Carter & Lovecraft Read Online Free Page B

He’d only used such databases peripherally when he’d been a cop; usually somebody else was quite happy to do it. Now, however, he had a notebook full of passwords for privileged access databases that the public never got a sniff of, a notebook of the kind he had been told by his computer guy not to keep, as it was a bad security risk. Fuck that , thought Carter. How was he supposed to keep all those passwords straight otherwise?
    That morning he had a client turn up in the office, which was something that didn’t happen so much. Usually contact was made by phone or by e-mail. Perhaps only one in five clients, if that, actually wanted to sit in his office and talk to him, face-to-face.
    None of the one in five was ever a smoky femme fatale, talking in one-liners and sitting provocatively on the corner of his desk. The desk was from IKEA, as was the single filing cabinet where he kept hard copies of contracts, and so were the chairs on either side of his desk. None of them would have suited a sultry femme fatale disporting herself upon them. She would have seemed out of place in the pine-toned office, with its pine-toned furniture and the sandy-haired man behind the desk with the face of a poetic boxer, as an ex-girlfriend of Carter’s had once described him.
    This time it had been a woman in the uniform of a diner waitress on her midmorning break. She said she had finally had enough of her husband’s “fooling around,” but Carter saw that what she really resented was his reluctance to pull his weight. It wasn’t that her husband was fucking around, it was that he was doing it on her nickel. She wanted a divorce, and she wanted everything. Carter thought she had a good chance of getting it, too. He explained the legalities of what he did, and what sort of evidence would be necessary to get the day in court she wanted. He took her details and those of her husband, talked through what sort of plan he would use to gather evidence and how much it would come to. She didn’t balk when he mentioned money, which was good. She’d made some inquiries of her own, and had made sure she had the money available for his services. He understood he was being paid in better than a year’s tips; she had been planning this for a while.
    He saw her out, and crossed to the window to watch her leave the small office block’s side exit and walk to her car. He liked to do this; people skimmed his life at a tangent and then were gone again. It was easy to believe that they puffed into smoke when they walked out of his office. Watching them cross the parking lot kept them vital just a little bit longer.
    He watched her drive away in an old white Honda, turned, and found Henry Weston sitting quietly in the chair on the “client” side of the desk.
    *   *   *
    He didn’t know the man was Henry Weston at that point. He had no idea who Henry Weston was, nor had he ever heard of him. But now there was a man of about five feet six who couldn’t have been an ounce over 120 pounds, with neat dark hair parted on the left side, wearing a three-piece suit that wasn’t flashy, nor was it cheap.
    Carter hadn’t heard a thing. The spring in the door handle creaked when compressed. The upper hinge squeaked slightly. These were both noises to which he had grown very familiar over the last eighteen months.
    The man who would presently turn out to be Henry Weston smiled at Carter. It was a very open, disarming smile. Nothing smug or supercilious about it; it was the smile of a man who’d heard a good joke and wished to share it.
    “I’m sorry,” said Carter. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
    “I came in,” said the man, as if to reassure him.
    Carter didn’t need reassurance on that point, but it was kind of the man to offer it, all the same.
    “Can I help you, Mr.…?” Carter held out his hand.
    The man regarded it for a moment, then remembered his manners. He rose to his feet (the chair clicked a little when he rose, Carter thought.