Second Life (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 4)

by D. F. Bailey

  She studied him for a moment and smiled.

  “So. How was the debate between Dr. Fast and the notorious Kali Rood?”

  “Civilized chaos.” He slipped off his shoes and padded toward her with the Armani jacket draped over an arm. When he kissed her she pulled him closer and embraced him tenderly despite the awkwardness of the roses and jacket riding between them.

  “That feels promising,” he whispered.

  “You never know. Might want to try your luck later.” She pulled away and tugged at his arm. “New jacket?”

  “Not really.” He gave her a dark look. “You won’t believe what happened today.”

  They sat at the kitchen table overlooking the herb garden that Eve had recently coaxed back to life. Despite the winter rains, the on-going drought had returned in March. Every day Eve sprinkled the herbs with a watering can that she kept under the sink. She said the garden made her feel like an earth goddess.

  But the feeling of domestic bliss faded when Finch mentioned Toby Squire. After he told her the story of Squire’s suicide he realized that the drama would be difficult to eradicate from his memory. And tonight he knew he’d be sitting at his computer in the upstairs library writing an eyewitness report for the eXpress. Wally Gimbel, his editor, would be outraged if he discovered that Will sat on the story for more than a few hours. Detective DeRosa was right: Squire’s death marked the final chapter in the tragedy that destroyed the Whitelaw dynasty. Wally would pin the story to the top of the web page and leave it there for a month.

  “What about that jacket? It looks way too small for Squire.”

  “It’s a 38-tall. I doubt Squire could fit his hands through the sleeves.”

  Will’s fingers burrowed through the outside pockets once again. Nothing. Likely Squire had stolen anything of value before he abandoned it on the railing.

  “DeRosa said she found a lot of cash on his body.”

  “How much?”

  “Wouldn’t say.” Finch shook his head. “There was no wallet, no credit cards. I guess he kept the cash he found and dumped the rest.”

  “Let’s see.” Eve ran her hand over the material with a look of distaste. She examined the designer’s label. “Jeez … Armani. Looks brand new.” Her fingers brushed over the outside pockets. “It’s creepy just knowing he touched it,” she whispered and glanced away.

  “Think I should I hand it over to DeRosa?”

  Eve gave him a skeptical look. “What about the pistol?”

  “From a distance it looked like your .38 Special, but when I asked, she wouldn’t disclose any details. Except for the room key they found on Squire. Hotel Vincent, room 203.”

  “I’m surprised she’d tell you that.”

  “Personal charm, I guess.”

  “Of course. How could I forget?” She draped the jacket over the back of an empty chair. “Part of me wants to burn this thing. It’s like anything that monster ever touched should be banished from the face of the earth.”

  “Should I get rid of it?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head with a bleak frown. “Just hang it in the storage room for now, okay. I can’t bear to sit here and have to look at it.”

  Finch walked down the hallway to the windowless storage locker and hung the jacket on a hook attached to the inner wall.

  “For now I just want to forget about him,” she said when he returned to the table. “It’s like an old shark coming around for another bite. And how do you ever forget that?”

  ※

  On the ground floor the renovated Alta Street cottage had a living room, dining room, kitchen, and a guest room next to the entry that Eve had transformed into her home office. An open-step plank staircase with glass siding and a steel bannister led to the three rooms on the second story that included the master bedroom, a two hundred-square foot bathroom, and an open corner space that Finch had converted to a library and his writing room.

  At the far corner of the library, between the window that overlooked the street and another staircase that climbed to the roof deck, he’d installed a wide desk where his computer sat surrounded by the litter of correspondence from his agent and publisher. On the floor next to the desk stood the stacks of four-hundred-page drafts he’d written to produce Who Shot the Sheriff? It was a tidy mess organized by a system that only Finch understood.

  Above the desk a pendant lamp hung from the ceiling to a position about a foot above his head where he hunched over the computer and tapped at the keyboard. The heat from the lamp warmed the top of his head. He’d meant to raise the lamp another foot or two, but never got around to it. Instead, he tugged on a Giants baseball cap which blocked the heat and shaded the intense lamp light from his eyes. He opened the window and a faint breeze drifted over his face, yet another modification to the heat-and-light configuration of his work space. The mewling of a cat crying in the darkened lane broke his concentration. When he heard Eve’s footsteps in the hallway behind him he turned his head.

  She stood at the doorway with an iPad in her hand. “Have you been following the newsfeed from the eXpress?”

  “No.” He continued typing, knowing that if he stopped in mid-sentence he could lose his entire train of thought. “I try and blank it out when I’m working,” he mumbled and typed another two words.

  “Then you should look at this.” She stood beside him.

  Completely distracted now, he looked at her with a frown.

  “You saw Martin Fast at the debate this morning, right?”

  “Yes. I told you that.”

  “He’s dead.” She passed the iPad to him and tipped her head to one side as if to say, drop the attitude—this is important.

  “What?”

  “Looks like he got caught in some kind of dime-store stick-up that went bad.”

  Finch read the headline: “Esteemed Climate Scientist Shot In Market Street Melee.” The story was written by Fiona Page, Finch’s colleague at the eXpress. He scoured the first few paragraphs and learned that just before one PM, Martin Fast had entered Triple-8, a convenience store on Market Street near Ninth. According to the cashier, a masked gunman dashed into the store, stole the cash from the till, mugged Fast for his wallet and shot him in the chest and through the head.

  “I just saw him”—he turned to check the time on his computer—“less than ten hours ago.” He shook his head in disbelief. “He had that crazy debate with Kali Rood. Then he must have gone for lunch.”

  “Which is when he was shot.” Eve sat beside him. She set a hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry. I know it’s been an awful day.”

  “My God. I just interviewed him last week.”

  He recalled Fast’s crisp demeanor, the brisk way he had of stitching together the facts of his arguments, his mastery of data, the inescapable conclusions that he’d published in every credible climate journal in the world. Simply stated, his message offered little solace: due to the ineluctable forces of climate change, within one hundred years civilization as we know it will end. Therefore, the most important responsibility of government is to ensure the survival of as many citizens as possible. Will remembered the emphasis Fast had placed on the words “ineluctable forces” as if they were succulent desserts at a posh buffet. He took a certain pride in forecasting the doom and gloom that awaited humanity at the end of our gluttonous feast. It was an attitude that earned him a lot of scorn from Wall Street and politicians—whom he described as “blind, inept, and in bondage to one another.”

  As he recovered from the shock, Will tried to sequence the events of the early afternoon. Immediately after the debate, he’d climbed the stairs to the top floor of the public library, settled into one of the carrels in a quiet zone, and knocked off five paragraphs about the war of words and ensuing disarray. Then he’d emailed the story to Jeanine Fix at the eXpress, strolled up Polk Street to Brenda's French Soul Food and ordered the Croque Monsieur. After his meal, he’d walked back to the parkade, picked up his car and drove through the detour alo
ng Turk Street where he spied Toby Squire—the random coincidence that set in play the events leading to his suicide. By then it was almost four o’clock. Just two or three hours earlier, and less than five blocks away, Martin Fast had been gunned down on Market Street.

  ※ — FOUR — ※

  DURING WILL FINCH’S six-month leave of absence from work—the time he’d taken to write his book, Who Shot The Sheriff?—his managing editor, Wally Gimbel had tried to make some changes at the eXpress.

  Since the collapse of their parent company, The San Francisco Post, the online readership of the eXpress had grown by eight hundred percent. On the other hand, advertising revenues had shrunk by a factor of twelve. Before this mix of good and bad news had been taken into account, Willie Parson, one of two brothers who owned the eXpress, had promised Wally he could hire two new journalists to bulk up the paid staff. But the financial realities of the looming catastrophe made Parson hesitate.

  “Sure, we grew the readership by a huge margin,” Parson said as he paced the floor in front of Wally’s desk. “An historic margin.” He paused and tipped his chin to one side. “But these readers don’t buy a fucking thing! They’re like ghosts. With a thirty-three percent negative cash flow we simply can’t continue.”

  “What are you saying?” Wally felt his neck stiffen as he prepared himself.

  “I’m saying the board reached a decision last night.” He stopped his nervous pacing and settled his eyes on Wally. He shrugged as if he were a doctor delivering news of a terminal illness. “If you don’t break even this quarter, we’re cutting our losses.”

  They both took a moment to weigh the consequences.

  “And then?” Wally hoped his boss might offer another angle to explore. Sell the eXpress to someone who actually knew how to run an internet news organization. Find a benefactor. Launch some kind of kick-start campaign.

  “And then Parson Media will simply concentrate on building our profitable divisions.”

  Wally raised his eyebrows with a look of exasperation. The profitable divisions included internet gaming, dating sites, travel advertising, digital-coupon sales. Over the past ten years he’d watched Parson Media morph from a chain of respectable print publications (books, magazines, daily and weekly papers) to become a digital menagerie. And he knew there was no place for him in this zoo of phantoms and ghosts. If he wasn’t careful, one of these beasts might eat him alive.

  “So that’s it?”

  Parson’s voice took on a sympathetic tone. “Wally, you know there’ll be a place for you somewhere in Parson Media. But let’s not even think about that yet. As I said, we’ll look at it again next quarter.”

  “All right.” Wally stood as Parson wheeled about to the door.

  “And give my love to your wife.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  ※

  Finch settled into his chair at the far end of the row of desks the reporters called the bog. When he logged onto his computer and brought up the eXpress homepage, he scanned his story on Toby Squire’s suicide knowing it was the final chapter in the Whitelaw saga. The epilogue. Good riddance, he thought and turned his mind to the murder of Martin Fast.

  Since Will had covered yesterday’s rancorous debate between Fast and Kali Rood, and Fiona Page had picked up the story of Fast’s murder, somebody needed to draw the roadmap on how to move forward, especially if her story developed momentum. He picked up his desk phone and buzzed Wally Gimbel.

  “Gimbel.” Wally’s voice was flat, dismissive.

  “How do you want to handle the follow-up on Martin Fast’s murder?” He paused. “I can tag-team with Fiona if you want, but I haven’t seen her today.”

  “She’s here with me in the boardroom. Come on over and we’ll sort it out now.”

  When Finch joined Wally and Fiona, he saw three or four file folders open on the big oak desk. The editor and reporter stood at the edge of the table sorting through the papers, comparing them with the information on their computer tablets. Wally had his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Fiona glanced up and smiled at Finch. Over the past year she’d let her hair grow out and return to its natural color, a strawberry blonde that she wore in a pony tail bound together with a decorative scrunchy.

  Finch could tell they’d just begun the process of piecing together the facts. Comparing Martin Fast’s illustrious CV to the one-page fact sheet the SFPD had provided about his murder created a dissonance the media was scrambling to bring into balance. The question at the front of everyone’s mind: how could a man of such storied accomplishments be snuffed out in a two-minute mugging?

  “Just digging in?” Finch asked.

  Wally drew an audible breath. “Yeah. I told Jeanine to pull up the Post’s archive on Fast. But I didn’t expect this.” He pointed to the files. “I guess you knew he was part of a Nobel prize-winning committee.”

  Finch nodded.

  “All right,” he waved a hand. “Let’s get Finkleman to make sense of this. For now we’ve got to tackle the breaking news.”

  Wally sat and waved a hand to two adjacent chairs. Finch sat opposite Fiona with a look of anticipation. They were about to tackle a story that could become either a short wind sprint or an agonizing double marathon. No one knew what lay ahead.

  “I heard you were there with Squire,” Fiona said and drew her lips into a frown. “Last chapter, huh?”

  He smiled, amused to hear the same words Detective DeRosa used to describe the suicide.

  “All right, let’s get down to it.” Wally closed the cover on his tablet. “Fiona, bring Will up to speed.”

  “This morning’s police report says the .38 Toby Squire used to off himself fired three rounds.”

  “Three?” Finch leaned forward and set his arms on the table.

  “And since two rounds were fired into Martin Fast, the ballistics and forensics team did a blast-and-match and discovered the same gun was used in both shootings.”

  Finch blinked. Squire must have pulled the stick-up just after noon, killed Fast, and then shot himself when Will cornered him. Was it possible?

  “That might account for the money,” he said.

  “What money?” Fiona titled her head.

  “DeRosa told me they found some money on Squire.”

  “How much?”

  “Wouldn’t say.” He tried to recall her exact words. “She said it was ‘more than enough.’ Given the fact I called her after I spotted Squire, she was pretty abstemious with the details.”

  “Abstemious?” Wally raised an eyebrow. “You still on the wagon?”

  Finch smiled. “It’s a way of life, Wally.”

  “Yeah, so is celibacy.” He let out a friendly laugh as if he was referring to his own form of abstinence.

  “All right. Here’s how we pitch the next inning,” he continued. “Fiona, you cover Fast’s murder and the ballistics report linking the .38 to Squire’s suicide. Will, you write the big-picture profile of Martin Fast’s career. Try to get Kali Rood’s take on him. After their debate yesterday, the Virgin Queen ought to bring a different perspective to his accomplishments.”

  They all smiled at this. Kali Rood and her foundation had acquired the aura of a cult after Jayne Waterston, a journalist at The Village Voice, dubbed her the Virgin Queen in a feature article last fall.

  “I could do a full profile piece on her. After the story I did on Fast last week it would provide some balance, I guess.” Even as he said this, Finch felt a sort of loathing. Balance was not a word he would normally associate with Kali Rood.

  Wally nodded, an acknowledgement that it was the right road to take. “I hate to see her get the last word on him, but as they say in Hollywood”—he crooked a thumb in the direction of LA — “timing is everything. Anything else?”

  “Not from me.” Fiona picked up her tablet.

  “I’d like to take a last look at Squire’s world,” Finch said as he stood up. “DeRosa told me where he was living in the Tenderloin.”

 
; Wally shrugged as if this side of the story lacked merit. “Only if you have time. But really, Squire’s obit doesn’t need an epilogue. Keep the focus on Fast. Sad to say, but by next week the death of Dr. Martin Fast will be old news. Nothing more than ‘fish wrap’ as we used to say.”

  Wally shook his head with a look of regret, and for the first time since he’d returned to his desk at the eXpress, Finch noticed the weariness etched into Wally’s face. Something’s wrong with the boss, he told himself, but he knew this was the wrong time and place to ask. Maybe later.

  ※

  When it came to checking Squire’s apartment, Finch decided not to wait. After his meeting with Wally and Fiona he grabbed his jacket and courier bag and made his way to the front desk. As he approached the receptionist Dixie Lindstrom, he asked her to make an appointment with Kali Rood for any time that afternoon or the next morning. She lived in New York and he knew she planned to return there within the next twenty-four hours.

  “Text me when you have a place and a time when she’ll meet me for an interview. Tell her I only need thirty minutes, okay?”

  “You got it, Will.” Dixie smiled. Her phone rang and she picked it up on the second ring.

  She’s probably the busiest person in the eXpress, Finch figured, but she always has a smile for everyone. He never understood how she managed to maintain her equanimity in the face of so many competing demands. One day he’d ask for her secret formula and advise her to bottle it.

  As he drove back to the Tenderloin District he tried to calculate the odds of beating the cops to Squire’s room. Yesterday DeRosa had suggested that sweeping his place was not a priority. But that was before Squire had been linked to Martin Fast’s killer. There’d be enormous pressure to open the case to a public inquiry by the “political climatocracy”—a term Kali Rood had coined in her debate with Al Gore last summer.

  There’d be equal pressure from the police chief to close down the investigation ASAP. After all, nailing Squire for Fast’s murder ensured the SFPD would score a rare triple-bagger: Squire had murdered Gianna Whitelaw and now Fast. Maybe. After he shot himself the cops could score three runs on a bunt. Any option that opened the case to further investigation would never be considered.