Masters, page 5
She winced. “I hope that’s not true. I would hope that people cared and that somebody saw the value that he brought to the job. But honestly I’m not sure they did.”
Masters thought about how little he’d heard about Nicholas’s disappearance case, how little information he’d been given, and realized that her take on it could be true. It would be sad if that were the issue, and Masters would be sure that wasn’t the way it ended. And, for Nicholas, who had spent his life solving all these cases? Masters wanted to confirm that Nicholas got justice too. Or better yet, that he got his ass back home where he belonged.
“I’ll take it under advisement, as they say,” he added. “We’ll follow up. Now let’s get this back to your place, so I can get a copy of the USB, and so you can keep that other stuff safe.” He hesitated as he walked by her side. “And please tell me, have you had any disturbances yourself?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Any break-ins, any robberies, any strange events during the night, anything?”
She frowned and shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t have. … I can’t remember anything.”
“And you likely would remember if such a thing had happened?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“Yes, I would think so. I’m not somebody who gets nervous easily,” she shared, “although I have been a lot more nervous since my brother’s disappearance.”
“Which is to be expected,” he confirmed. “And, if you had a problem before, you would have called your brother, I presume.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“You mentioned how you work for a bank. Did you look at those investments of Nicholas’s long enough to decipher anything about them?”
“No,” she confessed, flushing. “It felt like I was intruding in his world.”
“Do you think anything of concern is there?”
She shook her head. “No, but you’re right. I should be the one who takes a good look at it.”
“Then please do,” he suggested, “but I do need a copy of the USB.”
She groaned. “Why wasn’t all this done before?”
“Because I don’t think anybody found those envelopes,” he guessed. “So, the question is, why did nobody find those? Maybe the real question is, where was this stuff when the original investigation was started?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I don’t, but you’re making me more worried every time you open your mouth.”
Chapter 3
‡
Elizabeth looked over to see if Dolly was on her porch, but she wasn’t. With a grateful sigh, Elizabeth raced on by.
When she and Masters were in the sanctuary of her home, he asked, “So, you didn’t want anybody to see what we were carrying, or were you avoiding your neighbor?”
Surprised at his intuitiveness, she winced. “That doesn’t sound very good, does it?”
“Not necessarily, but you told her that you would go see her. Is that something you’re avoiding?”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “I just don’t want to be asked any questions right now.”
“And yet it’s a good time to ask questions of others,” he pointed out.
“I know. I know.” She raised her hands in frustration. “But all this has stirred up something that I don’t have any answers for, so it’s making me a little touchy.” She walked into the kitchen and put on the teakettle. “You can use my laptop right there.” She pointed to it.
And, with that, he turned it on and put the USB key in.
She stepped up behind him, waiting for the files to load, so she could read the contents too. It was only one file. As it popped up on the screen, it was labeled Evidence. “Ah, shit,” she whispered.
Masters double-clicked it, and it opened to reveal other files and a lot of images. Masters clicked on one of the images.
She sucked in her breath. “Oh my God, is that a dead man?”
His voice grim, he nodded. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I don’t have any ID. I don’t have any way to confirm that at the moment,” he explained. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
“Shit,” she muttered. “What was Nicholas into?”
“I don’t know.” Masters quickly copied the contents to her desktop and saved it and then shared, “I’m a little worried about your having this.”
“It’s my brother’s, and, if he’s dead, I get everything in his estate anyway,” she stated bluntly. “And you’re not taking a copy without my having a copy.”
“And I don’t have a problem with that, for sure,” he told her. “I’m just worried about somebody finding out that you have it.”
She froze as she understood what he was saying. “You’re thinking it’ll be dangerous for me.”
“Your brother’s disappeared, and he’s worth millions of dollars. We don’t know anything about where he’s gone or why he’s disappeared. Now we find he has a hidden file called Evidence. So I think it’s safe to say, Yes, if you have this info, you could be in danger.”
She sucked in her breath and stared at him. “I appreciate the honesty,” she began, “but, right now, it would be nice if you would say something like, Hey, don’t worry about it. This will all blow over, and you’ll be totally fine.”
But he stared at her steadily and did not give her that reassurance.
She sank into the kitchen chair beside him. “I should never have found this, should I?”
“It wasn’t terribly well hidden, was it?”
She thought about it, then shrugged. “Under a piece of plywood, atop the carpet at the bottom of his closet? No, yet, in a way, yes. It was all filed, very methodically, like he is,” she noted. “I would have expected him to have his things in order, one way or another. When he went missing, I called. I cried. I even got lawyers involved to get somebody to give a shit. The fact that Nicholas was one of the navy’s own investigators just meant that they had locked everything down.”
“And yet I’m getting the idea from you that maybe they didn’t lock anything down.”
Elizabeth added, her voice rising, “Look at how much time has been wasted, when they could have been actively looking for Nicholas. Maybe they didn’t do any investigation.”
Masters held up a hand and clarified, “That I can’t confirm. I just know that I don’t have full access to the investigation yet.”
She shook her head. “And that’s bullshit.” He smiled as if appreciating her fury, but she wouldn’t be appeased by something like that. “My brother deserves everything the navy can do for him,” she declared, trying hard not to rant in his face. “He’s a good man, and he needs help. He’s either alive and needs help, or he was alive and needed help, and nobody was there for him.”
“And you shouldn’t feel guilty for anything he’s gone through,” he stated firmly.
She snapped, “Of course I’m not guilty.”
His lips twisted.
“Yet somehow I still feel guilty. Right. I know. I know. I know,” she murmured, as she buried her face in her hands.
After a moment he grabbed her fingers and gently squeezed them. “Look. The files are transferred. I want you to hide them on your laptop somewhere or move them to cloud storage. Then delete this copy and restart your computer. Anybody who is any good with computers could still retrieve these files,” he explained. “You’ve got to understand that. But you don’t know anything about what’s on them, and you need to keep it that way, right?”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I didn’t like anything about what you mentioned earlier. However, I will get a handle on his financials.”
“Good. You do that part,” he said. “And give me a heads-up when you get through it all.”
“I will,” she replied. She watched as he got up to leave.
Then he turned and suggested, “Hopefully you’re having a nice cup of calming herbal tea right now and not more coffee.”
She looked over at the teakettle. “If I was doing coffee, somebody should just shoot me now,” she muttered. “Coffee is my absolute favorite all-time drink, but maybe not right now.”
He smiled and nodded. “Just checking.”
“I’m not that far gone,” she muttered. She got up and walked him to the door, knowing that he had the USB key in his pocket, and she had the rest of the physical documents. “Do you think the documents are safe here?”
“No. My suggestion would be to put it all in a safe deposit box. At least until we can get through this. If we ever get his body, or we find him, you’ll need those documents just to make your legal case,” he explained. “So, be safe and take care of everything.”
“Got it.” She sighed. “You do realize I won’t sleep tonight now.”
“Neither will I. Neither will I.” He turned to face her. “I know you don’t need my number because you’ve got it in your phone already, but please make sure you’ve got a way to find my card in case you lose your cell or something,” he suggested. “Call me if there’s any problem.”
“And when you say, any problem?” she asked, letting her voice trail off, studying his face.
“Any kind of problem. For all I know they’re watching you right now, and now that they’ve seen me come here twice, they’re wondering why.”
“Maybe you should take everything then,” she offered suddenly.
He frowned. “Are you that nervous?”
“You’re certainly not doing anything to relieve that nervousness,” she snapped.
“True,” he muttered. “Do you have a safe deposit box?”
“I do, but I would have to get through the night in order to get this paperwork somewhere safe tomorrow,” she explained, trying for humor, only to have it fall flat.
He hesitated. “So, how nervous are you about staying here alone tonight?”
She winced. “I wasn’t before.”
“And now you are,” he noted, with a nod. “Okay, so how do you feel about an overnight houseguest?”
She stared at him. “Seriously?”
“You tell me. I’m fully prepared to stay here and to sleep on the couch, so you can get a good night’s sleep. Then we can get those documents to the bank first thing in the morning,” he shared. “I also think you should be quick to put it all into a digital format, so you have that proof too. It’s quite possible that, if Nicholas did invest in some of these companies, and he did make that money, maybe he also owns shares in those stocks, and people want his shares back. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it, except that, right now, we’ve got a problem. Thus I would feel a whole lot better if all this was backed up somewhere.”
“Well shit,” she muttered, staring at him.
He nodded. “So what’s the decision?”
She didn’t even know what to say.
He nodded. “And your silence then is a decision.”
“What decision?” she asked, with a note of humor.
“The decision is, I’m staying, so you need to put more water in the teakettle.”
Chapter 4
‡
Elizabeth woke early the next morning and hurried downstairs, hoping to be awake before her houseguest, but, of course, he was sitting in the kitchen on his phone. She looked over at him.
He smiled. “Good morning.”
“At least we made it through the night,” she noted, half joking.
“We did, indeed,” he stated, with a smile. “How are you feeling?”
“I got some sleep, so I’m doing fine and feeling foolish.”
He shook his head and added, “Hey, staying alive is never being foolish.”
“Being paranoid is another story,” she quipped.
He smiled at her. “So far I haven’t seen anything bordering on paranoia, so I wouldn’t worry about that.”
“Yet, you mean.”
He chuckled. “You can add yet if you want and if it makes you feel better, but honestly you’re handling a lot of very difficult information pretty well.”
She smiled at him. “I think you’re one of those nice men who always tries to make life easier for people.”
He laughed at that. “I know a lot of people who would argue with you on that point. Remember how I’m one of the military investigators? I have to be a hard-ass at times, and that is rarely appreciated.”
“No, it wouldn’t be appreciated,” she agreed, “but that doesn’t mean that what you do is wrong. I know Nicholas always told me how his job alienated people in a way, and that wasn’t fair to him either.”
“No, it certainly wasn’t, and it isn’t, but it is the job,” Masters stated firmly. “That’s just part of it.”
“Right. So …” She looked around and realized that a pot of coffee was dripping.
He apologized. “Sorry, I didn’t know whether you would be upset that I took the liberty of making coffee or appreciate the fact that it’s done and ready.”
She laughed. “Because I’m desperately in need of coffee, I’ll go with the latter.”
“Good, I was hoping you would.”
She poured two cups and brought them over, as he put down his phone. “Were you working?”
“Of course. I’ve contacted my boss as well.”
She nodded. “Was he upset that you spent the night?”
“Why would he be upset?” he asked her in astonishment.
She flushed. “It just seems weird.”
“It’s not weird,” he declared. “Stop thinking that you’re being paranoid about this. This investigation is too important. Jasper was quite surprised at the documents you found too, and I have emailed copies of the file from the USB to him as well.”
Elizabeth frowned, as she thought about the repercussions. “What if Nicholas wasn’t even supposed to have those files?”
“Maybe he wasn’t. It won’t be common knowledge.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that we will keep his USB files confidential at the moment, until we clear everybody in his department first. We must ensure that this isn’t involved in the sniper case we’re already dealing with.”
She shook her head. “As much as I want all this solved, it never occurred to me that it would be this difficult.”
“No, nobody ever thinks it’ll be hard.”
“Surely somebody knows who shot Mason, and so that’s got be easy, right?”
Masters shrugged. “On TV they solve it within a half-hour show,” he noted. “Real life isn’t like that. You see those cold cases where they go twenty, thirty years, and then sometimes technology has improved enough that they can do something with the evidence. You just have to be grateful for the foresight of the people who collected all the evidence at the beginning and kept it, hoping that sometime down the road there would be technology that would help.”
“That is one of the most fascinating aspects to me,” she murmured. “That somebody thought far enough ahead to collect everything and then hoped technology would catch up someday.”
“And now that is catching up,” he pointed out. “We have more and more cold cases being solved, and sadly not always in time for the family of the victims to find closure. However, in many cases, it is in time for the culprits themselves to be captured.”
“Can you imagine the criminal who, for that many years, thought they were free and clear, until suddenly one day they get caught? I’m sure it must be like a bolt out of the blue for them,” she noted, shaking her head.
“I would imagine so. In many cases they’re arrogant enough to think that they didn’t leave anything behind and that they’re perfectly safe. They may spend that first year or two worrying about it, but then, to them, it’s just a done deal.”
She nodded. “I can’t think of anything more satisfying than working on cold cases like that.”
*
He smiled. “That’s a big part of it, but so is working on current cases.” In fact, Masters loved his job. “My job is very fulfilling, yet frustrating, all at the same time,” he shared, with a smile.
“And yet do you have a job?” she asked in a half-joking manner.
“I do. It’s just that our investigative team works on different levels within the military, and not everybody knows all the details about what everybody else does,” he murmured.
Maybe she didn’t even know what he was doing. “So, now what?”
“Why don’t we both run to your bank and put Nicholas’s physical documents in your safe deposit box there? Have you got digital copies on your computer and in the cloud as well?” When she nodded, he added, “After that I’ll drop you off and head back to my office and sort through the information on the USB drive. What about you and your work? Where should I drop you?” he asked curiously.
“I mostly work from home,” she replied, looking around, frowning. “I only go in when I have a specific need to be there in person.”
Thankfully the trip to the bank and back went without a hitch, although Elizabeth remained nervous, looking around at her surroundings, even when inside the bank.
“No one’s following us,” he shared, which seemed to calm her down on the way back to her house. He walked her to her door and went inside with her. After he checked out her house and all the windows and doors, he rejoined her in the kitchen. “I know it probably sounds autocratic, and I certainly don’t mean it to because it’s more about your safety, but could you check in with me, each time you come and go throughout the day?”
Her eyebrows slowly rose as she contemplated that. Then she studied his face and nodded. “Considering you stayed here overnight for me, that’s the least I can do.”
“At some point,” he reminded her, “talk to your neighbor.”
She hesitated and then sighed. “I probably should. If nothing else it’ll encourage her to continue keeping an eye on Nicholas’s property.”
“That’s not a bad thing right now,” he pointed out.
She winced. “I don’t want to think that I’m in any danger.”
“I don’t want to think that either,” he murmured, “so let’s not even go there.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she muttered, with half a laugh. “I guess it’s all about sorting through what’s going on and then coming to some understanding.”
