by Jeramy Gates
“Impressive,” I said.
Tanja dialed the contact information. A minute later, she hung up. “Natalie can’t see us today, and she won’t talk over the phone. She wants to check our credentials and verify who we are. I told her she could contact the sheriff.”
“So what now? We just wait?”
“She made an appointment for us tomorrow morning. Once she’s satisfied that we are who we say we are, she’ll find the files for us.”
“I guess that means we have the afternoon off,” I said, smiling.
“Perfect. You can fix that cabinet door I’ve been asking about for two weeks. And we can talk about a few things.”
I groaned. “I think I need a drink.”
“No you don’t. You’re driving. And you’re stuck with it until I can fit behind the wheel again.”
The waitress returned with our receipt. I signed the restaurant’s copy, and scribbled in a tip. As I set the pen down, I had the terrible feeling that I’d just spent the last of our money on nachos and super burritos. I crossed my arms on the table, leaned forward, and gazed into Tanja’s mesmerizing hazel eyes. They were very dark that afternoon, and I wondered if their color was reflecting her mood. She stared back at me, expressionless.
“All right,” I said. “How bad is it?”
She took a deep breath. “Our house payment is three weeks late.”
I considered that. “There’s some kind of grace period, right? I mean, it’s not technically late until after that.”
“That was three weeks ago, Joe. When I say it’s late, I mean Late, with a capital L.”
I dropped my head into my hands, feeling the sharp stubble of my scalp biting into my palms. “What’s going to happen?”
“That depends. I know you won’t like this, but I do have Grandma’s check. That will catch us up through the end of the month.”
“Grandma knows all about this?” I groaned.
“What was I supposed to do, lie to her?”
“Did you have to tell her anything?”
“I’m sorry, Joe. She asked about our financial situation and I started to cry. It’s not my fault. It’s the hormones.”
I still had my head in my hands. I looked up into her face, and she said, “Are you going to be okay?”
“I don’t know. I just hate the fact that we’re this close to success, and it’s all falling apart around us. First, we had James Pishard trying to sue us, then Grandma’s relationship with the sheriff, and now a foreclosure? I feel like I’m up the creek without a paddle. You know the one I’m talking about.”
Tanja took my hand. “It’s all going to work out, Joe. You just need to have a little faith. This is what we’ve been working and praying for. It’s going to happen. With this check, we’ll be all caught up, and after we solve a couple cases…”
“Candy will rain from heaven?” I said.
Tanja smiled. “Maybe.”
Maybe. Or, maybe we’ll miss the next payment too, and be living on the street just in time for the baby’s arrival…
Our meeting with Randall’s agent the next morning was early, so we had no choice but to make the morning commute into the city with a million or so other drivers. I had brought my cane along with me because the weather was cool and foggy, and my leg had been stiff ever since I touched that lake.
As we entered Marin county, I saw the fog thickening up, and knew it was going to be a rough day. By the time we reached the Golden Gate bridge, it was so dense and dark it may as well have been nighttime, and a dull throbbing pain started building in my hip.
Traffic jammed up in all the usual places, but thankfully there were no accidents. We managed to walk into the agent’s office building a whole five minutes early for our nine o’clock appointment. We took the elevator to the twentieth floor and introduced ourselves to the intern, a longhaired college kid with a nose ring and a tribal tattoo on his neck. He buzzed his boss on the phone and said, “Mrs. Brown will see you now, you can go in.”
Natalie’s waiting room was tiny compared to her office, which could have served as a studio apartment. She must have spent a small fortune on the interior design. Between the mahogany furniture, the leather sofa, and the paintings, I had to wonder how much of their money her clients were seeing.
As we entered, Natalie rose up from behind her desk. She was a tall, refined looking woman with curly auburn hair, large rectangular spectacles, and a long, slightly crooked nose. She was dressed expensively, and wore more than her share of jewelry. She didn’t offer us a seat, and I got the impression she wanted to get us out of there quickly.
“I spoke with Sheriff Diekmann last night,” she said. Her voice was deep and earthy with a slight grittiness to it, almost masculine. “He explained the situation and verified your identities. So now that we have that out of the way, let’s get down to business. How can I help you?”
“We’d like Randall Rosen’s itinerary for the time surrounding his death,” Tanja said. “We need to know where he was, and for how long.”
“I have it on file. I’ll email it to you directly. Anything else?”
“How well did you know Randall?” I said.
“As well as I know any other business partner,” she said. “We had a few lunches. I know that he was married. I’ve been sending his widow royalty checks since he disappeared. She inherited his estate, of course.”
“Do you think he might have been having an affair?” Tanja said.
Natalie’s right hand went to her necklace, and she began casually stroking the pendant between her thumb and forefinger. I had no idea what it meant, but I saw that Tanja noticed it, too.
“We didn’t talk about things like that,” she said. “Our relationship was strictly professional.”
“Of course,” Tanja said quickly. “Did he mention a speaking appointment at Healdsburg High School?”
She tilted her head sideways and stared into the distance. “Now that you mention it, yes, I remember that. In fact, he called me the night of that engagement and told me to keep the presses warm.”
“Meaning?” said Tanja.
“It usually means that a writer has a new book on the way, and he expects it to be a hot commodity.”
“Did he say what the book was about?”
“No. I assumed it was another piece of investigative journalism. He had dreams of winning a Pulitzer someday.”
“Were you sleeping with him?” said Tanja.
Natalie narrowed her eyes. “I already told you, we had a professional relationship. Now if you don’t have any more questions, I have a lot of work to do.”
“Thanks for your time Mrs. Brown,” said Tanja.
As soon as we were back in the elevator, I turned to Tanja. “That was blunt,” I said. “What made you think she was having an affair with Randall?”
“When she said her relationship with Randall was professional, did you see the way she covered her throat?” Tanja said.
“Did that mean she was lying?”
“Possibly. That movement was a tell for her discomfort. Body language like that doesn’t originate in the conscious mind. It comes from the subconscious; the mammalian brain. It’s the same part of our brain that tells us to defend ourselves from an attack, or in some cases, to flee. It’s instinct. Natalie was touching her throat, the place where voice originates. She may have been having an affair with Randall, or she may have had knowledge of another affair. Either way, she didn’t like talking about it.”
“And the other arm, crossing over her body?”
Tanja grinned at me. “You’ve been paying attention, haven’t you?”
“I’m learning.”
“That’s another sign that she was uncomfortable with the subject matter. It’s called an unconscious blocking movement. The brain instinctively tries to protect itself. Like the way you throw your arms out when you fall, or when someone throws a football at you.”
“That’s not subconscious,” I said.
“Not entire
ly, but that’s because you’re expecting it. The fact that you can marry your conscious goals with your subconscious reactions is what makes you so good at sports.”
“Not so much anymore,” I said, holding up my cane.
“You still have your days,” she said with a wink. “Not all sports happen on the field. Anyway, it’s nearly impossible to gauge whether a subject is lying based on body language alone. The best trick is to create a baseline of behavior. Ask questions that the subject is comfortable with, but pepper the interview with questions that are more probing. If the subject reacts in a similar fashion to one particular line of questions, you can be sure you’re witnessing a pattern. Then you hammer it home until you get a confession.”
“You Feds,” I said, laughing.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“You just remind me of the men in black, acting all spooky and mysterious. No wonder you freak people out, with all your head games.”
“You asked,” she said.
I apologized for hurting her feelings, but she waved off my concern. “It doesn’t hurt to have a reputation for being devious and clever,” she said with a laugh. “In fact, it makes my job easier. When people are nervous, they slip up.”
“Do you believe Randall and Becky were having an affair or not?”
“That would be almost impossible to prove. I think we should call Becky’s mom again. See if Becky had a diary or journal. Even an old email address. Something to give us some insight into what was going on in her life.”
“We still have one more thing to do while we’re in the city,” I said.
“We’re not going to Chinatown so you can buy nunchakus.”
“That’s not what I was thinking. We have an appointment at the Chronicle, remember?”
“Right. We should probably head in that direction.”
“Perfect. And after that, we can go to Chinatown and buy some nunchakus.”
We parked in a garage a few blocks from the Chronicle on Mission Street. “I hope they validate,” Tanja said. “Thirty-five dollars for a half hour? These rates are extortionate.”
“You mean like the price of gas?” I said sarcastically. “Welcome to the new millennium.”
A few minutes later, we stepped inside the San Francisco Chronicle’s main office and found ourselves facing a huge room full of cubicles and desks. To our right, a girl in her late teens -probably an intern- looked up from her computer and said, “Can I help you find someone?”
Tanja told her about our appointment, and the intern picked up her phone. “Brian, the police are here to see you.”
“We’re not technically police,” I said as she hung up. “We just work for them.”
“I know,” she said, smiling. “I just couldn’t pass up the chance to tell Brian that the police want to talk to him.”
A tall black man wearing slacks and a cardigan came hurrying in our direction. “I’m Brian Lewis, the chief editor,” he said as he joined us. “How can I help you?”
“We called last night,” Tanja said. “We’d like to ask a few questions about an ex-employee of yours.”
“Ah, you must be the investigators from Sequoia.” A sense of relief washed over his features. “Please, come into my office. This way.”
He led us into an eight by ten office at the back of the building. It was less than impressive, especially considering he was the editor of a major newspaper.
“Sorry, we don’t have much space anymore,” he said. “It’s all digital now. Computers and cubicles. One of these days, they’ll figure out how to upload our brains into a computer, and there won’t be any offices left at all.”
“We’re fine,” Tanja said reassuringly. “I’m sure you’re very busy, so we won’t take much of your time.”
“I spoke with your sheriff yesterday,” Brian said, gesturing for us to sit. “I was sorry to hear about Randall. You must understand of course, that after being missing so long, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. His wife had him declared dead three years ago.”
“We understand she had been considering divorce before his death,” Tanja said. A slight smile turned up the corners of his mouth.
“I don’t doubt that. They were both very young. I don’t think their marriage turned out to be what her and Randall wanted it to be.”
“Do you think he might have cheated on her?” I said.
“Think? I know it for a fact. We used to go out drinking on Fridays and Randall would pick up girls right in front of us, still wearing his wedding ring! The guy was shameless. He was good, but shameless.”
“I see,” Tanja said. “Do you know Natalie Brown, his literary agent?”
Brian’s smile vanished. “We’ve crossed paths a few times.”
“Do you think they were having an affair?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me. All I know for sure is that she kept filling his head with all these grand ideas, and that’s probably what got him killed.”
“What sort of ideas?”
“Oh, the usual stuff. Randall was talented, anyone could see that. He was young, energetic, and good-looking. Natalie was trying to make him into a big literary star. She had these ideas about breaking a big story and selling the movie and publishing rights. Which is a load of nonsense, of course. Big stories don’t get made into movies, they get you killed.”
Tanja frowned. “What do you mean?”
He leaned forward, lacing his fingers together on the desk. “Big stories always involve corruption. Usually, they involve politicians or big corporations; people with power, resources, and enough motivation to kill to protect their interests. If something like that becomes a movie, you’re talking twenty or thirty years after the fact.”
“You think Randall may have been working on something like that?”
“Absolutely. A few days before he disappeared, he told me he was about to break the big one. He said I’d have to visit him in Hollywood after the story got out. Then, big surprise, Randall went missing and nobody ever heard from him again.”
“Do you have access to any of his records?” Tanja said. “If we had a better idea of the story he was working on…”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you. It doesn’t work that way. Freelance reporters like Randall do most of their work on their own computers. When the story is ready, they usually submit it to me by email. Until that point, we have nothing in our system.”
I glanced at Tanja. “He must have had a laptop,” I said. “Perhaps his wife would still have it.”
“Doubtful,” said Brian. “Randall would have had it with him. Can you imagine a writer going anywhere without his laptop?”
“We didn’t find anything like that in the car,” said Tanja.
“It could be at the bottom of the reservoir,” I said. I instantly remembered that murky ice-cold water and regretted even thinking it.
“Don’t worry,” Tanja said, reading the look on my face. “I won’t make you scrape the bottom of that lake again. Besides, even if we had found it, I doubt it would do us any good. Not after five years under water.” She turned her attention back to Brian. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Lewis.”
“Of course. If you have any more questions, feel free to call me.”
In order to get our parking ticket validated, Tanja and I had to go to a nearby deli for lunch. It was the cheapest thing we could find, and considerably cheaper than the seventy dollars we’d have had to pay for parking. I didn’t mind. It was turning out to be a nice day in the city. The sun had begun to burn through the fog, and my leg was glad for the chance to rest and soak up the warmth. After sitting on the patio for twenty minutes, the pain was almost gone.
While we ate, Tanja pulled the case file out of her handbag and began flipping through the pages. “What are you looking for?” I said.
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out what the connection was between Randall and Becky. Do you remember what her mother said about Becky’s conspiracy theory about her father’s de
ath? I wonder if Randall knew about it.”
“That’s possible,” I said. “She may have gone to him with her story.”
“Could be, but the practical part of my mind tells me they were just sleeping together.”
“Maybe it was both,” I said. “She was a pretty girl. Definitely Randall’s type. Maybe she went to him with her theory, and he promised to help because he was hoping to get her into bed.”
Tanja stared at me. “You really think just like a man, you know that?”
“I am a man.”
“If you ever cheat on me, I’ll castrate you.”
“I know, sweetness. If I was that kind of guy, I wouldn’t still be around.”
Tanja tilted her head slightly, as if a new thought had occurred to her. “That’s right, you wouldn’t be, would you?”
“Huh?”
“If you were a guy like Randall, you’d have split the second I got knocked up.”
“Yeah, but I’m not.”
“I know that, Joe. I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about Randall.”
“I’m not following.”
She let out an exasperated sigh and leaned forward. “Let’s say Randall went along with Becky just to get into bed with her. A person like that would have had his fun and moved on, but he didn’t. He stuck around. He told everyone he was about to break the story of a lifetime. He must have been talking about Becky’s father.”
“You think he believed her story?” I said.
“He must have. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“If that’s true, she must have had some pretty convincing evidence.”
“Enough evidence to convince a big shot San Francisco reporter to investigate.”
We stared at each other for a second. Inspiration struck, and Tanja’s eyes lit up at the same time as mine.
“If they were investigating that suicide together…” I started.
“Whoever killed Becky and Randall also killed Becky’s father!”
She closed the file and put it back in the briefcase. “I think it’s time for another talk with Becky’s mother.”