The Final Twist

4

This was Colter Shaw’s mission. To check out each of the locations on his father’s map — there were eighteen of them — and find the evidence Amos Gahl had hidden.

As he now looked over the documents in the secret room of the safe house’s basement, he realized they had nothing to do with BlackBridge. They had to do with engineering projects and shipping. Some in English, some in Russian or perhaps another language using Cyrillic characters. Other printouts were in Spanish, a language that he could speak, and they related to shipping and transportation too. There were a number in Chinese as well.

Someone was using the secret room as a base of operations. One of the original members of his father’s circle? Or, like Shaw, second generation? A man or a woman? Young? Middle-aged? Some of these materials were dated recently. He turned to the duffel bag on the floor and — after an examination for a tripwire — unzipped it.

Inside was the answer to the question of gender. The clothing was a man’s, of larger-than-average physique. T-shirts, work shirts, cargo pants, jeans, sweaters, wool socks, baseball caps, gloves, casual jackets. Everything was black, charcoal gray or dark green.

Then he saw in the shadows against the back wall another stack of papers. Ah, here was his father’s material. It was Ashton from whom Shaw had learned the art of calligraphy, and the man wrote in a script even more elegant — and smaller — than Shaw’s.

His heart beat just a bit faster, seeing these.

Shaw carried the stack upstairs and set the papers on the rickety kitchen table. He sat down in an equally uncertain chair and began to read. There were more details about the UIP, and references to other schemes the company engaged in: dodgy earthquake inspections of high-rises (some located on the San Andreas Fault, no less), government contract kickbacks, land-use and zoning ploys, stock market manipulations, money laundering.

There was a clipping about the death of a California state assemblyman, with two question marks beside the victim’s picture. The man had died in a car crash on the way to meet with a state attorney general. The resulting fire had destroyed his auto and boxes of records he had with him. The crash was curious but no criminal investigation was begun.

He found as well articles about Todd Zaleski, his father’s former student turned city councilman whom Ashton believed was murdered by BlackBridge.

Everything he found hinted at the company’s guilt. But this wasn’t evidence — at least not enough for a prosecutor. Shaw had some experience on the topic of criminal law. After college he’d worked in a law firm, while deciding whether to take the LSATs and apply to law school. He’d been particularly inspired to study the subject by one Professor Sharphorn at the University of Michigan and thought he might take up the profession. In the end, his restless nature put the kibosh on a desk job, but an interest in the law stayed with him and he often read up on the subject; it was also helpful in his reward-seeking job.

No, nothing his father had found would interest the D.A.’s office.

Shaw then found a note, presumably from a colleague of Amos Gahl, intended for Ashton. It was a small sheet of paper folded many times. This no doubt meant it would have been left in a dead-drop, a spy technique of hiding communiqués under park benches or cracks in walls, avoiding the risk of electronic intercepts.