“Jenny and I did it. Were you her supervisor?”
“I’m the group leader,” he answered with a sidelong look at McKinnon. “I’m executing the program.”
“I direct the research,” McKinnon said. He shook his head with regret. “It’s been painful to pretend nothing happened. We feel the loss keenly. On behalf of all of us, accept our condolences.”
Suspicious as I was, I saw no signs McKinnon was faking it. His voice was authoritative and precise. His blue eyes were fierce but had human warmth in them.
“We’re all in shock,” Jenny said softly.
The room was silent. Even McKinnon, for all his presence, seemed at a momentary loss. Still, I sensed tension coming from somewhere. It was the dark-haired man. He had that implacable alpha look, as if the entire conversation was taking place only at his pleasure. He stood stock still but brimmed with testosterone, a solid two hundred pounds, but not dumb. His eyes picked up everything.
“So, about Marion—” I said.
Alpha Man spoke up in a clear, hard voice. “She has a vendor meeting.”
McKinnon turned to him in surprise. “Today?”
“Yes.” The man rocked forward on the balls of his feet, but didn’t elaborate.
After another silence, McKinnon glanced behind him, in the direction, I supposed, of where his investors were waiting, then at his watch. “Well. I’m terribly sorry, but I have to go.”
“Do you think—” Jenny began, waiting for his attention. “We’d like to see Sheila’s workspace.”
Doug Englehart cleared his throat. “It’s, ah, all packed up.”
“Too painful to see her things there, I imagine,” McKinnon said.
“Perhaps we should take them for you,” I suggested.
Before Doug could object, Alpha Man spoke. “We’ll release them to next of kin.”
“We’re in touch with the family,” I said. The apartment manager had stimulated my misinformation faculties, though it was true we’d called Perkins at the hospital to give him the phone number for Abe, Sheila’s brother. “They won’t be here for a few days. They asked us to take care of her effects. We have the key to Sheila’s apartment.”
I watched the man carefully. His thick brows rose slightly. “Next of kin only. Thank you for your concern.” He crossed his arms in a way that said he wasn’t thanking me at all.
McKinnon looked at his watch again. We stood to shake his hand. “I’d like to talk to you some more,” I said.
“Of course,” he agreed. “When time permits.”
The dark-haired man frowned. “You’ll need to clear that first, doctor.”
McKinnon whirled just before exiting the door. “I’ll speak to whomever I like, Neil.”
Doug Englehart glared at the man named Neil, and followed McKinnon out. We started to leave as well, but Neil blocked the door. “You said you had something to give Sheila — which strikes me as strange, since you already knew she was dead. Nevertheless, I’ll be glad to handle it.”
I wanted to see how he’d react if I mentioned the journal. He could well have been the one who’d been in Sheila’s apartment. If Jenny was right and their reasons for taking the hard drive were purely work-related, the diary wouldn’t concern him. But it was also possible that whoever was snooping had been interrupted by the manager and hadn’t seen the black book in the bedroom. In that case, he might want it.
Curiosity got the better of me, as it usually did. First I asked, “I’m sorry, Neil, what was your last name?”
“I’m an officer of the company.”
I waited for him to go on. He didn’t. So I dropped my little bomb.
“We have Sheila’s diary.”
His eyes flicked up and down in a quick inspection of our persons. He settled on a straw bag Jenny was carrying. “We’ll keep it with the rest of her effects.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “We’ll give it to the family ourselves. I’m sure they’ll also want Sheila’s hard drive, when the police find out who stole it.”
My comment about the hard drive was rewarded with a visible tightening of his facial muscles. He said nothing, but edged over to fill the door frame.
I stepped toward him. “We’d like to see Sheila’s workspace.”
“Impossible, I’m afraid.” He remained still, his features frozen.
I said, “Let’s go, Jenny.”
The man didn’t budge. His smile grew, which only made it more menacing. “Why did you bring her diary? You must have intended for us to have it.”
“I’d hoped to cooperate with you in finding the cause of her death. I can see that’s not going to happen.”
“Your definition of cooperation is rather self-centered. Leave the diary with people who know what they’re doing.”
“We’re done here.” I advanced on the door. Jenny cinched the bag to her shoulder and followed.
I didn’t stop when we got to the door. Neil and Mr. Security turned aside at the last second, allowing just enough space for us to squeeze through. The bag brushed against him. We strode across the lobby to the door.
Jenny waited until I’d pulled the Scout out of the LifeScience lot to turn on me. Her face was red. “Bill, you are so dim sometimes. I can’t believe you told him about the diary. What if he tried to get it?”
“The diary’s safe under my seat. It was the only way to break through his mask. Now we know he’s serious about getting it. I want to know why.”
7
I joined the stutter of Friday morning traffic the next day as I made my way toward 280, the freeway that would take me to San Francisco. Maple, oak, and sycamore flared gold and red in the morning sun. To drive through Silicon Valley was to jump abruptly from one era to another. One moment you were in a shaded postwar suburb of ranch houses, car washes, and drive-ins; the next you were passing by the expansive green campus of a big tech firm, complete with swimming pool, gym, and gourmet cafeteria. The recreational facilities were set right out front, too, for potential employees to see how good they’d have it.
Interstate 280’s eight spacious lanes undulated through pastures in the shadow of the coastal range. It bracketed the west side of the valley, a mud flat that ran alongside the bay. Before its transformation, the flat had been a checkerboard of orchards and sunny towns, protected from the Pacific’s cold fog by the coastal chain. When silicon and software replaced apples and apricots, the string of sleepy, pleasant communities — Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Cupertino — melted together into something that, viewed from above, resembled an etched transistor. On the east side of the valley was Highway 101, the main artery along the bay, forty miles of noise barriers and auto body shops.
I whizzed along without much problem. The commute had reversed its direction during the tech revolution, which to me was something like water flowing uphill. The heavy morning traffic now headed south from San Francisco to what were once suburbs.
Whizzed was a relative term for the Scout. I kept to the rightmost lane. The car was in a good mood and had started right up this morning. Some day I’d get to the bottom of what made it sulk in the moisture. Jenny said I was just stubborn. She didn’t understand how much the Scout had gotten me through.
The jeep had loomed mighty in my mind as a child. I insisted on being the one to turn the hub locks on the front wheels, and savored the sound when my father ground the secondary gearshift into four-wheel drive. When I was in high school, after my parents split up, the Scout came into my hands. I couldn’t imagine turning it over to some stranger, even as the paint faded and I had to replace one original part after another. It was an anchor for me through the high-tech whirlwind. Some people understood its charm, but most saw it the way Jenny did: a prehistoric box whose bucket seats were about as comfortable as a school bus and whose truck suspension allowed you to feel every pebble on the road. While new cars were designed to look slippery as a suppository, the Scout was all straight lines. The windshield was a flat piece of glass. The original black license plate with yellow letters, now beaten and bent, was still fixed to the bumper.