Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) (27 page)

“I told them both I was doing breakfast with you,” she said.
 
“But I didn’t say where.”

“Have you ever eaten there before with them?”

She nodded yes.
 
“Both of them.
 
I love their potatoes.”

Crap.
 
“Do you trust your friend at the FBI?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you might want to rethink that for now,” he said.
 
“I think I just outran an undercover FBI car.”

28

Ben dropped off Maggi, who took her own BMW to downtown Portland to visit her brother at the detention facility.
 
She was determined to get her brother out that day with the help of the shark, Della Bluesky.
 
Ben hoped she succeeded.

Then Ben drove directly to a business complex south of Portland, pulling into the parking lot of a large white building.
 
The sign in front read ‘Mammoth Paper Company.’

He talked his way in to their PR Department, where he convinced them he had information about a data breech, which got him in to see the director of IT.
 
The man in charge was old, with a full head of gray and who had to have been around since the first computer was built.

Ben sat in the lone chair beyond the IT director’s cluttered desk with two computer monitors.
 
The man looked concerned and perhaps a little afraid—his corpulent structure oozing with sweat.

“What can I do for you, Mister Adler?” the IT director asked.

Flashing his old Air Force OSI badge, which he had kept upon retirement, he explained who he was, without really lying.
 
He also made sure the guy saw his gun on his right hip to lend credibility.

Then, with the ruse intact, Ben said, “I understand you’ve had a data breech.”

“How do you know this?”

Because this man just confirmed it.
 
Also, Ben had hacked into their system faster than a teenager could change his high school grades.
 
“Has any damage been found in your system?”

“No,” the IT director said.
 
“It looks like only snoopers.
 
As far as we can tell.”

Now, Ben needed to tread lightly.
 
He didn’t want to let this IT director know why he was really there.
 
“Have you figured out what they were looking for?”

“It makes no sense,” the paper man said.
 
“We think they were only looking at contracts and lease agreements.”

Ben tried to feign shock.
 
“Seriously?
 
Why that?”

“We can’t figure that out.”
 
The IT director rubbed his scruffy red beard.

“What are these lease agreements?” Ben asked.

“Nothing special.
 
Mostly just access to our lands for hunting and other reasons.”

“Such as?”

The IT director shrugged slightly and said, “Recreation mostly.”
 
He hesitated and added, “And our mushroom and truffle access programs throughout the Coast Range.”

Ben pretended not to be interested in this.
 
“Anything else related to these lease agreements?”

Clicking on his keyboard for a couple of seconds, the IT director finally said, “Actually, yes.
 
We ask all of our lease holders to update their access with us weekly.
 
That schedule was also downloaded.”

Bingo.
 
That’s what Ben wanted to confirm, since he had been able to get into that system from his laptop at Maggi’s townhome.
 
“Have you been able to trace the hacker to a source?”

“No, the guy’s good.
 
We just know someone accessed our system.”

Ben got up and thanked the man for his help.

As he was leaving, the IT director said, “Are we in some kind of trouble?”

Standing at the door, Ben pondered the question.
 
“You should be all right.
 
But you might want to shore up your security.”

Ben got back out to his car and he sat for a moment thinking about the situation.
 
Although he had found out how easy it had been to breech the security on the Mammoth Paper Company’s database, he still didn’t know who had accessed the lease information and the location of Marlon Telford’s truffle crews.

Next he drove south a few miles past Albany, where he turned east for ten miles to the town of Lebanon.
 
The Veterans Administration had built a nursing home and rehab center there a few years back, and Ben guessed that he might end up there at some point in the future—assuming he didn’t die from some other reason before he needed the nursing home.

He signed in to the rehab part of the facility and was escorted to a room with two patients.

When Lt. Col. Bull Keyes saw Ben, he gave a double take, not sure if he was seeing things properly.
 
At one point Bull Keyes had lived up to his name, with broad shoulders and a gruff disposition that gave him the appearance of a charging bull.
 
Now he was diminished considerably.
 
His hair, cut still into a flattop, was completely gray.
 
The left side of his wrinkled face drooped lower than the right, with a touch of drool coming out the side of parched lips.

“Jesus Christ, they’ll let anyone in here,” Colonel Keyes said with great effort, his words slurred.

“No need to call me the Lord and Savior,” Ben said.

“You bastard.
 
I know too much about you to call you that.
 
What the hell you doing here?”

“Thought I’d drop by before you’re dead.”

“You son of a bitch.
 
I’m not dead yet.
 
This is just a temporary set-back.”

“What the hell happened?”

“I had a fucking stroke.
 
What’s it look like?”

Yeah, the man was still the Bull.
 
Ornery as ever.
 
He’d probably outlive Ben.
 
“I got a visit from a pretty Irish girl the other day.
 
She dropped your name.”

“Pretty young lady,” the colonel said.
 
“You find her brother?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you might be thinking about tapping that young girl.”

Ben tried to hold back a smile, but he knew the Bull was accomplished at understanding facial expressions.

“Shit, you already tapped it,” the Bull said.
 
“Hell of a thing being young and single.”

“I’m not that young, Bull.”

“I know.
 
You need to start living your life.
 
Can you grab me a tissue?”

Ben pulled a couple of tissues from a box and handed them to his old boss.
 
With his good hand, the Bull blotted out the drool at the side of his mouth.

“Can’t control this shit,” the Bull said.
 
“Feel like a God damn slobbering bulldog.”
 
The former colonel narrowed his gaze at Ben.
 
“You got something heavy on your mind.”

Ben explained what was going on with the former military members from the Compound, and the FBI raid of Marlon’s house.

“Not everything is hunky dory in your part of the woods, Ben.”

He had a feeling there was more to this case than a simple missing person.
 
“What do you know about it?”

The Bull tried to smile but it came out looking like the man had gas.
 
“I could never pull shit on you, Ben.
 
Think about everything you know.”

“Why don’t you just save me some time and tell me?”

“It works better if it comes from you.”

Ben considered everything that had happened over the past week or so, and he was beginning to wonder about a few things.
 
He ran through everything that was going on, from the mysterious burning of bovines to the murder of a former Army soldier, and then up to the shootings and the raid on both the Compound and Marlon Telford’s home.

“Is the man a pervert?” the Bull asked.

“I don’t believe so.”

“And the former military men are just picking mushrooms and truffles?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then the FBI seems to be out of line,” his former boss concluded.
 
“Tell me about the dead soldier.”

Ben explained as much as he knew about that case, which wasn’t that much.
 
“You told me you were stationed in Central America during that time.
 
And that you were helping the Salvadoran government with arms and tactics.”

“Mostly arms,” the Bull said.
 
“We sure as hell didn’t authorize them to form Death Squads.
 
But you have to understand the times, Ben.
 
We were fighting Communists on multiple fronts.
 
We couldn’t let them get a foothold in that region.
 
Not that close to America.”

“So you think that angle might be a dead end?”

“You’re not investigating that murder are you?”

“No, of course not.
 
But an old friend is.”

The Bull contemplated that, his eyes seeming to rise to the ceiling.
 
“He might be on the right track.
 
But it could just be some random act of violence.
 
Or a drug deal gone wrong.”

“I don’t think it was drugs,” Ben said.
 
“They looked into that.”

“As I always told you. . .”

“When logical is not probable, look for the improbable.”

“You got that shit right.”

Ben nodded agreement.
 
“When do they let you out of here?”

“A couple more weeks.
 
Physical Torture wants to get my left side back more before they set me free.”

“All right.
 
If you need anything, let me know.”

“How?
 
Did you get a phone?”