Ice Cap by Chris Knopf Page B

just wanted to talk.”
    â€œFairness and accuracy are hard work. That’s why I need to talk face-to-face. To get it right.”
    No way am I doing this, I said to myself while hearing my voice giving Angstrom directions to the Japanese restaurant below my office that often served as a conference room when conferring with people I didn’t trust. The owner, Mr. Sato, took a protective interest in me, which I nurtured and reciprocated with free legal advice for his employees, all of whom he’d brought over from his hometown in Japan. Thus adding a glancing familiarity with immigration law to my scattered résumé.
    â€œHope you have four-wheel drive,” I said to Angstrom. “We got a whompin’ mess of snow out here.”
    â€œSnow? Really? That’s exciting.”
    I said something lame and rushed him off the phone. I’d have plenty of chances later on to make a bigger ass out of myself.
    *   *   *
    My plan was to work at my desk for a few hours, catching up on my other cases and pretending not to be worried sick about Franco Raffini. The plan held firm at first, but then I found my attention drifting toward the window, which had a great view of a big windmill across the street. I did that for a while until my eyes were attracted by the security monitor glowing at me from the table next to my desk. It wasn’t a very scintillating video. I could switch from two views of the hallway to the area immediately beyond the outside door, which was a nearly undifferentiated field of white. I continued to look anyway, flicking between the cameras until assured of the senselessness of the pursuit. Then after going back to work for another half hour, it occurred to me I hadn’t reviewed the recordings made from the security cameras. It was good policy to review and delete the material to date to avoid running out of memory. It was an even better policy when I needed a break from busywork, which was most of the time.
    The people who sold me the system wisely included software that let me scan the recordings on my computer at high speed, automatically stopping at any important change in the image. These changes were then assembled into a thumbnail menu that you could sample all at once, drastically reducing review time.
    I fired up the program, then went back to my drudgery until a little ping told me the menu was ready to go. I clicked on the icon and the screen filled with fourteen static images labeled by time and date. Twelve of them were me coming and going, one was the FedEx guy dropping an envelope in a box I kept by the outside door, and the other showed the two guys I’d just missed seeing the other day. I checked the time code—they’d come back when I was over at Dayna’s.
    It was unmistakable; they were the same guys. And now I had their faces, clear as a bell, looking directly up at the camera. One was substantially shorter than the other. The taller one looked African American, though light-skinned, suggesting mixed heritage. The other was all white, with a round, brutish face, his mouth set in a semipermanent sneer.
    I pulled my robe tighter at the throat as if to shield myself from their staring eyes. Then with an unsteady hand I clicked on the static image. The video started with them walking into camera range. They looked from side to side, then at the door, feeling around the trim, but avoiding the doorknob. One of them finally looked up at the little hole that held the camera, pointing at it and saying something to the other guy. He nodded, and they left again.
    My breath caught in my throat as the implications settled in. I went back to the still image and downloaded it as a JPEG. I also downloaded the video segment of the two guys and disconnected the laptop to bring along with me before heading across the hall and diving into the shower.
    *   *   *
    While I owed my current job as a full-time defense attorney to Burton