The Woman Who Stopped Traffic

by Daniel Pembrey

  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 N
atalie 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…’

  Stevens was returning, 20 yards away. She read on:

  ‘An overall picture is emerging, looking something like this: The killer knew Malovich’s commuting pattern. Finding the right occasion, late Monday night, the killer tracked Malovich home, overpowering him some place around that water culvert out back of the Silicon Bean, where the terrain is extra dark at night and the ground recedes from view –’

  Stevens at 10 yards.

  ‘Killer manages to incapacitate Malovich with the Professional stun gun then asphyxiatse him. Killer rolls Malovich’s body through the eucalyptus bushes where he (she? – Malovich just 125 lbs) waits to ensure the coast is clear, taking the opportunity to fish out his keys from his pocket. Over the low wall they go, into the rear lot of Garden Court, then to Malovich’s end-of-block apartment ten yards away, and finally the mock hanging…’

  An image came to her of Malovich suspended in that small, fetid place: his burst eyes bulging, his once sallow skin now waxen...

  The door blew open. The file was already back on the detective’s side of the table, right way round. Pulver picked it up and thrust it into the chest of Stevens behind, causing him to spill the water.

  They sat down. Pulver put his phone back in his breast pocket and Stevens handed Natalie what remained of her water.

  The two men took a moment, getting settled.

  “See, this is the slight problem we got, Miss Chevalier.” Pulver leaned in a little: “That in the space of a single day, you show up at the scenes of two sets of homicides.”

  His eyes locked onto hers like lasers.

  It made no sense! “But who – the other one?” she stammered.

  Pulver waited a beat.

  Then he told her, and it floored her like a prize fighter’s one-two: Jon Vogel dead!

  The suspicion that she was connected with both killings: multiple!

  Suddenly it felt like the floor was opening, swallowing her. She felt her eyes widen: “Vogel – How –?” she gasped.

  “We’re still verifying that,” Pulver said, in a warmer tone of voice all of sudden, apparently accepting her version of events, finally. “The report we received earlier today, even I’m having difficulty accepting.

  “And believe me, I thought I’d seen it all.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Natalie was nearing Monterey when she thought to call Ben. Her mind was going in six directions at once.

  She’d managed to get through to Vogel’s neighbor by phone, and while Star hadn’t exactly invited her round for dinner, she hadn’t totally discouraged her either. It was the closest she’d get to the circumstances of Vogel’s death.

  Ben picked up on the second ring. “Holy Cow,” was all he managed, for a good few seconds. Eventually he came to. “Fuck. Jon Vogel is dead! And with utterly bizarre timing.”

  “How so?”

  “Schweitz and Carmichael have brought the IPO forward to Monday morning. An investor committed to take half the issue. They think the company is hot enough to get the rest away fast, so they want to go now. The final registration statement was filed at lunchtime and announced after the market closed.”

  “Which investor?” Natalie asked.

  “Some sovereign wealth fund based out of the Middle East.”

  “You don’t sound convinced,” she said.

  “Doesn’t matter what I think. Never mind: how did Jon die?”

  “Don’t know. I’m on my way down to see Star, the neighbor in the beach cottage, to try to learn more.”

  “Damn, this is starting to wig me out.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I could leave the city right now and join you?”

  “No, it’s OK. I’m almost there. But I did have a question for you. You remember last time we drove down together, we were talking about Malovich’s stock options? You were explaining how his options cancel and everyone else’s stake rises accordingly.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well how does it work with Vogel’s forty percent?”

  “Oh, I see where you’re going. No, Vogel bought that stock outright. It’s his, free and clear.”

  “Huh.” It didn’t seem to fit any pattern.

  “– or was his,” Ben said. “Ownership now being governed by his will, I guess.”

  “OK,” Natalie said. “I’d better drive. I’ll let you know what I turn up.”

  “Please do. And call me anyway, to let me know you got back safe.”

  Outside Vogel’s entranceway was a Monterey County Sheriff’s cruiser with its distinctive badge: a bear lumbering across a gold star. There were three other cars, two unmarked, all with police lights on. The flashing lights occasionally synchronized but more often flickered wildly at one another. People were leaving the property – earthy folk wearing loincloths and other strange attire, several carrying muddy sleeping bags over their shoulders. Evidently the self-sufficiency camp had been disbanded.

  Natalie put the Taurus back into Drive and proceeded on down Pine Glade Way. She didn’t know t
he direct route to Star’s place, but guessed there was an access road further along. Sure enough, a prayer flag marked out a track leading off the main road.

  The track wound its way down through thick woodland, the sturdy Taurus thudding and rattling away. As with Vogel’s driveway, the woodland began to open out, this time into silvery trunks with high branches. It was like driving through a giant pincushion. Between the spindly trees, she could see the water of the westward cove flash golden-white in the low sun. She tried to phone Star to check she was on the right track, but her phone had moved out of range. Then she saw a horsebox, and the beach cottage itself.

  Star was ashen-faced as she opened the back door. Natalie gave her a hug and the older woman’s bony frame sank into hers.

  They went in and sat at a wooden table near the fire. Star was in the middle of supper: thin, sweetcorn soup and day-old walnut bread. She offered Natalie some and Natalie gratefully accepted, realizing that she hadn’t eaten all day.

  For a while, the two women sat in a stable sort of silence, just the clink of spoon on bowl, the fizzing and popping of the fire and cries of faraway gulls. Finally Star spoke:

  “You know we were there, at Altamont – that December of sixty-nine. They say it marked the end of the sixties, an’ I guess they were right. We were up front, next to the stage. I remember thinking how strange it was, with the stage being only three feet high an’ all. But the vibe was so different. It was so sudden. Something in the air just shifted. We were gonna leave, during Airplane’s set, but Jon wanted so bad to see the Stones. That was Jon: he always wanted to be right there, in the moment.