Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
The idea was that there had to be someone in a position of authority at State of Mind Security who could answer Cloister’s questions.
Evidence was piling up against that, though.
Behind the desk, the receptionist left another message, hung up, and gave Cloister an ingratiatingly apologetic smile.
“Sorry,” she said. “There’s a security conference in Reno? A lot of senior engineers and our owners are there and…I guess they are in panels or on panels. Um…”
She trailed off and spread her hands in a “the ball’s in your court” gesture at Cloister. He was pretty sure she hoped he’d take the loss and leave. He would have to eventually, but he could stretch this out a bit longer.
“So, if I was a client, I’d just be locked out of my property until they came back?” he asked.
The receptionist looked over her shoulder to see if anyone else had turned up in the office to field his questions. They hadn’t. She swiveled back to Cloister.
“We have protocols in place,” she said, “for remotely accessing our systems.”
“Who has access to those protocols?”
She was used to that question. Cloister could see the way she relaxed as she parroted the party line.
“They are strictly regulated,” she said. “Only the senior engineers can get into those systems…”
“So I’d be locked out?”
“No,” she said quickly and then grimaced. “Come on, man. You know how often people forget their code, cut their thumbs, or don’t want to have to be on-site to let a tradesman in and out? The senior engineers got sick of being on-call 24-7, so…we came up with a workaround. It’s still secure.”
“What’s the workaround?” Cloister asked.
There was a pause, and then the receptionist reached under the desk and pulled out a yellow Post-it. There was a list of five codes on it, scrawled in a strong black Sharpie.
“Only the senior engineers' accounts can access the override,” she said. “We can just access the senior engineers' accounts. But I’m the only one with the codes, and I only give them out to our junior engineers if we get a call.”
“Was Brian Fowler one of those engineers?”
“I…maybe,” she said.
Cloister’s radio crackled. He tapped it off and gave the receptionist his best smile.
“I can’t hang around much longer,” he said. “Could I just see Brian’s desk before I go? Then I can come back at a more convenient time.”
Relief loosened the receptionist’s shoulders. She smiled back and pushed herself back from the desk.
“Sure,” she said. “It’s right this way.”
Cloister glanced down at Bon, sacked out at his feet, and nudged her shoulder with his boot. She gave an abortive yawn, flicking her tongue over her lips unhappily as the gesture stung it, and got to her feet. They fell into step behind the receptionist.
She led him through the open-plan office behind her into a larger, dimly lit storage space at the back of the building.
Racks of shelves, stacked with boxes, were pushed against the walls, and two vans were parked in the bays at the front.
Despite the failure of anyone to answer the receptionist's calls, there were a handful of staff milling around.
They looked vaguely alarmed at the intrusion and hunched down over their monitors.
Fowler’s desk was at the back, tucked away from the rest. He had “accommodations,” the receptionist explained vaguely. She hovered awkwardly next to him, not sure what to do with her hands, as he looked the desk over.
“Do you need anything else?” she asked.
“A coffee would be great,” Cloister said.
The receptionist gawped at him for a second as she tried to work out how to navigate that. Her eyebrows knotted together as she stalled her way through an “um” and an “oh” before customer service took over.
“I can do that,” she said and took a step back.
Her foot brushed against Bon’s tail, and she hopped to the side.
“Sorry,” she told Bon. Then, “Sorry,” to Cloister before she walked briskly away.
That gave Cloister the opportunity to stare blankly at the desk.
Now that he had access, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for.
His remit when it came to searches was usually drugs or dead bodies, but not clues.
He pulled a chair over to sit down and had a quick sift through the paperwork on Brian’s desk. Work orders and leave requests.
The drawers were empty, except for a stash of energy bars and protein drink sachets. They were all numbered with Sharpie.
Cloister had just closed the door and started to feel under the desk when a soft whine from Bon caught his attention. He brushed the detritus of some dried-up gum off his hands and looked in the same direction her ears were pointed.
Just as Reid Lassiter stood between the desks, a box pulled off the shelves held awkwardly on his hip as he talked to the receptionist. Whatever she said made him grimace and shake his head, resulting in her reaching out to squeeze his upper arm with the hand not holding coffee.
Cloister pushed the chair back, wheels catching on the rough carpeted tiles, and headed over in that direction.
As he reached them, Reid’s face flushed and then blanched. He took an awkward step back, arms tightening on the box.
“Deputy Witte,” he said stiffly. “I was just um…telling Jessie here that Miles is still missing.
Jessie looked from Reid to Witte. Then her eyes tracked over to Fowler’s desk.
“Is that why you’re here?” she asked Cloister. Despite her sympathy of a second ago, her voice had the distinct excitement of the gossip mill as she asked, “Did Fowler have something to do with this?”
Reid dropped the box in his arms.
“What?”
The coffee that the receptionist brought back turned out to be useful after all.
Reid sat in his car outside, cup cradled in both hands, and shook his head.
“I don’t…maybe?” he answered Cloister’s “did you know him” with a helpless shrug.
“I know Jessie, mostly I deal with her, and Dan, he’s the senior partner.
Sometimes they aren’t here, and one of the engineers steps in.
Sometimes it’s one I’ve seen before, but usually it’s not.
There’s high turnover. I don’t know if I’ve met him.
Why would he do this? Why haven’t I heard anything?
It should be on the news. I’ve seen those appeals before. ”
Cloister held his hand out in a calming way. “Mr. Lassiter, I assure you, everything we’re doing is to try and make sure Miles comes home to you.”
“Only if ‘we’ means you and that FBI agent,” Reid said. “I’ve not seen anyone else care about Miles. Why isn’t this front page news?”
“Missing people rarely are,” Cloister said. “Not my call.”
Reid let his breath out shakily and looked at the cup in his hands.
“I’ve got an appointment at the Humane Society this weekend,” he said.
“So he’ll come home, and I’ll have the cat.
Stupid. It’s just I never thought we’d get here.
I loved him from the start, but he always kept me at a distance.
He kept everyone at a distance, like he had a mail box so he didn’t have to give anyone his address.
Then a couple of years ago, it was like…
he just decided this was it. I didn’t ask why.
I didn’t care. I figured maybe he had an ex he was scared of or something, but I didn’t want to ask and spook him.
So he’s got to be OK, right? You can’t just have everything in your life fall into place like that, and then it just come apart again. Right?”
“Cats are good company,” Cloister said.
Reid snorted. He glanced down at Bon. “Maybe I should get a dog instead,” he said. “For protection.”
“Problem is, people get attached,” Cloister said. “They have a dog trained to protect them, but they’re more worried about the dog.”
Reid gave a wry nod. “That would be Miles,” he said. Then he tilted his head to look past Cloister. “What’s Jessie doing?”
Cloister turned and watched the receptionist dart down the little stretch of sidewalk toward them. She stopped in front of them, looked over her shoulder, and then pulled a file from under her hoodie to hand to Cloister.
“You didn’t get it from me,” she said and then gave Reid an apologetic look. “That’s everything we had on record for Brian. I hope it helps.”
Cloister flicked it open and looked it over. His eye caught on the address at the top.
“Cuyamaca Road,” he read out.
Reid looked up from his coffee. Confusion pinched his face.
“That’s just around the corner from our house,” he said. “I go past it on my way to get takeout. He’s my neighbor?”
The new developments built on the outskirts of Plenty came fully mapped out and resourced, the houses all Irish Twins with only a few years and minor aesthetic tweaks to distinguish them. Come further into the city and the gentrification had to work with what was already there.
The houses being flipped and foreclosed on now had been new builds a couple of decades ago. They’d been built on split plots and old pastures bought up by developers.
Not Cuyamaca Road. It had been here first.
The street was set back from the rest of the neighborhood. The houses were bigger, with oversized porches and deep, well-founded driveways. They were set on plots big enough that instead of a plastic DIY playset, they had apple trees old enough and sturdy enough to string a tire swing from.
Although, as Cloister parked between a dusty old wood-sided Volvo and an accessible minivan, the tires looked broken down from exposure, and the ropes were frayed.
These houses had been bought and built to be family homes.
Except it was hard for families from Plenty to buy in Plenty these days.
Kids grew up, and jobs on the farms were thin on the ground and didn’t pay enough to support a family anymore. Never mind a house.
There was a For Sale sign up on one house, newly tamped into the dirt and with the realtor’s face untouched by the weather. Further down, another house had a sign that already boasted SOLD and heavy metal shutters over the windows.