Total Control (45 page)

"What she have to say?" Sawyer asked.

"A lot. Like her father was nervous the last couple weeks. Didn't want them to visit him. He had started to regularly carry a gun.

Hadn't done that in years. In fact he had taken a gun with him to New Orleans, Lee. It was found in a bag next to his body. Poor bastard never had a chance to use it."

"Why the move from New York down here, especially if his family stayed up there?"

Jackson nodded his head. "That's interesting. The wife wouldn't say one way or another. Just said the marriage was kaput and that was it. Page's daughter was of a different mind, though."

"She give you a reason?"

"Ed Page's younger brother also lived in New York. He committed suicide about five years ago. He was a diabetic. Gave himself a serious insulin overdose after a drinking hinge. Page was close to his kid brother. His daughter said her dad was never the same after that."

"So he just wanted to get away from the area?"

Jackson shook his head. "I gather from talking to his daughter that Ed Page was convinced his brother's death wasn't a suicide or an accident," said Jackson.

"He thought he was murdered?"

Jackson nodded.

"Why?"

"I've requested a copy of the file from NYPD. There might be some answers in there, although I spoke briefly with the detective who worked the case and he says all the evidence points to either suicide or an accident. The guy was drunk."

"If he did kill himself, anybody know why?"

Jackson sat back. "Steven Page was a diabetic, like I said, so his health wasn't the greatest in the world. According to Page's daughter, her uncle could never get his insulin regulated. Although he was only twenty-eight when he died, his internal organs were probably much older." Jackson stopped talking and looked down at his notes for a moment. "On top of that, Steven Page had very recently tested positive for HIV."

"Shit. That explains the drinking hinge," said Sawyer.

"Probably."

"And maybe the suicide."

"That's what NYPD thinks."

"How'd he contract it?"

Jackson shook his head. "No one knows. Officially, at least. I mean, the coroner's report wouldn't have been able to determine the origin. I asked the ex-wife. She wasn't any help. The daughter, however, tells me her uncle was gay. Not openly, but she was pretty sure about it and she thinks this is how he contracted HIV."

Sawyer rubbed his head and blew out a mouthful of air. "Is there some connection between the possible murder of a gay man in New York five years ago, Jason Archer ripping off his employer and a plane going down in Virginia?"

Jackson pulled at his lip. "Maybe, for some reason we don't know, Page knew that Archer didn't get on that plane."

Sawyer felt guilt for a moment. From his conversation with Sid-they--a conversation he hadn't shared with his partner--Sawyer knew that Page had been aware that Jason hadn't been on the plane.

"So Jason Archer disappears," he said, "and Page looks to pick up the trail through the wife."

"Makes sense as far as it goes. Hey, maybe it was Triton who hired Page to check on leaks, and he sniffed out Archer."

Sawyer shook his head. "Between their in-house staff and Frank Hardy's company, they have more than enough bodies to do the job."

A woman entered the room carrying a file. "Ray, this just came in over the fax from NYPD."

Jackson accepted the file. "Thanks, Jennie." After she had gone, Jackson scrutinized the file while Sawyer made a couple of calls.

"Steven Page?" Sawyer finally asked, pointing at the file.

"Yep. Real interesting stuff."

Sawyer poured a cup of coffee and sat down next to his partner.

"Steven Page was employed by Fidelity Mutual in Manhattan," said Jackson. "It's one of the biggest investment houses in the country.

He lived in a nice apartment building; place was filled with antiques, original oil paintings, closet full of Brooks Brothers; Jag in the garage down the street. He also had an extensive investment portfolio: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, money markets. Well over a million dollars' worth."

"Pretty good for a twenty-eight-year-old. But I guess those investment bankers make killings. You hear all the time about these punks making truckloads of money for doing who the hell knows what. Probably screwing the likes of you and me."

"Yeah, but Steven Page wasn't an investment banker. He was a financial analyst, a market watcher. Strictly salaried position; not big bucks either, according to this report."

Sawyer's brow furrowed. "So where did the investment portfolio come from? Embezzlement from Fidelity?"

Jackson shook his head. "NYPD checked that angle. There were no funds missing from Fidelity."

"So what did NYPD conclude?"

"I don't think NYPD ever concluded anything. Page was found alone in his apartment, door and windows locked from the inside.

And once the medical examiner's report came back as a probable suicide via insulin overdose, they pretty much lost interest. In case you didn't know, they've got a bit of a backlog on homicides in the Big Apple, Lee."

"Thanks for enlightening me, Ray, on New York City's corpse problem. So who inherited?"

Jackson sifted through the report. "Steven Page didn't leave a will. His parents were dead. He had no kids. His brother, Edward Page, as his only sibling, got everything."

Sawyer took a swallow of coffee. "That's interesting."

"But I don't think Ed Page popped his younger brother to fund his kids' college education. From what I could find out, he was as surprised as anyone else that his brother was a millionaire."

"Anything in the autopsy report catch your eye?"

Jackson picked out two pages from the file and handed them across to Sawyer. "As I said, a massive insulin overdose killed Steven Page. He injected himself in the thigh. It's a typical area of administration for diabetics. Other hypodermic entry sites around the thigh region showed it was his normal area of injection as well. Toxicology report showed a point-one-eight blood alcohol level. That didn't help his cause any when he took the overdose. Rigormortis indicated he had been dead about twelve hours when he was found; body temp was about eighty degrees. He was also in full rigor; that corroborates the time of death indicated by the body temperature and puts his check-out time at between three and four in the morning.

Postmortem lividity was fixed. Guy died right where they found him."

"Who did find him?"

"Landlady," said Jackson. "Probably wasn't a real pretty sight."

"Death rarely is. Any note left behind?"

Jackson shook his head.

"Page make any calls before he kicked the bucket?"

"The last phone call Steven Page made from his apartment was at seven-thirty that evening."

"Who'd he call?"

"His brother."

"Did the police talk to Ed Page?"

"You bet they did. Especially after they found out about the bucks Steven Page had."

"Ed Page have an alibi?"

"A pretty damn good one. As you know, he was a police officer back then. He was working a drug bust with a squad of officers on the Lower East Side when his little brother was dying."

"The police ask Ed Page about the earlier phone conversation?"

"He said his brother was distraught. Steven told him about having HIV. Ed Page said his brother sounded like he had already been drinking."

"He didn't try to go see him?"

"He said he wanted to, but his brother wanted no part of that. Finally hung up on him. Ed Page tried calling back, but there was no answer. He had to go on duty at nine. He said he'd thought he'd let his brother alone for the night and then try to talk to him the next day. He didn't get off duty until ten A.M. He grabbed a few hours' sleep and then went to his brother's office downtown around three.

When he found out Steven had never come to work, he went directly over to his brother's apartment. He got there about the time the police did."

"Jesus. I bet he was feeling some heavy-duty guilt."

"If that had been my little brother..." Jackson said. "Damn.

Anyway, they ruled it a suicide. All the facts sure point that way."

Sawyer rose and started pacing. "And yet with all that, Ed Page didn't think it was suicide. I wonder why."

Jackson shrugged. "Wishful thinking. Maybe he was really feeling guilty and made himself think that so he'd feel better. Who knows? NYPD didn't find any evidence of foul play, and looking at this report, neither do I."

Sawyer didn't answer. He was in deep thought.

Jackson took the report on Steven Page and put it back in the file.

He looked over at Sawyer. "Find anything at Page's office?"

Sawyer focused absently on his partner. "No. But I did find something interesting at his house." He put a hand inside his suit pocket and extracted the photograph labeled "Stevie." He handed the photograph to Jackson. "Interesting, because it was kind of hidden behind some other photo. I'm pretty sure it's a picture of Steven Page."

As soon as Jackson's eyes came to rest on the photo, his mouth dropped open. "Oh, my God!" He rose from his chair. "Oh, my God!" he said again, his voice rising, his hands violently shaking as they clasped the photo. "This can't be--it's not possible."

Sawyer grabbed his shoulder. "Ray, Ray? What the hell is it?"

Jackson ran to another table in the room. He frantically grabbed files, scanned them before tossing them down and snatching up others, his movements becoming more and more frenetic. Finally he stopped, a file open in his hand, his eyes glued to something in the mass of papers within.

Sawyer was beside him in an instant. "Dammit, Ray, what is it?"

he said fiercely.

In response, Jackson handed over to his partner an object from the file. Sawyer stared down at the photo in disbelief. In a different pose, the too-handsome face of Steven Page looked back at him.

Sawyer grabbed the photo he had taken from Ed Page's apartment off the table where Jackson had dropped it and looked at the picture again. His eyes swung back to the file photo. There was no doubt, it was the same man in both photos.

A wide-eyed Sawyer looked at Jackson. "Where did you get this photo, Ray?" he asked very slowly, his voice hardly above a whisper.

Jackson licked his lips nervously; his head swayed from side to side. "I can't believe this."

"Where, Ray, where?"

"Arthur Lieberman's apartment."

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Subj: Fwd: Not me.

Date: 95-11-26 08:41:52 EST

From: ArchieJW2 To: ArchieJW2 Dear Other Archie: Watch your typing. By the way do you often send mail to yourself? Message a little melodramatic but a nice password nonetheless. Maybe we can talk encryption techniques. Heard one of the best around is the Secret Service's racal-milgo. See you in Cyberspace. Ciao.

Forwarded Message:

Subj: Not me Date: 95-11-19 10:30:06 PST

From: ArchieJW2 To: ArchieKW2 sid all wrong all backwards/disk in mai1099121.19822.

29629.295111.39614 seattlewarehouse-get help hurry! Sidney stared at the computer screen; her mind alternated between racing out of control and threatening to shut down. She had been right, though. Jason had mistyped, had hit the k instead of the j.

Thank you, ArchieKW2, whoever you are. Fisher had also been right about the password--almost thirty characters long. She assumed that's what the numbers represented: the password.

Her heart sank as she looked at the date of the original message.

Her husband had implored her to hurry. There was nothing she could have done about it, and yet she had an overwhelming sense of having let him down. She printed out the single page and put it in her pocket. At least she would finally be able to read what was on the disk. Her adrenaline soared with the thought.

It abruptly went even higher as the sound of someone entering the library reached her ears. She carefully exited the program and turned off the computer. Her hands were shaking as she put the disk back in her purse. She waited for additional sounds, her breath coming in shallow bursts, one hand on the butt of her pistol.

When a sound came from her right, she slipped out of the chair, bent low and proceeded to move quietly to her left. She rounded a corner and stopped. Staring her in the face was a bookshelf of volumes she had spent much of law school and her first years in practice poring over. She looked through a gap in their ranks at the man in the shadows. She could not make out his face. She didn't dare move farther for fear of making any noise. Then the man started to come directly toward her. Her grip tightened on the Smith & Wesson; her index finger clicked off the safety. She pulled it from the holster as she backed away. Crouching low, she made her way behind a partition, her ears straining for any sound as she desperately tried to think of a way out. The problem was there was only one doorway leading into the library. Her only chance was to circle around, trying to keep a little ahead of whoever was out there until she reached the doorway and could run like hell. A bank of elevators was right down the hallway. If she could make it.

She proceeded to move a few feet and wait, then repeated the process. She had to assume she was making enough noise for the man to hear her but not in a manner, she felt, for him to gauge her strategy. The footsteps from behind matched her maneuvers almost perfectly. That should have been enough to set off alarm bells in her head. She was almost at the doorway and could actually see the frosted glass in the dim light. She gathered her strength and nerve to take a few more steps, and then she would make her run. Five more feet. Now she was almost at the exit. Flattened against the wall, she slowly began to count to three.

She never made it past one.

The bright lights blinded her. By the time she refocused, the man was right next to her. Pupils dilating, she instinctively swung the pistol in his direction.

"My God, have you lost your mind?" Philip Goldman blinked rapidly to adjust to the new level of brightness.