The Dinosaur Chronicles (19 page)

“You won’t, either. The unit has a cell-modem. Keeps people from tracking my research.”

“Are you talking about the authorities? Or about your questionable FBI agent?”

Carfack said, “Who knows?” and began typing on the keyboard.

Brill pressed her point. “Couldn’t the authorities just serve your Internet or cell provider with a warrant and have your movements traced?”

Carfack chuckled. “I’m not me.”

“Oh? Who are you, then?”

“Dr. Erwin Stoud, late of the American Podiatric Association, whose Internet service was still in good standing at the time of his fatal coronary.”

Brill said nothing. Carfack gave her a quick glance and added, “Erwin and I were friends. After his funeral, his widow invited the mourners over for tea and cakes.” Carfack typed some more.

Brill blinked. “So you just asked the widow if her freshly-planted husband had an Internet account you could scavenge?”

Carfack chuckled. “Of course not. What kind of a cad do you think I am? When no one was looking, I sneaked into Erwin’s office and made off with his cell modem and his little book of sign-ons and passwords. He was always very orderly and finding it in his files took only a minute. I pay his Internet provider with postal money orders for several months at a time, and I also use proxies and other security software. Anyone trying to trace my work will have a job on his hands.”

Brill said, “You
are
paranoid.”

Carfack grinned. “But still vertical. Aha!” He turned the screen of the laptop in her direction. A search request on an Internet engine she had never heard of had come up with half a dozen Diego Samarands. Three were referenced in various technical articles as researchers; one was an actor from Montreal, Canada, and one was a fictional character in an on-line novel.

The sixth reference pointed to an American History site.

Carfack had already selected that entry and clicked.

Ten seconds later, Brill and Carfack knew how Diego Samarand had died.

“My God,” Brill said softly. “The Bay of Pigs.”

—

The Bay of Pigs. Often, the Bay of Pigs
Disaster
. As Brill drove home from her visit with Carfack, she reviewed what they had learned about the United States’ unsuccessful attempt to oust the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro.

After Castro’s ascent, the idea of using Cuban exiles to depose him had begun with Allen Dulles, CIA head under President Eisenhower. Exiles were recruited from the many Latin communities in Florida and the other Gulf Coast states. To keep the operation a secret, the exiles received their training outside the United States, in camps in Guatemala.

Originally, the CIA had planned to infiltrate Cuba with the exiles and begin a guerrilla war. Later it was decided the exiles should launch a direct attack, with the idea of capturing a beachhead and holding it for several days. After that time, one or more officials of the Cuban government-in-exile would be landed, and the U.S. would recognize them as the true government of Cuba. Those officials would then ask for U.S. troops to help quash Castro’s illegal takeover, and the U.S. would then have the political cover needed to invade the island.

In April of 1961 the exiles landed at a spot on Cuba’s southern coast called the Bay of Pigs. Air strikes by U.S. forces against the Cuban air force helped put the exiles on the beach. But the unexpectedly robust resistance encountered by the exiles gave the White House pause, and a promised second round of air strikes never materialized.

After running out of ammunition, the invading force had had no choice but to surrender.

And among its casualties was a young man who had once lived in Irving, Texas.

Diego Samarand.

When Brill arrived home and stepped through her door, she found the red light of her answering machine blinking with an unfamiliar urgency. She scolded herself, noting that the machine’s circuits could hardly know the meaning of any message, and that the blink rate of the LED could hardly have changed.

It’s Carfack, Brill thought. His paranoia was contagious.

The machine held two messages. Brill pressed the Play button.

Montgomery James Pengold’s words crackled across her much-used message tape.
Gladys, call me as soon as you get back. We have a problem.
 

Brill pushed the Pause button and took Pengold’s card from her purse. It didn’t have a home number on it, but it did have the number of the P.I.’s cellphone. Brill picked up her phone and began dialing but cradled the handset before completing the call.

“Damn Carfack. Now he’s got me doing it.” She pulled her own cellphone from her purse. Using a cell wasn’t a guarantee the call wouldn’t be tapped or tracked in some way, but it made things more difficult for any bad guy without serious resources. Again, she dialed Pengold’s number.

“Monty—”

“Gladys! Are you all right?”

Brill said dryly, “That’s a reassuring way to begin a conversation. What’s happened?”

“Are you talking from your house phone?”

“No, my cellphone. Why, have you been getting heebie-jeebie lessons from Carfack?”

“Is that where you’ve been? I’ve been trying to get you for a couple of hours. I finally left a message.”

“So now you’ve got me. What’s up?”

“My office has been rifled.”

“What!”

“They nearly got away with it, too. That is, without my discovering it.”

Brill slipped off her jacket and tossed it to the sofa.

“I don’t understand. Nothing was taken?”

“Just information.
Your
information.”

Brill shook her head. Things weren’t making sense.

“Monty, start at the beginning.”

“You know I’ve got a video camera pointed at the door of the anteroom.”

“Of course.”

“I have the video signal routed to both the monitor on my desk and to an old VCR. Each evening when I leave the office I take out the old tape and put in a new one. This evening I noticed the clock on the VCR was four minutes slow, which was odd because I hadn’t been aware of any power outage. Besides, the unit wasn’t blinking Tuesday, 12 o’clock, so there couldn’t have been an outage.”

“So what did you do?”

“So I rewound the tape and began viewing it. I figured if anything funny had gone on, it happened during the hour I was out of the office for lunch. At the 12:33 timestamp I noticed a visual glitch in the recording. Now, such a glitch could be the result of electrical interference or a worn tape, but usually it means a stop-start sequence. I dug out a stopwatch and found that the minute from 12:33 to 12:34 lasted 87 seconds.”

“So someone stopped the recorder,” Brill said, “rewound it to the 12:33 point, reset the time on the VCR and started the recording again.”

“Exactly.”

“But didn’t the camera catch them leaving? Or did they go out the window?”

“The windows were locked. And if you’ve ever seen any of the bank videos they show on the newscasts, you know you can’t tell faces on those recordings because the subjects are too far away. My camera is zoomed—set to capture the upper torso of anyone at the office door. So if someone needed to sneak out, they could crawl out the door and under the camera’s view. I’m sure that’s what happened.”

“And the rest?”

Brill heard Pengold sigh. “I’m sure you’ve noticed I’m not exactly meticulous when it comes to keeping the office straight. But just because I’m a slob doesn’t mean I don’t know where I’ve put things and
how
I’ve put things. People who aren’t slobs don’t realize this. After I discovered the tape had been manipulated, I took a real close look at all the files on my desk and on the card table. Whoever came in was interested only in my copy of the report I gave you about the Greaveys. I know because it was the only folder left
exactly
in its original spot. Everything else looked, well—shifted.”

Brill said, “But how did they know to look in your office to begin with? Would Carlos have sold you out?”

“I doubt it. I’ve worked with him for years, and I’ve never gotten a bad sniff from his outfit. More than likely it was my fingerprint check of Eleanor Greavey that someone’s traced back to me.”

For a moment, neither Brill nor Pengold spoke. Finally Brill said, “So what should I do?”

“Keep your doors and windows locked, keep your cellphone on your night table and a butcher knife under your pillow.”

Brill snorted. “Thanks a lot.” After hanging up with Pengold, she unpressed the answering machine’s Pause button to listen to the second message.

Gladys!
Ogee Dennever’s crisp delivery echoed over the speaker.
I know you’ve been keeping tabs on old Greavey. His sister came to visit him just after your shift ended. She stayed all of five minutes before bounding out of here, but she’s back again, this time with a court order. She’s moving Greavey to another hospital, and the ambulance is expected later tonight. Thought you should know.
 

Brill stood by the answering set, stunned. Whoever was behind this was moving fast. She pressed the redial button on her cellphone and said, “Monty, you’re right. We have a problem.”

—

A man had once told Brill, “I can tell a woman’s mood by the click of her heels on a hard surface. I can tell if she’s hesitant, scared, confident or determined.”

This evening, the determined click of Brill’s heels as she approached the nurse’s station did not go unnoticed. Second-shift supervisor Ogee Dennever had the court order in his hand even before Brill spoke.

Brill took the paper and read. “How do we know this is real?”

Ogee said, “It
looks
real. Of course there’s no way of checking up on the thing before morning. Unless you want to get the district attorney on the phone at this hour.”

Brill glanced at the large clock that hung from the wall. It was nearly midnight. “Greavey’s still here, I take it?”

Ogee nodded. “He’s in one of the holding cells, awaiting transport.”

“Holding cell! Why?”

“Read the order.”

Brill read. After some legalese transferring Greavey to the DeSanger Hospital for Mental Illnesses, she came to a paragraph that read,
Because of the subject’s recent violent actions, and because of his tendency to agitation at the presence of certain members of the Logan Institute staff, it is hereby ordered that Daniel Greavey be held in isolation until he can be moved by appropriate medical personnel. Additionally, no one from the Logan Institute is to talk to, pass notes to or otherwise communicate with Mr. Greavey during the time he is held in isolation.
 

“This is crap! This judge—” Brill looked at the signature. “—Harsfield—has been bought off!” She tossed the order back onto Ogee’s desk.

Ogee folded his arms. “For what purpose, Gladys?”

Brill ignored the question. “What if Greavey is hungry, or wants to use the bathroom? Someone will have to talk to him then. And what are these ‘recent violent actions?’ I don’t know of any!”

Ogee said, “I don’t know of any either. The sister must have spun some story.”

“Sister!” Brill spat. “Which cell’s he in?”

“A-4. But you can’t go there.”

“Why not?”

“You’d be violating the order and putting the Institute at risk for contempt—and a suit.”

“There’s no risk. You know this is bogus.” Brill walked to her desk, unlocked the center drawer and pulled out a key. “If you’re worried about your job, Ogee, just turn your head as I walk down the hall.”

“Gladys ...”

“I’ll be all right. Now, can I have a piece of gum?”

“What?”

“From your goodie jar. A piece of gum.”

Ogee threw up his hands. “Sure. Why not? I’ve never seen you with a piece of chewing gum in your mouth—ever—and now you want to start.” He handed Brill a stick.

Brill unwrapped the gum and stuffed it into her mouth. She gave Ogee a last wink before she headed down the hallway to the holding cells.

Chapter 5

Gladys Brill had two things going for her: The guts to make a decision and, once made, the determination to carry it out.

Now, as she watched the door to cell A-4 slam shut, she put the access key back into her purse. She’d have no further use for it. On this side of the door, no keyhole was available.

Daniel Greavey sat on one of two padded benches that were the only furniture in the room. He had watched Brill enter, but had said nothing. Now, as Brill sat on the other bench, he said, “Come to say good-bye?”

Brill looked him in the eyes. “We don’t have much time. What happened earlier tonight, when Eleanor came to visit? What did you tell her?”

Greavey’s face fell. “I made a mistake. Told her I’d told you about Diego. That made her plenty mad. She started spouting some stuff about gratitude and how they’d have to get me out of here.”

Greavey’s reference to “they” was not lost on Brill, but she ignored it for the moment. “You know Eleanor’s not your sister, don’t you? You know she’s not the Eleanor from six months ago.”

Greavey sighed. “Sure. I ain’t blind.”

“Did she tell you where your sister was?”

Greavey shook his head. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“The woman from six months ago wasn’t my sister either.”

Brill’s heart jumped. “Then who are these people?”

Greavey squirmed on his bench. Brill could tell he was scared—scared of being moved. But he looked up at the four padded walls and the padded door with the small grilled window, and his eyes glared black for a moment—like the moment when he had first mentioned Diego’s death.

“They said they were friends of my mom’s,” Greavey said. “I don’t know if I believe that. After I got convicted of my brother’s death—if I had a brother—I was supposed to be sent to a state institution. You know how those are. No funds. Staff too overworked to care about anything except makin’ it through their shifts. Bad food and no facilities, and most of the patients just left to rot.” Greavey spread his hands. “So these friends of my mom’s got together with a judge and had me transferred to the Logan Institute. It ain’t paradise, but I have a room to myself and the staff’s decent and some of the other patients are actually my friends.”