“They didn’t represent anyone, they represented everyone. They were the invisible hand behind the case that got rid of the witness.”
Tansy’s eyes went wide. “Got rid of…”
“Not that. Just out of town, way, way out of town. Charlie set him up in a condo one of the kids’ parents owned in Cabo San Lucas. Until today, I had suspected Charlie of threatening the witness into fleeing. The truth is Charlie just paid him off.”
“Where is he now?”
“Dead. Had a stroke a year later. He might’ve survived if he’d stayed in the States and was living close to a first-rate emergency room. He died of pneumonia a month afterward. I found his death certificate in Charlie’s file.”
Tansy bit her lip. “Poor man.”
“What?” Gage threw up his hands. “Poor man? He was a disgusting human being.”
“But pneumonia is a horrible, horrible way to die.”
Gage started to answer, then caught himself. He examined Tansy’s soft, round face and sympathetic eyes. She would’ve made a magnificent nurse.
He watched her drift off in thought during the quiet moments that followed.
“I didn’t realize until now,” Tansy finally said, “that despite what I told you, I hadn’t really made peace with never knowing exactly what happened. I just stopped laboring over it in my mind.” She glanced at the file. “How much money did Charlie make for doing it?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“As far as I can tell. His accounting records don’t show any entries under that case number. Maybe he-”
Pegasus. Maybe the money was wired to Pegasus.
Gage wished he had known the name in India so he could’ve prompted Wilbert Hawkins’s memory of the account that had wired the million dollars funding his escape.
In any case, Gage knew he needed to think it all through before he told Tansy.
“Maybe the payment was combined with something else he was working on,” Gage said. Tansy’s eyes flickered. He knew that she knew he was thinking something different than what he was saying. “Or something like that.”
Chapter 38
'Got it, boss.”
Alex Z could barely dribble a basketball, but the enthusiasm blasting through the phone told Gage he’d just performed a slam dunk.
Gage was driving up the Embarcadero Freeway from Daly City back to his office, just about to the off-ramp toward China Basin and AT amp;T Park.
“There’s no way anyone could have found it, no matter how much time they spent searching his computer.”
“Except you,” Gage said.
Alex Z laughed. “Of course.”
“How did you do it?”
“Charlie named the file Med-USA and stored it among his medical records.” Alex Z paused. Expectancy seemed to vibrate through the telephone line. “Get it?”
“Get what?”
“Med-USA.”
“No. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Remember the day I started searching Charlie’s computer?”
“Sure. I walked into your office, tossed a paper airplane over your head…”
“My earrings.”
“Earrings? Greek mythology?” Gage tried out versions in his mind. Med USA. Med-USA. MedUSA. “Medusa?”
“Bingo. Pegasus was the winged horse that emerged when Perseus cut off Medusa’s head.”
“Snakes.”
“Snakes and money. Lots of snakes and money. Millions and millions and millions of dollars over fifteen years.”
“What about the first spreadsheets you found? The ones with the coded columns?”
“I think they’re bogus. Decoys for whoever might come snooping.”
“Then why are you certain Medusa is real?”
“Because there’s a million-dollar transfer from Pegasus to Andhra Bank in Hyderabad the same week Wilbert Hawkins disappeared.”
Gage thought back on his conversation with Jack Burch.
“Where’s the Pegasus bank account?” Gage asked.
“Cayman Exchange Bank.”
Gage didn’t like hearing the name. The bank had turned up in too many offshore financial scams over the years. Never convicted, but like most banks on the Caymans, often suspected.
“Can you tell where the money came from?”
“No. I think that’s on another spreadsheet. I haven’t been able to decode it yet.”
“But you’ll figure it out?”
“I’m not walking away from this computer until I do.”
Chapter 39
Bethel Island in the Sacramento River Delta.
Gage had gotten stonewalled the last time he drove out to confront the retired OSHA inspector, Ray Karopian. But that was then, when he had only vague questions about Karopian’s investigation of the TIMCO explosion-
And this was now.
Viz followed Gage from San Francisco over the Bay Bridge then north, almost to where the Sacramento River flowed into San Pablo Bay. What had once been rolling hills grazed by cattle was now a commercial corridor of malls, fast-food restaurants, townhouses, and apartments.
Gage and Viz headed east on Highway 4 past the just-within-commuting-distance bedroom communities, condo complexes, and meth labs.
Hot, dusty, and windy.
They could see the TIMCO refinery spread out between the freeway and shoreline, its forest of two-hundred- foot fractionating towers operating around the clock, distilling crude oil into usable fuels and company profits.
Gage continued north after Viz pulled into a service station at the main Bethel Island intersection. He cast a glance toward False River, then hung a left along the waterfront to Karopian’s three-story, clapboard-sided home. The house was set back from a wide street paralleling the shore. A third of an acre. Mature trees. Gage was still surprised at how little a million and a half dollars had bought before the economic collapse, even in Middle of Nowhere California.
He spotted Karopian working on the thirty-five-foot Bayliner tied to his private dock extending from the grass-covered levee, and remembered thinking last time it was an awfully big boat for such a slim stretch of water.
Karopian didn’t turn until Gage’s dress shoes thunked against the metal surface of the dock. Thin, balding, a
