The Stolen Ones (5 page)

CycleLife LLC was located in the back of a red-brick, two-suite professional building on an industrial parkway in the southeast section of the city.

On the way, Jessica did a search on her iPhone, and found the company’s website. According to the site, CycleLife was a provider of reclining lift chairs, walkers, grab bars, shower chairs, bath lifts, scooters, ramps and other healthcare products. While the company’s headquarters were in Philadelphia, there were catalog stores in Allentown and York.

When they pulled into the parking lot there were only two vehicles: a white delivery van and a red Kia Rio. The van had the CycleLife logo on the door.

On the way to the building they met a woman coming out. She was in her early forties, and wore a smart navy blue suit, white blouse. She also appeared to be in a hurry.

Byrne took out his ID wallet, opened it, introduced himself, then Jessica.

The woman nodded at both of them, but she couldn’t shake hands because her hands were full with binders, catalogs, a pair of telephone directories, as well as a pair of tote bags, each bulging with papers.

‘Your name, ma’am?’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m Karen Jacobs.’

Byrne gestured to the nameplate next to the door. ‘Do you work for CycleLife?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m the national accounts manager.’

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you have a moment.’

It was clear that the woman did
not
have a moment – rush hour was in full thrum, and there was a good chance this woman needed to get home, make dinner, corral the children, etc. Jessica could relate. But Kevin Byrne had a way of posing this particular question, especially to women, that broke down the barrier.

When Jessica saw the woman’s shoulders relax, she knew Karen Jacobs was resigned.

‘Is this about Robert?’ she asked

‘Which Robert would that be?’ Byrne asked.

‘Freitag,’ the woman said. ‘Robert Freitag. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’

‘We don’t get too many visits from the police.’

Byrne smiled. ‘That’s probably a good thing.’

‘No offense.’

Byrne just nodded.

‘Did you catch the person who did it?’ she asked.

Jessica noticed that the woman used
person
, not
man
. Most people said
the man
or
the guy
who did it.

‘Not yet,’ Byrne said. ‘We’re working on it.’

The woman looked a bit longingly at her car, then back at the two detectives. ‘Well, we might as well go inside.’ She turned to the door. ‘If that’s okay.’

‘That will be fine,’ Byrne said.

The woman tried to balance the books and folders in her hands, attempting to get to the right key on the ring.

‘Let me take those for you,’ Byrne said.

The woman hesitated, as if she might be carrying highly sensitive material, then handed it all over to Byrne. ‘Thanks.’

A few moments later she unlocked the double glass door, stepped inside. As they entered, Jessica noticed Byrne watching the woman. Karen Jacobs, as harried as she was at that moment, as end of the day disheveled, was not an unattractive woman.

When she disappeared into a small alcove off the reception area, and punched a few numbers into the alarm system’s key pad, Jessica nudged her partner, whispered: ‘You never carry
my
books.’

They sat in the small, fluorescent-lit waiting area. Two sofas facing each other, one chair, a pair of glass-topped end tables, along with a coffee table arrayed with industry trade magazines:
Sports ’N Spokes,
AAH, New Mobility.

‘I talked to the other detective right after… after it happened,’ Jacobs said. ‘I told him everything I knew.’

‘That would be Detective Garcia,’ Byrne said.

‘Yes. I still have his card. Doesn’t he work for the police any more?’

‘No, ma’am,’ Byrne said. ‘Detective Garcia passed away.’

Jessica watched the woman closely when Byrne said this. Karen Jacobs was by no means a suspect in the murder of Robert Freitag, but the way people took news of a person’s death said quite a bit about them.

On hearing the information the woman’s face lost a little color. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘Of course,’ Byrne said. ‘He was a good man, and a good detective. And now Detective Balzano and I have taken over the investigation.’

Karen Jacobs just nodded. She snuck a glance at the wall clock.

‘How long did Mr Freitag work here?’ Byrne asked.

The woman thought for a few moments. ‘Just over five years, I think. I can get his work records if you like.’

‘That would be very helpful,’ Byrne said. ‘We’ll get them before we leave.’

‘I’m afraid they’re not here.’

Byrne looked up from his notepad. ‘You don’t have them here?’

‘No. They’re kept off site. I can have them faxed to you in an hour or so if you give me your fax number.’

Byrne handed her a card. ‘Do you recall where Mr Freitag worked before coming here?’

‘I’m pretty sure he worked as an accounts manager at Aetna for a while, but I couldn’t confirm that unless I looked it up.’

‘How many people are employed here now?’

‘There are just six of us. We really need at least two more people, but the economy being the way it is…’

‘Has Mr Freitag’s position been filled?’

‘Oh my, yes. Even a company this size needs a logistics manager.’

Byrne made a few notes. ‘How well did you know Robert?’

Jessica was waiting for
Mr Freitag
to become
Robert
. Right on schedule.

‘Not very well at all, really, considering how often I saw him. He was pretty much a loner.’

‘How so?’

The woman gestured to the walls around them. ‘As you can see, we’re not a big company. At least in the brick and mortar sense. Most of our sales are online and catalog sales. We maintain a warehouse in Newark and ship worldwide from there.’

Byrne nodded, waited.

‘What I’m getting at is that we work in pretty close quarters, and there tend not to be a lot of secrets. We know who is dragging because of a late night, who has a lousy diet, who is sick, who’s in love.’

‘And you’re saying that Robert didn’t make friends here?’

‘Let me put it this way, one year – I think this was the second year Robert worked for us – we bought him one of those oversized birthday cards, the kind with the pop-up characters in the middle. The only reason we knew it was his birthday was because it was on his application. He would never tell anyone something that personal.’ Karen Jacobs rearranged herself on the chair, crossed her legs, continued her story. ‘Anyway, we gave the card to him at lunch that day and, in Robert’s inimitable style, he reddened a bit, mumbled a thanks, gathered together his uneaten sandwich and left the break room in a hurry.’

Both Jessica and Byrne sensed there was more to the story. They remained silent.

‘The next day Alonzo – that’s Alonzo Mayweather, our IT guy – was dumping some shredded documents into the big recycling bin out back, when he saw some material in the bin, some red shredded cardboard. He moved some of the paper aside and saw that the big birthday card had been shredded. Not only had Robert shredded the card, but he then tried to put it on the bottom of the bin so no one would see it. Weird, huh?’

A bit antisocial, Jessica thought, certainly ungracious, but not particularly weird. And she knew weird.

‘Why didn’t he just take it home and throw it out when he got there?’ Karen Jacobs added.

It was a rhetorical question, but Byrne responded to it anyway. ‘I’m afraid I can’t answer that, ma’am.’

‘Well, needless to say, we never bought him another card, never acknowledged his birthdays in any way.’

This partially explained the dearth of cards at Robert Freitag’s house. If he got them, it seemed, he didn’t even bring them inside.

Byrne continued the standard line of questioning, taking sparse notes. There wasn’t much to write.

‘Can you think of anyone who might have had a problem with Robert?’ Byrne asked. ‘Someone he owed money, or someone who owed him money?’

She thought a moment. ‘No. I don’t think he ever gambled, and I’m sure he was never involved in drugs or anything like that.’

You can never be sure about drugs
, Jessica thought, but decided to take this woman’s word for it.

‘What about personal relationships? Girlfriends, a jealous boyfriend?’

At the word boyfriend, the woman smiled. ‘Robert wasn’t gay, if that’s what you mean.’

Jessica was pretty sure Byrne meant Robert Freitag may have been dating a woman who had a jealous boyfriend. Byrne let it ride.

‘Is there anyone here, other than yourself, who might have had a closer relationship with Mr Freitag?’ he asked.

She took a moment. ‘Not really. He was impossible to get to know.’

Byrne made another note. ‘Was there ever any money missing from your business accounts? Any unauthorized withdrawals?’

It seemed as if this question came as a bit of a shock. ‘You mean CycleLife accounts?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you saying Robert took money from the company?’

‘I’m not saying that at all,’ Byrne said. ‘We just have to explore every possibility.’

Karen Jacobs shrugged. ‘Not that I know of. Again, we’re a small company. If something like that happened I would know about it.’

‘Did Robert have access to the accounts?’

‘No. Only the owner, Mr Larson, has access. He signs every check.’ At this she pointed to a photograph on the wall, a picture of a white-haired man shaking hands with a woman in a wheelchair.

Byrne glanced at Jessica, who shook her head. She had no questions. They both stood; the woman followed suit, straightened her skirt.

‘We thank you for your time,’ Byrne said.

‘You are most welcome.’ The woman glanced at her watch. She had all but missed rush hour. ‘I’ll probably get home about the same time.’

‘We don’t want to keep you any longer,’ Byrne said. ‘Can we get that list of employees now?’

‘Of course.’ She crossed over to the reception desk, hit a few keys on the computer keyboard. Seconds later the laser printer came to life. Karen Jacobs grabbed the sheet, handed it to Byrne.

‘Thanks,’ Byrne said. ‘You’ll have that other information faxed to us? Mr Freitag’s application and resume?’

The woman held up her cell phone. ‘I’ll call them straightaway.’

‘I just have one other question,’ Byrne said.

‘Sure.’

‘When you met with Detective Garcia, did he ask a lot of the same questions I asked you?’

She thought about it. ‘Not really. To be quite honest, I didn’t really understand some of the things he was talking about.’

‘Can you give us an example?’

‘Well, he asked me about Robert’s last day of work, and whether or not he seemed troubled or agitated that day. When I told him nothing seemed out of the ordinary, he just stared at me for the longest time.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Nothing for a little while. Then he asked if I would turn the music up.’

‘The music?’

‘Yes. The odd thing was, there wasn’t any music playing. We sometimes play easy listening through the intercom speakers, but we didn’t have it on that day.’

Byrne glanced at Jessica, back at Karen Jacobs. He buttoned his coat, put his notebook in his pocket.

‘Can you think of anything else about Robert?’ he asked at the door.

She thought for a few moments. ‘Not really. Like I said, Robert was pretty much a closed book. You might be able to find something in the stuff we took out of his desk, if you’d like to take a look at it.’

Jessica looked at Byrne, then back at Karen Jacobs. ‘You still have the contents of his desk?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s all in a box in our storeroom. We figured someone in his family would come for it. No one ever did. There isn’t much.’

‘Did you show Detective Garcia Robert’s desk when he was here?’ Jessica asked.

‘No.’

‘And why is that?’

‘Well, two reasons, to be perfectly honest, Detective. One, it was a bit of a shock having just learned that Robert had been murdered. That was a first for me, and I hope it’s a last.’

‘Of course,’ Jessica said. ‘And the second reason?’

Karen Jacobs shrugged. ‘Detective Garcia never asked.’

They stood in the parking lot of the industrial park. The rain had let up for the moment, but the occasional drop signaled a return. The white, legal-document-size cardboard box was on the hood of the car.

‘Makes you wonder what else John didn’t ask,’ Jessica said.

‘Yes, it does.’

Jessica opened the box, looked inside. The woman was right. There wasn’t much in there – a stapler, a tape dispenser, a pair of local Philadelphia yellow page directories, along with a white pages directory. There was also a flip-over desk calendar. Jessica took the calendar out of the box and put it on the hood of the car. She began to page through the days.

‘Are there any entries around February twentieth?’ Byrne asked.

Jessica checked. The page for 20 February, the day Robert Freitag was murdered, was gone. As were the pages for the previous six days. The nearest calendar page was for 13 February. Jessica took out her Maglite, angled the beam on that page. There were indentations on the page, as if something had been written on the page above it.

‘Can you read what’s there?’ Byrne asked.

‘Hard to tell.’

‘Wish we had a pencil.’

‘I think we do,’ Jessica said. She rummaged in the white box, soon produced an unsharpened pencil, as well as a desktop pencil sharpener. The manual kind, not the electric kind.

‘Thank God our friend Robert was old-school,’ Byrne said.

While Byrne held the sharpener, Jessica put a tip on the pencil, blew on it. She then gently rubbed the graphite over the serrations on the calendar page. Just like in the old movies, an image began to appear. When she was done she aimed her Maglite on the page.

‘Looks like JCD 10K 8P.’ Jessica handed the calendar to Byrne. ‘What do you think?’