Cotton

by Paul Heald

  Stanley did not have to fake surprise or empathy. The date of her death set off alarm bells, and the young woman before him was clearly in pain. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” He folded up the paper and gestured weakly with it. “I never would have shoved this in your face if I knew.”

  She nodded. “Where did you get the picture?”

  He wondered where to begin and settled on an abbreviated version of the facts that would be most likely to keep her engaged. “I’m helping the US Department of Justice investigate the abduction and possible murder of a woman in Clarkeston, Georgia. We think that a man named Jacob Granville might have killed her and gone into hiding. We found two pictures of you and Brenda among his things: one in some old files and the other on his Facebook page.”

  Elisa looked around the lobby. Several groups of people were waiting for appointments or chatting in the bright, open space. She nodded her head and eyed him fiercely, as if she were scrutinizing his DNA with the intensity of her gaze. “Let’s talk someplace else,” she said. “I think that Jacob might have killed Brenda.”

  * * *

  When Stanley had suggested that they meet for dinner and encouraged her to think big, since he was picking up the check, she had chosen a quiet restaurant tucked down an alley on the edge of the old city. Their table was snug and private, and it was no surprise when she revealed that they were in the oldest timbered building in Geneva. The pair talked easily as they sipped their wine and waited for appetizers to arrive. Stanley began with small talk, not wanting to jump straight to what might be a traumatic conversation about Elisa’s dead friend. They had enough in common that it was almost an hour before Stanley filled her glass with a crisp Côtes du Rhone and finally asked her about Brenda and why she was suspicious of Jacob Granville.

  “Jacob came here to visit Brenda, and the day after he left, I found her in her bedroom.” She was in firm control of her emotions now, her voice calm and analytical. “It looked like a drug overdose, but I knew that Brenda never did anything other than smoke some marijuana, and the police agreed that the circumstances of her death were troubling. The case is still open, as far as I know, but it’s labeled something that would translate as ‘suspicious misadventure’ or something like that.”

  “What made you suspect Granville?” He refilled his own glass and took a sip. “And did you say anything about him to the police?”

  “For sure! I always thought he was a creep. I knew he had a girlfriend in Georgia that he never told Brenda about, and he propositioned me twice.” She spoke emphatically and with the merest trace of an accent that he heard most clearly and charmingly when she tried to wrap her mouth around the word Georgia. “He was a dog. I think that’s the right word.”

  “That doesn’t make him a killer.”

  “No,” she conceded, “but you must understand, Brenda was gorgeous and she was his lover, yet when she leaves for work he tries to seduce me?” She shook her head and held her palms upward. “Come on! Why would he come at me?”

  He began his protest before finding appropriate words. “Well, I’d certainly make a pass at you!”

  Her eyes widened and eyebrows rose.

  “Wait! That didn’t come out right!” He waved his hand and then saw that she was enjoying the misunderstanding. “I mean: don’t be so modest. It just means he’s a shit and not necessarily a murderer.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “No.”

  “Unless you’re a woman,” she sighed, “it’s hard to understand how some guys have this negative aura. He was too sure of himself. He felt entitled to anything he wanted. He liked to be in control.” She smoothed the napkin on her lap and put her hand over her glass when the waiter tried to refill it. “I don’t know. He just lacked sympathy for women. He broke Brenda’s heart when he left, but she was determined to follow him to America.”

  Stanley nodded. “And that would have caused problems with the other girlfriend.”

  “It gave him a motive,” she explained, punching the air with her words. “Get rid of the clinging girl who makes your life so complicated. It wouldn’t be the first time. Men have killed for much less.”

  “They have,” Stanley was forced to admit. He could see no doubt in her eyes; she really believed that Granville had killed her friend. “What did the police say when you told them your theory?”

  She shrugged. “They are Swiss. They wrote it all down and promised to investigate. I heard several weeks later that he had disappeared and the trail was cold.”

  Stanley had no problem imagining a hypothetical world where Jacob Granville solved his problems with women by killing them, but the manner of death—a fake drug overdose—didn’t seem violent enough for someone who was supposedly so misogynistic. The professor had also read Granville’s posts about the cotton case. The reporter’s commitment to a serious human-rights issue also seemed inconsistent with his being a serial killer.

  “Did Brenda tell you why he made his last visit to Geneva?”

  For the first time, Elisa looked reticent. “She was helping him with a story that he was writing.”

  “About the cotton case?”

  She looked surprised. “Yes. She was helping the panel with research into the economics of the world cotton market.” She frowned. “That was how she got him to come. She was heartsick, and she told him that she had secret information that she could only reveal in person. Phone and email were too dangerous, she said.” She paused while the waiter finished pouring more water. “She was really in love with him.”

  “That would provide another motive,” Stanley reasoned. “He finds out he’s been duped by her into coming and gets really angry.”

  She nodded her head and concentrated on the filet of sole that had just been placed before her. He encouraged her to start and grabbed a piece of bread. He had interviewed enough people to know when he was not getting the whole story, and he sensed that she was holding something back. He also knew that pushing too hard sometimes drove valuable information down a deep hole from which it never emerged, so he changed the subject and asked her about her job in the IP Division.

  She turned out to be a talker. Single well-worded questions elicited long, thoughtful, and enthusiastic responses on a variety of different topics, from the geopolitics of patent law to the best place for a single woman to live in Geneva. She had one thing in common with Granville. She saw the work of the WTO through a human-rights lens. Even obscure topics like international patent treaties were imbued with humanitarian considerations, and she had a passionate commitment to introducing rules that would reduce the price of patented pharmaceuticals in developing countries. Stanley liked women with strong opinions, but not every guy did. He wondered about her personal life. Was she alone with her commitments or was she adored by some nice young liberal man?

  The evening passed quickly and pleasantly. When she finally slowed down, rather embarrassed that she had spoken so much, she managed to draw him out about his family and seemed genuinely fascinated by the long trail of evidence that had dead-ended in Mallorca. She seemed especially amused by his encounter with Reggie, the mad dart-throwing nudist. He finished his tale with Melanie’s request that he come to Geneva.

  “So, you came all this way because of a picture of Brenda and me?” She shook her head in amazement.

  “Not every bit of evidence we have points to Granville. We really wanted to know what was so important about Brenda’s story that he had to come to Geneva. The timing of the trip in relation to his disappearance is striking.” He finished the bottle of wine with equal pours into their glasses. “I still don’t understand what she must have said to him.”

  Elisa bit her lower lip and frowned. She reached out and touched the top of his right hand as it rested on the table. “Please forgive me for not saying anything before, but I wasn’t sure if I should trust you.” She looked embarrassed and spoke with her head slightly bowed. “I do know what Brenda said. She desperately wanted to see Jacob, but she also d
id have a big story for him. Someone tried to bribe the panel of arbitrators in the cotton case. She wouldn’t give me all the details, but someone offered her a lot of money to approach one of the panelists with a bribe.”

  “Did she say who?”

  “No, but she said it was a North American, that he wanted the panel to rule in favor of the US.”

  Stanley tried to digest her story. Here was a compelling reason for Granville to travel to Europe. Corporate farmers had convinced Congress to hand out billions in cash, and one of the beneficiaries wanted to bribe the WTO to maintain the status quo. Who had the most to lose if the WTO ruled against the US and threatened the stream of cotton subsidies? It would not be hard to write a sensational story starring corrupt businessmen willing to go to any length to fleece American taxpayers and screw poor African farmers. The story had Pulitzer written all over it.

  He muttered shit and felt a sudden chill. And what would the bad guys do if they learned that Brenda was talking to the press?

  “Do you know anything else?” he asked. “Did she report the bribe to her boss or anything like that?”

  “I told her to,” Elisa said in frustration, “I told her to go right away, but she wanted to get some proof to give to Jacob. Get a picture of the guy or a recording or an email, something she could give to him for his story. If she told her boss right away, he would just take her off the case and that would be it. If Jacob had not decided to come, I’m sure she would have reported the attempted bribe.”

  “Do you know whether she eventually did?”

  “No. I think she was going to, but then Jacob broke up with her and she was so upset that all she wanted to talk about was him and how to get to the States to see him. He was all she talked about the day before she died.” She shook her head angrily. “What a waste.”

  “Did you ever tell anyone about the bribe?”

  “I was really upset, but before I said anything, the panel ruled against the US, so there didn’t seem to be any point. I certainly had no proof either.”

  “And you never saw any connection between the bribe and her death?”

  She leaned forward in her chair. “No. Why?” She crossed her arms and leaned back. “Jacob killed her.”

  “Maybe,” he spoke slowly, “but if you had Congress writing you checks for billions of dollars every year and if you were willing to starve African peasants to keep the money rolling in, wouldn’t you go to extreme lengths to prevent the world from knowing that you were trying to bribe the World Trade Organization?”

  “Oh my God.” She put her hand to her mouth and her eyes widened. “But you said Jacob killed his girlfriend in Georgia, too.”

  “What if he were murdered to kill the cotton-bribe story? What if his girlfriend was just collateral damage? Neither of them has ever been found.”

  “But we can’t know,” she said in a voice that was almost a whisper. “We don’t know what happened.”

  He took her hand. “No, but we can try to find out.”

  * * *

  The next day Elisa met him at her apartment in Annemasse. She had moved to a smaller flat than the one she shared with Brenda, but even with a raise she could not afford to move into Geneva proper. She made some tea and they sat on the sofa in front of the only window in the apartment. She felt a cool breeze and heard the faint hum of traffic drift over their conversation.

  “I sat up all night trying to think of anything that Brenda might have told me about the cotton case or the bribe.” She tucked a lock of hair behind her reading glasses. “It’s been five years, and the only thing that I didn’t tell you was that the bribery guy had an accent. She thought it might be Spanish. But that’s all I remember. She really didn’t want to get me involved.”

  He nodded and then smiled. “I don’t suppose you have any of her passwords so that we could check old emails or anything like that? Any pictures of the bribery guy on her Facebook page?”

  She liked this American. He had a sense of humor and a light touch with everything, unlike most of his fellow countrymen, who loudly bullied their way to what they wanted. She was glad that she had a surprise for him, an answer to some of his questions, maybe.

  “Once when she was out of town her laptop crashed, and she called me to check her email on my computer. She had to tell me her password, which was Brenda, with an 8 instead of a B. Unfortunately, I made fun of her because I thought the password was too easy, and she must have changed it. When I tried to log on to her account last night, it failed.”

  “Nice try, though.”

  “Then I went through her stuff. After she died her parents came and collected most of her things. They left behind some books and papers and other little stuff. I went through it last night, but there is nothing interesting. I even flipped through the books to look for notes, but there was nothing.”

  “Crap.” He leaned back on the sofa and stole a look out the window. He was six or seven years older than her, mid-thirties or so, darkly handsome and intelligent face, and like most Americans, a bit overweight. His best feature was, for lack of a better word, his karma. He wasn’t trying; he was just doing, just being. The contrast to the humorless gray suits bustling around Geneva could not have been more pronounced.

  She poured him some more tea. “I do have one thing. When I was cleaning up to move out of our old apartment, I found Brenda’s cell phone wedged way down in the sofa.”

  “Didn’t the police find it when they searched the apartment? Given how she died, they must have searched the place thoroughly for drugs.”

  “They did. They brought in the super-sniffing dogs and went all over the apartment, but the dogs found nothing, except the stuff left next to her.” She put some milk in her tea and stirred. “This is why they believed me about Brenda. A real addict would leave traces all over the place.”

  “Do you still have the phone?”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a nondescript cell phone. “Take a look at the messaging history. I topped up the battery with my old charger and already read through it.” She got up and looked for some cookies in the kitchen while he scrolled through the messages sent and received. She knew what he would find, evidence of a stupid plan inspired by watching too many spy movies.

  A series of short messages between Jacob and Brenda revealed that she had set up a meeting in a café with “Gomez.” Jacob was to discreetly snap pictures of the meeting and Brenda would carry a small recording device. The scheme was not spelled out plainly in their short bursts of communication, but Elisa thought that the plan was fairly clear and wanted to know if Stanley would come to the same conclusion without her prompting him. Most disturbing was Brenda’s final text to Jacob, following a succession of pleas for him to return. It read simply, “They know!” There were no messages that were sent to Gomez or received from him.

  When she heard Stanley set the phone down on the glass coffee table, she sat next to him and placed some shortbread next to the teapot.

  “Your friend was very foolish,” the professor said soberly.

  “What do you think she did?” She listened to his interpretation of the messages and was not surprised to hear that he had the same idea: Brenda had set up a meeting and somehow she and Jacob were discovered. The mysterious Gomez was the person initiating the bribe and possibly the person who arranged for them to be killed.

  “You and I are not going to be so foolish.” He held up the phone. “Can I take this with me back to the States? I want to bring it to the US attorney in Atlanta who’s running the investigation and tell her what we think happened. She’ll know what to do, and she’ll understand that we need to keep your name completely out of it. Right now, no one knows that you know anything. I think you’re pretty safe, but she may have some ideas about how to track down Gomez or at least figure out who he works for.”

  She nodded. If anyone suspected her, she would have met Brenda’s fate long ago, but it was nice to see the concern in his eyes. He wanted both to protect her and t
o find out who killed her friend. “You can keep the phone,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said. Then, for the first time, a hint of awkwardness entered his voice. “And would you mind if I come back to visit you when this is over?”

  She blushed and poured him another cup of tea.

  XXVI.

  NUMBERS

  Melanie offered to pick up the Professor Hopkins at the new international terminal of Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta. He was due to arrive in the early evening, and she had time to finish the day’s work and then grab a cup of coffee while she waited for him to clear customs. She had considered inviting James Murphy to meet with them, but Stanley Hopkins had been her agent, and given the fact that she had never even met the man, she wanted to question him first in private. The sociologist had been rather cagey on the phone when he called from Geneva, hinting that he had a long and complicated story to tell. Although she had come to trust James implicitly, her genes themselves protested at the thought of inviting a journalist to a debriefing that could head in any number of sensitive directions. So, she stood alone by the baggage carousel, looking for a traveler whose face matched the darkly handsome picture of Hopkins she had found on the Belle Meade College website.

  After a fifteen-minute wait, she saw him round the corner into the baggage-claim area, just as the first suitcases spewed from the bowels of the carousel. She studied him for a second, forgetting to wave and mark her presence. His hair had a bit more curl than the picture showed, and his face was more boyish. He carried a bit more weight than he needed to, but he still moved like an athlete. After a quick scan of the room, he began walking toward her.

  “Ms. Wilkerson?”

  “How did you know?”

  He extended his hand with a cryptic smile. “Your suit matches your voice.”

  What the hell did a $500 Armani voice sound like? She didn’t exactly know but figured it had to be a compliment. “Okay. Why don’t I take you to the hotel and let you get settled while I wait in the bar?”