Authors: Harlan Coben
Wendy sat back. She turned to Ridley Barry. "If Phil is this big-time thief, why hasn't he been arrested?"
For a moment, no one said anything. Ridley Barry looked toward Win. Win nodded. "Go ahead. She won't tell."
He cleared his throat and adjusted his bow tie. He was a small man, wizened, the kind of old man some might call endearing or cute. "My brother Stanley and I founded Barry Brothers Trust more than forty years ago," he began. "We worked side-by-side for thirty-seven years. In the same room. Our desks faced each other. Every single working day. The two of us managed to build a business with gross outsets that exceed a billion dollars. We employ more than two hundred people. Our name is on the masthead. I take that responsibility very seriously--especially now that my brother is gone."
He stopped, looked down at his watch.
"Mr. Barry?"
"Yes."
"This is all very sweet, but why isn't Phil Turnball being prosecuted if he stole from you?"
"He didn't steal from me. He stole from his clients. My clients too."
"Whatever."
"No, not 'whatever.' That's much more than a question of semantics. But let me answer it two ways. Let me answer as, first, a cold businessman and, second, as an old man who believes that he is responsible for his clients' well-being. The cold businessman: In this post-Madoff environment, what do you think will happen to Barry Brothers Trust if it gets out that one of our top financial advisers ran a Ponzi scheme?"
The answer was obvious, and Wendy wondered why she didn't see that before. Funny. Phil had used that question to his advantage, hadn't he? He kept using that as proof he'd been set up--
"Why haven't they arrested me?"
"On the other hand," he went on, "the old man feels responsible to those who put their trust in him and his company. So I'm going through the accounts myself. I will reimburse all clients from my personal finances. In short, I will take the hit. The clients who were defrauded will be compensated in full."
"And will be kept in the dark," Wendy said.
"Yes."
Which was why Win had sworn her to secrecy. She sat back and suddenly more pieces came together. Lots of them.
She knew now. She knew most of it--maybe all of it.
"Anything else?" Win asked.
"How did you catch him?" she asked.
Ridley Barry shifted in his seat. "You can only keep up a Ponzi scheme for so long."
"No, I get that. But what made you first start looking into him?"
"Two years ago, I hired a firm to examine the background of all our employees. This was a routine thing, nothing more, but a discrepancy in Phil Turnball's personal file came to our attention."
"What discrepancy?"
"Phil lied on his resume."
"About?"
"About his education. He said he graduated from Princeton University. That wasn't true."
CHAPTER 35
SO NOW SHE KNEW.
Wendy called Phil's cell phone. Once again there was no answer. She tried his home. Nothing. On the way back from Win's office, she stopped at his home in Englewood. No one was there. She tried the Starbucks. The Fathers Club was gone.
She debated calling Walker or maybe, more likely, Frank Tremont. He was the one who handled the case of Haley McWaid. There was a good chance that Dan Mercer had not killed Haley. She thought that maybe she now knew who did, but it was still speculation.
After Ridley Barry left his office, Wendy had run it all by Win. There were two reasons for this. One, she wanted an intelligent outside ear and opinion. Win could provide that. But, two, she wanted someone else to know what she knew as, well, backup--to protect both the information and herself.
When she finished, Win opened his bottom drawer. He pulled out several handguns and offered her one. She declined.
Charlie and Pops were still gone. The house was silent. She thought about next year, Charlie gone to college, the house always this still. She didn't like it--the thought of being alone in a house like that. Might be time to downsize.
Her throat was parched. She downed a full glass of water and refilled the glass. She headed upstairs, sat down, and flipped on the computer. Might as well start testing out her theory. She did the Google searches in reverse-Princeton-scandal order: Steve Miciano, Farley Parks, Dan Mercer, Phil Turnball.
It made sense to her now.
She then Googled herself, read the reports on her "sexually inappropriate" behavior, and shook her head. She wanted to cry, not for herself, but for all of them.
Had this all really started with a college scavenger hunt?
"Wendy?"
She should have been scared, but she wasn't. It just reconfirmed what she already knew. She turned around. Phil Turnball stood in her doorway.
"Other people know," she said.
Phil smiled. His face had that shine from too much drink. "You think I mean to hurt you?"
"Haven't you already?"
"I guess that's true. But that's not why I'm here."
"How did you get in?"
"The garage was open."
Charlie and that damn bike. She wasn't sure what the right move was here. She could try to be subtle, hit her cell phone, dial 9-1-1 or something. She could try to send an e-mail, an electronic SOS of some kind.
"Don't be afraid," he said.
"Do you mind if I call a friend then?"
"I'd rather you didn't."
"And if I insist?"
Phil took out a gun. "I have no intention of hurting you."
Wendy froze. When a gun comes out, it becomes the only thing you see. She swallowed, tried to stay strong. "Hey, Phil?"
"What?"
"Nothing says you have no intention of hurting someone better than whipping out a handgun."
"We need to talk," Phil said. "But I'm just not sure where to start."
"How about how you kicked that mirror shard into Christa Stockwell's eye?"
"You really have done your homework, haven't you, Wendy?"
She said nothing.
"You're right too. That is where it began." He sighed. The gun hung down by his thigh. "You know what happened though, don't you? I was hiding and then Christa Stockwell screamed. I ran for the door, but she tripped me and grabbed my leg. I never meant to hurt her. I was just trying to get away, and I panicked."
"You were in the dean's house because of a scavenger hunt?"
"We all were."
"Yet you took the fall alone."
For a moment Phil looked off, lost. She considered making a run for it. He wasn't pointing the gun at her. It might be her best chance. But Wendy didn't move. She just sat there until he finally said, "Yes, that's true."
"Why?"
"It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. You see, I came into that school with every advantage. Wealth, family name, a prep school education. The others struggled and scraped. I was drawn to that. They were my friends. Besides, I was going to get in trouble anyway--why drag them into it?"
"Admirable," Wendy said.
"Of course, I didn't know the extent of the trouble I was in. It was dark in the house. I thought Christa was just screaming out of fear. I had no idea when I confessed that she'd been hurt that badly." He cocked his head to the right. "I like to think that I still would have done the same thing. Taken the hit for my friends, that is. But I don't know."
She tried to glance at the computer, tried to see if there was something she could click to get help. "So what happened then?"
"You know already, don't you?"
"You were expelled."
"Yes."
"And your parents paid Christa Stockwell for her silence."
"My parents were aghast. But maybe, I don't know, maybe I knew they would be. They paid my debt and then told me to go away. They gave the family business to my brother. I was out. But again maybe that was a good thing."
"You felt free," Wendy said.
"Yes."
"You were now like your roommates. The guys you admired."
He smiled. "Exactly. And so, like them, I struggled and scraped. I refused any help. I got a job with Barry Brothers. I put together a client list, worked hard to keep everyone happy. I married Sherry, a spectacular woman in every way. We made a family. Beautiful kids, nice house. All on my own. No nepotism, no help . . ."
His voice drifted off. He smiled.
"What?"
"You, Wendy."
"What about me?"
"Here we are, the two of us. I have a gun. I'm telling you all about my nefarious deeds. You're asking questions to stall me, hoping for the police to arrive just in the nick of time."
She said nothing.
"But I'm not here for me, Wendy. I'm here for you."
She looked at his face, and suddenly, despite the gun and the situation, the fear left her. "How so?" she asked.
"You'll see."
"I'd rather--"
"You want the answers, don't you?"
"I guess."
"So where was I?"
"Married, job, no nepotism."
"Right, thank you. You said you met Ridley Barry?"
"Yes."
"Nice old man, right? Very charming. He comes across as honest. And he is. I was too." He looked down at the gun in his hand as though it had just materialized out of thin air. "You don't start off as a thief. I bet even Bernie Madoff didn't. You're doing the best you can for your clients. But it's a cutthroat world. You make a bad trade. You lose some money. But you know you'll get it back. So you move some other money into that account. Just for a day, maybe a week. When the next trade comes in, you'll make it up and then some. It isn't stealing. In the end, your clients will be better off. You just start small like that, a little crossing of the line--but then what can you do about it? If you admit what you've done, you're ruined. You'll get fired or go to jail. So what other choice do you have? You have to keep borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and hope that something will click, some Hail Mary pass will work, so you can get out from under."
"Bottom line," Wendy said, "you stole from your clients?"
"Yes."
"Gave yourself a decent salary?"
"It was part of keeping up appearances."
"Right," Wendy said. "I see."
Phil smiled. "You're right, of course. I'm just trying to give you the mind frame, justified or not. Did Ridley tell you why they first started looking at me?"
She nodded. "You lied on your resume."
"Right. That night in the dean's house--it came back to haunt me again. All of a sudden, because of what happened all those years ago, my whole world began to disintegrate. Can you imagine how I felt? I took the fall for those guys, even though I wasn't really to blame, and now, well, after all these years, I was still suffering."
"What do you mean, you weren't to blame?"
"Just what I said."
"You were there. You kicked Christa Stockwell in the face."
"That's not what started it. Did she tell you about the ashtray?"
"Yes. You threw it."
"Did she tell you that?"
Wendy thought about it. She had assumed, but had Christa Stockwell actually said it was Phil?
"It wasn't me," he said. "Someone else threw an ashtray at her. That's what shattered the mirror."
"You didn't know who?"
He shook his head. "The other guys who were there that night all denied it was them. That's what I meant about not being to blame. And now I had nothing again. When my parents heard about my firing, well, that was the final blow. They disowned me entirely. Sherry and my kids--they started looking at me differently. I was lost. I was at rock bottom--all because of that damned scavenger hunt. So I went to my old roommates for help. Farley and Steve, they were grateful to me for taking the fall, they said, but what could they do about it now? I started thinking, I shouldn't have taken that hit alone. If all five of us had come forward, we could have shared the load. I wouldn't be alone in this. The school would have gone easier on me. And I'm looking at them, my old friends who won't help, and they're all doing great now, all well-off and successful. . . ."
"So," Wendy said, "you decided to take them down a peg."
"Do you blame me? I'm the only one who paid a price for what happened, and now it was like I was finished in their eyes. Done. Like I wasn't worth saving. My family was rich, they said. Ask them for help."
Phil couldn't escape his family, Wendy thought--their wealth, their position. He could want to be like his struggling friends, but he was never really one of them in their eyes--because when push came to shove, he simply didn't belong with the poor any more than they belonged with the rich.
"You learned about viral marketing from the Fathers Club," she said.
"Yes."
"That should have tipped me off. I just looked again. Farley was trashed. Steve was trashed. I was trashed. And there was already enough about Dan online. But you, Phil. There isn't a word about your embezzling crimes online. Why? If someone was out to get all of you, why didn't he blog about your stealing from the company? In fact, nobody knew about it. You told the Fathers Club that you were laid off. It wasn't until my friend Win informed me that you'd actually been fired for stealing two million dollars that you suddenly opened up about it. And when you knew I was down at Princeton, you even got in front of that one too--telling the guys you got expelled."
"All true," Phil said.
"So let's get to your setups. First, you got some girl to play Chynna, Dan's teenage girl, and Farley's hooker."
"That's right."
"Where did you find her?"
"She's just a hooker I hired to play two roles. It wasn't all that complicated. As for Steve Miciano, well, how hard is it to plant drugs in a man's trunk and tell the police to take a look? And Dan . . ."
"You used me," Wendy said.
"It was nothing personal. One night I saw your TV show and figured, wow, what better way to get back at someone?"
"How did you do it?"
"What was so complicated about it, Wendy? I wrote that first e-mail from Ashlee, the thirteen-year-old girl in the SocialTeen room. Then I posed as Dan in the room. I hid the photographs and the laptop in his house when I visited him. My hooker pretended to be a troubled teen named Chynna. When you told me in my online persona as 'pedophile Dan'"--he made quote marks with his fingers--"to show up at a particular time and place, Chynna simply asked Dan to meet her at the same time and place. Dan showed up, your cameras were rolling . . ." He shrugged.