Interpreter for the Dead Page 3

  He walked into the great room. A black leather sofa and two chrome table lamps were the only remnants of Mr. Neufeldt's not too distant bachelorhood.

  Dane spotted a pair of French doors he jogged over. The office. A state of the art Dell computer awaited him on the other side.

  He moved away from the door, resisting the siren song that tried to lure him inside. First he needed to search the entire house. He sprinted up the stairs two at a time. Memories of finding two naked teenagers huddled inside a closet on one of his first jobs was enough to make him check any and every place big enough to hide a human being.

  Or dog.

  Minutes later, satisfied he was the sole inhabitant of the house, Dane returned to the office and sat down in front of the computer.

  Tell me your secrets, he said, rubbing his hands together.

  He flipped the power switch and waited. A window eventually popped up and asked for a password.

  No biggie.

  He would just go through the back door. He shut the computer off and turned it back on, holding down the shift and alt keys. The computer came back to life in DOS mode. Not as pretty as Windows, but a lot more accessible. He pulled out a small, portable thumb drive and popped it in. The computer greedily lapped up the zombie-juice lines of code.

  The monitor blinked out and reopened in Windows, bypassing the password prompt. Its soul now lay bare to do with as Dane pleased. What he pleased, however, would take more time than he had, so he'd have to take the soul with him. He plugged another ten-gigabyte pen-sized portable drive into the computer's USB port. While that copied everything inside the computer, he turned his attention to the desk.

  He used a digital camera to copy every number and letter scribbled around the edges of the blotter and calendar and on any scrap of paper in the drawers.

  Old tax filings, bank reports and annual reports showed the Neufeldts to be in sound financial health, having made most of their money the old-fashioned way through trust funds and tax deferred investments.

  Mr. Neufeldt himself owned a construction company incorporated in Nevada that appeared to be doing quite well - or very bad, depending on which set of books you were looking at. Additional income from low-income housing developments helped keep the couple in the lifestyle they'd long been accustomed to.

  The pen-drive started blinking. Copying was complete. With his digital camera full of high-resolution pictures of birth certificates, insurance policies, shareholder reports, credit card numbers, two PINs, and everything else that might be even vaguely useful, it was time to go.

  Normally, he'd have handed most of this over to his lawyer, Kirsch, but not now. In the past it had taken no more than three or four days for Kirsch to sell the information to another of his clients, and then wire the money to Dane's account. But the last time it took over two weeks. The delay had made him suspicious enough to fly out to Colorado for a surprise visit. He tracked Kirsch to Vail via his secretary, and then the GPS unit he'd planted in the lawyer's golf bag. Kirsch never left home without it.

  Dane had 'bumped' into Kirsch coming out of a coffee shop, and asked how he was doing in this small world. Kirsch said he was fine, but Dane thought he looked a little frazzled.

  Something was up. Dane wondered if Kirsch and Cocaine had gone from casual dating to full time shacking up and was taking precautions for it...

  The whole house gone through, Dane went back in the kitchen. His stomach reminded him he still hadn't eaten anything. He opened up the refrigerator. The cold air felt good. He glanced at his watch and smiled, thinking about Pete. The poor kid was probably sitting in the Lexus right now, trying to get it started, while Neufeldt ripped up the other half of the ten-dollar bill. Maybe it would inspire another song.

  Dane located the remains of a party tray and a bottle of Perrier. He juggled both as he closed the door with his foot and then went out to the garage. He chowed down on cheese squares and pepperoni slices while he carefully put the alarm back together.

  Things had turned out well, thought Dane, humming to himself.

  He'd gotten enough stuff to toss Kirsch a bone while he flew down and took care of his accounts. He'd lay low for a while before going about the business of finding another lawyer - just in case. Eggs in multiple baskets and all that...

  He could go out the garage door, but felt it best to go out the front door instead, where he could look out the windows. He pulled back the curtains and everything looked fine.

  He popped the last of the brie into his mouth and went outside.

  The barrel of a shotgun pressed against the side of his head.

  "Don't fucking move."

  Chapter 4

  Dane paced back and forth in his Eagle County Jail cell, a single thought turning over in his mind as he stared into the graffiti scarred plastic mirror bolted to the wall.

  Where the hell was his lawyer?

  It had been surreal after they peeled him off the pavement. It wasn't as if the idea of being caught had never crossed his mind. As a teenager, it had taken him only one weekend in the Denver County Jail, sharing a ten-by-ten holding tank filled with drunks and junkies, to see the wisdom of having a lawyer on retainer.

  Rodney Kirsch helped him move into a whole new arena after Dane found a lucrative cache of credit cards in a day planner in a 100k Mercedes he'd stolen. The lawyer had handed the cards off to another client of his, and Dane wound up with about three times more money than he'd ever gotten lifting cars. Stealing identities from the obscenely rich quickly became much more profitable, and safer, than running around in crappy weather stealing their cars. He still ran his valet scam, but now it was for information. Never for the car itself.

  Kirsch had never left him hanging. Never.

  He thought about all the money he'd paid the bastard over the years and it made him even angrier. He could just picture him on the back nine at some swanky course in those ridiculous golf shirts he loved to wear.

  He was going to throttle Kirsch when he got out of here. If he got out.

  Dane lay down and closed his eyes, shutting out the sights, if not the sounds. He'd give anything to be able to shut out the smells. Holding cells were a pungent combination of sweat, alcohol, and piss. He started to drift into sleep.

  "Dane. Legal visit."

  Dane sat up so quick he nearly blacked out. He grabbed the bars to keep himself from falling. The image of the guard on the other side of the bars doubled and blurred.

  "What?"

  "You deaf? Legal visit. Get down to the gate and put your hands through the bars."

  Dane shook the cobwebs from his brain. He turned and put his hands behind his back, trying not to grimace as the guard yanked them through and slapped on the cuffs, ratcheting them tight enough to cut off his circulation.

  Kirsch. The bastard had finally shown up.

  The guard mumbled into his walkie-talkie then the cell door rumbled open. He pulled Dane through the door and thrust him down the long stretch of walkway.

  Dane didn't know if he was going to bitch Kirsch out or hug him. He had made him wait in this shithole for five days, but Dane could already feel the rage morphing into relief with every step.

  The guard undid the cuffs, and escorted Michael Dane through the last door.

  "You got fifteen minutes."

  There were two people sitting on the other side of the divider - neither one was Kirsch.

  The man tried his best to smile with some sincerity and failed miserably, flashing a set of impossibly white teeth and a pinkie ring as he smoothed a stray hair back into place. Apparently he'd fallen asleep in a tanning booth, because his skin was the color and texture of an old worn out saddle. He kept nodding his head incessantly, which Dane found annoying.

  The woman beside the bobblehead matched him nod for nod. She was thin and brittle. Her hair was pulled so tightly it made her mouth twitch. Or maybe she was just trying to manage a smile, he couldn't tell.

  Who the hell are these people?

&n
bsp; His first thought was that they were from the public defender's office, sent over by the court since they hadn't heard anything from his lawyer, but that didn't quite fit. The guy had money, if not taste. The woman stared like a deer caught in headlights. She noticed Dane staring and her hand moved up to the gold cross hanging around her neck.

  Jehovah's Witnesses. Or worse...

  Shitty lawyers or True Believers, he was going to stop this bullshit before it began. He got up and pushed his chair back in.

  "If you're from the public defender's office - thanks, but no thanks. I'd sooner represent myself than trust some court-appointed flunkie that couldn't make it in the private sector."

  The forced smiles evaporated.

  "If you're here on behalf of the Big Guy in the Sky, tell Him I'm fine, but he might be seeing my lawyer once I get done choking the life out of him. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to my cell."

  The woman's cheeks turned red and her eyes went wide. She turned to the man next to her, nostrils flaring. Beneath her thin pale skin Dane could see the fine network of veins in her nose. She had the telltale veining of a former cocaine addict. Ironic.

  "Is this your idea of a joke?" she asked.

  The guy looked like a fish yanked out of the water. His mouth opened and closed, his head snapping back and forth between her and Dane.

  "I thought Mr. Dane was deaf!"

  The comment stunned Dane for a moment, and then he forcefully pushed the chair aside and leaned on the counter, incensed.

  "What's going on here?"

  The guy stood up, shaken.

  "Your parents were deaf, so I just assumed that...it never occurred to me..."

  "My parents? How do you know that?"

  Livid, the woman cut him off.

  "Five years of interpreting and I thought I'd seen it all, but this is definitely a first." She stood up, grabbed her coat and jammed her arms through the sleeves. "I can't believe I cancelled an appointment for this."

  "I'm sorry, Ms. Tanner. Please-"

  "Oh, you'll be getting a bill for my time, rest assured."

  She cinched the belt of her coat so tightly it looked like she might split herself in two at the waist.

  "For your information Mr. Caywood, both of my parents are deaf too. In fact, most children of deaf parents are hearing," she looked at Dane contemptuously, "if not law abiding."

  Dane was fed up.

  "What is going on here?"

  Caywood turned to face Dane, flinching as the door slammed shut behind him. He gestured for Dane to sit, composing himself before taking his own.

  "John Caywood. You don't know me, but your father did,"

  He passed a business card through the tray. It was the gaudy, cheap kind:

  JOHN CAYWOOD, REALTOR

  HELPING DREAMS COME TRUE IN BOULDER COUNTY

  FOR OVER FIFTEEN YEARS

  It explained so much. Dane smirked, thinking back to all the other dirt peddlers that had come around the farm trying to get his parents to sell as the city began to grow.

  He had always been the mediator, signing and finger spelling words he had no concept of, for a man who knew even less.

  "What means variable rate of interest?

  "I don't know."

  "What do you mean you don't know? You are hearing!"

  "I don't know!"

  His father and the real estate agent would go back and forth forever, with him signing and talking until his hands were numb and his throat was raw.

  It always ended the same.

  They would shove their papers back into their briefcases, mumble about "stupid deaf people" and walk out the door. His father always enjoyed watching them go.

  "See? Hearing are not so smart. My father hearing - think he is so smart, get money, buy this, buy that. Give to my brother, but not to me. All hearing, all know everything. What happens? They lose everything! Only this house and this land are left. They die and who has all this now? Stupid deaf man Henry Dane! Judge did not want to give to me, but has to by law. I never sell."

  This would infuriate his mother. She'd yell at her husband for making Michael interpret unnecessarily. His father's hands would fly into the air, jabbing and slashing. A silent browbeating for questioning him. Then he would belittle Michael for being weak.

  "He is only eleven!"

  "So? I was working on farm when I was ten!"

  "Things different then, Henry Dane! Not good now."

  It always ended the same - his mother running to her room in tears and him being sent out to do chores as punishment.

  Dane couldn't remember how much horse shit he had shoveled, or post holes he'd dug, with the taste of tears bitter in his throat, just praying something would happen to the son of a bitch.

  Dane slid the business card back under the glass.

  "Look, Caywood is it? I don't know where you got your information, but anybody back there should have told you that my old man and me parted ways a long time ago. I'm about the worst person you could get to try and change his mind, even if I weren't in here."

  A puzzled look crossed Caywood's face.

  "Sorry you wasted your time, but if he was ever going to sell it would have been after my mother's funeral, and that was seven years ago. Don't take it personally - lots of others have tried and failed."

  Caywood just kept staring. Dane leaned on the counter and waved his hand in front of Caywood's field of vision, trying to snap him out of it.

  "Hello? What part of this aren't you getting? I'm in jail, and my lawyer is out somewhere playing hide-and-seek. I've got bigger problems. Go try someone else."

  Caywood slowly came of his trance.

  "You don't know, do you?"

  Caywood's tone made him uneasy.

  "I don't know what?"

  Caywood searched for words.

  "Your father is dead."

  The words rang in Dane's ears and the floor shifted underneath him. He lowered himself back into the chair.

  "I'm sorry. I thought you'd been informed of his death."

  Dane shook his head, looking down at his hands, following the creases.

  "When?"

  "Not quite two months ago."

  The words sounded tinny and hollow coming through the speaker hole.

  "Heart attack," Caywood added. "At home, I believe."

  Dane nodded, looking everywhere but at the man who had just told him his father was dead and buried. He finally brought his attention back to Caywood.

  "That's why you're here. To buy it from me." Dane shook his head. "You guys are unbelievable."

  "It's a bit more complicated than that."

  Dane fixed him with an icy stare. Caywood removed a folder from his briefcase and slid it through.

  "Your father died intestate, but an Application for Informal Appointment of Personal Representative has already been filed with the Boulder County Probate Court. Now, that shouldn't be approved once it's determined that you-"

  "In English."

  "Your father left no will. He didn't appoint anybody to manage his estate."

  "Estate?" Dane laughed. "I guess that depends on your definition."

  "Well, legally, an estate is defined as-"

  "I know what 'estate' means."

  "If nobody is named in a will, then anybody can become executor by petitioning and being approved by the court. And, like I said, someone has petitioned. Oren McConnell."

  Dane smiled, remembering the lanky, slow moving neighbor coming home from his job out in the sandstone quarries near Lyons, covered in red dust from head to foot.

  His wife was a pudgy little thing that would make him take off his clothes on the sun porch, as their children swarmed around and dug through his pockets for candy.

  McConnell had two boys, both deaf and both hellions. The one girl, Twiggy, was a tomboy who could hear just fine. She was either using her hearing to help her brothers or make their lives a living hell, depending on what kind of mood she was in. The only time Dane had e
ver seen her cry was when he dunked her in the lake.

  His father had whipped him so hard he had to sleep on his stomach for a week.

  "Mr. Dane?"

  "Oren McConnell. I heard you."

  "If you don't file a Demand for Notice within thirty days, McConnell's petition will be approved, and as Executor he could give you nothing."

  Dane shut the folder and shook his head.

  "I think I get the picture now. You've had your eye on this property for a while, dollar signs in your eyes as you saw the suburbs come creeping over the horizon. My father wouldn't sell. The neighbors wouldn't sell. And as long as nobody would sell, there wasn't much you could do."

  Caywood blanched. His left eye started to twitch almost imperceptibly.

  "Then you heard, or more likely read, about my father's death in the obituary section of the Daily Camera while fishing for around motivated sellers. And I bet you recalled hearing a rumor about Henry Dane's wayward boy. You wrote it off at the time, but now it got the gears turning and you started doing some digging around."

  Dane's voice dripped with sarcasm.

  "I'm not about to apologize for how I-"

  "As luck would have it, my name came up in the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons database. Bad for me, good for you. You got on the road as fast as you could, bringing your smiling face here to make me an offer I couldn't refuse, right?"

  Caywood glowered. He dropped all pretenses.

  "I'll own that property eventually, trust me. If you don't take the buyout now, I'll get it when McConnell has to auction it off."

  "You're a parasite."

  Caywood stalked to the door. He addressed Dane as he looked around at the dull gray walls.

  "I'd suggest you start making better decisions. Unless of course, you have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card tucked away in your cell somewhere."

  Dane stared past his ghosted image in the glass, the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights boring a hole into his brain. Caywood was gone.

  He did have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card. He just couldn't get to it.

  Chapter 5

  "Michael Dane, legal visit."

  The guard took Dane through the same drill as his last visit, only this time he escorted him to a room with a different setup. No divider.