The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [108]
Yet, in the family portrait forming in Nikola’s mind, there were two figures in the shadows: one, whoever had stored Russo in the center of tank 913 in Washington, D.C., and, two, Laurel’s still-anonymous benefactor. Number one’s identity was slowly forming in Nikola’s mind, and the emerging shape filled him with foreboding. Then there was number two, whose persona had to be inextricably linked to the subjects in the picture, but he couldn’t figure out how or why. Nikola knew that as soon as he determined the why, a name would emerge.
To flesh out numbers one and two, Nikola had compiled a hand of playing cards, a list of names tied, however thinly, to Araceli, Laurel, and Russo—family, friends, relatives, and a few professionals like medical doctors and teachers who could perhaps shed a little insight into their lives. In Nikola’s game, the Brownells were almost insignificant. The card they represented, if it existed, wasn’t an ace but a little one in a side suit. Of course, in the endgame, when all the trumps and big guns had been laid down, the humble card they held might afford Nikola a missing trick and net him the contract.
As a student of human frailty, Nikola knew the richest depositories of treasure didn’t hide in safes or vaults but in the dark recesses of wardrobes. Nikola frowned on coincidence, but the fortuitous discovery of a noisy skeleton lurking in Martha Brownell’s wardrobe had given him a tool.
Before Martha’s election to preside over Grimes University in 2036—an appointment she held until her retirement in 2047—she’d run the privately owned Paulson College for over twenty years. It was widely acknowledged that, under Martha’s tutelage, Paulson had grown from insignificance into an elite institution for grooming young women with powerful or wealthy pedigrees.
After Martha resigned her post three years after Araceli’s death—ostensibly to claim her rightful place at the top of academia—Candace Bishop, her second-in-command, had taken over as principal. Both had been Araceli Goldberg’s teachers and mentors.
Seemingly intelligent people do the dumbest of things in the name of self-mortification, like writing diaries. It’s well known that diaries are written for others to read, but only one degree of sublime stupidity can improve on committing compromising or even criminal events into the permanence of text: entrusting the data to the treacherous care of a computer.
Dennis Nolan had sifted through Paulson College’s computer more as a pastime than to look for anything specific. Nikola had expected him to skim over Araceli’s college record, perhaps noting a few peccadilloes, but Dennis was curious and loved to track archives with long roots.
Candace’s diary, tucked at the end of a score of subdirectories, inside a calendar-making program but unaccountably accessed daily, was a sobering read. Martha had not left Paulson College of her own choice. Rather than meeting twice a week with the college’s benefactors, Martha had been exercising Candace’s husband, Edward, for the previous ten years on Mondays and Thursdays. In itself, the affair wouldn’t have merited exposure but for a tiny detail: Martha and Edward loved to invite a few chosen pupils to share in the fun. To beef up her case, and before pulling the rug from under Martha’s feet, Candace had secured the services of an obliging detective. The sleuth had compiled a bulky, graphic document brimming with acrobatic competence and bound to delight the vice squad. Instead of raising a stink, Candace had counseled Martha into seeking greener pastures and surrendering her post, but not before heartily recommending herself as successor—or else. A shrewd move, at odds with the recklessness of leaving the incriminating evidence on her hard disk.
After parking the car in front of the house, Nikola strolled past a well-tended lawn, breathing