Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum #25)(64)

“Did the police take anything out of the office?” I asked Miriam.

“No,” she said. “Not to my knowledge.”

“I’ve reviewed the security tape again,” Ranger said. “Skoogie entered the building with a messenger bag hung from his shoulder. I don’t see a messenger bag here. I also don’t see a computer on Skoogie’s desk.”

“He worked on a laptop,” Miriam said. “A MacBook Air. He carried it in his messenger bag. It was so he could work from home or on the road.”

“Did you back it up for him?” Ranger asked. “I didn’t see an external backup drive.”

“He was very private about those things,” Miriam said. “He might have used the cloud.”

“Was he on the road a lot?” I asked.

“When I first started working for him he would occasionally travel with a band. For the past year he’s been going to L.A., trying to sell a television show.”

“Do you know anything about the show?”

“Not really. I’ve never been involved in the creative side of the business. My title is ‘assistant to Mr. Skoogie,’ but I’m mostly just a receptionist, and I do a little bookkeeping. I know Victor was involved. And a Canadian company was interested in producing. I believe Mr. Skoogie was trying to find a second production company with deeper pockets. And on this last trip he scheduled a meeting with a woman from HBO. Mr. Skoogie was very excited about that. I don’t know how it turned out.”

“What about Ernie Sitz?” I asked. “Was he involved?”

“He was very involved in the beginning,” Miriam said, “but he developed some legal problems, and he disappeared. I heard a rumor that he was in South America.”

We left Miriam and returned to Ranger’s Porsche.

“Now what?” I said.

“Now we visit Skoogie’s condo.”

“Are we still looking for the missing files?”

“Missing files, missing computer, missing phone.”

“Maybe they’re all in the missing messenger bag,” I said.

“And that probably was taken by whoever came up the back stairs and visited Skoogie before Waggle found him.”

Leonard Skoogie lived in a budget-friendly five-story condo building north of the government complex. We took the elevator to the fourth floor, and as we walked down the hall, I wondered if any of his neighbors even knew of his passing. The building felt impersonal.

Ranger knocked twice and announced himself. No answer. He picked the lock and opened the door.

I looked around and thought this is the way a marginally successful man lives after paying off three ex-wives. Small dated kitchen, combined living and dining room, one bedroom and one bathroom. The furniture was inexpensive and utilitarian. The exception to this was a large, elaborately carved mahogany desk that occupied the area designed for a dining table. I suspected this was the one piece of furniture he’d kept from the divorce settlements.

We searched the condo, and came to the desk last. The top was a mess of loose papers, sticky pad notes, takeout menus, and candy bar wrappers. There was a charger and cleared space for a computer. The loose papers and notes weren’t helpful. A reminder of a haircut. A band contract. A party invitation. Drawers contained the usual assortment of paper clips, pens, antacids, rubber bands. The file drawer was devoted to pornography. I suppose the pornography was less expensive than acquiring a fourth wife.

“I don’t see an external backup, but he has six flash drives,” Ranger said, pocketing the drives. “Let’s hope we get lucky.”

We left the condo and drove back to Rangeman. Ranger plugged the drives into his computer, and the third one contained several short videos. There was an interior of the diner with Raymond, Stretch, and Dalia at work. The camera panned to a third man. I knew from photos that this was the first kidnapped manager. The video that followed was of the manager taking the garbage out. This was one of the YouTube videos. The next video is dark with a spotlight on the manager’s face. He has a number tattooed on his forehead. He’s unresponsive. The next video is Waggle with a meat cleaver in his hand. He’s making chopping motions, and he looks completely insane. The last video is back at the diner and Dalia is serving a customer. The camera pans in, and we see what appears to be a penis in a hotdog bun.

Ranger pulled the flash drive out of the computer. “This answers some of our questions,” Ranger said.

It took several beats for me to find my voice. “Do you think it’s real?” I whispered.

“Probably not.” Ranger grinned. “The size is optimistic.”

“The size is frightening,” I said. “The whole series of videos is frightening.”

Ranger ran through the remaining flash drives. Two were empty and one contained two short videos of Waggle taking the money and the passport out of the safe.

When I first saw the videos of the five men being kidnapped I thought they were the product of a freak who wanted to brag about his crime. Now I was thinking the snippets I saw today might be made by a freak who wanted to show he was a videographer.

People working in a diner. People mysteriously disappearing from the diner. Crazy meat cleaver guy chopping. People’s parts returning to the diner. The crazy meat cleaver guy withdrawing his money and passport and presumably getting out of town.