Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon(23)

“You don’t think this could be a real blackmail note, then?”

    I considered it.

“It’s possible, I suppose,” I said. “I didn’t know Ted that well, of course. But from what I did know of him… yeah, it’s possible. But I still think it’s more likely it was his idea of a practical joke. The man was an incurable practical joker.”

“Looks to me like someone figured out a cure,” the chief said, nodding toward the vacant mail cart. “You picked this up in an office?” he continued, turning to the officer.

“Yes, sir!” the officer said.

“Why don’t you go down and see if you can find whoever belongs to that office and bring him on up here.”

“Or her,” the officer added.

“Or her,” the chief said genially. “You run along down to the parking lot and find him or her. Of course,” he said, turning to me, “statistically speaking, around this place, the odds are the owner of the office is going to be a him.”

“About nineteen to one,” I agreed. “For some reason, we have a hard time getting women even to interview here, much less take jobs.”

“But it’s nice to see the troops are paying attention in all those expensive classes I send them to.”

    I nodded absently. I had a bad feeling about this. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the eager young officer returned escorting Rob.

“Hey, what’s up?” Rob said.

“You recognize this?” the chief asked, showing him the baggie.

    Rob peered at the paper inside the baggie and nodded. “Yeah, I found it in my in-basket last week,” he said.

“And did you comply with the blackmailer’s instructions?”

“Blackmailer?” Rob echoed. “You think this is a real blackmail note? Cool!”

“What did you think it was?”

“I figured it was someone’s idea of a joke,” Rob said. “Or maybe someone was putting together the evidence for a new trial.”

“A new trial?” the chief asked.

“A new fictitious trial for the Lawyers from Hell game,” I clarified.

“Yeah, exactly,” Rob said. “We have this subscription service for registered users, you see; they get to download two new cases a month from our Web site.”

“I see,” the chief said, looking disappointed. Why did I think he’d have liked it better if Rob’s past were filled with prosecutions for blackmail and indecent exposure and other lurid crimes? “So you never followed the blackmailer’s instructions?”

“No,” Rob said. “I didn’t realize it was a genuine blackmail note. Do you really think someone was trying to blackmail me?”

“You say it was found in your in-basket.”

“A whole lot of stuff ends up in my in-basket by mistake,” Rob said.

“Including the occasional bit of actual work,” I said.

“Yeah, probably,” Rob agreed. “Most people know better than to leave stuff there. I mean, if they really want me to see something, they usually just stop me in the halls and show me.”

“So when was the last time you cleaned out your in-basket?” the chief asked.

“July third,” Rob said promptly.

“That was six weeks ago,” the chief said. “You’re positive?”

“Absolutely,” Rob said, nodding.

“You cleaned out your in-basket the day before the Fourth of July?” I said. “What was it, some kind of declaration of independence from paper?”

“Actually I didn’t deliberately clean it out,” Rob said. “A bunch of us were fooling around with firecrackers in my office, and we set it on fire.”

“Your office?” the chief asked.

“Mainly just my desk,” Rob said. “But it burned up all the papers on my desk. Melted the in-basket, too. Had to get a new in-basket.”

“So this paper couldn’t possibly have been on your desk before July third, but it could have arrived there any time since.”

    Rob nodded.

“What nude pictures do you think this note refers to?”

    Rob shrugged.

“You’ve never, for example, posed for nude pictures?”

“Not since I was in college,” Rob said, as if it were ancient history, instead of less than a decade ago.

“You posed for nude pictures in college?” the chief said.

“I used to pose for life drawing classes to earn extra money,” Rob explained. “I expect there are a bunch of paintings of me.”

“Nude?”

“Some of them, yeah,” he said.