Color of Blood(18)

How a person stacked pencils or organized folders, or even maintained a supply of staples, told Dennis a lot about their personality. Of course these days it was more complicated because of the computer.

The IG’s office maintained a stable of forensic computer engineers that could retrieve old data off hard drives and deleted emails and texts from servers. That’s what he’d been told, though he was typically suspicious of all things digital.

Still, he discovered to his amazement that accomplished thieves and liars write the most incriminating emails and texts.

Dennis had already seen a list of Garder’s emails. They had been retrieved and reviewed by the two analysts from Operations. The emails turned out to be innocuous and ran the gamut from gossipy workplace items to laborious interchanges with a local rental car agency. Garder was also a member of something called a Fantasy Baseball League, and there were many emails in which he traded for real-life baseball players.

Dennis also had seen a list of websites Garder had visited, and they consisted of long URL strings. Some of the sites were obvious, like the link to the Western Australian University English Department or an eBay link to a specific watch, but many of the links were unintelligible and useless unless he sat down and entered every single link, looking for a lead.

Typically Dennis might have requested a low-level Langley analyst pore over the URLs and prepare a report, but Marty would never authorize that kind of investment in such a small case. Dennis had been told that most of the geeks in the IG’s office had been repurposed to Operations teams tracking down Al Qaida cells.

Garder’s room appeared orderly and well kept. The small metal desk had a flat-screen computer monitor, a keyboard and mouse, an oversize official US Consulate coffee mug doubling as a pencil holder, a metal ruler, a black standard telephone, a small metal table lamp, and one of those give-away stress balls. Dennis picked up the soft stress ball and read the label: Compliments of the WA Agricultural Agency. He squeezed it softly in his right hand as he continued looking around the room.

A gray metal, horizontal file cabinet stood behind the chair, and he swiveled to open it. Three stacked drawers of vertical file folders held absolutely nothing. The sound of the vacant drawers echoed like an empty airplane hangar.

Turning back to the desk, he checked the drawers; one of the three small drawers to his left held blank sheets of computer paper, a small tray of push pins, and notepads; another held a dog-eared internal phone directory as well as a telephone directory for Perth. The other drawer held hanging file folders that were empty.

Dennis looked in the small trash bin under the desk. It was empty. The walls were nearly bare except for a hanging calendar on the back of the door and a large wall map of Australia. Standing up and positioning his face inches away from the portion of the map portraying Western Australia, Dennis strained to see if any area had been marked, circled, or stabbed with a pushpin.

It was hard to tell in the low light of the room, so he grabbed the table lamp off the desk and held it at an angle several inches away from the map. There were tiny holes here and there on the map that he took for pushpin holes. But these could have been from a predecessor who used the room. Putting the lamp down, he walked over and removed the calendar off the door.

It appeared to be brand new, and there was not a mark on it for any previous month, though it was open to the current month.

He sighed and finally put down the stress ball, tempted briefly to keep it, since he felt an odd satisfaction in squeezing it. Maybe if he squeezed it hard enough, his problems with St. Regis would simply go away.

Before he left the room, he employed on old investigator’s trick to look for fallen or misplaced items. He pulled open the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and reached behind the hanging files, searching for items that had fallen to the bottom. He found three paper clips and an empty hanging folder.

Standing up, he grabbed the entire file cabinet and hinged it forward at the top a few inches from the wall. Peering behind it he noticed a piece of paper had fallen and was wedged at the bottom. He managed to tease it out from the side, letting the empty cabinet boom as it went back into place.

He opened the folded piece of lined notepaper. In longhand were four lines written in pencil:



Not Kimberly

Nor the way of the lake

But a Savory treat!

For all Europium



This idiot was really into poetry, Dennis thought. Strange guy.

He pocketed the verse, turned off the light, and pulled the door tight behind him.

Casolano appeared to have been waiting outside.

“Um, the CG would like to see you,” he said.

“Again?” Dennis groaned.

“Yes.”

“Before we see the CG, can you show me your mail room?”

“Can I ask what you’re looking for?” Casolano asked.

“Garder’s mailbox,” Dennis said. “You folks must have a mailbox for messages and mail, stuff like that.”

“Oh, I see,” Casolano said. “Sure, follow me. But we have to hurry. The CG asked me to tell you it was urgent he see you.”

On the second floor, near a bank of copy machines, Dennis was shown an old-fashioned, wall-mounted maze of boxes with names above each opening. Dennis found Garder’s name and was surprised that there was a single pink message slip.

Dennis snatched it. The message in longhand stated: Mr. Pearson returned your call. 899-1900, ext. 45.