Monahan 02 Artificial Intentions (32 page)

I looked over at Jay and then at Kelly.

“This just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?”

They both nodded.

“We have to speak to the police. To the detectives who are investigating Tommy’s murder.”

“Agreed,” Kelly said. “Although I’d like to wait until my guy calls with something. The detectives will likely find it interesting that Ben Tucker and Nat Scott were both in Flagstaff, at the same time, but this information isn’t going to help them solve the case.”

“I’m getting closer to believing that both of them had something to do with Tommy’s murder.” I stood up and walked over to the windows and stared across at the tree tops of Central Park. “We have to tell them about Dr. Francis, too,” I said to the window. My watch said I had ten minutes to get to the restaurant to meet Cleve.

Kelly told Jay he didn’t have to go with me. He patted his side, under his left arm. “I’m on the case,” he assured Jay. I think he had a gun under his jacket.

Cleve was waiting for me inside the small entrance to the restaurant. The building was very old and the ceilings were very low and Cleve looked like the Friendly Giant. He stood in front of the maitre ‘d with his shoulders hunched and his head bent over. I gave him a small smile in greeting and then a waiter led us to our table.

I ordered a sparkling mineral water with lime and lots of ice and Cleve said he would have the same. Nothing on the menu appealed to me because I was sick just thinking about the shit going on. Silence surrounded me and I could hear the blood pounding in my ears. I stared mutely at the menu and felt spent. Sure I was tired because of my hour with Frank Sanchez, but my body always tried to shut down on me when I was stressed. Knowing I was only into the first part of the marathon of what Phoenix Technologies was going to be to me, I mentally slapped myself and girded myself for a long race. My eyes were full of tears when I finally looked up at Cleve.

He put his menu down on the table and looked across at me with concern on his face. I held up my hand, stopping him from speaking and took a sip of my sparkling water. “Sometimes, it’s a little much,” I told him by way of explanation. “I’m okay, though,” I reassured him. I adjusted myself in the chair and sat up straighter and looked him in the eye, all business now.

“So, what do we need to discuss counsellor?”

“A couple of things. First off, I want to go back to Toronto for the weekend, but I can be back early next week. That is if you need me. You know I’m only a phone call away.” I nodded. It was true. I knew I could count on Cleve for whatever I needed.

I smiled a bit. “Funny isn’t it? A couple of weeks ago, you were the boss. Now I get to say who comes and goes,” I joked. “Unless something comes up, I don’t see why you would need to be here next week.” He was listening intently to what I was saying. As if I had something important to say, which was a crock if you thought about it. What could Kate Monahan possibly have to say that a man so educated, so well respected, would listen to so intently? I reached across the table and put my hand over his.

“Mr. Johnston, do you know how much I value your friendship? How much I appreciate that you were Tommy’s friend? And how much I appreciate your advice and counsel now? This is hard for me, and I know I’ve been a royal shit to you in the past. I’m sorry for that. I’m just glad you’re here now.” That was one big speech for me, a little on the bare emotional side, but it needed to be said.

Cleve’s big hand engulfed mine and he squeezed lightly. “Enough said. I’m glad to be here and to be of help.”

The waiter appeared and took our orders. While we waited for our food Cleve gave me some more kick-you-in-the-gut news.

“I’ve been thinking about the company and this mess with Global Devices,” he started. “So far, we’ve come clean with the shareholders and the Securities Commissions about the contract cancellation. But what we haven’t done is address the fact that the company is accused of falsifying records. When the FDA finds out about that, it’s not going to be pretty for Phoenix.”

Great. Just what I needed. More good news. And the fact that I hadn’t even thought about this made me even more angry. I was the president of a company for gawd’s sake. I should have thought about this. Fuck. Pay more attention Monahan, I chastised myself.

“So what do we do about this?” I asked Cleve.

“I’m going to do some research into it. See if there’s any precedent out there on this. Look into what sanctions the FDA can put on companies for this type of screw-up. This is preliminary so I don’t want you worried about it. But we need to be ready.”

“Okay. Let’s get ready. But also let’s remember that right now these are only accusations and haven’t been proven. This is all tied in to Tommy’s murder. I’m sure of it.” And then I filled him in on what Kelly and Jay had come up with last night and today. The good news on our exemplary employees, Ben Tucker and Nat Scott.

When I finished we both sat quietly for a while, sipping our coffee and waiting for the bill.

“Wow,” Cleve finally said, softly. Not a word normally in Cleve’s dictionary so it sounded weird coming from him. “Tommy had it all figured out, and it got him killed. Poor son of a bitch.”

I couldn’t agree more. Now
I
just had to figure it all out. And not get myself killed.

chapter forty-five

The 20th Precinct looked the same as it did when I had visited it almost two weeks ago. A deceptively modern-looking building, it could have been a bank or an upscale jewellery store except for the large brass words mounted on the brick wall beside the door - 20th Precinct, The City of New York Police Department.

It was hard to believe the things that had happened in those two weeks - it seemed like a lifetime. It took me a few minutes to recall that it was only yesterday morning that Carrie had tracked down the two detectives for me. Assuming that Detective Bartlett was still in the hospital with her back problems and that Detective Shipley was back in town, Kelly and I asked for Detective Shipley at the Precinct.

When Kelly and Lou picked me up at the restaurant after my lunch with Cleve, I insisted that we speak with the police as soon as possible. Kelly instructed Lou to head over to the 20th Precinct on West 82nd Street. On the drive over, we discussed what we needed to tell the police. Kelly was adamant that we give them everything we knew. “In order for them to do their job, they have to have all the facts.” I didn’t disagree with him.

Shipley’s clothes looked like she had slept in them and if her hair had met a hairbrush in the last week I would’ve been surprised. To be fair though, she was probably a little overworked with her partner off sick. She stood in front of us and held her hands together, not offering to shake. Before she spoke, her body shuddered with a very deep sigh which seemed to have started somewhere deep inside her, down near her ankles.

She nodded her head slightly at me and spoke in a soft voice. “Miss Monahan. What can I do for you?”

I introduced Kelly as the head of security for our company and left it at that. “We’d like to speak to you about a few things we think may be relevant to the murder of Tom Connaught.”

She chewed a little bit on her lower lip and shook her head, just a little. “I have nothing to report on the case, I’m sorry. There is no news since the last time we spoke.”

“I understand,” I told her. “But there are some things that we think the police should be aware of.”

“Okay,” she agreed grudgingly. She turned and walked away and I assumed we were to follow her. We walked up two flights of stairs and down a narrow hallway to a small room, similar to the one that Bartlett had taken me to. Notably and thankfully, this one did not smell like the inside of my brother’s hockey equipment bag.

Detective Shipley sat across the table from us and placed a small, spiral-bound notebook in front of her. Surprisingly, she actually had a pen and once she had it in her right hand, she looked up at us expectantly.

“So you said you’ve got some news,” she said.

“Yes,” I told her. “We’ve come across some things at the company that we think you should be aware of. Some things involving some of our employees. And we’re finding out more information by the minute.”

Detective Shipley was looking down at her notepad and doodling in the upper right hand corner of the page. I stopped speaking and it was a good five seconds before she looked up at me. Glad to see that I had her attention.

“I’m not sure how much you know about our company and what it does,” I continued. She nodded at me. At least she was awake.

“We are in the development business. We have clients that we partner with who need high tech components developed and built. They contract us to develop and build things that haven’t been done before.” She was still with me. “One of our biggest partners over the last couple of years has been a company called Global Devices. They’re in the medical research business. I found out recently that they had cancelled all contracts with us and demanded all of their property back.”

Shipley shrugged and gave me a
so what?
look.

“Well, I’ve been talking to the President of Global Devices about why they cancelled with us and apparently it was because research results were being falsified. Which is not very kosher, considering that we partnered with them to build an artificial kidney for humans.”

Shipley sat up just a little bit at this news.

“But, apparently, only a few people at our company knew that the contracts were cancelled, and didn’t tell anyone, and have kept up a phoney pretense that everything was A-okay.”

Shipley looked a little confused.

“I’m still confused about the whole thing myself,” I acknowledged. “But to top it off, our Vice President of Research and Development has moved out of her office and not given any notice to the company.”

“How long ago was this?” Shipley asked.

“Yesterday,” I told her. Shit this was sounding so lame.

“Let me back up a little bit. A couple of days ago, I found out that Mr. Connaught had a safety deposit box.” Shipley definitely perked up at this news and starting writing in her notepad. “I found papers inside the box that were copies of correspondence with the Food and Drug Administration, and originals of letters which looked to be love letters.” Shipley stopped writing and looked up at me, puzzled.

“I know, it doesn’t make much sense,” I said lamely.

“Maybe I can help out,” Kelly offered.

“Please.” Before Shipley thinks I’m a complete moron.

“Miss Monahan spoke with the President of Global Devices,” Kelly told her. “Apparently one of their Vice Presidents, a Doctor Jordan Francis, resigned his position at Global and hasn’t been heard from in a month. There is no evidence that he’s been at his apartment either. The same papers that were found in Mr. Connaught’s safety deposit box were found taped to the underside of Dr. Francis’ desk drawer.”

The story sounded so much better coming from Kelly. “The Vice President of Research and Development who works at our company, Natalie Scott, vacated the premises and cleaned out her office on Wednesday night. On Miss Monahan’s instructions, my staff have been checking the backgrounds of each of the employees in our research and development group.”

Shipley interrupted at this point. “You’re only
now
checking backgrounds? In this day and age?”

Kelly held up his right hand. “Of course we check backgrounds,” he said indignantly. “Very thoroughly. But people lie, as we’ve found out. One of our employees falsified his application and we’ve found out that he has spent time in a state prison for sexual offences. He didn’t tell us on his application that he was a qualified surgeon or that Miss Scott, our Vice President, the one who disappeared into the night, apparently worked at the same hospital as he did in Arizona several years ago. Miss Scott failed to mention any of that on her background documentation.”

Kelly stopped at this point and we waited while Shipley wrote some more in her notepad. When she finally looked up at us, she asked, “What do you want me to do with this?”

“Question Miss Scott and the other employee. Find out if they know where Dr. Francis is. Look into his disappearance.”

Shipley made some noise in the back of her throat, that little tiny noise that could make a mockery of whatever you had just said. The noise meant, “as if”. Really. There was a collective pause among the three of us. Kelly turned a wee bit red in the face and I think Shipley was wishing she could take it back.

I stood up and looked down at Detective Shipley. “Here’s something you can do,” I started to tell her. Kelly stood up and took me by the elbow, putting a little pressure on it. I understood the pressure to mean
cool it
. So I took a little breath and realized that pissing off this woman would get me nowhere. “Have a nice day,” I finished the thought and left the room. I must be growing up, I thought. Under similar circumstances I probably would have told the woman to rub her knuckles in shit, so I was pretty proud of myself. I made a mental note to call my mom and let her know.

I thought Kelly was right behind me but I arrived in the lobby alone. While I waited I looked around and realized the Precinct looked like the inside of my old high school. The walls were tiled and the place had an institutional feel to it. Institutional buildings like these gave me the creeps and I wondered what the hell the designers were thinking when they put tiles on the walls. As if it were a shower or a bathroom. Yuck. They were probably thinking
efficiency
and how easy it would be to clean. I wondered if they actually mopped the walls. Double yuck.

Kelly appeared in about ten minutes and we didn’t stop to talk in the lobby. When we were sitting in the back of Lou’s car, he told me that he had hung back for a few minutes to talk with her.

“I wanted to cut her some slack,” he said. “You can’t imagine how overworked some of these detectives are. Their caseloads are huge and with her partner out on sick leave, she’s managing it all on her own. I asked her to give some thought to what we had told her. I wouldn’t hold my breath though that she’s going to do anything about it at this point. She’s barely keeping her head above water.”