Company Man (31 page)

He sat down with the kids in the family room, the two of them on the couch that faced the enormous TV, Nick in the big side chair that Lucas normally staked out, which Nick thought of as his Archie Bunker chair. The Dad chair. He couldn't remember when they'd all watched TV together last, but back when they did, Lucas always grabbed the Archie Bunker chair, to his silent annoyance.

On a trestle table next to the TV set Nick noticed the little shrine that Julia and Lucas had made to Barney: a collection of photographs of their beloved dog, his collar and tags. His favorite toys, including a bedraggled stuffed lamb—his own pet—that he slept with and carried everywhere in his slobbering mouth. There was a letter Julia had written to him in different colored markers, which began: “Barney—we miss you SO MUCH!!!” Julia had explained that the shrine was Cassie's idea.

Lucas sat on the couch in huge baggy jeans, his legs splayed wide. The waistband of his boxer shorts was showing. He wore a black T-shirt with the word
AMERIKAN
in white letters on the front. Nick had no idea what that referred to. The laces on his Timberland boots were untied. He was wearing that rag on his head again. My own in-house, upper-middle-class, gated-community gangsta, Nick thought.

Lucas, staring off into the distance, said, “You gonna tell us what's up with the five-oh?”

“The police, you mean.”

Lucas was looking out the bay window, watching the cops on the lawn.

“The police are here because of that guy who we think kept coming by and writing things inside our house,” Nick said.

“‘No Hiding Place,'” recited Julia.

“Right. All that. He was a man who had something wrong with his head.”

She said in a small voice, “Is he the man who killed Barney?”

“We're not sure, but we think so.”

“Cassie's dad,” Lucas said. “Andrew Stadler.”

“Right.” Cassie's dad.

“He was fucked up,” Lucas said.

“Watch your mouth around your sister.”

“I've heard that word before, Dad,” said Julia.

“No doubt. I just don't want either one of you using language like that.”

Lucas, smirking, shook his head with amused contempt.

“So this man, Andrew Stadler, he died a couple of weeks ago,” Nick went on, “and the police think he might have tried to come by our house the night he was killed, on his way to wherever he was going.”

“They think you did it,” Lucas said. A triumphant smile.

Nick's insides seized. Maybe he
had
heard, that night when Eddie came over. Or did he just put two and two together?

“Hey!”
said Julia, outraged.

“Actually, Luke, what they're doing here is trying to trace his whereabouts.”

“Then how come they're gathering evidence? I can see 'em out my window. They dug up some dirt from the lawn and put it in a little container thing, and they keep walking back and forth on the lawn like they're scoping for something.”

Nick nodded, breathing in and out. They were gathering dirt? What did that mean? Had they found dirt on Stadler's body? He remembered that Eddie had brushed Stadler's shoes clean.

Could they have found dirt on Stadler's body that connected him with the house? Could they even do something like that? This was the awful thing: Nick had no idea of what the police were actually capable of, how advanced their forensic science was, or how backward.

“Luke,” he said calmly, “they're looking for anything that can tell them whether the guy came by here that night or not.” Nick knew he was treading water here. His kids were too bright. They'd watched too many TV shows and movies. They knew about cops and murders and suspects.

“Why do they care?” asked Julia.

“Simple,” he said. “They need to nail down what he did that night, see if he really was here instead of somewhere else, so they can figure out where he might have gone after that, when he was killed.”

“Wouldn't that be on the cameras?” Lucas asked.

“Could be,” Nick said. “I don't remember when the new security system was put in and when exactly the guy was killed.”

“I do,” Lucas said right back. “They put the cameras in the day before Stadler was killed.” How the hell did he know that,
remember
that?

“Well, if you're right, then yes, they might find something on the cameras. I have no idea. Anyway, the police want to get your fingerprints while they're here.”

“Cool,” said Lucas.

“How come? They don't think
we
killed the man, right?” said Julia, looking worried.

Nick laughed convincingly. “Don't worry about that. When they check for fingerprints inside and outside the house, they're going to find our fingerprints—yours and mine and Marta's—”

“And probably Emily's too,” said Julia.

“Right.”

“And probably that guy Digga, right, Luke?”

Luke rolled his eyes, looked away.

“Who's Digga?” Nick asked.

Lucas didn't answer, still shaking his head.

“He's this guy who wears a do-rag just like Luke and plays really loud music when you're not here and always smells like smoke. He stinks.”

“When does he come over?” said Nick.

“Like once or twice,” Lucas said. “Jesus Christ. This is totally wack. He's a friend of mine, all right? Am I allowed to have friends, or is this, like, a prison where you're not allowed to have visitors? You happy, Julia? Fuckin' tattletale.”

“Hey!” Nick said.

Julia, so unused to being yelled at by her older brother, ran out of the room crying.

“Uh, Mr. Conover?”

Detective Rhimes, standing tentatively at the door to the family room.

“Yes?”

“Could I see you for a minute?”

“We found something on your lawn,” she said.

“Oh?”

She'd taken him out into the hall, far enough away from the kids that they couldn't hear.

“A mangled piece of metal.”

Nick shrugged, as if to say, So? Is that supposed to mean something to me?

“It may be a bullet fragment, maybe a piece of shell casing.”

“From a gun?” His breath stopped. Outwardly he tried to project an image of nonchalance, but interested, as someone in his position should be. Someone who was innocent, who wanted the cops to find the killer.

“It's hard to say. I'm no expert.”

“Can I take a look?” he said, and he immediately regretted saying it. Mustn't betray too much interest. Must get the balance right.

She shook her head. “The techs have it. I just wanted to ask you—it may seem a silly question—but you've said you don't own a gun, right?”

“That's right.”

“So obviously you've never fired a gun on your property, I'm sure. But has anyone you know fired a gun in your yard, to your knowledge?”

He attempted a dismissive laugh, though it sounded hollow. “No target practice allowed here,” he said.

“So, no one's ever fired a gun outside your house, to your knowledge.”

“Nope. Not as far as I know.”

“Never.”

“Never.” A cool trickle of sweat traced a path along the back of one ear and down his neck, where it was absorbed by the collar of his shirt.

She nodded again, slowly. “Interesting.”

“The techs—are they sure it's from a bullet or whatever?”

“Well, you know, I doubt
I
could tell the difference between a bottle cap and a—a Remington Golden Saber .380 cartridge,” she said. Nick couldn't stop himself from flinching, and he hoped she hadn't noticed. “But the crime scene techs, they're awfully good at what they do, and I have to defer to them on that. They tell me it sure looks like a fragment from a projectile.”

“Strange,” Nick said. He tried to look puzzled in a sort of neutral, disinterested way, not letting the way he was really feeling leak out—terrified and trembling and nauseated.

Eddie had assured him he'd collected everything, all the shell casings, and checked for any other trace evidence that might be on the lawn. Then again, he could easily have missed a small piece of lead or brass or whatever it was, a flying piece of metal that had lodged itself into the earth, say. That would be easy to miss.

After all, Nick had noticed the smell of liquor on Eddie's breath that night. He'd probably been sleeping it off when Nick called. Didn't have all his faculties about him. Maybe he hadn't been so thorough.

Detective Rhimes seemed about to say something more when Nick noticed someone walking by, carrying a black rectangular metal object sealed in a clear plastic bag. The fireplug woman, the evidence tech with the wide ass in the new jeans, was holding what Nick recognized at once as the digital video recorder that was hooked up to the security
cameras. They must have taken it from the closet where the installer had put the alarm system.

“Hey, what's that?” Nick called out. The woman, whose nametag on her denim shirt said Trento, stopped, looked at Detective Rhimes.

The detective said, “That's the recording unit from your security system.”

“I need that,” Nick said.

“I understand. We'll make sure this is turned around just as quickly as possible.”

Nick shook his head in apparent frustration. He hoped, prayed that the little shimmy of terror moving through his body wasn't obvious. Eddie had wiped the disk clean, he'd said. Reformatted it. Nothing was there from that night.

Nick could only imagine what the camera image would look like. The lurching of a man in a too-big flapping overcoat suddenly illuminated by the outside lights. The flailing hands. The way the man had crumpled to the ground. Or did one of the cameras capture the act itself, Nick holding the pistol, his face contorted with fear and anger, pulling the trigger? The gun bucking up and back, the smoke cloud. The murder itself.

But that was all gone.

Eddie had assured him of that. Eddie, whose breath had stunk of booze. Who was always cocky but never thoughtful and thorough, certainly not in the rink. Who'd always acted hastily, impulsively.

Who might have missed something.

Done it wrong. Failed to reformat it properly.

Might have fucked up.

“Also, Mr. Conover, we're going to need the keys to both of your cars, if you don't mind.”

“My cars?”

“The Chevy Suburban that you drive, and the minivan. We'll want to dust for prints and so on.”

“How come?”

“In case Stadler tried to get in, steal one of the cars, whatever.”

Nick nodded, logy and dazed, reached into his pants pocket for his key ring. As he did so, he noticed a swarm of activity in his study, straight down the hall. “I'm going to need to check my e-mail,” he said.

Detective Rhimes cocked her head. “I'm sorry?”

“My study. I need to get in there. I have work to do.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Conover, but this might take a while.”

“How long are we talking?”

“Hard to say. The evidence techs move in mysterious ways.” She smiled, her face lighting up, really lovely. “Oh, one quick question, if you don't mind?”

“Sure.”

“About your security director—Mr. Rinaldi?”

“What about him?”

“Oh,” she said with a quiet laugh, “I suppose it's like ‘Who will guard the guards?' or something, but I'm sure you did a background check on him before you hired him to be your security director.”

“Of course,” Nick said. A background check was precisely what he hadn't done. Eddie was an old friend. Well, a buddy, maybe. Whatever that meant.

“What do you know about his police career?” she asked.

 

There was a yellow tape across the entrance to his study. It said, “Crime Scene—Do Not Cross.”

Crime scene, he thought.

You don't know.

Two evidence techs in there, wearing rubber gloves. One was dusting the doors, door frames, light switch plates, the desk, the wood frame and glass panes of the French doors, with fluorescent orange powder. The other was vacuuming the carpet with a strange-looking handheld vacuum cleaner, a black barrel, long straight nozzle.

Nick watched for a moment, cleared his throat to get their attention, and said, “You don't need to do that. We've got a housekeeper.”

A lame joke, pathetic even. Offensive, probably.
They
didn't have housekeepers.

The tech with the vacuum cleaner gave him a hard look.

Nick let it slide. They were dusting for fingerprints, but there was no way they were going to find anything incriminating. Stadler wasn't inside the house on the night of his murder. He'd dropped to the ground, easily twenty feet from the French doors.

That wasn't what bothered him.

What bothered him was why they seemed to be focusing on the study. There were lots of other rooms in the house where Stadler might plausibly have gotten in. Why the study?

Did they
know
something?

“Mr. Conover, do you have a key to this drawer?”

A confident baritone. One of the techs was pointing at the locked drawer where he'd kept the gun Eddie had given him.

He felt his entire body seize up.

“Key's right in the top middle drawer,” Nick said mildly. “Real high security.”

He flashed on the box of cartridges in the drawer next to the gun. A green and gold cardboard box, the words
REMINGTON
and
GOLDEN SABER
in white lettering.

Eddie had taken them away, right?

When he took the gun?

Nick didn't remember anymore. That night was such a blur.

Please God oh please God let them be gone the bullets make them gone
.

He waited. Holding his breath, while the tech opened the big middle desk drawer, located the key at once, knelt down to unlock the bottom drawer.

The back of his shirt collar was seriously damp now. Downright wet.

My life is in this anonymous guy's hands right now. He has the power to lock me away forever.

There's no death penalty in Michigan, he found himself thinking. He'd never thought about it before, never had a reason to think about it. No death penalty.

Life in prison, though.

That was in the balance.

The drawer slid open, the tech bent over.

A second went by, two, then three.

The vacuum cleaner was turned off.

Nick felt like vomiting. He stood there on the other side of the yellow crime-scene tape like some casual sightseer, a tourist, and he waited.

The tech got to his feet. Nothing in his hands.

Maybe the drawer was empty.

If one stray bullet had rolled to the back of the drawer…

No, the tech would have taken out his camera and taken a picture if he'd found something.

The drawer had to be empty.

Nick felt relief. Temporary, maybe. Momentary.

He stood there watching the tech, the one who'd been vacuuming, take out a plastic bottle with a pistol grip and begin spraying a section of the hand-plastered walls around the light switch.

Decora rocker switch, Nick thought. Laura had replaced all the light switches in the house with Decora rocker switches, which she insisted were much more elegant. Nick had no opinion on Decora rockers. He'd never really thought much about light switches before.

The guy started spraying the bottom of the French doors, then the carpet.

He heard the two techs murmuring, heard the one with the plastic bottle say something like, “Miss my Luminol.”

The other one said something in a low voice, something about a daylight search, and then the first one said, “But Christ, this LCV shit is messy.”

Nick didn't know what they were talking about. He felt stupid standing there on the threshold of his own study, gawking and eavesdropping.

The first one said, “stain's gonna be degraded.”

The second one said something about “DNA match.”

Nick swallowed hard. “Stain” had to mean blood. They were looking for bloodstains on the door handles, on the
door, on the carpet. Bloodstains that weren't visible to the naked eye, which had maybe been wiped away but not well enough.

Well, at least I'm safe on that, Nick thought. Stadler never entered the house.

But his brain was not cooperating. It kicked up a thought that made the adrenaline surge, made him break out in sweat once again.

Stadler had bled, fairly profusely.

The black puddle of blood.

Nick had walked up to him, kicked at the body with his bare feet. Maybe even stood in the blood, who knows, he couldn't remember.

Then walked back into the house.

Onto the carpet. To call Eddie.

He'd never
noticed
any bloodstains on the carpet, and neither did Eddie, but how much did it take? What scintilla of evidence, carried into the study on the soles of his bare feet from the puddle beside Stadler's body? Mere droplets perhaps, invisible to the naked eye, smeared onto the wall-to-wall carpet unseen, soaking into the woolen fibers, waiting to announce their presence?

The tech who wasn't spraying the carpet turned around to look at Nick's desk, noticed Nick still standing there.

Quickly Nick said something, just so they wouldn't think he was watching in terrified fascination, as he was. “Is that stuff gonna come off my carpet?”

The tech who was spraying shrugged.

“And what about all that powder?” Nick went on, fake-indignant. “How the hell am I going to get that out?”

The tech with the spray bottle turned around, blinked a few times, a lazy, malevolent grin on his face. “You got a housekeeper,” he said.