Guilt.
Nohar triggered Young's suicide: "You're the finance chairman. Why didn't you figure it out first?"
Then, blam.
Of course Young knew what was in the finance records. Nohar felt like an idiot for not realizing sooner. Young was the one to let in the canine assassin with the Levitt Mark II. Young was in a conspiracy with them. Somewhere there was a trail in the records. Johnson had found it and had confronted Young with it. The two of them were close, but Johnson was going to put a stop to it, whatever it was. Young couldn't let that happen—no, not quite right, they couldn't let that happen. They hired the morey. They killed Johnson. They probably just told Young to turn off the security and leave the door open so they could explain things to Johnson. When Young blew up, they made sure the records vanished.
No way Young could call the cops. Whoever was handling Young must have forced him to go on, business as usual. Go into work, go back to his shadow house.
All the while, guilt ate Young up. He felt responsible for Johnson's death.
The whole charade of blowing out the picture window was to cover Young's tracks. To give Young an alibi.
It was working so well—up to the point Young torched the records.
That seemed an act of desperation, and not just Young's desperation—
Nohar had a bad thought.
Thomson had mentioned Johnson's executive assistant, Stephie, as having the same access to the finan-FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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cial records as the gang of four. That was obviously just the "official" slant on things. After all, Stephie described herself as window dressing. What if they didn't know that?
That worried Nohar.
What if they thought Johnson's executive assistant knew something, and just weren't sure enough to go to the lengths they went with Johnson?
What if she was being watched?
Could it be a coincidence Young went ballistic the day after Nohar talked to her?
Could it be a coincidence that the white rat's—Term's— "Finger of God" seemed to have lifted?
He called Stephie. No answer.
It was ten-thirty, an hour and a half before he was to meet her. Damn. Nohar clutched the filing cabinet and started deep breathing exercises. His concern had triggered the fight-or-flight reflex, the adrenaline was pumping. He
wanted to fight something. It was still too soon after those Ziphead rodents behind the bus. Something inside him was responding to the pulse, the adrenaline, the stress-He fought it off.
Nohar couldn't let his control slip like that.
He had barely brought himself back under control, when the comm buzzed.
Nohar told the comm. "Got it."
The comm responded.
Smith had the video on. He was as eldritch as ever. The glassy eyes still stared out of a flat, expressionless face in the center of a pear-shaped head. Moisture glistened on the rubbery-white skin. On the monitor, Nohar got a chance to examine Smith from a closer perspective than he really wanted to.
The pear shape of the frank's head, Nohar now saw, was caused by a massive roll of flesh that drooped over the frank's collar. The roll of fat obscured any neck or chin the frank might have had. The frank was totally hairless, too, no hair at all, anywhere. No pores Nohar could see.
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The frank could have been a white polyethylene bag filled with silicone lubricant.
The reason the frank didn't blink was because he didn't have any eyelids.
Smith also didn't have any nostrils.
No ears either.
The frank was calling from an unlisted location, and the lighting only picked up the frank's white bulk, nothing of the background. "I am glad I see you mostly unhurt from when you go to Philip Young,"
"Thanks." Nohar immediately noticed Smith's weird accent again. It was not Afrikaans. "Your message said you paid the hospital."
"It is a legitimate expense of the investigation."
"You want a progress report."
The frank attempted a nod, sending the flesh of his upper body into unnatural vibrations.
Nohar told the frank what he knew and what he thought he knew. How Johnson was killed, who was involved, and, of course, the as yet nebulous why. Nohar had convinced himself, despite Young's unreliability, that the reason lay in the now-destroyed-and-or-missing financial records of the Binder campaign. "Excellent progress in such a short time."
"Now let me ask you a few things." Nohar knew he had jumped into the case prematurely, and what bothered him most wasn't his involvement in a pink murder, or even his involvement with a murder, period. What bothered him was the absence of information on his client and his client's company.
"I render what aid I can."
"First, you're worried about MLI being involved in the killing, and you told me you're an accountant— What's in the campaign records that could have connected back to MLI?"
"Only our heavy financing of the Binder campaign. A connection our board informs me will be severed as of our last payment—the three million Binder is missing and we are not. Our only contact with the Binder FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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campaign is our money and suggestions on appropriate votes to take on the issues before him."
Nohar snorted. Having a bunch of franks telling Binder what to do bordered on the absurd. "You dictated the way he voted in the House?"
"He never votes against us. Our support is based on his closeness to our views."
That did not ring true. A frank's views being close to Binder's? Binder was a little to the right of Attila, was for the sterilization of moreys and probably the outright extermination of franks.
However, the finance records were the only connection between MLI and Binder. That gave credence to Smith's suspicion someone in MLI was behind the killing.
Since the money trail had been sitting tight that long—fifteen years back, the way Harrison acted— if the motive was in the records it was in some incredibly obscure financial tidbit where Johnson never would have seen it in the first place, or it was in those "suggestions on appropriate votes."
"Second, I want to know where you and the other franks at MLI really come from."
For the first time Nohar saw what could be the remotest trace of expression on the frank's face. Close to a nerve. The bubbling voice seemed just a little strained when Smith responded. "I told you. We come from South Africa—"
"South Africa never signed the U.N.'s human genome experiment ban—but it's just one non-signer of at least two dozen that have the technology. One of a half-dozen that uses it. That isn't an Afrikaans accent."
Smith let out a sound that could have been a sigh. "I do not know if I am glad or not I hire such a perceptive investigator."
"Don't compliment me on noticing the obvious."
"I am afraid this information I cannot give you."
"Oh, great-"
The sigh, it was a sigh, came again. "Please, I ex-
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plain. Our origin must remain private. Just as we must remain unseen ourselves. It is for the company's survival. If MLI has a murderer, or murderers, in its midst, such secrets are public. But my loyalty will not permit such knowledge until I know if the guilt is there. If you can't pursue this without that information, I will let you go with the money you have earned.''
Good, you have an out. Nohar stood there, staring. He told himself he was going to say to hell with it. Drop the whole mess then and there. . . .
He thought of Stephie.
He couldn't.
He had never ditched anything in the middle.
"You know you're hobbling me when you withhold information."
"I am sorry."
"I need copies of those 'suggestions.' "
"They're on file. I get them. At ten-thirty Wednesday night we meet in the cemetery."