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“Looks like Geddings was stealing medication from the Institute and selling it,” Pallas said.
“That’s how I would have written this scene.” Ambrose put the vial back into the container and replaced the lid. He aimed the flashlight into the go bag again. “Jodi Luckhurst was right about one thing. People in the drug trade do like guns.” He took out the pistol and checked it. “Loaded. He must have figured that if he ever needed it he would be in a hurry.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Pallas said. “If his gun is here it means he didn’t have it with him when he went to the asylum to meet you.”
“Maybe he wasn’t expecting trouble that day. But it’s more likely he had another gun. He was ex-military and he was dealing drugs. Trust me, he would have been well-armed.”
Pallas examined the last item in the go bag, a small black case. She picked it up and opened it. There was one object inside, along with a sticky note.
“A memory card,” she said. She held up the tiny digital storage device. “Whatever is on here was valuable enough to be included in Geddings’s go bag.”
Ambrose picked up the sticky note. “Two initials:AandD.”
“Ambrose Drake,” Pallas said.
“There’s also a date.”
Pallas met his eyes. “Is it—?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s the night I spent in the Carnelian Sleep Institute.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Excitement slammed throughAmbrose. “This is it,” he said. “This is what we came here to find.”
“Maybe,” Pallas said.
“There’s no other explanation for the initials and the date,” Ambrose said. “Whatever is on the card has to be the information Geddings intended to sell to me.”
“If the memory card he planned to sell to you is here in his go bag, what was he going to give you when he met you at the asylum?” Pallas asked.
“A copy. I told you, that’s the beauty of selling information. You can duplicate it as often as you want.”
“True,” she said.
“And why wouldn’t he have wanted to keep a copy for himself? After all, if it’s worth a lot of money to me, there’s a good chance it implicates someone else, someone who could be blackmailed. Fenner, for example.”
She whistled softly. “You’re right.”
He looked at her. “If it hadn’t been for you I would never have found this. I owe you.”
Her mouth tightened. “We’re partners.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe you.”
“Forget it. This is what I do.” She waved a hand in a vague gesture aimed at the smuggling tunnel. “I find hot spots.”
She was looking irritated again, but this wasn’t the time to try to figure out why. He slipped the small memory card case into the pocket of his jacket and dropped the plastic container with the medication vials inside back into the go bag.
“If we give the meds to the police we’re likely to get dragged into a drug case that will screw up our own investigation,” Pallas warned. “We might even end up getting arrested. Trust me, I know how these things work.”
Her grim tone snagged his attention. He looked at her. “The Saltwood case?”
“Yes.” She eyed the tunnel. “There’s another problem. Those booby-trapped steps are a serious hazard. It’s pure luck that no one stumbled over that trip wire before we got here. What if some transients trying to get out of the rain break in or a couple of local kids decide it would be fun to take a look inside the house and accidentally find the tunnel?”
“Don’t know about you, but my skill set does not include the dismantling of explosives.”
“Neither does mine,” she said. “We don’t have any choice, do we?”
