The Victim at Vultee Arch

by Charles Williamson

  “Are those young men pitching pennies?” I asked pointing to a monitor in the cavernous room.

  “Yep, they haven’t got much to do here at night. They often read paperbacks and horse around with each other. There was even a fistfight one night. I think it was over the dark-haired girl sleeping in that far corner, but I just let them go at it. It’s not my job to supervise them. I just make sure they have a badge,” Phil said.

  “What about the other floor. Is anyone up there at night?” I asked. I assumed it was where Griffin’s office was located.

  “No it’s a space for operations people. They seldom work this late. Those monitors cover that floor,” he said pointing to the lower row of seven monitors, which showed darkened rows of workstations and tables. “It’s connected to this floor by that circular staircase. The elevators don’t stop on that floor at night. You take the stairs when you do your hourly walk around. The boss is in that corner next to the glass conference room here on this floor. If he’s working late, you’d best avoid him. He’ll get a fellow fired if he doesn’t like your manner. He’s out of town I heard. So you won’t see him today, but he’s sometimes here at night. He’s some kind of English big shot, named Sir Henry.”

  “I just sit here and look after things except when I walk my rounds.” I was pleased to hear that Henry Griffin was out of town. I didn’t want him to see my badge, which had my name in large black letters.

  “Do some folks work tomorrow night too?” I asked.

  “No, because Friday night is Saturday in Asia, and all of these markets are closed. The place is always empty by the time you’ll come in at midnight. You probably won’t see a soul until Sunday night,” he said. Tomorrow night would be a great opportunity to do the investigation of Griffin’s office. I could have all the time I wanted alone with his records.

  “Put your company shield in your pocket and keep it visible at all times. Put this cell phone on your belt. Keep the phone on all the time. They’ll call and check if you’re awake a couple of times tonight.” Phil handed me a plastic card and said, “You put this recorder card into the wall slots when you do your walk around on the hour. This big ring holds a passkey, but you probably won’t need it. It’s on that big ring so you can’t put it in your pocket and forget you have it. Always hang it up after your rounds. Let me show you now, and you can do it at midnight once before I leave.”

  Phil led me on a tour of the facility. As we passed the young men tossing pennies against a wall, he introduced them as Gary and Jody. The girl reading the paperback was Gretchen and a young man studying college textbooks was Wong. Long rows of workstations filled the room. I wasn’t introduced to the sleeping girl in the back corner. Each trading position had six to eight computer monitors, several keyboards, and very complicated telephones. I’d been in the trading room at my son’s firm, and the setup was similar. Along the north and south walls were rows of small glass-walled offices. The room’s corners held glass-walled conference rooms except for the boss’s office in the southwest corner. There were eight places to push in the card on each floor, including the restrooms. One was just outside of Henry Griffin’s office door. There were dozens of file cabinets built into the outside wall of his office. I glanced in through the glass door and saw some antique looking furniture that made the room look like a smoking room in an English gentlemen’s club rather than an office.

  “Do you ever check to see if anyone is in one of the offices?” I asked.

  “Most have glass doors, so you can see right in, but I sometimes look around. You’re not allowed to read anything you see on any of these desks. They say it’s confidential stuff, but I can’t see any reason to read it anyway since I don’t have any idea what all these busy folks are doing round here. One day-guard was fired just for looking down at papers on a man’s desk. Another guard was fired when he found the bar in Sir Henry’s office and helped himself to a little medicinal drink. Damn expensive drink I’d say. He’s been out of work for six months now. They go through a lot of security people around here. We’re not employees of the bank. We’re just contract labor, no account by their standards making twelve dollars an hour in one of the country’s most expensive cities.”

  I didn’t mention that I’d been hired at fourteen dollars an hour. The second floor contained a section that was occupied by the Risk Management Department. Quentin Thatcher was still listed on the glass door to the work area as Managing Director. That would be Margaret’s area tomorrow morning.

  I made my rounds with Phillip at midnight. I moved freely around the trading room at 1:00 as unobtrusive as the furniture. I didn’t even draw a glance from the young men playing a video game on their computers, or the sleepy paperback reader. I decided to take a quick look around Henry Griffin’s office at 2:00.

  The office smelled of leather and lemon wood polish. The thick carpets covered a parquet floor that squeaked slightly when I stepped on it. The desk drawers were locked, as were the drawers along the top of a mahogany credenza. The sliding panels that covered the lower section of the credenza revealed a simple single-line telephone. That was a surprise because the desk held a complex phone with a whole panel of buttons. When you’re searching for something suspicious, the key is often to pay attention to anything that is out of place. A working phone inside a credenza certainly qualifies as strange. I picked up the cordless handset and noticed the small caller ID screen. Arrows below the screen were used to review recent calls. There were two phone numbers among the dozen recent calls listed from the 928 area code of northern Arizona. One was from a number I didn’t recognize. I jotted down all of the numbers to investigate later.

  One recent phone call had been from a phone number I knew well. I sat in Griffin’s plush chair staring at the small display on his private telephone. It showed the home phone number of my boss, Sheriff Greg Taylor.

  CHAPTER TWNETY-SEVEN

  I’d carefully examined the locks on the desk and the file cabinets. They’d be easy to pick with some common tools that I should be able to find somewhere in midtown. I put the list of phone numbers in my pocket and quickly left the private office. I didn’t want my presence to be noticed by the people left in the trading room. Tomorrow, I’d have all the time I’d need to do a thorough job.

  My head was dizzy with the realization that Sheriff Taylor had called Henry Griffin’s private line using his own home phone. The county attorney had insisted that no one from the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department have contact with officers of the bank. While there might be a reason for Sheriff Taylor to call Sir Henry Griffin in violation of those instructions, how would he have known the direct phone number? Why would Sheriff Taylor use his own home phone for the call? I wanted badly to discuss it with Margaret.

  I received two phone calls during the night asking for a status report, which was the security company’s method of making certain that I was sober and awake. One thing was clear as I passed through the trading room; there was nothing much for the people left on the night shift to do. I saw them talk on the phone several times, but mostly they read, played video games, or studied. I wonder how they’d gotten jobs that required no work and probably paid many times what law enforcement officers in rural Arizona towns make. I completed my hourly rounds on both floors without seeing anyone except those who were here when I arrived until a few people began to show up around 6:30. My shift was over at 7:00, and my relief arrived exactly on time.

  I walked back to the hotel to have breakfast with Margaret before she went to work. She was dressed and ready to report to her temporary assignment a little earlier than the scheduled 9:00. We walked through the drizzle to a small restaurant a few blocks from the hotel and sat in a booth in the back.

  “Was there any excitement your first night on the job?” she asked after we ordered from a surly overweight woman who grunted once to acknowledge our order and hurried away.

  I’d been thinking about the call from Sheriff Taylor to Henry Griffin all night, but I hadn’t c
ome up with an answer. “I had a passkey and used it to glance around Henry Griffin’s office,” I said with what I thought was a neutral tone. “There were people working all night in the trading room nearby, so I didn’t spend long in his office.”

  “What’s bothering you Mike? You found something you didn’t expect?”

  “Yes. I found a single line telephone inside a credenza behind Griffin’s desk even though he had a complex multi line phone on his desk,” I said. I was surprised that Margaret had caught on already to my troubled reaction to the discovery. She could always read me.

  “That’s suspicious. He probably has a line that doesn’t go through the company PBX. John told me that trading firms usually record their calls in case of disputes about what was said when an order is placed. Griffin may want a phone that doesn’t go through the company’s recording system,” she said.

  I pulled out the list of phone numbers, putting them in front of Margaret. “This private phone has a caller ID feature that records the phone numbers of recent incoming calls.”

  She looked at the phone numbers and said, “There’re two from our part of the state. I’ll be anxious to hear who phoned him from northern Arizona.”

  “I recognized one of the numbers. It’s Greg Taylor’s home phone.”

  Margaret took a moment to digest that and said, “I’m sorry Mike. I know you’ve begun to regard him as a friend and not just a boss. It doesn’t prove he’s involved, but I can see that it looks suspicious that he even knows Griffin’s private number.”

  “I’ll track down the other phone numbers today. I may make a condolence call on Dr. Thatcher’s ex wife. I also plan to pick up a few lock-picking tools. When I go to work tonight at midnight the trading room will be deserted because it will already be Saturday in Asia. I should have all night to snoop around by myself,” I said changing the subject. At my mention of lock picks, Margaret frowned but made no comment.

  “He might have had a good reason to have called Griffin,” Margaret said.

  “I know. What are your plans for today?”

  “Heather said she’ll take me for coffee soon after I get there. That will give us a chance to visit out of hearing of the other employees. She’s very anxious to help and plans to work on sorting out a motive, assuming there is a motive related to the risk management area of the bank,” she said.

  “Heather’s only an intern. She probably doesn’t understand the formulas in those stolen documents,” I said.

  “I’m not so sure,” she said. “Heather is smart and very motivated. That may be enough. If we find evidence of trading problems and of a cover up, she’ll pass that information on to the Securities and Exchange Commission and to the bank’s outside auditors.”

  After breakfast Margaret headed to work, and I went to the hotel. I put out the Do Not Disturb sign so that I could have six hours of sleep before resuming the investigation in the afternoon. Before going to bed, I called Chad at home and gave him the list of phone numbers I’d copied. I had no warrant to search Henry Griffin’s office, and I didn’t want to involve Chad in my nefarious New York life of crime so I didn’t explain how I’d gotten the phone numbers. I also omitted Sheriff Taylor’s home phone number from the list. I wasn’t ready to raise that issue with Chad yet.

  I was rested and relaxed as I walked west along Forty-Second Street that afternoon. I was looking for a place that might sell the tools I needed for my illegal search that evening.

  As I walked along the crowded sidewalk, I began to have second thoughts about actually using lock picks. What the hell was I doing? Had I changed that much? Only a few days after my suspension, I was looking for the tools for a felony burglary. I’d always been so much of a straight arrow cop that my nickname in LA was Chaplain Mike. I really believed in following the rules and treating everyone, even criminals with an appropriate level of respect.

  It might not have been a crime to look into the unlocked credenza in Griffin’s office and record phone numbers since I had the legal right to be on the premises, but breaking into locked desk drawers was clearly illegal. I decided on a compromise. I’d only snoop in places that didn’t require forced entry.

  I caught a cab and directed the turbaned driver to take me uptown toward the Upper West Side. I called Shannon Thatcher on my cell phone as we bumped along Broadway.

  “Mrs. Thatcher, this is Mike Damson from Sedona. I spoke with you about Dr. Thatcher’s death,” I said, not mentioning that I’d been suspended from the case.

  “Yes, detective. Is there any news about who killed Quentin? I’ve been very anxious to hear more about what happened.”

  “I’d like to talk to you about the case. I’m in New York, and I’d like to come to your apartment if that’s convenient now,” I said.

  “I’d very much like to talk to you. Do you know where my apartment is?” she asked.

  She gave me detailed directions. She welcomed a chance to meet with me, and I told her I’d be there in about fifteen minutes. I had the cab driver let me out in front of a toy store on Broadway across the street from Zabar’s. I purchased a talking lavender unicorn for little Jennifer. Saul Steinheart, the HR man at Bank E & A, had told me there had been an acrimonious custody fight over the girl when her parents divorced, and now Jennifer had lost her father completely. In the photo in Quentin Thatcher’s wallet, the little girl had held a metal unicorn.

  I knew that Captain Horn considered Shannon Thatcher a prime suspect because she and her daughter were the heirs to the estate and the beneficiaries of Quentin Thatcher’s insurance. I wondered if he’d been in contact with her. Horn was a hard-boiled sort of interrogator. He didn’t have much practical investigation experience, and I suspect that he’d learned police interrogation from watching too many police dramas on TV. I’d often been accused of being much too easy on suspects when I interviewed them, but I had the best record of clearing homicide cases for five years in a row while I was in LA. I knew that a hard-boiled approach usually caused suspects to shut up and ask for a lawyer. I would use a tactic that had worked for me many times in the past.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Mrs. Thatcher lived on the fourteenth floor of a prewar apartment building on Central Park West. It was one of those buildings that looked as if it had been designed by an architect whose hobby was decorating wedding cakes. The doorman checked with Mrs. Thatcher to see that I was actually invited before letting me onto the elevator and pushing the fourteenth floor button. He seemed to regard me as suspicious, and he probably watched to see that the elevator didn’t stop at any other floors.

  A plump Hispanic woman in her mid forties opened the door and greeted me as Sheriff Damson. “Did you catch those snake murderers?” she asked.

  “Not yet, but we’ll definitely get them soon. I promise.”

  “Linda, please bring the detective into the library.” I heard Mrs. Thatcher say from another room. The apartment was huge, at least as big as our Sedona house. When Linda led me around a doorway into a room where three of the walls were lined with books, real books not fake matching sets purchased by a decorator, I saw a view of autumn in Central Park through the large windows. It was a panorama as dramatic as the view from my own living room in Sedona in a very different man-made way.

  Mrs. Thatcher was sitting on one of a pair of matching leather chairs with a silver tea and coffee service on a table in front of her. She stood and shook hands directing me to the adjacent chair and poured coffee for me into a very fragile looking teacup.

  She looked at me intently before saying, “I was tempted to tell you to meet me at my lawyer’s office, but I decided that would only focus more attention on me as a suspect. I want to persuade you and that ass, Captain Horn, to look for the real culprit and to not waste more of your time on me. I loved Quentin more than I can ever describe. We couldn’t figure out how to keep our marriage together, but I’d never do anything to hurt him. He was a wonderful man.”

  “Mrs. Thatcher, it was kind of you to
meet with me on such short notice. Actually, I’m not here to interrogate you as a suspect, but to see if you can point me toward a motive for the murder. I also wanted to give you and Jennifer my condolences.”

  As I took the unicorn out of the bag it said, “I love you” in a childish voice. I’d grown up before talking toys, and I found its comment a little disconcerting. I said, “I brought this for Jennifer. This must be a very difficult time for her.”

  Mrs. Thatcher smiled for the first time and said, “She’ll love it. Linda, please bring Jennifer to meet Detective Damson.”

  Linda held the cute five-year-old girl’s hand as she led her into the room. Jennifer seemed to be dressed for a party in a fancy outfit with embroidered flowers. Mrs. Thatcher said, “Honey, this is Detective Damson. He’s going to find the bad man who killed your father. He brought you a present.” The young girl walked right up and took the unicorn. The toy said, “hello,” and Jennifer smiled.

  “Thank you,” Jennifer said. “I love unicorns. I have a brass one that daddy gave me.”

  Jennifer caressed the new toy as Linda led her from the room. I thought of the body of the young man that I’d seen on the autopsy table in Flagstaff. I was going to bring his murderer to justice even if ignoring the sheriff’s instructions cost me my law enforcement career.

  “How can I help you detective?” Mrs. Thatcher asked.

  “Do you have any idea why Dr. Thatcher was in Sedona?” I said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know. I hadn’t spoken with him in the week before he died. He certainly was not in Arizona on vacation. Quentin almost never took vacations, but he would have wanted to take Jennifer with him if it had been a vacation. He must have gone on business.”

  “Do you know Jonathan Lacy of Scottsdale, Arizona? He’s on the Bank E & A’s board,” I asked.

  “I’ve met him at some bank functions. He’s a nice elderly man, distinguished looking with gray hair. I can’t imagine he was involved.”