral, right? It makes sense that they’d want to screw up
the contract for the vaccine. And having the shipment show up short would go a
long way toward doing that, don’t you think?”

“I do. At least that’s what I
did
think. But, this prepper stuff adds a wrinkle.”

“First of all, we don’t even know
if Gerig is a prepper. And, say she is, it could just be a hobby, unrelated to
her corporate espionage career.” Naya cracked a smile.

Sasha’s return smile was weak. “Or
it could be the beginning of another Ruby Ridge. You know that’s what Connelly’s
thinking.”

“What are you thinking?”

The question stirred up all the
anxiety and worry Sasha had spent the weekend tamping down. Sasha looked at
Naya for a long moment then said, “I’m thinking this is getting too ugly, too
fast. And I’m not up for anything other than a civil lawsuit between two
corporations.”

Naya’s voice was softer and had a
note of concern when she asked, “So, what are you gonna do, Mac?”

“The first thing I’m going to do
is call Gavin Russell. We have to find out whether we even have a problem.”

Gavin Russell, formerly of the
Clear Brook County Sheriff’s Office, had struck out for greener pastures and better
coffee after the dust settled in Springport. He’d refused the promotion from
deputy to sheriff, taken an early retirement package, and opened a private
investigator’s office across the street from the courthouse in the space
recently vacated by the town doctor.

He answered Sasha’s call on the
second ring.

“Russell Investigations.”

“First of all, it’s Saturday, why
are you in the office? Second of all, you still don’t have a secretary?” Sasha
asked.

“Hey, Sasha,” he laughed. “As to
your first question, you’re one to talk—I see you’re calling me from your
office. And, as to the second, I can’t convince Gloria that I’ll pay her better
than the new judge. I’m still working on her, though.”

Sasha smiled, surprised at the
fondness she felt for the former deputy and the judge’s secretary. “You’ll wear
her down,” she said. “So, how’s business?”

Russell’s voice rumbled across
the line, and Sasha could picture him, his chair tipped back on two legs and
his feet propped on his desk. A cup of shade-grown Cubano at his elbow.

“Good. It’s a piece of cake,
actually. Mainly, I’m doing what I used to do for the sheriff’s office—serving
subpoenas, tracking down witnesses, that sort of thing. But, I can charge less
and still make more than I was earning. And the oil and gas people are like an
untapped market.” He chuckled at his own pun.

“How so?”

“Well, the riggers aren’t local,
most of them, anyway. And they’ve been up here a long time, months on end. Some
girlfriends and wives are starting to get worried. One of them found my website
and hired me to follow her guy around for a few weekends. Took a bunch of
pictures of him playing cards and watching football at The Hole in the Wall,
and she was delighted. She told all her friends, and now everybody wants me to
follow their guy.”

Sasha wasn’t sure that was a
great idea. Her last messy case had involved broken marriages and photographic
evidence of bad behavior. “That sounds kind of dangerous, Gavin.”

“Naw, I tried to explain to these
ladies—there’s not a huge single woman population up this way. Trust me, I
know. Their guys aren’t going to get into that kind of trouble, not in
Springport. But, they just want the peace of mind and are willing to pay top
dollar for it. Speaking of long-distance relationships, how are things with
Leo?”

“We’re working on it,” she said
simply.

“Good. He’s a good man,” Gavin
proclaimed. Then, his tone changed, and he said, “But, I know you didn’t call
me just to shoot the breeze. What’s up?”

“I might need to hire you. Can
you still access state databases?”

Gavin answered slowly. “Do I
still have personal access to the state databases? No.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

 “To answer your question, then,
yes. But, what exactly do you need?”

“I’m not sure. I have a corporate
client that’s trying to find an employee. She used fake references and a phony
address but her social checks out. Her last whereabouts were in New Kensington,
outside of Pittsburgh. Naya’s going to run down all the publicly available
information, but we have a bit of a time crunch. Are there any databases you
know of that would help?”

“Does she have any known prior
arrests or convictions?” Gavin said.

“None that I know of, but to
check the criminal dockets on our end would be a nightmare.”

Each of the sixty-seven counties
within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania maintained its own criminal docket
sheets, which were theoretically searchable on-line, but it would be tedious
and time-consuming for Naya to run the searches one at a time, and there was
always the risk that some county clerk had mistyped a letter when entering the
data or that a county wasn’t completely up to date with its dockets. No, Naya’s
time was better spent running down other leads. Especially if Gavin could go
straight to the source.

“Okay. Give me the name and
social. I’ll call you back with anything that pops.”

“The name is Celia Anne Gerig.
That’s G-E-R-I-G and her social is—”

“Celia Gerig?”Gavin repeated,
cutting her off. Surprise registered in his voice.

“Don’t tell me you know her.”

“I know
a
Celia Gerig. She’s
local. If it’s the same woman, I took her to my prom.”

Celia woke up
late and bone tired on Saturday afternoon. She checked her watch. She’d slept
past noon. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that. She didn’t feel
refreshed, though. She felt wrung out and flat.

She pushed herself up on her
elbows and blinked the sand out of her eyes, trying to figure out where she
was. As the fog lifted over her brain, the events of the previous evening
returned: the dead car battery and the run-in with Ben; the drive north to the
rendezvous point; the meeting; the vaccination. It all came back, and she
realized she was in Lydia’s guest room.