Remote Control Read online

  “But you, like, know her, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow.” She glanced down at the bills in her hand, suddenly realizing the bonus built into her tip, and said, “Cool. I can’t wait to tell my friends.”

  Alan closed the door and walked back toward the kitchen with the pizza thinking, right there, that’s exactly the problem that Emma’s facing. If the fact that you delivered pizza to her house is worth telling your friends, what is this damn disc of having sex with her worth?

  Kevin Quirk carried his food to the couch where he sat close enough to Emma that he would have been able to protect her even if the roof caved in unexpectedly.

  Kevin continued detailing the outcome of his conversation with Ethan earlier that day. “Your boyfriend has an elaborate alarm in his place, which he swears he always turns on at bedtime, except when he has houseguests, which is rarely. Disabling the various infrared sensors and leaving the perimeter armed has apparently caused him some technological vexation in the past—isn’t that ironic? Like an astronaut being afraid of heights is what I think—so when he has visitors, he says he just leaves the whole thing unarmed. Emma, did he say anything about arming or not arming the alarm last night?”

  She shook her head.

  “And you didn’t see him arm it?”

  She shook her head again.

  Kevin’s voice took on a stern shadow. “You never met with that bodyguard I sent, did you, Emma?”

  “The disc was already gone. It seemed pointless.”

  “I can get him back over here tonight.”

  She said, “No.”

  Kevin continued, his voice level again. “Ethan Han tells me that he’s guessing that entry came from the adjacent roof. Big old double-hungs provide great access. I went out there; one of the latches is scratched and bent. I dusted, collected some latents. I’ll try and get somebody I know to run them through AFIS for me. Also picked up prints from the cart that all the equipment is on. Long shots, I know—they’re probably his or yours, Emma, or one of his employees’. He says a half-dozen people are in and out of the lab every day.

  “By the way, here’s the list of the guests Han says were at that party the other night, the night of the incident in the parking garage. One of you want to take a look, check it for me?”

  With the hand that wasn’t around Emma’s shoulders, Quirk offered the list. Alan took the sheet and perused it. He then handed it to Lauren and said, “J.P.’s not on it.”

  Lauren looked over Alan’s shoulder. “That’s right, other than J.P., I think it covers everyone who was there.”

  “Who’s. J.P.?”

  “J. P. Morgan. Ethan’s business partner. What’s his real first name, Lauren? Thomas?”

  “I think so.”

  “He was at the party, too? A tall, skinny guy with a bad haircut? Looks like he’s wearing a coonskin cap without a tail?”

  “Yes, that’s J.P.”

  “He came by today while I was talking to Han. I was never formally introduced.”

  Emma spoke for the first time in quite a while. “J.P.’s a full partner in BiModal. He comes and goes as he pleases.”

  “What about this Raoul Estevez and his wife? Anybody know them?”

  Alan said, “Diane’s my partner and they’re both good friends of ours. Raoul just began working for BiModal. They’re beyond reproach.”

  “Nobody’s beyond reproach. Does he have access?”

  Emma said, “All the technical staff has access to the lab. Ethan’s apartment in back has a separate key.”

  “And you all agree that you met these other guests, the money people, for the first time at this dinner party?”

  They all said they had.

  “Let’s go back to the beginning. What good is the disc? What’s the motive in stealing it?”

  Lauren said, “Blackmail. Leverage. Money.”

  “Blackmail of whom? Emma or Ethan?” Alan asked.

  Kevin answered. “I’ve been assuming Emma. Is Ethan vulnerable? Anybody?”

  Alan said, “Maybe. BiModal is privately held. If Ethan tried to take the company public, data like this could be quite compromising to him.”

  “Are they contemplating an IPO?” The urgency of the question left Alan wondering if Kevin’s next call would be to his broker.

  “Apparently Ethan would like to. A huge capital infusion would take the pressure off R&D budgets, allow Ethan to develop his projects faster. J.P. has convinced him not to.”

  “Why?”

  “This is according to my friend Raoul. J.P. would prefer to postpone an IPO until after the company’s promise is clearer to potential stockholders. His argument is that if everyone is patient, when the IPO takes place the company will not only get the capital it needs, but that all the principals will become instant billionaires à la Bill Gates with Microsoft or Marc Andreesen with Netscape.”

  “Raoul said ‘billionaires’?” Lauren asked.

  Kevin nodded “It’s not out of the question. After Netscape’s initial public offering, its value jumped six hundred percent in four months. It’s really a question of what the high-tech community thinks of the company’s potential.”

  “Wow.”

  Kevin Quirk was still looking for suspects. “Who had the opportunity to steal the disc? Ethan says eight or nine people have keys to the laboratory area and know the alarm codes. Techs, partners, janitorial. Does anyone else have access? Emma?”

  She shrugged “A burglar?”

  “It’s a long shot. A burglar would have taken other things. Could someone have come in while you two were—”

  She stopped him. “The music was loud. It’s possible someone came in. Maybe someone watched us through the windows. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”

  Lauren asked Alan to help her clean up.

  Alone with her in the kitchen, Alan said, “It has to be an inside job, a computer person. Who else could make use of that data?”

  “What about Ethan? He could be pretending it’s stolen just so he doesn’t have to erase it.” Lauren lowered her voice. “How serious is Emma about this? Can you tell?”

  “What? About suicide?”

  “Yes.”

  “I need to talk with her some more. But given the right, or wrong, precipitants, I think the risk is quite high. Her level of intent certainly is, I need to know what her plans are. I’ll try to sit down with her before we leave tonight.”

  “What kind of plans are you talking about?”

  “‘Plan’ as in method—how she’s planning on killing herself. If I knew that, it would help me determine the potential lethality of an attempt. Even with lethal intent, someone will survive a suicide attempt if they believe that five Tylenol and a shot of tequila will kill them. Lethal intent, low-risk method.”

  Lauren slotted the dishes into the dishwasher rack and began to rinse the glassware.

  “But what’s your impression of her clinically? She looks terribly fragile to me. I’m scared for her.”

  Alan began to wipe the counter. “I agree. She’s barely treading water.”

  “Is she safe enough to be by herself?”

  “You mean does she need to be hospitalized? Maybe. But I can’t hold her on what I’ve seen. She’s saying she’ll kill herself ‘if’ something happens. That’s not imminent enough danger for the mental health laws. And she would never admit herself voluntarily, the notoriety and fallout of being hospitalized would be absolutely unacceptable to her. I’ll try and get her hooked up to see somebody on an outpatient basis first thing tomorrow. You’ll have to stay here or she’ll have to come to our house in the meantime.”

  “What about Diane? She’d be good with Emma.”

  “Too much of a conflict there, with Raoul working with Ethan. It will have to be someone else.”

  Lauren asked, “Can you believe this? This is…this is a nightmare. I mean, can you imagine what the release of this thing…this disc, would mean to her? What it would do to h
er?”

  “It’s like a digital version of rape,” Alan said.

  “No, it is rape, Alan. Multiplied by thousands or millions or whatever. It’s rape on demand.”

  Alan knew instinctively that his wife had covered some moral ground about the philosophy of rape that he still needed time to contemplate.

  “What’s your impression of Kevin Quirk?”

  He had hit a nerve. She slammed the dishwasher shut.

  “What do I think of Emma’s friend Kevin?” She twisted her head around to make sure Quirk wasn’t listening. “You know what? The truth is I don’t trust his motives. If this recording ever became available, my fear is that he’d be the first man on his block to get his Discover card out of his wallet. That’s what I think about Kevin Quirk. That is, if he didn’t follow Emma over there yesterday and steal the damn thing himself.”

  Before Kevin Quirk had a chance to make an alternative offer, Lauren announced that she was planning to spend the night with Emma.

  Alan thought Kevin looked ambushed. After mumbling something about needing to stay in Boulder another day, anyway, to follow up on what he’d already learned about the missing disc, Kevin said that maybe he would just sleep on Emma’s sofa.

  Seeing the look of distaste that idea precipitated on his wife’s face, Alan suggested that Quirk come home with him and sleep in the spare bedroom instead of camping out on an uncomfortable couch.

  But sleeping in a stranger’s guest room five miles from Emma apparently wasn’t what Kevin Quirk had in mind. “On second thought,” he said, “I think maybe I’ll just get a motel room.”

  Kevin asked for directions to the Holiday Inn. When he embraced Emma and left her house around eleven, he did so, Lauren thought, reluctantly. She tried to convince herself that Quirk’s reticence was engendered by sincere concern over Emma’s welfare, but she couldn’t quite manage to sway herself. She harbored a concern that Kevin’s motives were more personal than that. She tried to remember all the political celebrities who had ended up married to their bodyguards. Patty Hearst? One of Gerald Ford’s kids? One of Princess Grace’s kids? She couldn’t recall.

  Before Alan said good-bye he sat next to Emma and waited until she looked at him. He said, “I think you need to see someone, Emma, a therapist, right away. Tomorrow.”

  “I know. I’ve thought about it, too. You’re probably right. What about you? Can I see you?”

  “That would be great, but because we’re already friends, it’s not possible. But I know some people who are very good. Let me contact them for you, see if they have time to see you tomorrow.”

  “I’m pretty busy tomorrow. With school and everything.”

  “Emma. It’s important.”

  She looked at Lauren, who was nodding her encouragement.

  “Okay.”

  “I have your word?”

  “Yes.”

  Alan drove home feeling that the agreement was pure capitulation on Emma’s part. But he’d already made a judgment about her honor and felt confident that if she gave her word, she would keep it. At this stage he didn’t require enthusiasm; he would gladly settle for cooperation.

  Clinical instinct told him that emotionally, Emma Spire had an aneurysm that was threatening to blow.

  Lauren, literally, tucked Emma into bed.

  The bedroom that Emma chose for her own was the one that had once been her grandparents’.

  A double bed with a simple steel frame and an oatmeal comforter took up the spot where the marital bed had stood. A tall nightstand of weathered pine stood beside it like a sentry. A large rectangular discoloration on the wall behind the bed still showed precisely where, for many years, a piece of art had hung.

  Emma had placed nothing over the stain. The walls in the bedroom were bare. The windows were shuttered with wide slats that had faded to a dull white.

  Along one wall of the bedroom stood a metal and glass étagère covered from corner to corner, back to front, with framed photographs of Emma, Emma’s mother, Emma’s father, and Emma’s grandparents.

  Lauren decided that the room felt like a monastic retreat. Or a safe house. Not like a home. Emma had been forced to move into this big house long before she was prepared to make herself a home.

  Emma, in panties and a T-shirt that trumpeted one of her ex-fiancé’s hit movies, tugged the comforter to her armpits. She rolled onto her side, facing away from Lauren, who sat on the edge of the mattress.

  “It’s not as dark as it seems, Emma.”

  For a moment, Lauren suspected that exhaustion and hopelessness had trapped Emma in sudden sleep. But Emma cleared her throat, pulled some hair away from her face, and said, “In my life, Lauren, it’s always as dark as it seems. There’s more I haven’t told you.”

  Lauren stroked Emma’s hair and felt a stab of dread. She said, “More what?”

  “More…that’s awful.”

  Lauren couldn’t imagine what that might be. She said, “I’d like to hear what it is.” But she didn’t want to hear it. She wanted to run from the room, jump into her car, say hello to her dog, and be home in her own bed with her husband.

  “It’s about Ethan.”

  “Yes,” Lauren said. She figured that.

  “I think Ethan…I think he belongs to…Operation Rescue.”

  Lauren’s lips were about to say “So what?” when her tired brain permitted the insidious connection to be made to Nelson Newell, Emma’s father’s assassin, and the radical right-to-life movement.

  “Oh, God,” she murmured quietly.

  “Yes, oh God.”

  “Are you thinking he did this on purpose? Meeting you, dating you? Recording you like he did?”

  Lauren’s hand had come to rest on Emma’s shoulder. Emma’s muscles tightened noticeably before she spoke again. “I don’t want to think that way about somebody I…I just slept with, but I have to consider it. I have to. Ethan seemed so sincere to me. But…maybe I misjudged him. Those people…would love to hurt me, Lauren. Nothing would make some of them happier than to drag me through the mud on top of my father’s grave.”

  Had this really been the point of Ethan’s insistent seduction of Emma? Had Ethan been setting Emma up for some major scandal in order to undermine her credibility with the public? That scenario seemed way too complex and awkward to Lauren. She guessed that—if Emma’s supposition about Ethan and Operation Rescue were true—the motive was probably simple vengeance. And the opportunity was pure serendipity.

  “Do you know this for sure?” Lauren asked. “About him being part of the antiabortion movement?”

  “No. I saw some mail at his house, that’s all.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “No, it was sealed; it had just been delivered. But it was from them.”

  “Maybe it was just a fund-raising letter. I’m sure they rent mailing lists and send out solicitations to a lot of people.”

  Emma raised her voice. “No. It wasn’t.” She rolled onto her abdomen, her face almost buried in the pillow. “I just have an awful feeling that he’s a member. Trust me.”

  Yesterday, Lauren mused, I would have trusted you. Today, I’m not so sure.

  Lauren woke Emma around seven-thirty. Lauren was due in court at nine and before she left Emma alone, she wanted to make an assessment of Emma’s mood and be certain she had plans for the day.

  Emma’s demeanor was much brighter than it had been the night before, and Lauren thought she actually saw a hint of a smile when Emma came into the kitchen after her shower and smelled fresh coffee.

  “Thanks for waking me, I have a nine-thirty contracts class I absolutely can’t miss. The teacher is a tyrant.” She shook her head. “Actually he’s a bit of a fool.” She poured herself a mug of coffee and added a healthy shot of milk.

  Lauren was relieved that Emma had something other than camping under the covers planned for the morning.

  “What about after class?”

  Emma smiled again, wider this time. “You want
to know if I’m going to blow my brains out before lunch, don’t you?”

  Lauren almost choked on her coffee. She finally managed to say, “No, that’s not what I was thinking—” before she made a valiant attempt to match Emma’s glorious smile and said, “Not entirely, anyway.”

  “The contracts professor may be a jerk, but his class isn’t that bad. I’ll be okay. I have another class at eleven-thirty. Then I’ll come by the office. I don’t know if you remember, but I’m still planning to attend that three o’clock evidence hearing on the Ramirez case. The one I researched the motion for?”

  Lauren’s legal calendar was one of the farthest things from her mind. “Thanks for reminding me, I’d forgotten all about that hearing. I’ll see you in the office by two, then? We’ll go over to court together.”

  Emma sipped some coffee. “Sounds good.”

  “Oh, and don’t forget, Alan’s going to call with the name of a therapist. You promised you would do that today, too. Will you see if you can get an appointment?”

  “Yes, Mom. If my schedule allows it.” The smile that accompanied the statement was the warmest one so far. Not quite as electric as Emma was capable of, but sufficiently heartening to satisfy Lauren that she could pack up her things and head home to change for a day at the office.

  When she got there, she left Alan a long voice-mail message, filling him in on the latest twists.

  A few minutes after Lauren’s departure, Kevin Quirk called Emma.

  “You okay?” he asked, concern in his voice.

  “Yes, Kevin, thanks. Thanks for everything.” Then she said, “I was too upset to go into it last night, but I’m afraid this guy I’m seeing might be involved in the right-to-life movement.”

  Kevin didn’t doubt her for even a second. “Then it looks like you’ve been set up, Emma.”

  “I wondered if there was some way you could check out what his involvement with them is.”

  “There are some people I can call.”

  “Kevin, there are always people you can call.”

  “What can I say?”

  “Discreetly?”

  “Without a trace. Leave it to me.”