Laurie thinks it unlikely that Kristen was forced to write the letter. “She was obviously under incredible stress, even if she wrote it without coercion. The fact that she might have used a few names or words that were uncharacteristic seems understandable.”
“You’re probably right, but let’s follow it through.” It’s a technique I always use when a status quo is questioned. I assume the new scenario is correct, just for the moment and just for the purpose of seeing where it leads.
Laurie nods. “The most obvious conclusion is that it would mean Arthur Wainwright was not involved in Kristen’s murder. He wouldn’t force her to write a letter accusing himself.”
I nod. “No question.”
“And if he didn’t do it, there would have been very little reason for him to commit suicide, at least not that we know of. And especially since he was dead before you introduced testimony about Taillon’s phone calls to him, and before Karen read the letter in court.”
“It has to be him,” I say. “Although something about the suicide bothers me.”
“What’s that?”
“The location.”
“The cemetery?”
“Yes, but more because it was at his ex-wife’s grave site. Kyle’s college roommate told me that Kyle used to tell stories about their divorce, how bitter it was and how Arthur left her with almost nothing. Kyle hated him for it, which was why the roommate thought it was surprising and amusing that Kyle wound up working for him.”
“Maybe it was a love-hate thing, and as he was about to die, love came back in the picture.”
“Maybe.”
“You think it wasn’t a suicide?”
“If he didn’t kill Kristen, which is the hypothetical we’re currently working on, then I think it’s very possible he was killed and it was set up to look like a suicide. If you wanted to do it in a place where you wouldn’t be seen—”
She interrupts and finishes the thought. “What could work better than a secluded area of a cemetery, in the middle of the night, with a snowstorm about to start?”
“Right. And there is something else that I just thought of. It’s the timing.”
“What about the timing?”
“It’s always been a little surprising that Arthur did what he did before the most damning evidence came out. I’ve assumed he somehow knew what was about to happen and bailed out rather than face it. But I never got the sense that Arthur was the type to back down; he was a fighter. He already hired a top lawyer in Hauser to go after me.”
“So?”
“So maybe whoever was behind this knew what was going on and knew Arthur was about to come at me with both barrels. So he did what he had to do to stop him.”
“How would the killer have known what was going to happen? We’ve already checked the place for bugs, so that couldn’t be it.”
“Beats the hell out of me. Sounds like a job for the K Team.”
“Are you upset by Marcus, Corey, and me doing this, Andy?”
“No, of course not. But if you happen to be working on one of my cases, should I ever get stuck on another case, can you call it the A Team?”
“First of all, I think that name is taken. Second of all, when you act like this, we might have a different view of what A stands for.”
I’ve spent another two hours this morning getting nowhere.
Our theories about Karen’s letter and Arthur’s involvement are interesting and maybe even credible, but we have no way to confirm or refute them. Which in term renders them useless.
“I’m going for a ride,” I say to Laurie.
“Where to?”
“I need to drop the rent check off at Sofia’s.” I’m talking about the fruit stand below my office, owned and operated by Sofia Hernandez.
“Are you familiar with the concept of mail?”
“I am. But you know that when I drop it off, she gives me a cantaloupe. I live for her cantaloupes. Our mailman doesn’t give me anything.”
I get in the car and head down to my office. I’m still thinking about Arthur Wainwright, and I almost get into an accident because I should be thinking about driving. The driver of the car I almost rear-ended gives me the finger and drives away. I refrain from returning the gesture because I’m mature, and because the guy is right.
I park right in front of the office, which means right in front of Sofia Hernandez’s fruit stand. She’s behind the counter, casting a wary eye on the two teenage boys picking out fruit; my guess is there are a significant number of apple thefts that cut into her profit margin.
She lights up when she sees me. “Mr. Andy, how are you today?”
I have no idea why she puts Mr. in front of my name; I have tried to get her to stop on many occasions, obviously without success. “Very good, Sofia. How are you?”
“I’m good, family is good, but the fruit business is slow. I’m ready for summer.”
We talk some more and I mention that I’ve come down to pay the rent. “You’re always on time. You and Mr. Sam.” She’s referring to her other prize tenant, Sam Willis.
I hand her the envelope with the check.
“I forgot to tell you. I have PayPal now, you don’t have to give me the checks. You can pay that way.”
“That’s okay; I don’t mind. I like seeing you.” The truth is that I wouldn’t know how to use PayPal if you gave me a year to figure it out.
“You just want your cantaloupe.” She smiles.
I return the smile. “You know me too well.”
She gives me the cantaloupe. I have no idea how she gets ripe ones year-round, but I’m not complaining. We thank each other and I head back home, cherished cantaloupe on the seat next to me, setting off the alarm because I haven’t fastened the cantaloupe’s seat belt.
I’m on the way home, stopped at a light on Market Street, near Eastside High School. I’m smiling to myself over Sofia Hernandez using PayPal and, unlike me, trying to avoid becoming a technological dinosaur.
Then I wonder how many of my law school colleagues are paying rent to landlords who run fruit stands.
Then I say to myself, out loud, “Holy shit.”
The first thing I do when I get home, even before I update Laurie on what is going on, is call Sam Willis. “Sam, I’ve got some things I want you to do.”
“We have a new client?”
“No. Same one.”
“Oh.” I can hear the disappointment in his voice. “What do you need?”
“Send me information on routers … how they work, general stuff. You can email it to me at the office.”
“Routers? How technical do you want me to get?”
“Doesn’t matter; I’m not going to read it. Also include whatever information about Kyle Wainwright you can find online. Doesn’t matter what it is; I’m not going to read that either. Then I want you to talk to Sofia Hernandez and … hey, do you think you can hack into the computers of a university?”
“Why? You want me to change your grades?”
“Sam…”
“Of course I can get in. Those eggheads think they’re so smart they never protect themselves well enough.”
“Great.” I tell him what the situation is and what I want him to do.
“I’m on it.” The disappointment is gone from his voice.
As soon as I get off the phone with Sam, I call Pete Stanton. He gets on with “I don’t like those midafternoon victory parties. By eight o’clock I was hungry again.”
“Maybe if you’d stop arresting the wrong people, I wouldn’t win so many cases, and we wouldn’t need to have parties.”
“Maybe I should arrest you for impersonating an asshole. What are you calling me for?”
“I know what’s going on.”
“Going on with what?”
“Kristen McNeil, Arthur Wainwright, Charles Arrant, everything.”
I’m sure he can tell by my voice that I’m serious. “I’m listening.”
“You’re going to have to do more than
that. I’m just not ready quite yet. And you’re not going to like it, but you’re going to have to play by my rules.”
Kyle Wainwright figured he had mourned long enough.
There was a business to run. NetLink Systems was now his business; his father’s will was clearly written to leave it to him. There were other co-owners, but Arthur had 65 percent, which gave him full control. Which meant that Kyle was now in full control.
Kyle pretended to the outside world that he was upset about his father’s death, but he didn’t bother pretending it to himself. He could not stand the son of a bitch, ever since he’d bailed out on Kyle and his mother. But Kyle kept his eye on the financial ball, and now it had paid off.
Kyle was a smart guy, and he had carefully watched how his father ran things. Kyle had also watched Jeremy Kennon and the other tech guys and had learned from them. Kyle felt confident that he knew the business inside and out, and that he was ready.
But NetLink Systems was not quite the company it was a few days ago. The circumstances of Arthur’s death carried with them a lot more than the whiff of scandal. NetLink’s clients were going to be worried that they would be tainted by association, and they would need to be treated with kid gloves.
Countering that was that NetLink was an outstanding company that turned out an excellent product, and they had contracts in place with all of their important clients. By the time those contracts neared their end, the scandal would have faded, and things should continue as always.
Kyle would devote himself to making the clients comfortable; he was good at that. He would do whatever was necessary to ensure success.
He had waited too long. Nothing was going to stop him.
Jeremy Kennon is not there when I call, so I leave a message.
I’ve created a rather significant upheaval at NetLink Systems, to say the least, so I’m not sure if he’ll call me back. But he’s been willing to talk in the past, so I’m hoping he will.
He does … fifteen minutes later. “Haven’t you caused enough damage already? What the hell do you want now?”
“To talk.”
“So talk.” His tone of voice makes it clear that we’re not necessarily buddies anymore.
“It has to be in person; I don’t want to do it over the phone. And I have some theories to share with you that I need your input on. You have the expertise.”
“You want my input? What am I, on your staff? Tell me what this is about.”
“Arthur and Kyle Wainwright. Not necessarily in that order.”
“What about them?”
“Can we meet? There is something you need to hear, and some things for you to explain to me. You’re the only one who can do it.”
He thinks for a few moments. “You sure as hell can’t come here to the office, not after what happened with Arthur.”
“You pick the place.”
“How about my house? I live in Ridgewood.”
“No good. The place could be bugged. Surveillance is what we’re going to be talking about.”
“Come on, bugged? Who are you, James Bond? Then, “So you pick the place.”
“The Duck Pond in Ridgewood. Should be convenient for you.”
“The Duck Pond? This is January.”
“Dress warm … believe me, this is important. Eight o’clock? Near where the picnic tables are?”
“I should not be doing this. Eight o’clock.”
I get off the phone and check my emails for the information on routers and Kyle Wainwright that Sam sent me. I just skim it briefly, but everything seems to be in order. Then I call him to get the updates on the other areas he was checking into, and everything he says fits neatly into place.
Then I talk to Laurie about the arrangements I think we should make, all of which she agrees with.
And then all I can do is wait to meet with Jeremy Kennon. If all goes well, that will click the last piece neatly into place.
I arrive at the Duck Pond at ten before eight.
It’s dark and cold here, not terribly unexpected for a northern New Jersey night in early January. I’m also not crazy about being in a dark place, all alone, but I have no reason to think I won’t be safe. And I also have no one to blame; I picked the time and place.
Kennon pulls up right on time and parks near me. He walks over, arms folded, slapping his sides to deal with the temperature. “This is nuts.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can. We can sit over there.”
We sit at one of the picnic tables, across from each other. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Arthur Wainwright had been running an illegal operation out of NetLink Systems. He started it soon after he founded the company, and it’s been ongoing ever since. He did it alone; there was no need to include anyone else. Ultimately, he brought in Kyle.”
“What kind of illegal operation?” I’ve obviously got Kennon’s attention.
“It has to do with the routers. There’s a chip in there … at least I guess it’s a chip. This really isn’t my area; that’s what I need you for. But when a router with that chip was placed in a company, or even in a private person’s home, it allowed Arthur to monitor everything that came in on the internet into that network.”
Kennon doesn’t respond, so I continue, “So in effect they were spying on companies all over the country; maybe the world. They got the most intimate details of a company’s operations, strategies, plans. You know how much that information would be worth to certain people? I’m sure you do.
“That’s where Arrant came in. He was the conduit for all of it. He was international, so my guess is that there is spying involving a number of countries as well. There is no limit to what they might pay for industrial espionage with that kind of value. But that isn’t for me to go through; that will be up to the authorities once we break this open.”
“We?”
I nod. “You’re the key player. You know the ins and outs of your systems. You can figure out how all this was done. This is the right time to get on the right side of this, Jeremy.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
“Fair enough. I’ll give you an example. One of the routers NetLink made is used in the athletic department at Clemson University. A coach at LSU, going through Arrant, paid for their offensive game plan. I’m not sure if you saw the game, but LSU won, twenty-one to six.”
“Arthur has been out of the tech area for a while.”
I nod. “But Kyle hasn’t. Kyle has been dealing with Arrant directly. The beauty of it is that no one else at NetLink had to know about it. All Kyle had to do was insert the chip, and no one could ever know that it was bad.”
“Is that it?”
I nod. “Yes, except for one other thing. There’s just one mistake in all I’ve told you so far.”
“What’s that?”
“Instead of using the name Kyle Wainwright, I should have used Jeremy Kennon.”
The expression on his face is surprise, not worry. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means you’ve been conducting the operation, with Arrant. It means you killed Arthur Wainwright. It means that you were the older man Kristen McNeil was having an affair with. And it means you hired Taillon to kill Kristen McNeil, after he forced her to write the letter.
“Taillon didn’t call Arthur’s private line back then. He was calling you. You told me that the company was always changing offices, moving people around. I’m betting they didn’t redo the whole phone system each time, so the private numbers stayed with the office.”
Kennon lets this all sink in, then says, in a quieter, calmer voice than I would expect, “How did you figure it out?”
“It started with something you said. When you were at my office, you asked if I pick up a cantaloupe when I drop off my rent check. I didn’t think anything of it, but looking back, I wondered how you possibly could have assumed that the person who ran the fruit stand was my landlord.
“So we talked to her. We asked her about the day last mont
h when we lost wireless internet, and she said someone from the computer company had come by and installed newer equipment that day, without her even asking for it. And guess what? The new router was made by NetLink Systems.
“You were reading every email I got. That’s how you knew about Mitch Holzer mentioning Arrant’s name to me. And you read my email to my lawyer colleague about finding Kristen’s letter. That’s why you jumped the gun and killed Arthur; you didn’t want him defending himself. No telling what might have come out.”
“Not bad,” Kennon said. “But if you were looking to break this open, why are you telling me? Why not the police?”
“Did I mention the money that you must be making? I want some of it, and I want some for my client. Payment for the nightmare you put him through.”
Kennon stands up; and somehow a gun has appeared in his hand. “I don’t think so. You made a big mistake; you’ve set the whole thing up for Kyle to take the fall. It will look like he did all of this, including killing you.” Kennon looks around. “You even picked a great location. Maybe better than the cemetery. Let’s take a walk towards those trees.”
Suddenly there is a sound I have now gotten familiar with, followed by a blur that runs across my line of vision and lands on Kennon. He screams and within an instant he is on the ground, Simon ripping at his arm.
“Off,” Corey says, and the ever-obedient Simon obeys. Freed from the crazy dog, Kennon tries to run, only to be grabbed by Marcus and tossed like a tennis ball against a tree. He falls to the ground.
“Nicely done, boys,” says Laurie.
Suddenly the area is lit up by floodlights; it’s now daytime at the Duck Pond. Pete runs up, flanked by three officers with guns drawn.
I open my shirt, which does not feel good in the cold, and I rip the wire off my chest, which feels even worse. “You get it all?”
Pete nods. “Every word.”
“Pete,” I say, “have you met the K Team?”
Dachshund Through the Snow Page 20
