“My Marine superpowers. That, and the note of excitement in your voice.”
“Which is why journalists make lousy poker players. I checked with a contact at Tate Enterprises. It was Alfred Tate who hired Clinefeld Engineering to do a site investigation at the cement factory. Strictly illegal since he doesn’t own the land.”
“Alfred Tate suffered a stroke six months ago. He’s incapacitated.”
“Or maybe not. He made the request only a few weeks ago. Or someone in his office did, anyway.”
“You have any idea why?”
“Not yet. Maybe it’s all just post-stroke disorientation. DPC had a survey conducted last April by a company named Geotech Engineering. They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, and it’s their report that DPC used to state the value for the land.”
“Did Clinefeld actually conduct the site investigation?”
“I’d love to know. I called the office a bunch of times yesterday, but all I get is a request to leave a message. So far, no one has called me back. But the day is young.” A shrill of phones went off in the background. “Ah, crap. I gotta go.”
“Wait—”
“Buy me coffee next time.”
He hung up. I called Cohen and left a voice mail. It was a long shot, but worth pursuing. “If you don’t have an ID on the dead man yet, try Clinefeld Engineering. Alfred Tate asked for a land survey a few weeks ago—the request is in that folder from Ben’s desk. Maybe they only now got it scheduled, and the dead man is one of their engineers.”
Hiram Davenport had homes in multiple locales, as one would expect of someone with his wealth. Island homes, mountain homes, a villa in Italy. But in his hometown, he’d opted to keep it simple—he lived in one of his own developments. Davenport Towers was a cluster of high-rises that had sprouted like weeds in a former industrial area near the railroad tracks close to downtown Denver. Before Transco United took over, the place had been a mix of small and medium-size businesses, low-income housing, and a homeless camp near the river. Hiram’s company had no doubt promised to clean up an area gutted by the 2008 recession and, in exchange, been able to snap up the land for a song. He pushed the rezoning through and got the city to enforce an ordinance that said neither his trains nor anyone else’s could sound their horns in that area between the hours of ten p.m. and eight a.m.
Once he had broken ground, the high-rises popped up like Legos in place of lost dreams and hardscrabble lives. The bottom floors were filled with coffee shops and boutiques and the remaining floors were made up of million-dollar apartments, the parking lots agleam with shiny new BMWs and Range Rovers. Never mind the water shortages or demolished homes or the displaced homeless. Never mind that per capita, Denver already had enough billionaires to make it hit the “most greedy” lists of cities in the United States without luring in more. Hiram had bet that people would jump at the convenience of quick downtown and highway access and the appeal of the brand spanking new, even with the gritty aesthetics of the railroad tracks. And he’d been right. People snapped up the leases like they were freebies on Black Friday.
“Takes money to make money,” as my grams always said. Once Hiram married into it, he’d done well. I’m sure the views were spectacular.
Now as I exited the interstate, the high-rises, each one a glass-and-stone tower rising twenty stories or more, stood rosy in the morning light. Their windows were a gleaming reflection that caught the sunlight and tossed it back into the air in a shimmering halo.
How, I wondered, had Ben Davenport felt about his father’s conspicuous wealth after the poverty of Iraq? His father’s America was a two-edged sword that offered guilt as an ugly counterpoint to the good life. But maybe people like Hiram didn’t worry much about moral injury.
I splashed through a gutter flowing with rainwater and pulled into a lot lined with media vans. A lone cop kept vigil, his job, presumably, to keep the journalistic mob from Hiram’s door. Inside the building, I knew, would be other cops—detectives in plainclothes watching for anyone who might want to murder the family patriarch in order to finish what they’d started.
I found a twenty-minute parking space reserved for the coffee shop on the ground floor. As Clyde and I got out, I saw a man in a gray suit emerge from the towers and head toward a black BMW idling nearby.
Lancing Tate. No doubt come to pay his respects to Hiram only a day after suggesting it was Hiram’s fault that members of his family had been murdered.
I signaled Clyde and we made a beeline across the parking lot toward Tate, cutting him off twenty feet from his vehicle.
“Mr. Tate,” I said. “I need a word with you.”
He didn’t look at me. “If you want an interview, call my office.”
He tried to move past, but I stepped with him.
“Sir.” I flashed my badge. “We need to talk.”
Behind me, a car door opened. Tate’s driver. Who probably doubled as his bodyguard.
Tate took in the badge and then my uniform, and finally he looked at my face. His eyes flicked to Clyde. “I’ve nothing to say to you. Get out of my way.”
A man who’d clearly created himself at a gym loomed into my field of view. Clyde lowered his head, ready to leap if I gave the word.
“Back off,” the bodyguard said to me. Now the uniformed cop who’d been holding off the media was heading in our direction.
I ignored the muscle and said to Tate, “It’s about that old merger between T&W and Davenport’s railroad. I’d rather talk to you than the media.”
“That wasn’t a merger. That was a scalping.”
The uniformed cop arrived. “You guys need help?”
The bodyguard and I both said no, and the cop retreated.
“I know there was something off about that merger,” I said to Tate. “That’s exactly why I want to know about it.”
“You work for DPC.”
“My concern goes beyond that.”
His gaze dropped again to Clyde and he frowned.
The bodyguard puffed out his chest as if he thought that would scare me off. “Sir?”
“Five minutes,” I said.
The look Tate gave me could have taken flesh. But he nodded. “Make it two. We can talk by your truck. If you lock up your dog.”
“I was bitten by a stray dog when I was a kid,” Tate explained after I’d settled Clyde in the passenger seat of my truck. “I had to go to the hospital for stitches and a rabies shot. We always had dogs when I was growing up. But now I try to avoid them.”
“Understandable.”
I leaned against the sun-warmed truck. Not even eight in the morning, and the day was already hot. Leaves hung listlessly and steam rose from nearby drainage vents. Tate stood on the sidewalk, in the shade cast by Hiram’s high-rise. If he was roasting in the three-piece suit, he didn’t show it.
“I know Hiram is a formidable rival,” I said. “Losing T&W must have been hard on your father. I just wondered if he ever talks about it.”
“You and that TV reporter,” he said. “If you’re looking for a way to link that old merger with the fight for the bullet train, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“How did your father feel about that takeover?”
Tate folded his arms. “It broke his heart, at least for a time. I was away at school when it happened, but my mother told me how much it hurt him.” He shrugged. “But he’s a businessman. And this is the business we’re in. The history of railroads is all about mergers. Has been from the very beginning.”
“Did you know that just a few weeks ago, your father asked Clinefeld Engineering to do a site investigation of the land that was part of that merger?”
“That’s impossible. My father can barely remember his own name. Where did you get that idea?”
“Could someone else in your company have requested it?”
“Why would they? We’ve had nothing to do with that land for almost thirty years.” He dropped his arms and drummed the fingers of his left hand
against his thigh. “What are you getting at?”
“Could you confirm with your people, Mr. Tate, and let me know?”
“If you think it’s important, I can check with our land office.” He shrugged. “But if my father actually managed to request a survey, or got someone to do it for him, it was probably because he thought it was 1982 again.”
“Thank you.” I took out a business card and wrote 02XX56XX15XP on the back, then showed it to Tate. “Does this number mean anything to you?”
“The police showed it to me yesterday. Sorry, it means absolutely nothing. What is this about?”
“What if you take out the Xs?”
He looked at the number again, then shook his head. “No.”
“The locals called it Deadman’s Crossing.”
His face cleared. “Wait. This is the crossing at Potters Road, isn’t it? My dad mentioned that name years ago—Deadman’s. It’s the crossing that Hiram made such a big deal about upgrading after the merger.” His wide eyes met mine. “Samantha Davenport was killed near that crossing. You think these deaths have something to do with that crossing.”
“We’re looking at everything.”
“But how could the Davenport murders and Lucy’s kidnapping have anything to do with that crossing?”
“Let’s stick with the past. If mergers and takeovers are a regular part of business, why did the 1982 takeover upset your father so much?”
Tate gave a disgusted shake of his head. “You work for Hiram Davenport. What do you think?”
“There are a lot of layers between his office and mine. I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“Hiram Davenport is the most rapacious man I have ever known. He went after my father’s railroad using every legal tactic known. Which, as I’ve said, is business. I can at least understand that. But I suspect he used a few illegal tactics as well.”
“Such as?”
Tate looked across the parking lot. I followed his gaze toward the media vans parked on the street, then looked back at him. I noticed a small cut near his ear where he must have nicked himself during his morning shave. Odd, for a man who seemed so meticulous. When he brought his eyes back, his expression had turned hard. He shoved his hands in his pockets and spread his feet, a gesture that looked like he’d watched too many Great Gatsby movies.
“All I know,” he said, “is what my father told me when I came home from school that year. This was months after the fact. Dad called Hiram a lot of names. Cheat and scoundrel were some of the nicer ones. Then yesterday, after the detectives came to speak with me, I went to see my father. I wanted to try and explain to him what had happened to Hiram, to ask him if he had any ideas about it. Dad still lives in the house I grew up in. But it’s more like a hospital now than a home. He’s been bedridden since the stroke.”
I nodded in sympathy.
“As soon as I mentioned Hiram’s name,” Tate said, “Dad started talking about the merger.”
“What did he say?”
“Just that it was wrong. That what happened was all wrong. But I don’t think he was talking only about the merger.”
“What do you think he meant?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. He got agitated, and I changed the subject.”
“Would your mother have a better idea what he might mean? Surely they spoke about it.”
“My mother passed away years ago.”
Again, I nodded my sympathy. “Have you ever heard of a man named William King? He lived in Columbus, Ohio.”
Tate scratched his chin, thinking. “Sorry. No.”
“Or maybe his mother, Betsy. She worked for DPC.”
“I’m afraid not. Is this important?”
I decided to walk on the wild side. “The police are suggesting that if Hiram is distracted by a family tragedy, he might let go of his dream of a bullet train. Leaving you as the only one with the resources and infrastructure to pursue it.”
Tate flushed. “You’re suggesting that I had something to do with what happened to the Davenports? That’s outrageous.”
“Did you?”
Tate’s spine went rigid. “Aside from how despicable that very suggestion is, if you knew anything about Hiram Davenport, you’d know that kind of strategy would never work.”
“Why is that?”
“For Hiram, relationships are a game. He likes to figure out your vulnerabilities and your ambitions and then use them against you. I don’t know if he’s capable of caring about other human beings, including his own family. The only thing that matters to him is his empire. And the centerpiece of that empire is his railroad. He’d never let anything distract him from that.”
“Not even his granddaughter?”
He gave me a contemptible look. “Depends on her value on the open market. I heard about the reward. Ten million is nothing to him. It just makes him look good.” He freed his hands and glanced at his watch. “I have to go.”
“One more question, Mr. Tate.” I thought of MoMA and the fact that both Samantha and Veronica Stern were part of the art scene. And that Stern had abandoned Lancing’s company for Hiram’s. “Do you like art?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“You know, sculpture, paintings. Photography.”
“Sure, I guess.”
“Would you say you’re a patron of the arts?”
“No. What are you getting at, Agent Parnell?”
“Never mind. Thank you for your time, Mr. Tate. Here’s my card. You’ll let me know what you learn about the site investigation?”
“If it will help find Lucy. But I want you to leave my father out of this. His life has been nothing but struggle. Now that he’s dying I’d like him to have some peace.”
CHAPTER 18
When I was very young, my mother took me to a fish farm. She thought it would please me to see the artificial ponds with their tiny fry. You could buy food from a machine for a quarter, and when you tossed the pellets in, the water boiled with gaping mouths as the fish fought for the food. That was what stayed with me. The water roiling with openmouthed fish. And the fighting.
—Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.
After Tate left, Clyde and I made our way through the ground-floor maze of shops and up to the second floor, where the residential area began. The elevators opened onto a lushly carpeted lobby that swallowed all sound. Marble columns, gilt-framed mirrors, individually lighted works of abstract art, and immense potted palms rounded out a décor that suggested a five-star hotel lobby rather than a Denver high-rise. Unlike the ground floor, up here there were no patrol cops or members of the press. Too gauche for the clientele, I imagined. There was a single security guard and one detective. I picked out the detective by his cheap suit.
Clyde and I crossed to the guard’s desk and I showed my badge. “I’m Special Agent Parnell with Denver Pacific Continental. Mr. Davenport is expecting me.”
The guard studied my badge, phoned in to verify it, then called up to Hiram’s penthouse and got the go-ahead to buzz me up. He escorted us to the elevator and pressed the call button. When the doors opened, he waved us in, then reached past me and inserted a passkey.
“You’re good to go,” he said.
Twenty-two floors up, the elevator doors opened onto an atrium filled with light from two banks of windows. The polished wood floors glowed serenely in the morning sun and the air smelled of flowers from an immense vase set on a glass table in the middle of the space.
All around the vase and piled on the floor were stuffed animals, cards, and more flowers. An outpouring of sympathy for Hiram.
A door straight ahead opened and a middle-aged man with a crew cut, arms big as tree trunks, and eyes like chipped glass emerged to check my credentials. He studied my badge, eyeballed Clyde, and asked if I had a gun.
I showed him.
“Empty it, please.”
These guys were serious. I shrugged and popped out the magazine then cleared the chamber. Pick your
battles.
“What’s it like being the executive protection for a man like Davenport?” I asked by way of making conversation.
The muscle didn’t respond. He opened the door he’d just come through and gestured me to follow. “This way, Agent Parnell.”
He led me past spacious living areas and down a hallway filled with pictures of Hiram posing with a variety of dignitaries. Presidents and congressmen mainly, although there was the occasional Hollywood celebrity. I followed the muscle to a closed door near the end of the hall, where he stopped and knocked lightly. A voice from within told us to enter.
The first thing I saw as Clyde and I stepped through the doorway were the wraparound windows on three sides. I’d been right. The views were spectacular.
Hiram Davenport stood at the wall of windows that looked east, over the railroad tracks and into the heart of downtown Denver. Dressed casually in khaki pants and a polo shirt, he stood with his hands in his pockets, shoulders back, staring out the windows like an emperor surveying his realm. Which was appropriate enough, I supposed.
Except that the image was marred by the long green hose that ran from the plastic tubing hooked over his ears to an oxygen concentrator humming quietly next to the sofa. Two nubs were fitted into his nostrils. This was new. And the reason for last night’s cancelled meeting, I assumed.
As Clyde and I crossed the floor to join him, I took in the rest of the room—the white-and-tan furniture, the tasteful objets d’art. Splashes of color in tribal-print rugs and a single piece of art over the white leather sofa—a painting of a man bending over to look at another man swimming in a pool. Green mountains rose in the background. I was sure it was original and expensive.
I couldn’t help it—my first thought was that this wasn’t a place where you brought the grandkids to play. What was it Samantha had said to Veronica Stern? That Hiram was big on gifts, less so on family events.
Hiram turned at my approach. He removed the oxygen leaders, turned off the machine, and beckoned for me to join him at the window. Clyde and I went to him and I ordered my partner to sit. Hiram gave Clyde a cold look but after a blink decided to accept my partner’s presence. He turned to me.
Dead Stop (Sydney Rose Parnell Series Book 2) Page 22