Evelyn approached. She eyed the paper. “This way.”
She put me in a conference room and gave me water in a compostable cup.
“We’ll be ready in a second.”
Thirty minutes later she returned with reinforcements. Olivia from HR fanned out a sheaf of waivers and NDAs. Rita from Legal stood by as I signed them. Harold from IT opened up a laptop.
“This is Luke’s?” I said.
“You don’t need the physical device to access his data,” Harold said. “Everything’s in the cloud.”
Apart from a trip to Portland at the end of the month, my brother had no travel scheduled.
“What about his meetings yesterday and today?” I asked.
“He’s been out of office,” Evelyn said.
“Did he call in? Or cancel?”
“You’d have to ask the people he was supposed to meet with.”
“Great. Can we do that?”
A beat. Evelyn glanced at Olivia, who glanced at Rita.
Harold picked at his chapped lips.
Rita said, “May I ask what the purpose of this is?”
“I told Evelyn. We don’t know where he is. It’d help to know who’s seen or spoken to him.”
“You’re a police officer?”
“I’m his brother and I’m here as a private citizen.”
“Be that as it may, I’m not comfortable with you interrogating our employees.”
“It’s not an interrogation. Nobody’s under arrest. It’s a yes — no: Did Luke make his meetings or not? It doesn’t have to be me who asks them. You do it. Or ask Scott. He’ll be happy to help.”
Three heads rotated toward the glass pod, where Scott could be seen at a distance, pacing and fluttering his pink broadcloth arms like a tropical fish in a tank.
Harold tore off a piece of skin. His lip bled and he dabbed at it with the hem of his hoodie.
Rita said, “Let’s hurry it up, please.”
Evelyn took out her phone. She checked the laptop screen and thumbed a message. A moment later the phone emitted a cutesy bubble-popping noise.
She checked the laptop, thumbed again. Pop.
Olivia smiled at no one. Rita stared at the floor, wishing she billed by the hour.
Harold was rolling the piece of skin between his fingertips like a tiny joint.
Pop, pop, pop.
“No,” Evelyn said at last.
“He didn’t call in.”
She shook her head.
“Didn’t cancel.”
“Everyone’s telling me he never showed up.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s check his inbox.”
Harold flicked away the skin, opened the mail client, and slid the laptop to me.
Evelyn, Olivia, and Rita drifted forward to read over my shoulder.
I turned in my chair. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to respect Luke’s privacy.”
Evelyn stepped back. Olivia stepped back.
Rita threw me a look of loathing and stepped back.
Luke’s mailboxes were untouched since Saturday. Ditto the documents and chat feeds.
No mention of the Camaro anywhere. Nothing to or from Rory Vandervelde. For that Luke more likely would have used his personal email.
Thinking he might have used one account as a backup for the other, I opened the login page in a new window and keyed in lukeedison29. I clicked FORGOT PASSWORD? and followed the steps.
A few seconds later a recovery link showed up in his work inbox.
I clicked it.
The screen prompted me for a code sent to his phone.
Accounts and usernames and passwords and PINs, a giant knot of electronic yarn.
“Say I did want to find the physical device,” I said to Harold. “The computer he uses belongs to you? Do you have a way to track it?”
“As long as it’s actively connected to the internet.” He drew the laptop over, typed, shook his head. “Off-line.”
“Are we almost done?” Rita asked.
Harold said, “What about his phone?”
“I don’t know where it is,” I said.
“Do you want to know?” He angled the screen out to show an employee profile, tabs for payroll and benefits and so forth. Under the PROPERTY tab, two entries appeared.
MacBook Air LOCK — ERASE — LOCATE
iPhone 11 LOCK — ERASE — LOCATE
“We don’t issue employee phones,” Olivia said.
“You did to Luke,” Harold said.
I believed Olivia from HR that Bay Area Therapeutics did not issue phones, and I believed Harold from IT that they’d made an exception in my brother’s case. He’d been hard up when Scott made him employee number nineteen. Probably Scott had said something to soften the impression of charity. Just till you get back on your feet.
They’d since forgotten about it. Or maybe they justified the perk on the grounds that Luke made a lot of work calls. Andrea would have her own phone plan, predating their relationship.
I pulled the laptop over and clicked LOCATE.
A new window opened, a map marked with a red pin: Castro Valley, south of the freeway.
“That’s where it is?” I said.
“It’s where it was, last time it pinged,” Harold said. “It might not be there anymore.”
I clicked the pin, bringing up coordinates and a timestamp.
Monday, October 2, 12:04 a.m.
Chapter 9
Situated due east of San Leandro, Castro Valley is the first of several bedroom communities strung along the 580 Tri-Valley Corridor. Our high schools had a rivalry. In Luke’s final game before he dropped out, he got tossed for clotheslining their point guard.
To everyone else in attendance it must have seemed like he’d picked a strange moment to lash out. We were up by double digits with two minutes left on the clock. To me — sitting on the bench, watching it happen — the gesture made a perverse kind of sense. I wouldn’t have done it. But it resonated at center of my id. He and I had learned to play against each other, battering like bighorn sheep, our blood staining the driveway concrete. There were no fouls called. Fouls were for pussies. Get hit? Hit back. Hit first. Don’t wait. Suckers waited.
Then came middle school, Saturdays at the park, developing a fluent two-man game, running rings around the competition; misdirecting, talking trash, calling out schemes in a shorthand akin to the language of twins. Becky or bubble referred to Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” and meant: Set a back screen. We had lyrics for a pick-and-roll, a pick-and-pop, a give-and-go, V-cut, switch. The code was elaborate and protean. You had to be inside our heads. And then, older and taller, riding the bus to Mosswood, the most storied game in Northern California. For two kids playing against grown men, the atmosphere was Darwinian.
Hit first. Hit hard.
So while I considered it dumb of Luke to swing his arm, and felt smug in the belief that I had greater self-control, I also appreciated the act’s internal logic. It was an act of self-preservation, programmed by years of battling for dominance and status; the act of a competitor.
It’s not enough to defeat an opponent. You have to degrade him. Tear out his heart.
The competitor in me also understood that Luke’s loss was my gain. The conference board suspended him for three games. Coach gave me the next start. I never gave it back.
Past the main Castro Valley shopping district, suburban tracts dissolved and died out. The earth rose up in welts. Then began five depopulated, mountainous miles.
Take the exit for Eden Canyon Road.
Off-ramp signs pointed left for food and lodging, right for gas.
Turn right.
I came to a deserted intersection.
You have arrived at your destination.