THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3) (23 page)

Then he opened Tay’s front door and gestured his men through it with his head.

“I want that disk drive,” Goodnight-Jones said to Tay.

“Everybody wants something.”

“I haven’t finished with you,” Goodnight-Jones said.

“Take your best shot.”

Goodnight-Jones glared at Tay, then he closed the front door behind him and was gone.

TAY FOUND A
package of Marlboros and a box of matches, and he went out into his garden and sat down at the teak table. August followed and took the chair opposite him.

For a while, neither spoke. Tay busied himself lighting a cigarette. He shielded the flame of the match from the warm evening breeze by cupping his hand around it. Then he shook out the match, dumped it into the ashtray, and exhaled in a long, steady stream.

August did nothing at all. He just sat and waited.

“You’ve had me under surveillance,” Tay said. It was a statement, not a question.

August shifted in his chair. “Not really. I asked our guys to keep an eye on your house. I was worried about you.”

“Why would you be worried about me?”

“Look, Sam, there’s a game
being played here that
you don’t understand. Hell, I’m not even sure
I
understand. You’re trying to find out something that a lot of people don’t want you to know. Look what happened to the last two people who found out.”

“So you started watching my house?”

“Yes.”

“How are you doing it? Do you keep watchers out there somewhere twenty-four hours a day?”

August chuckled. “We don’t do things that way anymore, Sam.”

“Then you’re using cameras.”

“Would you believe me if I told you I had parked a spy satellite right over your house to keep an eye on you?”

“No.”

August shrugged and spread his hands, palms up. “Well… there you go. You probably wouldn’t believe me no matter what I told you.”

Tay smoked quietly for a moment. August offered nothing more.

“I gather you were sitting somewhere tonight watching the front of my house on a television screen,” Tay went on after a while, “and you saw those three guys letting themselves in.”

“Sam, whether you believe me or not, I’m not spending every waking moment watching you. I ask for limited video surveillance on your house for your own safety. As it turns out, my concerns were obviously justified.”

“Then if you’re not watching that television screen, who is?”

“Nobody is watching any television screen. The technology works on the basis of motion detection. When your front gate moves, a video clip is sent to my phone.”

August reached into his trouser pocket and fished out what looked to Tay like an ordinary Apple iPhone, although it probably wasn’t. He held it up so Tay could see it.

“When I saw those three guys going into your house, I thought I’d come over and have a look. I was concerned they might be waiting inside for you to come back.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I thought another suicide might be on the schedule. I didn’t realize you had that boy’s backup drive. If I had, I would have realized they were searching for it.”

“How do you know I have Tyler Bartlett’s disk drive? I never told you that.”

August shrugged and pointed to Tay’s French doors. “I could hear most of the conversation you and your pal were having.”

“It’s a shame I didn’t get a chance to watch you climbing over my back fence. I would have paid admission to see that.”

“It wasn’t my first choice for a dignified arrival, but I figured walking up to your gate and ringing the bell wasn’t going to help much.”

Tay nodded and went back to his cigarette.

August waited a bit, then he asked, “Did you have the kid’s backup drive when you came to Pattaya?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you didn’t tell me about it.”

“I never got the chance. You cut off our conversation right after I told you that Tyler Bartlett was designing security protocols for The Future. You ran out of that bar like your ass was on fire.”

“What’s on it?” August asked.

“Tyler’s backup drive?”

August nodded.

“No idea.”

“You haven’t looked at it?”

“I thought you overheard what I told Goodnight-Jones.”

“Not that part.”

Tay nodded and thought about that.

“What do I know about computer stuff, John?” he continued after a pause.

“You know enough to plug in a disk drive.”

“I asked somebody else to—”

“Who?” August interrupted.

“I gave it to my Sergeant, Robbie Kang. He knows quite a lot about computers and such.”

“So what did he tell you about the drive?”

“He said it was encrypted.”

“Did he decrypt any of it?”

“Why are you so interested in this backup drive, John?”

“I told you. We have an interest in Goodnight-Jones. If this kid was backing up data related to The Future, it might be helpful to us.”

Tay took a final puff and dumped his cigarette butt in the ashtray.

“Are you ever going to tell me who this
we
you’re always talking about really is, John?”

August smiled and said nothing, which was pretty much what Tay expected him to do.

“I can’t be of much help to you, John. Like I said, the drive is encrypted. I don’t know what’s on it.”

“Where is it now?”

Something made Tay hesitate. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust August. He supposed he did, at least mostly. But August worked for somebody. Although he didn’t know for sure who that was, he could guess, at least more or less.

The Wangster and Julie had been willing to help him by trying to decrypt Tyler’s drive when there was nothing in it for them to offer their help. Hanging them out now to the people August worked for hardly seemed fair. So Tay decided to offer August a slightly modified version of the truth.

“Sergeant Kang gave the drive to a computer nerd he knows. Somebody thought he might be able to decrypt it.”

“Who did he give it to?”

“I don’t know,” Tay shrugged. “I never asked him.”

August looked skeptical, and Tay didn’t blame him, but he didn’t challenge Tay’s claim of ignorance.

“Has this nerd decrypted any of the drive?” August asked instead.

Tay hesitated for the second time. The laptop was lying on the chair right between them, but the chair was pushed beneath the table. All Tay had to do was pick up the laptop, open it, and show August the four decrypted files. Maybe August could even tell him what they meant.

But he didn’t do that.

“No, I don’t think he’s decrypted anything,” Tay said. “No one’s told me if he has.”

Tay busied himself lighting another Marlboro. He didn’t particularly want another cigarette, but he needed something to do with his hands and his eyes. He didn’t dare look at August and he didn’t want to try to hold his hands still. He knew August was watching him for any clue that he was lying about the drive not being decrypted. He didn’t want to do anything to give him one.

“How about a drink, John?”

Tay shook out the match and tossed it into the ashtray.

“I’ve got a couple of pretty decent single malts inside. I think we’ve both earned a taste of something good.”

After August left, Tay took their empty glasses in the kitchen and rinsed them out. He stood there for a while thinking about having another cigarette, but he decided not to. Instead, he walked around the house shutting off the lights, and then went upstairs to bed.

Tay had hardly closed his eyes when he felt the mattress at the foot of his bed compress with the weight of someone sitting down on it. How was it possible, he asked himself, to feel the weight of his mother’s spirit sitting on his bed? Weren’t spirits supposed to be ephemeral things, weightless and gauzy? Hadn’t the great painters depicted spirits as winged seraphim afloat in the heavens? Of course, in his case such a rendering would require him to picture his mother as an angel. That was far beyond the power of his imagination.

“Wake up, Samuel! I don’t have all night, you know. I have things to do, places to be.”

She had things to do and places
to be? Did that mean the spirits had spiritual smartphones running spiritual calendars so they could keep up with everything they had to do? The philosophical implications of that were like trying to imagine infinity. Tay quickly gave up thinking about it and cracked one eye open.

Sure enough, there was his mother seated on the end of his bed. She was wearing a yellow silk suit with the jacket buttoned and a straight skirt that modestly covered her knees. Her hair looked freshly done. Perhaps she really was going somewhere, Tay thought. If she had existed. Which she didn’t.

“I suppose it’s too much for me to expect you to thank me.”

“Thank you for what, Mother?”

“For reminding you to carry your gun, Samuel. What else?”

“But I didn’t need my gun, Mother. I didn’t shoot anybody.”

“Maybe you should have. That part is beyond my control. All I can do is tell you to have it. I can’t make you use it.”

“Are you saying I should have shot Goodnight-Jones?”

“Why not? You would have saved yourself the trouble that’s coming.”

“What trouble?”

“You don’t really expect me to tell you that now, do you? You know I’m not going to just hand you everything on a platter. I’ll give you a nudge in the right direction from time to time, like reminding you to carry your gun, but that’s it. You’re on your own from there. A mother can’t do everything.”

Tay watched his mother turn toward him and cross her legs. He felt her weight shift on his mattress just as if she were really there. Which she wasn’t, of course.

“Now pay attention, Samuel. I have a message for you.”

“Another one, Mother?”

“Be more respectful, Samuel. The last message I had for you was awfully useful, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Are you paying attention to me, Samuel?”

“Yes, Mother. I am paying attention to you.”

“Good.”

His mother abruptly lifted her right hand. Until then it had been folded neatly in her lap together with her left hand. She pointed her index finger at Tay.

“You must be very careful right now. Things are not as you think they are.”

Tay nodded and waited for the rest, but his mother said nothing more. She just shook her finger at him and then folded her hands back in her lap.

“That’s it?” Tay asked.

His mother looked genuinely puzzled. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No, Mother, it’s not enough. You sound like a fucking fortune cookie.”

Tay’s mother made a clucking sound with her tongue. “Such language, Samuel. I didn’t raise you to use language like that.”

“You hardly raised me at all, Mother. Mostly, I raised myself.”

“Samuel, that is so cruel. Hearing you say that would probably kill me if I weren’t already dead.”

“It’s the truth, Mother.”

“What did I ever do to make you hate me so much, Samuel?”

“Don’t be a drama queen, Mother. You know perfectly well I don’t hate you.”

Tay’s mother made a sniffling sound and Tay peered closely at her. Was she crying? Was it possible for a ghost to cry? This was all getting to be too much.

All at once Tay’s mother turned and looked directly at him, and he saw she was smiling.

“I do enjoy our bantering, Samuel, I really do. It’s the highlight of my day.”

“You have days in… well, in wherever you are?”

“Of course we have days. How else would we tell time?”

“Are your days the same length as—”

“I wish I had more time to sit and chat, Samuel. But I have to go. Things to do, places to be.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Now you will remember my warning, won’t you?”

“Yes, Mother, I’ll remember.”

“Then repeat it back to me.”

“What?”

“My warning, Samuel. Repeated back to me. I want to make sure you understood.”

“I must be very careful right now. Things are not as I think they are.”

His mother nodded.

“What things are you talking about, Mother?”

“Good night, Samuel. It’s been real.”

And with that Tay felt his mother’s weight lifting off the mattress and she was gone. Not in a puff of smoke, not in a puff of anything. Just there one minute, and the next… gone.

It had been something all right, he thought. But
real
wasn’t the first word he would have chosen to describe it. It wouldn’t even have been the last.

Tay punched his pillow into shape, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep.

Either that, or he stayed asleep and stopped dreaming he was talking to his mother.

Whatever.

TAY WAS IN
the kitchen when his cell phone rang. He was on his third cup of coffee, his second slice of toast, and his first cigarette.

Tay’s first reaction was a flash of annoyance, but then his first reaction whenever a telephone rang was generally a flash of annoyance. He thought he had turned his telephone off before he went to bed because he really didn’t like talking to anyone on the telephone early in the morning. The whole truth, he supposed, was he didn’t much like talking to anyone on the telephone at any time, but for it to be first thing in the morning just added to the general sense of injury a ringing telephone gave him.

“Hello?”

“This is Julie, Inspector. Have you looked at those files I sent you yet?”

Tay suddenly remembered he had left Julie’s laptop on a chair out in the garden and it had been there all night. Could that have damaged it? He didn’t know much about laptops, but surely just sitting outside overnight couldn’t have done any harm. Still, after Julie had gone to the trouble to l
oad the four decrypted
files onto a laptop and have someone bring it to him, he could hardly admit that he hadn’t even looked at the files yet, could he?

“Ah… Julie, I’m going to have to call you back in a few minutes. I’m on another line.”

“Sure, Inspector. I’ll be right here.”

“Five minutes.”

They said their goodbyes and Tay rushed straight out to the garden to retrieve the laptop.

Tay pulled a stool up to his kitchen counter, opened the laptop, and poked at the buttons until the unit gave a
DING
and the screen turned white. It was a sleek little thing, hardly bigger than a sheet of typing paper and not much thicker. Tay didn’t really know anything about Apple laptops, but then he didn’t know much about any laptops. He understood how central to life computers and the internet had become for most people. They simply weren’t central to
his
life.

If he needed to find out something, he looked it up in a book. The printed page had weight and substance, and Tay thought finding whatever information he was looking for on a printed page gave the information weight and substance as well. Looking at information on a screen felt, by contrast, somewhat ephemeral. He didn’t think information should feel ephemeral.

Tay got up and poured himself another cup of coffee, and then he returned to his stool and peered at the screen of the laptop that was now glowing with a snappy blue background. Down the right side of the screen was a column of tiny file folders neatly labeled as Decrypted File 1, Decrypted File 2, Decrypted File 3, and Decrypted File 4.

Well
, Tay thought,
this looks easy enough
.

He clicked on the folder labeled Decrypted File 1. When nothing happened, he tried clicking on it twice. As soon as he did, a document opened on the screen. He put down his coffee and leaned toward it.

It looked just like Julie had described it. Lines of numbers interspersed with something that looked to Tay like gibberish, but what he recalled Julie saying was computer code. Whatever that was.

Tay quickly opened the other three decrypted files and found that they looked more or less the same. He had no clue what any of them meant.

He found his cell phone, looked at the last incoming call on the call list, and pushed the button that said
Redial
. To his amazement, a moment later he was talking to Julie. He was such a simpleton about technology he was always astonished when whatever he wanted to happen actually did happen.

“I don’t see anything here that makes the slightest sense to me, Julie. It’s just like you said. Nothing but numbers and… ah, computer code.”

“What do you think of the other files I sent you?”

“What other files?”

“The other twelve. You told me to concentrate on sixteen files. I put the first four on that laptop, but we found a way to decrypt the other twelve overnight and I sent them to you first thing this morning.”

“Sent them? How did you send them?”

“By email, of course. How else? Aren’t the files attached to that email I sent you?”

Tay said nothing.

“The email went to the address I set up for you on our server,” Julie added. “It’s in the Apple Mail inbox.”

Tay said nothing.

“You haven’t looked, have you?”

“I told you,” Tay said. “I don’t use email. It never occurred to me to look.”

“Okay,” Julie said. “No problem. Let me talk you through it. Is the laptop open in front of you?”

“Yes.”

“What are you looking at?”

“Ah… the screen is all blue and the four decrypted files are on the right-hand side.”

“Okay, that’s good. Now, is your Wi-Fi on?”

“I don’t have Wi-Fi.”

“What?”

“I don’t have Wi-Fi here at home because I don’t have a computer. If I need to use one, I either do it at the office or go to a Coffee Bean and use one of theirs.”

There was a short silence at the other end of the phone.

“Okay,” Tay sighed, “I admit I’m an old fart.”

Julie laughed, and Tay thought it was a nice laugh. He still felt like an old fart, just not quite as old as he had felt a few seconds before.

“How long will it take you to get to a Coffee Bean?” Julie asked.

“Five minutes,” Tay said. “There are two right up on Orchard Road.”

Tay spared Julie an explanation of his usual indecisiveness as to whether to go to the one on the left or the one on the right.

“Okay,” she said, “take your phone and the laptop. Call me when you get there and I’ll talk you through opening the other files.”

Tay followed Julie’s instructions diligently, and it took him five minutes and a third of his café latte to get all twelve new files open.

“What do you think?” Julie asked.

“It just looks like nonsense to me.”

“Yeah, it looks like that to me, too. I’m sorry I haven’t been more help.”

“Are you sure these files have been completely decrypted?”

“Absolutely sure. What you’ve got there is the raw content of all sixteen files.”

“Okay,” Tay said. “I guess now all I have to do is figure out what they mean.”

“Do you want me to keep working on the rest of the files on the drive?”

“Yes, very much.”

“Are there any in particular you want me to concentrate on?”

“Can you tell when all the files were last modified?”

“Yes.”

“Then start with the most recently modified one and work backwards.”

“Got it. I’ll email you each file as I get it decrypted. Do you remember how to open them now?”

“I think I can handle that.”

“Then plan to drink more coffee. I should have more files for you soon.”

Tay ended the call, picked up his latte, and stared at the documents open on the screen in front of him. What the h
ell was he looking at?

He had no doubt that the key to everything was right there in front of him. If he could only see it.

He had sixteen documents, each one of which Tyler Bartlett had secretly backed up, and each one of which somebody had opened after Tyler was dead. That was pretty good evidence that there was something in them that was important. Now all he had to do was figure out what it was.

Piece of cake.

Tay sipped at his latte and flipped slowly through the twelve documents Julie had decrypted most recently. They looked like utter gibberish to him. Numbers, symbols, and letters, but almost no actual words and absolutely no sentences. If Julie
hadn’t been so certain the documents were decrypted, Tay would have assumed they were all still in code. These twelve made even less sense to him than the first four documents Julie had decrypted.

Those four documents, at least, were constructed in what looked like a pattern. Blocks of eight numbers arranged in pairs, followed by what Julie had called computer code, followed by more blocks of eight numbers arranged in pairs.

Tay went back to Decrypted File 1 and studied its top lines again.

1.36442, 103.991531

3.0527541, 101.689453

10.833306, 106.611328

11.544873, 104.892167

The left-hand numbers were in a numerical sequence, all right, but they didn’t even have the same number of digits after the decimal point. One had five, one had seven, and the other two had six. The right-hand numbers were more consistent, all of them had six digits after the decimal, but then they weren’t in a numerical sequence. On down the page there were six more blocks of similar numbers. Some of the columns were in numerical sequence and some weren’t.

The more Tay thought about it, the more his head hurt.

He read back and forth through the documents all afternoon and tried making notes. He changed the sequence of the numbers around, added them, subtracted them, and even listed them backwards, but nothing he did brought with it anything he recognized as understanding. In the middle of the afternoon, he went back to the Coffee Bean to check email, and then he did it again in the early evening. Julie sent him a total of nine more files, but none of them made any more sense than the first sixteen had.

Tay didn’t give up, but he knew he was getting nowhere. Finally, he made himself a sandwich, ate it while watching CNN, and went to bed.