“You saw me?”
“I saw you,” breath, breath, breath, “run over Carol Conroy with your car.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
J ames was in office five, splicing a wire connection.
“Drop it pal. This project isn’t going anywhere right now.”
“Bro, I’ve got about ten minutes here and I’ll have the-”
“Drop it.” I screamed at him, and he stepped down from the ladder. Without looking back, I strode from the room, knowing he was right behind me. I was the person in charge of this project and people had better start paying attention.
Through the work area, through the hallway, and into the lobby. Daliah was on the phone, talking fast and furiously. “Yes. Her body is still there. No. Wait, there’s another call. Hello? Yes. We’re off of a Hundred Seventy- Second Street. Please hold. Hello? No, she’s,” Daliah paused, “she’s dead.”
I turned and James was right behind me.
“We’re out of here?” He asked me so innocently.
“Yeah. We’re out of here. In another minute the cops are going to be here asking me all kinds of questions.”
I heard him, quietly behind me. “See you tonight. Eight sharp. And, I’m looking forward to it.”
The response was equally soft. “James, be careful. Take care of yourself.” Eden Callahan was praying for the date to still be on.
Son of a bitch was still in there working it. If we had a Friday night, my roommate was set. If we had a Friday night.
No other words were spoken. James came up by my side as we exited the building, and he looked the other way when we walked by the blanketed body and the three paramedics who were lifting her onto the stretcher. What was left of her.
He didn’t say a word as we approached the truck. James pretty much knew what I was thinking and I knew that he did. It was scary how close we were. Em and I shared a very close relationship. Not as close as I wanted, but damned close. James and I-it went beyond understanding.
He opened the door of the truck and started the engine. The traditional cough, the belching of black smoke, and he put it into drive. “Where are we going?”
“Remember the day care center?”
“The one we visited on that first GPS excursion?”
“Tiny Tots Academy. The same.”
“I remember.”
“There was a reason Feng stopped there.”
“And the locked building?”
“No one there to ask, but we can ask someone at the school.”
He pulled out of the parking lot, and as we glanced out of the windows, we could see the emergency vehicle parked by the body of Carol Conroy. It was hard to fathom, hard to understand. Here was a lady who was supposedly scared for her life, a lady who had asked for our help, and a lady who had led us down a very dark path. Here lay a lady who had betrayed her husband and me. Me. I wasn’t getting a check from this lady. I know it sounds very selfish, but when you think of the time, effort, and expense we’d gone through, I had a reason to be slightly upset. Somebody had to pay for the smoke detector/camera.
“Why the day care center, Bro?”
“I want to see who works there, James.”
“Very strange.”
Ten minutes later James pulled into Tiny Tots Academy. Somewhat shaken and battered by the ride, we stepped from the truck. I opened the front door and walked in. A policeman greeted us right inside.
“What can I do for you two gentlemen today?”
The uniform caught me off guard. “Is there trouble here?”
“No. Why?”
“You’re a policeman-” And, I thought, a murder just happened fifteen minutes ago. The victim was a lady who carried a pencil from this place and “Off duty. Off-duty policeman. This is my day job. Security for-”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Certainly.”
“You have a professional staff here?”
“Of course. The instructors. I believe most of them have certificates. You guys surely aren’t here to check licenses.” He looked me up and down. Jeans, the bruise on my arm, a ripped T-shirt.
James looked at me, still not sure where all this was going.
“No. I don’t check licenses. But you also probably have volunteers, am I right?”
“We do.”
“Do you know any of them?”
“Most.”
“Is there a volunteer named Carol Conroy?”
“There was. She worked one or two days a week.”
Yes. Finally a good piece of spying. I was proud of myself. “She worked?” Past tense.
“I understand that she’s no longer with us.”
I nodded. “Did she ever have a visitor? Maybe an Asian gentleman in a security uniform. Drove a Honda Accord.”
The cop studied me for a second. “No. Not that I ever saw.”
Maybe he was lying to me. I’d had this thing half figured out, but if he never saw a visitor “Now, Mr. Chen, he drives a Honda.”
“Mr. Chen. The guy who owns the laundry?”
“Yep. The same. He stopped by most days she was here and they had little meetings out by the playground.”
I grabbed James by his shoulder. “Thanks.” I spun around and walked out the door.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“I don’t know for sure. But Chen has the same car that Feng has. I think we put a GPS unit on Chen’s Honda, not Feng’s. Chen has been meeting with Feng in the parking lot at Synco daily.”
“Yeah. That’s what J.J. said.”
“James, it was Chen’s voice that I heard while I was hiding under the Honda in the parking lot. After I put the GPS on the car, those two guys walked up and it was Chen, the guy with the scuffed shoes, that was talking to Feng.”
“Okay. So why is he visiting this school?”
“Don’t you get it? To meet Carol Conroy. She probably volunteered so they could have a safe place to meet. Think about it. They could walk outside, talk, pass information, and kids don’t gossip.”
“We know Chen wants those codes. But Chen and Carol Conroy?”
“I don’t have all the answers. I mean, this thing is going faster than I can keep up with it. My guess is that Chen was working with Carol Conroy. Chen was pushing Sandy Conroy and Feng to get the codes from the Department of Defense. He and Carol were planning all along to take the money and split.”
“So Chen was the Chinese connection and Carol was the Synco Systems connection. And Ralph. The deceased Ralph? Didn’t we hear that he was supposed to be getting the codes?”
Somehow I knew that Ralph had never known Sandy, Feng, Chen, and Carol were going to steal defense secrets for the Chinese. Ralph looked at the software order as a great sale. That’s probably all it was to him. The others were plotting on how they could make $75,000,000 off the government. And if Ralph Walters did find out that they were plotting the dastardly deed, that was probably the reason he’d been killed.
