“I’m fine,” he replied.
“You’re as pale as a ghost.”
“I said I’m fine.” Decker stood at the back of the parking lot, staring down at the rushing freestone stream in the gulch behind the market.
Ice glazed the boulders. Icicles hugged the embankment. Sunlight beamed and blinked from the turbulent waters. It looked like a river of glass.
“Let’s go,” Decker said, heading back toward the car.
Police Chief Jackson Brody was waiting for them in his office. He seemed taller behind his desk, more imposing. As soon as he stood up to shake their hands, Decker realized just how short he really was — perhaps five feet four, wearing boots. He had a thin cut of a face, like a half moon, perpetually turned to one side, with brown hair and moody brown eyes. But there was nothing moody about his handshake. It was almost too much. He checked their IDs and sat back down behind his desk without saying a word. Once again, Decker was impressed by Lulu’s forging abilities.
The office was large, girdled with accolades — framed diplomas and photographs, flags and other colorful regalia — befitting the local magistrate, which was probably the term favored by law enforcement officials of his type this close to the Canadian border, Decker thought. Decker had grown up in Iowa, after all, a land of small towns and small-minded sheriffs. His own father, a cop, had battled them his whole life. The Napoleon Complex was common in cops. Strapping on a gun always made you feel taller.
“You kind of missed the party,” Chief Brody said. “Most of the reporters who came here when Zimmerman died left a long time ago.”
“I know. We’re doing a follow-up,” Lulu said. She had changed into a pair of black slacks with a purple blouse and black fisherman’s sweater right before they’d left Boston. With her oversized canvas bag and Doc Martins, she looked more like one of her own graduate students than a reporter. But when she pulled out a small spiral notebook, started scribbling, the effect was complete. “You say that’s Jackson Brody, right? B — R—O — D—Y. Right? No e. Sounds like a stage name.”
“So does Sarah Lee. Your parents must have a sense of humor.”
“Lee is a very common Chinese surname,” Lulu said.
“You know,” Chief Brody continued, leaning forward suddenly. He stared intently at Decker. “You look…” He pointed at Decker’s face. “You look like that guy. You know who I mean. The mega-tsunami guy.” He started snapping his fingers. “What was his name? Stecker. No, Decker. John Decker, Jr., right? Didn’t he just get shot in some holdup in Washington? I thought I saw that on TV.”
Decker rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I get that a lot. But if you were to actually put us together, side by side, you’d realize we look nothing alike. Not really. It’s weird.” Then he laughed, a kind of half-formed throaty chuckle. “Especially now that he’s dead!”
“Yeah, I guess—”
“Back to Zimmerman,” Lulu said. “You have no reason to believe that his death was caused by anything other than an accident, do you?”
The Police Chief scowled. “Nope. It was an accident all right. Caught it on tape. Plus, we found skid marks and animal tracks at the scene. He was obviously speeding. Lost control of his Land Cruiser trying to avoid hitting an animal. Happened not too far from here on 100, between Winhall and Londonderry, just north of Spring Hill. Ended up going through the guard rail, down the embankment, and into the beaver pond. Here,” he said. “I had them pull out the clip when you called.” The Police Chief leaned over and turned on a DVD player and TV parked on an AV stand by his desk.
Moments later, some footage appeared on the screen. “Luckily, Tom Higgins just installed these webcams by the entrance to his lodge. Otherwise, the last we’d have seen was him traveling by the Mobil at the junction of 100 and 30,” Brody added. Just then, the picture became clear and Decker could see Zimmerman’s Land Cruiser veering off to the right, braking and spinning out of control.
“With all those reported cases of sudden acceleration at the time, even though Land Cruisers weren’t part of the recall, Toyota sent a team in to look for electronic malfunctions, faulty floor mats, that sort of thing. But the car checked out clean.”
The clip kept repeating, over and over again. For some reason it made Decker think of one of those funniest video shows on TV. After a while, as the white Toyota swerved off to the side for the umpteenth time, it took on the property of a clown car, crashing through the guard rail of the little bridge, tumbling off the edge, landing on its back upside down in the beaver pond.
“I don’t see any animal,” Decker said. “He just spins off to the side.”
“We figured it’s blocked by the guard rail.”
When Chief Brody noticed Decker transfixed by the screen, he added, “I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. The crash didn’t kill him. According to the coroner, Zimmerman drowned, pure and simple, pinned like that upside down in the water.”
“Mind if I get a copy of that?” Lulu said, handing Chief Brody a memory stick.
“I guess not,” he replied. “Already been all over TV.” He slipped her flash drive into a vacant USB port.
“Can you tell us if anything unusual happened before his death?” Lulu continued as he copied the file. “Anything that brought Mr. Zimmerman to the attention of your office, perhaps? Complaints? Calls in the night? Anything?”
“Well, there was that trouble when Patrick Sailor, CEO of Gigity—”
“What’s Gigity?” asked Decker.
“Powers registration systems with social login,” said Lulu. “You know. Permission-based identity systems. Hello?”
When Brody noticed Decker’s puzzled expression, he leapt into the fray. “They’re the guys who ask you, ‘Want to register onto this website using Facebook or Twitter?’”
“Oh, right,” Decker said. “Didn’t realize they farmed that stuff out. Thanks.” Effortlessly, Lulu had given him the opening he needed to bond with Chief Brody.
“Zimmerman had done some consulting work for Gigity two years earlier,” Lulu continued, “and they accused him of leaving a backdoor in his code that allowed him to see the personalization data being passed between Facebook and whichever site the user was trying to sign into. You know: user profile data, interests, activities, email address, location and social graph connections, friends, likes and dislikes. Whole thing turned into a lawsuit when Gigity said they could prove Zimmerman was cracking their data, but the case was eventually settled. Zimmerman paid a king’s fortune they said, though he swore he never intercepted the data. As if he could ever be an innocent bystander.”
“You think he was lying?”
“I’m just saying,” said Lulu. “Zimmerman was an absolute genius. Cuspy code all the way. Would have been hard to fool him.”
“Later on,” added Brody, handing the memory stick back to Lulu, “weeks after the suit was resolved, Zimmerman started having problems with his environmental controls and security systems. He called down to the station several times, swore he saw someone on his property. But, whenever I sent a car out, my guys never found anything. Not a footprint. I went out there myself more than once. Frankly, he seemed to be losing it. Zimmerman was always a little bit weird. You know those millionaire types,” he said, glancing over at Decker and raising an eyebrow.
“Tell me about it,” said Decker.
“Went on and on about being watched. Paranoid, if you ask me.”
“And they’ve always got some pricey condition, don’t they?” said Decker. “Of course, they can afford to be sick. They don’t have the deductibles we do. Say, Chief,” Decker added. “You wouldn’t happen to know of a place we could stay around here, would you? While we’re working on this story, I mean. Some lodge or hotel? Nothing fancy. Ms. Lee here tried calling before but everything seems to be booked.” He shrugged helplessly.