A Private Eye Saves the Day
by Gina Marie Wylie
Copyright© 2020 by Gina Marie Wylie
A few weeks after Lydia had wound up the Linda Wallace case, she took Elizabeth to a special Thursday evening rehearsal for Elizabeth’s high school orchestra. Nearly a hundred kids, instruments in hand, were heading into the auditorium, a dress rehearsal for the fall concert the following Friday evening. Elizabeth had insisted that Lydia stay for the rehearsal, so Lydia took one of the zillion empty seats in the auditorium.
Not many parents stayed; most of those that did seemed to be helping in some fashion or other. Lydia took her notebook and wrote in big letters: BE THERE FOR THE KIDS. She contemplated the admonition to herself for a few moments, remembering with fondness her mother’s applause and happiness when Lydia had played the flute, briefly, in 7th grade and the pride her father had beamed at any of them when they’d taken part in any sort of school activity.
Lydia realized she hadn’t seen one of Rico’s football games during the fall. Then and there she made a vow to never miss another. Never. She underlined the words she’d written three times.
A man sat down next to her and she glanced at him, curious. There were a lot of empty seats in the auditorium he could have picked instead of the one he had. He was in his mid-40s, dressed in charcoal gray slacks, a white turtleneck, and a sport coat. All were of good quality.
On stage the kids were still tuning up; there was no one at the conductor’s podium as yet. “Excuse me, are you Lydia Hernandez?” the man asked softly.
Lydia nodded, hoping this wasn’t from her brief exposure to fame in the Wallace case. In a way, it was.
“My daughter Shannon plays the clarinet in the orchestra,” he gestured to the stage. “She sits next to your sister.”
Lydia glanced up; Elizabeth was chatting animatedly to the girl next to her. For Elizabeth, that was something. Elizabeth wasn’t as shy as Nita, but she was definitely never going to be mistaken for an extrovert.
“They call themselves the Gang of Four,” the man added. “Besides playing clarinet, they are all rather, ah, petite.”
Lydia grinned slightly, eying the other. “In your daughter’s case, she has some hope. Elizabeth, alas, hasn’t.”
The man grinned, shaking his head. “My wife is about your size.” He nodded and held out his hand. “I’m Jason McCulloch.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. McCulloch,” Lydia said politely, shaking the proffered hand. He was, she thought, trying to be friendly to someone his daughter played with.
“Shannon told me the other day that you’re a detective with a doctorate in computer science.”
“A wanna-be private investigator who dropped out of college just before she had to prove her thesis,” Lydia said, deprecatingly.
“But you’ve put people in jail,” Jason was succinct. It hadn’t been a question.
“The police have put people in jail. Sometimes. As my partners are fond of saying, police work isn’t like the movies or TV. Even when you think you know who did something, proving it is a whole other ball game.”
“I am President of the Constellation Corporation. We are a medium-sized company that makes extruded plastic parts to very fine tolerances. We have a situation I’d like to talk to you about.” He waved at the stage, where someone was standing now at the podium, leafing through music.
“I realize this isn’t the proper venue for a business meeting. But I rather hoped to impose on my daughter and your sister’s friendship to at least get a friendly hearing.”
Lydia shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
The conductor raised his baton, and the man next to her whispered, “If we talk now, we’ll get thrown out.” He grinned and Lydia smiled back.
The orchestra ran through a piece. Lydia frowned. It was rather ragged. The conductor seemed to think so too, and for a few minutes they worked on this and that, then ran through the whole thing again. It sounded much better.
The conductor announced the next piece and everyone changed music. Jason said quietly, “This next piece. This is the one.”
The orchestra played through it, and a minute or so into the piece, Lydia heard the same notes she’d been hearing from Elizabeth’s room for weeks. It was just Elizabeth playing! A solo! It wasn’t very long, and then the girl next to her played, Shannon? Then Elizabeth played again, the only instrument in the orchestra playing, then another girl behind Elizabeth played. She was, Lydia thought idly, also rather diminutive. And then a final long series of notes from a fourth girl. The orchestra reached the end of the piece, and the conductor stood for a second and announced the next piece.
“I suppose we’ll get in trouble if we clap?” Lydia asked, and Jason McCulloch nodded, grinning. “I’m tempted anyway,” Lydia told him.
“Tomorrow.”
In any case, the orchestra rapidly began the third piece. It was nice, Lydia thought, and she paid more attention now to who was playing when. After an hour, the conductor called a break.
“Shannon wanted to be first chair clarinet since grade school. She cried the night she came home after the first orchestra practice this year; she just cried for hours.” The man was looking steadily at Lydia; “Said she wanted it so badly, and that there was just no way; the new girl, Elizabeth, was a million times better than she was.”
“Shannon is an only child, and my wife and I have each tried to show up the other in how much we can spoil her. I think we’ve failed.” He grimaced. “Instead of hating your sister, they’ve become best friends.”
Elizabeth appeared, with a group of three other girls following her. “Lydia, this is Shannon McCulloch.” She nodded to the short blonde girl that Jason had said was his. “Amanda Betancourt and Janet Reese.” Amanda was the tallest of the quartet; perhaps five three. Dark, darker even than Elizabeth. Janet Reese was heavier, a bit, than the other three, but not by much.
“What did you think, Lydia?” Elizabeth asked.
“Mr. McCulloch said I’d probably get tossed out if I clapped. I wanted to, anyway.” Elizabeth beamed. “You were all good, very good,” Lydia continued. “I wished I’d played half as well when I was in school.” All of them beamed at the praise, then ran off together.
“Amanda’s parents were in the Peace Corps together in India.” Jason murmured. “And they brought her home from there. The story they told...” He shook his head in disbelief. “They went into an abortion clinic and the floor was covered with dead and dying babies. Dozens, hundreds. Girls, all girls.” He sighed. “They found a dozen or so that were still alive. They took them to an orphanage and got into mega-trouble. They were kicked out of the country.” He looked at Lydia. “That was one day in one clinic. There are dozens of those clinics in every large city; they have a lot of large cities in India.”
Lydia tried to picture the scene in her mind; she turned pale. “Dear God!” Her voice was a faint whisper, her whole body shaking.
“Joe’s worked with me for a dozen years. He tells me that the most difficult thing he will ever do will be telling Amanda where she came from.”
Lydia looked at him. “I can only speak for myself. My parents, Elizabeth’s, were killed in a traffic accident a year ago. I thought I was going to die when they told me. Then I wanted to hug my brothers and sisters and somehow pretend it hadn’t happened. It did, though. It did happen.” She looked the man in the eye. “He should tell her now. Now. Today.”
“How about yesterday?”
Lydia was nonplussed. “Yesterday, today. It will never get better, it will never get easier. It does, though, get easier to put off.”
Jason turned around, startling Lydia, to speak to someone behind them. “Well, Joe, that’s two votes for yesterday.”
Lydia turned to look. The man was tall, thin, and well, dusty looking. He had probably been a hippie, she thought, back in the 70s.
The man nodded and sighed. “I have nightmares thinking about it. My wife...” He shook his head. “It took nearly a year of therapy before she could look at a doctor without picking up something large and heavy.”
The man behind them nodded at Lydia. “Jason’s been at us for years. Good arguments. You...” He looked so sad, Lydia thought, “you said it only gets easier to put off. Truer words have never been spoken. I tell myself, I can’t do it tonight. Tomorrow? Amanda has her concert tomorrow. Why spoil it for her? And the day after, she’ll have come home from the concert, happy and glowing with pride and pleasure. How could we ruin that for her? And the day after that will be Sunday and we’ll be in church, giving thanks to God she’s with us, and not...” There were tears in his eyes. “There is no good time, ever.” He took a deep breath. “Some people never even tell the kids they were adopted.”
“Amanda has probably noticed,” Jason said with a small smile.
Afterwards, Lydia nodded politely to the others and took Elizabeth home. “Tell me about your friends,” she asked as she drove. For the first time in a long time, Lydia saw something like genuine animation on her sister’s face. Elizabeth talked about them, all of them. Girl things, mostly. Clothes and classes, boys and makeup. Music, first and foremost.
Friday at the concert, they were there, even Rodrigo. Rod had brought along a girl who wore a dress enormously shorter than Lydia had ever seen worn on a live person before, not to mention heavy purple eye shadow and deep red lipstick smeared across her lips. Only the twins hadn’t come. “Previous dates,” they had said. As if this concert hadn’t been on the calendar since school started!
Lydia was standing with the boys and Nita when the man Joe came over to them, trailing a tall, thin, dark woman, her arm around Amanda’s shoulder. For the first time, Lydia noticed the odd gait Amanda walked with. Her father introduced Lydia as Elizabeth’s sister. Amanda had brightened, shaking Lydia’s hand. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
“She went to get ready,” Lydia said. “She didn’t want to take a chance on getting her dress messed up, so she’s changing.”
Amanda grinned and ran off. Not the carefree abandon the most kids managed, but with an odd, rolling gait. Something was wrong with one of her legs. The picture flashed in Lydia’s mind of the babies lying on the floor, like hair in a beauty salon. Who would be careful with a baby you were just dropping on the floor? To be swept up and emptied into the dustbin? She gagged.
“Miss Hernandez, this is my wife, Miri.”
By reflex alone, Lydia managed to hold out her hand, trying hard not to let her emotions show. “Please, it’s just Lydia.”
“Thank you.” The woman’s eyes were sad, Lydia thought. Reminding her a little of Mrs. Wallace’s.
Her husband shrugged. “We told Amanda last night. Do you know what she said?” Lydia could only shake her head. “‘Oh Mom, that must have been horrible for you.’” His eyes showed the pain he felt, yet at the same time, there was more. “Her first thought was for Miri, not herself.” He sounded pleased and amazed at the same time.
“Kids are tough,” Lydia said.
Miri repeated, “Thank you again.”
Joe added, “Also, I have a message for you. From Tom Leech: ‘Hello, Lydia, why haven’t you called?’”
Lydia giggled. “I procrastinate myself!”
“Has Jason talked to you about our situation?” Joe started.
Jason McCulloch appeared, a very petite woman by his side. “If you’re talking business, Joe, I’m going to have to dock your pay!” He shook his finger at Joe in mock anger.
“We told Amanda.”
Jason McCulloch grinned, then when he heard the outcome, took Joe and hugged him. Lydia was a little nonplussed; she’d never seen grown men hug before.
The woman next to Jason smiled. “They’re always like that. They spent eight years in the Air Force together, and they’ve never been able to stop telling stories ever since.” She held out her hand. “Susan McCulloch.”
“Lydia Hernandez.”
“One of the women in my office, Jacque Weaver, conveys her regards, and she also has a question: what is going to happen to the diaries? I confess, I’d like to know the answer to that myself.”
Jacque Weaver had been the City Prosecutor who’d dealt with Bruce Crane. Lydia shrugged. “I returned the originals to Mr. and Mrs. Wallace. The choice is up to them.”
“What diaries? Is this business? I’m going to take some people here and throw them into a pond if they don’t stop talking business!” Jason chided them.
“If we’re going to find good seats, we probably should go in,” Joe said.
They ended up sitting together, and afterwards, Jason McCulloch had grinned. “That was fantastic, girls!” The girls beamed. “I was thinking, just now, that I’m just dying for some Chinese! Would anyone like to go out and have a late dinner?”
It was an interesting evening, one that Lydia thoroughly enjoyed. Lydia respected Jason’s request not to talk business over dinner with the three daughters present and promised that she would come into their office on Monday.
Monday morning, Lydia was up early and was sitting at the kitchen table, helping get the kids out the door when Denny came in and sat down. Nita ran and got him a cup of coffee, and Elizabeth put in some toast.
“They’re spoiling me,” Denny grumped, good-naturedly. He glanced at Lydia. “Are they always like this?”
“Well...” Lydia started to say, but Elizabeth stuck her tongue out at her. “Not always.”
Denny munched a piece of toast and sipped the coffee, then grimaced. “Decaf.”
“The doctor said regular was bad for you,” Nita told him gravely. Lydia glanced at her youngest sister ... that was the first time in a year that Nita had said something in Lydia’s hearing without having been asked first.
“It might be bad for me, but at least it doesn’t taste like wet cardboard,” Denny grumbled. He turned his eyes to Lydia. “You’re going on a client visit this morning?”
Lydia nodded. “I think so. They were kind of vague. I was intent on enjoying the concert, which really was very enjoyable.” Elizabeth looked up and beamed.
“Mind if I tag along?” Denny asked.
Lydia looked up at him. “No, of course not. I wouldn’t mind tagging along with you, either.”
“Reed has been getting all the fun,” Denny continued. “He’s the only one who gets to see you work. I thought it would be nice for a change if I got to watch.”
The building, when they pulled up to it, was different than practically anything Lydia had seen in Phoenix before. It was large, very large. It was classic red brick, two stories tall, covering an acre or so. They walked inside, found the receptionist, and moments later they were in Jason McCulloch’s office.
Joe was there as well. At a nod from Jason, Joe closed the door behind them. “I’m sorry,” Jason told them, looking a bit grim. “We’ve had problems. Very serious problems.”
“Start from the beginning,” Denny inquired. “What kind of problems?”
Jason steepled his fingers, and Lydia smiled to herself. She knew what that meant!
“We’ve been in business for twelve years. Joe and I put the money we’d saved when we were in the service together to get us going. We make plastic extrusion parts and aluminum stampings. Joe’s fascinated with computers and electronics; he was my crew chief in the Air Force. He’s done our data processing since the beginning. I’ve always liked to boss people around, so I’m CEO.
“Better him than me,” Joe said morosely. “I thought DP was a cush job -- at least until lately.”
Jason went on. “We’ve steadily grown over the years, averaging about ten percent a year. The last few years, we’ve really hit our stride and it’s been closer to 20%. Two years ago we decided we needed a bigger plant and looked around. We found this place. During World War Two it was a factory making aircraft electronics for the government. During the early 50’s, more of the same. Then they closed it down. The last company that leased the building from the government had fallen on hard times.” He grinned. “They made propellers.” Everyone laughed.
“We sublet the building eighteen months ago. Neither Joe nor I are fond of debt; we never had the cash flow to justify a computer before, but when we moved here, things were looking up. We’d used service bureaus before. Joe convinced me we could do better, quicker, cheaper with our own machine. So we leased an IBM System 38.”
“I know that one,” Lydia said, grinning at Joe.
“Yes. Well, Joe was right. In six months, it went from an expensive gizmo to a critical part of the business. We had a few problems at first. IBM told us it was because we were in the main part of the warehouse, and the environment was dirty. We needed cleaner power and less dust in the air. Six months ago, we completed work on a computer room. Separate, it has its own power, air conditioning, and has filtered air. The whole nine yards. It cost a bunch, but by then, I was as convinced as Joe.
“We moved the machine not quite six months ago. For about a month, everything was great. A couple of minor problems, nothing major. Teething problems, we thought. But the problems continued. Sometimes we’d run a report in the morning and then again in the afternoon, and the numbers would be different when there should have been no difference.
“Programs would stop with errors where there shouldn’t have been errors. It’s gotten slowly worse. IBM has been out a hundred times. They’ve looked at the disk drives, at the CPU, at everything they can think of. They changed out damn near everything. Finally, a month ago, we had a meeting with the IBM regional manager, and for the first time, he suggested that perhaps what we were looking at was sabotage. Someone inside, deliberately messing with the computer.
“We put in more safeguards. It kept getting worse. Not dramatically, but every day, it seemed like something new would happen.”
“Jason even suspected me,” Joe said quietly. “But that was okay, because I was watching him.” He grinned. “I talked to Tom Leech; he said when you worked for him, you suspected everyone.”
Jason went on, “I swear that no one is sabotaging the computer. I’ve known Joe since high school. I can and have trusted Joe with my life.”
“Every time you flew,” Joe said without heat.
“Yep. And a couple of special times, too. Look, we put security guards in the computer room at night. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters. In the morning, the data is messed up. The backups are messed up. The programs are messed up. Joe is the only person in the computer department from six months ago who is still working for us. Everyone else quit, disgusted with the lack of trust. In the last week or so, we can’t run a program twice and get the same results. Most of the time, the programs need to be recompiled just to run. Half the time, the programs need to be fixed because there are errors in the source.
“Ghosts, gremlins, saboteurs. Who knows?” Jason said. “All I know is that it’s killing our company. We didn’t try to hide what was happening; everyone knows. Everyone knows we’re still looking. We’ve lost something like a tenth of our employees. Some of the people we’ve lost had been with us since we started.”
“When Jason said he wanted someone outside to help, I was as desperate as he was,” Joe said. “I asked around; Tom Leech, among others. Your name came up. Then Jason’s daughter mentioned you, then Susan. So we thought, what the hell, we’re desperate. Everything the two of us have worked to build for more than a decade is going down the toilet. This isn’t about my ego as an electronics whiz, who should have some clue as to what’s going on; it isn’t Jason’s fault for trying to find out what’s happening.
“It is, though, happening. We’re going down the tubes.” He looked at Jason, who nodded. “Right now, we’d give anything, anything to find out what’s going on. Business has been severely affected; customer service, productivity -- you name it.”
“Anything,” Denny said, “that’s a very nice price. I think we can probably quote you something a little lower than that.” There were smiles, but they were forced.
A little while later, Joe led Lydia and Denny into the computer room, Jason begging off, explaining he had to try to stem the tide of red ink. The computer room was deep inside the building, with no windows to the outside, but there were windows on three sides, looking out on the factory floor. “Everything we’ve done has been a screw-up,” Joe said dejectedly. “Originally, we used regular partitions; we put up the glass when we knew we were having a problem. The big mistake, though, was asking anyone walking by to report anything suspicious.”
“A shortage of reports?” Denny asked.
Joe shook his head. “No, a surplus.”
Lydia felt a little ill, imagining what it must have been like. It would have been amazing if anyone had stayed.
For two hours, she listened and watched as Joe went over the history of what had happened.
There was a programmer, a contractor, who sat at the operator’s console and checked to see if any of the batch jobs had ended abnormally every few minutes. When he found one, he’d recompile the program and restart it. Most times, that worked. Occasionally, the program wouldn’t compile, and Joe would go in and look at the problem and usually be able to fix it.
“It’s random bits being twiddled. I shut down the system, thinking we had something like a computer virus. Except IBM says it’s not possible. We had a dedicated phone line with four drops to some of our larger customers, sixteen remote terminals spread among them. Now it’s zero and zero. We’ve been using faxes for the last few weeks.”
“Oh, right, not possible!” Lydia snarled. “Leaving out the empirical evidence otherwise. IBM has never impressed me; one of these days, someone’s going to clean their clock.”
The other grinned. “Yes, well, we shut it all down. There is nothing running on the box I don’t know about. Yet, programs and data are still being corrupted.”
“Is everything journaled?”
Joe sniffed. “Yes; doesn’t help. The changes aren’t showing up in the journals. A week ago, I journaled the source libraries.” Lydia knew that was supposed to be a big no-no, since it used so many system resources. “Changes happen to journaled files, data, or source, and those changes aren’t reflected in the journals. IBM had people here all last week, and they couldn’t figure out how it was happening. It’s impossible, they said. Yet every day -- right under their noses, right under mine -- it’s happening. They are going to be back later this week with another team. IBM is perplexed, that’s what they told us. They were perplexed.”
Lydia looked around the room. There were three walls of glass, and the other was a long wall of brick. “What’s on the other side of that?”
Joe laughed. “You got me.”
Both Lydia and Denny turned to him.
“There’s an area on the plans that is bricked off. It’s a shaft or maybe an old vault; this was a secret installation during WW II and into the late fifties.”
Lydia walked over to the brick, studied it for a few seconds. They were just plain red bricks, although not weathered. They had been recently painted over. She ran her fingers over the wall. Curious, she rested her fingers against the bricks for a moment.
Seeing her interest, Denny did the same thing. Just brick, he thought.
“You have building plans?” Lydia asked Joe, who nodded and led them down the hallway, away from the computer room.
“This is Ned Armstrong,” Joe informed her, “our industrial engineer. Ned, could we see the building plans?”
The other nodded and waved at a trestle table with blueprints spread across them. For a few minutes, Lydia looked at the plans, then up at Joe. “You have no idea what’s behind there?”
“Nope. As I said, the consensus is that it used to be a vault, and they bricked it up sometime during the fifties.”
“Thirty feet long, twenty wide. And you’ve never tried to see what’s inside?”
Ned Armstrong shook his head. “No, no reason. We lease the building; we’ve never needed the space.”
Denny sniffed, and Lydia grinned.
“Events of unknown cause, happening next to a wall with something unknown on the other side.” Lydia tapped the plans. “If I were an Egyptologist and this was King Tut’s tomb and I saw this...” She shook her head and laughed. “I’d be salivating and calling for the jackhammers. Curse of the Mummy be damned!”
Joe shrugged. “It’s a vault!” He waved towards the door. “Come!” They followed him as he led them back towards the computer room. This time, they approached from the factory side. Again, more bricks, but with a set of steps that ran up one side of the wall.
“Up!” Joe ordered, but Denny immediately demurred.
“Stairs are currently not a wise idea for Denny,” Lydia explained without explaining, but she did follow Joe up, though.
Just as they got to the last few steps, Joe stopped. “We do a number of specialty castings for some of our larger customers. Ones they need yesterday, if not sooner, but are expensive enough that they don’t want to keep spares themselves.” He shrugged. “So, we have some already made up. We keep them up here where they are out of the way, but still handy.” He gestured to their left, at the bricks.
Lydia saw that the bricks ended, and there was an interface between them and raw concrete. Just with her eye, the concrete looked like it was two feet thick. “This has just got to be a vault, look at the ceiling,” Joe said.
Lydia nodded, staring at the concrete intently. She glanced along the wall, visible in the somewhat dim lights of the warehouse. She reached out and touched the concrete, then went up the remaining stairs and looked around the expanse. After a bit, she knelt and touched the concrete again, before finally standing up.
“How old is this?”
Joe shrugged. “I’m not sure. Come here.” He led the way towards one corner and stopped. Below was nothing but empty space; there was no railing. “Look.” Joe pointed down.
Lydia dropped to one knee to see better. Three letters drawn in the concrete: “JTM.” Underneath those was “‘56” and underneath the numbers was what looked like three thumbprints pressed into the concrete, each thumbprint 120 degrees offset from the other. It looked like some odd flower, Lydia thought.
Lydia walked back to the stairs, thinking hard. She glanced down at Denny, calling to him. “Denny, we need an outside thermometer. Could you see if they have one?”
Denny nodded and turned to Ned, who shrugged and went to find one. A few minutes later, Lydia put the thermometer down against the concrete floor. Joe watched without speaking. “Why?” The word seemed to hurt coming out.
“Because the concrete is warm. Because the bricks in the computer room are warm.”
“It’s nearly summertime,” Joe said quietly. “It’s just a little warm outside.”
“Yep. And if we were outside, there would be no problem.” Lydia waved around them. “I don’t see any sunlight.”
Since that was self-evident, Joe kept a stiff lip and didn’t say anything. Lydia looked up after about five minutes. “Steady at a bit less than a hundred and ten.”
Lydia went downstairs, Joe following. “I’d like someone to check the thermometer every hour and write down the time and temperature,” Lydia told him.
He frowned. “Why?”
“Lydia asked,” Denny told him reasonably. “I can do it if you like. I’m not much of a hand with computers, but I can read a thermometer. Of course, I’m going to charge a hundred an hour, or my daily per diem of $300.”
Joe looked at Denny and grinned. “I think I see your point. I’ll have one of the warehouse people do it. There’s always someone here.”
Denny looked at him without expression. “My doctor says it’s really important for stroke patients to do as much as possible. I wouldn’t mind.”
Lydia turned from that and gestured at the wall. “If you wanted to cut through this, how long would it take?”
The other snorted. “I have no idea. A vault, who knows?”
“Could I get a ladder and a hammer?” She motioned towards the edge of the brick area facing the main factory floor.
He blinked, nodded. A few minutes later, Lydia climbed up, trying not to be too nervous. She tapped lightly on the spot she wanted, but nothing happened. She hit harder, and pieces of concrete flew off, some of them hitting her in the face. She closed her eyes the next time and missed her stroke. After five or six tries, she had what she wanted. She had them move the ladder further along one of the long sides and climbed up again and banged away some more.
When she was down, Joe went up, looked at what she’d hit. It was the tail end of a piece of rebar steel; not too surprising on a concrete slab. He came back down, and Lydia nodded at Denny. “I’d like to talk to my partner for a few minutes. Maybe we’ll get some lunch,” her voice was neutral and as uninflected as she could make it. Joe could tell that she thought something was up, but he had no idea what. He waved at Ned, and the two of them walked away.
“Denny, do you know anything about vaults?” Lydia asked her partner when they were alone.
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