The Chessman (22 page)

Hartzell laughed. “Clearly I can relate to your father. Lucy’s the only one I’ve got, Paul. I’ll never be ready to stop being the most important man in her life.”

“To be honest, sir, I’m never sure where I stand with Lucy.”

“Nonsense. I only get to meet the cream of the crop.” Hartzell finished his wine and set the glass on a walnut coaster. “Now, after making a complete ass of myself, what can I do for you?”

“My father met you at a charity event in Chicago some years back.”

“Was that the restoration project for the Art Institute or the Breast Cancer Awareness at the Belden Stratford?”

“You shared a table at the Stratford. My aunt Nora is a cancer survivor. She likes to give back and lets my parents know whenever an occasion presents itself.”

“Your aunt Nora is a saint, Paul. If I remember correctly, we raised a lot of money that evening.” Hartzell peeked at Crenna. “Your father has the same dark hair, maybe a little gray on the temples, wears wire frames?”

“That’s him.”

“I do remember your father.” Indeed, Lucy had described Crenna Senior to Hartzell from some family albums she had riffled through at Paul’s apartment. “It was an enormous crowd that night and your father joked about us being packed in like so many sardines.”

“Dad’s a card, all right.”

“Give your father my best, Paul, next time you talk to him.”

“I will, sir. In fact, that’s what I wanted to discuss with you. My father’s investment group has been looking into market opportunities.”

“Please have him let me know if he finds some good deals. It’s been strange days, son, the likes of which I’ve never seen—and I’m as old as dirt. The monetary policy of this administration, if anything, has prolonged the suffering. Legislators on both sides of the aisle should be tried for economic treason. Everyone needs to calm down, be patient, and ride out the storm while confidence returns to the financial sector.”

“That’s exactly what Father’s investment group is interested in, Mr. Hartzell. Safe places to ride out the storm.”

“Give me a second, Paul. And you’ve got to start calling me Drake—I insist.”

Hartzell grabbed his glasses and disappeared down the hallway for a minute and then came back holding a business card, which he handed to Crenna.

“Have your father give Ben Vetter a call. The number on the back will put him straight through. There are no miracles, Paul, but Ben will set your father’s investment group up with a steady ROI and great positioning for when the Bull comes charging back, as it inevitably will. I cannot offer a higher recommendation than Ben Vetter.”

“Thank you, Drake.” Crenna looked a bit letdown, but placed the card in his wallet. “My hope was to connect you directly with my father’s group.”

“That’s an endearing compliment, Paul. Very gracious of you. Lucy will wholeheartedly disagree about my awkwardness at tooting my own horn, but,” Hartzell sat down and leaned forward, “certainly not through any god-given talent or genius, I find myself occupying a certain upper niche in the world of high finance. A certain niche that deals with an amount of funding required to initiate investments that is, quite frankly, highway robbery. It’s shamefully elitist, Paul. The funding threshold is an amount of currency that I’m uncomfortable talking about in a pleasant social situation such as this. Let me assure you and your father that the investment firm I’m recommending is most trustworthy. You have my word.”

“I didn’t mean to cause you any discomfort, sir. My father and I have tremendous respect for your reputation and standing in the financial community. That’s why I feel that connecting the two of you would turn into a win-win relationship. My father’s group consists of several entities that pool their interests.” The Business major with an Economics minor sipped from his glass of wine. “By all means, sir, tell me what this
threshold
amount is, and if it’s out of our league, I’ll toast you—I’ll even hand-deliver my résumé—and then I’ll bring this business card of Vetter’s back to my father for consideration.”

Hartzell cocked his head sideways and offered Paul Crenna an absurdly high number.

“You had me going there for a second, sir,” Crenna said. “But I don’t see that as being a showstopper.”

Hartzell stared at the mark for several seconds.

“How about some more Petit Verdot, Paul?”

Chapter 28

“T
hey never found his body,” Cady told the conference room, focusing mainly on Assistant Director Jund. “Jake Westlow
is
the Chessman.”

“Start at the beginning, Agent Cady, and walk us through your theory.” A sullen Jund leaned back in his chair at the head of the table.

Cady knew what was coming. Jund was going to play devil’s advocate and punch as many holes in Cady’s
theory
as possible to see if it held up to the light of day before committing to additional steps. He respected the assistant director’s strategy, knew his theory needed to be run through the wringer, but also knew this meeting had the potential to be a major pain in the ass.

“Jake Westlow had known Marly Kelch since he was a seven-year-old. Dorsey Kelch believes that Westlow deeply loved her daughter.”

“We’ve been told repeatedly that everyone loved the Kelch girl. She was like…what’s her name in that Ben Stiller movie? The one where he gets the gob stuck on his ear.”

“
Something About Mary
,” Agent Evans volunteered.

“That’s the one. Evidently, Marly Kelch had that same girl-next-door thing going on that every guy falls in love with and the kind of face that ‘launched a thousand ships.’ But that in and of itself means nothing. When I grew up I fell in love with every pretty girl who smiled at me. I still do. Perhaps I’m the killer.”

“Jake was a gifted child,” Cady said, pressing on, “a brilliant mind, and he ultimately skipped three grades ahead to graduate in Marly’s class.”

“So what? My sister got moved ahead one grade and I’ve never heard the end of it. Perhaps she’s the killer.”

“Marly Kelch was a girl of endless energy. She worked nearly full time in high school, she was a phenomenal athlete—a tennis star, Homecoming Queen, played a mean clarinet, was lead in most of the plays, and, if not for Westlow, Marly would have been the class valedictorian. In fact, she gave the graduation speech as Westlow was too modest and opted out. But there was another endeavor, a smaller endeavor that the duo had cooked up at Reading Central Catholic High School, something that didn’t snare many headlines. Turns out Marly had taught Boy Westlow how to play chess back when she first babysat for him. The two started the Reading Chess Club.”

“The plot thickens, but most players learn at a young age. My nephew plays chess and he’s eight. Perhaps he’s the killer.”

Cady knew the assistant director’s sarcasm masked the incredible stress he’d been under the past ten days. The AD wanted the case presented to him from the very beginning, and Cady was going to give it to him—building block after building block.

“The Westlows were dirt poor. In Jake Westlow’s single-parent household, Mom ran a consignment and sewing shop in order to make ends meet. There was no money, nothing for college tuition. Even though he was able to CLEP through most of freshman year, young Westlow wound up with a double major at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—both Chemical and Mechanical Engineering. Now ask yourself, how could he afford this?”

“Scholarship.”

Cady nodded his head. “The kid skated through MIT on a Navy ROTC scholarship.”

“So he was a naval officer after MIT?”

“He was in the CEC, a Navy Civil Engineer Corps Officer. He was a lieutenant commander at the time of his
death
. Westlow ran civil engineering projects in Iraq back when it was a hot zone—bases, airfields, harbor facilities, that type of thing.”

Agent Preston had Westlow’s service record in front of her. “It fits the profile, sir. Military service would provide Westlow great know-how.”

“His motive is vengeance over the murder of the person he considered his
soul mate
,” Jund thought aloud. “As for means, he’s got the skill set and brain cells necessary to plan and carry out these multiple homicides. But the opportunity is out of whack. Why the ten-year gap after the Kelch girl’s death?”

“He didn’t know.”

“What?”

Cady offered a handful of photocopied sheets to Agent Schommer, who took one and passed them on. The page contained the timeline he’d scribbled down before the morning meeting. Cady waited until everyone in the room had a sheet in front of them.

“Westlow is devastated by Marly’s death. He doesn’t understand how a tremendous athlete like Marly can drown, even if she’s had a couple glasses of wine. Let’s say he’s always been dubious. He makes it a point to stop in and visit Dorsey Kelch whenever he’s in town, or, in this case, when he’s on hardship leave over the impending death of his mother. He visits Mrs. Kelch. They page through the
Newsweek
issue that has both father and son Farris on the cover and Mrs. Kelch lets slip that Marly knew Patrick Farris at Princeton. This gets Westlow to thinking, to delving into his feeling that something wasn’t quite right about Marly’s death.”

“What’s this next mark, ‘Funeral,’ on your timeline mean?” asked Jund.

“That’s the date of Lorraine Westlow’s funeral. She died ten days after Jake Westlow’s visit with Dorsey Kelch. However, please note that two nights after Westlow’s visit with Kelch is when Bret Ingram dies in a fire at his lake resort. It’s my belief that Westlow had a heart-to-heart with Ingram, used the threat of force or death to get Ingram’s story about what really happened at Snow Goose Lake. Ingram confesses all he knows to Westlow, how the Zalentine twins woke him from his drunken stupor to have him mislead the police, how the purchase of Sundown Point and other things were
handled
by power attorney Barrett Sanfield. It may even have been a great relief to get this guilt off his chest, but in effect Bret Ingram signed his own death warrant. No way Westlow lets the man live after hearing of his complicity in the cover-up of Marly’s death, so he improvises and the town drunkard dies in an apparent fire.”

“What’s this next date, marked ‘Dorsey Kelch’?”

“That’s a few days after his mother’s funeral, now fourteen days after their initial meeting and the thumbing through of the
Newsweek
magazine that set everything in motion, when Jake Westlow stops by to bid a final farewell to Mrs. Kelch. Dorsey said he was still shaken up over his mother’s death, but I posit that Westlow had made plans, knew the road ahead of him was turbulent, and stopped by because he knew he would never see Marly’s mother again.”

“And this next date, marked ‘Westlow Suicide,’ is a month later.”

“Agent Preston has been digging into that,” Cady responded. “Liz, can you walk us through Jake Westlow’s
alleged
suicide?”

“At that time Lieutenant Commander Westlow was stationed out of the Naval Base in San Diego. Westlow had been UA from his 32nd Street Naval Station for four days—Unauthorized Absence or AWOL. This was highly unusual for someone at Westlow’s level of command.” Agent Preston shuffled the packet of papers in front of her, photocopies of which had been passed about at the meeting’s start. “He then surfaced in San Francisco to rent a twenty-four-foot sailboat from the marina manager at Emeryville Marina, located in San Francisco Bay—a pretty idyllic place, fairly upscale. Westlow tossed twelve hundred plus a security deposit down on his American Express card for five days with the J/24 Presto, a boat commonly used for training or day-sailing in the bay. We will return to Westlow’s intriguing utilization of credit cards in a minute,” Preston looked about the table and continued, “but suffice it to say that the J/24 sailboat was far below the Lieutenant Commander’s level of expertise. So in the early evening of August thirtieth, Jake Westlow was last seen motoring the small yacht out of Emeryville Marina—‘a stunning figure in his service dress whites,’ according to one witness. The Coast Guard received an SOS from the J/24 at exactly 10:30 p.m. Westlow radioed in an SOS on channel sixteen.”

“What was his emergency?”

“The transcript of Westlow’s SOS is included in Exhibit C.” Agent Preston let a few seconds pass for pages to flutter. “Westlow followed standard procedure. He called ‘U.S. Coast Guard’ several times and then said, ‘This is vessel Amber Waves, Amber Waves, Amber Waves,’ which was the name of the rental J/24 that he was sailing. A minute later Westlow repeated the hailing procedure. At this point, as you can see in the transcript, the Coast Guard responded. They immediately sent him to a different frequency. On this new frequency, channel seventy-two, Westlow provided his name and the exact location of Amber Waves in longitude and latitude. When asked about his emergency, Westlow’s answer was ‘MOB.’ MOB stands for man overboard. Then Westlow responded quietly, almost inaudibly, ‘I’m sorry.’ Even though the Coast Guard radioman repeatedly asked him to expand on his distress signal, Jake Westlow switched off the radio. He was never heard from again—not from the United States Coast Guard, anyway.”

“What exactly did the Guard find on Amber Waves?” Jund asked.

“The officer I interviewed was on the Response Boat that night. He said it was like ‘something out of The Bermuda Triangle.’ The waters were calm. No other boats were in the vicinity. The Coast Guard found Westlow’s shoes on the boat deck, his uniform folded neatly on top of them. Aside from that, the Amber Waves was completely deserted. The course Westlow set had been across the bay and then southward into the Pacific Ocean. The J/24 was about eight nautical miles off the coastline, north of Monterey. Westlow had dropped anchor, and the boat had moved only slightly in the twenty minutes it took for the HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter to spot the J/24. Evidently, Westlow had left the cabin light on for them. The Response Boat showed up ten minutes later.” Agent Preston flipped another page. “Exhibit D is a copy of Westlow’s short note to the rescuers, found next to the radio, that essentially apologized for wasting their time and stating that he ‘did my best not to make any mess for you to clean up.’ Our forensic handwriting analyst has verified it to be in the lieutenant commander’s handwriting. In addition, there was an empty bottle of Valium on the floorboards, as well as a halffull bottle of Ambien rolling around next to it. They also noted some vomit along the starboard side of the craft.” Preston took a breath and then continued, “The Coast Guard assumed that the hidden meaning in Westlow’s distress signal signified that he was the man overboard—a suicide—and that the sea swallowed up Westlow’s remains. Shark food. A body like that would be picked clean if it ever washed up at all.”