by Sara Rosett
She shook her head to banish those images. So much had happened since then. She scanned the parking lot, but didn’t see Sharon’s white minivan. She must be running late, but there was Connor’s precious Beemer wedged into the last space on the back row to protect it from door dings. She gripped the door handle on the office’s front door and pushed, calling out, “Connor? It’s me, Zoe.”
There was no answer. He was probably on the phone. He always was. While Jack preferred to text, Connor liked to talk. More like, hear himself talk, Zoe thought as she took a few steps toward Connor’s office, then her pace faltered. Underlying the smell of copy paper, ink, and old coffee, there was a funny smell...not a gas leak...something else. Something faintly rancid. Had a mouse or something died in one of the walls? Zoe had seen (and smelled) some pretty gross stuff as a property manager. She’d been called on to remove dead mice from traps and the bathrooms—well, people could be disgusting, especially when they didn’t have to clean up after themselves.
She walked to Connor’s office door and stepped into the doorway. “Connor,” she said uncertainly. His oversized executive leather chair was turned slightly away from her, but she could see he wasn’t on the phone. He sat motionless, one arm aligned neatly on the armrest. “Connor?” She repeated, her voice almost a whisper. Her heart began to thump in her chest. She wanted to leave, but forced herself to take a few hesitant steps until she could see his face. His thin blond hair hung limply over his forehead, but didn’t conceal the bright red bullet hole between his open eyes.
Chapter Three
ZOE wasn’t sure how long she stood like that, staring at Connor’s body, but it was probably only a few seconds before the front door opened, then solid clicks sounded as someone stepped across the small tiled entry area.
Zoe jerked around. “Hey, Zoe, are you in here?” called a female voice. “I saw your car.”
Sharon. It was Sharon, her voice reassuringly normal. Zoe pressed her shaking fingers to her mouth then said, “Yes, I’m in Connor’s office.” It came out breathy and odd sounding. Sharon would know what to do. She was a forty-five-year-old divorced mother of two boys who never took any crap from anyone, including Connor, the most frequent distributor of crap Zoe had ever seen.
“Why do you sound out of breath? Have you taken up jogging, too?” There was the sound of something, paper or files, being slapped down on a desktop, and then Sharon appeared in the doorway of Connor’s office. “Am I going to be the only lazy bum around here—” She stopped speaking when she saw Zoe’s face, then Connor’s body.
“Oh. My. God.” Zoe had taken a few deep breaths and expected that she would need to calm Sharon down, but Sharon only shook her head and put her hands on her ample hips. Looking remarkably composed, she said, “Well, I can’t say I’m awfully surprised.”
“You knew this was going to happen?” Zoe asked.
“Not this exact thing,” Sharon said. Her short, dark brown hair feathered against her plump face as she shook her head. “But I knew someday he’d push someone too far.”
“Should we check for a pulse?” Zoe asked, reluctantly. She’d always steered clear of Connor, and she wasn’t about to go near him now.
“No. He’s dead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Honey, I worked in a nursing home for two years before I went to work for the boys. He’s not going to have a pulse. He’s probably been here all night,” Sharon said, matter-of-factly. “He was wearing that suit yesterday. Come on, let’s get out of here. The police won’t want us to touch anything.” Sharon ushered Zoe out of Connor’s office and pushed her down into the visitor’s chair positioned in front of her desk before she picked up the phone to dial 911.
“We should leave. What if whoever did that is still here?” Zoe said, standing up quickly.
“I’ve already been in Jack’s office—I had to drop off some files and,” she paused, looked over her shoulder, and said, “I can see there’s no one hidden in the bathroom. The door’s wide open. You better call Jack while I call the police,” she said, her fingers poised over the phone’s keypad.
“Jack’s missing.”
During her rambling morning drive, Zoe had rehearsed several ways to break the news to Sharon and Connor. That bald statement hadn’t been one of her choices, but it was all she could come up with at the moment. “The police think he’s dead. They’re not officially saying that, but I know they’re not hopeful. He was caught in the storm yesterday and tried to wait it out under a bridge. He slipped into the water and they’re searching the creek now, but...” Zoe shrugged. “Like I said, they’re not hopeful.”
Sharon plopped down into her chair, the phone dangling from her hand. “Both of them...gone?” Zoe nodded. She finally had stunned the unflappable Sharon. “Did you see either one of them yesterday?”
“Sure,” Sharon said. “They were both here in the morning. Jack left at noon like he always does, and I didn’t see him after that. I left early for the dentist and didn’t come back. Connor was in there yammering away on some conference call when I left,” she said, and then she looked slightly ashamed, as though she’d just remembered Connor was dead.
“Something weird is going on,” Zoe said, worriedly chewing on her lower lip. “One business partner disappears and the other is shot on the same day? That can’t be a coincidence. Jack came by the house to shower like he always does after his run, but I didn’t see him. Do you think he came back here before...” Zoe raised her eyebrows at Connor’s doorway.
“I don’t know.” Sharon slapped the phone down and wheeled her chair to her computer. She moved the mouse then began typing. “I’m the network administrator. I can see when they last used their computers.” She tapped a few more keys then leaned back in her chair. “Connor used his computer yesterday morning—just his e-mail, though. Jack used his—Word, e-mail, a few spreadsheets, Internet searches, all normal stuff from seven-thirty until eleven-thirty. Then he logged on to the Internet again around twelve-thirty.”
“But he was at home around then,” Zoe said.
They stared at each other for a moment then Sharon said. “I better make that call to the police.” She picked up the phone and told the 911 dispatcher that there had been a murder.
Zoe asked in a low voice, “Can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt both of them?”
Sharon tilted the phone away from her mouth and said quietly, “You know what Connor was like—he ticked off half the people he met, but murder? No. And Jack? No. No one.”
Zoe nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. But I haven’t talked to Jack about, well, anything lately. How was the business going? Did they have anyone who might...want them out of the way? That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?” Zoe said, amazed she was having this bizarre conversation.
“No. Everything was fine. Fantastic, even. The stock has been through the roof. We’d gotten a lot of good press lately. And we had some interest from a possible new client in Italy.”
“But competitors? Someone who’d want Jack and Connor gone?”
Sharon’s mouth quirked into a wiggly line, discounting that thought. “No. We don’t have any serious competition. That’s why we’re doing so well.” Zoe heard the distant wail of sirens and had an urge to bolt for the door. She wanted away from this crazy situation, but she forced down the desire to escape.
Dallas
Wednesday 11:26 a.m.
ACROSS town, Jenny Singletarry looked around Jason’s Deli for Special Agent Mort Vazarri. He’d either be here or down the block at Arby’s. She hoped he was here because she didn’t have time during her lunch hour to make another stop. She spotted him in the back corner eating alone. She hurried to get some food for herself then slid into the booth across from one of her most important contacts. “How’s the tuna sandwich, Mort?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Same as always,” he said, his voice monotone.
Mort was a burly guy of about fifty, but he looked as though he should be coll
ecting social security checks. His physical appearance hadn’t changed much in all the time Jenny had known him: medium height and build with a thatch of thick hair, which had gone gray prematurely when he was in his late thirties. She had once told him his hair made him look like a mad scientist. She’d been seven at the time. She’d had her arms hooked over the backyard fence and her feet braced on the support boards to boost herself up so she could see what their neighbor, Mr. Mort, was harvesting from his garden that ran along the side of the fence. He’d laughed and asked her if her mom wanted tomatoes. He didn’t laugh much anymore, not since his daughter’s leukemia diagnosis. After two years of treatment, tests, and hospitalizations, she’d passed away.
Unlike his physique, which was unchanged, his face reflected all the stress and grief and pain of his loss. His personality had changed, too. Instead of his normal friendly manner, he was withdrawn and almost listless. The washed-out version of Mort worried her, not because she was afraid he’d quit or move away and she’d lose a source, but because she’d known him forever. She’d been fascinated with him when she was a kid.
The FBI agents she saw on TV or in the movies were always young and handsome or they were slightly older and troubled, but still handsome. They were nothing like her middle-aged neighbor who told great knock-knock jokes and gave away tomatoes. In fact, Jenny thought that her incessant drive to discover the truth—her aspiration to be a reporter—could be, partially at least, traced back to her desire to find out the truth about Mort—was he really with the FBI?
She’d spent long hours observing him on weekends from the safety of her upstairs window, which overlooked his house. She kept careful notes. He mowed his grass, weeded his garden, and had conversations with her dad about the brown patches in their lawns. It seemed too mundane for a real FBI agent. Then one day, his wife Kathy had invited her inside their house and Jenny had seen proof: his badge. And she’d also seen the pictures lining the hallway. Sequenced in a timeline, the photographs traced his time in his military uniform, then in a tuxedo for his wedding, and later in his police uniform. At that point, the pictures shifted to their daughter. Walking slowly back down the hall, turning back time as it were, Jenny realized she’d learned her first lesson in truth. The truth of Mort belied all those television stereotypes. Mort was real and the truth was more surprising to her than the made-up stuff.
During college she’d kept in touch with Mort and Kathy in a distant way, dropping in to see them for a few minutes during Christmas or spring break when she was home. She always took a mystery novel for their daughter, Ellen, who was several years younger than Jenny. Ellen had been a surprise baby who had arrived when they were in their late forties, long after they’d given up on having a family so it seemed especially devastating when she was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. She fought for two years, but died when Jenny was in her senior year. It was only after Jenny returned home with her new journalism degree that she realized how bad off Mort was.
She didn’t know much about clinical depression—the health sciences were about as far away from journalism as you could get—but she was willing to bet that Mort was seriously depressed. His partner of fifteen years retired and moved to the Alabama Gulf Coast, and his new, younger partner tended to rub him the wrong way, to put it mildly. Kathy seemed to find a vocation at the cancer society. She immersed herself in fundraising, patient education, and cancer prevention awareness. She would never be the same after her daughter’s death, but she seemed to find solace and support in her volunteer work. Mort, on the other hand, seemed adrift, removed, and almost indifferent, which was such a contrast from the usual spark and verve that characterized him before Ellen’s illness and death.
Jenny knew from experience not to ask how he was. She’d only get his standard answer: fine. She dipped a spoon in her tomato soup and stirred. “So I hear you and Mr. G.Q. are working on a new case.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “You throwing around that non-existent press pass again?”
She raised her chin. “I’m a legitimate employee of the Dallas Sentinel News.”
“Yeah, but last time I checked, the obit writer didn’t need to know about on-going FBI cases.” He grinned briefly before finishing off the last bite of his sandwich.
“All I need is one good break to move up to News,” she said, then steered the conversation away from her rather unfulfilling current job. “Is G.Q. around?”
“Nah,” Mort wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “He’s over at Nordstrom’s perfume counter. New girlfriend—Alana, I think—works there.”
“How long do you give it?”
“Let’s see, this is the first week...probably two more weeks. A month tops.”
“I give it less than a week.”
“You’re on. Twinkies or Twizzlers?”
“Twizzlers, no question. Well, either way, it’s good to know one of Dallas’s top twenty-five eligible bachelors isn’t going off the market.”
Mort tossed his napkin onto his plate with a bark of laughter. “Not anytime soon.”
“It’s good to hear you laugh, Mort,” Jenny said and then immediately regretted it because his face shut down. She’d committed the cardinal sin—she’d mentioned his emotional state, something he avoided at all costs. “So about this case,” she said quickly, pulling her notepad from her bag. “I hear that GRS stock holders aren’t happy.”
“Where did you hear that?” Mort asked, his arms folded across his chest.
“My friend Hank works in Local News. He mentioned it.”
“Is someone working on a story?” His face was neutral, but Jenny knew he wanted to know if the paper would throw a spotlight on one of his current investigations.
“Yeah, me,” Jenny said pertly. Mort shook his head, and she continued, “No one’s really digging into it yet. They’re shorthanded as it is, after the lay-offs, and it’s still local election season. Almost everyone is covering the primary run-offs and the local school board elections.” She leaned forward. “This is my chance.”
“Are you sure you want to work for that editor?” Mort asked. “I hear she’s a real piece of work.”
Jenny lowered her voice. “Word is that it won’t be long before she’ll be at a local television station.” The newsroom editor at the Dallas Morning Sentinel, Anna Thessanta, was a twenty-five-year-old shrew who could shout anyone down and seemed to survive on a diet of Starbuck’s lattes, carrot sticks, and a few almonds thrown in for protein.
“Why don’t you do that—work in TV? That’s where all the action is, right? Newspapers are dying.”
“I’m not TV material. I’m too plain.” She lifted a strand of her lank, brown hair and pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “That’s not for me,” she said with a shake of her head. “And I see what you’re trying to do—distract me. But I’m not falling for it. The rumors about GRS sound pretty bad.”
“Well, it sounds as though your, what-do-you-call-it, blog, website thing is going pretty good. Kathy reads it everyday,” Mort said, sidestepping the GRS topic.
“That’s terrific. I’m glad she likes it,” Jenny said, adding, “It’s a blog. The Informationalist is great, but it’s not real journalism, you know?” The number of unique visitors to the blog was growing steadily, and she was surprised that what had started as a lark had grown into something of an underground sensation. Her friend Toby, who worked as a doorman at a swanky hotel, sent her some photos of a shoving match between an NFL quarterback and the paparazzi. She’d posted the photos with Toby’s description of what had happened and added her own slightly sarcastic commentary. The blog was a hit. The blog stats proved it, but she felt an edge of discomfort. The Informationalist was tabloid news, “infotainment.” She wanted to be a respectable journalist with serious articles below her byline. “So about GRS ...what do you know?”
Mort shrugged. Jenny stifled a sigh. He was clearly more interested in discussing her writing career than GRS, but if she was right, if the
research she’d done pointed to what she thought it pointed to...well, this might be the case that would hold his attention, maybe spark his interest and help him shake off some of the hopelessness that seemed to hang on him like an oversized coat. And the story could be her break, too. She finished her soup then moved her bowl aside so she could spread a stack of papers on the table.
“What are those?”
“Press releases from GRS.” Jenny handed him one. “This is from February.”
He scanned it. “GRS to revolutionize the e-waste sector. Yeah,” he said, his voice bored. “Hot topic now, with the fast turnover of computers and cell phones. They want businesses to outsource e-recycling to them. They guarantee a secure disposal and that components will be broken down, using proper environmental precautions. Appealing to everyone’s environmentally conscious side and all that.”
“Right,” Jenny said. “Until I researched this, I had no idea that e-waste was shipped to China and India and broken down by hand. And that toxins and pollutants can be released.”
Mort tilted his tall, red glass for the last sip of his drink then looked toward the soda dispenser.
Jenny fanned out more press releases. “They’ve announced partnerships with C-Tech Recycling, Trans-Global Recycling, and Guahzouh Inc., a disposal company in China.” Mort edged toward the end of the booth with his glass as she continued, “None of which have actually happened. In fact, I can’t find records that the last two companies even exist. C-Tech Recycling does exist, but it isn’t a partner with GRS. C-Tech signed an agreement to receive recyclables from GRS for six months.”
He glanced at her. “Just six?”
“Yep.” She had him. She could see it in the sharpness in his gaze. She dropped a sheaf of printouts at least half an inch thick on top of the press releases. “These are message board posts at investment websites. Beginning in January, there’s increasing chatter about GRS. It’s an ‘innovative company,’ a ‘fast burner,’ and ‘investors should get in quick.’ Some of the messages are copied verbatim from one message board to another, always anonymously, of course. I have no way of figuring out if the same person or group of people has been talking up GRS, but....”