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It was clear that Jay had skipped town, and he had taken a woman with him, but Timothy had been wrong about who it was. It wasn't Tricia. It was Jay's girlfriend, whoever that was – the woman who was about to enjoy Timothy's money with her newly rich young boyfriend.

Timothy shook his head. None of it really made sense. Such an elaborate charade, simply to take Timothy's money and ruin his life. It was as if someone hated him, as if someone loathed him more than anyone else in the world, as if the point of the hoax wasn't merely to take his cash, but also to humiliate him and
betray him and hurt him and make him feel a burning pain.

And as he thought about this, something occurred to him.

That someone really did hate him. That someone who had been close to him had betrayed him. It was someone smart – someone much smarter than he – someone who could plan for years in advance, someone who could go through all the possibilities, see the permutations ahead of time and have a solution for every complication.

It was someone who knew him – knew exactly how he would react to each poke and prod, someone who knew his shortcomings: his overconfidence, his blindness, his ego. It was someone who knew Timothy better than anyone else knew him, better even than he knew himself.

And now he understood why the shampoo in the shower seemed so familiar. It was the same shampoo that Katherine used.

And now he remembered what Neiderhoffer had said, the afternoon he had accused Timothy of murder. There was something that bothered Neiderhoffer, and now, standing in the middle of the Kid's deserted apartment, it bothered Timothy too. If Katherine had called him from Big Sur and committed suicide there, then where was her cell phone? Why had they not found it on the cliff, where she committed suicide? Why did they not find it in that neat pile of clothes that she had removed before jumping? Why had they not found it in the rocks below? Why had it vanished on the day of her death, along with her body?

He didn't know why he felt so certain, but he saw the next thirty seconds of his life clearly, as if he sat in the audience of a play, but was reading the script two pages ahead; he knew exactly what would happen next. He reached into his pocket, took out his own cell phone, flipped open the clamshell. Of course he knew what would happen.

He dialed her cell phone number.

How many times had he dialed it in the past? As he was racing to and from his office; as he was driving home to her, or away from her; as he was lying about where he was going or where he had been, or about how hard he was working or about how much he missed her and couldn't wait to get home. He had dialed the
number a thousand times, and each time it had meant nothing to him; but now, it was the most important seven digits he had ever dialed, and he pressed them with his finger shaking as it tapped the keys.

It took a moment for the call to be placed, for the radio signal to find an antenna, and for a computer to begin billing his account, and for another radio signal to go out searching for her phone, to wake it from electronic slumber and make it jingle.

The moment was pregnant and quiet, and at first nothing happened, but then something did.

From the Kid's living room came a pleasant electronic jingle, a phone ringing –
her
cell phone ringing. He followed the sound, keeping his own phone open and pressed to his ear. He found it on the edge of the Kid's coffee table, under a newspaper – the old black analog Motorola she never wanted to part with, and he realized that even that was part of her plan, to keep her old phone, the kind of old-fashioned phone that could make calls that were impossible to locate and trace. How many years ago had she started planning this?

He felt sick now, and thought he needed to sit down, but instead he vomited. The warm fluid – all alcohol and bile – splashed the Kid's floor.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He shut his cell phone and slid it into his pocket, and after a moment her black Motorola stopped ringing, too.

He sat down on the Kid's couch and wondered if he would vomit again. Nothing made sense. The only thing he knew with certainty was that he had been betrayed by the woman he loved most in the world.

But why the elaborate hoax? Why the tales of body switching and brain backups and Chinese doctors and suicide and sultry secretaries? Why not just divorce him and try to get the prenuptial agreement thrown out in court? Could she really hate him that much?

And as he sat on the couch, thinking about it, with the taste of vomit on his lips and Tricia's blood soaking his pants, he realized that, yes, she hated him that much.

50

Four hours after a gardener, curious about a front door that was ajar, entered the Van Bender house and found the young girl's body, Detective Neiderhoffer arrived at Wells, on the Big Sur coast.

He pulled his Honda Civic off the dirt road called Mule Canyon, onto a dusty overlook facing the Pacific, and parked next to a police cruiser labeled ‘The Town of Wells Police.' The stencil on the cruiser door – a weird diction Neiderhoffer had not seen before – suggested the cruiser held the entire Town of Wells police force. He realized after a moment that, in fact, it did.

A detective wearing a tan twill short-sleeve shirt and brown slacks sat on the hood of the cruiser, his eyes closed, his face tilted to the sun. Neiderhoffer got out of his car and approached.

‘Detective Billings?'

The detective opened his eyes and looked annoyed. ‘Yeah.'

‘Ned Neiderhoffer. Palo Alto.'

Billings nodded.

‘You find him?' Neiderhoffer asked.

The detective pointed. Nestled in a patch of bramble was Timothy Van Bender's black BMW. The car had been driven off the flat overlook, and its hood had jacked down into a ditch so that its trunk was raised a few inches in the air.

Neiderhoffer walked across to the BMW. The sun was high and bright, but a cold wind snapped off the Pacific. The wind made him nervous about the edge of the overlook. Only a skinny black link chain – knee-high, more a suggestion than a command – kept sightseers and shutterbugs from plummeting off the edge. Neiderhoffer kept his distance as he walked, an arm casually outstretched so that he might grab the chain link if a sudden gust knocked him sideways. He tried peering over the edge. He was a
hundred feet up, maybe more. Below were a pile of rocks, jutting out of the water like ten-foot teeth. Waves broke hard against them, and the rocks vanished for a moment, and then reappeared as the sea washed out.

‘Careful now,' Billings called. He yelled to be heard over the wind and surf.

Neiderhoffer glanced over his shoulder at the detective in order to give him a dirty look, but Billings had gone back to tanning, facing the sun, his eyes closed.

Neiderhoffer went to the BMW. He hoped to see Timothy Van Bender in the front seat, with brains splattered on the side windows and a gun in his hand. But the car was empty. The interior was intact, the black leather spotless. No suicide note.

He returned to the edge of the overlook and held onto the chain, bent over the edge, peered down. Rocks and ocean. Surf splashing violently. Loud waves. Much louder than he expected. No body. No clothes. No shoes.

‘Careful!'

A hand grabbed Neiderhoffer around the waist. Billings was standing behind him. Because of the ocean sound, Neiderhoffer hadn't heard him approach.

‘You know how many people we lose over this cliff, every year?' Billings asked. His mouth was close to Neiderhoffer's ear, and Neiderhoffer could feel his breath.

‘How many?'

‘None. No one ever comes up here.'

Neiderhoffer extracted himself from Billings' touch. He looked again over the edge of the cliff. ‘No corpse down below?'

‘A little hard to get to. We need to bring a boat around from the other side of the cove. We're working on it.'

Neiderhoffer scanned the water for a boat. There was none.

Billings said: ‘But we're never gonna find one.'

Neiderhoffer turned. ‘What's that?'

‘The body. We're never gonna find it. There's a tough rip because of the cove. Anything that lands down there gets smashed up pretty good, then pulled out to sea. He's probably floating past Tijuana right now.'

‘Maybe.'

‘And then, you know, you don't last very long. Shark food.'

Neiderhoffer looked down at the rocks, searching for some trace of Timothy Van Bender.

‘I mean, if you're asking me,' Billings said, ‘he's dead. You don't survive that jump.'

‘Maybe,' Neiderhoffer said again.

‘It's kind of poetic, isn't it?' Billings said.

Neiderhoffer thought he was talking about the beauty of the sea down below. There was something awesome and fear-inspiring about it. It was poetic, yes.

But Billings continued: ‘A man drives a couple hours just to commit suicide in the same exact spot as his wife. That's real love, isn't it? To follow your wife to the end – the very end. I know I wouldn't do that for
my
wife.' Billings thought about it. ‘Well I might follow her, just to give her a little push, in case she changed her mind. But I wouldn't jump in after her.'

Neiderhoffer smiled.

Billings asked: ‘How much do you have to love a woman to do that?'

‘Well,' Neiderhoffer said. He was about to explain that Billings had it all wrong, that Timothy Van Bender had actually killed his wife, perhaps by pushing her from this very spot.

‘Now that's love,' Billings said. ‘You don't see that very often.'

Neiderhoffer pressed his lips closed, decided not to speak after all. Looking down at the rocks below, the crashing waves, the foamed ocean, he wasn't sure what to think. Maybe it was love. Maybe you could hate someone enough to kill them, but still love them at the same time. Marriage was a funny thing. It made people mad.

‘I don't know,' Neiderhoffer said.

He turned and headed back to his car to start writing his report.

51

Palo Alto Daily News
, October 1, 1999

Suspect Kills Companion, Then Self

In one of the most gruesome crimes in Palo Alto history, former hedge fund manager Timothy Van Bender murdered his secretary with a blow to the head and then killed himself by drowning himself in the sea on Wednesday night, police say.

A gardener found the female victim, Tricia Fountain, 23, dead in Van Bender's stately Waverly Drive mansion. She was killed by severe trauma to the back of her head. ‘The evidence points to Timothy Van Bender being responsible for the murder,' Detective Alexander Neiderhoffer told the
Daily News
by telephone. Timothy Van Bender, 47, was under suspicion for murdering his wife, Katherine Van Bender, in August, but the police had not formally charged him with a crime. Timothy Van Bender maintained that his wife's death was a suicide.

Long-time Palo Alto resident Timothy Van Bender was for many years a successful manager of his own hedge fund, a vehicle designed for wealthy investors. But recently, according to CFTC documents released yesterday, Van Bender's fund, Osiris, had fallen on hard times and Van Bender was accused of stealing millions of dollars from his investors.

‘I just can't believe it,' neighbor Ann Beatty, who lived a few houses away from the murder scene, said. ‘I knew Katherine Van Bender for years. And I even met the young
woman that they found murdered. She was a lovely girl. The whole thing is a tragedy.'

An autopsy is being performed on Ms. Fountain. Results will be released later today. Mr. Van Bender's body has not yet been recovered, but the Coast Guard is conducting a thorough search, according to the Palo Alto Police Department.

‘We believe that Timothy Van Bender killed his wife, and his lover, and then himself,' Detective Neiderhoffer said. ‘He was responsible for the death of two people, and the theft of millions of dollars that had been entrusted to him. When Mr. Van Bender decided he couldn't escape, he ended his own life, thus drawing to a close a horrifying story.'

52

VENTURE-GRAM

Daily email update for venture capital professionals

Funding News for October 14, 1999

New funding has been reported for secretive startup Amber Corporation, based in Palo Alto, CA. Sources report to Venture-Gram that Amber raised a third round of capital totaling over 30 million dollars. The round gives the company a post-money valuation of over 120 million dollars, sources say. The company's founder, Dr. Clarence Ho, reportedly impressed the investor group with a demonstration of what some sources call ‘astounding technology.' The investor group includes Kleiner Perkins, Sutter Hill, and Sequoia. The exact nature of the company's technology is unclear, but former employees have reported that the company focuses on brain/machine interfaces.

53

The bar at the Four Seasons Hotel in Manhattan, with its cold marble and high ceilings and dim lights, was filling slowly with a typical Monday evening crowd.

Wall Streeters in Armani suits were led, with their pretty young female companions, to tables along the walls. There was time for one quick drink before the cab ride down to the Village where dinner reservations waited.

At the front of the room, a piano player tinkled jazz standards. Nearby, in the corner, a table was occupied by one couple that stood out from the crowd. They too were a mixed-age couple, but the roles were reversed; it was a young, attractive man, and an older middle-aged woman.

The woman was Katherine Van Bender and the man was Jay Strauss, the Kid.

They looked into each other's eyes and smiled. He reached across the table and took her hands in his. Wordlessly, he squeezed them.

A waitress appeared with a tray, carrying drinks. She put a Cosmopolitan down in front of Katherine. ‘For the lady, a Cosmopolitan.' She laid the other drink in front of Jay. ‘And for the gentleman, a Dalmore Scotch, neat. Is there anything else I can get you?'