by D. F. Bailey
“I don’t think so.” His eyes narrowed. “Let’s talk about how your newspaper slandered my family. About how you’ve destroyed my life!” He clamped his mouth shut and sneered. A moment passed as he appeared to adjust his mood. “Hey. I’m sorry.” His voice dropped a half tone. He took a long slug of the red wine, wiped his lips and set the glass on the floor. “I know this is as hard on you as it is on me.”
She looked at him with disgust. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve got a three-year-old son who doesn’t know where his mother is. An employer who has no idea….” She glanced away, unsure how to continue. “Look,” she said and turned back to him, tried to hold his eyes. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. Every night it’s the same. First you drug me. And then when you think I can’t remember anything, then you … touch me.”
His mouth swung open and he turned away with an expression of disgust.
“I do. I remember everything, Justin. Every. Thing. You’ve. Done.”
He began to sip small draughts of air through his nostrils. In-out, in-out. When he regained control of his breathing he turned to her. “Fiona. Do not say another word.”
“All right. I’m sorry,” she offered. Finally she made eye contact with him. Maybe she could spin this thin connection into something more durable. “Look, I know you’re like everyone else. Wanting love. Recognition. It just doesn’t work when you try to take it.”
His head dipped slightly, but he still held her eyes.
“Justin,” her voice fell to a near whisper as she inched beside him. “Imagine another way. First, just let me go.”
His tongue darted between his lips, tiny, indecisive movements that suggested impending crisis. Then he drew away, flexed his hand — once, twice — and smashed his fist against the side of her head.
※ — THREE — ※
WILL FINCH AND Eve Noon stepped through the doors of Café Claude just before the noon-hour rush flooded into the bistro. A few early birds had taken the best tables next to the front window, the tiny space transformed into a stage each night for the jazz acts that played through the evenings. Over the past five years Will had spent hours at the bar talking to patrons, tourists and the staff of waiters and bartenders, most of them loyal employees who took pride in working at one of the city’s hippest cafés.
When he spotted Jean-Paul Boisvert at the far end of the bar, Will waved a hand.
“Will Finch! Long time, no see.” Jean-Paul’s Parisian accent seemed to kiss every word he spoke.
“Bon soir, J-P. Trop longtemps, mon ami.” Will extended a hand over over the polished counter top.
Jean-Paul smiled and shook his hand. “Your accent still makes you sound like a Québécois poutine chef.”
Will laughed and turned to Eve. “Jean-Paul, let me introduce Eve Noon.”
Jean-Paul lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it with a theatrical flare. “Enchanté.” He turned back to Finch. “I see your life has improved since we last met.”
“More than you can imagine, my friend.”
“Can I get you a drink?”
“Another time, maybe.” Finch settled onto a stool and propped his elbows on the bar. “Actually we’re looking for someone you might know.”
“Justin Whitelaw,” Eve said and set her hands on the counter. “I was telling Will that I think he likes to hang at Café Claude and Will said he knew you. So … one plus one.”
“Is just two.” Jean-Paul pinched his lips together, a hint of discretion. “You know Justin?”
“Yeah. One of those I-knew-you-whens. I met him at a Missy Elliott concert last year.” She waved a hand in the air. “But when Will and I started to talk about him, I thought, why not? Be good to catch up.” Eve leaned forward and the gap in her blouse fluttered open to reveal the warmth of her cleavage.
“Maybe you’ve seen him?” Finch smiled again. “Apparently Café Claude is part of his crawl.”
“Sometimes.” Jean-Paul’s eyes drifted across Eve’s chest. He turned back to Finch. “He’s usually in here every week or two. So happens you’re sitting on his favorite stool.”
“Really?” A look of surprise crossed Finch’s face. “Maybe I should keep it warm for him.”
“Doubt it.” He paused. “You heard about all the trouble in his family?”
“Read about it.” Finch looked away and tried to recall if he’d ever told Jean-Paul that he worked for the SF eXpress. Probably.
“With all that going on,” Jean-Paul said, “maybe he’s feeling depressed.”
“That’s why I thought this might be a good time to see him,” Eve pressed on. “Cheer him up.”
Jean-Paul studied her again, as if he now needed to make a decision about her. Could she be trusted? Then he leaned toward Finch and whispered, “Have you checked across the alley?”
“The alley?” His eyebrows rose a quarter inch.
“Oui. He keeps a bachelor apartment there.”
“That one?” Eve pointed through the window to the building on the far side of Claude Lane.
“Down four or five doors.” He tipped his head to the right. “White brick building with steel fire escape on the outside. Third floor on the right. With the dormer window facing into the lane.”
※
Finch tried to distribute his weight between his feet and left hand as he balanced on the third-floor fire escape. Below his perch Claude Lane now bore the flood of foot traffic from the lunch-hour crowds wandering through the ten-foot wide alley. He didn’t like high-wire acts, but better him than Eve, he decided, especially since she was wearing three-inch heels.
To the curious passersby glancing at him from the lane he feigned the look of a forlorn renter who’d lost his keys and locked himself out of his own apartment. When a burly twenty-year-old dressed in army camouflage called up to him — “You all right?” — Finch simply shrugged and said, “Had better days, but I’m okay.”
As he inched forward he could see that the window was ajar. He drew his multitool from his courier bag, opened the needle-nose pliers and wedged the tip under the sash. Pressing down on the tool, he tried to lever the window upwards. No give. Then he bunched his fingers into a fist and hammered the multi-tool handle with the butt of his hand. The sash jumped an inch. Finch put the tool away, inserted his fingers under the sash and lifted the glass window. Seconds later he stood in Justin Whitelaw’s love nest.
It wasn’t fancy. He quickly assessed what appeared to be a standard bachelor pad: a minimalist space with a queen-size bed, surround-sound audio gear, a fifty-inch TV mounted to the wall above a closed-off fireplace that had been retro-fitted with an electric spot-heater. A dozen scented candles adorned the mantle. Just the mood-making atmosphere required to stoke the heat with his latest pick-up from the bistro. And a solitary get-away from the dreary weight of his life. Like his deceased half-sister Gianna, Justin probably needed a variety of escape mechanisms. A place to blow off the excesses of inherited fame and money and reclaim a personal life of his own.
He quickly scanned the room for anything that might belong to Fiona: clothing, her purse, a tube of lip gloss. Nothing. As he crossed the synthetic carpet he tugged on his rubber gloves. He opened the front door and Eve Noon breezed past him into the apartment.
“None too soon, darling. I think there’s a drug deal about to go down at the end of the hall.”
Finch heard a neighboring apartment door swing open and shut. Footsteps trod along the hall and clomped down the wooden stairs. The building had to be a hundred years old, part of the hasty urban reconstruction following the 1906 earthquake.
He closed the door and turned to Eve. He was about to ask, did they notice you? — and immediately dismissed the thought. Anyone who sees Eve remembers her. A blessing and a curse.
“What do you think?” He waved a hand in the air. “I haven’t seen anything that belongs to Fiona.”
As she pulled on her latex gloves she studied the place with the apprehension of a biologist consideri
ng a sleeping wolf. She sniffed the air. Ran a finger over the fireplace mantle, then assessed the smudge of dust on her glove. She lifted the newspaper lying on the coffee table beside the love seat. “Friday’s LA Times. Your competitor,” she said with a smile.
“So he was here four days ago.”
“Maybe.” She put the paper down and lifted one of two brandy glasses by the stem. She inhaled the residue of alcohol still alive in the bowl of one snifter. “These we confiscate,” she said and slipped each into separate baggies and stowed them in her shoulder bag. “Let’s see what other nastiness we can uncover.”
She led him to the bed and pointed to the far side. “Let’s lift the duvet. We might find some trace residues.”
Each of them took a top corner of the duvet and folded it back to reveal the bedsheets.
“Silk.” Even through his gloves Finch could feel the sleek material slip under his fingers.
“I love up-market bedding. Maybe we should try that one day.” She smiled at him and then turned her attention to a stain in the middle of bed. “So. There we go. A little leakage from Mr. or Ms. Maybe both. I wonder who?” She applied the tip of a steel blade to the dried fluid and slipped the sample into a glass vial and sealed it. After they folded the duvet back in place, she swept a hand over the cover. “Does that look like how we found it?”
“Close.” Finch nodded, impressed by Eve’s unhurried, thorough approach. Although she’d left the SFPD years ago, she’d maintained her investigative expertise.“What’s next?”
“You check the garbage, I’ll take the bathroom.”
The garbage pail had been emptied and the bag replaced, but the dish rack held a set of plates, utensils and glasses for two. In the refrigerator he found little more than standard fare: orange juice, a rack of canned diet colas, two bottles of high-end French wine: Pouilly-Fumé. He sniffed the cheese, bacon strips, eggs and turned his nose away. In the vegetable tray a head of lettuce had shriveled into a musty lump and a cluster of mushrooms had shrunk to gnarly stumps.
The cupboards revealed a well-organized store of china plates, cups, glasses. A collection of food staples filled half of a shelf in the pantry: canned tuna, pasta, vegetable oil, a jar of salsa, a can of tomato sauce. In a pinch, he decided, Justin Whitelaw could hold out here for two or three days without starving. After that, he’d be forced to eat the china and drink dish soap.
“Look at this, Will.” Eve emerged from the bathroom. She held a medicinal bottle between a thumb and index finger.
“Some kind of medication?”
“Maybe. There’s no prescription label. Just small white pills with an X scored across the face. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Roofies, the date rape drug.”
“You mean Rohypnol?”
“Could be.” She dropped one of the pills into another vial and sealed it.
“Anything else?”
“We’ve got a good start.” She checked her watch. “Time to push on. But leave the window open a crack. I’d hate to watch you fall into the lane next time we have to break in here.”
As they made their way down the stairs to the building entrance another possibility occurred to Finch.
“Let’s check the basement, Eve. Some of these bachelor rentals come with a storage room. Maybe there’s something beneath.” He pointed to the flight of stairs that descended below street level.
He clicked on the light switch and led her down the staircase. The walls, rough-cut rocks and stones that had probably been recovered from the rubble of the 1906 quake, formed a narrow passage that extended the length of the building. Two naked light bulbs, one at each end of the corridor, hung suspended by their wires from the ceiling. The air felt dry and fetid. Unlikely the space had been vented in the past decade or two. They tiptoed along the cracked concrete floor. Every four or five feet they encountered a closed wooden door, each one locked with a keyed deadbolt. Finch tapped on the surface of the second door to test its heft. No echo meant it was solid core construction. Probably an original, he figured and leaned a shoulder into it. No give at all.
He looked at Eve. She shrugged, unsure what to suggest.
“Fiona,” he called out. Then he yelled as loud as he could: “Fiona Page! Fiona, it’s Will. Are you in here?”
“What’s going on?” a heavy voice called from somewhere behind them.
Finch turned to see a large silhouette fill the space where the staircase opened into the corridor. As the stranger stepped forward the backlight from the distant light bulb enlarged his profile.
“Just looking for a friend.” Finch decided to improvise. “We heard she was visiting, and somehow wandered down here.”
“Who’s the friend?” The stranger pulled closer, less than ten feet away.
“My girlfriend,” Eve offered. “Fiona Page. Do you know her?”
Silence. Then another step forward. “Fiona? Who’s she visiting?”
“Justin Whitelaw,” Finch pointed to the ceiling. “Up on the third floor.”
After another step, Finch could recognize the face of the young man standing before him. It was the burly twenty-year-old dressed in camo who’d called out to Finch on the fire escape as he tampered with the apartment window.
“Do you happen to know him, by any chance?” Finch asked. His voice carried an easy, casual tone.
As the stranger considered this, he shrugged, obviously unsure how to respond. “If he lives here, my father will know him. He’s the manager.”
“Your father’s the building manager?” Eve stepped past Finch and stood in front of the young man. She smiled. “That’s good to know, because I was wondering about this building. By the way, my name’s Betty Smith. This is Jim.” She pointed to Finch and then extended her hand.
“I’m Arnold.” His eyes settled on Eve. A slight shudder rippled through him as he shook her hand.
“I can tell, I mean it’s obvious,” she continued, “that this building was put up sometime after the big quake in oh-six. And I’ve got a girlfriend researching reconstruction in the French quarter. I’m just wondering” — she set a hand on Arnold’s arm and guided him back to the staircase — “could I get your number and arrange for you to meet with her?”
“Meet with her? M-m-me?” His voice trembled with a hesitant stutter.
“Yes. I’m sure she’d like to have a look down here.” Eve led him back up the stairs as she spoke. Moments later the three of them stood outside the building on the narrow sidewalk. She took his phone number. As she and Finch walked back along Claude Lane, she turned and waved a goodbye, then crossed onto Bush Street.
※
When Will and Eve returned to his condo in Mother Russia — the renovated Edwardian co-op house on the cusp of Nob Hill — Eve immediately unpacked her bag and set the contents on the living room coffee table.
“Two brandy snifters,” she said as she lifted the ziploc bags which held the matching glasses. “A little love jism from the bedroom, and a pill which I’m certain will be identified as Rohypnol.”
“Maybe some of it will lead us to Fiona.” Will shook his head and slumped into the sofa. He still felt partly responsible for Fiona’s disappearance. After all, he’d implored her to stake out Justin Whitelaw in Café Claude and press him for an interview. Will even suggested she do it covertly. Without mentioning she was a journalist for the SF eXpress, lead Justin on with some flirtation, then grill him for whatever information he could provide about the murder of his sister Gianna Whitelaw. The fact that the cops hadn’t questioned Finch about Fiona also troubled him. Almost a week had passed since she’d vanished. Why weren’t they on the case?
“So, next steps.” Eve carefully stored the stolen evidence in her shoulder bag. “Before I send this to Leanne in the forensics lab, you need to collect something to identify Fiona’s DNA. And her fingerprints.”
Will considered this. “You need both?”
“The DNA to match against the sample from the bed sheet and prints to compare to who
ever held the snifter glasses. If either of them — or both — make a positive match, we’ll have a lock on the case.”
“All right. I’ll go into the office this evening to see what I can find at her desk. Except for the nighthawks working the midnight shift, the building should be nearly deserted.”
Finch felt a buzz in his pocket. His cell phone showed a text from Sochi: We’re in! Almost a new record for Rasputin: thirteen days, sixteen hours and twenty-two minutes to crack the password on the thumb drive. Well below the NASA job, but still a hard nut to crack. Details later.
Finch smiled; finally some good news. One of his housemates, Sochi, specialized in quantum cryptography. He’d offered to use one of his software programs — Rasputin, as he called it — to crack open the password to the thumb drive which Eve had found in Gianna’s condo the night of her murder. For almost two weeks, Rasputin had been stumped. The delay began to trouble Will and for a while he wondered if Sochi had broken the code and stolen the data on the drive. Simple paranoia, he told himself and read Sochi’s message to Eve.
“That is good news.” She smiled. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but since I’ve never met Sochi, I was beginning to doubt him.”
“Doubt him — or me?”
She reached across the sofa and set her hand on his thigh. “There’s no doubt about you, darling. Not from me, anyway.”
He knew she was referring to the night when Toby Squire bludgeoned her with a golf club and abandoned her to die in a locked cupboard swarming with rats. The thought made him shudder. After Finch rescued her, and when Eve realized that he’d saved her life, all the previous deceptions and uncertainties of their relationship dissolved.
Despite her infatuation, she pulled her hand from his leg and drew a long breath with a measure of self-control. “So what next? We wait for Sochi to reveal what’s on the flash drive?”
He nodded. “It could change everything.” But only if the thumb drive contained pertinent information, he thought. And what, exactly, could that amount to? He combed his fingers through his hair and tried to imagine the best-case scenarios. New information to explain Gianna’s apparently senseless murder. Evidence proving fraud in the Whitelaw corporate empire. Documents. Photos. Transcripts.
