Dig Your Grave

by Steven Cooper

  “Is that like insider trading?” Mills asks.

  “Don’t answer that question,” Tribble instructs the woman.

  “If it was,” White says, “it was an innocent mistake. I simply forgot we were in blackout, and I wanted the funds to finish remodeling my home.”

  “And that’s a terminable offense?” Powell asks.

  “It could be,” White concedes.

  Mills raps the edge of the table between them and says, “We don’t want to take up any more of your time, so if you could describe for us how the argument with Davis Klink ended.”

  She nods, gathering her thoughts. But there’s more in her eyes. There’s an assessment of something, a reconciliation, maybe. Mills sure wishes Gus Parker were here in the room. Finally she says, “It ended with him saying that I was on my own with this, that the company would not support me if charges were filed.”

  “Did he threaten to report you?”

  “He didn’t say. He left it purposefully ambiguous.”

  “How do you know it was purposeful?” Powell asks.

  “Because that’s his style.”

  “Where were you Friday night?” Mills asks.

  “At home,” White replies.

  “All night?”

  “Yes.”

  “With?”

  “Are you questioning her as a suspect?” Tribble wants to know.

  “Everyone is a suspect,” Mills reminds him, then to Claire, he asks, “Who was with you?”

  “My daughters.”

  “Are you married?” Powell asks.

  “Divorced.”

  “How old are your daughters?” Powell continues.

  “Eleven and fifteen.”

  “None of you left the house at any time?” Mills asks.

  “No,” she says. “Not at all. Are we through?”

  Mills stands to confirm that they are. “For now.”

  The others follow, a faint sigh from Peter Tribble as he rises, and bid farewell with handshakes.

  As Shelly Newton escorts them out of the building, she reaches for Mills’s arm and pulls him toward her. She whispers, but Mills can’t hear her over the whining treadmills in the lobby where the security guards continue to channel their inner hamster.

  “Come outside,” he tells her, and she follows.

  “Call me,” she says. “I think I have some new information.”

  “You can’t tell me now?”

  She backs away. She shakes her head. “No. I’ll get in trouble if they see us talking. I’ve been warned.”

  8

  Gus Parker presses a button, and Mrs. Betty Freck comes sliding out on her tray, kind of like a CD ejected from a big, old computer. Her CT scan is complete. He asks if she needs help up from the platform. She nods. Gus reaches for her arm and lifts. At 150 pounds, Mrs. Betty Freck is not a massive undertaking, but she is heavy enough to strain Gus’s back. He’s out of shape, and he knows it. He needs to exercise more, especially since he’s in his forties. Maybe he’ll start climbing Camelback again instead of just adoring it for its beauty. Beatrice Vossenheimer says they should get back to doing yoga together, and they should. Mrs. Betty Freck is standing on her feet now, and she takes a deep breath.

  “You all right?” he asks.

  “I’m fine, I think. But I hate that machine. So noisy and cramped.”

  “Everybody hates it,” he says. “You can get changed now.”

  He reminds her to stop by the front desk on her way out.

  “The results?”

  “The radiologist will read them in the next day or so,” Gus replies. “What’s today? Tuesday? So your doctor will have the results by Friday or Monday, latest.”

  She thanks him.

  He goes back into the booth to double-check the images of Mrs. Betty Freck’s sinuses. He types his code into the computer, but he doesn’t recognize the page that pops up. Instead of displaying the woman’s sinuses, the page displays somebody’s neck. Somebody messed up. He hopes it wasn’t him. Next, he types in “FRECK” and hits “Search.” Her record appears, and he opens the file, finds the images. He scans them quickly to make sure they’re readable, and they all look fine except for the last one, which is compromised by a blur across the top two quadrants. Mrs. Betty Freck must have moved her head during the very last shot. He magnifies the image, hoping that it might be readable with a good zoom. The blur does seem to disperse, and it gives way to this:

  STAY AWAY FROM HER

  Gus doesn’t flinch. He studies the words with vocational interest, as if he’s analyzing a simple technicality. He tilts his head to the right, then to the left, searching for a logical explanation. He scrunches up his mouth and squints at the words. “STAY AWAY FROM HER.” Then he shakes his head and knows instinctively that the words aren’t really on the screen. He doesn’t have to ask anyone to confirm; he knows it’s a vision. He doesn’t always understand his visions, doesn’t always know what to do with them, but he usually knows a vision when he sees one, and here he is staring at a vision that reads like a warning. It’s either a message about Mrs. Betty Freck or a message about him. Likely him, he thinks. But he has no clue. His speculation goes nowhere. Until he thinks of the graveyard. He’s back there, vividly, crawling on the ground. His hands rake the earth, sifting for an epiphany. And then, yes, a thud of recognition.

  At the end of the day Gus dials Alex and tells him about the image.

  “Could those words mean anything to the case?” he asks the detective. “‘Stay away from her’?”

  “They could,” Alex replies. “But I don’t know. We don’t know enough to know either way.”

  “Could there be a mistress involved?”

  “If you say there is, Gus, then I would guess your vision is reflecting that,” Alex tells him. “Is that what you’re seeing? A mistress?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m absolutely seeing a warning. And the warning is about a woman. But I’m afraid this could be the psychic cart before the psychic horse.”

  “I don’t believe in psychic horses,” Alex says with a wry laugh. “Let me know when you have more.”

  He’s off the phone with Alex for about two minutes when he gets a call from Billie.

  “Do you miss me?” she asks.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you miss me so much you’ll want to fly out to Malibu and spend the weekend with me.”

  “Is that an invitation?”

  “It’s a summons,” she says with a throaty laugh.

  “I’ll have to see if Beatrice can watch Ivy.”

  “Bring Ivy. Bring Beatrice. Just come to Malibu.”

  Gus tells her he’ll think it over. So, he does some thinking after the call, and he does some more thinking during his twilight walk with Ivy as she happily skips along tugging at him. He searches the sky and absorbs all of its hues, really feels the colors shift across his face and pass through his skin. Washed clean from the day now, and the ointment of the night applied, Gus senses that the warning, “STAY AWAY FROM HER,” was intended for him.

  Mills has probably kept Shelly Newton waiting too long and hopes she hasn’t entertained second thoughts in the meantime. It’s been twenty-four hours, so anything’s possible. Particularly now after the news from Preston and Myers: the Illumilife legal team will likely fight the subpoena for Davis Klink’s phone records. In a letter to the court, the lawyers stated that records of Klink’s calls could jeopardize trade secrets and other matters if it becomes public who called the company’s CEO, when and for how long. There is a shitload of minutia in the letter, but the basic argument is that any number of incoming or outgoing calls to Klink’s cell phone or to the company’s switchboard could raise speculation about any part of the business. Say, for instance, the CEO of Coca-Cola called and spoke to Klink for an hour. Was he asking if Klink was thirsty? Or thirsty for a merger? Were they conspiring to take over Pepsi, or to sell off the toilet cleaner division of Illumilife to Procter & Gamble?

 
; Fuck it and fuck them. It’s a murder investigation. Mills and his squad will get the damn phone records. In the meantime, he dials Shelly Newton.

  “Can you talk now?” he asks her.

  “Yes,” she says in a whisper. “Let me shut my door.”

  Her first words when she returns to the phone surprise him. “I like you, Detective Mills,” she says. “I really do, and I want to help you.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Please leave my name out of this. I don’t trust anyone in this building.” She’s still whispering even with the door closed.

  “Before we continue, Ms. Newton, you should know that if someone at your company is implicated in the murder of Davis Klink, and your information leads to the apprehension of our suspect, you could be called to testify at trial,” Mills explains. “I want you to know that before you say another word.”

  “I understand,” she says. “And I’ll deal with that when and if the time comes. But while you’re digging around, please don’t mention that you talked to me again.”

  “Agreed.”

  She speaks conspiratorially as she tells Mills what she’s heard from Tracy Quibb, Claire White’s executive assistant. Apparently, the executive assistants run their own information mafia where knowledge is the supreme currency. It’s a higher form of gossip; it’s organized gossip perpetuated by intrigue and laced with betrayal—all by necessity, all tacitly approved. This is how it sounds as Mills listens to Shelly’s breathless account of Claire White’s implosion. “She came rushing back to her office after the big blowout with Davis, nearly in tears! She screamed for Tracy to come in, shut the door, and then she picked up a paperweight and threw it against the wall and said, ‘He threatened to fire me!’ And I believe it, Detective Mills, because Davis was that upset. Her job was on the line. Until Davis was murdered, that is.”

  Mills certainly won’t accuse Shelly Newton of being subtle.

  “Plus,” she continues, again in a conspiratorial whisper, “Stella, Peter Tribble’s assistant, told Tracy that Peter was investigating Claire for misappropriation of funds. This is huge, Detective Mills. If true, it would not only be the end of Claire’s job; it would be the end of her career.”

  “What kind of misappropriation of funds are we talking about?” he asks.

  “I think it has something to do with Claire using money from the HR budget to fix up her house. She probably thought no one would miss a million or two.”

  “How big is her budget?” Mills asks.

  “I can’t say for sure, but we have fifty-four thousand employees in offices and factories around the world,” Shelly says. “We’re a Fortune 500 company. Claire always reminds people of that, you know, because she’s all about flash and status. She loves for people to think she’s loaded . . . and important.”

  “I take it you don’t like her.”

  “She’s not well liked,” Shelly says. “Some people think she might be psychotic.”

  “Now that sounds like something I can use,” Mills replies.

  “No, no, please,” she begs. “That’s just an observation. She behaves strangely. She has temper tantrums. She’s tightly wound. But it’s not like we have a diagnosis. She could just be a total bitch, so please don’t have her committed, okay?”

  The nice thing about a phone call is you can roll your eyes and shake your head with impunity, which is exactly what Mills is doing now. “Don’t worry,” he tells her. “Claire White certainly takes the ‘human’ out of ‘human resources,’ but I don’t have the authority to commit her. Is there anything else?”

  “The acquisition of Portman Brands,” she says. “There are a lot of people unhappy with it. Both at Illumilife and Portman.”

  “Anybody specific?”

  “Executives who fear losing their positions once the companies are integrated.”

  “Names?”

  “No. I don’t have specific names. But I’ll ask around.”

  He’s sure she will.

  “Killing Davis would stop the acquisition,” she says.

  “How so?”

  “It’s still pending approval, and my guess is that a dead CEO might cause shareholders of both companies to lose confidence in the deal.”

  “Is this your opinion or something you overheard?”

  “Both.”

  “Whom did you overhear it from?”

  “Peter Tribble.”

  “How many layoffs have happened under Davis Klink’s leadership?”

  “Thousands,” Shelly says boldly. “It’s business. In the last five years we’ve gone through three restructurings.”

  The math is as obvious as it is staggering: thousands of people had a motive to murder Davis Klink. Plus how many more who wanted to stop the acquisition. Plus his wife, his children, maybe a brother, a sister.

  “But he was a brilliant businessman,” Shelly insists. “Brilliant.”

  “Were you in love with him?” Mills asks.

  “Oh. My. God,” she says, just like that, heaving the words at Mills as if he deserves a few Molotov cocktails just for asking. “That’s absurd! He was my boss. I ran his life. I saw all the blemishes. I respected and admired him, but I wasn’t in love with him. That’s appalling, Detective.”

  “Well, okay then, no offense intended,” Mills says. “I’m going to ask you again if Davis Klink had a mistress.”

  She takes a deep breath, exhales. “It’s none of my business.”

  “But?”

  “But, if I had to guess, I would say of course he had a girlfriend or two over the years. Just based on his travel and expenses, alone.”

  “Did any of his affairs end badly?”

  Silence. Then Shelly clears her throat and says, “I wouldn’t know.”

  “No ugliness? No crazy phone calls? Threats?”

  “I think you should talk to his security team.”

  “Speaking of phone calls, why did his daughter call through the company switchboard to reach him? Wouldn’t she have called his cell phone directly?”

  “No,” the woman replies. “His children often called the switch-board and asked for me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Davis rarely answered his cell phone if it wasn’t another exec calling,” she replies. “The kids knew they could get to him through me.”

  “Sounds like business before family.”

  “It’s business before everything,” Shelly says. “Now I really must be going, Detective. I’ll stay on the case, and we’ll talk again soon.”

  She speaks with the thrill of a private citizen who thinks she has conjoined herself to the case. Mills thanks her, and because she “really must be going,” he lets her go. He looks at his notes. Illumilife is a clusterfuck of rumor, suspicion, motive, innuendo, and ego.

  The surveillance video from Safeway arrives Thursday morning. Myers, his shirt stained by ketchup or blood, had raced into Mills’s office as soon as he had uploaded the file. Which explains why Myers’s laptop is sitting in the center of the case agent’s desk and why Myers is sitting in the case agent’s chair instead of Mills. Mills flanks him on one side, Powell on the other. Preston hovers behind them. They watch every frame.

  22:09:21: Vehicle enters alley.

  22:09:28: Vehicle headlights go off, vehicle still in motion.

  22:09:30: Glitch in videotape (four seconds).

  22:09:34: Vehicle parks.

  22:09:34–22:16:48: Vehicle parked. No activity.

  Myers pauses the video and says, “So, he just sits there for seven minutes and doesn’t do anything.”

  “We can count,” Mills reminds him.

  “And we can’t assume he’s not doing anything,” Powell says. “Just because we can’t see into the car doesn’t mean nothing’s happening in there.”

  22:16:48: Driver side door opens. Unknown individual exits vehicle.

  22:16:51: Glitch in videotape (five seconds).

  22:16:56: Unknown individual opens rear cargo door.

 
; “I don’t think that’s Klink,” Powell says.

  “Hard to tell,” Mills concedes. “Video’s too grainy and dark. Hey, Myers, can you freeze this here, maybe zoom in?”

  “I’ll try,” Myers says. Then he punches a few things into his keyboard and, using his fingers on the mouse pad, manipulates the picture on the screen, pulling the image closer. The unknown individual grows larger, much larger, but more distorted with every push inward of the zoom.

  “Zoom out a bit,” Mills says. “I can’t make shit out of this.”

  Myers zooms out slowly.

  “That’s the sweet spot,” Preston tells him. “Freeze it there.”

  The image is as close as it will come without the distortion. They all study the screen. Mills squints, trying to draw out a face, but the man is wearing a hat, the brim dipped coyly over his eyes. “He looks shorter than Klink. I think we have the CEO at six feet. This guy looks five-six, five-seven tops.”

  “Agreed,” Powell says. “But he’s dressed similar to our victim.”

  She’s right. The suspect, and Mills is fairly sure he’s looking at a suspect now, appears to be in a suit and tie, an ill-fitting one, but a business suit, no less.

  “Play the video,” Mills orders.

  22:16:57: Rear cargo door is open. Suspect is speaking.

  “Fuck, I wish these videos had audio,” Mills snaps. “Anybody read lips?”

  “You’d have to be able to see the lips,” Myers says.

  Mills acknowledges the caveat with a quick nod, then, watching the suspect pulling at a shoe and the leg that follows, says, “What the fuck is he doing?”

  22:17:07: Suspect is pulling Unknown Individual #2 by the ankles from cargo area. UI #2 emerges, hitting head on cargo door above. Suspect pulls UI #2 from vehicle.

  “This could be Klink,” Mills says. “But we can’t get a good enough shot to confirm. He’s dressed in a suit. He’s towering over the other guy, so he’s probably the right height for Klink.”

  “I think our suspect has a gun. Watch,” Powell says.

  22:17:55: Suspect spins UI #2 around. Both men walk from car, UI #2 slightly ahead.