by Mike Brogan
“Okay . . .”
“Brooke, this is Agent Neal Shaw. We’re wondering if you recall any engineers, or ex-employees with expertise in the driveline systems, engine control modules, electronics and related systems, who were really angry at GV for being fired or forced out?”
Brooke was silent for a few moments. “Well, I recall a brilliant, highly experienced engineer. She was really frustrated and angry with the company.”
“What’s her name?”
“Hilda Schmitz.”
“Why so angry?”
“Because she’d been passed over for several well-deserved promotions for many years.”
“Why?”
“Because she was married and of child-bearing age. Back then, as you know, female engineers were not exactly welcomed with open arms by our male colleagues. The bosses complained, “We train these women, who then off they go make babies and stay home to raise them.”
“But,” Naismith said defensively, “today the boys do somewhat better.”
“Very much better here at GV,” Brooke agreed. “We have in-company child nursery and kid centers in our locations. Mom or dad can have lunch with kids.”
“Where is this Hilda Schmitz now?” Agent Shaw asked.
“Augsburg, Germany. She was born there. But . . . well . . . she’s got Stage-Three ovarian cancer. She’s in hospice care now.”
Madison wondered if her dying wish was to punish GV?
“Anyone else come to mind.” Shaw asked.
“Lukas Dover. He left in an absolute rage. But one week later, he was all smiles.”
“Why?” Shaw asked.
“His grandmother left him seventy-six million dollars.”
“Anyone else with the expertise and anger to do this?”
Brooke paused for several moments. “Let me give it some thought.”
“We’d appreciate it. Just contact me.” He gave her his direct phone number.
“Oh wait!” Brooke said. “I remember an absolutely brilliant engineer. He also became enraged at GV. Even sued the company.”
“Why?”
“He blamed GV for the death of his wife and daughter.”
“Even though he worked at GV?” Shaw said.
“Yes.”
“What happened to the wife and daughter?”
“They died in a GV vehicle accident he claimed was caused by the GV braking system. But the engineering evidence and police report found the brakes were fine. His wife’s cell phone indicated she’d been texting at the time of the crash.”
“What’s the engineer’s name?”
“Robert Bruner.”
“Do you think he’s capable of intentionally injuring people in GV vehicles?”
She paused again. “Well, ah . . . I don’t think so. But who knows? These days aren’t the men who gun down school kids usually the quiet guys next door?”
“Seems like it. Where does Bruner live?”
“He used to live in Rochester Hills. Maybe still does. When he left here, he was quickly snatched up by another components supplier. Like I said - he’s brilliant. Engineering genius. Holds numerous patents. Last I heard, Bruner was the director of engineering at a company headquartered in Michigan called AutoSystemics International. A big supplier of electronic and driveline components to carmakers worldwide.”
“Do they supply GV?”
She paused. “Yes.”
THIRTY ONE
Special Agent Neal Shaw hung up from talking with two GV engineers about Robert K. Bruner, the fired, angry ex-GV engineer. Both engineers confirmed what Brooke Daniels said: Bruner was a brilliant automotive engineer, but enraged at GV for allegedly causing the death of his wife and daughter in a GV vehicle crash.
After speaking with three more engineers, Shaw realized Brooke Daniels knew Bruner far better than anyone. He decided to drive over to the GV Engineering Campus and talk to her again. Maybe she’d recall something important. He called and asked if he could come over now.
“I’ll be waiting,” she said.
Minutes later, he walked into a small GV conference room where she was studying an engineering diagram on a wall chart. She turned and smiled at him.
“Brooke?”
“Yes. Agent Shaw?”
“Yep.”
Her smile jolted him. So did her shiny, short dark-brown hair, large green eyes, smooth skin, and a knockout smile all nestled nicely atop a tall, slender marathoner body. Brooke looked younger than her voice sounded on the phone.
They sat at a small round table.
“Thanks again for seeing me, Brooke.”
“Sure . . . I just hope I can help, Agent Shaw.”
“Neal, please.
“Neal.” She smiled.
“And you’ve already helped when you mentioned Bruner phoned a man named Van Horn.”
“I wasn’t really listening, but our cubicle walls are short and Bruner’s strong voice always carried over.”
“I understand. Did he talk often to Van Horn?”
“Maybe once a week, sometimes more.”
“Do you recall what they talked about?”
She paused. “Mostly what you’d suspect. Car stuff. Suspensions, drivelines, 4-wheel drive, braking, acceleration, steering. Tech words we use a lot.”
Shaw nodded.
“I even saw Bruner talking to Van Horn here in our cafeteria once. I asked my lunch buddy, “Who’s that with Bruner?” She said, “Oh, that’s Nester Van Horn. He some big Poobah with an auto supplier company, SmartEnergies, I think. Probably trying to sell Bruner some new component system.”
Shaw said. “Do you know if SmartEnergies sells parts to your company?”
“I think they do. But Purchasing can tell you the specific parts and systems.”
“I’ll check. Remember anything else about Robert Bruner?”
She paused a moment. “Well, I got to thinking about how secretive he is.”
“How so?”
“He was always secretive about what he was working on. And always extremely secretive and protective of his family.”
“Controlling?”
“Very. And critical. I used to hear him on the phone criticizing and scolding his wife.”
“About what?”
“Little stuff. Like folding the bathroom towels the wrong way, staying at the store five minutes too long, and putting too much starch in his shirts, and too little garlic in his baba ganoush, and letting the TV clicker batteries die, and cutting the grass on the wrong angle. Serious crimes to him.”
“Did he ever complain that she texted while driving?”
She paused and wrinkled her brow, making her green eyes even more attractive. “I don’t recall that.”
“After she died, did he remarry?”
“Oh no. He said he was far too distraught.” She paused. But . . .”
“But what?”
Brooke blushed a bit. “He was not too distraught to make dates with women from Joys-R-Us Escort service and a place called Kum & Go.”
“Anything else?”
Brooke paused. “Not much. But after his wife and daughter died, he told me he couldn’t relax and sleep well. Once at a company party, his wife told me there was only one place where he could relax and get away from his problems.”
“Where?”
“Their cabin.”
Agent Shaw went on full alert. “Where’s that?”
“Somewhere in Michigan I remember. They took long vacations there every summer. Long weekend getaways, too.”
Agent Shaw wondered if Bruner was hiding out there now. They’d tried his cell phone several times, but got no answer. Voice messages had not been picked up. He was not at home. His car was gone. His credit cards had not been used. He was not online. They’d found no hint of a cabin or second house. They had no idea where Bruner was. He’d gone dark. Which made him a person of much greater interest to Shaw.
“Remember any more about the cabin’s location?”
Brooke
paused and smiled. “She told me it was near a beautiful lake.”
Agent Shaw smiled. “Only eleven thousand lakes in Michigan. Did she mention the lake’s name?”
“No. Nor did he.”
“We might be able to locate it through a property deed or rental agreement. Remember anything else?”
She paused. “Not right now.”
“Thanks, Brooke, you’ve helped a lot. If you can think of anything else, just call me.
“Oh, wait - I just remembered something else his wife said at the company party . . .”
Shaw waited.
“Up at the cabin, she shopped at a place called ah . . . Frenchman’s Grocery or Frenchman’s General Store, something like that.”
“We’ll check it out. Anything else, Brooke?”
She shook her head.
“Please don’t mention our conversation about Bruner to anyone. Not even your GV coworkers.”
Concern narrowed her eyes. “You don’t think someone here might be behind this, do you?”
He didn’t want to spook her, but she needed to be aware. “We don’t know. But we think anything’s possible, Brooke. Just be careful.”
“Okay . . .”
“And call if you remember anything else. No matter how small it seems.” He handed her his card as they walked toward her desk.
He hoped she’d call even if she didn’t recall anything. He wanted to see her again. And she smiled like maybe she might like to see him again. Or was that wishful thinking? He didn’t notice a ring on her finger or a boyfriend photo on her desk. And she didn’t seem intimidated or put off by his FBI badge and card. All good signs.
* * *
Brooke watched him walk away. She liked the way he walked away. She liked the way he walked in, kind of a confident, no-nonsense walk. She’d also liked how he glanced at her empty ring finger a couple times. And when he turned around, she noticed his empty ring finger and felt like purring.
She’d found herself staring into his blue eyes, light as robin eggs, and checking his trim, muscular build.
His smile was honest and disarming. The FBI guys on television never smiled.
Brooke decided to spend a lot more time thinking about Robert Bruner so she could maybe spend more time talking to Agent Neal Shaw.
THIRTY TWO
Madison and Pete Naismith sat in her conference room working on ways to persuade or even frighten the stubborn XCar owners to return their cars to the dealers immediately.
There were still too many XCars out on the roads and she feared more surges.
Meanwhile, additional new XCars were arriving and being stored at the dealerships, awaiting the XCar official national launch date - the date when dealers could officially sell the XCars to the public . . .
. . . just a few days from now.
Before then, Hank Harrison had a tough decision: to launch - or cancel. And he had to decide within the next twenty-four hours.
If GV’s engineers could not fix the surging in that time, Hank Harrison would postpone the national launch. And postponing looked more and more likely since the engineers still couldn’t find a way to prevent the surges.
Madison asked the TV networks to hold the XCar commercials until her agency gave them the green light. Most agreed, but some wanted to bill GV a surcharge for changing the ad schedule.
Despite the damaging PR from the surges, there was good news. Many consumers were still interested in buying the XCar. Many were signing intent-to-buy lists at the dealerships. Many offered to pay dealers over the sticker price to drive the first XCar in their neighborhood.
Pete Naismith took a phone call, listened and shook his head in disbelief, and hung up.
Madison’s heart pounded. “More surges?”
“No. But what we feared. Some greedy dealers have already sold launch XCars – despite the GV corporate mandate not to sell before launch date. Customers are bribing dealers to sell them an XCar early.”
The conference room phone rang. Madison hit the speaker button.
“This is Madison . . .”
“Hi, Madison, it’s Hank Harrison. Is Pete there?”
“I’m here, Hank.”
Pete seemed reluctant to hear the news.
“Another XCar accident,” Harrison said softly.
Madison’s stomach churned.
Pete’s teeth clenched and he seemed to grow physically ill.
“Bad?” Madison didn’t want to hear.
“Yes. The XCar surged, steered wildly and slammed into a . . . school bus.”
Jesus! . . . Madison closed her eyes and pictured bleeding school kids strewn across a street.
“Twenty-two third graders. Six injured. One seriously.”
No one spoke.
“The bus driver died instantly.”
She closed her eyes, wanting to comfort Hank and Pete with the right words, but there were none.
She also wanted to block a painful memory clawing back into her mind. She flashed back to eighth grade. She and her classmates were being driven home in the school van. As usual, they joked and laughed as the van wove its way through traffic. After they dropped off the Dawson girls at their house, the bus drove off, heading toward Madison’s home.
At the next cross-street, a drunk pickup driver ran a stop sign and slammed into the rear of Madison’s school van, knocking it across the intersection into the grill of a UPS truck.
Madison woke up in the hospital. Only a minor concussion and a bruised shoulder. The rest of the kids had small cuts and scratches.
Except Annie.
Seven-year-old Annie had begged Madison to switch seats with her on the van. Madison knew how much Annie loved to wave to people out the back window . . . so Madison gave her the back window seat.
Where Annie was crushed to death by the pickup.
THIRTY THREE
MICHIGAN, UPPER PENINSULA
Special Agent Neal Shaw’s stomach stiffened as the Citation Mustang jet banked hard right and plunged down over the sprawling Upper Peninsula forest. Somewhere in the trees, he and Agent Hayden would land and go check out Robert Bruner’s cabin.
The pilot, a freckled, baby-faced guy named Ethan looked like he might have whiskers to shave in about ten years.
Shaw stared down at the green trees. They looked thick as a Flokati carpet and dense enough to land the plane on. Shaw had heard that eighty-four percent of the Upper Peninsula was forest. No wonder logging was still big business up here.
“My uncle goes snowmobiling down there,” Shaw said.
“No way! It’s solid trees!” Hayden said.
“Look closer. Three thousand miles of groomed snowmobile trails weave through those trees. That’s enough to snowmobile from here to Orlando, Florida and back.”
“But there’s no snow in Orlando,” Hayden said.
“Was in January 1977.”
“How the hell you know that, Shaw?”
“My mom was at Disneyworld that day.”
Hayden looked out the window. “Where are all the people down there?”
“Bears ate ‘em. Twenty thousand bears in the UP. Only nineteen people per square mile.”
“Manhattan needs more bears.”
“Why?”
“Seventy-one thousand people per square mile.”
The plane banked hard, split through some clouds, and Shaw saw the landing strip for the Chippewa County International Airport near Kincheloe.
“Ever land here, Ethan?” Shaw asked.
“Nope. Daddy says these crosswinds are wicked,” Ethan said, grinning. “Don’t worry.”
Shaw worried. He’d didn’t like flying in small aircraft with pilots who couldn’t shave yet and never landed at an airport with wicked crosswinds.
Ethan began his final descent. Moments later, the stiff crosswinds hit hard, but at two hundred feet, the thick forests seemed to buffer the winds.
Ethan touched down soft as Chuck Yeager, then taxied over to the gate near a large modern ter
minal with a sky-blue roof and a spacious hanger nearby. The parking lot was filled with pickups, vans, and a few cars. He was relieved to see an ambulance. Weapons might be needed at Bruner’s cottage.
They deplaned and were met by a husky man with red cheeks, a gleaming sheriff’s badge, a Smokey Bear hat, and a pudgy belly threatening to snap his belt. He introduced himself as Sheriff Mason T. Cole.
Shaw and Hayden jumped in Sheriff Cole’s Suburban and sped out of the airport. Two young deputies followed in a county police car.
Sheriff Cole drove west onto Route 48 and then turned on Trout Lake Road leading toward Frenchman’s Lake. That clue from Brooke Daniels about Bruner’s cabin near “Frenchman something” turned out to be Frenchman’s Lake.
The cabin was titled to Jerry Smith, a Bruner alias. Quantico located Bruner’s cabin through the cabin landline phone bills which showed multiple calls to and from his Rochester Hills home and office, and through his wife’s credit card purchases in the nearby town of Frenchman’s Lake.
Minutes later, Sheriff Cole turned left, bounced down a dirt road with deep ruts, parked behind the thicket of trees, got out, and pointed ahead.
“Bruner’s cabin is two hundred yards down this road.”
“Have you seen him in the area?” Shaw asked.
“Nope. But Inez did. She runs the Frenchman’s general store down the road a piece. Says Bruner come in two days ago and bought hisself enough food for a few days.”
Agent Shaw nodded. “So maybe he’s still in the cabin.”
“Could be.”
Everyone checked their weapons and moved toward the cabin.
Shaw saw tire tracks leading to and from the cabin. As he drew close to the cabin, he saw no vehicles, no signs of life, heard no sound coming from inside. Maybe Bruner had driven off. Maybe he was driving back here now. Or maybe he was waiting inside to blast them away when they stepped through the door.
“Do you have men stationed back on the main road in case Bruner returns to his cabin?”
“Yep,” Sheriff Cole said. One close to town on Trout Road. One watching the entrance to this drive. They’ll alert us if they see him coming.”
Shaw nodded and pointed to tire tracks. He noticed that some of the tracks looked like SUV tires, some like motorcycle or large trail-bike tracks.
