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anything to do with Alicia."
"But, based on what I was able to overhear of your conversation with him, the
acting CEO of Mechanix is the actual killer. Once Sheldon talks and links her
to the killing, everything is likely to come out."
"Shel is a very evasive lad. It'll take a couple days at least for the cops to
persuade him to tell them much of anything at all."
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Natalie was thoughtful for a moment. "Okay, I guess apprehending a murder
suspect is a big enough story to impress my tyrannical bosses,"
she decided. "Then, when I spring the Alicia Bower angle on them, it'll knock
them on their collective fannies."
"Without a doubt," he agreed.
"If only," she said, glancing at him once again, "I could get over the idea
that you're still conning me."
IT WAS NUARL midnight and there was relatively little traffic to be seen
outside the windows of Walt Bascom's tower office at the Cosmos building,
mostly cruising bright lit sky cabs The agency chief was sitting on the edge
of the desk, one leg slowly swinging, idly fingering the keys of his saxophone
and watching Jimalla.
She sat, very straight, hands folded in her narrow lap, in a red plastiglass
chair a few feet from him. "I'm still," she was telling
Him, "sort of afraid."
"We can put you up someplace safe for awhile," Bascom assured her.
"We'll let your parents know that we'll--"
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"I don't have much in the way of parents," she said, glancing toward
Dr. Moreno, who was gazing out a window across the office. "Just my dad and he
doesn't much give a darn where I am."
"We'll notify him anyway. But he won't know exactly where you are.
Okay?"
"Yeah, that'd be fine, sure."
"Soon as she told us what she knew, I figured you ought to know," said
Dan. "Well, no, actually, I thought I should tell my dad, but I don't know how
to contact him, so I settled for you,
Mr. Bascom. He's okay, isn't he?"
"At last report."
"But he hasn't found Alicia Bower yet?"
"No, not so far as we know."
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Molly leaned over in her chair to tap Jimalla on the arm. "You can tell him
what you told us."
"Guess I might as well." She lifted her hands off her lap,
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rubbed at her knees, refolded her hands. "I got to know most of the people in
our therapy group. Not exactly as friends, but I know them."
Dr. Moreno turned his back to the window and gave the girl an encouraging nod.
Jimalla continued, "I never much liked Guy Woodruff, but--" "Guy
Woodruff, huh?" Bascom tapped the side of his saxophone with his forefinger.
"We know him by another name, but go ahead."
"Well, I used to run into him around Venice pretty often. This one night I was
at Kaminsky's Kafe--you know the place,
Harry."
"A dump," supplied Moreno.
"Yeah, it is, sort of. I was in a booth with a friend and I heard somebody
talking in the next booth to ours. Couldn't see them, but I
recognized Guy's voice. He was talking with an old man, somebody sixty or so.
Except this man kept calling him Sheldon and not Guy--well, that fits in with
what you just said, doesn't it? Anyway, this old man was saying that somebody
named Myra wasn't pleased with Sheldon's reports. Did he think they were
paying him for a lot of drivel and no
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facts? He said that Sheldon had to put down every damn word that
Alicia said in the sessions. "You put it down word for word, Sheldon, and let
us do the editing." Something like that, is what the old man told him."
Jimalla unfolded her hands, flexed her thin fingers and rubbed at her knees
again. "I got, you know, curious. So I took a careful walk to the bathroom.
They didn't get a look at me, but I saw them both. It was Guy for certain,
sitting there with a thin, welldressed man who didn't look too healthy."
"You didn't hear the other man's name?" asked Bascom.
She gave a negative shake of her head. "And I just forgot all about it for
awhile. But then Alicia disappeared and I got to wondering,"
she told him. "When Guy, or whoever he is, went missing, too, I knew something
was going on wrong. Then I .. well, I guess this was stupid, considering. I
told a few people what I knew, even though I'm not exactly sure what it is I
really do know. Next day, when I was about to go into the place I was staying,
a couple of guys tried to grab me and drag me into their land car I kneed one
and got away from them both, but I was really scared. I told my friend, Norm
Porter, about all of it." She glanced at Molly. "Molly told me that some guys
worked Norm over to get him to tell them where they could find me.
That's even scarier."
Dan said, "I figured you could use the ID Simulator, Mr. Bascom.
Then you could use Jimalla's description of that older man to maybe get
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an identification of him."
"Yep, we ought to be able to do that." The agency head moved closer to her and
held out his hand. "Come on over to the gadget, child, and we'll give it a
try."
Tm MENTOR PSYCH Centre loomed up across the Staff Landing Area, a
multistoried, blank faced building standing grey in the grey morning.
"His electro pass got us onto the lot," observed Georgia as her sky car set
down on the grey surface of the lot. "So the other stuff Dr.
Winter lent you ought to work, too."
Unbuckling, Jake said, "Getting inside is not going to be our major problem."
"No guards outside the Staff Entrance, just like Winter said." She left the
car.
"But considerable awaiting inside."
They walked confidently across the early morning ground level landing area. At
the opaque plastiglass door to the Staff Wing
Jake inserted the electro key that the psychiatrist had given him.
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Fifteen seconds passed.
Then, with a faint hissing sound, the door slid aside.
The initial length of grey corridor was blank, without a single door or
window. Just before they reached its end, they halted.
Jake picked up Georgia and carried her in his arms. After one small laugh, she
shut her eyes and feigned unconsciousness.
Around the bend in the corridor was a wide door labeled
COm'ROL/MONn'OreG - 1. Stationed directly in front of it, arms folded across
his massive chest, stood a large grey guardbot.
He turned his head toward the pair, asking, "What are you doing in this area,
please?"
"Look--where's Dr. Cohen's office?" asked Jake in a very agitated voice.
"This section of the Centre is restricted to staff only, sir."
"I know, but Cohen's on staff, isn't he?" Jake moved up closer to the robot.
"If you wish to see Dr. Cohen--which Dr. Cohen is that, by the way?
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We have two on staff and--"
"Stanley," said Jake. "Listen, the medication he gave my wife--some kind of
new stuff and if you ask me he shouldn't be handing out anything that
dangerous to people--Well, I found her on the bathroom floor this morning.
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It's Dr. Cohen's--that's Dr. Stanley
Cohen's--fault and we--"
"Sir, you should have called MedAlert and not--awk." Georgia had swung up her
left hand and slapped a tiny parasite control-disc to the preoccupied
guardbot's Side. "Okay, you can put me on my feet now, Jake."
He did that, telling the controlled robot, "You'll let us into the
Control Room. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Far as you're concerned, everything is just fine. Nothing out of the ordinary [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]