Stone Eater (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 2)

by D. F. Bailey

  “Hey.” Her voice rose a note. “Here’s something different.”

  “What’s that?” He glanced at her as she hunched closer to the computer screen. “You should straighten your back, you know. That posture will destroy your spine.”

  “Seriously. Look at this.”

  He stood behind her and peered into the computer screen. The email to Gianna was dated a day after she’d driven up to the Whitelaw lodge in Cannon Beach.

  I just dropped some files and a USB flash drive off at your apartment. When you get back to SF you’ll see them in the top drawer of your dresser. The drive is tiny, the size of your thumb. Don’t worry about what’s in it. In fact, you won’t be able to open it. Only I have the password. And don’t lose your cellphone (again) — that’s part of it. Sounds crazy, I know. But for the first time, I’m getting worried. The court case opened my eyes to how serious things are at the firm. Why can I never see trouble coming? I need you to help me see these things. Just like I need you for everything now. It’s hard for me to say that, you know. Okay, okay — enough! I’ll see you next week in Cannon Beach. You know how I feel about you. Just remember that. Raymond. XX

  “The flash drive,” Finch whispered. “And the cellphone. ‘That’s part of it.’ What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Eve read the email a third time. “But we hold all the pieces we need to solve this, don’t we? The flash drive, the cell phone — and this note. It ties the first two together.”

  “Maybe.” Will stepped towards the door to his condo. “I’ll check in on Sochi. See if I can hurry him along on breaking the password to the drive. Back in a minute.”

  After a brief lecture from Sochi — “You can’t rush these things, Moscow. It’s like asking someone to double the speed of light. Can’t be done. Even by Rasputin” — Finch returned to his apartment to discover Eve engaged in an intense phone call. She sat at the table taking notes and repeating a set of instructions. Finally she set the phone down.

  “So. We’ve managed to come up with a list of possibilities of BMW X3s that match the fragments of the license plate.”

  “And?”

  “There are only seven candidates.”

  “Seven.” Will nodded, surprised that after so many roadblocks, the way forward might now open up. “Makes sense; that car is an expensive ride.”

  “Even better, we can probably eliminate four of them because they’re registered outside the Bay Area. Guess who’s left standing with the remaining three?”

  He shrugged.

  “Dean Whitelaw. President and CEO of Whitelaw, Whitelaw & Joss.”

  “Whitelaw?” Finch forced himself to sit on the sofa. He held a hand to his temple and tried to sort through the ramifications.

  “Yeah. This thing’s gone that crazy.” She stood up and walked in a wide circle. “Okay. Are you ready to do this?”

  “Wait a minute. Was that Dean Whitelaw’s DNA in the blood sample? Is he the guy who punched you out?”

  “Leanne still can’t match the DNA to a name. And apart from his pictures in the press, I’ve never seen Whitelaw in person. But the asshole who attacked me was big, heavy — a real bear. And British. That’s the one irregularity. Whitelaw looks more like your typical senior CEO: lean, gray, dressed head-to-toe in Armani. We still have to figure out how the two of them fit together.” She fixed her eyes on him. “So. Are you in?”

  Finch felt his heart thrumming. His weariness subsided as he contemplated what lay ahead. “Yeah. Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “If you own a hoodie, wear it,” she advised. “Then let’s go back to my place. I’ve got to prepare a few things. Whitelaw lives in Sausalito. We’ll drive over there tonight and have a look when it’s dark. It’s not like I can get a warrant, so we have to study this carefully before we make a move. And we can’t make any mistakes, Will. If we do, we’ll end up in separate jail cells.”

  She laughed, an attempt to break her serious tone. “Which I hear is very bad for clone-bonding.”

  ※

  A little after ten that night they drove past the Whitelaw compound. As her car crawled up the road Eve tried to assess the dynamics of the neighborhood: the topography of the streets, the landscaping, zones that would provide cover and those they should avoid.

  They’d already studied the property layout back at her condo. Google Earth provided an overview that revealed three buildings, a swimming pool and what appeared to be two large sheds. The residence sprawled across the eastern edge of the estate. A three- or four-bay garage stood to the right just past the gated driveway. Close to the south perimeter, past the swimming pool, a small bungalow perched on the brow of a hill. They couldn’t determine if this was a maintenance shed, a studio or some kind of workshop.

  When he’d memorized the layout, Finch wondered how many stories the main house contained. But as they cruised along the road and he could see the building beyond the stuccoed compound walls, he began to worry. It stood at least two levels high, he figured, and probably had a basement — maybe even a sub-basement. All told, the house must be at least twenty thousand square feet. Maybe more. Lots of room to play hide-and-seek.

  “We park here,” Eve said after completing a second drive-by reconnaissance. She pulled the car under the shade of a broad beech tree. “We’ve got a full moon rising around three A.M. If we have to wait all night, this tree should provide some cover.” She set the hand brake and turned the wheel so that the tire butted against the curb.

  The winding downhill slopes in upper Sausalito were steep enough to warrant precaution. Back in January Fiona reported a story about a runaway car parked somewhere in this neighborhood that side-swiped a string of bling vehicles before it bounced through the mayor’s living room window, burst into flames and gutted the entire building. The story began to trend in the social justice forums because the offending vehicle was a 1971 Ford Pinto. At one time Pintos were universally condemned as fire traps but the Detroit auto industry refused to be regulated. The clincher: this particular Pinto was uninsured. Ring one up for the little guys.

  She cracked the windows on the F-150 and flipped the sun visor to cover the top of the windshield, then reached in front of Finch and pulled his visor down, too.

  “I still can’t believe you drive a Ford pickup truck.” He tapped the dash with a knuckle.

  “One of the most common vehicles in America. In my business, it helps to blend in.”

  “So, no Porsche. No Maserati. Even after your settlement, you didn’t want to treat yourself?”

  “I thought of it.” She shrugged. “For a day or two.”

  After a moment she leaned into the footwell and lifted the two trays of sushi that they’d purchased before they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. She began to unravel the plastic wrap.

  “Dinner’s served. You want the California or Dynamite Roll? Or share?”

  “Share. So did you do anything special?”

  “Special?” She passed him a pair of chop sticks wrapped in paper.

  “To celebrate.” He watched a Jaguar crawl past them and then slip out of sight. Finch wondered if he should try to penetrate her reticence to discuss her windfall. Maybe a bad idea; a lot of people built psychological walls around themselves with money.

  “Sure. I paid off the mortgage on my condo. Now take. Eat. Drink.” She passed him a can of Orangina. “I want to be ready when we take this creep down.”

  Applying the square tip of a chopstick to a puddle of soya sauce and wasabi paste, Finch swirled the mixture into a green slurry inside one of the plastic sushi lids. He set a piece of California roll into its center and waited for it to absorb the fiery sauce.

  He set his eyes on the iron gates across the street and thought about Eve’s frugality. She told him that with five percent down and a thirty-year mortgage, she’d purchased her condo the year she started to walk her beat in the Tenderloin District. But when her windfall landed, instead of trading up to a glass penthouse on Telegraph Hill, she decid
ed to continue living in Little Russia. Everything about her apartment revealed her innate thriftiness. The neighborhood, once a blue-collar, working-class district on the foggy side of Presidio Boulevard, still clung to its traditional roots. These days the area nurtured a conservative quietude, far removed from the downtown bustle. That said something about her. What exactly, he wasn’t sure.

  A half hour passed and the night buried the neighborhood under the cover of darkness. Finch liked that they could sit together in complete silence, neither of them compelled to talk. Perhaps the silence itself provided a kind of bond. A way to commune without words or touch, he thought. Then a question came to him.

  “So tell me about your other tattoo. The one with the number.”

  Her chin dipped to one side and for a moment they drifted back into the silence.

  “The number is B25634.”

  “What’s the significance?”

  “My baba’s number. I was named after her. Eve Asimov, my grandmother. The surprising thing is how the number was so unusual for Birkenau.”

  “Birkenau?” Will’s neck stiffened.

  “With everyone else in Birkenau, the Nazis only took the serial numbers up to 19999. Then they’d roll over to a new alpha-series. So when they reached B19999, they should’ve moved the sequence to C00001, C00002 and so on. But the B-series went up to 29999. To this day, nobody knows why.”

  “Jesus.” He turned his head toward the passenger window and drew a hand over his mouth and chin. Then he shifted around to study the look on her face. She appeared distant. Almost vacant.

  “I’m sorry, Eve. It was none of my business.”

  “No. Don’t be. Something good came of it.”

  “Something good?”

  “She survived for one thing. But it’s what she told me that’s important.” She waited a moment before continuing. “Something I never want to forget. That’s why I had her number tattooed on my arm.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “ ‘Never let anyone dominate you.’ ”

  “Well, she was right.” He pressed his back against the upholstery and straightened his spine. He considered the price her grandmother paid for this lesson. A tuition far too dear.

  “So. Does it matter?”

  “What? That you have her tattoo?”

  “No. That I’m one-quarter Jewish.”

  He leaned forward and took her forearm in his hand. He tried to imagine the numbers burning into her baba’s skin. The shock, the smell of singed flesh.

  “Listen, this is one crazy world we live in,” he whispered and shook his head with a look of disbelief. “Don’t ever worry about that, okay? Not with me, anyway. Jewish, Catholic, Muslim. It doesn’t change anything.”

  She smiled and grasped his hand. She was about to say more when a blur of light washed over the hood of the F-150. Then the focussed illumination from a pair of headlamps climbed above the inside of the compound wall.

  “Look.”

  Finch watched the car lights sweep along the driveway toward the wrought-iron gate. The lamplight flashed through the spiked rails and threw a pattern of moving jail-bars across the road and into the F-150. First Eve and then Finch slipped below the cover of the dashboard and waited as the heavy gates swung open and closed with a metallic groan. When they looked up, they saw the black Mercedes-Benz limousine glide past them towards the city.

  Eve gunned the engine. Ten minutes later they passed through the Rainbow Tunnel and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into the city. When they caught up to the limo they followed at a distance until it reached a four-story building on Beach Street, drove up a concrete ramp and disappeared into a parkade.

  ※ — FOURTEEN — ※

  AS THE MERCEDES-Benz crossed the Golden Gate Bridge Dean Whitelaw mulled over his plans. He knew that improvisation would be critical, but that the end result was certain. Only three outcomes were acceptable: the death of the gimp — the pet name he’d given the blackmailer — the recovery of whatever physical evidence the gimp possessed, and Toby Squire’s termination.

  To ensure he could arrange his escape route in advance, Dean told Toby to drive to the top floor of the parkade twenty minutes before the appointed hour. He drew open the privacy screen in the limo and instructed Toby to ease down to the far end of the lot, then circle back so that the hood of the car pointed toward the exit.

  Toby wheeled the car around and parked it. “Like this Mr. W?”

  “Yes. That’ll do. Now listen Toby, no matter what happens, I want you to come out of the car to where I am after I signal you. Do you understand?”

  Toby eyed his master through the rearview mirror. “Yes sir, I do.”

  “Do what?”

  “As you said.” Toby frowned. “Come over to you when you signal me, sir.”

  “Good. Now close the screen and we’ll just wait here.”

  The screen slid into place and Dean lit a Cohiba Esplendidos cigar. He drew a long draft into his lungs and tasted the sweet smoke slipping over the burr of his tongue. Ahh, yes. The scene was now set.

  Once the gimp produced the camera, Dean would reach into his pocket, draw the Smith & Wesson and shoot him through the bridge of his nose, or as close to it as possible. Then he’d fire a second shot through the heart. He’d secure the camera and call Toby over to him. He’d tell Toby to drag the corpse to the edge of the parkade wall, near the shadow cast by the concrete column that supported the roof trusses. The moment Toby touched the body, he’d call to him again, and when Toby turned, he’d shoot him in the chest and through his forehead with the PT745. A man Toby’s size might require three shots, maybe four. He’d wipe his prints from the PT745 and fit it into the right hand of the gimp. Then he’d clean the Smith & Wesson and wrap Toby’s thick fingers around the pistol stock.

  He felt a dull ache twist through the bones in his wrist. Shaking his head in dismay, he found a pill and ground it between his teeth. The powder tasted bitter on his tongue, felt dry as it passed into his throat. He decided to see his doctor again. Maybe tomorrow. Somehow he had to halt the waves of pain rising through his body hour after hour.

  But now, now — now.

  He could feel his belly flood as the sweep of headlamps brushed across the concrete walls and a red Honda NSX nosed up the ramp and parked in a stall next to the staircase. His heart jumped and he tried to push all speculation from his mind. Live in the moment. He settled on a visual affirmation. He held an image in his mind, an instant of exhilaration as he crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, thirty minutes from now when he would pitch the gimp’s camera through the open window, over the pedestrian railing and into the salt water below.

  He could almost hear it splash.

  ※

  Eve parked her Ford F-150 at the curb opposite the parkade and studied the entrance that led to the up-ramp. A swing-arm barrier blocked the entrance. She could use the automated pay system to lift the arm and follow the Mercedes-Benz into the lot, but she decided to keep her options open and park the car where it stood.

  “We’ve got more flexibility if we park here,” she said as she cut the engine.

  Finch pulled at the stump of his earlobe and studied the tiers of the four-story parkade. A thicket of ivy climbed sixty feet from the sidewalk to the top of one wall. Despite the architect’s attempt to soften the mass of concrete with a splash of greenery, this building is as ugly as they come, he decided.

  “Let’s go.” He tugged his hoodie over his head and stepped onto the sidewalk. Together they crossed Beach Street, dodged around the swing-arm barrier and then paused to study the interior of the parkade.

  “Use the stairs.” She pointed her left arm to an open doorway where a floor-to-ceiling “1” had been painted on the adjacent wall.

  “He’ll be up top,” Eve said in a whisper. “Probably some kind of meeting. Maybe a drop-off. Wait a sec before we go on. Here, hold this.”

  She passed a flashlight to Will. He watched as she drew a multitool from her bag and
applied the Phillips head to two screws on a junction box tied into the stairwell light system. A moment later she unravelled the power lines and the staircase blinked into complete darkness. He clicked on the flashlight.

  “Ready?”

  Will led the way. The smell of unvented engine oil washed through his nostrils. When he passed an entrance to the car stalls he scanned the concourse for the limo. Nothing. Half the parking bays stood vacant, typical for the middle of night around Fisherman’s Wharf. As they rose to the next level, he noticed that only a quarter of the stalls held any cars. On the third tier he counted just four vehicles.

  Finch continued up the staircase, his feet now heavy from the climb. As he approached the fourth floor doorway, he paused three steps from the landing and turned off the flashlight. Eve nudged beside him. Together they tried to make out what lay ahead.

  “There.” Finch nodded toward the far end of the parkade. “Just under the shadow.”

  He stepped up to the landing for a better look at the Mercedes-Benz. The car pointed towards the exit ramp. No lights, no engine sounds, no one visible through the tinted windshields. Eve hitched her hand around his elbow and pulled him back a step.

  “I can hear a car coming,” she whispered. “This is where we wait. I’m going to video whatever goes down.”

  As she pulled her phone from her bag Finch watched a Honda NSX pull into a stall opposite the doorway. If he wanted to, he could spit on the hood of the car.

  ※

  Glancing through the rearview mirror, Jack Querrey watched the swing-arm barricade drop behind his Honda NSX. His hands pulled the steering wheel a quarter turn to the right and the car slipped onto the up-ramp. As he rose through the parkade, he glanced at the dashboard clock. Good. Ten minutes late. He wanted to let Whitelaw stew. A man of his status, a self-made Horatio Alger who’d clambered into the top one percent by squashing the other ninety-nine in a hundred below him — a man like that wouldn’t tolerate tardiness very well. And whatever Whitelaw couldn’t tolerate, Querrey decided to embrace. It was an inner game of jujitsu — and one more opportunity to turn mere luck into good fortune.