The Strategist (15 page)

He immediately thought about the other woman in this equation. It was the same woman who Julia picked up from the airport the morning of her murder. The same woman whose house Julia had been in most of that day. The same woman who showed up at Julia’s house after her murder in hysterics. The same woman who recently left the FBI because she stood by while her partner was executed by a third rate serial killer.

When Solomon followed Julia to the airport, after a sharp deviation from morning her routine that included a thirty minute stop at the First Western Bank, he assumed she had taken the day off to pick up a family member or some male suitor that he previously knew nothing about.

When he saw Julia walk back to her car some forty minutes after they’d arrived, nothing in Solomon’s wildest imagination could have prepared him for who he saw walking behind her.

Camille Grisham looked much younger in person than she did on television. While her physical stature was formidable, her facial features were delicate, with no sign of the hard-edge that was portrayed by her FBI friends during various interviews and special reports. Her dark wavy hair was pulled back tightly, fully revealing a rich, pretty face that seemed more at home on a magazine cover than in some crime lab. But her eyes were tired and somber. No surprise if all the news reports that Solomon had heard about her were true.

He had felt an uncomfortable thump in his chest as Julia lifted the FBI agent’s suitcases into the back of her Range Rover. As the two stood outside of the car talking, the agent glanced over both shoulders, as if she sensed someone was watching her. The action unnerved Solomon more than he cared to admit, and he fought the urge to lower his head out of sight.

“Keep it together,” Solomon whispered to himself.

He followed them to a house that was only a few blocks fro
m the bar he had met his employer in only a few nights earlier. Solomon was instantly reminded of how small the world really was.

He watched the house for a long time. As the minutes turned into hours, any hope he may have had that Julia and the agent were merely acquaintances slowly evaporated. How close they actually were was something Solomon didn’t know. But he had to assume they were close enough to discuss the private, personal matters of their lives. That left open the very real possibility that the agent knew things pertaining to his employer, things that Solomon himself may not even know. People like Camille Grisham are trained to connect dots that the average person, even the average cop, would never even consider. No matter how well-staged a crime scene was, her first instinct would be to dig deeper. And if she had any inkling of the circle that Julia Leeds was a part of, that would be the first place she would dig.

Thinking about all of this made his mind leap to conclusions that frightened him and he knew he had to pull it together. Maybe the agent knew everything. Maybe she knew nothing. Either way, Solomon still had a job to do. The disks would be found, no matter who had them. And if finding them meant ending the nightmare that had become Camille Grisham’s life, then so be it.

As he pulled out his cell phone to make the call he absolutely dreading making, Solomon was reminded of a basic truth that he had briefly, and foolishly, allowed himself to forget.

There is no such thing as perfection.

CHAPTER 24

C
amille had barely spoken a word in the day and a half since Julia’s funeral. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything to say, she simply couldn’t trust what would come out of her mouth.

Following her incident in the closet, she began taking the anti-anxiety pills that were prescribed to her after Agent Sheridan’s death. They didn’t help as much as she would have liked. Though they succeeded in keeping her calm, the after effects left her with a feeling of complete physical disconnect, not only from herself, but from the entire world around her.

That world, it seemed, had become a different place in the week since Julia’s murder, and nothing about it felt right. The sounds of everyday life – birds chirping, car horns blaring, children playing – were muted, as if she were hearing them through a pair of noise canceling headphones. When she ventured outside, the people around her appeared to move with no sense of purpose or direction. Some stared at her with blank, lifeless expressions; their slack faces revealing nothing in the way of emotion. Others were oblivious to her existence altogether. Camille would stop short of calling them robotic, but there was certainly nothing organic about them. It was as if they were put there merely to fill in space; to preserve the illusion of the real world that Camille had clearly left behind.

Of course she couldn’t give voice to any of this. She already knew that she would forever be looked upon differently by those who knew her, no matter how much time had passed or how much progress she made. The whispers would follow her everywhere she went: ‘
That poor woman. First her FBI partner was killed, now her best friend. What she must be going through. How can a sane person possibly survive it all? Hopefully someone is keeping a really close eye on her
.’ The fires were already burning, no need to stoke them with talk of robots.

Besides, it would be just be another reason for Paul to worry, and Camille had already given her father enough reason to worry. Her withdrawal from the world had also, by extension, been a withdrawal from him. He had tried his best to stay engaged, to regularly check in on her, to give her an ear that was all too willing to listen. But she kept quiet; content to lock herself in her bedroom while the world around her slowly transformed into one that she no longer recognized or wanted any part of.

Her cell phone rang a lot during that time. She knew they were mostly calls of condolence, though she never answered a single one. People certainly meant well, but there wasn’t anything they could say to make her feel better. The fact of the matter was that she didn’t want to feel better. She didn’t want the world to return to normal or find a way to heal her shattered psyche. In Camille’s mind she deserved nothing more than to spend the rest of her life in the purgatory of her childhood bedroom, and until her father physically put her out on the street, she had no intention of being anywhere else.

Then she received
the call that instantly changed everything.

Much as she had done with every other call to her cell phone, she let it go directly to voicemail rather than answer it. She had listened to an
d deleted twenty-two other messages before she finally came upon it. It had been left nearly three hours prior.

“Good morning, Camille. My name is Laurence Pine and I’m an attorney with Pine, Goldwin and Associates,” the message said. “I oversaw Julia Leeds’ estate and we’ve just completed the reading of her will. There were items left to you by Julia, and we can arrange to have you come to our office so our clerk can process those items for you. But there was something else that Julia left for you, something that wasn’t an official part of her will. I’d prefer to meet with you personally regarding this, so I’m calling to see if you are available sometime today. I’ll leave my schedule open in the event that you are. My direct line is 303-” Camille didn’t wait for the rest of number. She simply hit the ‘redial’ button.

After a brief conversation with the attorney and an agreed upon meeting time, Camille was showered and dressed in twenty minutes.

When she went downstairs, her father was in the kitchen. The look of surprise on his face was palpable. “Are you headed out?” he asked as he stood over a grilled cheese sandwich cooking on the stove.

“For a little while. I just talked to Julia’s attorney. Her estate reading was today and apparently something was left for me that he wants to talk about.”

“Are you sure that’s something you can handle right now?”

“No. But I need to go anyway.”

Paul turned off the stove. “Well give me a minute. I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to do that, dad. I’ll be okay. I need to be back in the world by myself at some point.”

“Are you sure this is the right situation to do that?”

Camille shook her head. “There won’t be any such thing as the right situation.”

Paul nodded his agreement then turned back to his grilled cheese.

“It sure smells good,” Camille said as she attempted a smile. 

“Made with entirely too much butter, just the way you like it. I’d be happy to grill one up for you before you leave.”

“Maybe later.”

“And you’re positive you’re okay to drive?” he asked, now barely able to contain the anxious father that had been bottled up in him for days.

“Positive,” she answered, forcing her smile even wider. “I promise I won’t be gone long.”

“Okay. Just make sure you’re safe out there. And call me if you need to, for any reason at all.”

Camille almost rolled her eyes at the comment but held back. The sudden, unexpected death of someone you know makes you worry that much more for everyone else you know. Camille couldn’t fault Paul for being nervous about her being anywhere out of his sight. 

“I will, dad.” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek then walked out. “I love you,” she said over her shoulder as she opened the front door.

“I love you too, bunny!” he yelled back.

He hadn’t called her bunny since she was ten-years-old. It had always given her the biggest smile when she heard it. 

She was thankful he couldn’t see her reaction now. 

*****

The offices of Pine, Goldwin and Associates were located on the eighteen floor of the Wells Fargo Building, better known to those familiar with the Denver skyline as the ‘cash register’. Camille sat alone a spacious, softly lit lobby adorned with marble sculptures of half-clothed women playing harps and Spartan warriors dressed in battle gear, while the young receptionist left to inform Mr. Pine of her arrival. Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro
was playing softly on the receptionist’s desktop radio. Next to that sat a tray of handmade pastries and an ice bucket filled with bottles of water and orange juice. If nothing else, Laurence Pine knew how to create a welcoming environment. Unfortunately, the warm gesture did little to calm her frayed nerves.

The receptionist returned no later than thirty seconds after she left, the man Camille assumed to be Laurence Pine walking beside her.

“I’m so glad you could make it, Camille,” he said with a broad smile as he extended a hand to her.

He was a tall, good-looking man who was much younger than Camille expected. Despite the tension of the moment, his smile unexpectedly disarmed her. She rose to shake his hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Pine.”

“No formalities needed here. Laurence will do just fine.”

“Laurence it is,” Camille said with a smile that had quietly infiltrated her face. She allowed the warm feeling to linger a moment longer than it should have before she buried it in a serious demeanor.

The instant Pine saw the look, his smile faded. “Can I offer you something?” he asked, pointing to the tray on the receptionist’s desk.

“No thank you.”

“Okay. Then if you’d like to follow me, my office is right down the hall.”

Pine’s office was large, offering a clean view of Rocky Mountains that were sprinkled white with the season’s first snowfall.

“Please have a seat,” he said, pointing to a leather swivel chair that faced his desk.

As Camille sat, she watched Pine walk to a file cabinet adjacent to his desk. After unlocking and opening one of the drawers, he emerged with a large brown envelope in hand.

“Before we start, I should probably tell you a little about my relationship with Julia,” Pine said as he sat down behind his desk. “First off, we’ve known each other for well over a decade. We were actually in the same graduating class at Yale. She had originally recruited me when she came back to Denver to work for Brown and Epstein. I took her up on it, but after a year at the firm I got sick of the political in-fighting and decided to start up my own shop instead. Julia and I remained good friends throughout the years and I’ve been her personal attorney for almost six. She spoke of you often. In fact, the last time I talked to her was on the morning she was to pick you up from the airport. She couldn’t have been more excited you were coming. We hadn’t talked for a while and had made tentative plans to get together for lunch. Of course I had no way of knowing that would be the last time I would…” His voice trailed off as he chewed on the tip of his fingernail.

“I’m sorry,” Camille said, looking at a once strong, confident face that was now contorted with emotion.

Pine cleared his throat in an effort to compose himself. “It’s been difficult on everyone who knew her. And there were a lot of people around here who knew her. But n
o one knew her as well as you. I’m aware of the circumstances of your return here and the hell that you’ve been through since. I can sit here and say that I have some idea of how you feel. But the reality is I don’t. All I can say is I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Camille answered in a broken voice.

The two sat in prolonged silence, each seeming to process the gravity of the moment in their own way. After a few moments, Pine was the first to speak again.

“I guess I should get to why I actually called you here. As I mentioned, Julia and I met last Thursday morning. She had originally told me that the purpose of the meeting was to modify her existing will. But when she got here I discovered that she actually wanted to draft a second one. I told her that in all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never heard of anyone wanting a second will in addition to the one they already had. Typical Julia, she simply smiled at me and said ‘Larry my man, there’s a first time for everything.’”

Camille laughed. Typical Julia indeed.

Pine continued. “She went on to tell me that it wasn’t an official will and had nothing to do with the division of her assets. All she told me was that it was something that was to be opened by me and only me upon her death. Nothing to notarize or otherwise document. Just my word that I would do with it what she asked me to do. I laughed when I took the envelope, not knowing what it was and never once thinking to ask. Obviously I wasn’t laughing the next morning.”

Camille edged forward in her chair as Pine held up the envelope.

“As per her instructio
ns, I didn’t open it until after the reading of her will was complete. I found two items inside – a handwritten letter addressed to me and a smaller envelope. The letter was short, and didn’t say anything about the contents of the envelope.”

With that, Pine handed Camille the large mailer. She reached inside and pulled out the small, unmarked envelope. The lightweight paper suddenly felt like an eighty-pound weight in her hand and she let it drop to the desk.

“Did the note say anything else?” a shaken Camille asked.

“Only that it was to be given to you immediately.”

Camille’s chest felt heavy. “How did she seem to you that day?”

Pine briefly searched his memory before answering. “Fine. Happy. Couldn’t stop talking about how excited she was to see you.”

“Did she seem off in any other way, like she was worried about anything?”

“If she was
, she didn’t show it. When she gave me the envelope she was pretty nonchalant, like she was making a conscious effort to downplay the importance of her request. Of course I knew better. Julia never did anything nonchalantly.” Pine paused to reflect further. “I know what you’re getting at with the question, and the timing of her visit is something I’ve been wracking my brain over. She wasn’t nervous, she wasn’t flustered. She was nothing more than her usual boisterous, charming-as-hell self. I personally think the fact that she died less than a day later was one of those instances of the universe swift-kicking us in the ass with a not-so-gentle reminder that nothing in this life, not even the air we breathe, belongs to us.”

Diverting her damp eyes away from Pine, Camille looked at the envelope. But she was suddenly afraid to touch it. Whatever was inside would serve as the last contact Julia would ever make with her. After this, there would be nothing else. The finality of it made Camille want to run away, to tell Laurence Pine to keep it for another five, ten, twenty years, or perhaps to never give it to her at all. At least then there would be a chapter of their relationship that would always remain open; one last meeting left strictly to the imagination, free to be c
onstantly molded by any mood – happy, sad, or otherwise – that Camille saw fit.