All right, so the Suburban wasn't the best vehicle for picking up banged and bruised little brothers from the hospital. Hoisting him up and into the front seat had been interesting enough that Don vowed to put in an extra fifteen minutes per day on weight lifting. It was either that or get a car with a lower clearance from the ground, and Don hadn't finished paying off this car loan yet.
"I want out," Charlie grumbled, the bandage white around his head. Don hated to look at it; it also meant looking at the bruise that was seeping around Charlie's eye, giving the mathematician a raccoon look. The white sling securing his arm to his chest didn't help.
"I'm getting you out. Sit still. You'll fall if you try to get out by yourself. Wait."
"I can't wait. I have to see those notes of Dr. Halligan's. I have to remember them, Don."
"Have a little patience," Don told him, opening the door to help Charlie slide out. He caught his brother easily, alarmed that the man would have hit the ground with his chin if Don hadn't been there. "Hey, take it easy. Look, why don't I take you back to the apartment instead? You could rest. That would be better."
"I don't want to rest. I want to see Halligan's notes. There's something important in them, Don, something that I can't remember." That in itself was frustrating Charlie, that he couldn't remember the numbers that he'd seen.
"Queuing theory, that's what you said," Don reminded him. "That, and something about the yield."
"I did?" Charlie looked so lost that it was heart-breaking. "Don, I can't remember!"
"It's okay, Charlie," Don soothed, grabbing him under the good arm to help him hobble forward toward the front door of the Caldwell research building and inside. "The docs said you'd be like this for a couple of days. It's normal not to remember things right now. It's the concussion. Your memory will come back."
"Maybe not. They said that too, Don." Petulant. Scared.
Why was that the part that you had to remember, buddy? The part where the doctors were talking at you. "Hey, you wanted to be here at Caldwell's, you're here," Don said. "Let's get you to a chair. You're not walking very well."
"I'm walking just fine." Charlie staggered, and would have fallen if Don didn't grab him again.
"Sure, you are, buddy." Don thought swiftly. There was a sofa in one of the empty offices upstairs, just the thing for the stubborn mathematician. And it was accessible by elevator, not a lot of steps and staircases to be negotiated; a definite plus, under the circumstances.
The sofa was still there. Charlie aimed for the chair behind the desk with the computer on top; Don steered him for the sofa.
"Hey," Charlie protested.
"You've got concussion," Don told him. "You need to lie down."
Charlie blinked. This time his knees weren't cooperating, weren't rebounding back after the stagger. "I've got concussion," he finally agreed. His eyes started to roll back into his head. Don grabbed his brother more firmly and eased him onto the sofa, tucking pillows around so that he couldn't accidentally fall off onto the carpeted floor. Charlie groaned a sigh of relief, sinking into the cushions. His eyes closed.
Don looked down at his brother with a mixture of affection and exasperation. He shook his head. "Some things never change, buddy." He winked, even though Charlie couldn't see it. "I'll check back on you."
"Got it, Don." Colby came into the conference room where Don was working, trying to put the information together into some sort of coherent whole. So far, Don was having discouraging luck. Papers were spread out in front of him, detailing the various facts and figures and none of them seemed to go together into anything resembling intelligence. 'Frustrating' didn't begin to cover it.
"Good work, Colby." Don didn't care what it was, as long as it was forward movement. "What have you got?"
Colby flashed a piece of newspaper at him. David, farther down the table, leaned over to look. "Xenox Agricultural. Rival company, working on the same sort of stuff. And, look here, about two months ago they were accused of dirty dealings by the FDA. Fudging their data, presenting false information; that sort of thing. They got fined pretty heavily, which took them out of the running for the sort of process that Caldwell is working on. That gave Caldwell an open field."
"Okay," Don drawled, "and how does that help us?"
"'But wait! There's more!'" Colby quoted the unpopular commercial.
"I'm waiting, and I'm not hearing it yet."
"I ran Xenox's employee list. They're not that big, and they're even smaller now that the FDA is through with them. You'll never guess who I found working for them."
"No, I'm not going to guess. Tell me, and get it over with, Colby."
Colby grinned. "Does the name 'Brad Borowski' sound familiar?"
The grin was infectious: it spread to both Don and David.
"Our sniper," David identified it. "How interesting. He works for Xenox?"
"Did," Colby clarified. "The personnel files claim he was terminated a month ago, when the layoffs hit."
Don nodded, pleased. "I'm thinking we need to find out a little bit more about our Mr. Borowski. I'd like to know how he got to be so good with a gun, and who his connections are back at Xenox. Colby, that's your angle."
"Way ahead of you, boss. Brad Borowski, born and bred in North Dakota, expert marksman by the time he was twelve. Took his skills to the U.S. Army where he did as he was told, served his stint overseas, and won several commendations for his sharpshooting. Came back home, didn't like life down on the farm, so he went to the big city and worked for Xenox as one of their low level production techs until he got laid off last month."
"Nice work, Colby. Any speculation as to why he was shooting at Bostwick?"
"Uh…someone knew that he needed the money, now that he was no longer gainfully employed? I think murder pays pretty well when you hire in for the right people."
"I'd rather the blanks get filled in a little bit more, thank you." Don turned to David.
"That looks like my part is coming up," David said.
"Absolutely. With such deductive reasoning powers, you must be an FBI agent."
"I do my best."
"How about sinking your best into Xenox itself, then? See what you can find out about these dirty dealings that Colby discovered."
"I should be able to come up with something pretty quick," was David's opinion. "I've got a couple of contacts that might be of help."
"Really? You've got contacts in the FDA?"
"Yeah." A sideways grin. "We broke up, but it was amicable. We usually get together if I have business in Washington."
"You dog, you." If it worked, it worked. Don was more than happy to take advantage of David's personal life. "Bring it home." He checked his watch. "Better get started. There's a three hour time difference between Washington and here." He looked around. "Anybody hear from Rufus?"
"Right here, boss." Rufus trooped in, looking tired and disappointed, on the heels of Don's words. "Bad news. I can't find the data that Charlie downloaded from Halligan's computer."
"Did you look in that backpack that passes for a briefcase?"
"Yup. Not there. It was a mess. How does he find anything in there?"
"Watch out for the cockroaches," Don warned. "There are times when I think Charlie's trying to prove something about Chaos Theory with that thing. It would be tough to find. Did you look through everything?"
"Every page, and most twice. It's not there, it's not in the pile of papers that Charlie left on top of the desk that they let him use, and it's not in Halligan's office. And, Don," Rufus was very serious, "Halligan's computer was wiped. There's not a shred of data left on it. They wiped it out to the operating system. All I get is the blue screen of death."
"Not good." Because that meant that someone inside of Caldwell didn't want Halligan's data to get out. "Did you talk to anyone about this?"
"Only the people in IT. They swear that they haven't touched Halligan's computer. And they're all vouching for each other."
"They would. Any way to retrieve what was lost?"
"If there is, I don't know it," Rufus admitted.
"How about the mainframe?" Colby asked. "Isn't most of the stuff these guys use stored there?"
Rufus shook his head. "Not this file. Charlie found it on Dr. Halligan's hard drive, which meant it never made it over to the mainframe. He figured out her personal password and found the file by accident. If it contained suspect data, she may have gone to some trouble to keep it off of the internal system."
"And means that the suspect data may have some significance." Don paused to think. "People, why do we think that Bostwick was the target here? Why do we think that the sniper was after him?"
"How about because after the sniper killed Halligan, he came back for more?" David said dryly. "That second bullet came as close to Bostwick as the first one. He's the common factor. Borowski was aiming at him. Bostwick is lucky that Borowski blew it both times."
"Good point. But when we got here, Caldwell had Bostwick under guard. They jumped to the conclusion that he was the target, also. Why?"
Rufus frowned. "He's the head researcher. Without him, there's no process. Caldwell goes under."
"Leaving Xenox alone in the race to develop the miracle growth formula, despite their setback with the FDA. Yes, I got that. But Halligan was working on it, too. Wouldn't she know the process as well as Bostwick? This isn't the days of individual research, or so Charlie tells me. Everything is a team approach, with lots of data collection, so that something like losing a researcher won't be as big a blow."
"But—"
"Think about it, people. This was a sniping. What about simple car accidents? What about heart attacks and similar things that kill people before their time? Caldwell and other research companies don't want to lose everything just because someone doesn't stop at a red light." Don sat back. This had the feel of being right. "We jumped to the conclusion that Bostwick was the target because Caldwell—in the persons of Stewart, Nogales, and Bostwick himself—told us that he was."
"But what about the angle of entry of the bullet that killed Halligan?" Colby protested. "Didn't that—"
"Borowski is good," Don cut him off. "His army records say so. The scope on his piece was enough to put a bullet through the antennae on a housefly, and nobody gets that sort of equipment unless they're already very, very good. I don't care what the angle of entry was. Halligan was the target. Borowski could see both of them through the window, and he aimed for Halligan. This wasn't mistaken identity, or a poor shot."
"Maybe he was after both of them?" David tried for a new hypothesis. "Xenox would want to remove both senior researchers. Borowski shoots Halligan but Bostwick jumps back out of the way before Borowski can off him as well. The second time, out on the slopes, Charlie was next to Bostwick; Borowski misses for real. But that doesn't argue for a very good marksman. Which doesn't go along with what we know about Borowski." He folded his arms, puzzlement uppermost. "You're not trying to say that Borowski was after Charlie, Don? That wouldn't make sense. Charlie has no connection with Caldwell, Bostwick, or Borowski. You know that. They barely knew that Charlie existed until two days ago, and they certainly didn't know that we'd bring him along with us."
"He had no connection before," Don said grimly, "but he does now. He's seen Halligan's hidden data. Charlie's got a reputation among the scientific community; Dr. Bostwick knew who he was, had even attended one of Charlie's seminars. Someone must have known that it would only be a matter of time before he'd decipher what the numbers meant."
"Not any more," Rufus grumbled. "The data is gone."
Don smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. "That's what our murderer would like to believe. I know better."
"Don?"
"I have seen," Don said, "my brother recall eight pages worth of data, all numbers, no calculations. He has done this not once, not twice, but at least twelve times that I know of. Mostly to show off, but that's not the point."
"Photographic memory?"
"When it comes to numbers, yes. Forgets everything else, but when it comes to numbers, you can count on Charlie; pun intended. I suspect that we'll be able to retrieve Halligan's secret data."
"Not good enough for court's evidence," David warned.
"No, but by then we should have the rest of the case sewn up. What we need is the direction to go in, what Halligan was looking at. That's the crunch point."
"In other words, what the numbers mean." Colby put it a simpler phrase. "But first, we have to get the numbers."
"And when we get those, we'll have our murderer."
"No," said Don in no uncertain terms. "Absolutely not."
"Do you have a better plan?" Charlie asked, tilting his head in a way that Don found infuriating. And he'd bet that Charlie's students found it irritating as well. At the moment, Special Agent Eppes had a certain empathy for them. Rufus sat at the end of the table, stone-faced, watching the two brothers argue. Colby hid his own grin behind a coffee cup.
"News flash, Dr. Eppes," Don told him, "you are not an FBI agent. You don't get to go undercover. Leave the dangerous parts to those of us with the training to handle it."
"It won't be dangerous," Charlie insisted. "You'll be watching, you and David and Colby, and Rufus. All we have to do is pretend that I have the numbers. Your murderer will go after me, and you'll grab him. Piece of cake."
Not dangerous? His brother might be a genius, but had the common sense of field mouse. Just moments before Charlie had hobbled into the conference room to join them, collapsed into his chair with a white face, and looked about ready to pass out again. All that, and his arm in a white sling that clashed with the rest of his outfit, protesting that he felt fine. The white bandage taped to his forehead with dark hair falling over it did nothing to reassure Don, either. Was that blood leaking through? It looked like it.
"We wait," Don said finally. "Your memory might come back. We can figure out who's behind this whole scheme then."
"Or it might not," Charlie argued. "You heard what the docs told me. It's very common to lose twenty-four to forty-eight hours of short term memory with concussion, with only a fifty-fifty chance of regaining it. Face it, Don, I might not be able to recall Dr. Halligan's data. It may be lost forever."
"Better hope not," David muttered under his breath. "We need that data."
Don tossed David an irritated look before focusing back on his brother. "Or it may come back in the next hour," Don argued. "And, frankly, I wouldn't mind telling people that you can't remember. You think I want this murderer thinking you're a threat?"
"He—or she—already does," Charlie pointed out. "I would think you'd want to take advantage of the situation."
"What I want," Don emphasized, "is put a murderer behind bars without anyone getting shot. Again," he growled, glaring. "Think, Charlie. What were those numbers?"
"I can't think. I have a headache."
"I'm sending you home." That sounded nice and safe for a consultant who shouldn't have been shot in the first place.
"A four hour drive back to L.A.? Feeling like this? Not a chance. I'll head back to the Caldwell apartments first."
"No." A lonely apartment, where anyone could find Charlie and kill him without Don being any the wiser? Not in this lifetime. Don knew better. He looked around, scanning the room for ideas, since his brain wasn't coming up with anything…wait. Wait a minute. "No, Charlie, you are staying here. You're going to go back to work, very soon, right here in this research facility. Not yet, but soon."
"You're finally seeing things my way. Give me acetaminophen so I can function. I'll pretend to be a good little victim."
"No, you expect to be working very hard, very soon, right in that office down the hall where the sofa is. You'll be working on the data that you originally pulled out of Halligan's computer, just as soon as we give it to you again. That's what you're waiting for, for David to print it out. Feel free to talk about it to every Caldwell employee you meet on your way back to taking another nap on that sofa."
"Give it to me again? Don, the computer was wiped. I don't remember the numbers—"
"Doesn't matter." Don shoved a piece of paper at Charlie. "Write."
"Don, I—"
"Doesn't have to be accurate, buddy. Just make it look like what Halligan wrote. Set it up in a table or a graph, or whatever she did. Make it believable for a quick glance."
"Huh?" Charlie looked bewildered, and Don patted him gently on the shoulder. The good shoulder. He hated it when Charlie looked bewildered. It happened too often, but not usually over numbers. Usually it was over someone who didn't behave the way the numbers predicted they would: a bully, or some girl who thought making time with a geek would be a nice change of pace until she figured out that college professors didn't have the best financial remuneration in the world. This time it was overlaid with a heavy layer of concussion. Don winced. The concussion shouldn't have happened. Neither should the rest of it, not to a consultant.
David, however, caught on. "Charlie won't be the target, but the computer will."
"Bingo." Yet another example of why Don thought David should be next in line for a promotion. The man was good.
Rufus had a ways to go. "But, if we have the data, won't Charlie have access to it? He'll still be a target."
"Not yet, he won't. Not until he gets 'the data'. And we'll make sure that everyone knows that he doesn't have it yet." Don pointed his finger at the newbie for emphasis. "Whoever is behind this will go after the easy target first, try to slow us down. He'll try to eliminate the data, so that Charlie has nothing to work with. No data, no case. And nobody trying to kill anybody." He considered, thinking how to flesh out his plan. "David, you are now a computer specialist."
"Thanks. I always knew I was good at something. I take it I have magically managed to resurrect the hard drive on Halligan's computer and am now about to merrily print out copies of her hidden data."
Colby caught on. "When, in reality, you are simply inputting Charlie's fake numbers into a spread sheet to make it look like you've accessed the data. Nice. That should generate some action."
"And to make it easier for the suspect, I'll leave the room for several long breaks, so that whoever it is can come in and smash up the place." David nodded, pleased. "I like it. I always wanted to be computer whiz. I can't wait to inform Caldwell's people of my superlative genius."
Don grinned. "Halligan's cat is out of the bag. Go spread the word throughout the litter box, children."
"Six pages?" To his credit, the smile stayed frozen on David Sinclair's face. "Don, I flunked keyboarding three times. I hunt and peck at the rate of three words per minute. Charlie wrote six pages to copy!"
"Not a problem," Don said easily. "Not for our computer whiz. Notice that these are numbers. Not words." He grinned. "Only ten digits to work with, not twenty six letters. Look, you've even got a numbers keyboard just waiting for you. Piece of cake. Let me know when you've got it ready to print out." He sobered suddenly. "And remember, bullet proof vest at all times, David. The sniper may be in custody, but we haven't a clue how our unknown suspect will react. He may not wait for you to leave the room to smash the computer; we're only assuming that he will. He may even try to break your fingers so that you can't put in the data. Wouldn't that be fun?" He sauntered off, the grin creeping back onto his face, whistling, putting his plan into action.
David groaned.
"You were able to get the information off of Halligan's computer?" The disbelief was plain on Nogales' face. "I thought it was wiped, that the data was gone."
"Well, when you bring along the right experts…" Don let the statement slide off into the distance. "Not easy, but I'm told that it should pop up within another hour or two." Put the pressure on, Eppes. There were several portals for spreading false information, and Don intended to hit every one of them. He didn't want to believe that Nogales was the suspect behind the murders but he hadn't gotten to where he was by letting his emotions get the better of him. He done plenty of things that he really didn't want to admit to… "It shouldn't take long. David is working on it right now, says he'll have it done it a couple of hours. Then I can give the data to Charlie, and we can see what Alyse Halligan was up to." In a flash of inspiration, he added, "we'll be checking out her background thoroughly. Somebody that quiet, you have to wonder." Not above spreading a little mis-direction either, are we, Eppes?
"Not Alyse," Nogales said faintly. "Not Dr. Halligan." Which meant, Don realized, that Rosa Nogales was beginning to wonder herself. Which was a good sign; if Nogales was dirty, then she would have been looking to encourage Don to think along other lines. She would have been all but telling Don to dig into Halligan's background. Don started to feel better about the security chief.
Nogales gathered herself together. "Did the sniper crack? He give up his handler?"
"Not yet." The regret was real. "But he will. We're having a polite conversation with Chicago to see who has the better case against him, and, considering that we caught him with the gun used to kill Dr. Halligan in his possession, I think we do. He's been thinking about extradition all night long. He'll be ready to talk before too long, especially if we offer him an incentive." Also true, and also designed to put the pressure on the man—or woman—that was pulling Borowski's strings.
Nogales moved on. "So I can stop the bodyguard for Dr. Bostwick."
"I wouldn't be too quick on that end," Don warned. "Remember, Borowski is a hired killer. There's someone out there who wanted Dr. Bostwick dead." Maybe. Maybe not. "I wouldn't put it past them to try again, some other way."
Nogales nodded ruefully. "I'll back off here, inside, where no one can get to him, but leave the escort back and forth to home intact. Dr. Bostwick has been complaining that he feels crowded, now that you have the sniper in custody."
"No problem here," Don lied. Bostwick is one of my suspects. Give him rope to hang himself with.
Barry Stewart didn't look like a man with millions of dollars in Caldwell stock about to go bust, but then, now that the sniper had been apprehended, it appeared that his investment was safe. His chief researcher was free to continue to develop the process which would net the executive millions in stocks and bonuses. Stewart himself would continue to inhabit the large office in the penthouse with the mahogany desk and the deep pile magenta carpet.
Colby Granger set up a scope on the window sill, looking for a line of sight into the forest where the sniper had set up his nest. The task had absolutely no relevance to the case whatsoever. Talking to Stewart 'off the cuff' did.
"That's right, Mr. Stewart," he said. "Just finishing up a few last details. David'll have the data off of Halligan's computer, Charlie'll do his thing, and we'll be out of your hair before you know it."
Stewart looked up swiftly. Was that alarm that Colby read in those eyes? "I thought that the computer had been wiped."
Colby shrugged. "Yeah, but apparently there's a way to get the information back. David says that it doesn't really disappear, just kind of goes underground where nobody can find it. A little magic on the keyboard and poof! The data's back." He peered out the window at the slopes, looking out toward where the sniper had positioned himself. There was nothing out there except a few cattle munching on bales of hay at the base of the slopes. "Have to admit, I'll be sorry to see this case ending. I like L.A., but I've enjoyed being out here, breathing clean air."
"You'll have to get out here more often," Stewart said absently, his thoughts clearly on other things.
Yup. Definitely a suspect.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you have to step back. This is a crime scene," David said politely. He was sitting at the late Dr. Halligan's desk, working on her computer, surrounded by all sorts of textbooks and files and white boards. It reminded him of a tidier version of Charlie's office.
"I just need a notebook from Dr. Halligan's files," Bostwick said with the absolute assurance that he should get what he wanted.
"Sir, you need to step out of the room," David repeated, trying to keep the adrenaline from getting to him. The bullet proof vest which had felt so hot just a moment ago now felt incredibly thin. "At this time, the notebook is considered part of the crime scene. You can't have it."
"But I need it," Bostwick protested, trying to surreptitiously get a look at what David was doing. It looked impressive: David had the cover off of the computer tower, fans whirring and he'd left one of the disk drives open as if to receive a disk. A screwdriver here, a few wires there, and David had transformed himself into a computer geek. As the coup d'etat, he'd left the spread sheet pasted across the monitor, half of Charlie's fake numbers dancing in the boxes for any onlooker to see—and fear. Bostwick did a contrived double take. "You look as though you're having some success with Alyse's computer."
"Yes, sir, I am." David stayed polite, walking the line between officiously ordering Bostwick out of the room and allowing him to catch tantalizing hints of the 'data'. This was the third Caldwell employee he'd 'fended off' in the past hour; both Nogales and Stewart had likewise dropped by to monitor the progress of the FBI 'computer wizard.' If this kept up, David mused, he'd never finish inputting Charlie's 'data'.
"I hadn't realized that a wiped computer could still contain the data," Bostwick continued. "Our IT department certainly wasn't aware that this could be done."
"Very few people are," David replied with a straight face. "Our own IT people are collaborating with both the military and the CIA as well as some of the foremost experts in the field. One of the advantages of the new Homeland Security arrangement." He gestured to the machine. Lights blinked, hinting at the mysteries inside for the expert to tease out. "I should have the download completed within the next thirty minutes." Whereupon it can be given to our resident math genius, who will decipher just why Alyse Halligan was murdered and who was responsible, or so we would like you to think. Was it you, Dr. Bostwick?
"Remarkable," Bostwick murmured, working to drag his stare from the computer screen. David dropped one leg across the table where the monitor sat, partially blocking the view with his body, increasing the fear factor and well aware of how he was playing this suspect. A part of him automatically assessed the potential threat: Bostwick was out of shape, and slow. His mind moved at light speed, but the researcher would have to come up with something other than a frontal assault if he wanted to prevent 'Halligan's data' from emerging. David was physically safe, for the moment.
"I won't keep you," Bostwick declared, taking himself to the exit. "We need that information. I'm looking forward to not requiring a bodyguard any longer," he added, as if to remind the FBI agent that Bostwick was a victim and not a suspect.
"Yes, sir." David politely turned back to his 'task'. Every sense he had was focused on the man leaving the office, and not on the computer screen in front of him.
