by Blair Howard
“Okay. I’ll get right on it.”
“So… Jacque. Interviews. We’ll start with what’s left of the investigating officers, and unfortunately that’s just Ron Fowler. I want to hear the story from him before I decide what to do next, but sometime over the next few days we’ll need to go through the post report with Doc Sheddon…. I’m not even sure if Carl Bowden is still alive. I do know he retired years ago.”
“He is,” Heather said. “He’s at the Meadowlands Nursing Home on East Brainerd.”
I frowned. “How the hell do you know that?”
“I saw him there last week. I was visiting my mother.”
That was a first. Heather did not talk about her private life, ever.
“He was in a wheelchair, in the common room. Looked spaced out to me. Just sort of staring out of the window at the ducks on the pond.”
“Okay, well, I want to know why he declared it an accident. So we’ll need to see him too. We’ll do that right after we see Fowler. Then we’ll figure out what to do next. Okay, that’s it for now. Back to work, people. But Jacque, Tim, you stay here. Ronnie, have you got what you need?”
He did.
But I did not. I needed caffeine. “I’m making more coffee—anyone else….” And it was right then that I realized I hadn’t called Amanda. I looked at my watch. It was almost three thirty.
“Sorry guys,” I said. “Go get your own coffee. I need to make a call. I’ll buzz you when I’m done.”
I waited until I was alone and then hit the speed dial. She answered on the second ring.
“Ah,” she said. “So you are still alive. I was beginning to wonder.” She was joking. I could tell. At least I thought I could.
“Yeah… I’m sorry. I just got carried away is all. I have a case.”
“I know you do. You told me, remember? So, when?”
“No later than six o’clock. I promise. What’s for dinner?”
“Jesus, Harry. You’ve got nerve. We’ve been home ten minutes and I’m supposed to turn into this sweet little housewife? I don’t think so. You have two options: pick something up on the way home, or take me out. Which is it going to be?”
I sighed. “Meet me at the Public House at six. That okay?”
I could almost hear her smile. “That would be nice, but not the Public House. No. First, we were there only yesterday for lunch, second, I don’t want to drive, and third, it will be too busy; I want to be alone with you. How about—”
“How about I come home, change, and we go to Ruth’s Chris? I’ll book a table for eight o’clock. Will that work?”
“It will. Don’t be late. I love you.” And she disconnected.
I went to the outer office, beckoned for Margo, and asked her to make the reservation for me. I also asked her to make sure we got a quiet table, and to let me know when she’d confirmed. Then I grabbed a cup of joe and headed back to the conference room. Jacque was seated at the table sipping her coffee. Tim didn’t have any, thank God.
I’ve mentioned Tim before, but you should know he’s a geek in every sense of the word. Dropped out of Georgia Tech as a seventeen-year-old sophomore and has been hacking since his dad bought him his first IBM PC back in 1998. He never got caught although, reading between the lines, he came close a couple of times. He says he’s reformed. And if you believe that, you’d better watch out because there’s a squadron of pigs overhead and they’re about to offload.
He’s also the busiest member of my staff and I love him like a son. Most of the time.
“Ok, Tim,” I said, as I opened my iPad and seated myself at the right side of the table, next to the corkboard. “Let’s have it. What were you able to dig up?”
He picked up his set of papers, settled back in his chair, shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose, stared down at the first page… and I waited. The boy had a bad habit of retreating into some weird world of his own; I sometimes wondered if he suffered from some form of narcolepsy.
Finally: “Tim?” I asked quietly, as I handed one of the sets to Jacque.
“Uh….” He looked up at me. “Oh, yeah. Well, if you look at the papers I made up for you, you’ll see it’s all pretty standard stuff. All four, now three, are brilliant men, but I found little to set them apart except for Judge Ellis Warren and Peter Nicholson. But let’s do the other two first, if that’s okay.”
I nodded. He flipped pages, adjusted his glasses, and began.
“All four went to Baylor High School, where they formed a strong bond; all four graduated with over 4.0 GPAs. They all went on to good schools. As far as I can tell, Myers and Harrison are squeaky clean.” He looked up at me, got no reaction, then continued.
“Harrison graduated from Stanford Law and went to work for the Feds as an assistant prosecutor. Now he’s the Acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee.
“Heath Myers also went to Stanford Law, but he went into private practice here in Chattanooga. He learned the ropes at Robinson and Hart, and then opened his own law office with a couple partners in 2009. They specialize in corporate law.” He smiled at me when he said that last bit, knowing as he did that my father had had several run-ins with the erstwhile Heath Myers. “He’s successful, wealthy, has lots of friends, and is well respected… well, by most of his peers; some, not so much.” Again he smiled at me. “Although he does have a certain reputation for cutting corners….”
“He’s a damned crook, is what he is,” I said. They both looked at me.
“Just saying,” I said with a shrug.
“Well, as I said,” Tim continued. “They both seem to be clean. Now, on to Peter Nicholson.” He flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for, then he looked up at me.
“This one is probably more Ronnie’s area of expertise than mine, but I’ll give you the basics, then you can bring him in if you like.”
“Wait,” I said. “If we need him, let’s get him in here now. No point in going over it twice.”
I picked up the phone and buzzed Ronnie. He arrived a couple of minutes later and took a seat next to Jacque. I nodded for Tim to continue.
He nodded. “Peter Nicholson earned a master’s degree in finance from Booth—University of Chicago—one of the top finance schools in the US. From there he went to work for Charles Schwab and eventually became a stockbroker specializing in the NASDAC….”
“When was this?” Ronnie asked with a knowing look.
Tim flipped through pages, and Ronnie waited with a sly smile on his lips.
“That would have been in… 1995….” Tim and Ronnie said “1995” in unison.
Ronnie leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together behind his neck.
“The beginning of the dot-com bubble,” he said. “I knew it. And right there, if I’m not mistaken, is your motive. They were friends, right? I betcha one or more of the other three, maybe all of them, lost a bunch of money during the collapse and blamed Nicholson for it.”
Tim was right. This was exactly what I’d hired Ronnie Hall for. He’s the best in the business, a financial wizard, and about as different from Tim as the proverbial chalk from cheese. He came to me when I first opened the agency and now heads up my white-collar investigations division. His background is in banking and he has a masters in finance from the London School of Economics.
“Can you find out, Ronnie?”
“Yes. It may take a little while, but it’s all there if you know where to look. I’ll start with their finances. Should be easy enough.”
“Good. There’s no real rush, but soon would be good.” I turned back to Tim. “What else?”
“Let’s talk about Judge Warren.”
Now this should be interesting.
“I don’t know about a financial motive, but in 2004 he married Nicholson’s widow. That might be a motive, right? If he was having an affair with—”
“Yes, Helen Nicholson told me about that. And I think you may be right. I know the judge. He’s a rare piece of
work. I’ve thought for years that he’s corrupt, but proving it… well, let’s just say he’s good, very good. Maybe ‘bad’ would be the operative word. What else?”
“Nothing I can put my finger on, just a lot of innuendo and… oh, yeah; you’re not going to like this: he was, and probably still is, good buddies with Congressman Harper.”
I already knew that too, and I’d had the congressman on my mind for several weeks. It started on the sailboat out in the Caribbean. I was lying out on the foredeck daydreaming when he suddenly popped into my head, and I had an allover uneasy feeling that hadn’t ever really gone away. Maybe it was an omen….
Who the hell knows? I killed his daughter. He sure as hell isn’t going to let that go, even if it was completely justified.
“Warren,” Tim continued, “is the only child of a fairly well-to-do Chattanooga family. After high school he went on to Harvard Law, where he graduated in the top fifth percentile. As you know, he’s now a circuit court judge.” He paused and flipped the page. “Other than his friendship with Harper, and the public outrage when he married Mary Ann Nicholson, he’s clean. He’s a tough SOB, though.”
“That he is,” I mused, “as I well know from experience.”
I kicked back in my chair, stared over at the three photographs, and thought about what I’d heard and what I knew about the people in them. Their eyes seemed to stare right back at me, mocking me, daring me.
What the hell happened that day? Which one of you…. Maybe it was all of you.
“Boss?” Jacque asked, quietly.
“Hm?”
“Nothing. I thought for a moment we’d lost you, that’s all.”
I nodded. “I was trying to get my head around what happened that day. Why was there no in-depth investigation? How the hell did they class it as an accident? Nothing adds up, except for the fact that we are dealing with four very influential individuals, one of whom is dead and most likely murdered by one of the other three.”
I stared up at the photos some more, shook my head, and came back down to earth… well, from Prentice Cooper State Forest, where I’d been playing out, in my imagination, as many of the possible scenarios of what happened that day as I could think of. One of them killed him. Had to. Okay. Let’s go to work.
“Ronnie,” I said, leaning forward over the desk and handing him one of Tim’s information packages, “I want those financials, all of them, but Warren is the one I’m most interested in, right now anyway.
“Tim, keep digging. Dig deep. Find out everything you can about Judge Warren, Mary Ann Nicholson-Warren, and Myers and Harrison. If there’s any dirt on any of them, I want to know. I especially want to know if there was any gossip about Mary Ann and Warren.
“Okay, guys. Get to it.”
I waited until they left, and then I turned to Jacque.
“Tomorrow you and I are going to call on Fowler and Bowden. If we can get that done by lunchtime, we’ll go visit my dad and see what he knows.” I grinned. “Hell, we might even run into the Warrens. That would be fun.”
The look on her face was a picture. This was new territory for her, and I wasn’t sure she was entirely comfortable.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I am.” She smiled. “It’s just… well, a bit overwhelming, you know?”
“I do,” I replied, and I did, “but you’ll get used to it soon. In the meantime….” I looked at my watch; it was almost five. I glanced down at the box on the table and sighed. “I need to be home by six thirty, so let’s take a quick look through this stuff so we know what we’re talking about tomorrow.”
She nodded.
“This is all of the evidence—at least I think it is—that’s left from the original investigation. As for what the hell happened to the rest of it… well, your guess is as good as mine. The autopsy report is simple enough—too simple. The colored still photos are helpful, but before you leave if you could run prints from the Nikon we took this morning, well… I’m particularly interested in the ones of the stump and the bloodstains. These—” I picked them up and shuffled through them “—the originals are good, they cover the site in detail, and these close-ups of the wound in Nicholson’s chest show plenty of detail, but…” I looked closely at them, “they’re a little fuzzy, slightly out of focus….”
What? I shook my head. Something about the wound…. I dunno, and I don’t have time to try to figure it out now.
I set those photos aside until I had more time. Whew!
“We need to go see Doc Sheddon too. I want him to take a look at the report and the photographs. If you would, please. Have Tim make copies of the original photos, and you make copies of the report. Okay. I’ve had enough for today, and I’m taking Amanda out this evening.” I rose to my feet. “Give Fowler a call and see if you can set something up for first thing in the morning. Give Meadowlands a call too. See if we can get in to see Bowden, and call Doc Sheddon; we can see him whenever he’s got a few minutes. If there’s a problem, call me. If not….”
“I know; you’ll see me in the morning.”
I nodded. “You got it.”
Chapter 8
Wednesday, January 11, 8:30 a.m.
I rose early the following morning. I’d made it home the night before just in time to save myself from… well, you know. The steaks at Ruth’s Chris were outstanding, as always, and we made it back home in time to watch the evening news, only we didn’t. I was so tired I fell asleep on the sofa, and that’s where I woke up at five that morning, cold and groggy. On any other day I would have cleared the cobwebs by going for a run, but not that day. It was raining—no, it was storming, and the view over the city…. Well, there wasn’t one. Visibility was almost zero. We were up among the clouds: rain and dense fog—it was enough to kill the mood of even the most upbeat person, one of which… I ain’t.
The drive down the mountain that morning was a test, not only of my driving skills on the mountain roads in the middle of a thunderstorm, but also of nerve. At 7:15 a.m. it was still dark, and the road, blanketed in fog, was a virtual river. The water cascaded down off the heights onto the road in torrents. And it was cold, barely above freezing. I had the climate control in the Maxima set to a balmy 75 degrees, but even so, I couldn’t help wishing I was back on the sunny beaches of Calypso Key.
Once I was off the mountain, though, and onto Broad Street, things got a little better. Still, by the time I reached my offices I felt like I’d driven a hundred miles. Downtown was half flooded and still dark, and I braved the few yards from my car to the side door in a downpour, collar turned up, keys in hand. Fortunately, Jacque had arrived a few minutes earlier and it was already unlocked.
She was dressed in jeans, knee-high boots, and a white roll-neck sweater that contrasted starkly with her dark skin and even darker hair. The Smith and Wesson M&P9 was holstered on her right hip, something I’d never seen before, at least as far as she was concerned. It was something I was going to have to get used to.
My own Heckler and Koch VP9 was secured in its shoulder rig under my leather jacket. I too was wearing a roll-neck sweater, but mine was black, as were my jeans and jacket. I was dressed for comfort.
I usually get my own coffee—I don’t expect the people who work for me to wait on me too—but today Jacque had already made it for me, and a twenty-ounce Yeti cup was waiting for me on my desk, the gas fire logs on and turned up high. For the first time that day, I felt quite comfortable.
Other than my home, my personal office is the one place where I’m truly happy. It’s as comfortable as I could possibly have made it, and it cost me more to decorate than I care to reveal. It has all the trimmings: a huge, antique mahogany desk, leather chairs, iMac computer, but I also spent a lot of money on the decor. The walls are paneled with dark walnut; there are two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; the ceiling is painted a soft shade of magnolia and home to a huge crystal chandelier, something I picked out on a whim for reasons even I can’t recall. The windows are dressed with iv
ory sheers that contrast with heavy brocade drapes that match the carpet. Several pieces of artwork—local scenes by local artists—adorn the walls. They’re not worth a fortune, but they were costly enough. There’s also a small drinks cabinet where I keep my special goodies, including several bottles of Laphroaig Quarter Cask scotch whisky. But the focal point of the room is the floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace. The chimney is fake, but the gas logs provide plenty of warmth and atmosphere. The room had been designed by a master. Her intention was to impress my clients, to instill a sense opulence and success. She claimed that was important. Whatever. I like it because it’s a retreat, a place to go when I need to be alone, shut out the rest of the world, and relax, either in the huge leather chair behind my desk or in front of the fire.
“So,” I said, dropping into one of the chairs by the fireplace, coffee in hand, “what’s the plan?”
Jacque sat down on the other side of the coffee table. “We have an appointment with Mr. Fowler at nine and the receptionist at Meadowlands said we could drop by anytime other than between noon and one thirty, which is when they serve lunch. Dr. Sheddon will not be available until tomorrow, but he said we can go by there at nine, provided nothing happens overnight.”
“Hah,” I said. “The way the gangs are acting up right now…. Okay, nine o’clock it is. How are Bob and the others doing out there?”
“They’re fine. Everything… all of the cases are up to scratch and on schedule. Ronnie and Tim are still gathering what you need. They should have it for you later today. Other than that….”
I nodded, stared into the flames, sipped on my coffee, and was soon lost in thought, back in Prentice Cooper. I could picture what they said had happened, or what was supposed to have happened, in my mind’s eye.
Hell, shotguns don’t go off when you drop them. Well, rarely, but for sure not in a situation like that. Where were the others? What the hell was he doing on his own…. If he was on his own. I know….