Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [100]
“Okay. Thanks, Cindy.”
“Are you going to be back in the office today? A lot of people are asking.”
“I don’t know.”
“John Conley from Conley-White called. He wanted to meet with you at four.”
“I don’t know. I’ll see. I’ll call you later.”
“Okay.” She hung up.
He heard a dial tone.
And then she had hung up.
The story tugged at the back of his mind. The two people in the car. Going to the party. Who had told him that story? How did it go?
On her way to the party, Adele had made a call from the car and then she had hung up.
Sanders snapped his fingers. Of course! Adele! The couple in the car had been Mark and Adele Lewyn. And they had had an embarrassing incident. It was starting to come back to him now.
Adele had called somebody and gotten the answering machine. She left a message, and hung up the phone. Then she and Mark talked in the car about the person Adele had just called. They made jokes and unflattering comments for about fifteen minutes. And later they were very embarrassed . . .
Fernandez said, “Are you just going to stand there in the rain?”
Sanders didn’t answer. He took the cellular phone down from his ear. The keypad and screen glowed bright green. Plenty of power. He looked at the phone and waited. After five seconds, it clicked itself off; the screen went blank. That was because the new generation of phones had an auto-shutdown feature to conserve battery power. If you didn’t use the phone or press the keypad for fifteen seconds, the phone shut itself off. So it wouldn’t go dead.
But his phone had gone dead in Meredith’s office.
Why?
Forget that phone.
Why had his cellular phone failed to shut itself off? What possible explanation could there be? Mechanical problems: one of the keys stuck, keeping the phone on. It had been damaged when he dropped it, when Meredith first kissed him. The battery was low because he forgot to charge it the night before.
No, he thought. The phone was reliable. There was no mechanical fault. And it was fully charged.
No.
The phone had worked correctly.
They made jokes and unflattering comments for about fifteen minutes.
His mind began to race, with scattered fragments of conversation coming back to him.
“Listen, why didn’t you call me last night?”
“I did, Mark.”
Sanders was certain that he had called Mark Lewyn from Meredith’s office. Standing in the parking lot in the rain, he again pressed L-E-W on his keypad: The phone turned itself back on, the little screen flashing lewyn and Mark’s home number.
“There wasn’t any message when I got home.”
“I talked to your answering machine, about six fifteen.”
“I never got a message.”
Sanders was sure that he had called Lewyn and had talked to his answering machine. He remembered a man’s voice saying the standard message, “Leave a message when you hear the tone.”
Standing there with the phone in his hand, staring at Lewyn’s phone number, he pressed the SEND button. A moment later, the answering machine picked up. A woman’s voice said, “Hi, you’ve reached Mark and Adele at home. We’re not able to come to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, we’ll call you back.” Beep.
That was a different message.
He hadn’t called Mark Lewyn that night.
Which could only mean he hadn’t pressed L-E-W that night. Nervous in Meredith’s office, he must have pressed something else. He had gotten somebody else’s answering machine.
And his phone had gone dead.
Because . . .
Forget that phone.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. He suddenly put it together. He knew exactly what had happened. And it meant that there was the chance that—
“Tom, are you all right?” Fernandez said.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just give me a minute. I think I’ve got something important.”
He hadn’t pressed L-E-W.
He had pressed something else. Something very close, probably one letter off. With fumbling fingers, Sanders pushed L-E-L. The screen stayed blank: he had no number stored for that combination. L-E-M. No number stored. L-E-S. No number stored. L-E-V.
Bingo.
Printed across the little screen was:
LEVIN
And a phone number