The Strategist

by John Hardy Bell

  The neighbor two houses down from Julia’s, no doubt roused by the music Solomon made sure was loud enough for the entire block to hear, saw the car first from his living room window then from the front porch. And best of all, when Solomon drove through the Gilpin neighborhood a few hours later to make sure that Julia’s Range Rover was where it was supposed to be, he saw a patrol car parked directly in front of Clemmons’ house.

  Tough luck for the lowly mail clerk that he made such a sensible scapegoat.

  If investigators had done even fraction of their due diligence, they would have discovered early on that Clemmons and Julia worked for the same law firm. It didn’t matter that they most likely never knew each other. Once the police began feeling the heat that this case was sure to generate, they would start making things up; connecting dots that were never meant to be connected. He knew all too well how the game operated. In this case, he even had a hand in writing the playbook.

  “Perfection,” he uttered to himself with a smile that only accentuated the sharpness of his chiseled jaw line. “I should charge those assholes double.”

  But before he started demanding more money, Solomon knew he first had to complete the job he was originally paid to do. The logistical phase of the operation was over. Now it was time to recover the information that made the operation necessary in the first place.

  Before he proceeded to destroy Julia’s house, Solomon removed two computers from her home office: a clunky Gateway desktop and a Sony VAIO notebook. He also scoured the house for all of the portable computer disks he could find. He came upon box of CD-ROMs, several flash drives, even three floppy disks. He also looked around for homemade video tapes; even though he was assured that she would never have such a thing lying around. She didn’t.

  Solomon had strict instructions to recover her computer and every piece of data associated with it. But he was not told what information would be on that computer or the associated files. There was mention of a possible SD video disk or Windows movie file, which provided one obvious clue. But aside from that, his employer was intentionally vague. Compartmentalization at its finest.

  Ultimately it didn’t matter what Solomon knew and what he didn’t. The directive was simple. It also seemed silly in a way. All of this effort for a couple of computers and a handful of flash disks. But Solomon learned long ago that the ‘whys’ never mattered.

  Still, he couldn’t help but be curious.

  Sitting in his apartment bedroom with the five p.m. newscast turned down, Solomon set up the desktop computer on his bed and powered it on. A green indicator light blinked, then something inside the CPU tower made a sharp grinding sound. Finally, after five agonizing minutes, the monitor displayed a Windows XP symbol and the computer came to life. But that life seemed to be hanging on by the thinnest of threads.

  The lone file on the desktop was a Microsoft Word document titled ‘Copper Mountain info 11-29-09’. Solomon clicked on the file but it took at least forty-five seconds to open. During that time the sharp grinding noise inside the CPU returned, convincing Solomon that it was preparing to explode at any moment. Instead, it moved mind-numbingly slow through every other document that Solomon tried to open. Fortunately there weren’t many. An Excel spreadsheet titled ‘Julia’s Budget Dec ‘08’, a picture folder with seven photos of Julia’s dogs, the same ones he shot and killed before proceeding to Julia’s bedroom, and a PDF file that simply refused to open were all that he found. After a thorough check of the hard drive, including hidden and temporary folders, he determined there was nothing else of value on the computer.

  Next he inserted each of the floppy disks. This was probably the only computer in existence that still had the drive to support them, but it ultimately didn’t matter. Every one of the disks was empty. When he inserted one of the CD-ROMs, he immediately received a DRIVE NOT SUPPORTED message. He received the same message when he inserted one of the flash disks. After another forty seconds of grinding and barking, Solomon officially declared the computer worthless and wondered why Julia ever wasted her time with it.

  The second computer seemed more her style. The Sony VAIO looked brand new, and probably cost way more money than any computer should. He eagerly hit the laptop’s power button and sat back in anticipation of the flurry of files he was sure would be there.

  But there were no files. There wasn’t even a start up message. He saw nothing more than a blue screen with a blinking gray cursor in the top left corner. When Solomon pressed the enter button, the screen went black and the computer shut off. When he hit the power button again, the computer failed to respond altogether.

  Solomon pounded his fist against the keyboard and tossed the computer aside. The VAIO was one of the most expensive laptops on the market. It shouldn’t have just stop working, not unless it was hit with a Trojan horse or something equally fatal. But why would Julia allow herself to have two inoperable computers? She undoubtedly brought work home almost every night and it would be impossible to do that work without a computer. Something wasn’t adding up.

  Eager to get at least some idea of the information on the disks, Solomon pulled out his own Apple MacBook. He turned it on and breathed a sigh of relief when the desktop immediately came up.

  He started with the CD-ROMs. There were fifty-two in all. Every one of them was blank. Same with the eight flash disks.

  Solomon bit down hard on his lip. There was not a single piece of data on either of the computers or any of the disks. A million thoughts simultaneously ran through his head. All of them led to bad outcomes. Foremost in his mind was the idea that he had somehow misunderstood his directive. ‘Get her computer and any disks that you can find.’ There wasn’t much ambiguity there.

  That only left the possibility that Julia either never had the information to begin with, or she got rid of it before he or anyone else could get to it. Either possibility presented a major problem.

  The final exchange between Solomon and his employer was scheduled to take place in two days. Solomon was to deliver the computer data in exchange for the rest of his fee. But that exchange would now have to be put on hold. There would be no way to gauge his employer’s reaction to this delay. But Solomon knew how he personally felt about it - pissed off.

  More than anything else in the world, he hated loose ends. It was particularly bad when the failure was through no fault of his, as had been the case now.

  Solomon was not a private investigator, which meant that he had no intention of digging any deeper for those files than he already had. But that still didn’t change the fact that the job was now unfinished, and unless Julia was killed over two worthless computers and a bunch of empty data disks, his employer would expect more.

  Solomon had survived this long in the worlds he operated in because of two things: skill and instincts. Neither one had ever failed him. Solomon’s instincts were talking to him loud and clear right now. They were telling him that this simple little job was far from over. If someone other than his employer had the disks, Solomon knew it would be his job to find them. And once he did, that someone would most certainly have to die. It wasn’t a scenario he was particularly fond of, but one that his vast experience told him was inevitable.

  He immediately thought about the other woman in this equation. It was the same woman who Julia picked up from the airport the morning of her murder. The same woman whose house Julia had been in most of that day. The same woman who showed up at Julia’s house after her murder in hysterics. The same woman who recently left the FBI because she stood by while her partner was executed by a third rate serial killer.

  When Solomon followed Julia to the airport, after a sharp deviation from morning her routine that included a thirty minute stop at the First Western Bank, he assumed she had taken the day off to pick up a family member or some male suitor that he previously knew nothing about.

  When he saw Julia walk back to her car some forty minutes after they’d arrived, nothing in Solomon’s wildest imagination could have pr
epared him for who he saw walking behind her.

  Camille Grisham looked much younger in person than she did on television. While her physical stature was formidable, her facial features were delicate, with no sign of the hard-edge that was portrayed by her FBI friends during various interviews and special reports. Her dark wavy hair was pulled back tightly, fully revealing a rich, pretty face that seemed more at home on a magazine cover than in some crime lab. But her eyes were tired and somber. No surprise if all the news reports that Solomon had heard about her were true.

  He had felt an uncomfortable thump in his chest as Julia lifted the FBI agent’s suitcases into the back of her Range Rover. As the two stood outside of the car talking, the agent glanced over both shoulders, as if she sensed someone was watching her. The action unnerved Solomon more than he cared to admit, and he fought the urge to lower his head out of sight.

  “Keep it together,” Solomon whispered to himself.

  He followed them to a house that was only a few blocks from the bar he had met his employer in only a few nights earlier. Solomon was instantly reminded of how small the world really was.

  He watched the house for a long time. As the minutes turned into hours, any hope he may have had that Julia and the agent were merely acquaintances slowly evaporated. How close they actually were was something Solomon didn’t know. But he had to assume they were close enough to discuss the private, personal matters of their lives. That left open the very real possibility that the agent knew things pertaining to his employer, things that Solomon himself may not even know. People like Camille Grisham are trained to connect dots that the average person, even the average cop, would never even consider. No matter how well-staged a crime scene was, her first instinct would be to dig deeper. And if she had any inkling of the circle that Julia Leeds was a part of, that would be the first place she would dig.

  Thinking about all of this made his mind leap to conclusions that frightened him and he knew he had to pull it together. Maybe the agent knew everything. Maybe she knew nothing. Either way, Solomon still had a job to do. The disks would be found, no matter who had them. And if finding them meant ending the nightmare that had become Camille Grisham’s life, then so be it.

  As he pulled out his cell phone to make the call he absolutely dreading making, Solomon was reminded of a basic truth that he had briefly, and foolishly, allowed himself to forget.

  There is no such thing as perfection.

  CHAPTER 24

  Camille had barely spoken a word in the day and a half since Julia’s funeral. It wasn’t that she didn’t have anything to say, she simply couldn’t trust what would come out of her mouth.

  Following her incident in the closet, she began taking the anti-anxiety pills that were prescribed to her after Agent Sheridan’s death. They didn’t help as much as she would have liked. Though they succeeded in keeping her calm, the after effects left her with a feeling of complete physical disconnect, not only from herself, but from the entire world around her.

  That world, it seemed, had become a different place in the week since Julia’s murder, and nothing about it felt right. The sounds of everyday life – birds chirping, car horns blaring, children playing – were muted, as if she were hearing them through a pair of noise canceling headphones. When she ventured outside, the people around her appeared to move with no sense of purpose or direction. Some stared at her with blank, lifeless expressions; their slack faces revealing nothing in the way of emotion. Others were oblivious to her existence altogether. Camille would stop short of calling them robotic, but there was certainly nothing organic about them. It was as if they were put there merely to fill in space; to preserve the illusion of the real world that Camille had clearly left behind.

  Of course she couldn’t give voice to any of this. She already knew that she would forever be looked upon differently by those who knew her, no matter how much time had passed or how much progress she made. The whispers would follow her everywhere she went: ‘That poor woman. First her FBI partner was killed, now her best friend. What she must be going through. How can a sane person possibly survive it all? Hopefully someone is keeping a really close eye on her.’ The fires were already burning, no need to stoke them with talk of robots.

  Besides, it would be just be another reason for Paul to worry, and Camille had already given her father enough reason to worry. Her withdrawal from the world had also, by extension, been a withdrawal from him. He had tried his best to stay engaged, to regularly check in on her, to give her an ear that was all too willing to listen. But she kept quiet; content to lock herself in her bedroom while the world around her slowly transformed into one that she no longer recognized or wanted any part of.

  Her cell phone rang a lot during that time. She knew they were mostly calls of condolence, though she never answered a single one. People certainly meant well, but there wasn’t anything they could say to make her feel better. The fact of the matter was that she didn’t want to feel better. She didn’t want the world to return to normal or find a way to heal her shattered psyche. In Camille’s mind she deserved nothing more than to spend the rest of her life in the purgatory of her childhood bedroom, and until her father physically put her out on the street, she had no intention of being anywhere else.

  Then she received the call that instantly changed everything.

  Much as she had done with every other call to her cell phone, she let it go directly to voicemail rather than answer it. She had listened to and deleted twenty-two other messages before she finally came upon it. It had been left nearly three hours prior.

  “Good morning, Camille. My name is Laurence Pine and I’m an attorney with Pine, Goldwin and Associates,” the message said. “I oversaw Julia Leeds’ estate and we’ve just completed the reading of her will. There were items left to you by Julia, and we can arrange to have you come to our office so our clerk can process those items for you. But there was something else that Julia left for you, something that wasn’t an official part of her will. I’d prefer to meet with you personally regarding this, so I’m calling to see if you are available sometime today. I’ll leave my schedule open in the event that you are. My direct line is 303-” Camille didn’t wait for the rest of number. She simply hit the ‘redial’ button.

  After a brief conversation with the attorney and an agreed upon meeting time, Camille was showered and dressed in twenty minutes.

  When she went downstairs, her father was in the kitchen. The look of surprise on his face was palpable. “Are you headed out?” he asked as he stood over a grilled cheese sandwich cooking on the stove.

  “For a little while. I just talked to Julia’s attorney. Her estate reading was today and apparently something was left for me that he wants to talk about.”

  “Are you sure that’s something you can handle right now?”

  “No. But I need to go anyway.”

  Paul turned off the stove. “Well give me a minute. I’ll drive you.”

  “You don’t have to do that, dad. I’ll be okay. I need to be back in the world by myself at some point.”

  “Are you sure this is the right situation to do that?”

  Camille shook her head. “There won’t be any such thing as the right situation.”

  Paul nodded his agreement then turned back to his grilled cheese.

  “It sure smells good,” Camille said as she attempted a smile.

  “Made with entirely too much butter, just the way you like it. I’d be happy to grill one up for you before you leave.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “And you’re positive you’re okay to drive?” he asked, now barely able to contain the anxious father that had been bottled up in him for days.

  “Positive,” she answered, forcing her smile even wider. “I promise I won’t be gone long.”

  “Okay. Just make sure you’re safe out there. And call me if you need to, for any reason at all.”

  Camille almost rolled her eyes at the comment but held back. The sudden, unexpected d
eath of someone you know makes you worry that much more for everyone else you know. Camille couldn’t fault Paul for being nervous about her being anywhere out of his sight.

  “I will, dad.” She leaned in to kiss him on the cheek then walked out. “I love you,” she said over her shoulder as she opened the front door.

  “I love you too, bunny!” he yelled back.

  He hadn’t called her bunny since she was ten-years-old. It had always given her the biggest smile when she heard it.

  She was thankful he couldn’t see her reaction now.

  *****

  The offices of Pine, Goldwin and Associates were located on the eighteen floor of the Wells Fargo Building, better known to those familiar with the Denver skyline as the ‘cash register’. Camille sat alone a spacious, softly lit lobby adorned with marble sculptures of half-clothed women playing harps and Spartan warriors dressed in battle gear, while the young receptionist left to inform Mr. Pine of her arrival. Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was playing softly on the receptionist’s desktop radio. Next to that sat a tray of handmade pastries and an ice bucket filled with bottles of water and orange juice. If nothing else, Laurence Pine knew how to create a welcoming environment. Unfortunately, the warm gesture did little to calm her frayed nerves.

  The receptionist returned no later than thirty seconds after she left, the man Camille assumed to be Laurence Pine walking beside her.

  “I’m so glad you could make it, Camille,” he said with a broad smile as he extended a hand to her.

  He was a tall, good-looking man who was much younger than Camille expected. Despite the tension of the moment, his smile unexpectedly disarmed her. She rose to shake his hand.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Pine.”

  “No formalities needed here. Laurence will do just fine.”

  “Laurence it is,” Camille said with a smile that had quietly infiltrated her face. She allowed the warm feeling to linger a moment longer than it should have before she buried it in a serious demeanor.