No Witnesses

the twenty-four hours that followed the contaminated cans’ being placed on the shelves.

“Here’s the drill: First, I’ve attempted to contact these eleven individuals, but I only reached three. Your job is to do a follow-up. You proceed to their homes, collect any cans-treated as evidence, don’t forget-and conduct a thorough interview to make sure no cans were given away or placed somewhere that’s been forgotten about.”

Boldt said, “If we get lucky-if we locate these extra cans-then, beginning tomorrow morning, I want each of you to contact and interview these thirty-four others who were present at Foodland during the time of the drop.” He added as a footnote: “Obviously, this case gets our priority, although technically you’re not detailed to it, so you’ll have to stay current on the Book as well. It’s a lot of work, I know.” He continued, “These shoppers-and anyone they were with-are all potential witnesses and should be dealt with as such. We contact them first by phone, and with the hot ones, we conduct follow-ups. Interviews are tape-recorded, where we can get permission. I want you keeping good notes.” He glanced at Shoswitz.

“Okay? Questions?” Shoswitz said, “Let’s go.”

ELEVEN

At seven-fifteen that Monday evening, beneath a heavy blanket of cloud that accelerated the early summer dusk, Daphne let herself into the Adler Mansion using Owen’s master key. She closed and locked the door behind her. If she were to go undetected in her efforts, then she knew she must key in the security code within the next thirty seconds to prevent a silent alarm from sounding.

The Mansion, corporate headquarters for Adler’s global business, occupied a large corner lot in the old part of town. Adler Incorporated owned the rest of the buildings on this block as well, all nestled under towering trees, but the Mansion was special for its Victorian grandeur and charm. Three full stories and a converted basement, four chimneys, eight fireplaces, mustard-colored siding with white shutters and white trim, ornately carved fascia, a glorious series of roofs aimed to the heavens and topped with lightning rods like exclamation points.

She had decided to break the law.

In her mind the choice was quite clear. Warrants need more than suspicions in order to be issued, and suspicion and curiosity were all she had. Children were dying; there was no time for lengthy debate with judges and prosecutors.

Added to this was a nagging doubt that Howard Taplin intended to cooperate fully and provide her with all the files concerning the New Leaf contamination. Intuition? A psychologist’s instincts? During the meeting on Adler’s boat, she had witnessed his cool resistance to the topic of New Leaf. It was clearly not something that he wanted discussed or investigated. Why? she wondered. The meeting had taken place late Friday afternoon. The Monday business day had now passed without any mention, any offer of the files to the police. She believed that to officially request the files-for a second time-was likely to get them shredded. Regardless of Adler’s permission to be here, she felt that if she were caught in the act, if Taplin knew how serious she was about investigating New Leaf, that any and all files pertaining to the previous contamination would start disappearing quickly. And quite possibly, forever.

More important, the threats. Under no circumstances could she allow herself to be discovered, her identity revealed-the involvement of the police found out. The possibility of a disgruntled employee remained at the top of their suspect list. Word would travel fast within the company: The police raided our files last night. The faxed threats made it abundantly clear that police interference came at the price of more lives. If she made a mess of this, there would be more killing.

She searched for the security device on the wall of the pantry, through the swinging door now to her right- where Adler had told her to look. She pushed through but found it too dark to see well, and with activity in a few of the other nearby Adler buildings, she decided against turning on a light. The warnings against police involvement kept her anonymity of foremost importance.

Nonetheless, she took that risk. She wanted a look at the files alone, by herself, without the editorial screen of Howard Taplin’s watchful eye. The fact that Adler Foods had been involved in a contamination incident several years before offered Daphne Matthews, forensic psychologist, the possibility of a real and potent motivation. And whereas a large percentage of crimes against persons were seemingly committed without an identifiable motivation, judging by the use of language in the blackmail threats, she believed this crime different.

Fifteen thousand … sixteen thousand … she counted off as she waved her hand in large arcs on the wall desperately searching for the security device while her eyes continued to adjust slowly to the darkness. There! Behind the door, a mahogany valance enclosing it. She pulled the cover open. A red light at the bottom flashed ominously. Her middle finger sought out the raised bump on the number 5 key, she entered the code, and the red light stopped blinking, replaced by green. She entered the security number a second time, rearming the device as Adler had advised her, ensuring both her privacy and that the building would not be broken into while she was downstairs in the files.

She had only been here a few times, always in the day, always when the building bustled with activity. She found the near-total silence, the slight hum of ventilation, somewhat haunting. It was a big place, and the old wooden floors complained underfoot and a big grandfather clock in reception tolled out the seconds sounding like someone chipping ice. Living alone for as long as she had, she felt accustomed to solitude, but the unfamiliarity of her surroundings coupled with the clandestine nature of her mission here instilled in her a sense of foreboding, as if someone might be hiding around the next corner.

“Hello?” she called out tentatively, in case she was wrong about being alone. Judging that she was in fact all by herself in this museum of a place-every piece of trim, every piece of furniture restored or reproduced to match the original era-she returned into the back hall and stood at the top of the curving back staircase that led down into the converted basement. She hesitated only briefly before taking the plunge and descending step by cautious step into an increasing darkness. Adler had described the layout of this sublevel secretarial pool to her, and the location of the file room, but it did not make voyaging down into the darkness, the unknown, any easier.

She wanted those files. But more than anything, she wished now that she had not come alone.

The drumming in her chest increased with each stair step, her breathing quickened to sharp gasps. She nervously fingered the two keys like worry beads and twisted the starched ribbon that bound them.

In the faint red glow of a pair of lighted exit signs, Daphne saw that the secretarial pool housed five computer workstations isolated from each other by office baffles. There was a string of clocks high on the wall displaying the proper time in Rome, London, New York, Denver, Seattle, and Tokyo. A pair of erasable-pen board calendars hung on the same wall, cluttered with lines, arrows, and notations. The file room, marked Private, was to Daphne’s right. The second key opened this door.

She had prepared herself for a vast room containing row after row of gunmetal-gray filing cabinets. Instead, it was a simply appointed, small office space containing a pair of large-screen computer workstations, constantly running, that occupied a narrow counter space; two copiers; a color laser printer, and a pair of color scanners. On the left wall hung a shelving system that housed a dozen in-boxes, all labeled. The wall to her right held more shelving and two large green plastic garbage cans labeled B + W Recycle and Color Recycle. Below the computers were several drawers containing optical disks in plastic jewel boxes. They resembled small CDs and were numbered 1 through 131, with plenty of empty slots yet to be filled.

The room was windowless. Daphne switched on the overhead lights, pushed the door partly shut, and sat down at the right-hand terminal. The two computer terminals appeared to be identical. Both the keyboards and monitors bore the boldly printed name EDIFIS-Electronic Digital Filing System. Adler had cautioned that many of the more confidential categories were security protected, and had provided her with a credit card-size plastic pass bearing a magnetic strip that, once read, gained her the highest level of access. She pushed the proper function key for security clearance and ran the card through a slot on the right of the keyboard.

She was inside.

She quickly navigated through a series of menus to an alphabetized index that was organized into four separate databases: (C)ategory, (S)ubject, (D)ate, and (A)uthor. The indexing system felt familiar, like one used by the public library downtown. She moved deeper into the increasingly specific indexes.