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

was talking about. And he didn’t react to Jake Gardener’s name at all.”

“But we know for a fact that Lisa and Kline were buying from him, and that she was afraid of him,” Laurie says.

I shake my head. “I wish that was true, but I don’t believe it. You saw his operation; this is not a guy who was buying high-priced hit men. And Kline and Lisa were pretty well-off financially, especially Kline. He’d have a classier dealer; he wouldn’t be going to that parking lot in Passaic with an envelope full of cash.”

“There’s always a chance we had the wrong Rico,” Andy says. “Maybe among drug dealers Rico is like Smith, or Jones.”

“Or maybe Rico is just the name the dealer used in dealing with Kline and Lisa,” Laurie says. “Maybe his real name is Jeeves, or Shirley.”

Andy is nodding. “Don’t forget, Kline did a lot of traveling to do his seminars. He could have met Rico in any one of those places. But to cross-check all of those locations against places with drug dealers named Rico is not going to happen.”

“Has anyone noticed that we seem to run into a lot of dead ends?” I ask. “We’re chasing our tails here; no offense, Simon.”

Andy nods. “But we still have the knowledge, and Lisa’s email to back it up, that she and Kline were involved with drugs. That remains tremendously significant legally.”

Sam calls to say that he has gone through Lisa Yates’s phone records, but does not see any calls to Doris Landry or either of the two other people whose obituaries Lisa had. “I did find one other thing that might be of interest. Can I come over and show you?”

I ask that he come over this afternoon because I want to hear it and I have an appointment first. I’m going to see Richard Mahler, the guy who replaced Don Crystal as head of the IT department at Ardmore Medical Systems. Crystal said his name was “Miller, or Marler, or Marley, or some asshole,” so even though he got the name wrong, he was damn close.

Mahler was reluctant to talk to me when I called him, so I used the Andy Carpenter technique of threatening him with a deposition. Threatening depositions tends to convince people to do things they would not ordinarily do.

Mahler, like his boss, Jason Musgrove, has an impressive office with the all-glass view of Route 17. I have to admit that it’s hard to picture Mahler’s predecessor, Don Crystal, in this office. I can’t see him sitting behind this desk in his pajamas with feet, offering Tang to his corporate colleagues.

“Let’s get this over with” is Mahler’s congenial opening comment once I’ve sat down across from him.

“Works for me. You were Lisa Yates’s boss?”

“For only a few months before she was tragically killed. I have only been with Ardmore for eleven months.”

“Did you get to know her?”

“She did not report to me. I was only involved with her when there were computer-related issues, so I can’t say I got to know her. The times we interacted she seemed pleasant and competent.”

“Why did they hire you? What I mean is, why was there an opening?”

“If you met my predecessor, you wouldn’t ask that question.”

“Don Crystal? Wasn’t he competent enough?”

“He was very competent, a terrific talent. His sanity, on the other hand, was open to debate.”

“I’ve met him.”

Mahler nods. “Then you know.”

Point taken. Time to move on. “Was Lisa Yates involved in anything controversial? Anything that could have posed a danger to someone?”

“Not in her work life here at Ardmore. She had no discretion in what she did; data came in, she recorded it and put it into the system.”

“Medical information?”

“Yes.”

“Could she have added or deleted information that could have hurt someone?”

He shakes his head. “No. I assume you are looking for a motive for murder, but you won’t find it here. If someone felt that Lisa was doing something like that, they could simply have filed a complaint, and an investigation would have restored the accuracy of the data. There would be no reason for physical violence. You need to understand, Lisa and others in her role are messengers, or really conduits, of information.”

“Would you have seen what she was doing, on a day-to-day basis?”

“Only if I specifically looked at her work, but I would only have had reason to do so if there was a problem brought to my attention. I don’t recall any issues coming up, so the answer to your question is no.”

“Do you know why she quit?”

“Actually, I didn’t realize she had quit until two weeks after the fact. I don’t recall being surprised, but I didn’t really expect it either. These things happen, especially recently. People with any level of computer skill are much in demand, so they move on to where they can make more money.”

“Did you know Gerald Kline?”

“I knew of him, but we never met. When he recommended people, he went through HR, or Jason Musgrove.”

“Were you aware of any involvement that either of them might have had with drugs?”

Mahler reacts with surprise. “No. Absolutely not. Where did that come from?”

I decline to tell him where that came from. I thank Mahler for his time and assure him that a deposition would have been more painful. I learned nothing, which seems par for the course.

“LIKE I said, Lisa Yates’s phone records do not show calls to the people in the obits,” Sam says. “Of course, they could have called her, and it wouldn’t be in what I’m looking at. I basically have her phone bill information, which only shows outgoing calls. For the most part there is nothing unusual here, but one thing stood out. It could be nothing, but I thought you should see it.”

“Good. Let’s see it,” Andy says.

“There’s a woman named Jana Mitchell; she lives in Cincinnati. Lisa called her six times in the month before her death; I could check Mitchell’s phone records, but I would guess she probably called Lisa as