Wolf in the Shadows (7 page)

“We’ll talk more later,” he said into the mouthpiece. Then he hung up and regarded me thoughtfully, as if he was memorizing
every detail of my appearance.

I stood just inside the door, letting him have a good look. After a moment he nodded, his image of me apparently filed in
some mental data bank. He said, “Sit down and tell me what it is you want.”

I came all the way into the office and took a chair in front of the desk. Gage Renshaw remained atop it, hunched, elbows propped
on his bony knees.

“Hy Ripinsky had an appointment with someone in your La Jolla office last Wednesday,” I began.

Renshaw didn’t respond, just watched me attentively.

“He called there from Oakland Airport, was told there had been a change of plans, and came here instead.”

Still no response.

“At some point after that, he drove his rental car to a place off Highway One-oh-one in San Benito County, near Ravenswood
Road. He had an accident there, dented the car and broke a headlight by running into a boulder. On Saturday night the car
was dropped off at SFO by someone other than Ripinsky.”

Renshaw’s reaction to that was so minute I almost missed it—a slight tightening of the lines around his eyes. “Go on.”

“Ripinsky’s plane is still tied down at Oakland Airport. No one at his office has heard from him since he left Tufa Lake.
What happened to him? And where is he now?”

“Why are you looking for him?”

I hadn’t decided how to play this part of it yet. To buy time, I said, “My reasons are private and have nothing to do with
your firm.”

Renshaw got off the desk and walked around behind it. He straightened a pile of folders in its center, looked at his watch,
pushed the lock of white hair off his forehead. Buying some time of his own. “Up to now,” he finally said, “you’ve been very
direct, Ms. McCone.”

“As I told you, my reasons are private and unrelated to RKI.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He leaned forward on the desk, palms flat against its surface, the white lock of hair flopping down again.
“I do wonder what a private investigator employed by a local legal-services plan wants with Ripinsky.” To my surprised look
he added, “Yes, I recognized your name and had you checked out. It’s a policy of ours. What I discovered muddies an already
muddy situation.”

“What situation?”

He shook his head. “You really can’t expect me to level with you if you’re not willing to return the favor.”

And even if I did, he might not. I thought quickly, trying to decide how much to tell him.

Renshaw waited. When I didn’t speak, he straightened and began to pace, long arms clasped behind him. “Ms. McCone, I’ve already
given you more time than I intended. What’s your interest in Ripinsky?”

Something in the way he said Hy’s name put me on my guard. I saw a tightening of his mouth, a telltale whiteness of the skin.
This man was angry at Hy—very angry. I thought of how Bob Stern had described the people at RKI: “They’re tough and they’re
dangerous.”

“All right,” I said, attempting to feed into his anger, “Ripinsky and I were involved in a business deal. I can’t go into
the details. He cheated me, and I want to find him.”

Renshaw glanced sharply at me. Again I sensed he was taking a mental photograph, filing it for future recall. After a moment
he crossed to the desk and resumed his former position. “I’m glad to hear we’re on the same side,” he said in a confiding
tone. “But I’ll need to know more about this business deal.”

“I can’t tell you any more. There are other investors involved, and they value confidentiality.”

For a moment he was silent, pulling at the knot of his frayed green tie. Gage Renshaw didn’t believe my story of the business
deal any more than I believed his abrupt shift to the role of confidant. I met his eyes, saw they were amused, felt my lips
twitch in the beginning of a smile.

Renshaw smiled, too. “Well, here we are, Ms, McCone— two stubborn bullshitters at a standoff. You want Ripinsky, and I’ll
admit I want him, too. Same objective. Motive? Maybe the same, but probably not. What are we to do?”

I couldn’t level, not with this man. My motives—concern, caring, something like love—weren’t within his frame of reference.
Oh, he’d heard of them, all right, maybe even experienced them a time or two, but in this situation they simply didn’t apply.

“Your move, Ms. McCone.”

Again I met his eyes; they were no longer amused. I said, “All I can tell you is that when I find Ripinsky, there’ll be nothing
good in store for him.”

“Either you’re telling the truth or you’re a very good actress. For your sake, I hope it’s the former.”

“Why?”

Behind the sheen of his glasses his eyes went hard and icy. The skin around his mouth paled. “Because,” he said, “if you have
any affection for Ripinsky, you’re going to be badly hurt. When I find him, I intend to kill him.”

Now I had to call upon all my acting skills. With an effort, I kept my voice level as I asked, “What did Ripinsky do to you?”

Renshaw shook his head. “That’s confidential—like your business dealings with him.”

I thought for a moment. “All right,” I said, “I’ll tell you what I think happened. You or your partner hired Ripinsky, possibly
to deal with a situation that required his specific talents. Ripinsky screwed up or double-crossed you. You say you want to
find him, so you probably don’t have any more of a clue to his whereabouts than I do. That’s why you agreed to see me; you
thought I might give you a lead.”

Renshaw regarded me with narrowed eyes.

“That’s where I can help you,” I added. “If you tell me what went down, I can find him. You see, Ripinsky and I used to be
lovers; I know how he thinks.” Two lies there, McCone.

Renshaw raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “You were lovers, and now you’re willing to turn him over to me?”

I shrugged. “Situations change. People change.”

“That’s cold, Ms. McCone.”

“You were a friend of Ripinsky once?”

He nodded.

“Well, then, you ought to understand. Why should I feel any differently than you, now that it’s over?”

That gave him pause. He got up, began pacing again. I watched him carefully. This man wanted to kill Hy; if I were to prevent
that, I’d need to know him.

“Ms. McCone,” he said after a bit, “I understand you’re a good investigator, and I suppose you have the inside track if what
you say about your former relationship with Ripinsky is true. But I still doubt you can find him when our operatives haven’t
been able to locate him since Sunday night.”

Sunday night—not Saturday, when the rental car had been dropped off. “We’ve reached a stalemate, then.”

He faced me, hands on hips. “You realize I don’t believe a word of your story—the business deal, the other investors who
require confidentiality, Ripinsky cheating you. I’m not sure I even believe what seems more logical—that he dumped you and
you’re attempting to use me to get back at him. All of this seems like a smoke screen for some private agenda that I’m not
going to try to guess at.”

“My motives don’t matter. What does is that I can be bought to do what your operatives so far haven’t managed.”

Renshaw didn’t respond, but his eyes moved swiftly—calculating. He cocked his head as if listening to some internal debate.
Then he nodded, said, “Okay, come with me,” and started for the door.

I got up and followed. “Where’re we going?”

“Downstairs. There’s a lot of material I need to familiarize you with. Afterward we’ll discuss your price.”

*    *    *

Five minutes later I was seated in the front row of a projection room off the building’s lobby. Renshaw pressed a switch on
a console between us; the lights dimmed. He pushed another button, and a man’s picture appeared on the screen.

“Timothy Mourning,” Renshaw said. “CEO and chairman of the board of Phoenix Labs.”

Phoenix Labs. Where had I …? Oh, yes—the company whose initial public offering of stock had abruptly been canceled; I’d tried
to read the article about it in the business section this morning, and damned near fallen asleep. I studied the man’s face.
He was young for a CEO and board chairman, perhaps in his mid-thirties. On the plump side and mustached, he had a slightly
receding hairline topped by a wild mop of dark blond curls. I was willing to bet that in high school his classmates had labeled
him a nerd; now, while many of them remembered those brief years as their only time of glory, Mourning was head of a corporation.
His unabashed grin and the gleam behind his wire-rimmed glasses told me he possessed both a sharp intellect and a zest for
living.

Renshaw pressed the button, and the picture changed. “Diane Mourning,” he said. “Tim’s wife of eighteen years, and chief financial
officer of the labs.”

Diane Mourning’s face was thin, with high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, and wide-set hazel eyes. Her shoulder-length blond
hair also curled, but in a more disciplined fashion than her husband’s. Unlike Timothy, she apparently considered posing for
a photograph a serious matter: she stared uncompromisingly at the camera, her small mouth set in a firm, straight line. Not
much humor there, I thought, and wondered how they got along.

Again Renshaw changed slides, to a sprawling one-story stucco building surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire.
Open fields lay on either side, and an oak-dotted hillside rose in the background. A guard shack sat next to the gate, and
a sign on it said: Phoenix Labs, Inc.

“The company’s facility in Novato,” Renshaw explained. “Basic utilitarian plant, but someday there’ll be an office tower next
to it. Phoenix is one of the hot firms in the biotech industry. You know anything about biotech?”

“Not a great deal.”

“I’ll give you a background file; you read up on it. Basically it’s the wave of the future—genetic engineering, disease prevention
and cure. Real growth industry here in the Bay Area. Nine months ago Phoenix announced they were developing a drug called
Enterferon-One that can retard the growth of the HIV virus. They’ve planned an IPO of stock to finance the final stages of
development.”

“I read in the
Chronicle
that the IPO was withdrawn. Why?”

In answer, a new picture appeared: a narrow road with wild vegetation on either side; a red Mazda sports car sat nose down
in the right-hand ditch.

Renshaw said, “This is where Timothy Mourning was kidnapped. At approximately seven-ten
A.M.
, Tuesday, June first. On the road leading from his home outside Novato.”

So Phoenix Labs was an RKI client. “Was there anti-terrorism policy on Mourning?”

“No. He was extremely wary of that kind of coverage.”

“Why?”

“Because, much as the existence of such policies is supposed to be confidential, leaks occur. And a leak is a direct invitation
to violent fringe groups. Mourning believes in good security and contingency planning rather than insurance. Doesn’t like
insurance much, isn’t even covered by keyman or any other kind of life policy. Apparently, though, he operated on the mistaken
assumption that nothing could ever happen to him, because he ignored the advice we gave him.”

“And that was …?”

“Standard: Vary your route to work. Vary your routines. Do not stop your car to help anyone, no matter what the circumstances.
If stopped, do not unlock your doors or open your windows. Use your car phone to summon help. Granted, he couldn’t vary his
route to work; he lives on an isolated road—Crazy Horse—and there’s only the one outlet. But he could have changed the time
he left home, if he wasn’t such a stubborn creature of habit. As for the rest …

Renshaw switched slides. A close-up shot of the car appeared, the driver’s-side door wide open. “We assume he was forced into
the ditch. He either got out of the car on his own or was driving with the door unlocked and taken out forcibly.” Another
slide, the car’s interior, phone still in its cradle. “Either he didn’t go for the phone or had no time to use it.”

“When was the kidnapping discovered, and by whom?” I asked.

“Diane Mourning left the house at seven twenty-three. At least one of them varied the routine. She found the car and called
us.”

“Why not the police?”

“Our agreement with the client is that they call us first. If we feel it’s in their best interests, we notify the authorities.
As you probably know, there’s no statute on the books that requires citizens to report kidnapping or extortion attempts.”

“And did you feel it was in Mourning’s best interests to report it?”

“No. Initially there was some speculation that Mourning might have staged his own disappearance, and no ransom demand was
made that day or on the following two. From the first, though, we proceeded on the assumption that it was an actual kidnapping.
There had been threats from lunatic-fringe animal-rights groups against the labs and the Mournings personally.”

“Why?”

“Because the production of the new drug, Enterferon-One, requires the extraction of a substance from the cartilage of dolphins.
A group called Terramarine has made several bomb threats, and both Mournings, plus other key employees, have received written
and telephoned death threats.”

“All from the same group?”

“That isn’t clear. But from there it was only a short step to a kidnapping.”

“I assume you brought Ripinsky in because of the environmentalist angle.”

“Ironically, no. I’d contacted him several weeks before that about joining the firm. We need someone of his abilities. He
and I were to meet in La Jolla on Wednesday; I was prepared to offer him an ownership percentage if that’s what it would take.
But by then the Mourning kidnapping had gone down, and I was already here in the city. I brought Ripinsky in on it, figuring
he could help us deal with the environmentalists, if necessary. It was also in the back of my mind that giving him a taste
of the old action might persuade him to come on board.”

I wished I could ask about the “old action”—where he’d known Hy, what they’d been involved in, why Renshaw wanted him to
join RKI. But I couldn’t do that without undermining my claim that I knew him so well I could easily find him.