Whitewash

  “I will. You be careful, too. Don’t get cocky with that key card.”

  “Me? Cocky?” He smiled and turned, starting down the hallway. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Sabrina was already disappearing through the stairwell door.

  He checked his watch and pulled out the GPS device again. He needed to backtrack, get his hand truck and return to the vehicle to get another load. Then he thought he might just wander by William Sidel’s office.

  104

  Sabrina knew the best thing Eric could do for her now was let her do what she came to do. Still, it was hard watching him go in the opposite direction. He needed to move on to the next building, stocking soda machines. Anything out of the ordinary would draw too much attention.

  She took the stairs, stopping on each landing to listen. Other than Pasha and O’Hearn, she didn’t think anyone would recognize her with the new haircut and in running shorts and a T-shirt. She checked her arms to see if the spray-on tan had streaked in the flood of humidity.

  She leaned her ear against the stairwell door.

  “Are you there yet?”

  Russ’s voice made her jump again.

  “Jesus!” she whispered. “You have to stop doing that.”

  “I’m just checking on you.”

  “You’re scaring the crap out of me.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I never thought I’d hear you say crap.”

  “Yeah, well, I never thought I’d be sneaking back into this place.”

  “Okay, so I won’t scare the crap out of you. Just remember to update us, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  On the other side of the door she listened again before she started down the hallway. It was still quiet. No computers or copiers were humming yet. Not even the fluorescent lights were on. The sun streamed in through the small milky-glass window set in the laboratory doors.

  She tried the entrance closest to Dr Lansik’s office. Sometimes it was locked. Today she lucked out. Silence here, too. Lab coats hung from the antique stand. Freshly washed test tubes dried on a paper towel by the sink. Bottles containing various degrees of brown liquid lined the samples shelf. Sabrina was struck by how normal everything looked, as if she’d never left. What did she expect? Life goes on. Even without her and Anna Copello the lab ran smoothly. Maybe she, at the very least, expected to see a mess. Weren’t she and Anna always cleaning up after the guys?

  Her father had told her once that he didn’t believe in teams of scientists. One ego would always bruise more easily than another. And brilliant minds weren’t necessarily generous ones, especially when it came to sharing credit. But Sabrina thought it was absurd that anyone would believe she’d murder Anna Copello over a promotion.

  Dwight Lansik’s office remained the same. No one had even moved out the old blue sofa. They had, however, removed his framed credentials. Bright white squares revealed their existence where the walls had stained around them.

  First things first. She sat down at Lansik’s computer and turned it on. Everything booted up normally, which meant the computer was still connected to the network server.

  She clicked on Control Panel and found the program file under Network that Russ had instructed her he’d need. Then she accessed her own e-mail simply by typing in her password. No one had thought to cancel her account. She typed in Russ’s e-mail address, attached the program file and hit Send. He had told her he needed her to open a door for him and leave it open. Sending him the e-mail opened that door. The attached program file would allow access to anything and everything stored on the network server. It was similar to how hackers managed to download viruses. Sabrina didn’t completely understand it. But she understood enough to know that if the processing plant’s files of hurricane debris were still on the server, Russ would be able to find them now.

  “I just sent the e-mail,” she said into her mic. “Let me know if you’ve received it.”

  She waited. Damn! What if it wasn’t as easy as Russ had made it sound? Seconds ticked by. It felt like an eternity of silence.

  “Got it!” he finally came back.

  Sabrina closed her e-mail, but left the computer on. Now she needed Lansik’s password for Russ to be able to download all those coded files that were stored on the network server. In his notebook he said he’d left it back in his office “in plain sight for any true scientist to discover.” Russ insisted it would be at least six to eight characters. What if it was part of the degrees and certificates that had been removed? It was possible. All of them were scientific degrees of some sort.

  The small bulletin board behind Lansik’s desk contained the usual stuff that most people put on their office cubicles or bulletin boards, with the exception that Lansik’s had a scientific flavor. There were several New Yorker cartoons, a newspaper article on EchoEnergy that included quotes from Lansik, and a small strip of paper that looked like it had come from a fortune cookie: “You will be rich and famous one day.” At the bottom was a series of lucky numbers. It couldn’t be that easy.

  “Are you ready to try one?” she asked.

  “Ready,” came his quick reply.

  “Okay. 43590.”

  “That’s only five numbers.”

  “I know,” she told him. “It probably isn’t it, but you said it might be something overly simple.”

  Silence.

  While she waited she kept examining the room. There wasn’t much here. Lansik kept decorating to a minimum. On one wall was a small periodic table, one of those ancient eleven-by-seven laminated posters like the ones found in high-school science classrooms. On the opposite wall was a small clock.

  “Nada,” Russ said. “I tried it backward and forward.”

  She glanced at her watch. She was taking too much time. In plain sight, she repeated to herself, for a true scientist. She stared at the periodic table. Could it be some combination? Some joke like oil and water?

  Something made her look back at the bulletin board.

  There were two quotes from Albert Einstein. The first:

  One must divide one’s time between politics and equations. But our equations are much more important to me.

  The other was one she hadn’t seen or heard before: If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

  She stared at both for what seemed much too long then finally she said, “Russ, try this, AAxyzxyz.”

  She waited again, but not long.

  “That’s it! I’m in. Come on back.”

  Sabrina smiled and let out a sigh of relief. In a matter of minutes they would have copies of every process the hurricane debris had gone through, including dates and times that they could connect to the satellite photos Russ had copied.

  “You have a lot of balls coming back here.”

  It took Sabrina a second to realize the voice wasn’t Russ in her ear. It came from behind her. She spun to find O’Hearn standing in the doorway.

  “It’s all been a mistake,” Sabrina said. Certainly he’d understand as soon as she told him that she was right about Reactor #5 and about the hurricane debris.

  “That’s right. A huge mistake. You were the one who should be dead.”

  That’s when she saw the gun in his hand.

  105

  Tallahassee Regional Airport

  Jason sat in front of another TV at the airport. Everything appeared in a haze. Sounds were jumbled together. His reflexes felt delayed. Maybe it was still the effects of the Bloody Marys. Several times he bumped into people, not even noticing them.

  He had moved three times to different passenger waiting areas so he wouldn’t draw attention to himself. He’d lost track of how many flights he’d watched board, how many he had seen arrive. He’d lost all track of time. He toted his carry-on and briefcase from one end of the terminal to the next.

  He turned on his cell phone long enough to panic at the full queue of missed calls and voice messages. It started ringing, startling him so much he a
lmost dropped it. He didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID. He shut the phone off and slipped it into his pocket.

  CNN’s crawl added new information in bits and pieces. Jason had seen most of it often enough that he had it memorized, so he immediately noticed anything new that came across the bottom of the screen. He thought he’d seen the worst of it. He was wrong.

  The newest information read,

  The senator’s chief of staff, Jason Brill, is wanted for questioning. Brill is believed to have left Washington, D.C. Anyone with information as to his whereabouts has been asked to call 1-800-555-0700.

  Jason sat up at the edge of the chair. This was crazy. Of course he’d left D.C., for the energy summit. It had nothing to do with Zach’s murder. How could they believe he had anything to do with Zach’s murder?

  He glanced around. There were more lines waiting to board flights. Regular airport personnel picked up trash and drove trams with handicapped passengers. Once or twice a security guard passed through the area. No one seemed to notice him. No one looked like they were watching him.

  That’s when it occurred to Jason that there might be someone waiting down in baggage claim or at the rental-car counter. Jesus! They had to know he had taken the morning flight here and that he had arrived. They’d be able to check that out. He couldn’t just take another flight somewhere else. They might be watching for that, too.

  He hadn’t picked up his checked garment bag. In his mind he flipped through its contents trying to decide if he could do without it. Almost everything except his suits he had stuffed in his carry-on or his briefcase.

  He slouched down in the vinyl seat, suddenly very aware of how alone he was. He pulled out his cell phone. He had it turned on and started to dial before he snapped it off. They could track a cell phone, couldn’t they?

  He scoped out the crowds again, then grabbed his carry-on and briefcase. He found a bank of pay phones with no one standing around. It’d been so long since he’d used one he had to read the instructions before he dialed. If he got a voice-messaging service he’d just hang up and no one would recognize the recorded phone number.

  “Hello,” she said after the third ring.

  “Lindy, it’s Jason.”

  “Where are you?” She changed to a whisper, a panicked whisper. No, not panicked—conspiratorial.

  “Never mind that. What the hell’s going on?”

  “Hold on a minute,” she said and his stomach clenched. Was she going to give him up? But then he heard her tell someone she’d catch up, that she had to take this call. If he remembered correctly she was already down here in Florida. Isn’t that what Senator Malone told him last night? She was probably at the estate. “Your boss is in a whole lot of trouble,” she finally said. “Word is his fingerprints were in Zach’s hotel room.”

  “Jesus! I can’t believe this.”

  “Jason, he says he was covering for you.”

  “What?”

  “He claims you called him and he came to help you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know Zach?”

  “I didn’t know him.”

  “He says you and Zach have been meeting there at the hotel for months. You reserved the same room. You made the reservations from your office. There are phone records.”

  Jason gripped the phone, needing to hang on to something. Jesus! He had reserved the same room at the Washington Grand several times over the last few months—for Senator Allen.

  “Jason?”

  “You don’t believe any of this. I was with you.”

  Now there was a pause.

  “You left early, before I woke up,” she finally said.

  “Lindy, it was four o’clock.” He shoved his fingers through his hair and glanced around him, wondering if anyone could smell his panic.

  “I don’t have any idea what time you left.”

  “Lindy, you know I didn’t do this.”

  There was silence, again. He couldn’t believe this.

  “Is that what you told the police?” he asked, bracing himself against the wall. His knees were threatening to wobble.

  “I haven’t told them…look, they haven’t asked…yet.”

  “Lindy, why would I…” He glanced around and lowered his voice. “Why would I sleep with you if I was gay?”

  “How do I know why you guys do anything?” He heard a bit of anger in her voice. “It certainly didn’t stop Zach from sleeping with me the first time we met.”

  Silence. Again.

  Jason closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall of the pay phone. So that was it. She didn’t believe him.

  “Jason, maybe you should just go to them and tell them what happened.”

  The panic caught in his throat and he swallowed hard. How could she believe he was capable of murder? She would be worthless as an alibi. If the woman he fucked and left too early thought he was capable of going to another room in the same hotel and passionately killing a male lover, then what would the cops believe? Evidently the story Senator Allen had provided was convincing.

  “Jason?”

  He placed the phone gently back in its cradle.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had gone by while he stood there. The noises around him couldn’t puncture the throbbing in his head. His feet guarded the only belongings he now owned. The scent of cinnamon reminded his empty stomach to gather in knots.

  He had no place to go and the one person he thought he could count on, the one person he had pledged his loyalty to, had just thrown him in front of a moving train.

  106

  EchoEnergy

  “What’s going on?” Sabrina heard Russ whisper in her ear.

  “What are you doing with a gun, Dr. O’Hearn?”

  She didn’t move. Was he serious? He couldn’t possibly be worried that she had come back to knock off the rest of her colleagues.

  “A gun? Who’s O’Hearn?” She ignored Russ, slightly turning the earpiece away so that O’Hearn couldn’t spot it as easily. O’Hearn’s black eyes were as wild and unsettled as his mop of hair.

  “Why in the world would you come back?” he asked, then looked around the office. He noticed the computer screen though Sabrina had closed out her e-mail so nothing was left except the screen saver. “What could be so important that you’d risk coming back?”

  “I didn’t kill Anna,” she said, trying to explain. She figured O’Hearn was defending himself from her. As soon as she explained he’d understand. Then it occurred to her. How did he know she had been the real target?

  “What did you mean I should be the one dead?”

  “He left you something, didn’t he?” O’Hearn seemed focused on the computer, his eyes darted back and forth. “That son of a bitch left you something on his computer.”

  She’d never seen O’Hearn angry. Usually he had been the voice of reason, the calm within the storm. Now his silver goatee caught spittle, his bushy eyebrows met in an angry V. With his shirtsleeves rolled and pushed up, she could see the veins bulging in his arms, especially the one holding the gun.

  “I have no idea what or who you’re talking about.”

  “What is it? What did he leave for you?” He jabbed the gun at her.

  “Honestly, you’re not making sense.” She caught herself backing away from him and didn’t notice until she was up against the old blue sofa.

  “You almost ruined everything. You and Lansik. Too bad neither of you could be like good ole Ernie Walker, satisfied with retiring to Cancún with a nice little bank account.”

  “You’re in on it,” Sabrina said in almost a whisper. She couldn’t believe it. But of course, Sidel would have needed someone to change the computer program, someone who would know how to set the correct temperature and coking times.

  “What do you mean ‘in on it’?” O’Hearn looked insulted. “Lansik may have come up with the formula for thermal conversion of chicken guts. He certainly took all the credit
.” O’Hearn emphasized his points with the gun. Sabrina couldn’t take her eyes off it. “I was the one who kept saying we needed to do Grade 2 garbage in order to be efficient and make a profit.”

  “But the upgrades to the equipment were never made,” Sabrina reminded him. “As a scientist, how could you do it incorrectly?”

  “Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how much the government is paying to haul away that goddamn hurricane crap? Getting paid to haul away the garbage is the only way this process will ever be able to compete. We’d never be able to put out enough oil with chicken guts to be taken seriously. What’s the use of doing any of this if we’re not taken seriously?”

  “But Dr. Lansik didn’t agree.” Sabrina wanted to keep him talking. It was almost as if he forgot about the gun when he talked except that he swung it around recklessly.

  Out of the corner of her eyes she scanned the small office for weapons. Would Russ or Howard come to her rescue? No, of course not. They couldn’t get into the building. And Eric was off somewhere stocking soda machines. They couldn’t even contact him.

  “Dwight was very narrow-minded,” O’Hearn continued. He didn’t sound angry so much as vindicated.

  “Why didn’t Sidel just fire him?”

  “Sidel?” O’Hearn laughed. “You think that dimwit clown could comprehend any of this? He might know how to charm investors, but he doesn’t have a clue about thermal conversion. You ever heard his explanation? It’s magic.” O’Hearn laughed again and Sabrina noticed the gun hand dropped to his side. O’Hearn had a killer ego, not a killer instinct. If she could talk him out of this small office and into the lab, she might have a chance at making a run for it.

  “The oil’s not the same,” she said. O’Hearn quit laughing and stared at her. “Oil from Grade 2 garbage has too many impurities.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She knew it wasn’t true, but she continued, “I’ve seen samples with so many impurities they sink to the bottom.”