Outside the Wire

by Patricia Smiley

  “That doesn’t explain Harlan Cormack’s death. He wasn’t on that trip. He didn’t even work for TidePool anymore. Dag Lunds wasn’t in Hong Kong, either. In fact, he refused to travel in Asia.”

  Davie moved into the carpool lane and stepped on the gas. The car shot forward at a steady clip. “It’s possible the killer knew or suspected that Zeke had told something to all three of his friends. Karst was killed shortly after he returned to the States. That tells me the shooter was under some sort of time pressure to kill them all before they passed along whatever they knew.”

  “The killer needed money and guns, and he had to locate all four men. That takes time to plan.”

  “TidePool may know more than they’re telling us. After we hear what Guardian has to say, we’ll talk to them again.”

  The Guardian HR director greeted them at the front door of the yacht club with a perfunctory smile that was pleasant but bland and noncommittal. She guided them to a conference room off the hallway that had a view of small sailboats stacked on racks. The woman already knew they were investigating a homicide, so Davie didn’t waste time with small talk.

  Davie opened her notebook and prepared to write. “Can you tell us who from your company was at that meeting with TidePool?”

  “I didn’t know so after you called, I sent an email to our Hong Kong Chief Financial Officer. Here’s the response I got.” She handed Davie the printed copy of an email that contained a list of names. The Guardian negotiating team included the CEO, two senior vice presidents, the CFO, and a couple of account executives.

  None of the names were familiar to her, but they might be familiar to Dag Lunds. She handed the email to Vaughn to read. “Did your CFO mention anything about a conflict between Mr. Woodrow and any of your employees?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that, but I alerted him you might have questions. Hong Kong is a fifteen-hour time difference, so it’s tomorrow afternoon there. He’s standing by to speak with you.”

  The woman opened a teleconferencing program on her laptop. A moment later, a man’s face appeared on the screen. He was Asian, early thirties, wore glasses, and spoke with a British accent. He told them TidePool’s presentation had been routine. There were many details that still had to be hammered out before any contract was signed, but the meeting had been a positive step forward. He also stressed that TidePool was not the only company they were considering for their security needs.

  “Did you speak with Mr. Woodrow during the time he was in Hong Kong?” Davie asked.

  “Yes, of course, and Mr. Karst as well. We had several dinners together. I was born in London, but I have family here. The two men particularly enjoyed the ferry ride to Kowloon to a restaurant owned by my uncle.”

  “What was your impression of them?”

  He pushed the glasses higher on his nose with his middle finger. “Their credentials were impeccable—former soldiers and honorable men. I was terribly sorry to learn they were dead.”

  Davie leaned toward the screen to better read his expression. “Was there anything that caused you concern?”

  He hesitated. His frown indicated there was something but he seemed uncomfortable talking about it.

  “Anything,” she added, “even the smallest incident, could be important to our investigation.”

  He removed his glasses and wiped the lenses with a cloth. “I don’t want to cause a fuss, but there was something that happened on the last day. I saw Mr. Woodrow and Mr. Karst standing by the limo waiting to leave for the airport. Mr. Woodrow was staring at me in a most aggressive way. It seemed so odd because I thought we’d built a rapport during our time together. I tried to think of anything I’d said that might have offended him, but there was nothing. His demeanor made me uncomfortable and perhaps a little frightened. I’ve never seen such hostility coming from a man’s eyes. He looked like he would have killed me if given the chance.”

  Davie remembered Dag Lunds telling her the Army had turned them into killing machines and that murder during the Vietnam War had been frequent and casual. She wondered if Zeke had experienced some kind of flashback. “Had Mr. Woodrow ever confronted you before?”

  “No. Never. That’s why it was so alarming. It made my skin crawl.”

  “What happened next?”

  The CFO put his glasses on. “I moved away, out of his line of sight. As I was leaving, I glanced over my shoulder. That’s when I realized he hadn’t been looking at me at all. He’d been glaring at another man who was standing behind me at the time.”

  “Was the man glaring back?” Vaughn asked.

  “Yes, it appeared he was. He looked shocked.”

  Davie glanced at her partner, halfway expecting to hear a bolt of thunder from the revelation. “Did you know the man Mr. Woodrow was focused on?”

  “It was Van Kuris. Our Director of Security.”

  Davie felt a tingling sensation in her neck. They had a name. Van Kuris. She just had to find out what had happened between those two men that had triggered Zeke’s rage and possibly set the killings in motion.

  “Did you see the two men speak to each other?”

  “I went back to my office shortly after that, so if anything happened, I didn’t see it.”

  “What can you tell me about Mr. Kuris?”

  “I’m fairly new to the company, so I don’t know much about his background, except I heard he’s Canadian and I know he speaks fluent Mandarin.”

  “Can you describe him for me?”

  “I’m not sure of his age, but older, I think. Someone told me he’s about to retire. He looks fit. I’ve always assumed he had some sort of cosmetic surgery because his face and neck are quite taut for a man his age, and his skin looks a bit too smooth, if you know what I mean. I wondered if he was just vain, or if he was covering scars, possibly from some sort of accident.”

  “Did he ever talk about his past, like any military experience? Could be anything from Vietnam to the Middle East.”

  “Certainly he never discussed that with me. Did the Canadians even fight in the Vietnam War?”

  “I’d like to speak with Mr. Kuris,” she said. “Do you have his contact information?”

  “Yes, of course, but he’s out of the country at the moment—on emergency leave. I believe he went to visit a sick family member in Ottawa or some such place.”

  Vaughn had been quiet throughout the interview, but he perked up when he heard that. “When did he leave?”

  “I don’t know exactly but I’d guess a few days ago.”

  Everything was apparently going well until Zeke saw Van Kuris in the lobby of a Hong Kong hotel. What she didn’t know was if Kuris was a phantom from Zeke’s past, someone he wasn’t expecting to see there, or if the beef was specific to that trip.

  Dag had told her Zeke wore his dog tags whenever he went on assignment. Somebody removed one of those tags from his body as they did on the battlefield, which is why she thought the murders might be related to his military service. Canada didn’t fight in Vietnam, but all four men had served in hotspots all over the world. Kuris may have encountered Zeke and his friends in other wars.

  “Does Kuris have a Canadian passport?” Vaughn said.

  The CFO shrugged. “He may have dual citizenship, but he definitely has a Hong Kong pass. He’s a permanent resident here.”

  “Do you have a photo of him?”

  “We don’t publish photos of our executives for security reasons,” he said, “but I can probably access one from our personnel files. If you give me your email address, I can send it to you.”

  “That would be helpful. For now I need a description.”

  The CFO rattled off Kuris’s stats: height (5'9"), weight (175), nicknames (unknown), scars (unknown), other distinguishing marks (unknown). He also told them Kuris had a company credit card and gave them the number, but cautioned that his trip was
personal and therefore he was not authorized to use it.

  Davie looked at her partner. He shook his head. They had no further questions at the moment so they ended the interview and the HR Director closed the lid of her laptop.

  Out in front of the yacht club, a woman leaned over the bow of a powerboat trying to catch the loop of a mooring line with a boat hook. She missed. The skipper powered the boat backward and then forward as the woman tried again. And failed again. The skipper was screaming at her from the fly bridge. The woman screamed back. She tried one more time and finally snagged the line. The incident reminded Davie how fast even small disagreements could escalate. Had some minor argument triggered the murder of three men, or was the motive due to ancient history?

  29

  Davie and Vaughn left the yacht club but instead of walking to the car, Vaughn turned toward the beach. She welcomed the detour because they faced a tedious drive back to L.A. in a car without air conditioning, and they’d already been sitting inside for way too long.

  Davie put on her sunglasses to shelter her eyes from the glare. “What do you think of the Van Kuris lead?”

  Vaughn flipped his hand in a dismissive gesture. “We’re supposed to believe Zeke gives this Kuris guy the stink eye and he kills three people as payback? Nobody saw them arguing. They didn’t even speak to each other that we know of.” Vaughn tapped his finger on Davie’s glasses. “Maybe the sun was in Zeke’s eyes and he was just squinting.”

  Walking had made Davie warm, so she stripped off her jacket and slung it across her arm. “Kuris was the director of security. You can’t get a job like that without a background in law enforcement or the military. If he was in the military, he might have crossed paths with Zeke.”

  “The guy is from Canada. I know they’re one of our allies, but it still seems farfetched.”

  “I know it does, but the day after his encounter with Zeke, Kuris requested an emergency leave to visit a sick relative in Ottawa. A few days after that, Juno Karst was killed in Nevada, Zeke in Los Angeles, and Harlan Cormack in San Bernardino County. Then a sniper tried to kill Dag Lunds.”

  “At the moment, there’s no link between Kuris and the victims,” he said. “Lunds wasn’t in Hong Kong, and Cormack didn’t even work for the company anymore. Zeke retired from the military three years ago. If that’s what motivated the killings, somebody waited a long time for revenge. It makes more sense to focus on the two TidePool assignments the four of them worked together. You think RHD has the budget to send us to Istanbul? I love their rugs.”

  “I wouldn’t bother renewing your passport just yet.”

  They turned right when they hit the sand, strolling along the sidewalk past upscale beach houses set on narrow lots. Newport’s tony real estate stood in stark contrast to the quirky shops along the boardwalk of Pacific Division’s Venice Beach. For all its warts, she preferred Venice.

  “Maybe we’re overanalyzing this,” Vaughn said. “What if they picked a fight in a bar with a bunch of skinheads and the murders were payback.”

  “If it was something that recent, Lunds would have told us about it.”

  “Maybe he’s not who we think he is. His ex-wife said he had PTSD. Something could have happened that made him snap. Maybe he killed Zeke and the others.”

  Davie grabbed her partner’s arm and pulled him to a stop. “What are you saying? Somebody tried to kill him, too.”

  Vaughn turned toward her, his face a stone mask. “But they missed, didn’t they? What’s the likelihood of a guy with a sniper rifle not hitting his target? Lunds could have had an accomplice up on that ridge, somebody who also helped him pull off the other murders.”

  Davie flashed back to the image of Lunds sanding his father’s canoe and calmly relating his war experiences. His affect had been flat as he talked about all that violence. She supposed he could have known the sniper was on that hillside. But the more plausible explanation was that he sensed trouble because of his Ranger training or his days as a LRRP in Vietnam. The deer bolted because he sensed the shooter and Lunds pushed Davie into the river to save both of them. If it had been a setup, he could have let her drown, but he didn’t. He saved her life.

  “You don’t actually believe Lunds killed his friends, do you?”

  “Probably not. I’m just reminding you not to lose your edge until we know all the facts.” Vaughn checked his watch. “Let’s go back to the car. The freeway is going to be jammed if we wait any longer.”

  Davie had spent the last ten years on the job judging people’s characters. She’d gotten it wrong on occasion, but she couldn’t imagine Dag Lunds killing three of his closest friends. Even so, Vaughn’s theory was plausible and a good detective never closed her mind to possibilities.

  “You drive,” she said. “I’ll call Lunds and ask him to meet us at Pacific. Ninety minutes should give us enough time to get back to L.A. and for Guardian to email the photo of Van Kuris. We’ll show it to Lunds, see if he remembers the guy. Then we’ll ask for his alibi for the time of all three murders.”

  30

  Davie had only been gone from the Pacific squad room for a day, but it felt as if it had been forever. It was good to sit at her desk again. Giordano wasn’t there and when she checked the log sheet, she saw that he and Detective Montes had been called out on a drive-by shooting, which meant they wouldn’t be back for hours.

  While Vaughn called Quintero to update him on what had happened in Newport Beach, Davie printed a color copy of Van Kuris’s employee photo she’d received from Guardian’s CFO. She was typing up her notes on the Newport interview when her phone rang. It was the front-desk officer letting her know Dag Lunds was in the lobby. She grabbed her notebook and found him leaning against the wall by the front door, staring at the ATM machine on the walkway outside. He must have sensed her approach because he turned to face her.

  She was shocked by his appearance. His eyes looked red-rimmed and hollow, as if he hadn’t slept for days. His skin was pale and gaunt. She recognized the signs of stress and lack of sleep.

  Lunds flashed a rare smile. “You look dryer than the last time I saw you.”

  She smiled back and motioned for him to follow her into the squad room. “No more white water rafting for a while. How’s the canoe coming along?”

  “I haven’t been back to the cabin. I’ll probably head that way in the next day or so to put it back in storage.”

  She wondered if giving up on the restoration of his father’s canoe was a sign of depression. “Maybe on the weekends—”

  He cut her off. “It’s a retirement project. I’m not there yet.”

  She wondered how he could continue his employment with TidePool after what had happened to Zeke and the others, but maybe he loved the work or needed the money. Davie led Lunds into the detective’s inner sanctum, where she found an empty interview room and gestured for him to sit. Vaughn lurked just outside the door but made no attempt to question Lunds.

  The room was small. The table and chairs were mismatched and scarred. It was a good place to interrogate suspects because you didn’t want them to be comfortable. Witnesses like Lunds just had to suffer through the indignities of the city’s budget shortfalls. She reached out to close the door but he held up his hand to stop her.

  “Don’t … please.”

  She noticed a film of sweat on his forehead and remembered how trapped she’d felt driving up the garage ramp at LAX. “Claustrophobia?”

  He didn’t answer, just looked away.

  Christina had told them that Lunds came back from the Gulf War with PTSD. Davie wondered if he still had issues and if he was getting help for the symptoms. A wave of compassion washed over her as she thought about what he must have gone through. She’d met a lot of good people in her day, and she had a feeling Dag Lunds would be added to that list when this investigation was over.

  She slid into a chair, opened her n
otebook, and placed the color photo of Van Kuris on the table in front of him. “Have you ever seen this man before? Maybe on one of those assignments you all worked together for TidePool?”

  Lunds picked up the photo and studied it for a long time before returning it to the table. “I’m not sure. Who is he?”

  “His name is Van Kuris. He’s Guardian’s Director of Security. As I mentioned before, when Zeke was in Hong Kong, a witness saw a nonverbal confrontation with Kuris in the lobby of the hotel. It might not mean anything, but we’re following every possible lead.”

  “As I told you before, Zeke and I never worked together in Asia. He could have run into Kuris anywhere and at anytime. They might have had a history with each other, but it didn’t involve me.”

  “Except somebody targeted all four of you. If it wasn’t Kuris, who could it be?”

  He paused a moment and then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Look again. Forget about his hair and clothes. He may have changed since you saw him last. Concentrate on his facial features.”

  Lunds picked up the photo again, studying it carefully. A moment later, he looked up at her. His facial muscles were taut with tension. “Do you have a computer I can use?”

  “Why? Do you know him?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Davie got up. “Follow me.”

  She led him to her desk and pulled up a second chair for Lunds. Vaughn followed. Once she’d logged on to her computer and opened the Internet browser, she slid the keyboard toward him and watched as he accessed a website dedicated to Vietnam-era MIAs. He typed the name John Latham and waited. A photograph of a young soldier appeared on the screen. A caption identified him as a man who’d gone missing toward the end of the war.

  Lunds looked gaunt and haunted as he rolled his chair back to give Davie a better look. She held the photo of Kuris next to the screen and allowed her focus to dart from one image to the other. There was no doubt the young soldier bore a strong resemblance to Kuris. They couldn’t be father and son because the two men would be around the same age.