by Unknown
“It's a long story,” I warned him.
“Oh. Well, pretend you work at a newspaper—put it on a fifth-grade reading level and condense it into a short one.”
So I ended up telling Ian everything. How I had posed as part of the cleaning crew, intercepted the Metropolax office, snooped inside the recently looted supply closet. I told him about Suzie's bizarre resignation letter, and even more troubling note scrawled on the ladies' room mirror. I told him how Fritz Sachs had swept the burglary under the rug, how Jennifer had gone to lunch and never returned. How Suzie had moved to Big Clock less than six months ago, and had possibly been threatening someone in town who enjoyed a “facade of respectability.” By the time I got around to the dead woman who had washed up in the Chicago River, Ian's mouth was hanging open. His eyes appeared not to blink. It wasn't a good thing.
Perhaps I shouldn't have, but there was one detail I deliberately left out. It was the part about Fredriksen's cell phone number being etched in Suzie Diamanti's desk blotter. I couldn't bring myself to reveal that part to Ian. Fredriksen was his direct boss. He was a powerful man who owned two newspapers in Minnesota and a theater in LA. If I threw his name into this muddled mix, it might affect that way that Ian proceeded. Inevitably, Ian would be concerned with covering himself, protecting his job—maybe he would even feel obligated to go straight to Fredriksen and fill him in on everything I said.
Maybe not—but I couldn't take that chance. It stood to reason that Ian would have more loyalty to his boss than to me.
Now I waited for him to react. Finally, he shook his head, tossed the pen he'd been tapping on his desk. “Rocket, I can't believe you got this involved.”
“Ian, I did tell you I was serious about that wager of ours, that I was going to look into the robbery.”
“Yes, I understand that,” he said. “But I assumed that meant calling the company, identifying yourself as a representative of the local newspaper and seeing if anyone would talk to you.”
“I tried that—”
“I assumed it meant going over there,” he continued, “and asking individuals who worked in the building if they'd seen anything, heard anything. I assumed it meant canvassing a few obvious sites like Ebay to see if office supplies matching what was stolen were being sold or auctioned off locally.”
“Okay, that I did!” I said, trying to get some brownie-points.
“You've put the paper in a bad position with all your duplicity, for lack of a better word. God, I can't believe this mess,” he said. “You do realize that you could get arrested. That's how ridiculous this is.”
“What would I get arrested for? Cleaning against the will of people who weren't even there when I showed up each night? I didn't steal anything. I didn't lie about my name or identity.” (Come to think of it, I didn't do much cleaning, either.)
“No, just about being hired by the cleaning company,” he pointed out. “Just about your right to trespass in a locked building at night.”
“Ian, I'm sorry!” I yelped. “I admit I got in over my head.”
“Thanks for admitting the obvious. Now what are we going to do about it? That's the question.” He picked up the pen he'd cast aside, and started tapping it again. I could tell he was thinking analytically about my predicament.
I decided to speak. “Look. No matter how poor my ideas might have been, the fact remains that a woman's life might be involved here. Suzie Diamanti is gone. She has basically vanished—under questionable circumstances. The note on the mirror was a cry for help, I think. And I'm afraid to say, there's more.”
He stopped tapping. “Dear God—what?”
“Hang on.” I ducked out of his office, crossed to my desk and grabbed my bag. Once I was seated in front of Ian again, I pulled out the gold heart necklace. “I found it in the supply room at Metropolax. Look at the engraving. I think it belonged to Suzie. No one else's name on the staff begins with an 'S.' It's hard to believe this necklace was sitting there for eons, unnoticed—so it would have to belong to an employee who was relatively recent. I'm trying to figure out how to learn the identity of 'X,'” I added, referring to the inscription: S, With Love, X. But the thing is, if this did belong to Suzie...well, I've been giving this a lot of thought. What if the whole robbery thing was just a ruse?”
Thought he didn't shoot my theory down, he did appear concerned. “Meaning what exactly?”
I replied, “Think about it. The items that went missing that night were dissimilar and not particularly valuable. You've got Suzie's necklace on the floor—which could have gotten broken during some kind of struggle—and now Suzie's gone. What if what really happened that night was that Suzie was killed in the supply closet? And therefore what occurred after—the smashing of the lock, the taking of the items—was a smokescreen. A way to get rid of whatever physical evidence was at the scene.”
After a thoughtful pause, Ian said, “That's a lot of might haves and could haves, Rocket. Now, you say you have photos of the writing that was on the mirror? Anything else that's tangible?”
“Besides the engraved necklace, I have my notes on the staff, a copy of Suzie's resignation letter, and also a photograph of a blood-stained Post It note I saw in the supply closet. I think it's blood, anyway. I wasn't sure when I first saw it, but now it would make sense. Hey, do you think this is enough to get the police to run a DNA match on that body that washed up in the Chicago River, to see if it's Suzie?”
“No, of course not. Rocket, look at it. This is a lot of conjecture. And you're assuming that police even have a sample of Suzie's DNA to compare. You're assuming that the Chicago PD is going to work with the Big Clock PD on this—there are jurisdiction issues involved here, too.” He sat more forward. His brows were pinched in deep concentration.
“I've been checking online for a follow-up on the body that washed up, but haven't found any,” I told him. “I have to assume that the woman still has not been identified.”
“All right,” Ian finally said. “Give me whatever you have. Leave it all with me and I'll take a look at it tonight. See if I can help you make sense of this.”
“You will?” I said, suddenly feeling excited to have a partner, and no longer to have this secret from Ian. “You'll really help me?”
“On one condition,” he said. Now his voice was stern. “You are not to go back there. Is that clear? You are not to 'clean' or snoop around or get personally involved any further with this. Except at a distance, and with full disclosure to me.”
“But why—”
“Rocket, those are my terms. I want you to get your work done around here and just leave this to me for now.”
“Okay,” I agreed, stood and turned to go.
“And Rocket, wait. Does anyone else know about this?”
“No.” Not counting Amy Laraby, but I didn't figure that was what he meant.
“Let's keep it that way for now. I'm going to call a contact of mine at the police department—” I opened my mouth to protest, when Ian held his hands up. “Relax, I won’t mention your name. I'll keep it vague. But let's mobilize through the proper channels, see if we can get the police to look into this.” I already knew that the only “mobilizing” Detective Frandsen seemed to understand was the Gravy Train down Easy Street. But I didn't argue, just thanked Ian for his help.
On my way out of Ian's office, I remembered what he'd said about “full disclosure” and turned back. My hand on the doorknob, I tried to sound casual as I threw in one more detail. “Oh, by the way, I also happened to—no big deal, but, uh—meet with HR over there and pretend to be interested in becoming their receptionist.”
Ian shut his eyes then. Shook his head. “Just go,” he said. It appeared I had used his last shred of patience for the day.
On the way to my desk, I happened to glance back. I saw Ian take what looked like a pill bottle out of his desk drawer. Curiously, I watched as he unscrewed the cap, poured something into his hand, and brought his palm to his mouth. I wondered what p
ills he was taking, but if there was ever a time to ask a question like that, it surely wasn’t now.
Chapter 26
True to his word, Ian called Detective Frandsen the following morning. Regrettably, the event resulted in an embarrassing moment for me (at the hands of my arch nemesis).
The day started very well. The sun burst through my window, made brighter by the snow-crusted branches that brushed against the glass. I sprung out of my cocoon of comforters feeling excited, renewed. The idea that I had a partner in this whole mystery—and not just anyone, but Ian my intelligent, if sometimes uptight, boss. Mr. This-is- Unprintable-Until-We-Suck-All-the-Whimsy-Out-of-It. If logic were an emotion, Ian would be crying all the time. Surely he would come up with some insights I had missed in my own scattered analyses.
I knew I could talk to Amy, but at the same time, I didn't want to overburden her. She already had a lot on her mind with the upcoming gala at R&D.
I arrived at the Chronicle early, as I often did. The only one there yet was Ian, whom I could see through the window on his office door. I didn't want to ambush him as soon as I walked in, so I went to my desk, booted up my computer and went about my normal morning tasks: going through the emails and voicemails, putting on the coffee, and sorting through the pile of papers that had accumulated on the fax machine.
Two of the items that had come in were invoices, which Ian always had me file in a bin that hung on the wall between his office and Monica's. Every so often he would clear out the bin and send any necessary paperwork to the Accounts Payable department in Minneapolis that we shared with Culture & Performance. So I crossed the room and just as I was about to slide the invoices into the bin, I heard Ian's voice through the glass. “Hi, Tim, how're you doing? It's Ian Beller at the Chronicle.” I froze, papers still in hand. Tim was Frandsen's first name. I couldn't help leaning in closer to the wall to get a better listen.
Inexplicably, a tight knot formed in my stomach. I couldn't help being nervous that Detective Frandsen would reveal how I'd already called him on this. Or that Ian would tell him too much and I'd end up getting arrested for trespassing or some other charge I hadn't seen coming. Really I didn't have a clear picture of any one precise scenario that I feared. All I had was this uncomfortable, nervous knot coiling up my insides.
“Hey, Caitlyn—getting an earful over there?”
I jumped. With shame, I spun around, to find the worst sight known to humankind at this moment. Bud, staring at me with his usual shit-eating-grin. “Try a glass, it works better!” he announced.
God, would he just shut up!
I looked for the nearest stapler to throw at his head. Okay, fine, I didn't. (But have thought about it since and lamented my slow reflexes.)
Even though I felt furious with him right now—for not only interrupting my eaves-dropping, but then calling me out on it—I knew I couldn't show it. That would only make it worse for me. It would confirm my guilt and Bud would probably make an even bigger deal out of it. So I attempted to downplay the whole moment. “No, I was just filing these,” I said casually and held up the invoices.
Bud remained aglow with the fake-nice smile that had become his trademark. “Ian must be having a pretty interesting conversation in there, ey?”
“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said simply, feeling my cheeks burn red. I dropped the faxes in the bin and crossed back to my desk. “You're here early today, Walter,” I added, then pretended to be consumed in my emails until he eventually left.
Not to sound like a wannabe Zen master, but as soon as one door closed, another opened—Ian came out of his office at the precise moment Bud exited. (I envied his timing.) “Rocket, good, glad you're here. When you have a moment, stop in my office.”
I hopped up and practically ran in. Because of Bud, I had no idea what had just transpired with Detective Frandsen. I would have only Ian's word to go on. Not that I didn't trust him, but I would've preferred to hear the conversation unfold, rather than get a man's cursory synopsis. “First off, I spoke with my contact at the police department.”
“Great,” I said. “How did that go?”
“Well, not so fruitful, unfortunately.”
I tried to act surprised by Detective Frandsen's allergy to police work. “Well, how can that be? Did you tell him everything?”
“More or less,” Ian replied. “I took a page out of your playbook and kept most of what I said hypothetical.”
“Of course.”
“The bottom line is, as it stands now, there have been no missing reports filed on either of those women from Metropolax. We have no physical evidence of a crime, except for possibly the blood-stained Post It...but even if it did turn out to be blood, it wouldn't be enough blood to initiate an investigation or even get a search warrant and there would be nothing to compare the blood to at this point.”
“So it's a dead end? What about that body in the Chicago River?” I said.
Ian took a seat at his desk and motioned for me to sit, as well. Calmly, he said, “First things first. It's not a dead end. But we're going to have to come up with more conclusive information ourselves before the police are going to help us, that's clear.”
“So then you really believe me, Ian? How something is very wrong at this company? You're not mad anymore?”
“Rocket, I was never mad. You just caught me off-guard with all this yesterday. But last night I looked everything over and I had a few thoughts.” He flipped open a folder that contained my blown-up photos and handwritten notes about the staff. Eagerly, I sat up straighter in the chair. “One thing we might be able to work through is the name 'Sox.'”
Ian leaned back in his own chair just a fraction, and tented his hands together pensively. “For now, let's assume your theory is correct. That this note on the mirror was a hasty, last-ditch effort on Suzie Diamanti's part to name her assailant. Suppose, like you said, she was being chased by an attacker, and only had time to duck into the ladies' room and do this, before she was caught?” He held up the photo of the mirror shot with the words: Sox killed me.
“Why use a nickname?” he continued. “What if whoever finds the note doesn't know who that is? Think about it: this is your one moment to name your attacker and you choose a moniker instead of naming him or her straight out?”
“I know, I know! That's what I'm saying!”
He stilled my pronouncements with his hand, as if to say: Ease up there, Sparky. “Wait—now it might make sense,” he went on, “if you're afraid that using the person's name might implicate the wrong person.”
“Oh.” I paused for a second. “Huh?” I so wanted to understand it the first time.
“Let's say there are two men named 'Paul' working at a company,” Ian explained. “If you write 'Paul killed me,' which Paul would you be talking about? What if people assume you mean Paul Jones, when you're really talking about Paul Smith? Just for an example.”
“Of course!” I said. “Ian, there are two Dianas who work there—that must be it! One of those Dianas must be 'Sox'—”
“No, actually that's not it,” he corrected me. “It is one possibility, however.” He pulled out from among my notes a sheet of paper that had a list of the staff's names and slid it toward me. When all the names were in front of me like this, Ian's theory began to take a more robust shape in my mind.
“Wait...” I murmured, finally getting where he was going. “'Diana' is not the only name that overlaps on this list.”
Pointing to the names with his pen, Ian said, “You've got Diana James and James Williams. Then you've got James Williams and William Christopher.” I recalled what Bill told me at the party, that most of his coworkers did, in fact, call him William. (I thought of another name that overlapped. But I kept it to myself.)
“So you think one of these four is 'Sox'?”
Ian slipped the page back in the folder. “It's a theory anyway. It would explain why she used a distinct nickname instead of a real name.”
“But wh
y not just write the full name?” I said. “Then there would be no mistake.”
“If your theory is true that she barely even had time to slip away and eke out this cry for help,” Ian said, again holding up the mirror shot, “then she probably didn't think she'd have time to write out the full name, first and last. What if she'd started to and Sox caught up with her before she'd even finished the message? 'Sox' might've been Suzie's way of naming the person in time, and still allowing no confusion as to which staffer she was implicating. The problem, of course, is that you were the one to find the message—and so the name means nothing to you.” He closed the folder. “Like I said, it's a theory.”
“I like it! Although...if Suzie were pressed for time, as I do believe she was, I wonder why she didn't just use the person's initials,” I remarked.
“Too broad,” Ian countered. “Initials wouldn't be specific enough to indict someone within her own company.”
Nodding slowly, I added, “Plus, if 'Sox' were Diana Dupont, 'D.D.' wouldn't be the best identifier since Diana James was often called Dede around the office...”
Momentarily, Ian seemed to weigh this, then said, “Beyond just the name overlap theory, it's also possible the name 'Sox' had a personal significance. That there was some connection intrinsic to the nickname itself which Suzie wanted to be uncovered. But now, we're just wildly speculating, and getting away from reasonable deduction.” I almost asked what was wrong with that. But stopped myself just in time.
“Speaking of names, 'John Black' kind of sounds fake, doesn't it?”
“Excuse me?” Ian replied, a bit confused.
“I just mean, John Black sounds like a fake name. Don't you think?”
“But back to conspiracy theories within the realm of the plausible...” Ian began with that tone I'd come to recognize—a mix of condescension and sarcasm. The same tone he employed whenever he characterized me in terms of Nancy Drew. Frankly, the trait needed work. But now was hardly the time to say that. Instead, I said, “Where do you think Jennifer Agnor fit into all this?”