Authors: Simon Wood
That was it. He’d been doing his best to be compassionate to Rebecca. She had just lost her remaining relative. He tried to be cognizant of that, but he’d had enough. He jumped to his feet, sending the stool tumbling on its side.
“I’ve been trying to protect Shane’s reputation. That’s what I’ve been hiding.”
His remark extinguished the flames on both ends of the phone line. Stunned silence came from Rebecca’s end. Finally, he’d gotten it off his chest. He’d admitted to the deception that was getting him into trouble.
“What are you talking about?” Rebecca had lost her accusing tone.
“The reason I called Shane that night wasn’t about the job I was working on for him, but an e-mail he’d sent me.”
“An e-mail?”
“Yes. He sent this weird e-mail with an attachment, telling me to keep it safe, but not to open it. I called him to ask him about it. He tried to brush me off and told me to delete the file and forget all about it, but I couldn’t.”
“Did you think he was suicidal?”
“No. He sounded cagey but not suicidal. He was high by the time I reached his house.”
“Oh God,” Rebecca said, exhaling. “Have you opened the file?”
“Not yet. My house was robbed this morning. My computers were stolen.”
“So the file is gone.”
“No, I backed it up. I just haven’t opened it yet.”
“Can you open it now?”
His mom would be pacing by now, but it couldn’t be helped. She’d have to wait. “Sure. I can call you back when I’ve got the computer up.”
“No, I’ll wait.”
He detected impatience, not mistrust, in her voice. Hopefully he’d won her over. With Santiago circling him, he’d need a friend.
He picked up the phone extension in his office and booted up his new computer. As he accessed his online storage account, it occurred to him that Shane’s document1 file might be nothing more than a suicide note. It would explain his instructions not to open it. But as much as a simple suicide note would box up Shane’s death with a nice, neat bow, he guessed document1 was something else. Why send him a suicide note? Surely he’d send the suicide note to Rebecca, not him.
“OK, I’ve got the file. Do you want me to open it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Shane asked me not to. Neither of us may like what it says.”
Rebecca was silent for a second. “No, I want to see it.”
Hayden double-clicked on the file name before he could change his mind.
The file didn’t open. Instead, a dialogue box asked for a password.
“Shit.”
“What is it?”
“Shane password-protected the file. Got any ideas on what it could be?”
She sighed. “No.”
“Let’s start with the obvious then.”
Between the two of them, they came up with family names, nicknames, pets’ names, places, stupid phrases Shane said all the time, and significant dates, which included the date Rebecca’s parents died. What made the process difficult was not knowing the length of the password. It could’ve been four characters or forty. Hayden jotted down every harebrained idea they had. He punched in password after password, and every one came back with the same response—incorrect.
“Why send you a password-protected file without the password?” Rebecca said.
“Because I wasn’t supposed to be the one to open it.”
“What do we do now?”
We. She thought of them as
we
. It looked as if she’d stopped seeing him as an enemy.
“I can see if I can get someone to hack it.”
“I’m here at Shane’s,” Rebecca said. “Do you think the password could be among his things here?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“If I find something, I’ll call back.”
They made arrangements to meet up. She had Shane’s funeral to plan, and she asked for his help. With no family left, she needed someone to lean on. He didn’t hesitate to agree. It was the least he could do.
He went to hang up, but she stopped him.
“I need to ask you something. Do you think Shane killed himself?”
“Yes. There’s no doubt, but something drove him to it. Something sudden.”
Rebecca didn’t say anything. She just hung up.
Hayden stared at the screen. It still displayed the incorrect-password box. The answer to Shane’s death was wrapped up in this file. He knew it.
S
antiago parked at the Mountain Vista Funeral Home and went inside. Marin County didn’t have an official coroner’s office with a morgue. It ran a virtual office. A chief coroner worked out of the county office, while his coroner investigators worked out of a number of funeral homes around the county. A funeral director appeared, saw it was Santiago, waved, and returned to his office. Santiago was a familiar face to everyone at Mountain Vista. It was something that didn’t bring him a lot of comfort in the middle of the night. He found Richard Dysart in the small office outside the autopsy theater. Dysart looked up from his computer and smiled.
“Hey, Santi, you got my message.”
His wife called him Santi. Dysart overheard her call him that at a restaurant once and the
culero
called him it every time they met. “Don’t call me Santi.”
Dysart stifled a grin, trying to look contrite, and flashed a Boy Scout salute. “It won’t happen again.”
It was a lie, but Santiago let it go. Dysart didn’t take anything seriously, except for his job. Santiago put the tomfoolery down to his unpleasant career choice. The jokes kept Dysart from slashing his wrists with a bone saw, but Santiago wasn’t entirely convinced Dysart wouldn’t be a wiseass regardless of his occupation.
“I assume your summons has to do with Shane Fallon.”
“Not so fast, muchacho.”
“Leave the Spanish for Cancún, Dick.”
Dysart raised his hands in surrender. “Whatever you say, Santi.”
“I have a gun.” Santiago slid back his sport jacket for Dysart to see. “You know that, don’t you?”
“OK, OK,” Dysart said. He failed to contain a smile and held out two files to Santiago. “Ruben, you’re getting far too uptight for a Mexican.”
Santiago ignored the comment and took the files. He read the names: Shane Fallon and Sundip Chaudhary.
“My suicides. What about them?”
Dysart frowned. “I can see I’m going to be the one to do all the heavy lifting here.”
The coroner snatched the files back from Santiago and flicked through them. “You wouldn’t think to look at them, but your two suicides are related. If it wasn’t for my supreme talent and keen eye, I would have missed it. Chaudhary was remarkably well preserved for someone who’d bobbed around in the Pacific for as long as he had, but even so, he made it a challenge.”
Santiago wrinkled his nose. Dysart’s assessment of well preserved usually differed wildly from the rest of the world’s. He’d seen bodies come out of the ocean before and tried to blot out the image forming in his mind.
“Are you going to impress me anytime soon?” Santiago asked, trying to ignore the odor of embalming fluid in the air.
Dysart jerked a photograph from each of the files and handed them to Santiago. “I thought these would be of interest to you.”
The first shot was of Shane Fallon’s inside left forearm. His skin almost shone white in the overexposed shot. What didn’t shine was a rectangular-shaped bruise untidily located two inches from his wrist. The bruise measured around an inch by half an inch. The second photo was of the right side of Chaudhary’s neck. The shot captured Chaudhary’s ear, hairline, and partial profile. Santiago focused on the bruise and not the damage the sea had done to the Indian’s face. Decomposition and Chaudhary’s darker skin tone nearly disguised a rectangular bruise on the side of his neck. It was identical in shape and size to the one on Fallon. The discovery stilled Santiago and he no longer noticed the stench of formaldehyde in the air.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Besides a bruise?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t know.”
“
Pendejo
.”
“Don’t get pissy. I found something interesting. It’s not my job to investigate. It’s yours.”
“Any ideas? You’re supposed to be superior to us lesser mortals.”
“The bruises are recent. No discoloration. I’d say they picked them up hours before their deaths. Obviously, these guys connected with the same object to get these bruises. There may be something in that for you.”
“Are you suggesting something wrongful about their deaths?”
Dysart shook his head. “I’m just offering it up for its weird factor. There’s a possible connection. The bruises tie these guys together, but they didn’t kill them. Besides, as you know, they’re suicides.”
Santiago didn’t say anything. Gears were turning.
“They are, aren’t they? You have witnesses.”
“So it seems.” Santiago needed time to think this development through. “Fallon was supposed to have been doped up. Find anything to support that?”
“Tough to say. He didn’t shoot it, snort it, or swallow it. There aren’t any puncture marks. I checked all the junkie’s usual locations, even between the toes—nothing. Nose linings are clean. So is the throat. If he got high, I don’t know how he did it.”
“How long before I can get the tox report?”
“A couple of days. I got a rush put on them. You need to know it cost me a couple of Giants tickets.”
“Your sacrifice has been noted.”
“It better be. I don’t know why you’re going the extra mile on these suicides.”
Dysart was getting ready to blow hard and long about the shortcomings of his position. Santiago wasn’t in the mood to hear it and he didn’t have to, thanks to the incoming call on his cell. Rice’s name appeared on the display.
“What have you got for me?” he asked.
“Big surprises. You ready for it?”
Santiago let his silence warn the deputy not to waste time.
“Have you checked in with Marin Design Engineering yet?”
“On my way there next.”
“You may want to ask them about Sundip Chaudhary, seeing as he and Shane Fallon were coworkers.”
The world had just gotten decidedly more complicated. Santiago didn’t see that as a problem. People who complicated matters made mistakes. Two suicides were one such mistake. Sure, two people from the same firm could kill themselves days apart from each other. Both men had claimed to be guilty of something unforgivable. A suicide pact seemed logical. The problem with suicide pacts was someone always backed out. He just needed to find out who’d backed out of this one for everything to make sense.
Santiago gave Rice his orders and hung up on him.
“You’re grinning, Santi, and you don’t grin. Well, not here you don’t.”
“You asked me about a tie between these two guys. How does the idea of coworkers strike you?”
Dysart grinned, but it only lasted a second. Santiago enjoyed removing it.
“Say good-bye to another pair of Giants tickets. I want a tox report on Chaudhary, stat. It would be nice to have it at the same time as Fallon’s.”
Santiago left Dysart to his bitching and drove over to Marin Design Engineering. He’d contacted MDE’s CEO, Trevor Bellis, and warned him that he’d be dropping by, but hadn’t made an appointment. He didn’t want to give Bellis the opportunity to be “out on business” when he arrived. On the drive over, Santiago called to see if Bellis was in and got the answer that he was. He hung up without leaving his name. He pulled up outside MDE’s offices fifteen minutes later.
He entered MDE’s reception area. Framed photographs of Sundip Chaudhary and Shane Fallon hung on a wall. Above the photos hung a plaque with the inscription, “In memoriam.” MDE knew about the connection. It was a shame no one had seen fit to inform him.
He checked in with the receptionist. His badge surprised her and he tried a smile to allay her concern. She called Bellis, and after a five-minute wait Trevor Bellis introduced himself, looking suitably solemn. He showed Santiago to his well-appointed office on the second floor. It looked staged for a shoot for the Office World catalog.
Bellis indicated a chair. “Take a seat, detective.”
“Thank you, sir,” Santiago said, and sat down.
“I suppose you’re here about Sundip and Shane.”
“Yes. I am.”
Bellis shook his head. “I can’t believe they both committed suicide.”
“It’s tragic. People rarely see the warning signs until it’s too late.”
Santiago itched to hit Bellis with the tougher questions, but he needed to settle him down first and win his trust. He didn’t need the guy being defensive, so he warmed Bellis up with a few background questions.
“Work can drive people to suicide. Is it particularly stressful here?”
“There’s pressure. MDE is in demand. We work long hours, nights and weekends, but I would hate to think the work pushed them over the edge.”
“As you probably know, Shane Fallon is believed to have taken his life under the influence of drugs.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
Bellis appeared to be gearing up to unleash a holier-than-thou speech about the drug-free culture among his employees. Santiago decided to cut it off at the ankles with a little lie. “We don’t know the drug he took, but we have evidence to back up the claim.”
From Bellis’s expression, Santiago had just popped his balloon. Good. With the barrier removed, he could dig deep.
“I was wondering if you ever suspected Shane of drug use.”
“No, of course not. We have zero tolerance here for that sort of thing.”
“Do you do random drug screening?”
“We screen before employment, but not afterwards. Not without foundation, that is.”
“And you had no foundation?”
“No.”
Santiago nodded. “I see. Would anyone else know if Shane used drugs?”
“Possibly. You would have to ask them.”
“Could I?”
“Of course. I’ve warned my staff of your arrival and you have their full cooperation.”
Warned
. Santiago chewed the word over in his head. It was an odd choice of word. Inform, yes, but warn? You warned people against trouble. So was he trouble? He let the Freudian slip go, but kept it warm for use at a later time.
“I’m guessing you pay very well.”
The question threw Bellis for a second. “What makes you say that?”
“Your parking lot has some very nice vehicles parked in it.”
Bellis colored slightly. “Well, yes, we do pay very well. But I pay for the best. What’s your point?”
“Only that Mr. Fallon had the disposable income to support a habit.”
Bellis snorted. “So does Bill Gates—does that mean he’s a crackhead?”
“Well, no.”
“Just because I pay good salaries doesn’t mean it’s to support thousand-dollar-a-week drug habits,” Bellis said angrily.
He seemed genuinely inflamed by any suggestions that his employees were embroiled in a drug scandal. It was understandable, Santiago supposed. Scandal wasn’t good for anyone’s business.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Santiago said insincerely. “I didn’t mean to offend.” He decided to shift the questioning. Now that Chaudhary’s and Fallon’s deaths were connected, it opened up a whole new line of inquiry. “Did Sundip and Shane work together?”
“Yes. We’re all working on the same project.”
“Were they close? More than just colleagues, I mean.”
“Not especially so.”
“They didn’t hang out or anything?”
“No. Why?”
“Both men died professing guilt over something they’d done. They knew each other. Worked together. Whatever they did, I’m guessing it originated here. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Bellis paled. “Not really. They knew each other through MDE, but any wrongdoing would have occurred somewhere else.”
Santiago had kept the photographs Dysart had shown him of the rectangular bruises. He removed them from an envelope and slid them across Bellis’s desk. Bellis stared at the images, but made no attempt to touch them. The sight of autopsy shots of people you knew did that to a person. Santiago inched them closer to him.
“You see these rectangular bruises? I was wondering if there’s any object here that could have caused them.”
Bellis shook his head without taking his gaze from the photos.
“You wouldn’t have any problems with me looking around?”
Bellis shook his head again.
Santiago had shocked Bellis enough. He reclaimed the photos and slipped them back into the envelope.
“What do you do here? I’ve never been clear on what it is.”
The question refocused Bellis. “We’re a design house. Clients come to us with a problem that needs solving. We provide the solution.”
“You must have a diverse group of employees.”
“Yes and no. I have a core team backed up by contract staff to cover specialties. Although Sundip had worked for us for years, he was a contractor.”
That explained why Chaudhary’s employment record didn’t list MDE as his employer.
“And Hayden Duke?”
“He’s a recent contract hire. Shane recommended him.”
“How recent?”
“A week or so.”
“Before or after Sundip’s death?
Bellis fidgeted in his seat. “After.”
“I wonder if I could to talk to Shane and Sundip’s colleagues now and maybe see the building?” Santiago flashed the envelope to remind Bellis about the search for the source of the unusual bruise.
“Yes, I’ll take you to them.” Bellis got to his feet and came around his desk to show Santiago the way.
Santiago got up to join Bellis, but Bellis surprised him by blocking his path.
“Detective Santiago, you worry me. I get the feeling that you suspect my company of having some connection to Shane’s and Sundip’s deaths. It doesn’t. Is that clear?”
Santiago had ruffled Bellis’s feathers. Good. He liked ruffling feathers. It usually meant something.
“Are you withdrawing your cooperation, Mr. Bellis?”
“No. Just the opposite. As of today, I’ve made a public appeal offering a reward to get the person who called in Sundip’s suicide to come forward. That is something your department has failed to achieve.”
Yes, he’d definitely ruffled the CEO’s feathers.