The Woman Who Stopped Traffic (17 page)

CHAPTER 20

Natalie stopped in to see Tom Nguyen on her way down to Sunnyvale Police station, ostensibly about her security report – but really to take the temperature, following that phone message break-in. Nguyen had never sounded more busy. He told her they’d have to catch up another time. The implication seemed clear enough to Natalie: that Nguyen knew very well she’d hacked in to his voice messages.

She drove on to All America Way. From the outside, Sunnyvale Police station had a fine sense of civic accessibility about it, surrounded with its mature trees and friendly signage. The temperature in the Valley had dropped to a pleasant seventy-seven degrees.

But the interview room Pulver led Natalie into was windowless and battleship grey. It contained nothing more than three chairs and a table. She set down her tote bag. There was a strongly institutional smell about the place. A young officer with the name tag STEVENS accompanied Pulver. He was crew cut, uniformed and deferentially silent, placing a file down on the table in front of him. Pulver offered Natalie a drink, and she accepted: coffee, black, no sugar.

The drinks machine was down the hall from the interview room. Through a small rectangular window, Natalie watched Pulver palm his face with his big, bubble-like hands.

What was he thinking?

They were almost four days into a homicide investigation. According to an old adage, the likelihood of apprehending a killer halved with every passing 48 hours. She thought about those reporters gathering at the crime scene and wondered just how easy it was to get any real detective work done with the modern, Internet-based news cycle. Specifically, how often the top brass needed updates – on the work that probably couldn’t progress, because of all the updating – that likely only heightened the need for updates.

What really mattered to Pulver? Well, there was the crime scene itself. Investigating teams had differing durations of control over crime scenes, she figured. On a busy section of freeway, control could last less than an hour. The area around Malovich’s apartment would likely still be locked down – but for how much longer, before people needed to get back to their homes, their parking spots?

The other issue would be identifying motive. The complicating factor here had to be finding people who’d recently or unusually entered Malovich’s life. The guy seemed to have had no roots whatsoever in America, and few real relationships of any kind. Had Malovich left behind any social ‘footprint’ at all?

And then there was the inter-agency coordination Ben had commented on – the feds bringing ‘the resources and the interference’. And what was
that
, written at the top of Stevens’ file? It was upside down, but readable, circled: ‘Monterey County Sheriff’s Department’. Through the window she saw Pulver returning, balancing three coffee cups as he re-entered the room.

Stevens closed the door and switched on a small digital recording device: “Interview with Natalie Chevalier, person of interest to the Yuri Malovich inquiry, commencing fifteen-o-seven Pacific Standard Time. For the record, Miss Chevalier has declined the offer of legal representation.”

The ‘person of interest’ designator came as a surprise. It all felt rather different to Ben’s assurances just a few hours before – that she ‘needn’t worry about Pulver…’

“OK Miss Chevalier, could you give us a brief account of your role at Clamor, how you came to be there. You can skip all non-essentials, we’ll ask follow-on questions.”

She tried to include everything as briefly as possible: her pre-existing relationship with Nguyen, the presentation at the Keaton and the Jasmine incident, Nguyen’s offer for her to become a security consultant, and the report she was now writing up.

“And how would you characterize Yuri Malovich’s role at the company?”

“By his job title: Head of Security and Privacy.”

“So is it fair to say, just going by title, that your roles overlapped?”

She paused. “Well yes, it’s common enough for an outside advisor or consultant to work together with a corporate officer in that way. Consider a senior external auditor and a Chief Accounting Officer –”

“Maybe,” Pulver said. “Would you say that your involvement was prompted by
concerns
over the way Yuri Malovich discharged his duties?” 

She hesitated again. Stevens wrote a word down in his notebook. “I guess there may have been a level of frustration, yes, about Yuri not having fixed the problem that resulted in a trafficking victim appearing at an important investor presentation.”

“Were there other concerns about Malovich, which you were made aware of?”

“That was the primary one expressed to me.”

“Who?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You put it in the passive. Who expressed the concern to you?”

“Tom Nguyen, over our brunch together – when he first offered me the consulting role.”

Pulver took a moment, then said: “Were you aware of any strong views held by other management team members towards Malovich?”

She thought back to that Sunday strategy session and the argument over the Multi Identity Engine, which had somehow involved Malovich – only, she couldn’t remember how, and wasn’t inclined to pull out her notebook. “Not abnormally so.”

Again Pulver asked her to rephrase.

“From my understanding, in a successful start-up there’s always this jockeying for position with the prospect of such massive imminent wealth. At least, that was my feeling about how the team interacted when I observed them together. Look, I only met with Yuri Malovich twice, and he said little enough on each occasion
–”

“You knew him prior to your involvement with Clamor?”

“No! I knew
of
him, because of the security thesis he’d written at Stanford. It was an influential text in the industry. But like I said, I only met him twice: I didn’t
know
him. ”

Pulver asked for the full name of the thesis and Stevens wrote it down.
She started to think this interview had been a mistake. There was still time to back out or ask for a lawyer.

“OK,” Pulver
said, and thought again for a moment, flipping back through his own notepad. “You mentioned this “massive immi-nent wealth”. You were aware then of how much money Malovich stood to make?”

“I was aware of how much his stock options would be worth, yes.”

“How did you come by that information?”

“From one of the investment bankers involved in the IPO process.” Natalie knew that Pulver knew which one. But Pulver avoided all mention of their mutual acquaintance, going down a different path:

“Would it be reasonable to assume then, that if Yuri Malovich was replaced as security head, his successor would enjoy a similarly outsized level of remuneration?”

She didn’t like where this was heading. Yet, she wanted to set the record straight: “Stock options aren’t like that. They’re largely a lottery. Yuri just happened to join the company early on. A successor wouldn’t receive anything like the option position he’d managed to accumulate.”

“But sorting out this kind of embarrassing situation: that’s gotta be worth a considerable amount to a company at this
sensitive
stage of its development?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash for a fixed term consulting contract,” she said, wanting to be as transparent as possible. She immediately regretted it. Both men’s eyebrows rose.

“A quarter of a mil’, cash – in addition to what they’d planned to pay Malovich. Perhaps I should be in private practice,” Pulver said, and Stevens smiled, but not really. “Security sure pays,” Pulver continued. “At least, at Clamor.us it does.”

He let that observation hang there longer than perfect courtesy allowed.

“Now just for housekeeping purposes: what were your coordinates Monday night?”

She couldn’t believe it. She’d heard it said so often on TV, at the movies:
Where were you on the night of the murder
? It just didn’t seem real to her.
None
of this seemed real. And what
had
she been doing on Monday night? She couldn’t even remember. Wait – 

“I was flying back from Seattle, where I’d been to see old friends.”

“And your flight got in to Oakland, or SFO? At what time.”

“SFO, just after ten I think.”

He waited for her.

“I then drove straight back to the Keaton.”

“And what time did you arrive there?”

“I don’t remember. I was tired.”

Both men looked at each other, as though putting a pin in that one for later.

“OK, now the next day, you approached the crime scene
–”

“
– in the company of Ben Silverman,” she said, feeling betrayed by this whole situation now. Pulver looked at her like she was trying to sabotage his interview.

“
– and you approached from the rear of Garden Court. There’s quite a dense row of eucalyptus bushes, I’m sure you recall.”

“Yup, the way Ben led me.”

“Why did you choose that approach?” Pulver asked, flat-out ignoring her remark.

“It wasn’t my choice,” Natalie reiterated. “If I were to guess: someone with an unmarked police car had blocked off the entranceway to Yuri’s apartment complex, and Ben and I had been to the Silicon Bean before, making it an easier path of approach.”

Both men looked at Natalie, weighing every one of her words. She didn’t need to know all the details to recognize that the no-mans land between the Silicon Bean café and the Garden Court complex was of unusual interest to them.

Pulver’s
cell phone was ringing. He eyed the display: “Talk to me.” His thick limbs lifted him out of his chair and the room.

Silence followed. The air was unaccountably close.
Had someone turned the heating way up
? Which made Natalie think of something: this particular yoga exercise – like an internal lifting of the stomach into the chest, which almost made her pass out each time she’d attempted it. The effect was no different this time. Sure enough:

“
You OK
?” Stevens said with widening eyes.

“Not really,” she said, her face burning up.

“Jesus Christ, you need water?”

“That’d be great,” she exhaled. As soon as the door sucked to, she reached across and grabbed the file. What looked like ‘IS’ upside down became ‘51’, form 51s: the case notes. She flipped through, speed-reading. The more revealing ones read like a diary:

‘Malovich apartment frustratingly lacking in evidence. No signs of forced entry. Perhaps killer is an expert lock picker, I doubt it. In other important respects – the way the murder was dressed to look like suicide – this homicide appears to be the work of a rank amateur.

No killer this artless could have covered all their tracks…’

Presumably these entries would be written up into some investigative chronology. Another entry seemed to summarize the medical examiner’s findings:

‘ME flagged two issues. One, the conjunctivia in the deceased’s eyes: the way the capillaries burst isn’t consistent with rupture patterns seen after a noose snaps the human neck. Rather, it appears to indicate that death came slowly to Malovich, from asphyxia / strangulation. Two, the ME detected extensive, subcutaneous, post-mortem bruising around the deceased’s shoulders: “Combined with the lividity” – and I’m quoting Annelise verbatim – “this indicates the victim was dropped onto, possibly dragged along, hard ground”…’

The note then referenced the medical examiner’s report, marked ‘pending’. Natalie looked up through the small window. Mercifully the near water fountain was out of commission; Stevens had gone down to the far drinks machine. She kept flipping back-to-front, the entries becoming more recent and relevant with each turn of the page:

‘Clamor receptionist just commented on Malovich’s method of commute. Total paradox for a guy living in what is effectively a drive-though apartment complex that he didn’t actually drive. Owned a 2007 Toyota Camry with 189 miles on the clock. Shortest walk between the Clamor office and Garden Court being via the back lot of the Silicon Bean…’

Natalie could feel the growing urgency in Pulver’s comments: he needed manpower, resources – to find the evidence, the material witnesses
. Before matter and short-term memory vanished
. After interviewing the owner-manager of the Silicon Bean, he’d added:

‘Cafe was closed and empty at time of estimated death (11pm-midnight, ME reckoned).
Something
must turn up. Have ordered examination of twelve bags of dry brush from the disused water culvert separating the two properties. Fair amount of material to search through for DNA, I know. But forensics already turned up a button that matched the shirt Malovich wore on his last day –  with more sewing thread than usual for a button that’d merely fallen off…’