There was a pause on the line and then Bailey stammered: “M-M-Mary?”
“Yes?” she answered, tensing because she feared she was going to hear something uncomfortable.
There was another, shorter, pause. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ll see you.” The line went dead and Mary replaced the receiver. She was beginning to get a bad feeling about Bailey. She hoped he wasn’t getting cold feet.
Howard was in his office at 8 a.m. but Jake Sheldon had obviously beaten him to it. There was a message on Howard’s desk asking him to call Sheldon. He picked up the phone to call Sheldon’s office, but then had second thoughts and replaced the receiver. He walked down the corridor and pressed the bell at the side of the door to The Tomb. He waved at the surveillance camera above the door and the lock mechanism buzzed. He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The agent on duty was an old friend of Howard’s, a twenty-year man called Gene Eldridge. Eldridge had been sentenced to The Tomb for being unable to get his weight below 300 pounds, ostensibly for medical reasons but everybody knew it was because the Bureau top brass was trying to weed out all those agents who didn’t fit into its desired profile of young, healthy go-getters. He was a good-natured man, grey-haired with a florid expression, who had to have his suits tailor-made. He always wore a large handkerchief in his top pocket which he would produce with a flourish to mop his forehead at frequent intervals.
“Cole, how’s it going?” asked Eldridge. He was standing at the far end of the room wearing headphones. He waved Howard over. “Come and listen to this.” He slipped off the headphones and passed them to Howard. A man and a woman were talking on the line, though the man’s input consisted mainly of heavy-breathing and grunts. The woman, whose voice was husky and deep, was describing what she wanted to do with the man in graphic terms. “He’s a drug dealer the DEA are on to,” said Eldridge. “He makes one of these calls every morning.” The man on the line was building to a climax and Howard handed the headphones back to Eldridge, who unplugged them from the tape machine. “So what brings you back to The Tomb?” he asked.
“Tap on a house in Coronado, name of Schoelen. A call was made last night. Who was on then?”
“Eric Tiefenbacher,” replied Eldridge, wiping his forehead with his red cotton handkerchief. He sat down at the desk, his massive thighs squashing together like plump cushions. “Is there a problem?”
“No, it’s not a problem. He called Kelly Armstrong last night about a call made to the Schoelen home.”
“Yeah, the ice maiden. Eric’s had the hots for her for some time. Watch that one, Cole, she’s on the fast track. Her husband’s a big wheel in the Justice Department, isn’t he?”
“No idea. Can I hear the call?”
“Sure.” Eldridge pointed. “That’s the machine over there. Take the tape off and play it on the machine next to it. Just in case a call comes in while you’re playing it. You haven’t forgotten how to do it?”
Howard gave the overweight agent a withering look. “No, Gene, I haven’t forgotten.” Howard had spent seven months in The Tomb after the Bureau had first discovered his drinking problem. It wasn’t a time he liked to think about. He replaced the tape, and put the original on the machine Eldridge had indicated. He switched it on and the two agents listened to the conversation.
“Nice guy to be so worried about his dog,” said Eldridge. He handed the clipboard to Howard. “You wanna fill this in for me, too?”
Howard took the clipboard and wrote down the time the tape had been changed, followed by the tape counter number. “Like riding a bicycle,” he said, passing it back to Eldridge. “How long have you been here now, Gene?”
The big man shrugged. “Four years, I guess.”
“How come you don’t try to get out?”
“You mean why don’t I lose the weight? Hell, Cole, I’ve tried. I don’t even eat that much.”
Howard walked over to a wastepaper bin and looked down. There were several Burger King wrappings lying there, along with two empty packs of cookies. “Yeah, right,” he said.
“Besides, this isn’t too bad, you know? It’s regular hours, it’s clean, it’s safe, and it all goes towards my pension just the same. You were different, Cole. Your time in The Tomb was just a slap on the wrist, for me it’s an exile.” He wiped his forehead with the handkerchief. “So what’s with the tape?”
“I’m trying to track down the guy, I’m hoping that the conversation will tell me where he is.”
Eldridge looked at the clipboard. “According to the notes Tiefenbacher made, the call was placed from a public phone in Long Beach.”
“Yeah, that’s what it said, all right. Kelly’s out there.”
“But you think different?” asked Eldridge. Howard winked. “I suppose that means the ice maiden has rushed off on a wild goose chase?” Howard grinned. “What a fucking shame,” said Eldridge. “I guess she’ll be mighty pissed at young Tiefenbacher?”
“Okay if I borrow this tape for a while?” asked Howard.
“Hey, hold on a minute, Cole, you know as well as I do that the tape has to stay within the building. You can taint it as evidence if it leaves our jurisdiction.”
“It’s not evidence; we’re just trying to track down the guy, that’s all. I’ve a couple of experts I want to listen to the tape, and then I’ll bring it right back.”
“Today? You’ll bring it back today? On my shift?”
Howard nodded. “By lunchtime, Gene, I promise.” Back in his office, Howard dialled through to the Image Processing and Research Labs at Clayton Electronics. It was answered by McDowall, who sounded as if he was drawing on a cigarette. “This is Cole Howard, of the FBI,” said Howard. McDowall coughed and Howard smiled. “Is that a joint?” he asked.
“Jeez, you guys know everything,” said McDowall. “So what can we do for you, Special Agent Howard?”
Howard explained what he wanted and arranged to go round to the lab immediately. There was another message from Jake Sheldon on his desk, but Howard ignored it. Thirty minutes later he was in the laboratory with McDowall and Wyman. The sweet smell of marijuana still lingered in the air and McDowall had a slightly spaced-out look about him.
“That the tape?” asked Wyman.
Howard nodded and gave it to him. “The quality is good, but it’s the background I’m interested in.”
Wyman went over to a tape deck and motioned for the FBI agent to join him. “You’d better show me which bit you want,” he said.
They played the tape through to the point where Schoelen had called his mother. “This is it, from here on,” said Howard. “There’s some noise in the background as if he had the radio or TV on. Can you bring that up for me?”
“No problem,” said Wyman. “Compared with what we do with video, this is Stone Age stuff.” He looked over at McDowall, who was biting a thumbnail. “Bill, can you digitise this for me?”
“Sure thing,” said McDowall, who sat down at a computer. He pecked at a few keys. “Okay, run it,” he said.
Wyman pressed the play button and the conversation was replayed over a loudspeaker. When it had finished, McDowall gave Wyman a thumbs-up. “Got it,” he said. He hit more keys and the conversation played over the speaker again. “This is in the computer, not on tape,” Wyman said to Howard.
Wyman pulled a chair over next to McDowall and sat down. The two men talked together in rapid jargon, leaving Howard in the dark as to what they were doing. For all he knew, they could be speaking another language. McDowall’s fingers played across the keyboard, with Wyman offering advice, and lines of numbers scrolled across the screen. After ten minutes, Wyman nodded and sat back, a big grin splitting his face. “Try it,” he said. McDowall pressed a key and the speaker crackled into life. This time there were no voices. There were some musical notes, then a burst of what could have been static, then muffled voices.
“Sounds like TV, for sure,” said Wyman.
“Can you enhance the voices?” Howard asked.
“We can take out the higher frequencies, that should take the edge off it,” said McDowall. He bent over the keyboard, his hair swinging forward, and his head moved in time with the pecking of his fingers like a small boy during a piano lesson. When he replayed it, there was a noticeable improvement, though Howard still couldn’t work out what was being said.
“Keep playing it,” he said.
“Put it in a loop,” suggested Wyman.
McDowall pressed more keys and the section was repeated over and over as the three men listened.
“That sound, the electronic noise, it’s sort of familiar,” mused Wyman.
“I’ll try to enhance it,” said McDowall. “I’ll mute the lower frequencies first, see if that helps.”
The three men listened as McDowall played on the computer keyboard. It came to Howard in a burst of inspiration, and he laughed out loud. “It’s a phaser!” he cried.
“Man, you’re right,” said McDowall.
“Beam me up, Scottie!” cheered Wyman.