“No,” he said quickly.
“Not even preliminary talks?”
“No.”
Nick didn’t know what else to say. Either he was telling the truth, or he was lying, and if he was willing to lie so baldly, well, what the hell could Nick do about it anyway? He thought about mentioning all the back-and-forth e-mail between Todd and Scott, the encrypted documents-but he didn’t want Todd to know he was having his security director keep a close watch. He didn’t want to shut one of the few windows he had into what was really going on.
“Then maybe you can explain to me why you’ve got Scott going to China on some secret mission, like Henry fucking Kissinger, without even telling me.”
A few seconds of silence. “News to me,” Todd finally said. “Ask him.”
“Scott said he went to China to explore the options. He didn’t do that for you? Because if he did, I want you to understand something. That’s not the way it works around here, Todd.”
“He doesn’t report to me, Nick.”
“Exactly. I don’t want to be undermined.”
“I don’t want that either.”
“The job’s tough enough without having to worry about whether my chief financial officer’s taking secret flights to the Orient on Cathay Pacific.”
Todd chuckled politely. “It’s a tough job, and it takes a lot out of you.” The timbre of his voice suddenly changed, as if he’d just thought of something. “You know, I understand your family’s been through some rough times, death of your wife, all that. If you need to spend more time with them, we’re here to help. You want to take a little sabbatical, a little break, might be a good thing. You could probably use a vacation. Be good for you.”
“I’m fine, Todd,” Nick said. Not so easy, Todd. “Going to work every day-that’s what keeps me going.”
“Good to hear it,” Todd said. “Good to hear it.”
71
Bugbee was gobbling Cheetos out of a small vending machine bag. His fingers-which Audrey had noticed were usually immaculate, the nails neatly clipped-were stained orange.
“Makes sense,” he said through a mouthful of Cheetos. “Rinaldi picked up a piece in Grand Rapids when he was working there.”
“Or here. Those guns travel.”
“Maybe. So where’d he toss it?”
“Any of a million possibilities.” She was hungry, and he wasn’t offering her any, the jerk.
“I forget who the poor slobs were searched the Dumpster, but nothing there.”
“There’s probably hundreds of Dumpsters in town,” Audrey pointed out. “And the dump. And sewer grates, and the lake and the ponds and the rivers. We’re never going to find the gun.”
“Sad but true,” Bugbee said. He crumpled up the empty bag, tossed the wad at the metal trash can against the wall, but the bag unballed in the air and landed on the floor. “Shit.”
“Did you have a chance to talk to the alarm company?”
He nodded. “Fenwick Alarm’s just an office downtown. I don’t know what the hell they do-they install, but not in this case. They don’t even do the monitoring themselves. That’s done by a joint called Central Michigan Monitoring, out of Lansing. They keep all the electronic records.”
“And?”
“Nada. Just confirms what we already know. That Wednesday morning one of the perimeter alarms at Conover’s house got triggered. Alert lasted eleven minutes. Big fucking deal. You got the hard drive-that ought to give up what the cameras recorded, right?”
She explained what she knew about Conover’s digital video recording system. “I’ve asked Lenehan to look again. But Noyce has him doing all kinds of other things ahead of us.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
“Speaking of cameras, one of us should check out whatever they have at Fenwicke Estates security for that night.”
Bugbee shook his head. “Did already. They use a central station downtown. Nothing special-Stadler climbs a perimeter fence, that’s it.”
“Too bad.”
“I say we poly the guy. Both of those assholes.”
“That’s a tough one. It may be early. We may want to wait until we have more. I know that’s what Noyce would say.”
“Screw Noyce. This is our case, not his. You notice the way he’s been breathing down our necks?”
“Some.”
“He must smell something big about to pop.”
She didn’t know how much to say. “I think it’s more that he wants to make sure we don’t slip up.”
“Slip up? Like we’re rookies?”
Audrey shrugged. “It’s a big case.”
Bugbee said, with a crooked grin, “No shit.”
Audrey responded with a rueful smile as she turned to go back to her cubicle.
“That thing about the shell casing or bullet fragment or whatever,” Bugbee said.
She turned. “What shell casing?”
“That bluff?”
“Yes?”
“Not bad,” Bugbee said.
72
Nick was beyond weary. All the shit that was going on with Todd and Scott, all the crap he didn’t understand: it was draining. And that on top of Eddie and his warnings about Cassie: check yourself before you wreck yourself. And: What do you think she’s after? Could there be something to what Eddie was saying?
Was it possible, he’d begun to wonder, that, on some subconscious level, he wanted to be found out?
And worst of all, so awful he couldn’t stand to think about it, was this fragment of a shell casing the police had discovered on his lawn.
He’d always prided himself on his ability to endure pressure that would crush most other guys. Maybe it was the hockey training, the way you learned to find the serene place inside you and go there when things got tough. He never used to panic. Laura, always on the high-strung side, never got that. She thought he didn’t care, didn’t get it. And he’d just shrug and reply blandly, “What’s the use in panicking? Not going to help.”
But since the murder, everything had changed. His hard shell had cracked or turned porous. Or maybe all the stress of the last few weeks was additive, the worries heaped onto his back until his muscles trembled and spasmed. Any second now he’d collapse to the ground.
But he couldn’t, not yet.
Because whatever Todd and Scott were up to-all this maneuvering, the secret trips and the phone calls and the encrypted document-it had ignited a fuse in him that crackled and sparked.
You want to take a little sabbatical, a little break, might be a good thing.
Like Todd gave a shit about his emotional well-being.
Todd wanted him to take time off. Not resign: that was interesting. If Todd and the boys at Fairfield wanted to get rid of him, they’d have fired him long ago. So why hadn’t they? Was it really the huge payday, the five million bucks they’d have to pay to fire him without cause, that was stopping them? Given how many billions Fairfield had under management?
He tapped at his keyboard and pulled up the corporate directory, clicked on MARTIN LAI. A photo popped up-a fat-faced, phlegmatic-looking guy-along with his direct reports, his e-mail, his phone number.
He glanced at his watch. Thirteen-hour time difference in Hong Kong. Nine-thirty in the morning here meant ten-thirty at night there. He picked up the phone and dialed Martin Lai’s home number. It rang and rang, and then a recorded message came on in Chinese, followed by a few perfunctory words in heavily accented English. “Martin,” he said, “this is Nick Conover. I need to speak to you right away.” He left the usual array of phone numbers.
Then he spoke into the intercom and asked Marge to locate Martin Lai’s cell phone number, which wasn’t on the Stratton intranet. A minute later, a long number popped up on his screen.
He called it and got a recorded voice again, and he left the same message. He checked Lai’s Meeting Maker, his online corporate schedule, and the man appeared not to be away from Stratton’s Hong Kong office.