Boldt 03 - No Witnesses (11 page)

The number swam around lazily in her head:
five million dollars
.

Third paragraph, page 4:
Consumer Product Tampering
. She swallowed dryly and glanced around the room to make sure she was still alone. Gooseflesh ran up her left side and across her chest and down into her stomach, which fluttered nervously.

A long definition, followed by more legalese. It seemed to say that all costs of advertising, development, distribution, promotion, production, and publicity to reintroduce any discontinued product line that was pulled as a direct result of internal or external criminal activity—“see above”—were to be
paid in full
up to and including the sum of eighty million dollars.

She gasped aloud and reread this number:
eighty million dollars
. Under
Criminal Attack
, Adler Foods was to be compensated in order to return its goods to the marketplace. It occurred to her how it might be possible to misuse this reimbursement in order to redesign, repackage, and reintroduce a product or an entire line, with the insurance company footing the bill. It would require convincing the police a crime had taken place, and it would require paperwork from police files supporting this. Such paperwork existed already, no doubt, thanks to her enlisting the help of Lou Boldt, and the company had already issued one recall of Mom’s Chicken Soup, which Taplin had claimed would cost the company a quarter-million dollars. But according to this document, it would not cost the company at all. So why had Taplin lied about the cost to the company?

A hollow, sinking feeling stole into her. Her mouth went dry; her palms grew sticky. She loosened her scarf. It did not help.

She backed up in the indexes. She touched N, in the general index and found an entry for
New Leaf Foods
, the original company name that Adler had operated under until his reorganization several years before. She found the appropriate disk and inserted it into the machine, hit the
ENTER
key, and was faced now with yet another index. She browsed a variety of categories, astounded by the wealth of information and how easily available and accessed it was.

She browsed New Leaf’s legal documents and used a hypertext
SEARCH
function to locate all documents containing the word
contamination
. She took another ten minutes to narrow the result of this search down to several business letters and memos sent between New Leaf and the Washington State Health Department. All of these documents were shown in the index to have archived hard copies.

The first of these letters documented a phone call from the State Health Department alerting New Leaf to a possible contamination of their soup products. This and all subsequent correspondence was handled by Howard Taplin who, judging by the tone, had been cooperative but denied any wrongdoing on the part of Adler Foods. A product recall had been issued.

The dates of the correspondence were filed chronologically. In the middle of the electronic stack, Daphne discovered a copy of a State Health lab report that showed a technical analysis of New Leaf’s Free Range Chicken Soup. The details of Slater Lowry’s death did not escape Daphne’s attention. The psychologist in her suddenly had not only a possible motivation, but a convincing similarity between the two crimes.

She anxiously hurried forward in the correspondence searching for further explanations. Memo after memo blurred past. Too many to read thoroughly, but she scanned them all. She resorted to the
FIND
function, searching first for “chicken” and, faced with dozens of documents, changed the search string to “poultry,” which produced only six hits. She viewed the documents individually, reading each one carefully. On the third document she read the name:
Longview Farms
.

A rural route address was listed in Sasquaw, Washington. She wrote this down, including the phone number, and continued to speed-read the rest of the documents. Lawsuits and countersuits had been filed. State Heath had charged Longview Farms with the contamination, clearing New Leaf.

Her eye caught the slight uphill angle of a typed word,
salmonella
. She zoomed in on the image.

Daphne would realize later that had the lab report not been scanned into the computer, had the image not been placed on a large screen that allowed her to zoom in with the magnifying glass icon, she might have missed this and the other changes that appeared to have been made. One of these changes was the date—
September 15
—which appeared slightly askew, imperceptibly misregistered on the line with the rest of the typewritten data. Over the next fifteen minutes she scrutinized this document, studying all the vital information and discovering what appeared to be five separate changes. Six or seven, possibly. At last she leaned back in the chair studying the screen and released a huge sigh that she had unknowingly been containing. It seemed possible that this lab report had been altered. Why? And by whom? And what did it mean?

Two thoughts occupied her. She wanted a hard copy to show Boldt and others—perhaps even Owen Adler. She wanted a look at the archived copy to study its condition and, if possible, to run it by the second floor for lab tests. The New Leaf salmonella contamination gained weight in her mind as having some bearing on the present blackmailing of Adler Foods. Excitement surged through her. Right or wrong, she had to prove this to herself.

With the document on the screen, she selected the PRINT icon, but a message returned to check the printer. She had not thought to switch it on. She did so, but the switch did nothing. The machine was not responding.

She traced the printer’s power cord back to the wall socket, discovering a device unfamiliar to her. It appeared to be an AC power outlet that operated off a key: a metal box with a single keyhole that physically locked the printer’s plug inside the device and prevented any power reaching that plug without the right key. She tried the key Adler had given her, but it didn’t fit. Had he simply forgotten to give her this, or had he not wanted her gaining a hard copy without first asking?

She snapped her head toward the door, left ajar, believing she heard something. On the far wall of the secretarial pool, a red light blinked twice. She squinted and studied the box from a distance: It was a security keypad identical to the one she had used upstairs, this one located next to one of the downstairs exit doors.

She was familiar enough with security devices to know that this red blinking signal represented an entry by window or door somewhere in the building.

Someone was inside. Someone with a key.

A moment later the yellow blinking light turned green. This person had keyed in the proper code and reset the security.

She returned her attention to the computer screen. Whoever it was, she didn’t want the person finding her and seeing the New Leaf lab report on the screen. With the printer message still on the screen she attempted to close the file, but the screen responded with a second overlapping message that she had requested to print the document and that the printer wasn’t responding: “Verify printer operation,” the dialogue box told her. She selected CANCEL, but this only removed the second dialogue box. It did not clear the printing error. The lab report remained on the screen staring back at her.

How long did she have until she was discovered? As if to answer this, the tiny strip of light at the bottom of the door blinked, as whoever had entered the building had used the upstairs switch. Someone was headed downstairs.

The screen-saver graphic patterns at work on the other terminal were designed to protect a monitor from “burning in” by keeping images moving on the screen, and were timed to take over the screen after a designated period of inactivity at the keyboard. Daphne had no way of knowing what amount of time had been selected for the screen-savers to take over, but she realized immediately that one possible way to mislead whoever was now heading downstairs was to allow the screen-saver to kick in. It would hide whatever document lay beneath it, and she could not close the lab report because of the printer error interrupt. She could keep trying to close it, but to do so would involve the keyboard and would further delay the screen-savers. Furthermore, she realized that even if the screen-saver kicked in, a single keystroke afterward would eliminate the screen-saver and return the lab report to the monitor, giving away her snooping. Worst of all, this screen-saver idea required her to do nothing—to sit back and be careful not to touch any key, awaiting a screensaver that might not appear in time.

She took her hands off the keys and began softly encouraging the screen-saver to hide her efforts, while glancing repeatedly toward the door and the view of the secretarial pool. It occurred to her to lock the file room door in order to buy herself time, but she decided against it, believing this would require its own explanation and might raise the curiosity of whoever was approaching.

The lab report lingered on her screen. The screen of the terminal nearest the door continued to splash shooting stars at her. She knew that the “time out” interval for screen-saver software could be one minute, five minutes, or even ten or twenty minutes. She had no way of knowing what it might be on these terminals. If the intruder was just a security guard, she decided she had nothing to worry about. It was doubtful a security guard would pay any attention to what was on the screen. If it was an employee, however, it presented her a far greater problem. Such a person could be counted on to see and identify the document that a stranger had called up from the files.

The lab report continued to glare at her. No matter how strongly she willed it to vanish, it remained on the screen.“You piece of shit!” she hissed, tempted to put her foot through the monitor.

But the psychologist took over. Hoping to buy time for the screen-saver to engage, she leapt up from her chair and swung open the door, crying out as she unexpectedly collided and tangled with a man. She broke loose, shoved away, and looked into the face of Kenny Fowler.

“Woh!” he said, adjusting his suit jacket. “You?” he inquired, glancing furtively toward the file room door. “We got an alert that someone had entered—”

“Owen gave me his key. He didn’t want to attract attention.”

“His key?” Fowler asked. “The files? I thought Howard—”

“I didn’t want to bother Mr. Taplin.”

He nodded, but he did not appear convinced. Again, he craned his neck toward the file room door. “You weren’t on this evening’s log,” he explained. “No one was authorized for the Mansion. With all this trouble … We’ve cracked down on authorization. Your entry raised the curiosity of my guards.”

She cast him an intentionally suspicious look. It sounded to her as if he were making this up. She didn’t know what to believe.

“I was in the area,” he clarified for her, knowing what she must be thinking. “I took the call.” He tugged on his shirt cuff. He was nervous, she decided.

“You headed straight downstairs,” she pointed out, remembering she had not turned on any lights, had not given any indication of her whereabouts.

“The security system is a good one,” he said.

She took that to mean that he had known someone had penetrated the file room. Was he protecting the building or protecting access to the files?

“You need help with the file system?” he asked, attempting to ease his way around her in order to get a better look at the file room.

“I can manage.” Kenny Fowler would report whatever he saw to Howard Taplin. She was certain of that. The two seemed to work in concert. “Anything on any of the employees?” she asked, knowing that by agreement with Owen Adler, Boldt had assigned the in-house side of the investigation to Fowler. This eliminated any police presence at Adler Foods or their suppliers and the chance they might alert the blackmailer to the bigger picture.

“We’re working on it,” he replied, taking yet another step forward. “So, he’s giving you keys now?” He sounded almost jealous.

They looked at each other suspiciously. She felt both combative and defensive. If the lab report were still on the screen, then he was going to see it, because she fully understood now that Fowler was going into the file room with or without her blessing. Maybe because he felt it was part of his job. Maybe because he was curious. Maybe because Howard Taplin had told him to. He had known someone was in the file room even before he had got here. It made sense for security to be protective of the company files, and she knew Fowler to be a thorough man. Maybe that was all it was.

She did not want to believe that Howard Taplin would invent a crime in order to obtain insurance money that might allow the redesign of the entire Adler product line. Why go to such lengths? It made no sense unless the underlying economic strength of the company was a mirage. Were they in financial trouble? Had Owen hidden this from her? But no matter what, she felt she could not dismiss it without further investigation. The form she had seen on that screen implied tampering with evidence in an earlier contamination. She wanted answers. And for the time being she wanted them kept all to herself.

Fowler stepped past her and pushed through the door. She glanced in time to see that both screens showed the shooting stars of screen-saver software. For now, she was safe.

Fowler slid into the seat in front of the first screen—the terminal she had not been using—touched the keyboard, and the screen cleared, showing the opening menu. “You haven’t gotten very far,” he said. “Maybe I can help.”

“I don’t think so.” Her attention remained riveted on the keyboard to his right. If he touched one of those keys, if he bumped the mouse, the screen-saver would vanish, replaced by the altered New Leaf lab report.

“What was it you wanted?” he asked, blazing through a series of menus. “Security has its own files terminal,” he said, answering her astonished look at how fluent he seemed to be.

“Some privacy,” she answered, annoying him. “Thanks, but no thanks, Kenny.”

“What? What is it? What do you mean ‘privacy’? We’re on the same team here, remember. What—I’m not one of
you
because I left the force for better pay? What—that’s a crime?”