Company Man (41 page)

Audrey tracked down Bugbee on his cell phone at the Burger Shack, the place he liked to go for lunch. He could barely hear her. In the background was a cacophony of laughter and clinking plates and bad rock music.

“When are you coming back?” she said several times.

“I'm on lunch.”

“I can tell that. But this is important.”

“What?”

“You'd better get over here.”

“I said it can wait.”

“No, it can't,” she said.

“I'm at the Burger Shack for the next—”

“See you there,” she said, and she hung up before he could object.

 

Bugbee quickly got over his pique at having his lunch with the guys—three uniformed officers, all around his age—interrupted.

He excused himself, and he and Audrey found an empty booth.

“That's it,” he said when Audrey told him about the weapon match. “We got 'em.”

“It's still tenuous,” she said. “It's circumstantial.”

He glared. There was a large splotch of ketchup on his hideous tie, which only improved its appearance. “The
fuck
are you waiting for—Nick Conover's diary with a special entry for that night saying, I plugged the guy, me and Eddie?”

“We're connecting dots that I don't know if the prosecutor's going to let us connect.”

“Connecting
what
fucking dots?” he spat out.

She briefly considered asking him to cut out the potty-mouth stuff, but now was not the time. “We know this suggests that Eddie Rinaldi and Nick Conover were behind it.”

“Tell me something I don't know—”

“Will you shut up for a second, please?” It was worth saying just to see Bugbee's stunned expression. “The gun that was used to kill Stadler was also used on a no-gun case that Eddie Rinaldi worked six years ago. But does that prove Rinaldi pocketed the gun back in Grand Rapids? The case is still full of holes.”

“Yeah? I don't think so, and neither do you.”

“Our opinion isn't the same thing as what's going to convince the DA to prosecute. Especially in a capital case involving the CEO of a huge corporation and one of his top officers.”

“Tell you something—once we hook our boy Eddie up to a polygraph, he'll crack.”

“He doesn't have to submit to a polygraph.”

“If he's facing a first-degree murder charge and life without parole, believe me, he'll take it.” He leaned back in the booth, savoring the moment. “This is beautiful. Shit, this is beautiful.” He smiled, and she realized that this was the first time she'd seen him give a genuine smile of pleasure. It looked wrong on his face, didn't come naturally, looked like a disturbance in the natural order of things. His cheeks creased deeply like heavily starched fabric.

“Conover won't take a polygraph,” Audrey said. “Let's face it, we still don't know which one of them the shooter is,” Audrey said.

“Fuck it. Charge 'em both with first-degree murder, and sort it out later. Whoever comes to the window first gets the deal, that's how it works.”

“I don't know if we're even going to get to that point, if we'll get a prosecutor to write out a warrant.”

“So you go prosecutor-shopping. Come on. You know how the game works.”

“Noyce really frowns on that.”

“Screw Noyce. This is our case, I told you. Not his.”

“Still,” she said. “I don't know. I don't want to mess this up.”

Bugbee started counting on his left hand, starting with his thumb. “We got the soil match, we got the fucking erased surveillance tape, we got Conover's alarm going off at two
A.M.
, followed by the desperate cell phone call, we got Schizo Man with a history of attacks on the suspect, and now we got a gun match.” He held up five fingers triumphantly. “The fuck else you want? I say we run with it.”

“I want to pass this by Noyce first.”

“You want to run to Daddy?” He shook his head. “Haven't you figured out that Noyce isn't our friend?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Take a look. The closer we get to Stratton's CEO, the harder Noyce's been fighting us, right? He doesn't want us taking on the big kahuna. Wouldn't surprise me if he's in Stratton's pocket.”

“Come on.”

“I'm fucking serious. Something's off about the way that guy's taking their side.”

“He's got to be cautious on a case this big.”

“This is way beyond cautious. You notice how when I searched Rinaldi's condo, total surprise, and all of a sudden a couple of guns are missing from his rack, like someone gave him a heads-up?”

“Or maybe he dumped them after he or Conover murdered Stadler,” Audrey said. “Or Conover called him, told him a team was coming to search Conover's house, and Eddie races home and disposes of the evidence.”

“Yeah, any of those are possible. Theoretically. Then you notice how Noyce is trying to make life difficult for you, jam up your schedule with other shit so you don't have time to do this right? Look, Audrey, I don't trust the guy.”

“He's my friend, Roy,” she said softly.

“Oh, is he?” Bugbee said. “I wouldn't be so sure of that.”

She didn't reply.

Dorothy Devries's mansion on Michigan Avenue in East Fenwick didn't seem quite as big as Nick remembered it, but was possibly even darker. Outside, the gables and peaked eaves stopped just shy of Addams Family gothic. Inside, wooden floors were stained to a chocolate hue and partly covered with blood red Orientals. The furniture was either a dark mahogany or covered in a dark damask. She kept the curtains drawn, and he remembered her once saying something about how sunlight could bleach the fabrics. The moon glow of her pale skin was the brightest thing in the house.

“Did you say you wanted tea?” she asked, squinting at him. She sat almost motionless in a burgundy-clad Queen Anne's chair. There was a chandelier above them, which she kept pointedly unlit.

“No thanks,” he said.

“But I've interrupted you,” she said. “Please go on.”

“Well, the basic situation is what I've described. You and I worked hard on the sale to Fairfield, and we did that because we wanted to preserve your father's legacy. And your husband's.”

“Legacy,” she repeated. In the gloom, he wasn't sure whether her dress was charcoal gray or navy. “That's a pretty word.”

“And a pretty big accomplishment,” he said. She seemed to brighten. “Harold Stratton created a company that did what it did as well as—or better than—any other, and he did it right here in Fenwick. And then your husband put Fenwick on the map, as far as corporate America was concerned.” Dorothy had had a glossy vanity biography of her husband, Milton, privately printed, copies distributed widely. Nick knew she always responded to the most unctuous praise of her father's historical significance. “So the prospect of seeing Stratton bundled in brown paper and shipped to the Far East—well, I think he'd be appalled. I know I am. It isn't right. It's not right for Fenwick, and it's not right for Stratton.”

Mrs. Devries blinked. “But you're telling me all this for a reason.”

“Well, sure.”

“I'm all ears, Nicholas.” She used his full name as if he were a grade student, and a little small for all three syllables.

“You're part owner of the company. You sit on the board. I thought if I could enlist your support, we might be able to present the case together to the others. That way, they'd see it wasn't just about a manager trying to save his job. Because this deal—well, frankly, it would be a disaster. The Chinese aren't interested in our manufacturing facilities. They've got their own. They're going to gut Stratton, run a fire sale of the shop machines, and pass out walking papers to the remaining employees.”

“That puts things rather starkly.”

“It's a stark situation.”

“Well, you do have a flair for the dramatic. That isn't a criticism. But then you haven't come here to consult, have you?”

“Sure I have.”

“Because I didn't hear you ask me my opinion. I heard you telling me yours.”

“I just thought I should fill you in,” Nick said, perplexed. “See what you thought.” A pause. “I'm interested in getting your…help and guidance.”

A watery smile. “Is that right?” she said.

Nick looked at her, and his face started to prickle.
Had she already known before I came here?

“I must say I'm a little taken aback to hear you make an argument that's based on sentiment, as opposed to dollars and cents. Because, you see, I don't recall your seeking my help or guidance when you decided to discontinue the Stratton Ultra line. Which was, of course, one of my husband's proudest
legacies
.” In a quiet voice, she added, “Pretty word.”

Nick said nothing.

“And I don't recall your seeking my help or guidance when you decided to lay off five thousand workers, dragging the Stratton name through the mud,” she went on. “And after Milton worked
so
hard to make it a byword for what was
best
about Fenwick. That was part of his legacy, too, Nicholas.”

“Dorothy, you voted to approve the layoffs.”

“Oh, as if I could stop that train in its tracks! But please don't misunderstand me. I'm not complaining. We sold the firm. Almost all of it belongs to Fairfield Partners. And so we must be
very
businesslike about the whole thing.”

“With all respect, Dorothy, aren't you bothered by the idea of Stratton being owned by—by the Chinese government? The Communist Chinese?”

Dorothy Devries shot him a wintry look. “Please. Coming from
you
? Business is business. My family made good money when we sold to Fairfield, and we stand to make quite a bit more when they sell it to this consortium.”

“But for God's sake—?” He saw something in her face. “You knew all about it, didn't you?”

She refused to reply. “Nicholas, I didn't give you Milton's job in order for you to dismantle his company, believe it or not. But you did. You cheesed it up with all that Office of the Future eyewash. You got rid of what was real, what was solid, and replaced it with gilt and papier mâchè. Milton would have been appalled. Though I suppose I really can't judge you without judging myself, can I?
I'm
the one who gave you the keys to the corner office.”

“Yes,” Nick said, finally. “And why did you?”

Dorothy sat silent for a while. “As you might imagine,” she said with a drawn smile, “I've often asked myself the same thing.”

Audrey had promised to keep Noyce in the loop, that was the thing. Strictly speaking, she knew she had the right to go right to the prosecutor's office and request an arrest warrant for Conover and Rinaldi without even telling Noyce. She knew that. But it wasn't right to exclude him. It was a matter of courtesy to keep Noyce updated. She'd told him about the gun match as soon as she found out, and there was no reason to start keeping him in the dark now. It would infuriate him, but worse, it would hurt his feelings, and she wasn't about to do that.

Music was playing softly in Noyce's office as she entered. Audrey recognized Duke Ellington's “Mood Indigo,” a trumpet solo.

“Is that Louis?” she asked.

Noyce nodded, absorbed. “Ellington and Armstrong recorded this in one take. Unbelievable.”

“Sure is.”

“The Duke was great at composing under deadline pressure, you know. The night before a recording date, he's waiting for his mother to finish cooking dinner, and he goes to his piano, and in fifteen minutes he knocks off a piece he calls ‘Dreamy Blues.' Next night his band plays it over the radio, broadcasting from the Cotton Club. Later he renames it ‘Mood Indigo.'” Noyce shook his head, waited for the
song to end, and then clicked off the CD player. “What can I do you for?”

“I think we've got enough to arrest Conover and Rinaldi.”

Noyce's eyes widened as she explained, then just as quickly narrowed. “Audrey, let me take you out for ice cream.”

“I'm trying not to eat—”

“Well, you can watch. I've been thinking about one of those chocolate-dipped strawberry sundaes at the Dairy Queen.”

 

Noyce tucked into a boat-sized dish of soft-serve vanilla ice cream smothered in syrupy strawberries, while Audrey tried to avert her eyes, because it looked too good, and her will was weak when it came to desserts, especially in the midafternoon.

“You don't want your butt out there for false arrest, Aud,” he said, a strawberry smear at the side of his mouth. “You realize who you're dealing with, don't you?”

“You think Nicholas Conover's all that powerful?”

“He's a wealthy and powerful guy, but more to the point, he now works for a holding company in Boston that's going to be intent on protecting their investment. And if that means suing the police department in the town of Fenwick, Michigan, they've got the resources to do it. That means they sue you. And us.”

“That could work the other way too,” she pointed out. Her stomach was growling, and her mouth kept filling with saliva. “The holding company could get nervous about having a CEO charged with first-degree murder and jettison him.”

Noyce didn't look up from his ice cream. “You willing to take that chance?”

“If I have a genuine belief that Conover and Rinaldi were involved in a homicide, and I got a prosecutor to back me up on it, how is that false arrest?”

“It just means more of us in the soup. Plus, I can tell you, you're not going to get a prosecutor to write a warrant unless
he's sure he can win the case. And I worry that we're still thin on the ground here.”

“But look at what we've got, Jack—”

He looked up. “Well, let's take a look at it, Aud. What's your most damaging lead? The gun? So you've got Rinaldi on some case in Grand Rapids, and the same gun in that one turns up here.”

“Which is no coincidence. Rinaldi had a reputation as a bad cop.”

“Now, you've got to be careful there. That's hearsay. Cops are always gossiping, stabbing each other in the back, you know that better than anyone.” He sighed. “No one's going to let you run with that. If you want to say he took the gun, fine—but you don't have any proof of that.”

“No, but—”

“Look at it through the eyes of a defense attorney. The same gun used in Grand Rapids turned up here? Well, you think that's the first time a gun was used in Grand Rapids and here? Where do you think our drug dealers get their guns? Flint, Lansing, Detroit, Grand Rapids. They've got to come from somewhere.”

Audrey fell silent, watching him spoon the soft-serve, careful to catch a dollop of strawberry goo in each spoonful.

“Far more likely, in fact,” Noyce went on, “is that some shitbird in Fenwick bought a piece from some other shitbird in GR. Pardon my French, Audrey.”

“But the hydroseed stuff—the soil match—”

“That's an awfully slender reed to hang a first-degree murder on, don't you think?”

She felt increasingly desperate. “The cell phone call Conover lied about—”

“Again, maybe he really did get the day wrong. Audrey, I'm just being devil's advocate here, okay?”

“But Conover's own security system—the video for that night was erased, and we can
prove
it.”

“You can prove it was erased, or you can prove the tape recycled? There's quite a difference.”

Noyce had clearly been talking to Kevin Lenehan. “You have a point,” she conceded.

“Then there's the fact that both you and Bugbee canvassed Conover's neighbors, and not one of them heard a shot that night.”

“Jack, you know how far apart the houses are in Fenwicke Estates? Plus, a three-eighty isn't all that loud.”

“Audrey. You've got no blood, no weapon, no footprints, no witnesses. What
do
you have?”

“Motive and opportunity. A stalker with a history of violence and a handgun who was stalking the CEO of Stratton—”

“Unarmed, as far as we know.”

“Even worse for Conover if Stadler was unarmed.”

“And you yourself told me the guy had no prior history of violence. ‘Gentle as a lamb,' wasn't that the phrase you used? Audrey, listen. If you had a solid case against these guys, no one would be happier than me. I'd love to take 'em down for this murder, you kidding me? But I don't want us to fuck it up. I don't want us to go off half-cocked.”

“I
know
we have a case here,” she said.

“You know what you are? You're an optimist, down deep.”

“I don't know about that.”

“Anyone who loves God the way you do's got to be an optimist. But you see, here's the sad truth. The longer you stay in this job, the harder it is to stay an optimist. Witnesses recant and the guilty go free and cases don't get solved. Pessimism, cynicism—that's the natural order. Audrey, did I ever tell you about the case I had when I was just starting out? Woman shot in the head standing in her front parlor, shifty cheating husband, we kept catching him lying about his alibis, which kept changing. The more we looked at him, the more we were convinced he was the shooter.”

“He wasn't,” she said, impatient.

“You know why he kept lying about his alibi? Turned out he was in the sack with his sister-in-law at the time. This guy
wouldn't own up to the fact that he was cheating on his wife even when he was faced with a first-degree murder charge. He didn't crack until just before the trial was scheduled, the bastard. And you know what it was killed the wife? Just a random, stray bullet through her open window, a street shooting gone bad. Wasn't her lucky day. Or maybe that's what you get for living in a bad neighborhood. What seemed so obvious to us turned out not to be true when we really dug into it.”

“I get it, Jack,” she said, watching him scrape the boat clean, pleased to see that his last spoonful contained equal portions of ice cream and strawberry. “But we've dug into it.”

“A crazy guy's found in a Dumpster in the dog pound, with fake crack on him—I'm sorry, but you've got to go with a crack murder as your central hypothesis. Not some white-collar CEO with so much to lose. You know the old saying—in Texas, when you hear approaching hoofbeats, you don't think zebra. You gotta think horses. And I think you're going after a zebra here.”

“That's not—”

“Oh, I know it would be a hell of a lot more intriguing to spot a zebra than a horse, but you've always got to consider the likelihoods. Because ultimately your time is limited. Who's that woman who calls you every week?”

“Ethel Dorsey?”

“Tyrone's her son, probably killed in a drug deal, right? How much time have you been putting in on that case?”

“I haven't really had much time recently.”

“No, you haven't. And if I know you, I'll bet you feel that you're letting Ethel Dorsey down.”

“I—” she faltered.

“You're good, and you have the potential to be great. You can make a real difference. But think of how many other cases are clamoring for your attention. There's only so many hours in the day, right?”

“I understand.” She was shaken; what he said made sense.

“There's another case I want you to get involved in. Not
instead of this one, but in addition to it. One that will really, I think, give you an opportunity to shine. Instead of just getting bogged down in this dog-pound murder. Now, Jensen's got the Hernandez robbery trial on Monday, but he's going on vacation, so I'd like you to handle it.”

“Isn't Phelps the secondary on that? I only did one follow-up interview.”

“Phelps is on personal leave. I need you on this. And the prosecutor wants a pretrial conference on Friday.”

“Friday? That's—that's in two days!”

“You can do it. I know you can.”

She was befuddled and most of all depressed now. “You know,” she said in a small voice, “that looks good, what you had. What do I ask for?”