For Money or Mayhem

{20} Elegant Lines of Code

The hall was empty when I poked my head out the door. I’m sure I could have talked my way out of confinement if I needed to, but there was something about walking around with my butt hanging out of a hospital gown that affected my confidence. I wasn’t connected to any beeping machinery or medicine bags so at least I could walk quietly to the stairway and make my way to the lobby. No one uses the stairs in a hospital at night when the elevators are no longer in high demand.

I looked out the lobby door and saw the reception desk almost out of sight of the elevators. Unfortunately, the mailbox was directly across from me. I clutched the dozen credit card envelopes in my latex gloved hand. One thing about hospital rooms—there’s never a shortage of latex gloves. I straightened my back and walked straight across the lobby to the mail slot and I dropped the envelopes in. I turned on my heel and went back to the stairwell and inside. A young couple slept in the lobby leaning against each other. The guy opened an eye, but he shook his head and went back to sleep. I didn’t think the night watchman had noticed.

Before I slipped back into my room, I dropped the gloves in a hazardous waste bin. When I was safely tucked back in bed, I buzzed the night nurse. She arrived a few minutes later.

“I was just wondering if I could have something for my headache,” I asked politely. She looked at my chart, took my pulse and nodded.

“I’ll be right back.” True to her word, she was back with two pills and a glass of water in just a few minutes. It was ten-forty-five when I rolled over and coaxed myself back to sleep.

I was down to four suspects. The only EFC employees who had come to my room were Jen, Darlene, Phil, and Arnie. That bastard.

There was a bit of a scuffle and a quick “Hush. This is a hospital. You have no right to interfere with a patient’s rest.”

“Ma’am, unless you can tell me the patient is at risk, we have a warrant and service is timely.”

“Just don’t wake anyone else,” I heard her concede as the light in my room came on. I rolled over and squinted through my eyes. There were two uniformed officers in the room and just behind them I could see Arnie.

“What’s up officer?” I asked groggily. “I gave a couple of statements this afternoon when they thought I pushed the girl. Is there something new you want?”

“This doesn’t have to do with that matter,” the first officer said. “I’m Officer Rick Newton and I have a warrant to search your personal effects for stolen property.”

“Stolen property? I don’t have much here. They cut my clothes off of me this afternoon and I’m not sure where they went. They brought me a bag with my personal items in it. It’s in the drawer. My backpack is here. I don’t have much else.”

“I warned you, Dag,” Arnie said, stepping around the officers. “I warned you that you would be watched. But you had to prove how clever you could be.”

“Excuse us, sir,” the second officer said looking at the plastic bag that contained my wallet, handkerchief, pen knife, change, cell phone, and car keys. Both policemen wore gloves as they pawed through my possessions. “You’ll need to stand back.” Thing One had pulled the few items that I carry in my backpack out. Laptop, power cord, tablet, writable disks, and a few assorted cables. Thing Two had moved to the closet and was rifling through my shredded suit. Man, the pain pill that nurse gave me was having some interesting side effects.

“We’ll have to search your person as well,” officer Newton said after shoving my laptop back in the backpack. I pulled off the covers and slid out of bed to stand on the floor. He patted me down while the other officer ran his hands through the bedclothes, under the mattress, and into the pillow.

“This gown doesn’t even conceal me, officer,” I said. “I’m afraid I can’t hide much of anything else in it. Do you mind telling me what you are looking for?”

“Can you tell us your whereabouts last night at one o’clock a.m.?” Newton asked.

“Ellensburg, Washington,” I answered. Arnie’s eyes popped open in surprise.

“Do you have proof of that?”

“In my wallet, you’ll find several credit card receipts.” I answered. “I’m pretty sure I saw a security camera at the truck stop I was at. My attorneys will subpoena it.”

“What were you doing in Ellensburg?”

“A lot of things were happening in my life on Wednesday. Detective Jordan Grant in cybercrimes can fill in any details you’d like. I decided I needed to go for a drive to clear my head. I got carried away. When I finally got to Ellensburg, I just sat in a truckstop and did Internet searches until five. Then I made a couple of phone calls and drove back to town. I’d just come down to go to the office at eleven this morning when I was caught in an accident. By the way, you know that your failure to read me my rights means you can’t use anything I’ve said in a court of law?”

“That’s not possible,” Arnie said. “We clearly have him on video surveillance entering the manufacturing facility at one o’ clock and leaving fifteen minutes later.”

“My ID card doesn’t open that door, Arnie. You made sure of that.”

“Building security showed me the footage,” Arnie hemmed. “They can’t just make that stuff up.”

“Sure you can. You asked me to find out who was dipping in the till. Now I know.” I said it with bravado, knowing that Arnie was on the line. With me unconscious, it was an ideal time to plant the evidence. He just shook his head.

“There are no envelopes in this room,” said Thing One. “The search is a failure.”

“I’d like your names and badge numbers, officers,” I said. I motioned to a pad of paper on my night stand. The officer nodded. Legally, he was obligated to leave me the information. Jordan was going to be pissed.

“Sorry, Dag,” Arnie said. “Things have been so tense in the office the past two weeks that I’m jumping at everything. Just get well and nail her.” He looked apologetic and defeated as he walked out the door with the two police officers. I didn’t believe him for a minute.

The day had been long and exhausting and I still hadn’t managed much sleep. After the cops left with Arnie, I called Lars. As much as my ass was on the line, EFC had hired Lars’s agency to work undercover. It wasn’t long after that when I got a call from Jordan. I predicted rightly. He’d gone after the patrol that was called on the credit card theft. There was no way uniforms should have made the investigation. Even if the theft had technically not been a cybercrime, in this day financial crimes were so closely related that they all sat in the same department. He was on the warpath.

I hadn’t really slept long when the doctor came in and summarily released me. That created a problem because I had no clothes that I could put on, but a nurse came in and told me Jared had dropped off a sack of clothes on his way to work at five. I was more than thankful just to be back in my jeans and t-shirt. I packed up my meager belongings and caught a cab outside the hospital.

I was still in the cab when my phone rang and Andi asked if she could come and pick me up. I laughed.

“That’s a great idea,” I said. “Why don’t you come out to the curb and open the taxi door for me?”

The cab pulled up two minutes later and Andi was in my arms.

“I’m going to call in sick and cancel my classes today so I can take care of you,” she said helping me up the steps to her house. Cali came rushing out the door and grabbed me from the other side.

“Oh my god, that was you! Mom told me all about the accident.” Somehow the two sentences didn’t connect in my mind. I shook it off as being a result of my fuzzy-headedness.

“Wait, wait,” I said as we entered the house.

“I can’t stay here and cause you to miss work. And you have to go to school. I’m not going to do anything all day long today but sleep, so there isn’t a thing either of you can do.”

“But Dag…”

“No. Just seeing you both here this morning is more than any guy could hope for, but the doctor gave me some great pills. I’m going up to my room and take one, then sleep until faculty lounge this evening.”

“You can’t seriously think that you are going out tonight!” Andi was shocked.

“I have a date with a really sweet woman tonight, whom I’ve stood up twice. I am not about to miss another,” I said. Andi launched herself at my lips and scored a direct hit. She clung there for a minute and I savored her taste.

We’d probably have kept kissing if we hadn’t heard Cali’s “Aww.” We broke our kiss and I’m sure the color of my face matched the blush on Andi’s cheeks. “You guys are so cute. I’m going to school now. Glad you’re okay, Dag.” With that she was off and I was being led across the lawn to my stairs.

“Are you sure you don’t just want to stay with me?” Andi asked softly.

“I want to have all my faculties when I stay with you, sweetheart,” I said softly. “Right now I need to sleep and my own bed is the best place for it.” She walked with me up the steps, but didn’t come inside the apartment building.

“I’ll see you tonight, then,” she said, placing her lips softly against mine once more. It wasn’t passionate, but it was infinitely sweet. I was ready to fall asleep wrapped in her love.

I chose jeans, a plain white t-shirt, and my cashmere sweater for the evening. It was still pretty cool out, but I didn’t want to take a jacket to the club later. I came out of the apartment building, and looked up the hill toward Broadway. I sat down on the steps, pulled out my cell phone and called a cab. Twenty minutes later, longer than it would normally have taken me to walk to the Blue Bastion, a cab pulled up and took me up the hill. I’d slept all afternoon, but I just didn’t have the energy to walk anyplace.

Lars and Jordan showed up at the lounge as well. Neither talked about the accident, but simply came to enjoy the collegial atmosphere. I felt like they were checking up on me. I was given to understand that Lars had stormed Arnie’s office this morning and raised holy hell regarding the midnight raid on my hospital room.

“I’m one step away from putting the screws on him,” I said. “He knows. I haven’t figured out how he’s doing it yet, but it’s coming together. The whole stolen cards thing was a red herring. It had all the signs of being an impromptu scheme thought up after I’d shown interest in manufacturing.”

“As soon as you get something concrete, I’ll have a team ready to move in and mop it up, Dag. I’m getting a little frustrated having big collars one step away from positive ID.” Jordan was obviously not in a good humor. His techs still hadn’t closed the loop on Patterson and the longer it took, the more likely Patterson would be to find shelter in a faraway land. We weren’t even sure he was in Seattle now.

After everyone had gathered, Jan turned to Andi and me. “You two look very happy tonight. Have something planned?”

“We’re going to see Two Man Flash at SoDo tonight,” I answered.

“What’s the occasion?” Sara asked.

“No special occasion. We just happened to have tickets,” I smiled.

“Actually, there is kind of a special occasion,” Andi broke in. I looked at her expectantly. This was new. “You see, while you were sleeping today, I got a phone call. I got a job offer from the University!” Wow! The news put us in a celebratory mood. “I’ll be teaching one section of Intro to Literature and one of Reading Fiction. It’s a part time gig, so I’ll still be able to teach at the community college.” We all congratulated Andi. She’d wanted to get into the U for as long as I’d known her, and even if she was only teaching two classes, she had her foot in the door.

We relaxed and sat there eating and talking until much later in the evening than usual. Andi and I didn’t need to be at the club until nine, so we were in no hurry. Other members of the Lounge were in various stages of spring fever. We just sat and enjoyed each other’s company until Andi and I had to leave for the concert. We laughed when we realized we’d sent identical text messages to Cali: Break a Leg!

The concert was fun, though by eleven I was already feeling a little weak and the heat, noise, and press of people in the club were getting to me. At eleven-thirty, I asked Andi if we could go now, even though the band had another set to play. She quickly agreed and we caught a cab in front of the club.

Frankly, I’m not all that comfortable in Pioneer Square at night these days—even as far south as SoDo. There’s a pocket of light around each of the popular nightspots with huge voids of darkness in between and enough booze flowing in the gutters to make the seagulls sick. The shadows hid all manner of danger and I was glad we had a cab right in front of the club and could send him directly out of the neighborhood and up to Capitol Hill.

On the ride, we barely broke our kiss to breathe. Our hearts were still beating in time with the music we’d been listening to and there was no way we were ready for the night to end, even if we wanted a change of venue—to someplace, maybe, softer and quieter.

I tipped the driver and we stumbled into Andi’s house. We were so wrapped up in each other that it took us a moment before we realized we weren’t alone. We heard the sniffles first and then Andi turned on a light and we saw Cali lying on the sofa crying.

Andi turned from passionate girlfriend and near-lover to concerned parent in an instant and I was left staring with my mouth open.

“Cali, baby. What’s wrong, honey?” Andi asked as she scooped her daughter up in her arms. “Was the show that bad?”

“The show… was… fine,” Cali sobbed. “But Mel didn’t come.”

“She’s never missed one of your openings. What happened.”

“I… I… called after the show. Her mom… said… said… she’d run away from home. And then she said it was my fault. She said she never should have let her little girl run around with an undisciplined brat like me with my liberal upbringing and no rules. She said it was my fault that Mel ran away. Mommy, why did she do that?”

I couldn’t honestly tell whether Cali was asking about Mel or Mel’s mother. I guess it didn’t matter.

“I can’t believe she ran away and she didn’t even tell me. What am I going to do without Mel?” Cali was wailing and Andi was rocking her baby in her arms. I went into the kitchen to find the one remedy that every parent I’ve known has used. I boiled water and made tea. I found chamomile tea in the cabinet and made two steaming mugs. As Andi rocked Cali on the sofa, I held the warm cups for them and tried desperately to think of a nice fatherly gesture to make. Apparently the tea was it. Cali looked up at me.

“Thank you Dag. I’m sorry I ruined your night for you.”

“Tweety Bird, nothing is more important when you are hurting,” I said. Her smile flickered at the sound of that old nickname. “Do you want me to try to find Mel?”

“Can you?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll look. It’s hard for a girl who is so used to being connected to just drop out of sight.”

“Thank you Da… Dag.” My heart skipped a beat. For a moment, I thought she was going to call me Dad. Andi kissed her daughter on the forehead and told her to go take a shower and she’d cuddle her in bed. Cali took another sip of tea then left the room.

“That was so sweet of you, Dag.”

“I don’t know if I can find anything, but I’ll try.”

“Maybe you aren’t such bad parent material after all.”

“I love you, Andi. Cali comes with that.” I’d said it without realizing it. It wasn’t the way I’d imagined saying it. It wasn’t how I’d planned. But with all my intentions aside, it seemed the right thing to say. Andi’s arms went around my neck and she lifted herself off the floor getting to my lips. The kiss was a more effective painkiller than anything the doctor could have prescribed. My head, while not exactly clear, was suddenly pain free.

“Good night, darling,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I climbed to my room in the apartment building next door. I felt light and free. It was the kind of feeling that makes a man want to write poetry.

Only I don’t write poetry. I write code.

Short, beautiful, elegant lines of code.

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