Every Last Fear: A Novel

by Alex Finlay

“That’s great, Kyle, just terrific.” Liv felt the ache again.

  Kyle didn’t ask why she was there, just led her through the door to the back of the suite and into his father’s office.

  Noah came around from behind his desk. “What a surprise.”

  “Not an unpleasant one, I hope.”

  “Are you kidding me?” He gave her a hug. They both made a point of patting the other’s back.

  “I see you’ve met the office whipping boy,” Noah said. He put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder.

  “I did. I thought I was looking at a photo of you from college.”

  “But without the mullet,” Kyle added with a small laugh.

  “Hey, that was totally the style. Tell him how cool I was, Livie.”

  Hearing the old nickname threw her off balance. “He certainly thought he was cool,” Liv said, giving Kyle a knowing smile.

  “I’ll let you two catch up,” Kyle said.

  “Great to see you, Kyle,” Liv called after him.

  Noah directed her to the sitting area. She took a wing chair opposite him on the settee. The office was tastefully decorated, except for the vanity wall. Dozens of framed photos of Noah with politicians and famous people. Her eyes landed on one of him and George Clooney sitting at a long table, like it was a panel discussion, looking suitably serious. ‘A Violent Nature’ hadn’t thrust just Liv’s family into the spotlight.

  “I hear you’re getting a promotion,” Liv said.

  He gave a knowing half smile. “If I’d known you were coming to town,” Noah said, “I would’ve taken you to lunch. Or—”

  “It was last minute,” Liv said. “My dad…”

  “Oh no, I hope he’s okay.”

  “He’s fine. About to be evicted from his retirement home, but fine.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “He’s been giving the staff hell.”

  Noah chuckled. “I’d expect nothing less from Charlie. He gave me my share of hell back in the day.”

  Liv smiled.

  “I’m really glad you stopped by,” Noah said. “I thought after last time…” He trailed off.

  “I’m sorry about that. I was in a bad place.”

  “No, I should apologize.”

  “How about we both just start again?”

  “I’d like that,” Noah said. After a moment he added, “I saw the Supreme Court denied the appeal.”

  Liv nodded.

  “And you heard I may be appointed governor, and want to see if I can help with the pardon process.…”

  “Oh, Noah, no,” Liv said. “Well, strike that—yes, of course I’d want help, but that’s not why I came.”

  “No?”

  “I came for a different favor.”

  Noah smiled. His teeth seemed whiter, straighter than before. Porcelain veneers, she thought. Whatever it was, he had improved with age. Time unfairly favored those with the Y chromosome.

  “My sister and the director of the nursing home hatched something up. Thought the soon-to-be governor may be able to cut through some red tape on some of the company’s licensing problems, and they’d be willing to look past some of my father’s, um, behavior problems.”

  “Ah, Dennis Chang put you up to this.”

  “I normally wouldn’t ask, but they’re going to kick my dad out. We don’t have any other options. And—”

  “Okay,” he said. “Done.”

  Liv didn’t understand. “What do you mean? You think you can help?”

  “No, I mean it’s done,” Noah said. “After he struck out with Turner, Chang has been on me for months about the licensing issues. They want to open more facilities, and they’ve been in limbo.”

  “So, really? That’s it?”

  “Really. Go back. Tell him he’ll get good news by the end of next week. But only if he guarantees your father has life tenure.”

  “But what if— Are you sure this is legal? I don’t want to get you in any trouble.”

  “Trust me. Just tell him life tenure for your dad and he’ll get good news by the end of next week. If he says no, you’ll have to figure it out, since he’s getting the good news either way. The license thing was cleared two days ago.” He flashed a smile.

  “This is amazing. You don’t know what a relief—I can’t thank you enough for letting me know.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  Liv gave him a look.

  “I’m meeting Kyle and his partner at Vincenzo’s tomorrow night for dinner. Join us,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got Tommy with me, and I haven’t spent any time with Cindy, and we leave on Sunday and—”

  “Bring them,” he said.

  “I’ll need to talk to Cindy.”

  “Tell you what, Livie,” Noah said, walking to his desk. He picked up a pen and wrote something on a piece of paper. “Here’s my cell number. Talk to Cindy and if you can make it, just let me know. I’d love to catch up.”

  “I have your number,” Liv said.

  “I had to change it after the documentary came out,” he said.

  “Your adoring fans,” Liv replied.

  “They’re not all fans,” he said.

  Liv examined the paper. It was his official stationery: thick stock with Noah’s name and the state seal at the top. It hadn’t changed in seven years. Not since that morning he’d left her the note on the hotel room pillow, saying that he had to get home early to deal with the fallout from his son’s house party—the one that eventually sent her son to prison.

  CHAPTER 29

  MATT PINE

  Matt awoke to a tap on his shoulder. He sat up quickly, squinting at the bright sun, confused for a second, but then remembering he’d slept on the beach. Before him was a young Mexican man wearing a white polo shirt and tan shorts. Other similarly dressed men were setting up umbrellas, unfolding chairs, and raking the sand. Matt looked toward the ocean. It was early and only a few people were on the beach. A couple with two young kids walked the shore, searching for shells, running from the waves.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but this area is for guests only,” the man said.

  “I am a guest.” Matt stood, brushed himself off, and walked toward the footpath that led to the hotel, hoping the guy wouldn’t call his bluff. He continued through the back door of the lobby, his damp sneakers squeaking as he made his way to the entrance of the facility. Out front, a bellhop hailed him a cab to the police station.

  It took fifteen minutes to reach the station house. Matt took a deep breath before walking through the front door, which was propped open with a brick.

  The lobby was a sweat lodge. He didn’t remember it being so hot yesterday. Behind the front desk was the same receptionist. She had an old metal fan on the desk, blowing around hot air. She gave Matt a sympathetic look and he worried he was in for a repeat of yesterday.

  But this time she picked up the phone, murmured something, then put down the receiver. She showed Matt to a small room, this one even more sweltering than the reception area. Without saying a word, she motioned for Matt to take a seat, and then slipped out.

  It was a long wait. The room had white walls smudged with fingerprints, and was furnished with only a marred table and three chairs. It was quiet, save for the hum of the lights above. Matt thought of Danny sitting in a room like this one. The setting—isolated and windowless, the air hot and thick—was intimidating. Add some overly aggressive cops, and it was no wonder why so many people falsely confessed. They just wanted to get out of the situation, out of the room. He almost felt bad for his brother.

  The door opened, and in walked a stern-looking man wearing a black police uniform and combat boots that didn’t suit the climate.

  “Señor Gutierrez?” Matt said, rising and extending a hand.

  Gutierrez didn’t shake Matt’s hand. Instead he pulled out the chair roughly and took a seat across from Matt.

  Matt sat back down, the cop still glaring at him. One would think that losing your family might warrant so
me sympathy, or at least civility. But Gutierrez seemed put out by Matt’s presence.

  “I was told you needed me to sign some papers to release my family so they can come home,” Matt said.

  “Who told you this?” Gutierrez said in accented English. His tone was clipped, accusatory.

  Matt looked at him for a moment, taken aback. “FBI Special Agent Sarah Keller. She said the consulate would be—”

  “Pfft.” Gutierrez glowered at Matt. “We released the bodies yesterday.”

  Matt felt his jaw pulse. “So you already—”

  “The investigation is closed.”

  Matt digested that. This entire trip had been for nothing. And the investigation was closed? It had been only a few days. Given the guy’s demeanor, Matt doubted they’d done any meaningful investigation. Matt looked at Gutierrez and said, “And…”

  “And what?”

  “And what did your investigation find?”

  Gutierrez’s eyes turned dark. “Ask your friends at the FBI and consulate.”

  “Look, this may not be important to you, and you may not be equipped for this type of investigation, but my family’s dead. So I’d appreciate it if—”

  “You want to sass me, boy?” The man pulled out a nightstick from a ring on his belt and smacked it on the table.

  Matt swallowed hard. “I’m not sassing. I’m— Never mind.” Fuck this. He wasn’t going to get anywhere with this guy. Matt stood to leave.

  “I didn’t say you could go. Sit down.” When Matt didn’t oblige, Gutierrez stood, gripped the nightstick with his right hand.

  “Sit!”

  Matt held up his hands, palms in retreat, and slowly lowered to his chair.

  “I meant no offense,” Matt said. That wasn’t true. If Matt had learned one thing from his father, however, it was to never underestimate the power of an angry cop. When his dad gave talks about Danny’s case, he always warned parents to teach their children to treat police officers like a big dog they didn’t know. Most dogs were friendly, but you still wouldn’t just rush up to pet the creature; you’d use caution, make sure it didn’t bite. And you’d certainly never poke it with a stick. The same was true with cops. Most were hardworking, decent people. But the profession also attracted a certain breed. Like a rabid dog, you might not know the good from the bad until it was too late.

  “So tell your children no matter how angry they are, no matter how unjust the situation,” Dad would say, “that they should be overly respectful, overly cautious, and not make any sudden moves—it could save their lives.”

  Matt followed the advice. “It’s been a hard time,” Matt said. “I meant no disrespect. I’ve been up all night.”

  “I know. Fraternizing with prostitutes.”

  “What are you—”

  Just then a woman burst into the room, the receptionist trailing after her. The woman wore a business suit, her face twisted in anger. In Spanish she started castigating Gutierrez.

  Gutierrez said something in an equally harsh tone. Matt’s eyes went from one of them to the other, a tennis match of insults he couldn’t understand.

  The woman finally pointed a stern finger at Gutierrez. She said something as if it were a dire warning.

  To Matt’s surprise, Gutierrez, so amped up just moments ago, retreated.

  The woman looked at Matt now. “Let’s go, Mr. Pine.”

  Gutierrez didn’t try to stop them.

  Outside, the woman handed Matt a business card. “I’m Carlita Escobar—no relation—from the consulate.”

  “I thought Mr. Foster was assigned to—”

  “He’s been reassigned. I’m taking care of your case.”

  Matt didn’t know what was going on, but he didn’t much care. He just wanted to get the fuck out of there. “The officer said my parents were released last night.”

  “That’s right. Senior State Department officials insisted, and I had to go over Gutierrez’s head. You have some important friends, Mr. Pine.”

  Matt didn’t know what she meant by that, but again he didn’t really care. The last twenty-four hours had been what his friend Ganesh would call “a dog’s breakfast.”

  “Where did they send my family?”

  Escobar retrieved her phone from her handbag, then tapped on it as if she were looking for the details.

  “Nebraska,” she said. She pronounced the word Knee-Baraska, like she’d never heard of the place. “They went out on a flight last night.”

  It made sense. The family plot was in Adair. Someone must’ve talked to his aunt.

  “We have a car to take you to the airport.” She gestured to a town car parked nearby. “You’ll want to go now,” Escobar said, and glanced at the station house. “You should get out of Tulum.”

  CHAPTER 30

  SARAH KELLER

  The bright morning sun reflected off the skyscrapers lining Michigan Avenue. Sarah Keller walked into the lobby of the office tower, her first visit to the Chicago branch of Marconi LLP. She’d analyzed the company for two years—talked to former employees, scrutinized bank records, studied bios of the executives—so it was strange to visit the place in person. Headquartered in New York with offices in nine other states, the entire firm wasn’t dirty—at least, Keller didn’t think so. Just the Chicago office.

  A line had formed at the main reception desk of 875 North Michigan Avenue, men and women in stiff suits checking in for meetings at the law firms, telecom, and other companies housed in the impressive one-hundred-floor tower. Keller waited patiently, then displayed her badge to the security guard working the desk. Without hesitation or questions, the guard gave her a key card. He didn’t work for Marconi, and his job was just to make sure no one unauthorized made it to the elevator banks. He wasn’t about to give the FBI a hard time. No analysis paralysis for this guy.

  Keller rode the elevator up with a throng of smartphone-staring executives. She smiled at the twentysomething in wrinkled slacks who held a cardboard tray filled with four coffees. Keller’s ears popped from the elevation.

  She’d just spent two hours with a team from the Chicago field office, getting them up to speed. As Stan had warned, the Chicago SAC was a bit of a bull in a china shop, and more than willing to bust into Marconi swinging his dick. She’d convinced them to exercise restraint. She’d send a signal—the single click of a pen that was actually a transmitter—if they should storm the offices. She didn’t want to do that. She’d prefer to continue building the case. But she supposed they already had the goods. Payments from various cartel-controlled accounts. The intricate web of investments and shell companies to wash the funds. The return of the money, less a hefty commission. But they didn’t have a single witness who could put the story together for a jury. R. Stanton Jones, their original inside man and the tipster who’d gotten them started with the investigation, had vanished. It was possible he’d been rammed through a wood chipper or dissolved in a barrel of acid, favorites of the Sinaloa Cartel. Or maybe he’d just decided to change his identity and start anew. The taps on Marconi phones revealed no clues about what had happened to the middle-aged accountant. The Marconi executives seemed as baffled as everyone else at Jones’s disappearance.

  Keller’s team had approached other former employees and gotten some good intel, but no one who knew the nitty-gritty, as Keller did after spending nearly two years tracking and analyzing the records. She’d intended to talk to Evan Pine because fired employees were always the most prone to turn on their companies, but he’d died before she got to it. Was he murdered, as the filmmakers speculated? Or was it a murder-suicide? Based on an analysis of internet history artifacts, the Bureau’s computer forensics team believed that Evan, not Liv, had made the searches suggesting he was planning to off himself. Maybe he was. But murder his wife and kids? Everything she’d learned about the man said he wouldn’t kill his family. Most of his internet searches related to caring for them when he was gone.

  She stepped off the elevator and into the Marconi c
omplex. It was as she’d expected: not too sleek, not too extravagant. Understated elegance. No one wanted someone flashy handling their money.

  Correct that, the receptionist was showy—strikingly pretty, with a model’s symmetrical features. Keller watched the woman closely as she approached. Much could be learned in these initial encounters. The receptionists of companies—particularly smaller branch offices like Marconi Chicago—usually knew where the bodies were buried. They saw who came and went, were tapped into the secretarial gossip circles, and needed something to make the boring job bearable. Would the woman look worried? Scared? Nonchalant? Or excited at the break in her routine?

  “Hi,” Keller said, friendly enough. “I’m Special Agent Keller. I’m here to see Devin Milbank.” Keller showed her badge, watched the woman’s face.

  “One moment, please,” she said. The woman smiled, but Keller saw a twitch. A barely discernible flash in the eyes.

  The receptionist tapped on the keyboard, and in her headset mic said, “Sheryl, I have a Special Agent Keller from the FBI here to see Mr. Milbank.” A long silence followed as she listened on the other end. “No, she didn’t say.” The woman’s glance returned to Keller. “If you’d like to have a seat, Agent Keller, someone will be right with you.”

  “I prefer to stand,” Keller said, if only to see the woman’s reaction. Another smile, a nervous twist of her hair.

  Keller waited patiently, gazing out at the spectacular view, the tops of other skyscrapers and the green water of Lake Michigan spanning out to the horizon. It was nearly ten minutes before another woman, pretty again, appeared in the lobby. The delay meant the executives were having a pre-meeting. Probably a panicked one. The woman escorted Keller to the door of a glass-walled conference room. The glass was frosted so Keller couldn’t see inside.

  The woman held the door open. Two men stood when Keller entered.

  The first man was taller than she’d expected. She’d seen him only in photos and media appearances. The head of Marconi Chicago, Devin Milbank. If the office was dirty—and it was—so was he.

  “Special Agent Keller,” he said in his deep baritone. He shook her hand, a tight squeeze with lots of eye contact. He motioned to the other man, who was almost a foot shorter than Milbank, rotund in a pinstripe suit. “This is Mel Bradford, our general counsel.” The man stuck out his sausage-finger hands and gave Keller a vise of a shake.