In Plain Sight

Damn. Damn. And damn. “Yes, sir.”

“Counsel, please approach.”

Without so much as a peripheral glance, Jan passed Jacob Hall, and with Michaels at her side, she stood before the judge’s bench. It took only a few seconds to confer over dates and the hearing was set for Monday, two weeks hence, at eight-thirty in the morning.

She had two weeks to convince a cop with twenty years on the job to do something he’d never done before. Something that could endanger his own life, and the life of someone he’d given his word to, as well.

3

The phone rang moments before the first bus was due to drop off Simon’s youngest group of neighbors on Tuesday afternoon. He glanced at caller ID and then back at the screen in front of him. With a click, he maximized the manuscript he’d minimized in order to play freecell, covering the game he hadn’t won yet rather than closing it. He had a ninety-one-percent win ratio and he wasn’t about to see that drop because he’d quit a game.

Going rate for methamphetamine in Arizona (prices vary by state).

Simon read what he’d written half an hour before and waited for the ringing to stop. He checked the time in the lower right corner of his screen. Two minutes until the bus. Fingers on the keyboard, he deliberated over bullet choices. Made a decision. A pointing finger.

1/4 gram—$25.

One minute until the bus. The phone sounded again. Same number. The FBI agent was persistent. He picked up.

“Hello, Olsen. What can I do for you?” Simon said, eyes focused on the corner outside, waiting for the bus. After all, what else did he have to do with his day but munch on carrot sticks and watch other peoples’ kids get safely home from school?

“A map found at the Snowbowl corroborates the girlfriend’s story.”

Simon didn’t say the choice words he was thinking. “Who found it?” How legitimate was it?

“Full-time custodian. An older guy who’s been there close to ten years. Keeps to himself. He was cleaning a locker and found the folded sheet caught between two pieces of metal at the bottom.”

“Like it was planted there?”

“Like it dropped out of something.”

The better of the two scenarios.

“Someone lost it and doesn’t know where.”

“That’d be my guess.”

“Who used the locker last?” Not that it mattered to him. He hadn’t agreed to anything.

“A student of Leonard Diamond.”

The white man with the background that was apparently untraceable, or was traceable to contradicting places, who privately trained cross-country skiers and paid the Snowbowl for use of the facilities. Or so he’d said. The FBI had a tip that suggested something different.

“Was the student male or female?”

“Male.”

“An old piece of paper obviously left behind. Why did the custodian keep it? Turn it in? Why not just throw it away?” Those questions belonged to the agents and local police detective on the case, not to Simon. He didn’t want them.

“It incorporated every inch of the Snowbowl property, but it wasn’t like any other map of the Snowbowl he’d ever seen. The trails on the map aren’t standard Snowbowl trails. The way they’re engineered, only the most proficient skier could hope to master them or even make it over them alive. Turns out they aren’t sanctioned, which means they shouldn’t exist. The map was detailed, computer-generated, possibly one of many. Snowbowl officials contacted us.”

“Someone spoke to Diamond?”

“Never saw the map before in his life.” Scott Olsen’s mimicking voice made clear his lack of trust in the other man’s word.

“And the student?”

“Quit the class.”

“Let me guess,” Simon said. “The guy left no forwarding address and Diamond had no personal information on him.”

“Correct.”

“So how does a map of nonexistent trails tie in with a disgruntled girlfriend’s tale of hearing about terrorist training?”

Simon didn’t want to know. Deep in his soul, if he still had a soul, he didn’t want to know.

“Marking the beginning and ending of each trail was an emblem. A circle with three crosses in the top half and a blackened dagger at the bottom.”

Just as Amanda Blake—the disgrunteld ex-girlfriend of an acquaintance of Diamond’s—had told it.

“I’m not the right man for this job.”

“You had a master’s degree in law enforcement at twenty-three and you were one of the youngest under-cover agents the FBI ever had. You have antiterrorist training.”

“That was a long time ago.” And ultimately all that preparation had been useless.

“I have no idea how far this thing reaches, how many people could be hurt. This gets out now, and the local police have a city in panic. I need a very discreet professional look-see. You’re the only one I trust.”

Simon closed his eyes, consumed with remorse. And then opened them again, seeing nothing but the clean notepad he’d pulled out of the bottom drawer. “You said Amanda Blake is a waitress at the Museum Club?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll go tonight.”

“Glad to hear it,” Scott Olsen said. “Anything you need, Simon, anything at all, you just let me know….”

Simon nodded, his throat tight. “As always, awareness of my role here is on a life-or-death, need-to-know basis only.”

“Of course,” Olsen said. “Not even the local police will know.” And then he added, “Thank you.”

“I’m a thankless guy, Scott. I thought you were smart enough to figure that out.”

He hung up. Glanced out the window. He’d missed the bus.

“Andrew, where’s the Zeidel file?” Sitting at her desk, Jan called to the attorney she’d hired straight out of law school several years before. He’d been her most trusted assistant and colleague ever since.

“I left it on the corner of your desk,” the red-haired young man said, appearing at her door. As usual, they were the only two people left in the office at almost six o’clock on this Tuesday evening. “Right where I always leave everything.” He came over, his brown slacks loose on his slim body, his tie perfectly knotted and dropping forward as he leaned down to sift through the pile he’d left in the box on her desk.