“Exactly. Right.”
Fisher spoke up. “But you think his work was involved?”
“Maybe. We’ve all got personal projects, you know—hobbies. We talk about them all the time. But for a while, I don’t know…seemed like Bill was holding back.”
I nodded. “And I’m assuming you haven’t heard from him, right? No contact that you’re keeping secret?”
“I wish.” Chen looked down. “I keep my phone with me all the time. I sent him e-mails every day for the first two weeks. I still check all the time. First couple days, I even left the back door of my house unlocked. Gerry did, too.” He looked up. “I think Bill’s dead.”
“Which e-mail address are you sending to? One associated with the college?”
“Yes.”
“He’s not going to be using that. Not going to be phoning you either. He knows that those will nail him. If he’s innocent, he’s terrified out of his mind and going through grief and survivor guilt simultaneously, and doing it on his own. That would be enough to put most people in a psych ward within two days. Right now he’s probably one of the most paranoid individuals in the state. You’ve got no other e-mail address for him, something he can access anonymously on the Web?”
“No. I thought of that, but I don’t know one. And he could have set one up anytime, used it to e-mail me.”
“Except that as far as he knows, you buy the prevailing story and would try to trick him into giving himself up.”
“No. He’d know I wouldn’t do that.”
“With respect, Peter, you have no idea what paranoia is like. What about online science forums, Usenet groups, anything like that? Virtual places you’d expect him to hang out.”
Chen cocked his head. “Hadn’t thought of that.”
“He’s hardly going to be swapping equations back and forth,” Fisher said. “Given the position he’s in.”
“Of course not. But remember: For us, what happened to Bill is just a part of life. For him, it’s everything that exists. If he’s still alive, he’s been in hiding for three weeks. He needs to talk to someone, very soon, and he’s going to be trying to work out how. But he’s going to be very scared of physical contact or anything he fears might lead a bad guy to him. We have to find a way of making that easier for him.”
“But we have no idea where he is.”
“He’s in the city,” I said. “He’s not Rambo. I don’t see him taking to the mountains with a hunting knife between his teeth. He has no money, because he’ll know that an ATM will tag him. But he’s a bright guy, and I’m sure he could panhandle enough cash for half an hour online. That’s the best way I can think of trying to get to him.”
I grabbed a napkin off the table and wrote my cell-phone number on it. I gave this to Chen.
“Go home,” I told him. “Get online. Go to the places you and Bill and Gerry used to hang out. Leave messages. Don’t make it obvious they’re for Bill, but put something in them that will catch his eye and at the same time confirm it’s from a friend. And put this phone number in it. Not in plain sight, obviously. Find a way of hiding it, but in a way Bill will get. Can you think of a method of doing that?”
He nodded quickly. I knew he would. He looked like a puzzle kind of guy. “Good. And try to communicate that there are people who believe he’s innocent and that the person on the end of that phone line is one of them.”
“Okay. But why your number? Why not mine?”
“Because if we’re right, then someone who wasn’t Bill broke his wife’s neck and shot his son in the face before setting him on fire. Whoever Anderson makes contact with stands a chance of running into this person.” I stubbed out my cigarette and looked at Chen. “Want that to be you?”
“Uh, no,” he said.
chapter
TWENTY-FOUR
When he’d gone, Fisher turned to me.
“You didn’t say you were going to get into the house. I would’ve liked to have been there.”
“Which is one of several reasons I didn’t tell you,” I said. “And there was nothing there for you to find.”
“Jack…”
“Jack nothing. You pulled me into this by throwing my wife’s name in my face. She’s my interest here, and I’ll do what I have to in order to find out what’s going on. Just liked you turned up here with that friend of Anderson’s without letting me know first.”
“Bad idea? Talking to him?”
“Not unless he’s involved with whoever killed Anderson’s family.”
“Christ—you think he is?”
“No, I don’t. But you didn’t even consider the question. What if Chen had let someone know that Anderson would be out of the house that evening? Or if he’d even agreed to make sure he was? If either of those were true, we’ve just put ourselves squarely on someone’s radar.”
Fisher looked down. “Jesus. I didn’t think. Sorry. I’m…This isn’t really my kind of thing.”
“Remember that. Something else—when you called, you knew I’d been to Seattle. I want to know how you knew.”
“Just happened to see you,” he said, shrugging. “I didn’t even mean to tell you about it.”
“Where?”
“Road at the foot of Post Alley, near where the Kerry, Crane, and Hardy offices are.”
“We just happened to be in the same place at the same time?”
“I have no idea why you were there,” he said irritably. “I was on my way to try to talk to Crane. About the building in Belltown. I told reception I was interested in buying it. He wasn’t in.”
“Actually,” I said, “he was. I’d just come from there.”
“Oh.” Fisher frowned. “Why?”
“I got a call the night before. From a cabdriver. He’d found Amy’s phone in the back of his car.” I hesitated before continuing. It felt disloyal to speak of Amy to Fisher, as if by doing so I was joining some campaign against her. But that was absurd. “There appeared to be discrepancies in her whereabouts. I went to see Crane to find out where her meetings were that day, to work out when I could return her phone.”
“And?”
“He didn’t know she was in town. Or so he said.”
“But now you’re wondering if he was the guy in the pictures I took.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” he said.
“I’m not convinced there’s anything to be sorry about.”
“I hope you’re right. But the downside of what you’ve just told me is that we both visited Crane’s offices within a half hour and mentioned your wife’s name. We’ve probably put ourselves on his radar, don’t you think?”
“Fine by me,” I said. “I talked with the guy. I don’t see him for murder.”
Fisher said nothing. For just a moment, I began to feel that my hands were not my own. “You’re going to have to stop looking at me that way,” I said quietly.
“What way?”
“Like we’re back in school and I’ve said something naive.”
“That’s just in your head, Jack.”
“It’d better be,” I said.
“You think Anderson will call?”
“I have no idea. Chen may be right. Anderson may be dead. Whoever took out his family could’ve caught up with him. He could’ve gotten randomly mugged. He could’ve thrown himself into the bay. I’ll give him until midday
