The report ended with the anchorman telling us a fund had been set up for Eddie’s fiancée and her son. Sonja turned off the television. The room was eerily quiet. Then she cleared her throat and said, “We want to do everything we can to support you. You have some vacation time coming, don’t you?”
“Almost six weeks.”
“I think it might be a good idea for you to take that. If it turns out you need more time, I’ll see what I can do.” What was clear was that her idea of supporting me was to keep me as far away from the studio as she could. “Charles can take over for you in the meantime.”
Forgetting myself, I said, “That should be a disaster.”
She gave me a look. “Don’t be so sure. I got a call from Fred Metz in airlines. He’s quite happy to work with Charles.”
I refrained from saying they were both idiots. She’d find that out soon enough. We stood uncomfortably silent for a moment. Finally, I thanked her and said goodbye. There’d been a subtle power shift; Charles was in and I was out. And as long as I was a suspect in a murder case, I was going to remain out.
I walked back to my office. Eddie’s keys sat on my desk right where I’d left them. I only had a few minutes. Clearly, Sonja wanted me out of there. I didn’t think she’d go so far as to call security, but I figured if I was still here in twenty minutes, she’d come in and suggest I leave. Slipping the drive into the USB slot, I wondered if I should bring my personal items home with me. I didn’t have much. A coffee cup, an extra tie in case I spilled, a UCLA umbrella for those rare rainy days. I didn’t keep photos like some people or buttons with funny sayings or cartoons printed out from the Internet. Leaving would be easy.
The icon for the flash drive popped up on my desktop. It was called Eddie’s drive. Was that how he thought of himself? As Eddie? I clicked on the icon, and it opened. There was one folder on the drive, and it was labeled with a dollar sign. I clicked on it. A box came up asking for a password. Shit. I sat back in my chair and thought about how to go about guessing Eddie’s password. I hadn’t spent much time with him. I knew almost nothing about him.
Not for the first time, I wished my life was more like a movie. Usually, I wish I had some loyal but dorky friend who was secretly in love with me, which I’d notice only after he’d made a few simple but effective changes to his appearance and was suddenly adorably hot. On that particular day, though, I wished I had a genius friend who could whip up a computer program that would decode Eddie’s password in five tense minutes.
Unfortunately, my life was not a movie and I wouldn’t be able to easily access Eddie’s client list. I thought about my own passwords. For my financial accounts, the ones that really mattered, I used the phone number my parents had when I was a child. It was one of those things I couldn’t forget and no one else would ever guess. For other accounts, I used Jeremy1978. I knew I needed to stop doing that. I should probably get a pet so I could use its name as a password.
I wondered if Eddie might have chosen his passwords in a similar way. And was it any help to me if he did? The phone number idea wasn’t going to help. If Eddie did something similar, I had no way to find the number. His fiancée’s name was Sylvia. I tried variations on her name -- Sylvia1982, Sylvia1983, 1984Sylvia, and on and on.
I ran out of variations on Sylvia’s name and the folder hadn’t opened. I started putting in dirty words. Handjob. Jackoff. Wank. Anything I could think of. I was in the middle of trying to spell masturbator when Sonja walked by my office and glanced in. She didn’t say anything, but the message was clear. I took the thumb drive out of the computer, shut the PC down, and walked out.
On my way by Tiffany’s cubicle, she stopped me and whispered, “What’s going on Matt? It’s getting really weird around here.”
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t have anything to do with re-engineering,” I said. I was about to turn and walk out when I stopped. “Your son, Cameron, he’s good with computers.”
“Too good.”
“Could he open a password-protected file?”
“I think so.” She looked at me suspiciously. “This isn’t something illegal is it?”
“No,” I lied. “It’s just, you know, I locked this file and now I can’t remember the password.”
She held out her hand. I took the Pez dispenser out of my pocket and handed it to her.
“Cute,” she said, when she saw the rubber duck top. “I’m going to tell Cameron it’s illegal. That way he won’t be able to resist.”
Chapter Fifteen
Down in the garage, I got into my car and drove out of the building. I had no idea when I’d be driving back in. An idea began to form in the back of my mind. I wasn’t sure if I had the guts to do it, but I wasn’t sure I had a choice. I decided to think about it later -- there wasn’t much I could do today anyway. My phone rang. I’d left the ear bud at home, so I illegally took the call while I drove. It was Jeremy. Before I could say anything, he said, “I’m not speaking to you.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“The police were here,” he said petulantly.
“That’s not my fault.”
“They were asking
