Animal Instinct by Rosenfelt, David (novels for students TXT) 📕

“Can you quantify that?”

He smiles. “Man, I can quantify everything; I’m a living, breathing quantifier. I was there for four and a half years.”

“Why did you leave?”

“They padlocked my office and had security lead me out. It made me feel unwanted.”

“Mind if I ask why they fired you?”

“Let’s just say I was not management friendly. I would call them assholes when they were making stupid decisions, and they made a lot of those. So who killed Lisa?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. Can you think of anyone at Ardmore that would have had a reason to hurt her?”

“Nah, she was a nice lady. Smiled at me every morning; I can’t say that for everybody there.”

“Was she good at her job?”

“Hey, it wasn’t brain surgery, you know? Brain surgery isn’t even brain surgery, you know?”

I don’t know that, but I think it’s best to ignore the weird utterances coming from his mouth and try to get him to focus.

“She worked on a computer, inputting stuff, that kind of thing. Management thought the people who did that were all Steve Jobses. Hell, Steve Jobs wasn’t Steve Jobs, you know?”

“Your work was in computers?”

“Yeah, if you call setting up their whole damn system being in computers. And if you call handling all their IT stuff for four and a half years being in computers. Then, yeah, my work was in computers.”

“Who replaced you?”

“Nobody. At least nobody who knows anything. They brought in a guy named Miller, or Marler, or Marley, or some asshole.”

I’m floundering here, trying to get past his bitterness and into something meaningful to me.

“Did you know Gerald Kline?”

“Gerald Kline … Gerald Kline … oh, right … he’s the guy they used to pick some of the geniuses they hired. Never met him, never wanted to. What about him?”

“He was killed as well.”

“No shit? Who killed him? Same person that killed Lisa? Man, all the weird stuff started happening after I left.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Living off the money they paid me to leave. Where do you think I got the cash to buy the Tang?”

He starts laughing at his own joke, which I have to admit seems funny in the moment.

“If I ask you to think about Lisa Yates and Gerald Kline and call me if anything comes to mind, will you do that?”

“No chance.” He laughs again. “I’ll be too busy looking for work; my Tang money is starting to run out. Maybe one of your old friends in the police department wants to hire a computer guy? I interview really well; I’ll even buy new pajamas.”

“That should do the trick.”

WHAT is the world record for most consecutive unproductive indoor meetings?

Whatever it is, we must be approaching it. We keep getting together at Laurie and Andy’s house to discuss positive developments and strategy. What we come away with is that there are no positive developments, and we obviously need to come up with a new strategy.

Only Sam Willis seems to be getting anywhere, and he’s the one who called this meeting. Sam promises that this time he’s hit the mother lode, which is probably one of the better “lodes” to hit.

I just hope he’s right; my trial is bearing down on us.

“So, Corey, you made the suggestion that I should check Lisa’s emails. I did and found something very interesting. It’s an email from Lisa to Doris Landry … do you remember that name?”

“Of course. She’s the woman from Somers Point. Her obituary was one of the printed articles in Lisa’s suitcase.”

“Right. I think you’ll find the content very interesting, and I’ll show it to you in a second. But just as interesting is what is not there. It seems to be the last email in a fairly long chain.… There were eight previous emails. All are shown in this one email … one on top of the other … nothing unusual about that. But all the previous emails are gone; Lisa erased them and then emptied the trash. I can only assume she screwed up and forgot to erase this last one. Or maybe that’s just the way she kept her emails organized.”

He takes a small folder out of his briefcase and hands four pieces of paper to each of us. They have been collated and stapled; Sam is efficient.

We all start reading. It is, as Sam described it, an email chain between Lisa Yates and Doris Landry. They are clearly comfortable and familiar with each other; there are occasional references to family and things that each of them has been experiencing. Doris, for example, says that her son, Steven, is coming that day to take her out to dinner.

Then, on page three, comes the bombshell. Landry asks a question, phrased with deliberate vagueness, as if concerned someone else might wind up reading it: “I’m afraid to ask. But is there anything new with your situation?”

After Lisa says that she hadn’t wanted to bring it up for fear of “unloading” her problems on Landry, Lisa does just that: “It’s getting worse. Gerald doesn’t think that Rico will do anything. I think he’s crazy.… Rico doesn’t just dispense this stuff for nothing. He’s a dangerous guy; he’s connected to people. I’m afraid to leave my house.”

“Are you still going to quit your job?” Landry asks.

“I think so. I can’t live here anymore. If I go somewhere else and get clean, I can start all over. Without Gerald.”

Landry responded, “You can do it, Lisa. You have strength you don’t even realize.”

Lisa’s answer, and the last words on the chain, were “I’m going to need it.”

Andy is the first one to speak after we’ve all read it. “Well, this qualifies as a surprising development.” He is obviously and deliberately understating the case.

“Lisa and Kline were buying drugs,” Laurie says. “Do we know if the autopsy report said there were drugs in Lisa’s system? Or Kline’s?”

“We have Kline’s autopsy report in the discovery,” Andy says. “I don’t recall any mention of drugs, but I’ll look at it again. We don’t have Lisa’s report because Corey