Switchback

by Matthew Klein

  ‘Careful now,’ Billings called. He yelled to be heard over the wind and surf.

  Neiderhoffer glanced over his shoulder at the detective in order to give him a dirty look, but Billings had gone back to tanning, facing the sun, his eyes closed.

  Neiderhoffer went to the BMW. He hoped to see Timothy Van Bender in the front seat, with brains splattered on the side windows and a gun in his hand. But the car was empty. The interior was intact, the black leather spotless. No suicide note.

  He returned to the edge of the overlook and held onto the chain, bent over the edge, peered down. Rocks and ocean. Surf splashing violently. Loud waves. Much louder than he expected. No body. No clothes. No shoes.

  ‘Careful!’

  A hand grabbed Neiderhoffer around the waist. Billings was standing behind him. Because of the ocean sound, Neiderhoffer hadn’t heard him approach.

  ‘You know how many people we lose over this cliff, every year?’ Billings asked. His mouth was close to Neiderhoffer’s ear, and Neiderhoffer could feel his breath.

  ‘How many?’

  ‘None. No one ever comes up here.’

  Neiderhoffer extracted himself from Billings’ touch. He looked again over the edge of the cliff. ‘No corpse down below?’

  ‘A little hard to get to. We need to bring a boat around from the other side of the cove. We’re working on it.’

  Neiderhoffer scanned the water for a boat. There was none.

  Billings said: ‘But we’re never gonna find one.’

  Neiderhoffer turned. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The body. We’re never gonna find it. There’s a tough rip because of the cove. Anything that lands down there gets smashed up pretty good, then pulled out to sea. He’s probably floating past Tijuana right now.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And then, you know, you don’t last very long. Shark food.’

  Neiderhoffer looked down at the rocks, searching for some trace of Timothy Van Bender.

  ‘I mean, if you’re asking me,’ Billings said, ‘he’s dead. You don’t survive that jump.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Neiderhoffer said again.

  ‘It’s kind of poetic, isn’t it?’ Billings said.

  Neiderhoffer thought he was talking about the beauty of the sea down below. There was something awesome and fear-inspiring about it. It was poetic, yes.

  But Billings continued: ‘A man drives a couple hours just to commit suicide in the same exact spot as his wife. That’s real love, isn’t it? To follow your wife to the end – the very end. I know I wouldn’t do that for my wife.’ Billings thought about it. ‘Well I might follow her, just to give her a little push, in case she changed her mind. But I wouldn’t jump in after her.’

  Neiderhoffer smiled.

  Billings asked: ‘How much do you have to love a woman to do that?’

  ‘Well,’ Neiderhoffer said. He was about to explain that Billings had it all wrong, that Timothy Van Bender had actually killed his wife, perhaps by pushing her from this very spot.

  ‘Now that’s love,’ Billings said. ‘You don’t see that very often.’

  Neiderhoffer pressed his lips closed, decided not to speak after all. Looking down at the rocks below, the crashing waves, the foamed ocean, he wasn’t sure what to think. Maybe it was love. Maybe you could hate someone enough to kill them, but still love them at the same time. Marriage was a funny thing. It made people mad.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Neiderhoffer said.

  He turned and headed back to his car to start writing his report.

  51

  Palo Alto Daily News, October 1, 1999

  Suspect Kills Companion, Then Self

  In one of the most gruesome crimes in Palo Alto history, former hedge fund manager Timothy Van Bender murdered his secretary with a blow to the head and then killed himself by drowning himself in the sea on Wednesday night, police say.

  A gardener found the female victim, Tricia Fountain, 23, dead in Van Bender’s stately Waverly Drive mansion. She was killed by severe trauma to the back of her head. ‘The evidence points to Timothy Van Bender being responsible for the murder,’ Detective Alexander Neiderhoffer told the Daily News by telephone. Timothy Van Bender, 47, was under suspicion for murdering his wife, Katherine Van Bender, in August, but the police had not formally charged him with a crime. Timothy Van Bender maintained that his wife’s death was a suicide.

  Long-time Palo Alto resident Timothy Van Bender was for many years a successful manager of his own hedge fund, a vehicle designed for wealthy investors. But recently, according to CFTC documents released yesterday, Van Bender’s fund, Osiris, had fallen on hard times and Van Bender was accused of stealing millions of dollars from his investors.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ neighbor Ann Beatty, who lived a few houses away from the murder scene, said. ‘I knew Katherine Van Bender for years. And I even met the young woman that they found murdered. She was a lovely girl. The whole thing is a tragedy.’

  An autopsy is being performed on Ms. Fountain. Results will be released later today. Mr. Van Bender’s body has not yet been recovered, but the Coast Guard is conducting a thorough search, according to the Palo Alto Police Department.

  ‘We believe that Timothy Van Bender killed his wife, and his lover, and then himself,’ Detective Neiderhoffer said. ‘He was responsible for the death of two people, and the theft of millions of dollars that had been entrusted to him. When Mr. Van Bender decided he couldn’t escape, he ended his own life, thus drawing to a close a horrifying story.’

  52

  VENTURE-GRAM

  Daily email update for venture capital professionals

  Funding News for October 14, 1999

  New funding has been reported for secretive startup Amber Corporation, based in Palo Alto, CA. Sources report to Venture-Gram that Amber raised a third round of capital totaling over 30 million dollars. The round gives the company a post-money valuation of over 120 million dollars, sources say. The company’s founder, Dr. Clarence Ho, reportedly impressed the investor group with a demonstration of what some sources call ‘astounding technology.’ The investor group includes Kleiner Perkins, Sutter Hill, and Sequoia. The exact nature of the company’s technology is unclear, but former employees have reported that the company focuses on brain/machine interfaces.

  53

  The bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan, with its cold marble and high ceilings and dim lights, was filling slowly with a typical Monday evening crowd.

  Wall Streeters in Armani suits were led, with their pretty young female companions, to tables along the walls. There was time for one quick drink before the cab ride down to the Village where dinner reservations waited.

  At the front of the room, a piano player tinkled jazz standards. Nearby, in the corner, a table was occupied by one couple that stood out from the crowd. They too were a mixed-age couple, but the roles were reversed; it was a young, attractive man, and an older middle-aged woman.

  The woman was Katherine Van Bender and the man was Jay Strauss, the Kid.

  They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. He reached across the table and took her hands in his. Wordlessly, he squeezed them.

  A waitress appeared with a tray, carrying drinks. She put a Cosmopolitan down in front of Katherine. ‘For the lady, a Cosmopolitan.’ She laid the other drink in front of Jay. ‘And for the gentleman, a Dalmore Scotch, neat. Is there anything else I can get you?’

  The Kid shook his head. The waitress smiled and left.

  Katherine raised her glass. ‘To us.’

  The Kid lifted his glass. ‘To Mr. Dalmore, aged twenty-one years.’

  They drank to that.

  Afterward

  Musée National du Château et des Trianons, Versailles – nine months later

  At first, he didn’t notice her enter the room. He was staring at a painting, an eighteenth-century portrait of a young man in a powdered wig, with a pen nib raised delicately in the air, as if the subject of the painting wer
e considering a mischievous poke into the eyeball of the portraitist, to keep the sitting lively.

  The girl who entered the exhibition was young, closer to twenty than to thirty, and pretty, with long blonde hair to her shoulders. She wore a yellow sun dress. She held a sweaty copy of Fodor’s France under her arm. She sidled next to the man, and he noticed her for the first time. She stood, hip cocked, observing the portrait. Although she tried to hide it, too much about her yelled American: the department-store map of Paris sticking out of the Fodor’s, the tennis shoes, the fanny pack.

  The girl stared at the portrait for a long minute, then fumbled with the museum guide. She turned the page, looking for something, but was unable to find it. She frowned, puzzled.

  She turned to the man standing next to her. ‘Pardon,’ she said, in passable French. ‘Parlez-vous anglais?’

  Timothy Van Bender regarded the young girl carefully. There was no way this was a trap. She was too young, too befuddled. And, besides, it was unlikely anyone would recognize him. He had changed his appearance too much since his ‘suicide’ and escape from the United States: grown a beard, wore his hair long, traded Brooks Brothers suits for flannel shirts and cargo pants.

  He looked around the room and made certain no one else was listening. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’

  She smiled in relief. Timothy noticed that she had quite a pretty smile.

  ‘Is this the Joseph Ducreux room?’ she asked.

  ‘One of them,’ Timothy said. ‘Yes.’

  Something about the girl was familiar. He stared at her, tried to place it. It took a moment, and then he understood: she reminded him of Katherine, twenty years earlier. She was young, awkward, trying her best. Just a bit outclassed. But attractive. Terribly attractive.

  The girl pointed at the portrait in front of them. She pointed like an American, one index finger outstretched. ‘Is this …’ She looked down again at the museum guide, turned it left, then right, tried to gain her bearings.

  ‘Here.’ Timothy gently took the guide from her. He reoriented it, so that on the page the wall holding the Count of Bougainville portrait was at the top. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘You’re looking at this.’

  The girl took the guide from him and held it in front of her. She nodded. Now it made sense. ‘Thanks.’ She read from the guide. ‘The Count of Bow-Gin-Villa?’

  Timothy froze. For a moment, he thought the impossible had occurred: that Katherine Sutter, the woman he had married, had somehow transported herself into the body of this young American tourist. But, no, it could not be. Timothy had learned – at the cost of everything he had ever had – that there was no such thing as body switching, no such thing as identity transfers. No. This girl standing beside him was not his wife Katherine. This girl was just a pretty tourist, stumbling over the same pronunciation that Katherine had, two decades before. It was coincidence, and nothing more.

  The girl was looking at him. She was waiting for him to answer.

  ‘Actually,’ Timothy said, and he felt a laugh form at the base of his throat. ‘Your pronunciation—’

  He stopped suddenly.

  The girl raised an eyebrow expectantly, and her face was open, receptive – as if she anticipated a correction, a reproof – maybe a friendly lesson in French. But the man had halted mid-sentence, as if something had suddenly occurred to him.

  The young girl looked at the man. It was as if he had been stricken, mid-word, with paralysis. He was frozen, mouth open, a smile stillborn on his lips, his head angled strangely.

  Finally he smiled and said, matter-of-factly: ‘Your pronunciation is perfect.’

  About the Author

  Matthew Klein was born in New York City and went to Yale University. After graduation, Klein started several technology companies in Palo Alto, which, combined, raised tens of millions of dollars from investors. After the collapse of the dot com market, Klein moved to Westchester County, where he now runs a trading technology company and writes novels.

  Copyright

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Orion Books.

  First published in ebook in 2012 by Orion Books.

  Copyright © Matthew Klein 2006

  The moral right of Matthew Klein to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 4091 0910 5

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