“And that’s precisely the reason I wouldn’t mind somehow discovering that my father was indeed murdered.” He allowed a short sigh to escape him. “I know this is a long shot, Mr. Vickson, but I am prepared to hire you for the week. If you can’t find anything that doesn’t justify a longer investigation, then Alice and I will have to be satisfied with that. Will you take the job?”
“I will, Dr. Malik, Ms. Gould. I can start by looking into some of the police reports Detective Denton will let me look at. Otherwise, I’d like for each of you to tell me all you know about Trevor Malik.”
The next several minutes were spent with the doctor telling the life story of his father, with the occasional comment by Ms. Gould, who became quite relaxed ever since hearing her friend say he would hire me. According to them, Trevor Malik was among the best examples showing what good ol’ fashion hard work could accomplish. He grew up lower middle-class in a small town in northern Illinois, studied hard, met his future wife in college, and decided to specialize in biomedical engineering. Not long after graduating with his master’s degree, he enlisted in the army when the Concord civil war broke out, seeing some combat when the U.N. sent its coalition force, before coming home to tie the knot and help run the business his new wife was starting. The little business eventually found a foothold developing medical technology and was churning a good little profit for itself by the time Ryan was in high school. As far as Ryan knew, his parents paid all their debts and didn’t piss off anyone more than was usual for a growing business.
After hearing the first half of his life story, I had the impression that if murder was the cause of death, then it must have been due to a fairly recent event. In any case, I didn’t want to come to any assumptions right then. Once I heard some of Trevor’s more contemporary life, I bade my farewell and told them I would call if I needed anything in particular. The doctor asked if I was going to interview anyone, sounding a little apprehensive with that possibility, but I assured them that the old police reports would be enough for me to avoid troubling anyone right then.
I called Detective Denton on my way to my apartment. He didn’t answer, but he called me back when I was halfway home.
“I had a feeling or two you’d call me,” said the detective.
“So do you have what I want ready?”
“Fuck man, always right to business.”
“All right, I’m sorry. How’s your family? Fucking your wife good?”
He laughed. “We need to work on your people skills some time. So they ended up paying you, huh?”
“Yeah, for the week.”
“Poor bastards, and that includes you. Not sure what in the void you can find.”
“There was really nothing odd that stood out during the investigation?”
“There’s always at least a few weird things that stick out when we delve into someone’s whole life, but nothing that screamed bloody murder. I didn’t handle the case myself, but I know the guys who investigated are a couple of vets who don’t have a sense of humor. I browsed through a few files while I was downloading some for you, but I didn’t see anything interesting. I have no idea where you’ll start.”
“I’m not sure either. Just send what you got to the usual email. And thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And by the way, I do fuck her good.”
“That’s not what she tells me.”
“Fuck you, man.”
Needing one, I took a half hour nap before looking over what I was sent by Denton. Seeing as this was an open and shut case, my contact had no qualms sending me just about everything the department had concerning the suicide. A quick browse of the reports on my computer screen initially displayed little difference between what was available on private police accounts and public knowledge. Trevor Malik was found dead in his second story study by his wife at 7:45 p.m. on the twenty-sixth of June. She had been working late at Medtech and left at 7:20 p.m., which was corroborated by employees and surveillance footage. According to the same mechanical witnesses, Trevor clocked out at exactly 6:02 p.m. and, going by his car’s GPS, left unaccompanied straight to his house some twenty minutes away, leaving open nearly an hour and a half of the complete unknown. Nothing in his large home—which had an alarm system, but no cameras—indicated any attempt at forced entry and nothing was reported as stolen. The house itself was located smack dab in the middle of a patch of land encompassing three acres, giving it a good amount of space between it and its neighbors.
The lack of motive and evidence was supplemented by the lack of a suicide note. No scribbled note, typed memorandum, video farewell, or audio file was found anywhere. That by itself wasn’t unfathomable, given that not everyone who attempts suicide leaves a chronicled sendoff, but it was a bit out of place for a man who seemingly had a loving family and was a well-to-do member of both the medical and business communities. Adding to the oddness, Trevor had not touched his will in over two years, something one would think a man with his fortune would at least tinker with if thinking about ending it all. Still, this unsettled feeling that would have been felt by any casual outsider, much less two veteran detectives, did not open any concrete leads.
On digging a little deeper, I found another quirk that had an even lesser chance to lead me anywhere. Trevor’s study held some of his gun collection, most of which consisted of antiques that either hung on his wall or were displayed behind a large glass case. There were a couple of other more modern firearms typically stowed away in a cabinet, and it was one of these, a Glock 27, that carried out the brain scattering deed. Choosing this more reliable pistol made enough sense by itself, but the quirk that struck me was seeing the option he did not choose. A trifling footnote by one of the detectives stated that Trevor’s most precious gun was stored away in that very room. What had apparently started Trevor’s fascination with gun collecting was receiving a classic model of the .357 Magnum revolver by his father after graduating high school. Not that I had any notion to how Trevor would view killing himself with a gift from his father, but it did add to the impersonal way he went about such a personal decision.
At any rate, this unnervingly detached process did make it easier to think about this case as a murder. I caught myself feeling irritated if this man turned out to have shot himself without leaving any answers for his distraught family. Just a little note and everything would have been more final. I decided to treat this case as a surefire homicide staged to look like a suicide and work from there. Using this mode of thinking, I asked myself, ‘Why even make this look like a suicide?’ The answer was obvious. Every homicide would look like a suicide if murderers could get away with it, whether it was carried out by a close relation or a complete stranger. But who could successfully achieve such a difficult undertaking? The absence of forced entry implied Trevor had willingly allowed his murderer into his home, and it was likely the conspirator, or conspirators, spent a good while planning this. No one could possibly have masterminded such a convincing scheme after a heat of the moment crime of passion before Mrs. Malik came home, assuming she didn’t do it herself.
I thought Mrs. Malik an unlikely suspect. She had nothing grand to gain financially with her husband’s untimely death, always keeping control of the business side of things. If she did catch him being unfaithful and planned revenge, then I suspected something would have come out from his mistress, supposing she didn’t kill her as well, but that scenario led into an even deeper rabbit hole I didn’t think led anywhere. There was the chance it was him who had caught her cheating and was possibly planning a divorce, though one would assume he would have mentioned that to somebody or left it on record somewhere. Perhaps it was a jilted mistress who became angry at his refusal to leave his wife? I thought this theory might hold the most weight if other lovers were involved, seeing as it would make sense that Trevor would not tell anyone about his extracurricular activities and would thus leave the least trace. Nevertheless, an initial glance at his phone and email records didn’t show any unaccountable
traffic.
After those initial glances at his digital records, I began researching all that was found in his phone and computers. The phone was pretty standard fare, containing the expected number of text and calls to family and friends, but it was the computer data that soon had me intrigued. The files had been copied by the detectives from his personal and office computers, so one expected the heavy correspondence with family, friends, and employees, but that was the thing, there wasn’t much more than that. Several documents related to his work existed, containing technical gibberish I would have to spend six years of my life learning to understand, but even his office computers didn’t have as much as I thought someone helping to run a research company should have.
As I looked through more and more of the archive of notes, pictures, and interviews, the scant information in his computers began itching away at me, if only because nothing more seemed significant. There was the possibility that Trevor was simply very keen at discarding information he did not need. All the same, I couldn’t help noticing that the lone laptop I was using at that moment seemingly held as much content as all of his combined.
After a late dinner of leftover pizza and taking a short sleep, I called Ms. Gould in her office.
“How may I help you, Mr. Vickson?” she said once I established it was me.
“Was Trevor Malik much of a minimalist?”
“A minimalist?”
“I mean, how important do you think getting rid of clutter was to him? Was he very organized?”
She was in contemplative silence for half a moment before she answered, “I wouldn’t say he was much different than the average person. I would say that Emily tried to keep him tidy, but he just laughed that off. Why do you ask?”
“I just thought it odd that his office computers didn’t have all that much on them, considering his high position in the company.”
“His computers…? Oh! That’s probably because they were new. I remember he had me order a new pair a week or two before he died, so I doubt he could have put much into them.”
“I see. Did he order new ones often?”
“Not really. As long as they worked he was happy. In fact, he only ordered those new ones because I believe his old ones crashed.”
“They crashed?”
“I believe that’s what he told me. I remember thinking that I should start replacing his work computers every two years as a matter of recourse.”
“Do you know if he used his personal devices for work?”
“I imagine he did. He carried a little laptop and pad wherever he went.”
“Did he update those often?”
“Um, I’m not so sure about those.”
“Thank you for the clearer picture, Ms. Gould. I’ll call back for anything more.”
I instantly called Doctor Malik’s clinic, having to leave a message. He returned my call fifteen minutes later.
“What is it, Mr. Vickson?”
“Do you happen to know if your father’s computers and pad had been recently bought?”
“His computers? Can’t say th… Wait, now that you mention it, maybe. I can’t be sure about his pad, but I recall seeing a new laptop with him on one of the last days I saw him. His old one was black and the newer one was silver. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. What’s this about?”
Seeing as he would piece it together from Ms. Gould anyhow, I told him, “Your father’s office computers were new as well. Ms. Gould told me they crashed about a week or two before his death.”
A brief muteness of meditation overtook him before he said, “And you’re not going to treat that as a coincidence, are you?”
“It might be the best I got so far. Do you know what happened to his things?”
“Likely still at his house. My mother moved out, but she can’t bear the thought of selling it either. Only Alice and I have been there for any significant amount of time since that day. Would you like to take a look around?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can meet you there after work. Is six fine?”
“I’ll see you then.”
At 5:50 I entered the high-end neighborhood, where many kinds of tall, old trees dotted the site. I drove up to the entrance of the long driveway to the large home, finding the doctor already waiting for me outside his white BMW. There was a tanned brick pillar on each side of the driveway’s entry, but no hint of a gate or wall they must have once been a part of. A short drive later and we each met just outside his father’s former home, which was a wide two-story Federal Colonial style of house. Its brick façade was the same color as the pillars and some curved steps of gray stone led up to the tall, brown doors. The doctor unlocked the left door with his key and let me in. Resoundingly stepping into the household’s wooden floor had me smelling the musty, inert air. The lights were off, but there was still enough daylight breaking through the great, fan-shaped window above the door to brighten the large foyer, which held a broad, hooking staircase on my right. I followed the doctor up these stairs, a maroon carpet deadening our footfalls somewhat. He next steered me down a hall on the right side of the house, going down its length to the last room on the left.
Opening that door revealed the already familiar study where Ryan’s father met Ysana. Much of the back wall was a large window that looked out onto the flat and spacious backyard, and which allowed the infiltrating sunlight to softly reflect off the dangling dust particles that looked to have been undisturbed for weeks. On my right were various antique guns still hanging on the wall or displayed behind a glass case. To my left was the hefty mahogany desk I was told Trevor used mostly for work. Everything was just as I had seen in the pictures. The only item missing was the black leather chair Trevor was sitting in when the trigger was pulled. Ryan walked up to the desk and opened a drawer to pull out a silver laptop. He then proceeded to lift its cover and turn the device on.
As the machine booted up, Ryan seemed to be contemplating something. When the login screen showed itself, he said, “Hopefully he didn’t change his password. I don’t want to have to ask my mother for it.”
Two attempts later and he was successful in accessing the account. He moved out of the way to permit me to dig into the digital treasure trove. I pulled out a pen drive and inserted it into the port.
“Looking for anything in particular?” he asked me.
“I want to see the hard drive.”
“Wouldn’t the detectives have already done that?”
“Probably, but they didn’t record exactly what they found. I want to see for myself.”
I began running a diagnostic program I liked to use to recover any unerased data stored in a hard drive. With the computer not having been used in a long while, I hoped that any files deleted by Trevor (or anyone else) wouldn’t have been written over by the inactive machine. After several minutes, the salvage program finished its calling.
After a moment to allow me to read the results, the doctor asked, “Find anything?”
“Not a scrap of recoverable data.”
“Was that expected?”
“Not really. Unless your father deleted absolutely nothing in his last days, which is a remote possibility with a new computer, I’d say the hard drive was tampered with.”
“Gods, are you sure?”
“I’m fairly positive. Recently deleted files take some time to be completely erased by an active hard drive, but this computer doesn’t have a trace of retrievable data. This hasn’t been active since that day, correct?” Ryan nodded. “Then a completely muddled hard drive suggests to me that someone used a type of scrambling program to make certain no deleted information could be recovered. Of course, it could have been your father who used the program. Either way, it would mean someone wanted to make sure something remained hidden.”
“Something to do with his work, I’m betting. His new office computers must be a sign that someone also wanted the information stored in them gone. Shit, why didn’t the detectives connect this earlier?�
�
“The reports don’t even mention he had his office computers freshly replaced. They were veteran detectives, but old-timers tend to overlook the little things when it comes to technology. I doubt they even considered taking the devices downtown to have them inspected more thoroughly. Still, even if they had, they would only find this blank slate.”
“But someone would have told them what you told me. It would tell them that there was something odd going on.”
“Again, for all we know, it was your father who scrambled everything, and it could still be unrelated to his death.”
“But it’s the best lead we got.”
“Yes it is.”
“What do you want to do now?”
I wanted to think, so I told him I wanted to explore the rest of the house. As I walked about a house that was far too quiet for my liking, and as the doctor tried looking for the pad Trevor used, I began to conjecture what had happened six months ago. Keeping with my assumption that this was a murder, then I knew the killer’s goal was to get rid of information that would be stored in Trevor’s office computers and personal devices. Somebody doing a little research could easily discover how to discreetly send a computer virus to Trevor’s accounts using any number of ways. If it was someone Trevor trusted, then a virus sent by email would be the simplest way to infiltrate his digital realm and cause the havoc they wanted. As the doctor pointed out, the information they were targeting was likely work related, giving me the strong inclination that a close work associate was the source for all this. It made the most sense. If Trevor was researching something significant, then he would let at least a few others in his team know about it, and any one of these someones could hide their malevolent intentions from him until the very end, until they shot out the last possible storage space for information.
By the time Ryan sought me out, telling me he couldn’t find Trevor’s pad, I was able to convey to him the next phase of my investigation, which was to contact Ms. Gould and have her give me all she had on Trevor’s closest work associates. Ryan himself named a few researchers he knew his father was friendly with outside of work, but said that he couldn’t imagine any of them having a hand at a murder. Few ever do.
Generations (The Nimbus Collection Book 3) Page 3
