I explained it all to Freddie early Monday morning. His response was to pin another index card to the bulletin board, this one labeled SNIPER, and connect it to Hayley with red yarn.
“Subsonics,” he said. “Very professional.”
“Or a gifted amateur.”
“That, too. Question is, who was the sniper shooting at? You or the girl?”
“The girl.”
“You know this because?”
“I’m pretty sure she was behind the computer hacks.”
“Why?”
“Just a guess—to punish her family.”
“If she has the goods, why doesn’t she send ’em to NIMN like she promised?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who were the two guys who tried to snatch her from the Library?”
“Their names were Sean and Chad. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“Why was the sniper trying to kill her?”
“She’s a loose end. Look.” I gestured at the bulletin board. “It might be smart to also run yarn from SNIPER to O’NEILL, SIEGLE, and COWGILL. In each case, the killing tied up a loose end that might have been detrimental to the Guernsey family.”
“Except the Peterson murder and the rape, the Guernseys don’t have a horse in them races, do they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jeezus, the amount of shit we don’t know. Okay, let’s say the Guernseys really did send a sniper to kill one of their own. That ain’t got nothin’ t’ do with us.”
“I like her. Hayley. I like her. She’s so damned committed.”
“It sounds to me like she should be committed. Look, I’ve seen this before, another damsel in distress you want to protect.”
“She’s confused and hurt, and she seems so alone.”
“She’s not our client, Taylor. She’s not our concern. What we were hired for—”
“What about O’Neill?”
“Man was a professional. He took his chances just like the rest of us.”
“Are you going to his funeral? I doubt it’s been scheduled yet, but when it is, are you going?”
“Why would I?”
“He was one of us.”
“I get that, Taylor. Only it ain’t our job is what I’m sayin’. Same with Hayley.”
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
The office door was knocked on. I opened it. A woman, about thirty, overweight yet fashionable in business attire, stood in front of me.
“Are you Taylor?” she asked.
I said I was. She reached into the bag hanging from her shoulder and withdrew an envelope.
“I’m supposed to give this to you.”
I took the envelope. The woman left without speaking another word. I watched as she made her way to the elevators while I opened the envelope. It was filled with cash.
I stepped back into the office, closing the door behind me.
“Who was that?” Freddie asked.
I answered by tossing him the envelope. He looked inside.
“My, my, my,” he said. “I do like the color green.”
“It’s a down payment from the mayor of the City of Minneapolis.”
“Bless ’er heart. What do we need t’ do to earn it?”
“Find Hayley O’Brien, if she really is the hacker, and deliver a message.”
“Like the kind of message we delivered to the punk that was stalking our client last year?”
“No, no, no. This one is strictly verbal. Not even a threat. Just an offer of mutual assistance.”
“Sounds like the mayor is trying to cover her ass.” Freddie dropped the envelope on his desk. “Whaddaya know? Turns out the girl’s our concern after all. What do we do next?”
We were surrounded by lawyers in a smoke-filled room found deep in the bowels of an utterly exclusive club located on the edge of downtown Minneapolis. Only this time no one offered us cigars or alcohol.
We sat in the same chairs around the same table as a week earlier while I carefully explained everything that had happened in the past seven days, although I did fail to mention the mayor’s bribe and the fact that I had bent the rules of client confidentiality by talking to the cops on three separate occasions.
“You should see our bulletin board,” Freddie said.
What caught me by surprise was the realization that whenever the conversation bent to one lawyer’s case, the other four attorneys seemed to purposely tune out. I didn’t know if it was out of courtesy or apathy.
Cormac Puchner was the first to speak when I finished, no surprise there.
“Can you prove that Hayley O’Brien is responsible for the computer hacks?” he asked.
“You mean in a court of law?” I asked. “No.”
He gestured with his hands as if that were all he needed to know.
My partner said, “By a preponderance of the evidence—”
“Have you been going to law school at night without telling us, Freddie?” Douglas Jernigan asked.
Freddie shook his head.
“Let’s hurry this along. I need to be in court in less than an hour.”
“I have a hundred meetings,” said Puchner.
“Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that you’re correct about Guernsey’s stepdaughter,” Scott Mickelson said. “Is that a door we want to open?”
He was speaking to Freddie and me, but the question was meant for his colleagues.
“Obviously the girl is in danger,” John Kaushal said.
“We don’t know that,” Puchner replied.
“The word of Sidney Fredericks and Holland Taylor has always been good. Don’t you agree?”
Puchner shrugged as if he didn’t have an opinion.
“If Hayley is responsible for the computer hacks, the family will want to know,” Kaushal said. “If she’s in danger because of the hacks, they’ll want to know that as well. If she’s in danger from her family, then knowing that we know about it might forestall the Guernseys from doing something unspeakable.” Kaushal paused. “Don’t you agree?”
“No, I don’t agree,” Jernigan said. “We hired Fredericks and Taylor to keep the stolen information from reaching the public. So far they’ve done that.”
“All we’ve been doin’ is watchin’ the bodies pile up,” Freddie said.
“That has nothing to do with us.”
“There’re two ongoing police investigations, one in St. Paul, one in Minneapolis. Could be eventually it’ll have a lot to do with you.”
“Not me,” Mickelson said. “Or you either, John.”
Kaushal didn’t react to the remark. It was if an ongoing police investigation didn’t matter to him one way or the other. If Jernigan and Puchner objected to the suggestion they might be tossed under the bus, they didn’t show it.
Puchner said, “I’ve already dealt with the police. They’re no longer an issue.”
“They’re always an issue, man,” Freddie said.
“What exactly do you two want from us, anyway?” Jernigan asked.
“Besides more money,” Puchner said.
“An introduction to the Guernseys,” I said. “We can’t reach them on our own.”
“Although more money is also good,” Freddie added.
“Oh hell,” David Helin said. It was the first time he’d spoken. “If that’s all…”
He had dealt personally with members of the Guernsey family because of the Brooke St. Vincent divorce case, so Helin had several contacts he could reach out to and several numbers he could call. He told Freddie and me that he would get back to us as soon as he had something concrete to report, which surprised us. Of all the attorneys in the room, he was the one with the most to lose if the Guernseys should ever see what the computer hacker stole from them.
Freddie and I retreated to the office. First thing Freddie did was check for phone messages and review our emails. I watched him do it.
“What?” he asked.
“I was just wondering, does Hayley have a laptop in her backpack? I bet she doesn’t, the way she throws it around. If she did, she wouldn’t have needed to use the computers at the Library.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Maybe that’s why she hasn’t sent the intel she stole to NIMN. She doesn’t have a computer.”
“Or she didn’t want her emails and whatnot traced back to her.”
“No. Her cover’s blown. If she didn’t know that before, she’d’ve figured it out after what happened yesterday.”
“How does that help us?”
“Why don’t you stay here and take care of business while I drive out to Mound, buy a good book at the Library, something by William Kent Krueger—”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“Get a cup of joe. Hang around a bit. See who drops by.”
“Do you really think Hayley will return to the scene of the crime? No one does that, man. It’s a myth. Mostly people stay as far away from the bad thing as they can get.”
“We seek comfort in what we know. The fact the barista knew her by name, it’s obviously a place she’s familiar with. Don’t forget the free computers, either.”
“What about the divorcée?”
“I think we torched that bridge yesterday. If Hayley thinks I was responsible for the attack, Brooke probably will, too.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to give ’er a try.”
“Okay. In the meantime—”
“If Helin calls, I’ll let you know.”
That’s when the cops knocked on our door.
“You gonna talk to us or what?” Detective Sergeant Nathan Vanak asked. He was sitting in one of our chairs, his legs crossed at the ankles and his feet resting on our low round table, his hands locked behind his head as if he owned the place. His partner was leaning against the door, his arms crossed over his chest, a bored expression on his face.
“Wanna cup of coffee?” Freddie asked.
“No, I don’t want a cup of coffee,” Vanak said. He glanced at his partner. “You want a cup of coffee?”
“Depends. They got decaf?”
“Do you guys have decaf?” Vanak asked.
“No,” I said. “We don’t have decaf.”
“They don’t have decaf,” Vanak said.
“Never mind, then,” his partner said. “Gotta say, though, it doesn’t seem hospitable not having decaf.”
“It doesn’t, does it?” Vanak agreed. “What about visitors who don’t want caffeine? Don’t you care about them?”
“Yeah, me and Taylor have an act, too,” Freddie said. “Banter back and forth ’bout nothin’ to confuse and confound suspects and such. So let’s pretend we’re both confused and confounded. What the hell?”
“Clinton Siegle’s wife, what‘s her name?”
“Linda,” I said. Vanak was aware of the name, of course. He just wanted to know if I was emotionally invested in the case.
“Linda, right,” he added just to be sure. “Nice woman. Having her husband killed like that, a real tragedy.”
“It was.”
“Linda confirmed Siegle’s involvement with Standout Investments. She told us about the mysterious memo that the company is supposedly trying to suppress. The company would only speak to us through its attorney, though. What was the name of that Harvard prick?”
“Cormac Puchner,” Vanak’s partner replied.
“What kind of name is Cormac?”
“Irish,” Freddie said. “Ancient Irish.”
“How do you know?”
“Musta been TV or somethin’ like that, cuz you know us brothers can’t read.”
“Don’t give us shit, Freddie.”
“Not me. Wouldn’t wanna confirm no racial stereotypes you might have.”
“No, you wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Sergeant Vanak.” I purposely used his title because I wanted to snap him up. “If you’re upset about something and you want to take it out on us, I can live with that if you tell us why you’re upset.”
“Puchner is obfuscating like crazy. Refuses to even acknowledge that Siegle and Walter O’Neill were actually killed, much less that Standout was somehow involved.”
“Obfuscating,” Freddie said.
“You like that word, Freddie?”
“Gonna teach it to my kid soon as I get home.”
“What else?” I asked.
“We spoke to Mrs. O’Neill. She’s devastated by what happened to her ex. Have you met Mrs. O’Neill?”
“No.”
For a moment, it looked like Vanak was going to say something besides the words that actually came out of his mouth. “She gave us permission to search his office. It was a small space in one of those business malls you see along the highway. Not opulent like your digs. I’m told that the average PI makes about forty-five thousand a year. What do you two pull down? A lot better than that, I bet.”
Neither of us cared to admit that we were in the ninetieth percentile when it came to income, but I noticed Freddie slowly take the mayor’s envelope off his desk and slip it into a drawer.
“You went to Walter’s office,” I said.
“Someone had broken in,” Vanak said. “His computer was stolen. We couldn’t find any written notes. Nothing to indicate what he was working on. Nothing that could tell us who he was working for. What does that tell you?”
Neither Freddie nor I had an answer.
“Want to know what it tells us?” Vanak’s partner said. “It tells us that Siegle might not have been the target. Up till now we were working under the premise that O’Neill was killed because he just happened to be sitting there when the hitter went after Siegle. Now we’re wondering if O’Neill was the primary, because he found out something he shouldn’t have, and Siegle was killed because he was a witness. According to your statement, the last thing he said before you told him to call 911”—he didn’t consult his notes, yet he quoted me accurately—“He’s looking at me. He sees me standing at the window. Oh my God, he’s coming toward the house.”
“What do you have to say about that?” Vanak asked.
“It hadn’t occurred to me.”
“Give us something. I’ll settle for a name.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“I mean I can’t.”
“He was your friend. Are you telling me that you won’t help us find his killer because of some fucking rule? Taylor, Freddie, I promise it won’t come back on you.”
“He wasn’t our friend,” I said. “That’s beside the point. We can’t give you anything because we don’t have anything. O’Neill’s clients aren’t our clients. If we knew who he was working for, what he was doing, we would tell you, but we honestly don’t know. I thought this was about Standout, and now…”
Vanak rose from his chair and went to the door. His partner opened it. He paused before crossing the threshold.
“I’m going to leave this for now.” He wasn’t looking at us as he spoke. Instead, he gazed into the corridor. “I’m going to leave it because I know about you two. I know you’re going to pursue this on your own. I know that you’re going to tell me whatever you learn.”
Vanak and his partner left, closing the door behind them.
“Are we going to tell them if we learn anything?” Freddie asked.
“Apparently that’s what we’re expected to do.”
“We always do what’s expected, don’t we?”