Company Man (20 page)

Sergeant Jack Noyce pulled Audrey into his glass-walled office, which was not much bigger than Audrey's cubicle. He had it outfitted with an expensive-looking sound system, though, a top-of-the-line DVD player and speakers. Noyce loved his audio equipment, and he loved music. Sometimes Audrey would see him with his headphones on, enjoying music, or listening to the speakers with the office door closed.

As head of the Major Case Team, he had all sorts of administrative responsibilities and more than a dozen cops to supervise, and he spent much of his day in meetings. Music—Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Charlie Mingus, Thelonious Monk, all the jazz piano greats—seemed to be his only escape.

A piece was playing quietly on Noyce's stereo, a beautiful and soulful rendition of the ballad “You Go to My Head,” a pianist doing the melody.

“Tommy Flanagan?” Audrey said.

Noyce nodded. “You close your eyes, and you're back in the Village Vanguard.”

“It's lovely.”

“Audrey, you haven't said anything about Bugbee.” His sad eyes, behind thick aviator-framed glasses, shone with concern.

“It's okay,” she said.

“You'd tell me if it wasn't, right?”

She laughed. “Only if I couldn't take it anymore.”

“The practical jokes seem to have stopped.”

“Maybe he got tired of them.”

“Or maybe he's learned to respect you.”

“You give him way too much credit,” she said with a laugh.

“And you're the one who's supposed to believe in the possibility of redemption. Listen, Audrey—you guys went over to Stratton?”

“Now don't tell me he's filling you in on every step we take.”

“No. I got a call from the security director at Stratton.”

“Rinaldi.”

“Right. You talked to him, and then you both went over to talk to Nicholas Conover.”

“What'd he call you for?”

“He says you just showed up and waited for Conover outside a board meeting? That true?”

She felt a prickle of defensiveness. “That was my decision. I wanted to avoid any prepared answers, any coordination.”

“I'm not following.” Noyce took off his glasses and began rubbing at them with a little cleaning cloth.

“I'd already talked to Rinaldi, and something didn't sit right with me. I can't explain it.”

“You don't need to. Gut instinct.”

“Right.”

“Which ninety percent of the time doesn't pan out. But hey.” He smiled. “You take what you get.”

“I didn't want Rinaldi talking to his boss and getting his story straight.”

“So you just ambushed the CEO outside the boardroom?” Noyce laughed quietly.

“I just thought if we set up a meeting with him in advance, he'd call his security director and say, What's this about?”

“Still not following. You telling me you think the CEO of Stratton's got something to do with this case?”

She shook her head. “No, of course not. But there may be some connection. A couple of days before Stadler's death, there was an incident at Nicholas Conover's house. Someone slaughtered the family dog and dumped it in the swimming pool.”

Noyce winced. “My God. Was it Stadler?”

“We don't know. But this was just the latest of a long series of incidents at the Conover house since they moved in, about a year ago. Up till now it's been graffiti, nothing stolen, no violence. But each time, our uniformed division was notified—and we haven't done a thing. They didn't even print the knife that was used to kill the dog. From what I hear, there wasn't a lot of motivation to do anything about it, given the way people feel about Conover.”

“Well, yeah, but that's not right.”

“So just before Stadler's death, Rinaldi got in touch with our uniformed division to ask about this guy Andrew Stadler and find out if he had any priors.”

“And were there any?”

“A long time ago Stadler was questioned in connection to the death of a neighbor family, but nothing ever came of it.”

“What got Rinaldi interested in Andrew Stadler?”

“Rinaldi said he went through the list of people they laid off—and it's a long list, like five thousand people—to see who might have exhibited signs of violence.”

“Stadler did?”

“Rinaldi was evasive on that point. When I interviewed Stadler's supervisor, at the model shop where he worked, the guy said Stadler wasn't violent at all. Though he did quit in anger, which meant he lost the severance package. But Rinaldi said he found that Stadler had a history of mental illness.”

“So he suspected Stadler of being Conover's stalker.”

“He denies it, but that's the feeling I got.”

“So you think Conover or Rinaldi had something to do with Stadler's murder?”

“I don't know. But I do wonder about this Rinaldi fellow.”

“Oh, I know about Rinaldi.”

“He said you're friends, you two.”

Noyce chuckled. “Did he, now.”

“He didn't exactly play by the rules on the GRPD. He was squeezed out on suspicions of holding on to cash in a drug bust.”

“How do you know that?” Noyce was suddenly intrigued.

“I called Grand Rapids, asked around until I found someone who knew him.”

Noyce frowned, shook his head. “I'd rather you didn't call GR.”

“Why not?”

“People talk. Rumors spread like wildfire. Things could get back to Rinaldi, and I don't want him knowing that we've been asking around about him. That way we're more likely to catch him in a lie.”

“Okay, makes sense.”

“You saying you like Rinaldi for the Stadler homicide?”

“That's not what I'm saying. Edward Rinaldi's an ex-cop, and a guy like that may know people, you know?”

“Who might have done a hit on some loony ex-employee?” Noyce replaced his glasses, raised one brow.

“Far-fetched, right?”

“Just a little.”

“But no more unlikely than a crack-related murder involving a guy who doesn't fit the profile of a crackhead, had no crack in his bloodstream, and had fake crack in his pocket. A setup, in other words.”

“You make a good point.”

“Also, no fingerprints anywhere on the plastic wrapped over the body. Traces of talc indicating that surgical gloves were used to move the body. It's all very strange. I'd like to get Rinaldi's phone records.”

Noyce gave a long sigh. “Man, you're opening a can of worms with Stratton.”

“What about Rinaldi's personal phone records—home, cell, whatever?”

“Easier.”

“Could you sign off on that?”

Noyce bit his lip. “Sure. I'll do it. You got an instinct, I like to go with it. But Audrey, listen. The Stratton Corporation has a lot of enemies in this town.”

“Tell me about it.”

“That's why I want to be fair. I don't want it to look like we're going after them arbitrarily, trying to embarrass them. Bowing to public pressure, pandering. Nothing like that. I want us to play fair, but just as important, I want the
appearance
of fairness, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Just so long as we're on the same page here.”

Cassie Stadler's house was on West Sixteenth Street, in the part of Fenwick still known as Steepletown because of all the churches that used to be there. It was an area Nick knew well; he'd grown up here, in a tiny brown split-level with a little scrubby lawn, a chain-link fence keeping out the neighbors. When Nick was a kid, Steepletown was blue-collar, most of the men factory workers employed at Stratton. Mostly Polish Catholic, too, though the Conovers were neither Polish nor members of Sacred Heart. This was a place where people kept their money in mattresses.

He was overcome by a strange, wistful nostalgia driving through these streets. It all looked and smelled so familiar, the American Legion hall, the bowling alley, the pool hall. The triple-deckers, the aluminum siding, Corky's Bottled Liquors. Even the cars were still big and American. Unlike the rest of Fenwick, which had gone upscale and fancy, vegan and latte, with all the galleries and the SUVs and the BMWs, something uncomfortable and ill fitting about it, like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's high heels. Just before he parked the car at the curb in front of the house, a song came on the radio: Billy Joel's “She's Always a Woman.” One of Laura's favorites. She'd taught herself to play it on the piano, not badly at all. She'd sing it in the shower—“
Oh, she takes care of herself
…”—badly, off
key, in a thin, wobbly voice. Hearing it caused a lump to rise in Nick's throat. He switched the radio off, couldn't take it, and had to sit there in the car for a few minutes before he got out.

He rang the doorbell: six melodious tones sounding like a carillon. The door opened, a small figure emerging from the gloom behind the dusty screen door.

What the hell am I doing? he thought. Jesus, this is insane. The daughter of the man I killed.

Everyone is beloved by someone,
the cop had said.

This is that someone.

“Mr. Conover,” she said. She wore a black T-shirt and worn jeans. She was slim, even tinier than he remembered from the funeral, and her expression was hard, wary.

“May I come in for a second?”

Her eyes were red-rimmed, raccoon smudges beneath. “Why?”

“I have something for you.”

She stared some more, then shrugged. “Okay.” The bare minimum of politeness, nothing more. She pushed open the screen door.

Nick entered a small, dark foyer that smelled of mildew and damp carpeting. Mail lay in heaps on a trestle table. There were a few homey touches—a painting in an ornate gold frame, a bad seascape, looked like a reproduction. A vase of dried flowers. A lamp with a fringed shade. A sampler in a severe black frame, done in needlepoint or whatever, that said
LET ME LIVE IN THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD AND BE A FRIEND TO MAN
, over a stitched image of a house that looked a good deal nicer than the one it hung in. It seemed as if nothing had been moved, or dusted, in a decade. He caught a glimpse of a small kitchen, a big old white round-shouldered refrigerator.

She backed up a few steps, standing in a cone of light from a torchere. “What's this all about?”

Nick produced the envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. She took it, gave a puzzled look, examined the envelope as if she'd never seen one before. Then she slid
out the pale blue check. When she saw the amount, she betrayed no surprise, no reaction at all. “I don't get it.”

“The least we can do,” Nick said.

“What's it for?”

“The severance pay your father should have gotten.”

Realization dawned in her eyes. “My dad quit.”

“He was a troubled man.”

She flashed a smile, bright white teeth, that in another context would have been sexy. Now it seemed just unsettling. “This is so interesting,” she said. Her voice was velvety smooth, pleasingly deep. There was something about her mouth, the way it curled up at the ends even when she wasn't smiling, giving her a kind of knowing look.

“Hmm?”

“This,” she said.

“The check? I don't understand.”

“No. You. What you're doing here.”

“Oh?”

“It's like you're making a payoff.”

“A payoff? No. Your father should have been counseled better at his outplacement interview. We shouldn't have let him walk out without the same severance package everyone else got, whether he quit or not. He was angry, and rightly so. But he was a longtime employee who deserved better than that.”

“It's a hell of a lot of money.”

“He worked for Stratton for thirty-six years. It's what he was entitled to. Maybe not legally, but morally.”

“It's guilt money.
Schuldgeld,
in German, right?” Those corners of her mouth turned all the way up in a canny smile. Closer to a smirk, maybe. “The word guilt has the same root as the German word for money,
Geld
.”

“I wouldn't know.” He felt his insides clutch tight. “I just didn't think you should be left high and dry.”

“God, I don't know how you can stand doing what you do.”

She has the right to go after me,
Nick thought.
Let her. Let her rant, do her whole anti-corporate thing. Trash Stratton,
and me. Make her feel better. Maybe that's why you're here: masochism
.

“Ah, right,” he said. “‘Slasher Nick' and all that.”

“I mean, it can't be easy. Being hated by just about everyone in town.”

“Part of my job,” he said.

“Must be nice to have one.”

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”

“Life must have been a lot easier a couple of years ago when everyone loved you, I bet. You must have felt you were really in the groove, hitting on all cylinders. Then all of a sudden you're the bad guy.”

“It's not a popularity contest.”
The hell was this?

A mysterious smile. “A man like you wants to be liked.
Needs
to be liked.”

“I should be going.”

“I'm making you uncomfortable,” she said. “You're not the introspective type.” A beat. “Why are you really here? Don't trust the messenger service?”

Nick shook his head vaguely. “I'm not sure. Maybe I feel really bad for you. I lost my wife last year. I know how hard this can be.”

When she looked up at him, there seemed to be a kind of pain in the depths of her hazel eyes. “Kids?”

“Two. Girl and a boy.”

“How old?”

“Julia's ten. Lucas is sixteen.”

“God, to lose your mother at that age. I guess there's always enough pain to go around at the banquet of life. Plenty of seconds, right?” She sounded as if the wind had suddenly gone out of her.

“I've got to get back. I'm sorry if it bothered you, me coming by like this.”

Suddenly she sank to the floor, collapsing into a seated position on the wall-to-wall carpet, canting to one side. Her legs folded up under her. She supported herself with one arm. “Jesus,” she said.

“You okay?” Nick came up to her, leaned over.

Her other hand was against her forehead. Her eyes were closed. Her translucent skin was ashen.

“Jesus, I'm sorry. All the blood just left my head, and I…”

“What can I get you?”

She shook her head. “I just need to sit down. Lightheaded.”

“Glass of water or something?” He kneeled beside her. She looked like she was on the verge of toppling over, passing out. “Food, maybe?”

She shook her head again. “I'm fine.”

“I don't think so. Stay there, I'll get you something.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” she said, her eyes unfocused. “Forget it, don't worry about it. I'm fine.”

Nick got up, went into the kitchen. Dirty dishes were piled up in the sink and on the counter next to it, a bunch of Chinese takeout cartons. He looked around, found the electric stove, a kettle sitting on one burner. He picked it up, felt it was empty. He filled it in the sink, shoving aside some of the stacked plates to make room for the kettle. It took him a couple of seconds to figure out which knob on the stove turned on which burner. The burner took a long time to go from black to orange.

“You like Szechuan Garden?” he called out.

Silence.

“You okay?” he said.

“It's pretty gross, actually,” she said after another pause, voice weak. “There's like two, maybe three Chinese restaurants in this whole town, one worse than the next.” Another pause. “There's more than that on my
block
in Chicago.”

“Looks like you get a lot of takeout from there anyway.”

“I can walk to it. I haven't felt much like cooking, since…”

She was standing at the threshold to the kitchen, entered slowly and unsteadily. She sank down in one of the kitchen chairs, chrome with a red vinyl seat back, the table red
Formica with a cracked ice pattern and chrome banding around the edge.

The teakettle was making a hollow roaring sound. Nick opened the refrigerator—“Frigidaire” on the front in that great old squat script, raised metal lettering, reminding Nick of the refrigerator in his childhood home—and found it pretty much empty. A quart of skim milk, an opened bottle of Australian chardonnay with a cork in it; a carton of eggs, half gone.

He found a rind of Parmesan cheese, a salvageable bunch of scallions.

“You got a grater?”

“You serious?”