The Lost Key (7 page)

N
icholas kept his hand on Sophie Pearce's pulse, still fast, but steady. It was a shock, he knew, it was always a horrible shock to have the death of a loved one come swiftly, violently. She'd closed down.

Mike appeared at his elbow with a glass of water. “When she comes out of it, we'll give her some water. I doubt it will help, but it's something.”

He set the glass of water on a side table and rose. “I think she knows who EP is. Try to get her to tell you when she gets herself back together. I need to get the ETA of the crime scene techs. I'll be right back.”

“Nicholas, be sure to tell them someone else accessed the hard drive before you did. I'm betting Mr. Olympic was here and he did it.”

“I agree, but he didn't find the SD card and I'll bet it was the key to access the good stuff on Mr. Pearce's computer. I'll try to find the origins of all those files, see what they have to tell us.” He looked again at Sophia Pearce, moaning now, her eyes fluttering open.

He said abruptly, “I need time to sort everything. I've never seen anything like this.”

“Listen up, Nicholas. You don't have to do everything alone. We're all in this together, you and me and Zachery and Louisa and Ben, plus I've asked Gray Wharton to be attached to the investigation, you know how good he is. You're now a part of a big team. No more carrying the world's weight on your shoulders.”

Sophie Pearce opened her eyes. “I heard you talking about my father's computer. What was on it?”

Mike handed her the water and watched her drink, then set the glass back on the table.

“Please, talk to me. Tell me what you've found. None of it makes sense to me.”

Mike said, “I know this is a shock, Miss Pearce. We'll go slow, one step at a time. Now, when you say the store, you're talking about his bookstore, Ariston's?”

“That's right.” She was getting a little color back, though she was still too pale. Mike helped her sit up, and introduced herself and Nicholas again, waving toward Nicholas, who was speaking on his cell in the entryway. “My father is an antiquarian, one of the best in the field. Ariston's is renowned for rare books. He has a worldwide network.”

“So he's very successful.”

“Oh, yes, he has a gift for this, always has. Agent Caine, I don't understand, who would kill him? He didn't have any enemies. Everyone loved him.”

Nicholas stepped back into the living room. “We don't think it was premeditated, Ms. Pearce. You know as well as I do that enemies can be seen and unseen. As your father was a preeminent businessman in an esoteric field, he surely had rivals, people he
upset when he bested them. My grandfather's a bit of a collector; I know how cutthroat the auctions can get.”

Sophie nodded. “So you understand, then. It's such a small field. He had rivals, certainly. But enemies? No. Not my dad. No way.” She sat straighter. “Now tell me again how he was killed. You said a man stabbed him?”

Rather than answer her, Nicholas asked her again, “Tell us who EP is.”

He was looking closely this time and he saw it again, a flash of knowledge in her pale eyes, then it was gone. She didn't look at them, didn't say anything, simply shook her head.

Mike said, “Your father was stabbed on the street after an argument with another man. As he died, your father said to the man who stabbed him, ‘The key is in the lock.' Does that mean anything to you?”

“The what?”

“The key is in the lock.”

“No, I don't know.” Nicholas saw nothing in her eyes, no clue to give away that she knew what this meant.

“Could it have been a robbery?”

Nicholas said, “No, Miss Pearce—”

“Sophie, please.”

“Sophie. No, he wasn't mugged. He had his phone and his wallet on him when he was found, and nothing appears to be missing.”

Quick as a whip, she faced them again. “You said you found something on my father's computer. What was it?”

T
his was interesting. Nicholas gestured toward the office. “I'll show you, and you can tell me what you think your father may have been involved in.”

He walked down the hall to the library, Sophie behind him. She hesitated for a moment at the door. He could have sworn she scanned the doorjamb. Why was that?

“Everything all right?” he asked.

She gave a short jerk of her head.

“What do you do, Sophie?”

“I'm a translator at the UN. I specialize in Asian policy and economics,” she said, as she stepped into her father's office. He watched her look around, swallow, then cross her arms over her chest, steeling herself. “Show me.”

Nicholas thought,
Be careful now, no reason to give it all to her, since for whatever reason she's not being straightforward with us.
He leaned down and hit a couple keys and brought up the schematic of a satellite.

“Do you know what this is?”

“It looks like a satellite.”

“Correct. The problem is, this isn't just any satellite. This is a high-tech LEO-synchronous spy satellite, one the military will be using. Not to mention it bolsters the NSA's ability to listen in to pretty much any conversation it wants in the Northern Hemisphere.”

“Um, English, please, Agent Drummond?”

“LEO, short for low-earth orbit. It's where most spy satellites are placed.” He clicked a few times. The image was of another satellite, similar to the first, but with a few changes.

“This particular satellite hasn't been launched yet; it's still under development. Classified development, on a classified military project, on a classified server owned by a very big aerospace firm, who will be quite displeased when they find out the plans for their super-secret spy satellite are residing in the computer of an antiquarian in Manhattan.”

He stood straighter, to intimidate, and said very quietly, the threat clear in his voice, “Would you like to tell me what your father is doing with classified material on this SD card?”

Sophie Pearce smiled for the first time, not much of one, but still a smile. “It's not what you think, Agent Drummond. My father's not a criminal, he's an expert in military history. He has friends who perhaps share things they shouldn't, because he's known for his discretion. He could write a book with all the stuff people send him.”

“You're telling me his
friends
send him classified material that could be used against the United States if it were to be discovered by the wrong people?”

Narrowed eyes replaced the smile. “Yes. What are you implying?”

“I'm saying a civilian having access to these plans violates
hundreds of laws. And the
friend
you speak of, the one who e-mailed these plans? He masked the e-mail address, bouncing it through about forty servers all over the world, so it's virtually untraceable.”

He stopped, reached down and clicked the mouse, closing the image on the screen. That was enough for now—the satellite image didn't even scratch the surface of what Nicholas had seen, but she didn't need to know that.

“My father would never do anything to hurt this country.”

Mike paused in the doorway, listening. She saw Nicholas was towering over Sophie, but Sophie hadn't moved. She looked mad, ready to square off with him. Mike had the distinct impression Sophie Pearce was more than the sum of her parts. Like the Fox, she thought, who'd very nearly brought them down, Sophie had that same feel to her—softness covering steel. She knew more than she was saying, a lot more. How to make her level with them?

Mike stepped into the office. “Excuse me. Nicholas, can I speak with you a moment?”

He shot her a look, nodded. Mike said to Sophie, “Do you have other family here in town? Someone who can come be with you?”

Sophie shook her head. “It's only us.” Her voice cracked, and they knew the fact of her father's death was sinking in now.

“Who is ‘us'?” Nicholas asked.

“My . . . my brother.”

“What is his name?”

“Adam.” Her voice shook. “Please, where is my dad? I mean, where is his—body?”

Mike said, “At the morgue. There will be an autopsy. We need to be one hundred percent sure about how he died.”

Sophie swallowed hard. “Someone shoving a knife in his back isn't clear enough?”

Mike touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry. I truly am. Are you sure there's no one we can call for you? Your brother, Adam?”

Sophie said, “No, Adam's not here. I forgot—I have a meeting this afternoon and I need to call and cancel. Tell them what's happened.”

Mike said, “All right. Go ahead, we'll be out in a moment,” and watched Sophie pull her cell from her pocket as she stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

“You think it's safe to leave her alone?”

Mike said, “Worry not, crime scene's here. They'll watch her, see if she does anything hinky. We're in here, so she can't hop on this computer and delete anything.”

“Wouldn't matter,” Nicholas said. “I've already copied his hard drive and downloaded the files from the SD card.” He held up a small thumb drive. “I also encrypted the drive with my own program so no one can tamper with the files now.”

Mike grinned at him. “I knew I asked to partner with you for a reason. I listened to some of your conversation with Sophie. Do you think she's clean in all this?”

“Mike, she works for the UN. She's a translator.”

She nodded. “Yes, and that means international connections. We'll keep a close watch on her.”

“She also knows who EP is. I don't think she knows what her father meant when he said ‘The key is in the lock.' What else does she know that she's not telling us? The big question is why isn't she telling us everything she can think of? Her father was murdered. I can't tell you if Pearce was up to no good, but what I saw on the SD card—I think this is big, Mike, we're talking government secrets, big-money secrets. We need to pull apart Pearce's financials, and Sophie's, too.”

“And we need to protect her and her brother, Adam, given what Mr. Olympic threatened. Zachery called to report someone's been hanging around Ariston's this morning, as if he's waiting for the store to open. We need to get up there and check it out.”

“I bet Pearce has another computer at the store. I'd like a chance to see what's on it. We should take Sophie with us, if nothing else, to keep her safe. Maybe, too, she'll break down and tell us what else she knows about all this.”

Ariston's Antiquities and Rare Books

Second Avenue and East 57th Street

Noon

They walked to Ariston's, only minutes from Mr. Pearce's apartment, the perfect commute for a Manhattan businessman. Mike assumed the vast majority of Pearce's life was carried out in the few square blocks between his store and his apartment.

Nestled between a boutique clothing store and a high-end jewelry shop, Ariston's was in an older, handsome building, tall and narrow, the brick paled over the decades. The windows were dark, a hand-lettered
CLOSED
sign draped inside.

East 57th was busy, people hurrying to lunch, to work, to their lives. Mike had her hand on Sophie's arm, holding her back. They watched carefully for signs of anyone paying special attention to the store. They saw no one out of place.

Mike was on her cell with the Facial Recognition guys who'd spotted the man lingering around the store. “Anything?”

Nicholas glanced over. She shook her head and clicked off. “It's a guy, young, that's all they could tell us, that and he seems to have left for now. They'll call the minute they see him again. We're clear to go in.”

Sophie unlocked the front door, opened it slowly, and disarmed the alarm. So this was Ariston's. It was a comforting smell, Nicholas thought, familiar—it immediately shot him back to his family's home in England, Old Farrow Hall, and his grandfather's extensive library of rare books, the smell of old vellum, the warmth from the fireplace.

Ariston's was a bibliophile's dream: floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, some behind glass and many under lock and key. There was row upon row of shelves, all clearly labeled according to genre, sub-labeled according to century.

There was a small register area up front, and a larger seated space midway back, with two well-worn oversized brown leather chairs edged in nail heads. A gooseneck reading lamp hovered over each chair, and every other inch of space was filled with books.

Nicholas realized Sophie had stopped just inside the door. He heard her swallowing. He knew this was difficult for her. He couldn't imagine hearing that his own father was dead, hearing that someone had killed him. He prayed she'd keep it together, maybe even tell them what she knew.

He watched her square her shoulders and turn on the lights. He heard the pain in her voice when she said, “Dad spent most of his time here in the store. It was his whole world. The entire time I was growing up, he had me in here every spare minute, dusting, curating, answering the phones. When I got old enough, I started handling the orders. We have a worldwide clientele, especially for military titles.”

Mike ran her fingers along the spines of the shelf nearest her. “How exactly does all this work? Do people come in off the street to buy rare books?”

“More than you'd expect, actually. But the bulk of the sales are
online. The Internet was the best, and worst, thing that happened to our industry. It used to be all the work was done by letter, then by phone, but both had a distinctly human touch. Once people could buy the books without any direct interaction with Dad, well, it wasn't nearly as fun for him. He loved meeting new people. He lived for the auctions.”

“Auctions?” Mike asked. “Like Sotheby's and Christie's do with furniture and artwork?”

“Similar, yes. He could pay the rent for a year on this place with a single rare-book sale.”

Nicholas thought back to the books he'd seen under glass at Pearce's apartment. “Did your father keep the rarest books at his place?”

“Some, yes, but for the most part, those are the ones he really loves—loved.”

Her face went blank, then she gestured for them to follow her, and went to the back of the store. She unlocked a door, and they saw a small office with a desk and ledger books, and a brand-new twenty-seven-inch iMac computer on the desk. Sophie didn't hesitate, walked to the back of the room, pressed a series of buttons on a rectangular steel lock, and the door swung open with a pneumatic hiss. Behind it was a circular stairway.

“This leads to the basement where he keeps—kept—the really valuable books.” Her voice hitched. They watched her gain control. She flipped a switch inside the door and the basement was lit with the soft red glow from a single light, like a small fire on the wall. They walked down the narrow stairs into a space that didn't run the full length of the store but took up at least four hundred square feet, all bookshelves behind tempered glass.

Mike whispered, “I feel like I'm in the Vatican vaults.”

Nicholas felt his chest tighten. “Low-oxygen environment?”

Sophie shot him a surprised look. “Exactly. Plus humidity and temperature regulation. Sixty-four degrees, with an ambient humidity of forty-five percent. It's the only way to keep the books from crumbling into dust. We had to reroute all the water pipes, too, and the fire retardant is a special chemical mix that's safe for books and papers.”

She stepped to a case and pointed at a book with thick-edged gilt lettering. “This was his favorite. He's had so many offers over the years, but I never could convince him to sell.”

It didn't look remarkable, but when Nicholas read the spine, a chill washed through him. “William Blake's
The Book of Urizen
? That must be worth millions.”

Sophie smiled. “Only eight copies in existence. One went at auction for two and a half million in 1999.”

Nicholas said, “I wouldn't give it up, either. I love Blake.”

Nicholas looked like he might begin to quote Blake's poetry, so Mike quickly said, “We're looking at some incredibly valuable books here. Is there anything in this store, a book, some papers, some secret archives he's been getting offers on and refused to sell, like this Blake?”

Not an instant's hesitation. “Not that I know of.”

“Is there anything someone might want badly enough to kill your father?”

She shook her head. “I'm telling you, the antiquities world has its fair share of cutthroats, but none that would be capable of killing my father. He was a great man, and had the respect of a lot of people.”

That wasn't the point. Money was always a great motivator for
murder, but it wasn't right. Mike said, “Think of the man who sent him the specs on a classified satellite system. Who was he?”

They watched a tear streak down her face. She made no sound, simply wiped it away with her fingers. “I told you before, I don't know what you're talking about. My dad was into books, that's it. That satellite specs on his computer? Perhaps someone who admired my father thought he'd enjoy seeing it.”

Nicholas showed her a photograph of Mr. Olympic that he had saved on his mobile. “Have you ever met this man before?”

She looked at it closely. It was obvious the man was dead. His eyes were slitted open, his face a dusky blue. “He's dead, isn't he?”

“Yes,” Drummond said. “Do you know him?”

She slowly shook her head, swallowed bile. “No. I've never seen him before.” She watched him change the photo and quickly stepped back, her hands up. “Please don't tell me you have a photo of my father on your phone. I don't want to see it. I don't want to see him like that.” Her voice ended in a yell, and Nicholas put a hand on her arm to steady her.

She gathered herself, took a deep breath. “That dead man, he killed my father?”

“Yes.”

“And now he's dead, too. Good. Thank you.”

Mike lightly touched Sophie's arm, her voice low and calm. “Sophie, let me ask you again. Can you tell us why your father, as he was dying, said to his murderer, ‘The key is the lock'? What does it mean, Sophie?”

She was back in control. She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

Mike said, “Sophie, don't you think it's time for you to level with
us? You know your father's murder wasn't a random mugging. You need to tell us everything you know.”

“I have told you all I know. I don't feel well. Can we continue this conversation later? I want to go home.”

There was a bump above, and they all froze.