by Craig Larsen
Nick was aware of the girl’s giggles. She was sitting on the bleacher above him, just out of his sight. His attention, though, was drawn to the man in the cowboy hat in front of him, who had turned around to berate him. “Look where you are,” the man said to Nick. “You’re at a marathon, for Christ’s sake. And you want to light a cigarette?”
Nick took another deep drag before dropping the cigarette to the ground. The lit ember tumbled through the air, then drowned in a puddle at his feet.
“Yeah, you’re at a marathon, for Christ’s sake,” he heard the girl say.
Nick took another step out from beneath the bleachers, craning his neck to see who was teasing him. “Do I know you?” he asked the girl.
“Yeah.” Her face flushed. “Media and Politics? Professor Rigby’s seminar?”
“Oh.” Nick felt silly. He placed her now from his class Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”
“You’re not running in the race?”
“My brother’s the athlete.” Nick held his camera up for the girl to see. “I’m just here to take a few pictures.”
“Assuming he makes it.”
“He’ll make it,” Nick said. “If I know Sam, he’ll cross the finish line one way or another.” Nick realized that the girl was wearing running shorts. “You finished already?”
“Yeah. I beat your brother, I guess.”
Nick squinted toward the finish line, searching for Sam’s face among the runners coming into the stadium for the final lap of the long race. “He’s not going to like that,” he said.
“You’re Nick, right?”
“Yeah. Nick Wilder.”
“I like the things you say. Your comments, I mean, in class. Like what you said last week, about the way networks turn news into entertainment.”
Nick took a small step back to get a better view of the girl, doubly embarrassed now that he hadn’t recognized her. “Thanks,” he said.
“You have another of those cigarettes?” she asked him.
Nick gauged her. “You’re not kidding, are you?”
She smiled. “After twenty-six miles, I deserve a little vice, right?”
Nick noticed Sam enter the stadium as he lit their cigarettes. Even from this distance, Nick recognized Sam’s aggravation. His brother was scanning the bleachers, looking for him, worried that he hadn’t shown with his camera. “There,” Nick said. He pointed across the field. “That’s my brother now.”
The girl followed Nick’s direction. “He looks like you, doesn’t he?”
“He’s better looking than I am,” Nick said.
“I wouldn’t say so,” the girl said.
“You haven’t seen him up close yet.” Nick raised the camera to his eye. He brought Sam’s sweaty face into focus through the powerful telephoto lens and snapped a picture, then held the digital camera up for the girl to see.
“Yeah, you’re right,” she said glibly. “He’s much better looking.”
“That’s what all the girls end up saying,” Nick said.
Nick raised the camera back to his eye, this time bringing Blake Werner into the picture, too, next to Sam. Sam had thrown an arm over Werner’s shoulders, and the two men were running in step. Nick saw the tension on Sam’s face. He waited for him to smile, then snapped a picture of the two friends. Werner had come in from Boston the day before, just for the race.
“You’re a good brother,” the girl said. “My brother wouldn’t brave the cold to take my picture.”
“I owe Sam a lot,” Nick said. “He’s not just better looking, he’s putting me through graduate school.”
Nick was still smoking the same cigarette when he jostled his way through the crowd at the track to get a picture of Sam crossing the finish line.
“Jesus, bro’,” Sam said, arm in arm with Werner, stumbling toward his younger brother, “those things’ll kill you. Don’t you know that?”
Nick let the cigarette drop to his feet. He tucked his equipment back into his camera bag.
“You get the pictures?”
Nick snapped the camera bag shut. “What do you think?”
Relaxing, Sam gave his brother’s shoulder a squeeze. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go get a beer. Blake’s buying.”
“You play with fire, you get burned. That’s what they say, isn’t it?”
Werner was rocking on the bed, too drunk, Nick realized, to remain sitting up much longer.
“Tell me what you mean, Blake,” Nick said.
“Sam knew how dangerous Zarconia was.”
“What do you mean, dangerous?”
“It’s unstable. It’s a new drug. Genetic. You know how small a dose is? You just take a grain of the stuff. You can hardly measure it. It works on a molecular level. In your brain. It acts on certain receptors—basically, it supercharges your dopamine. You ever take Ecstasy, friend?”
“Sure.”
Werner raised his hands, then let them drop into his lap. “It was mine. All mine.”
“What are you saying?”
“I was the one, not your brother. I was the one who made it. It was my research. My baby.”
Werner was starting to ramble. Nick wanted to back him up to the beginning. “I never heard how you ended up working with Sam,” he said.
“Hmmm? We met at the university, the year before I went back to Boston to get my master’s. He was a lousy student, did you know that? A damn lousy excuse for a scientist. But he was good with money, you know? And I wasn’t.”
“So you went into business together?”
Werner shook his head. “I invented Zarconia, I told you. When I was at Harvard. That’s what I did. It was Sam’s idea to start the company, Matrix Zarcon. Give him credit for that. Your brother was one smart son of a bitch, friend. He convinced me to put the patent in the company’s name. What I didn’t quite understand was that the company belonged to him. Once he had what he needed, I was history. He kept the prize for himself.”
Appalled by what he was hearing about his brother, Nick nevertheless didn’t doubt that Werner was speaking the truth. “Wasn’t there anything you could do?”
Werner smiled. “He fired me, friend. Kicked me to the curb.”
“There wasn’t any way you could protect your interests? Legally, I mean. Couldn’t you have sued him for fraud?”
“What would have been the point? You’re not listening to me, friend. Zarconia was more dangerous than good. Like brushing your teeth with nitroglycerin. As far as I was concerned, there was zero chance of ever getting it tested.” Werner again raised the crook of his elbow to his mouth and coughed. “And then anyway, there were the pictures.”
“The pictures?”
“The photographs, friend.”
Nick was lost. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“You should remember. You took them. The day we first met. At the marathon.”
“I remember,” Nick said. “I took photographs of Sam and you, crossing the finish line. But I can’t see—”
Werner waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the diploma he had tacked to the wall above the bureau. “The day I was running the marathon in Seattle, I was also in Boston, taking my final exams for my master’s. Or a friend of mine was. All Sam had to do was bring the pictures to the university. I would have lost my degree.”
The information stunned Nick. “The pictures were proof you cheated on your exams,” he said, remembering how vehement Sam had been. “That’s why he wanted me there.”
“Like I said, friend, how well did you know your brother?”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. Sam had us both fooled.” Werner’s smile could have been a wince. “As far as I could see, my degree at Harvard was worth a hell of a lot more than a share of Matrix Zarconia. I never imagined that Sam would pull off the financing he did. How could I? Jason Hamlin’s a pretty big fish to reel in your first time out.”
“So he forced you out of the c
ompany.”
“Check. But hell, I’ve still got my diploma, right? And as for your brother—” Werner laughed, fastening Nick with a blurry stare. “All that stuff he was doing with Hamlin? Raising funds. Capital, he called it. Testing the drug. The FDA in one hand. Hamlin’s venture capital in the other. You know what it was, friend?”
Nick looked at the broken man in front of him, waiting. Sorry for him, sorry for himself. But somehow most sorry for his brother.
“A house of cards. That’s what it was. A goddamned house of cards. He knew how dangerous Zarconia was. He knew the potential, but he knew the risks, too, friend. He knew. He was playing with fire. Looks like he got burned.”
Nick handed the bottle of whisky back to Werner on his way out of the small, filthy room. As he pulled the door closed, Werner was sitting unsteadily on the edge of the bed, holding the half-empty bottle to his lips and taking a greedy swig. The vision remained with Nick in the elevator as he descended to the lobby, serenaded by the whining groans of the ancient cables overhead.
chapter 20
Nick woke in a sweat at dawn the next morning, gasping for breath, in the throes of a nightmare. He placed where he was. He recognized the door in front of him, the doorknob as he reached his hand to turn it. He had stood in this short hallway a thousand times before. The door swung slowly open in front of him. And he took a cautious step into his parents’ study in Madison.
Seated behind his desk, examining some papers, his father looked up at him, surprised. Nick’s first reaction was to approach his father and to embrace him. Nick realized only slowly that his father was dead. His face was bloodied, disfigured from the accident with the truck that had killed both his parents. His lips were swollen, purple. Like Sam’s, his teeth had been broken, forced backward into his mouth.
Lying in bed, Nick’s eyes were open already, but he struggled to open them wider, trying to see, writhing to untangle himself from his heavy blankets. At last the dark bedroom in Seattle came fuzzily into focus, replacing the vision from his nightmare. Nick settled back into bed, his heart racing in his chest, his breath caught in his throat. He dragged his hand across his sweaty face, through his hair. It felt as if he hadn’t slept a single minute since the cops had unzipped the body bag and he had looked into his brother’s lifeless eyes. Trying not to wake Sara, he crept out of bed. It wasn’t yet six A.M., but he didn’t want to close his eyes again. He looked around the grungy room, then decided to head in to his office.
The rain was coming down hard, and Nick got drenched running from the parking lot to the doors of the Telegraph building. He slid his cameras and his phone across the table to the security guard.
“I haven’t seen you in this early in six months,” she said, leaning back in her chair to look up at him.
“It’s been awhile,” he acknowledged, grateful for the small, everyday banter.
“I thought they fired you, didn’t they? Hey, you got your security pass or an ID card or something?”
Nick reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “They didn’t fire me.” He held his ID out for her to see. “I quit. But I still work freelance.”
“Were you right there when it happened? Did they catch him yet?”
“What?” Nick wasn’t certain what the guard was asking him.
“If it was me, I’d a killed the man.”
Incensed, Nick gathered his things into his hands. “You can give Laura Daly a call,” he said, “if you have an issue with my clearance.”
At six-fifteen, Daly stopped in front of the desk Nick was using. Nick looked up at her as the editor lowered herself into a red vinyl chair. She flinched a little as she sat down, like she was feeling some pain in her knees. Nick assessed her dispassionately, waiting for her to speak. Dressed casually against the morning cold in a thick navy Mariners sweatshirt over her usual white cotton shirt and dark gray trousers, there was little soft about the senior editor’s appearance. Nick had always thought that she went to pains to remove any hint of the feminine from her bearing.
This early in the morning, the office was almost empty. Several reporters were sitting in front of computer terminals, working on stories with imminent deadlines, and a few stragglers from the night shift were gathered at the coffee machine. Their voices rose and fell indistinctly across the huge newsroom, but the voluminous space was otherwise silent.
“I think I owe you an apology,” Daly began. Her tone was deliberately casual. Nick, though, was aware of the depth of her sincerity. He understood that she was worried that she had offended him, that she didn’t want to lose his regard. “About the gala, I mean. You left the restaurant pretty upset.”
“Forget it, Laura. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I’ve been pretty stressed.”
“I didn’t mean to push you,” she continued. “This is all new to me as well, you know what I mean? I don’t know what to expect. I thought maybe it might help to have something concrete to work on.”
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m figuring things out.”
Daly shifted a little in her seat, settling in. “When Harold disappeared, I forgot how to sleep for a while.”
Waiting for her to continue, Nick watched her brush a few strands of gray hair behind her ears. He knew the stories. In her thirties, when Daly had gotten pregnant accidentally, outside any serious relationship, she had decided to have the baby herself. She had raised her son alone, all the way through high school, only to lose him in a tragic twist of fate when he was eighteen. As long as Nick had known the editor, however, this was the first time she had ever herself mentioned her son to him.
“It got so bad I went to see a shrink—though that’s not something I tell too many people. You know what the therapist told me?” Daly raised her eyes toward the ceiling, remembering. “She said, as hard as it is to accept, Harold made his own choices. Not me.” Daly paused, as though she was once again listening to the therapist’s counsel. “I can’t blame myself.”
Nick remembered that Daly’s son had traveled with the high school baseball team to a state tournament a few hours away in Spokane, just a few months shy of his graduation. Harold didn’t want to go. He hadn’t wanted to try out for the team in the first place. Daly had pushed her son to make the overnight trip. Then Harold disappeared when the team stopped for dinner at a fast food restaurant. He had gotten up to use the restroom and had never come back. No one saw him leave the building, and no body had ever been found. Laura used the paper to organize a statewide search. Harold, though, had vanished.
Daly blinked back the memory. “I think I was afraid to sleep, because every time I did I would dream that Harold was in the room, reaching out for me. And every time I woke up, I lost him again.” When she glanced at Nick, her gentle smile caught him off guard.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. He wasn’t certain what else to say.
“Don’t be.” Daly reached out to touch Nick on his arm. “I don’t think about it so much anymore. You should know that. I’m only telling you because I want you to know I understand. I was pretty upset with my shrink when she told me that Harold was the one who was responsible. That he was gone and that I should stop waiting for him. Looking back, though, I think I understand what she was trying to tell me. Not to internalize the loss. Not to spend too much time looking for answers inside myself. There’s a lot in your life that is simply outside your control.”
Nick didn’t know how to respond. “Yeah,” he said at last, trying to return the editor’s smile. “You’re probably right. I’m doing the same thing.”
“Well, it’s natural, I guess. But heaping guilt onto yourself isn’t going to bring anyone back.” Daly straightened in the chair. “Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, either. So I worked instead. I spent so much time here, Hamlin ordered a wardrobe into my office for me and told me I might as well bring in a change of clothes. It’s still there—the cedar wardrobe in my office.” Daly nodded and pointed toward her office. Nick could see the large
, misplaced piece of furniture through the glass partition that separated the senior editor’s office from the rest of the newsroom. “You don’t think of Hamlin like that, do you? This was seven years ago now, back when Jason first bought the paper. Back then he was the first man in every morning. When he bought the paper, we were losing ten thousand dollars a day. He came down here and ran the place himself, turned the paper around.” Daly stopped speaking when she realized that Nick wasn’t following the story, and Nick became aware of the woman’s careful scrutiny.
“You really don’t need to worry about me,” Nick repeated.
The senior editor continued to examine him. “It’s only been a few days,” she said. “I’m just making sure.”
A thought occurred to Nick. “Listen, Laura,” he said, determined to change the subject, “what can you tell me about Adam Stolie?”
“Stolie?” Daly narrowed her eyes. Nick could see from her expression that she, too, was grateful for the change of focus. “The detective?”
Nick waited.
Daly pursed her lips. “I haven’t had much to do with him. He worked the Henderson case, I think. He was the one who made the arrest. Three, four years ago—a bit before your time—when they arrested the wrong man. He’s on homicide. One of Lieutenant Dombrowski’s boys.” Daly seemed lost in the train of her thoughts, then put two and two together. “He’s the one they got assigned to your brother’s case?”
“Yeah.” Nick hesitated, uncertain how much to share. “You know, I’ve butted heads with this guy before at crime scenes. As far as I’ve been able to tell, he doesn’t like me. Now he’s the only one standing between me and a jail cell. I’m not sure what’s motivating him.”
Daly considered the point. “Maybe it’s the Henderson thing,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t want to make another mistake like that.” She searched her memory. “If I remember correctly, Stolie experienced a family tragedy, too—about the same time as the Henderson arrest was going bad on him. I’m not sure I’ve got this right, but I think his brother died about that time. Leukemia maybe. Something prolonged. I can look it up.”