THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3) (22 page)

THE FOOTSTEPS CROSSED
the entry foyer, entered the living room, and stopped. The lights flared on and the footsteps started up again. Whoever it was, they were making straight for Tay.

Tay held his revolver at shoulder level with the muzzle pointing toward the ceiling. He had checked the cylinder when he took it out of the drawer in his bedroom. It had been loaded with five rounds, but
how long had they been
in the gun? He couldn’t remember the last time he had shot it. Would it even fire now?

Tay was still trying to decide if it was possible for the rounds in a gun to be too old to use when the footsteps stopped in front of the loveseat and somebody sat down. Tay looked up and saw the back of a head directly above him. Short, dark hair, neatly trimmed, but that was all that he could see.

More footsteps on the stairs. Two sets this time. They crossed the entry foyer and stopped at the entrance to the living room.

“Nothing,” a man’s voice said from somewhere across the room. Whoever he was, he spoke English with a pronounced Chinese accent. A youngish voice, not at all familiar to Tay.

The other man said something, too, but he spoke Chinese. A dialect Tay didn’t recognize. The first man responded in Chinese, and the second man grunted.

“He must have it somewhere,” the man sitting on the loveseat said, ignoring the exchange in Chinese.

His voice was older and more distinguished. It conveyed an air of being in charge. This was the boss and the other two were the muscle. Tay wasn’t completely certain, but he was pretty sure—

“I mean, for fuck’s sake,” the man went on in obvious annoyance, “she didn’t have it so he
must
have it. Look harder!”

One of the men standing at the entrance to the living room cleared his throat. “If the cop comes home—”

“How many times do I have to tell you? He’s not a cop. Not anymore.”

“But if he comes home—”

“If he comes home, I’ll take care of him. Now get back upstairs and tear the place apart if you have to.”

Tay no longer had any doubt. He knew exactly who was sitting on the loveseat right above him.

It was Zachery Goodnight-Jones.

Tay listened as two sets of footsteps retreated across his foyer and headed back upstairs. They were only a minute or two gone when Goodnight-Jones suddenly got to his feet. Tay tightened his grip on the revolver, but Goodnight-Jones took two steps away from the loveseat, hesitated, then turned back and sat down again. The springs creaked as he shifted his weight, and then the room went quiet again.

Crouched there on the floor behind
the loveseat, Tay decided that sneaking into his house to surprise the three men searching it was pretty much the worst idea he had ever had.

What did he think he was going to do? Shoot them? No, of course, he wasn’t going to shoot them. Even if he wanted to shoot them, which he didn’t, he only had five rounds in his revolver. As bad a shot as he was, that was about fifty rounds fewer than he really needed.

So what now? He wasn’t going to crouch there until they wrecked his house and left, was he? Doing nothing would make him feel even more foolish than he already did. He was armed, and he had surprise on his side, and Goodnight-Jones was sitting with his back to him. The advantage was his. There was no doubt about that. He just had to figure out what to do with it.

Tay knew he was overthinking things again. He did that all the time. Sometimes he wished he were someone who just
did
things without thinking every step to death first, but that wasn’t who he was. Maybe he could be though, if he put his mind to it. He had to think about that.

Oh for Christ’s sake
, Tay thought,
there I go again
.
Well, fuck that!

Tay rose to his feet, jammed the muzzle of his .38 into Goodnight-Jones’s right ear, and cocked the hammer with his thumb. In the silence of the room, the sound was unmistakable.

“Don’t move,” he said.

Goodnight-Jones was silent for a moment, then, “Tay? Is that you?”

Tay said nothing.

“Of course it’s you. Who else would be hiding behind your couch?”

Tay said nothing.

“We’re not going to harm you. I know Bartlett had a backup disk drive and I also know that you somehow wound up with it. I want it. Simple as that. The data on it by rights belongs to us anyway, and I’m entitled to get it back.”

Tay said nothing.

“The drive is all we’re here for, Tay. Give it to me and we’re gone.”

“Don’t you think you have that backwards?” Tay asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the one with a gun stuck in your ear, and I’m the one with my finger on the trigger. I think it’s pretty much up to me to say what we do now.”

“Not really. I have two armed men upstairs, and I hear you’re a lousy shot.”

Tay pushed on the gun and he felt Goodnight-Jones flinch as the front sight dug into the soft flesh of his ear.

“It would be pretty hard to miss from here. Even for me.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Tay, you’re not going to shoot me. I know that and you know that, so let’s just work this out and we’ll be on our way.”

“Why are you so interested in Tyler Bartlett’s disk drive?”

“So you
do
have it?”

“Actually, no, I don’t. But I know about it. I just don’t understand why you’re so desperate to get your hands on it.”

“I already told you, Tay. We think Bartlett backed up his work to that drive. If he did, it has proprietary information on it. Information our company developed at great expense. That information belongs to us and we’re entitled to have it back.”

“Information about the design of driverless cars?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“I don’t think so.”

Goodnight-Jones chuckled. Tay had the muzzle of a gun pushed into his ear so hard that the front sight had probably drawn blood and Goodnight-Jones was chuckling at him. That wasn’t the way this was supposed to be going. Maybe he was doing this man-of-action stuff wrong.

“Okay then, Tay, you tell me. What’s on the disk drive?”

Tay said nothing.

“You don’t have a fucking clue, do you? It’s encrypted and you can’t read it.”

“I can read some of it.”

“Yeah? How?”

“Because we’ve decrypted it.”

Tay felt Goodnight-Jones stiffen. “I don’t believe you.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to convince you of anything.”

“What do
you
know about decryption protocols?”

“Absolutely nothing. But I know people who know all kinds of things about them. Or I suppose they do. I can’t make any sense of what they’re telling me, but then they started sending me copies of Tyler’s decrypted files and so I figure they must know what they’re doing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You already said that. It doesn’t really bother me.”

“If you really did decrypt that drive, tell me what you learned.”

Tay took a shot. He figured he had nothing to lose.

“I learned you aren’t really building driverless cars.”

Tay was certain Goodnight-Jones was trying not to react, but he could feel his body tensing anyway.

“Bullshit, Tay. You’re just guessing. If that’s true, tell me what we’re really doing.”

“If you don’t know, I’m certainly not going to explain it to you.”

Goodnight-Jones snorted. “Give me the gun, Tay. Give me the gun or I’ll call my men down here.”

“You do that and I’ll shoot you.”

“No, I don’t think you will.”

“And you’d bet your life on that?”

Goodnight-Jones chewed that over for a bit. “What do you want, Tay?”

“I want to know why you killed Tyler Bartlett and Emma Lazar.”

“Why do you think
I
killed them?”

“Maybe you had somebody else kill them. Maybe even those two goons you have searching my bedroom. What difference does that make?”

Goodnight-Jones said nothing.

“You’re the one who knows why they were killed. That’s what I want you to tell me.”

“And if I do tell you?”

“You and your men walk out of here.”

“Somehow I think we’re going to do that anyway.”

“Maybe,” Tay shrugged. “Maybe not. At least this way it’s a sure thing.”

There was a silence and in it Tay could almost hear Goodnight-Jones weighing up his alternatives. When he came to a decision, he took a deep breath and then let it out again.

“We made a mistake,” he said. “What we did caused something of a stir, and it would mean all kinds of grief for us if anyone knew we were responsible.”

“This mistake didn’t have anything to do with driverless cars, did it?”

Goodnight-Jones said nothing, but then Tay hadn’t expected him to say anything.

“Was Tyler responsible for this mistake?”

“It had nothing to do with him. He just found out about it somehow. He told me he felt responsible. That’s why he quit.”

“Responsible? How?”

“I don’t know. He wasn’t responsible, not in any way. But seemed to feel… well, guilty, I guess.”

“So you killed him. Just to make sure he didn’t let that guilt lead him to seek absolution by telling someone else what you had done.”

Tay watched Goodnight-Jones’s shoulders rise and fall in a shrug.

“What was this mistake?”

“If you’ve read the data on the drive, you already know. If you haven’t, I’m not going to tell you.”

Tay wondered if perhaps he
did
already know without understanding he did. But of course he didn’t say that.

“Why did you try to make Tyler’s murder look like a suicide?” he asked instead.

“Tyler was too young for a natural death to be believable. It was either suicide or homicide, and we certainly didn’t want a homicide investigation so the choice was obvious.”

“The suicide set up was thin.”

“It was good enough until that damn woman came along.”

“And by that damn woman, I assume you’re referring to Emma Lazar.”

“I don’t think she knew what Tyler knew, but she was getting close and she wouldn’t let it go.
You
wouldn’t let it go. If you had, she would still be alive.”

“You piece of shit. You murdered Emma and now you’re claiming it was her own fault she was murdered. Maybe even
my
fault.”

“You asked a question, Tay. I didn’t expect you to like the answer.”

Goodnight-Jones cleared his throat.

“So are we all done here now?” he asked. “Can I get my guys and go?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking about it.”

“You think too fucking much, Tay. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to count to three, and then I’m going to stand up, walk to the bottom of the stairs, call my guys down, and then we’re going to leave. If you have the balls to shoot me in the back, go ahead and do it. But I don’t think you do.”

“Maybe he doesn’t,” another man’s voice said, “but I do.”

Tay was so startled he jerked and pulled the revolver out of Goodnight-Jones’s ear. Goodnight-Jones started to rise, but a hand appeared from Tay’s left, clamped onto Goodnight-Jones’s shoulder, and held him where he was.

Tay’s head swiveled around.

John August was standing right there next to him behind the loveseat. It was like a magic trick. One second August wasn’t there, and the next second he was.

August held a big semi-automatic pistol that looked like a Glock. It had a short black cylinder screwed into the muzzle that Tay assumed was a noise suppresser.

“Call your men downstairs,” August told Goodnight-Jones. “Tell them to come down with their hands empty or I’ll kill them and then I’ll kill you.”

“Who the fuck are
you
?”

“Trust me, friend. You really don’t want to know.”

“You honestly think you can get all three of us before we get you?”

“No doubt about it. Slide over a bit to your right, Sam. It sounds like I may need a little room to work here.”

Goodnight-Jones raised his hands to shoulder level and held them there, fingers spread. “All right, mate, j
ust calm down.”

“I’m very calm. Don’t you think I’m calm, Sam? Tell your buddy whether I look calm or not.”

“I think you look very calm,” Tay said.

“A couple of real comedians, aren’t you?” Goodnight-Jones said. “Look, I’m going to turn around very slowly and then we’re going to talk. No need for anybody to get killed here. We’re all just doing our jobs.”

Goodnight-Jones moved deliberately, each part of his body rotating and settling before the next part began to rotate. It was the way a man handling a live bomb might move, which in a manner of speaking was exactly what Goodnight-Jones was doing.

“May I put my hands down?” he asked when he was facing August and Tay.

“No,” August said.

“You’re a real charming guy, aren’t you, pal?”

“No,” August said again.

“You’re not a local cop. Are you ISD?”

“No,” August said for the third time.

“This isn’t much of a conversation we’re having, is it?”

Before August could answer, Goodnight-Jones wiggled his open hands side to side. “Don’t bother to say no again. It was a purely rhetorical question.”

“What do you want me to do with them?” August asked Tay.

“Why are you asking me? I can’t even figure out where the fuck
you
came from.”

“It’s your house, Sam. It ought to be your decision what we do with them.”

“Just get them out of here. I can find them again when I want them.”

“Then I guess it’s your lucky day, friend,” August said to Goodnight-Jones. “Call your pals and take off.”

“That’s it?”

“I could shoot you if you really want me to. Would that make you feel better?”

Goodnight-Jones said nothing. He simply turned his back on August and Tay and walked across the living room to the foot of the stairs.

“Both of you get down here,” he shouted.

A few seconds later, the two men who were searching upstairs obediently trotted down. They gaped when they saw Tay and August with their guns pointed at Goodnight-Jones.

“Don’t worry about it,” Goodnight-Jones snapped at them.