Rachel pushed open the door. I trailed behind her. I felt empty, but I was functioning. The horror of what had happened—the hang-up—was so great that I had pushed beyond paralysis to a strange state of focus. Again I compare all this to the surgery room. I enter that room, I cross that gateway, and I shed the world. I had a patient once, a six-year-old boy, who was getting a fairly routine cleft palate repair. While on the table, his vitals dropped suddenly. His heart stopped. I didn’t panic. I fell into a state of focus, not unlike this one. The boy pulled through.
Still flashing the ID, Rachel explained that we wanted to see someone in charge. The receptionist smiled and nodded in that way people do when they aren’t listening. She never took off the headphones. Her fingers pressed some buttons. Another woman appeared. She led us down the corridor and into a private office.
For a moment, I couldn’t tell if we were in the presence of a man or a woman. The bronze nameplate on the desk read Conrad Dorfman. Conclusion: a man. He rose theatrically. He was too slim in a blue suit withGuys and Dolls –wide pinstripes, tapered at the waist so that the bottom of the jacket flared out almost enough to be mistaken for a skirt. His fingers were thin like a pianist’s, his hair slicked down like Julie Andrews’s inVictor/Victoria , and his face had a blotchy smoothness I usually associate with a cosmetic foundation.
“Please,” he said in a voice with too much affect. “My name is Conrad Dorfman. I’m the executive vice president of MVD.” We shook his hand. He held our hands a second too long, putting the free hand over the shake and peering intently into our eyes. Conrad invited us to sit. We did. He asked us if we’d enjoy a cup of tea. Rachel, taking the lead, said that we would.
There were a few more minutes of chitchat. Conrad asked Rachel questions about her time with the FBI. Rachel was vague. She implied that she, too, worked in the private detection biz and was thus his colleague and worthy of professional courtesy. I said nothing, letting her work. There was a knock on the door. The woman who had escorted us down the corridor opened the door and wheeled in a silver teacart. Conrad began to pour. Rachel got to the point.
“We were hoping you could help us,” Rachel said. “Dr. Seidman’s wife was a client of yours.”
Conrad Dorfman concentrated on the tea. He used one of those screen-door sifters that seemed all the rage nowadays. He shook out some leaves and slowly poured.
“You folks provided her with a CD that’s password protected. We need to get into it.”
Conrad handed a cup of tea to Rachel first, then me. He settled back and took a deep sip. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help you. The password is set by the client on their own.”
“The client is dead.”
Conrad Dorfman did not blink. “That really doesn’t change anything.”
“Her husband here is next of kin. That makes the CD his.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Conrad said. “I don’t practice estate law. But we have no control over any of that. As I said before, the client sets the password. We may have given her the CD—I really can’t confirm or deny that at this stage—but we would have no idea what numbers or letters she programmed in for the password.”
Rachel waited a beat. She stared at Conrad Dorfman. He stared back but dropped his eyes first. He picked up his tea and took another sip. “Can we find out why she came to you in the first place?”
“Without a court order? No, I don’t think so.”
“Your CD,” she said. “There’s a back entry.”
“Excuse me?”
“Every company has one,” Rachel said. “The info isn’t lost forever. Your company programs in its own password so that you folks can get on the CD.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I used to be an FBI agent, Mr. Dorfman.”
“So?”
“So I know these things. Please don’t insult my intelligence.”
“That was not my intent, Ms. Mills. But I simply can’t help.”
I looked at Rachel. She seemed to be weighing her options. “I still have friends, Mr. Dorfman. In the department. We can ask questions. We can poke around. The feds don’t much like private eyes. You know that. I don’t want trouble. I just want to know what’s on the CD.”
Dorfman put down his cup. He strummed his fingers. There was a knock, and the same woman opened the door. She beckoned Conrad Dorfman. He rose, again too theatrically, and practically leapt across the floor. “Excuse me a moment.”
When he left the office, I looked at Rachel. She wouldn’t turn toward me. “Rachel?”
“Let’s just see how it plays out, Marc.”
But there really wasn’t much more to play. Conrad came back into the office. He crossed the room and stood over Rachel, waiting for her to look up. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Our president, Malcolm Deward, is a former federal agent himself. Did you know that?”
Rachel said nothing.
“He made some calls while we chatted.” Conrad waited. “Ms. Mills?” Rachel finally looked up. “Your threats are impotent. You have no friends at the agency. Mr. Deward, alas, does. Get out of my office. Now.”
Chapter 21
I said, “Whatthe hell was that all about?”
“I told you before. I’m not an agent anymore.”
“What happened, Rachel?”
She kept her eyes forward. “You haven’t been a part of my life in a long time.”
There was nothing to add. Rachel drove now. I held on to the cell phone, again willing it to ring. When we arrived back at my house, dusk had settled in. We went inside. I debated calling Tickner or Regan, but what good would that do now?
“We need to get that DNA checked,” Rachel said. “My theory might sound implausible, but does the idea of your daughter being held all this time sound any more so?”
So I called Edgar. I told him that I wanted to run some additional tests on the hair. He said that would be fine. I hung up without telling him that I had already endangered the drop by enlisting the help of a former FBI agent. The less said on that, the better. Rachel called someone she knew to pick up the samples from Edgar, as well as a blood sample from me. He ran a private lab, she said. We would know something within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, which would probably be, in terms of a ransom demand, too late.
I settled into a chair in the den. Rachel sat on the floor. She opened her bag and pulled out wires and electronic contraptions of all sorts. Being a surgeon makes me pretty good with my hands, but when it comes to high-tech gizmos, I’m totally lost. She carefully spread the contents of the bag across the carpet, giving this action her full attention. Again I was reminded of the way she’d do the same thing with textbooks when we were in college. She reached into the bag and pulled out a razor.