Dust Up: A Thriller (2 page)

4

Danny looked like hell. He tried to raise an eyebrow at me but could only manage halfway. “You’re here,” he said.

“More or less. You, too.” I plopped into my chair at the desk facing his. “Thanks for last night. For the cleanup and bringing Laura and everything.”

He nodded. “You sure you want to be here?”

“Never been sure about that. You seen Warren?”

“He was in with IAD.”

My stomach soured. “Internal affairs?” I laughed. “What, do they think I did it?”

Danny yawned and gave a halfhearted, “Probably not.”

“How long’s he been in there?”

Before Danny could answer, Warren came through the door. “How long has who been in where?” He grinned like he had caught me doing something.

“Any news on the Hartwell thing?” I asked.

Warren didn’t look tired. I got the feeling he hadn’t been up all night working the case.

He put a photo on my desk. “Recognize her?”

I shrugged. “Looks like the woman I saw driving away last night.” In the picture, she was smiling, a big carefree grin with laughter right behind it. Hard to reconcile with the tortured expression I’d seen the night before.

“Miriam Hartwell,” he said. “The vic’s wife.”

I nodded. So she wasn’t just a bystander. I felt sad. Whatever her involvement, she wouldn’t be laughing like that again for a while. “Did you talk to her?”

He shook his head. “Nope. She hasn’t been home. Not answering her phone, neither.” He said it ominously, as if it proved she was guilty. To be fair, it was pretty damning, but I thought back to the pain on the face driving away, and I looked at the smile in the photo on my desk. Even squinting, I didn’t see a murderer.

“So why was he on my doorstep?”

“You don’t have any ideas?”

I shook my head.

“You’ve never met either of them?”

I shook my head again. “Never.”

“Your address was in his phone’s GPS.”

“So it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“He had also Googled you. You got no idea why?” He leaned forward. “You sure he didn’t find out you were banging her, he comes to confront you, she decides to kill him first? Or you do?”

I laughed, first time that day. I’m pretty sure Danny did too. “Yeah, that’s what happened.”

“Fuck you, Carrick. That shit happens. You’d be surprised.”

He said it in that patronizing way homicide dicks do sometimes:
You wouldn’t understand because you haven’t seen what we’ve seen … You aren’t privy to the dark secrets of the human soul
.

I used to want to work homicide. Thought it was the major leagues. Then I got to know the guys there. Major-league assholes was more like it. I laughed again.

Warren shook his head, pitying me.

“Did you get the video from the deli across the street?” I asked.

He waved a hand dismissively. “Nothing there, just a blank file. No surprise they had an equipment malfunction at a dive like that. Anyway, we put out a BOLO—her and the car. We’ve got someone on their apartment. We’ll have her in custody soon enough. She didn’t show up for work today, didn’t call in.” He laughed. “He didn’t, either, but he’s got a better excuse.”

I looked up at him as he turned to go. “Did they work together?”

“Yup,” he said, bored. “Maybe they were up for the same promotion or something.”

“Where did they work?”

“Energene Corporation. Some kind of big biotech company.”

5

I decided to surprise Nola for lunch. She worked at GreensGrow, an urban farm a couple miles from our house. It was a tangle of hoses and planting tables, sheds, and gardening tools, all strewn around a big former industrial lot. I hadn’t found it all that impressive when she first started working there, but it was a hell of a lot of green in the middle of all that gray.

“Doyle!” she said, standing behind a plywood counter. Her hands hovered in front of an ancient fax machine, waiting to catch the paper slowly squeezing out of it. Her face brightened when she saw me, but I could see it had been dark to start with. “I’m just waiting for this order, then I’m taking lunch. Want to go out?”

We sought refuge in the dark interior of The Abbaye, a local favorite a couple miles away. We small-talked around an appetizer, but in the lull while we waited for our sandwiches, she let out a deep, sad sigh.

“So do they know anything about him? About what happened last night?”

I told her what I’d learned from Warren. She listened with her head down until I got to the part about the biotech company.

“Energene?” she said, her head whipping up.

I nodded.

“Both of them?”

I nodded again.

“Hmm.” She thought for a second. “What do you think that means?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been wondering. What do you know about them?”

Nola was a bit of a food activist. She had a degree in horticulture and used to own an organic farm. “One of their main offices is in Philly. They’re big. International. Not as big as Stoma Corporation, but they’d like to be. They’re into a lot of the same things—chemicals, genetically modified crops, industrial agriculture.”

I’d had a couple of run-ins with biotech companies in the year or so since I’d met Nola. We’d met amid the first of them. Big run-ins, including one with Stoma that damn near killed us both.

“So why was he coming to our house?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked suddenly upset, the conversation bringing it all back to her. I reached across the table and held her hand, squeezing it.

“So the guy who’s working the case…” she said.

“Mike Warren.”

“Right. Is that the same Mike Warren you told me about who botched the investigation into the Kelly Drive shooting last spring?”

I nodded.

“Wait, is he the one who messed up the evidence on that South Street stabbing?”

“That’s him.”

She stared at me for a moment, thinking about what that meant and what she thought about it. The waiter brought our sandwiches.

“Well,” she said, picking up a fry. “Try not to get into too much trouble, okay?”

6

“Of course, he’s an idiot,” Danny said, sipping his coffee. “We all know that. But so what, Doyle? It’s his case.”

“Right, and if a guy bled out on your front steps, in front of Laura, you’d be okay with Mike Warren on the case?”

He looked away from me, out the window, then turned back. “Nola saw him?”

“She heard it. She was there. She’s freaked out, and I totally get it.”

We were working surveillance in South Philly, parked across from the Oregon Diner. Some up-and-comer named Derek Hoyt was taking meetings, trying to expand his network. We were there to take a photographic record of the attendees.

“I hear you,” Danny said, raising the camera and snapping a dozen quick photos as two knuckleheads walked up to the front door. “Maurice Blaylock and Tonio Pesker,” he said, naming them. I wrote them down. Half a dozen names so far.

I laughed. “So I tell her who pulled the case, and she says, ‘Mike Warren, you mean the guy who botched the Kelly Drive shooting and the South Street stabbing?’”

We both laughed at that.

“So what are you going to do?”

I shrugged. “Depends on when we wrap up here.”

He nodded.

Five minutes later, the door opened and Blaylock, Pesker, and Hoyt walked out, grinning like they’re best friends on Christmas morning. Chances were good that by the end of the year, one of them would be dead and one or both of the others would have killed him.

Danny clicked another series of pictures as they shook hands and separated. Then he looked at me, cocking an eyebrow. “We’re done here. What’s your plan?”

I shrugged and looked at my watch. “I’m going to go to Energene, ask a few questions.”

He sighed. “Of course you are. I’m not going with you.”

“Perish the thought.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s two thirty. I’m going to log these in. Then I have a meeting with Cory Rogers at DEA about the task force.”

I nodded but didn’t say anything. Danny was excited about working with DEA, and I couldn’t blame him. But it meant he was leaving me all alone in the land of the assholes for two months, maybe longer. He knew I was annoyed.

He gave me a big fake smile and punched my shoulder. “So are you planning on getting screamed at right away or not till later?”

“Suarez is in a budget meeting, so I guess not until later.”

“Perfect,” Danny said, shaking his head. “Budget meeting. He’ll be in just the right mood for you.”

Suarez was our lieutenant. He and I were not besties.

Danny dropped me at my car, and I drove over to Energene’s North American headquarters in University City. It was a strangely likable twist of angled glass and steel, one of the newer buildings on the Philadelphia skyline, poking up into the airspace over the tracks around grand old Thirtieth Street Station.

The guy behind the desk was fifty, African American, with sharp eyes. He was friendly in a customer-servicey kind of way, but with an edge, like if he didn’t want me getting past him, I wasn’t getting past him. His name tag read BRYANT. I didn’t know if that was his first name or his last name.

I put my badge and ID flat on the desk so it wasn’t obvious to the people coming and going behind me. “I’m here to talk to Ron Hartwell’s supervisor,” I said. I had no idea who that was, but I was confident Bryant could figure it out for me.

He studied the ID intently for a moment. “Certainly,” he said. “Just a second.”

He tapped at the computer then picked up the phone. “Yes, this is the front desk. I have a Detective Carrick here who would like to speak to Mr. Vinson … I believe it has to do with Ron Hartwell.”

7

Two minutes later, a guy who was not Ron Hartwell’s superior stepped off one of the elevators and walked toward me. He was obviously ex-military, and I don’t think his hair knew he was out yet, cut close to the sides and a tiny bit longer on top.

“Detective Carrick?” he said as he walked up, extending his hand in a gesture that seemed a lot friendlier than the expression on his face. Luckily, before I shook his hand, I realized what he wanted and handed him my ID to study.

He looked back and forth between my face and the ID. Then he handed it back to me. “Okay,” he said. “Can’t be too sure these days. What can I do for you?”

“I came to speak to Ron Hartwell’s superior. Is that you?”

“I’m Tom Royce, head of security. I liaise with police. Try to make sure there’s a minimum of disruption to our operations here.”

He clasped his hands in front of him and leaned back, like he was thinking of all the ways I could disrupt their operations.

“Ron Hartwell is dead,” I told him, lowering my voice, figuring he didn’t know—otherwise, he wouldn’t be acting like such a prick.

“I know,” he said. “It’s very sad. But I’m wondering what it has to do with Energene.”

“He was murdered,” I said, loudly enough that several of the people walking by stopped or at least slowed down to look. Royce winced. I lowered my voice and leaned closer. “The police investigate these things.”

He looked around at the residual attention people were still paying us. Then he looked back at me, squinting to let me know he didn’t like me. “One moment,” he said, turning away and placing a call on his mobile phone. A few seconds later, he turned back around. “Okay. Come this way.”

I followed him to the elevators, where he placed his palm against a glass panel on the wall. A matrix of circles lit up, and he casually scrolled them down with his fingertips until he got to the top of the list. He tapped one of the circles on the top row.

We didn’t talk much on the way up or after we got off on the twenty-sixth floor.

I followed him down a carpeted hallway. After a maze of hushed cubicles, there was a series of heavy wooden doors. We passed one that read
RON HARTWELL
. It was closed. Three doors down, we came to one that read
SPENCER VINSON
.

Royce gave me an annoyed look as he knocked on the door with the back of his hand.

A voice on the other side said, “Come in.”

Royce opened the door enough to poke his head inside, and the voice followed it up with, “Busy, Royce. What is it?”

“Sorry, sir,” he said without entering. “That detective is here to talk to Mr. Vinson about Ron Hartwell.”

There was a pause, as if they were sharing some nonverbal communication. Then Royce stepped aside for me to edge past him. Up close, he was shorter than I had thought.

Inside the office, a heavyset man in his late forties was sitting behind a desk. His pale face had a glow of perspiration.

In the chair pulled up next to him was a slender man in his fifties who was clearly in charge. He wore a sour expression that probably had a lot to do with the other man’s sweat. It made me feel a little more charitably toward Royce.

“Mr. Vinson?” I said to the man behind the desk.

“Yes, that’s right.” His face remained oddly blank, like he didn’t know what expression he should be wearing.

“I’m Detective Carrick.”

I turned to the other man, letting him know it was his turn.

“Bradley Bourden,” he said. “I’m the CEO.”

Yes, you are
, I thought. “I just want to ask a few questions about Ron Hartwell.” The man behind the desk almost jumped when I looked at him. “You know he’s been murdered.”

Bourden closed his eyes for a moment. “Won’t you sit down?” he said, waving me to the chair still facing the desk. He sent a dull glare in Royce’s direction.

I ignored the chair.

“It’s very sad,” Vinson said. “He was one of our brightest.”

“Any idea who might have done it?”

Vinson’s face went blank again, like he couldn’t imagine the question was for him.

Bourden glanced at Royce again, then at me. “I would hate to speculate.”

“Speculation is exactly what I’m looking for, Mr. Bourden. We’re trying to develop as many theories as possible. Then we’ll see which ones we can rule out.”

“Have you ruled out simple robbery?” Royce asked, still in the doorway.