Stone Eater (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 2)

by D. F. Bailey

  He started to read. The book began on the thirteenth of March in the previous year. The first sentence seemed to continue from an earlier volume: Unlike Tuesday, BW didn’t call today at all. Five times yesterday. Today, nothing. To think I actually liked him. He flipped through several pages and realized that everyone was identified by initials only. And there were many of them. Thirty, forty? Mostly lovers, he realized. Then the parade of promiscuity stopped with the arrival of RT — obviously Raymond Toeplitz. A dozen references to EN (Eve Noon, he assumed) appeared from time to time, with comments on the food they ate in various trendy restaurants around the city. Once he’d absorbed Gianna’s style and the general thrust of her memoir, Finch scanned a few longer passages and started to read from back-to-front. One page before the last entry he found a recognizable journal entry:

  Met WF, a reporter from the San Francisco eXpress yesterday morning. He had the balls to come into the lodge kitchen unannounced to interview me and daddy — who threw him out. Spent the afternoon trying to put it all in perspective. My father, a demon. My step-brothers, murderers. RT, dead. How could I love him? But I did. I did, I did, I did. Found WF later at the Bridgewater restaurant. Wore my black Atelier Versace dress with the scoop neck. Gorgeous. A few drinks later, and surprise, I told him everything. Told him to print it all in his paper. Complete confession — and complete relief to have it all out. WF seemed so attentive, so much of what I needed. Later we stood outside, next to the river. He wrapped an arm around me to warm me from the chill, then sent me back into the restaurant for coffee. And to sober up. Decided then to do him, for my sake and his. My first since RT passed. Could tell I was his first in a while, too. Don’t know what it might be, but some loss has really hurt WF. I’ll see him again, I hope. Maybe we can help one another. Besides, he’s got the goods!

  Two brief passages followed. The first, a note about leaving Will early in the morning, her drive back to San Francisco and returning to her condo. The final entry, a sketchy piece of thoughts and fragments, appeared to be dashed off in a few seconds.

  Uncle Dean calls this morning. Insists on taking me to his home with Aunt Ginny for dinner tonight. He calls maybe once every year — and now this? Has to do with RT, but he won’t say what exactly. It’s just madness gone crazy.

  After writing these last words, Gianna must have called her mother, met her for dinner and left the diary for her to give to Finch. “In case I can’t give it to him, myself,” Sophia had said. But something else had occurred between the moment she’d finished her diary entry and visited her mother. Had Dean Whitelaw called back and threatened her? Obviously Gianna’s anxiety had spiked. Then, after leaving her mother, Gianna had texted Eve Noon in desperation. A few hours after that she’d been drowned. A murder so professionally executed that the medical examiner determined that her death was as a suicide. The Whitelaw family was spared further investigation and humiliation. Case closed.

  Gianna was right. It was madness gone crazy.

  ※ — FOUR — ※

  WILL FINCH ENTERED Wally Gimbel’s office and pulled the door closed behind him. Fiona Page sat opposite the managing editor and discretely applied a trace of Lypsyl to her lips as she sorted through some papers with her free hand. Will pulled a third chair to the side of Wally’s desk and sat down.

  “Okay kids, we’ve got five minutes on this.” Wally wiped a hand over his face. He bore a look of exhaustion that suggested he was tired of the Whitelaw saga. “That’s three hundred seconds, unless one of you can prove that Gianna Whitelaw will rise from the dead on the third day. Otherwise, this story is done.”

  “Unlikely,” Fiona admitted. “The memorial service is sometime this afternoon. If you want to post a vulture with a camera at the gate, you might be able to grab some pics of the bereaved coming and going.”

  Gimbel nodded, no, and pointed to the floor below. “Leave that for the print tabloid. They’ll send the pictures to us, gratis.”

  “Okay, so I’ve sorted through her personal history,” Fiona continued. “According to Facebook, she had one grand adventure, let me tell you.”

  “I guess some of us actually have a life,” Finch said, trying to inject a dash of levity to his voice. Normally this would be the moment to disclose that he’d skimmed Gianna’s diary and that it verified the worst insinuations against her. Instead he decided to keep the diary in reserve. He knew that when they ran out of leads, when the story became stale — Wally would force them to drop it. That’s when he’d bring the diary forward. To keep her story in the headlines for one more day to buy a little more time until he could change the story from a lament about suicide to an investigation into murder and the conspiracy to cover it up.

  “Maybe,” Fiona said. “If you consider living to include a rolling sexcapades tour from Rio to the Riviera.”

  A blank look crossed Wally’s face. “Some do. Consider it a lifestyle, I mean. Is there anyone willing to talk about it?”

  “Possibly.” Fiona scanned her note pad. “Over the past ten years or so, she seems to have had one steady friend. The only constant companion I could find. Eve Noon.”

  “Eve Noon?” Wally’s gaze drifted to the ceiling and then settled on Fiona. “The SFPD officer who broke open the police sex harassment scandals?”

  “One and the same.”

  “Jeez.” Wally closed his eyes as he spoke. “You know what I hate about this business?”

  “I dunno.” Fiona looked at Finch as if he might have an answer. “What?”

  “When we start to libel the dead.”

  “Legally, that’s impossible,” she said.

  Wally looked at Finch. “What about your deep throat. What’s her name?”

  Finch took a moment to respond. He needed to slow things down. If he also linked Eve Noon to the story as his confidential source, he could lose control of his tenuous relationship to her and the knowledge she bore about Finch and Gianna’s one-night stand. He could either disclose her identity now, or keep it in check for a while.

  “Betsy Smith,” he said.

  Fiona let out a laugh. “Who?”

  “A woman who claims that Gianna was murdered. And that the suicide is a cover-up.”

  “Not this again.” Wally eased away from his desk and set his eyes on Finch. “Is she for real?”

  “I think so, Wally. I’ve met her twice. She’s seen the ME report. And I think she’s got some physical evidence, too.”

  “Okay. So who is she in real life?”

  “I can’t tell you. Protected source. But she’s legit.”

  “Protected source!” Wally moaned and set both hands flat on the desk. “Okay, we’re way past five minutes. Fiona, track down Ms. Noon, set up an interview with her and see what insight she can provide. Suggest that it’s her last chance to pay a public tribute to a friend. And remember: she’s a media pro, so don’t let her spin you. Will, see what you can dig up through your new best friend. But I want to see something concrete from her. Something I can hold in my hand before we publish anything more about Gianna Whitelaw based on Betsy Smith’s evidence.”

  Everyone stood. Will opened the door and Fiona walked past him and down the aisle into the bog.

  “One last thing.” Wally tugged at Will’s elbow. “Lou Levine gave us the green light to publish the recording of the boy — Smeardon, right? — talking to the sheriff in Astoria. We’re going to publish a straight transcript, word for word. Another scoop. It’s certain to be submitted as evidence for the inquiry into who shot the sheriff. Whoever your John Doe is, it should bolster his defense.”

  “No doubt,” Finch said. Everyone at the eXpress knew how to play this game. They called it Last Man Standing. Assign the perp a pseudonym, John or Jane Doe, then begin a process to eliminate every possible suspect until only one remains.

  “Mmm. What’s he like?”

  What could he say about someone who’d saved his life? “A hero of our time.”

  Wally smiled at this, the title of Mikhail
Lermontov’s novel that Gimbel recommended to Finch shortly after they first met. “All right. Write a profile of him in case he goes to trial. Maybe you can save his bacon in return. Besides, it gives the eXpress one more kick at the can.”

  As he walked past Fiona’s cubicle in the bog, Finch considered Ethan Argyle’s fate. He seemed a thousand miles and two lifetimes away. But Finch understood that Ethan Argyle was tied to Gianna’s death through a series of off-setting links and connections. Ethan had shot Sheriff Gruman, who’d murdered both Donnel Smeardon and Raymond Toeplitz. And Gianna had been eliminated — why? Because she possessed something that Toeplitz held against Dean and Franklin Whitelaw and their company? The trail seemed too complex to follow. How could he weave all the threads together?

  Finch sat at his desk and pondered what Eve Noon might disclose to Fiona. The revelation of his fling with Gianna would ruin his reputation. Instantly. How could he have been so stupid? He felt as if he were holding an activated grenade. Release his grip and he would be destroyed. He definitely had to change the game. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and glanced around the bog. Certain that no one could observe him, he sent a text to Eve Noon: Be prepared. Fiona Page wants to interview you about Gianna. Tell her you’ll only talk to me.

  ※

  The sun streamed through the windows into Mother Russia. Will stretched his legs along the chaise lounge and adjusted the pillows under his back and neck. In his world, Saturdays claimed a life of their own and he liked to keep his agenda open and free himself from the appointments and deadlines that ruled his working life. On Saturdays he refused to fight anyone. Especially today, in this residential palace where no one could reach him.

  He sipped his coffee and decided to make a thorough study of Gianna’s diary. Two days earlier, his first read-through had been cursory. Apart from her entry about him (which he’d read four times) he’d found the rest of the diary little more than a detailed date book. He realized that sharing a life with Gianna would have been impossible. Given her needs, she could never restrict herself to one man and Finch knew himself well enough to know that he could never tolerate her promiscuity. They’d had one night together and he would remember her for that alone.

  However, once she became involved with Raymond Toeplitz she’d restrained herself. She thought he was a genius; but what did she know about math, algorithms, corporate finance? And was that really his charm? His IQ? Or was it his sexual innocence and the social naïveté rooted in his Asperger’s Syndrome? To Gianna, Toeplitz represented a male who would never betray her. The opposite of her father and most other men she’d encountered. Certainly the opposite of herself. The security of his disability bound her to him more than any pledge of love or sexual mastery. Finch could never compete at that game. Nor did he want to.

  As he studied the entries about Toeplitz, Will detected a narrative shift. Gianna’s tone changed from a running commentary on her private trysts to her own surprise at discovering that the Chief Financial Officer at her father’s company, someone she’d known distantly for over ten years, now confided in her completely. She recorded his confessions of inadequacy, his love for her, his fear of rejection, his sexual confusion, his social misery. Once she began to attend to him, he opened up completely. Finally he’d said, “I don’t know how anyone begins to have sex. What do they say first?” She found that so refreshing. After so many encounters with strangers. So many casual affairs.

  Only twice did Gianna make a comment about Toeplitz’s work and only once about the company’s fraud trial. Finch didn’t detect anything in her notes that might stand the test of evidence. Then just before Toeplitz betrayed the Whitelaws and agreed to testify for the DA, she made an unusual entry: RT says that if anyone discovers the files on GIGcoin, his life will be OVER. It frightens him.

  GIGcoin? Finch set his coffee mug on the side table.

  He continued to scour the diary. In the fifth-to-last diary entry, written just as she’d arrived at the family lodge in Cannon Beach, he found this opaque statement: RT dropped off some files and a flash drive at my condo. Said to keep them safe. Whatever that means….

  Finch’s cell phone vibrated. A text from Eve Noon appeared. I told Fiona that I’d only do an interview with you. Meet me in the MOMA lobby. Say, 4.00?

  He considered his options. Once again Saturday was about to be surrendered to his work week. When he conceded the inevitable, he replied. Meet you there at 6.00. Let’s have dinner. I have a surprise.

  At that moment he decided to tell Eve that he had Gianna’s diary. A mistake, perhaps, but it could provide enough bait to secure Eve’s trust. At least for one evening. Somehow he had to bind her confidence to him so that she would never disclose that he’d spent the night with Gianna and committed the one blunder that could ruin him.

  ※ — FIVE — ※

  A LITTLE AFTER three o’clock, a knock sounded on his door and Finch welcomed Sochi into his apartment.

  “Settling in?”

  “Yes. Bryce’s condo is perfect.” He studied Sochi’s face, almost invisible beneath his wiry red beard. He bore the look of a lumberjack who’d spent the last month wandering through a forest. At the same time, Finch wondered if Sochi had just signed-off on a twenty-four hour session in front of his computer screen.

  “Good. I have something for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Your passport to everything within Mother Russia.” Sochi held a flash drive between his thumb and forefinger.

  Finch smiled. “What is it?”

  Sochi plugged the drive into the laptop on the kitchen counter. “First type in your password.”

  “Which is?”

  “Where would a journalist live in Russia?”

  He thought a moment. “Moscow.”

  Sochi nodded and Finch typed “Moscow” into the password line. The screen filled with hundreds of underlined hyperlinks.

  “Welcome to Mother Russia, Moscow. We’ve waited quite a while for you.”

  Finch stood back a step. “Okay. This is … a little weird.”

  “I get that.”

  “You think I’ve been sent here for some reason?”

  “No. It’s just our inside joke. Maybe it says more about our collective sense of humor than anything about you.”

  “I guess.”

  Finch looked into the laptop and began to scroll through the series of screens. The links spanned everything from Mortgage Requirements to Solar Panel Maintenance. He clicked on a link named Garbage Rotation and Responsibilities. A calendar appeared identifying the city pickup schedule. Two weeks ahead, the name Moscow appeared on the box marked Tuesday.

  “Moscow. That’s you. On the twenty-third you have to load the totes with garbage from the kitchen and all the other common areas. An email alert will hit your in-box the day before.”

  Finch looked at him and smiled. He felt as if he were inhabiting a bubble of some kind. A virtual spaceship where everything had been invented before his arrival, a place of soft edges and indefinite boundaries, all of it managed by reams of invisible software code. Along with the fantasy came a gentle benevolence and the universal mantras from a previous Neverland: peace, love, and flowers. To make it all real, all you had to do was believe.

  “Sochi, can I ask what you do for a living?”

  He held a hand to his face and drew it through his beard. “I can either tell you what I do, or who I work for. But not both.”

  “Okay. What you do.”

  “Cyber security. Quantum cryptography to be precise.”

  “You mean like Homeland Security? Or the NSA?”

  “Can’t tell you that, now can I?” He smiled, as if he’d sprung a clever trap.

  Finch shook his head, amused. “I guess not.”

  “And if I did, I’d have to kill you,” he added.

  He began to laugh as if this tired old joke had just occurred to him now. His genuine, throaty laughter surprised Finch. Soon the redhead computer geek began chortling uncontr
ollably. Despite his skepticism, the spectacle soon had Finch laughing, too.

  ※

  Finch stepped off the street car and walked down Third Street to the corner of Mission. He knew the Museum of Modern Art was undergoing massive renovations and decided that the “surprise” he’d promised Eve would be dinner at Ristorante Umbria on the corner of Second and Howard.

  As they entered the restaurant he spotted a window seat at the far end of the room, a place where they could talk privately. As soon as they sat down, the manager approached them with a towel wrapped over his forearm and a brilliant smile fixed on his lips.

  “Will, I haven’t seen you in months. You’re still with the eXpress?”

  “Yes. Too long for me, too, Tony.” He tipped his head to Eve. “This is my colleague, Eve Noon.”

  “No. Impossible.” He shook her hand.

  “What’s impossible?”

  “She’s far too beautiful to spend Saturday evening with you, my friend.”

  They all laughed at this and Tony left them with menus and a wine list.

  “You’re well-known, I see.”

  “The eXpress office is just a block over.” He crooked a thumb toward his office. “Everyone comes here to interview politicians. In fact, if you want, you can order ‘Da Mayor’s Special,’ Ed Lee’s favorite meal — though I don’t recommend it.”