Dust Up: A Thriller (3 page)

“His wallet was untouched.”

Vinson shifted in his seat. It was almost a squirm.

Bourden let out a sigh. “This is a very competitive industry.”

I nodded, waiting for him to continue. In the silent pause, I heard a faint buzzing sound behind me and realized it was Royce’s phone.

Bourden lowered his voice. “We had recently begun to suspect Hartwell of industrial espionage.”

“Really?”

He nodded.

“What do you think he stole?”

Bourden shrugged, suddenly more relaxed, like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “Secrets. Who knows? It was just a vague suspicion.”

“Based on what?”

He gestured to Royce. When I turned to look at him, he was typing into his phone.

He looked up. “Oh, um, not much. Guilty behavior, I guess.”

“Do you have any evidence?” I asked.

Bourden shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Who do you think he was selling secrets to?”

Bourden glanced at Royce again, distracted. “Maybe the Chinese. Maybe one of our competitors.”

He was so distracted, I turned to follow his gaze just as he snapped, “Royce, what is it?”

Royce’s face was twisted in a grimace of awkwardness. “I … something came up. They need me at the front desk. I have to go.”

Bourden’s eyes flared. “Now?”

He seemed frustrated and annoyed. But there was something else in his voice as he said that one word. Nervousness, maybe, or even fear.

“I’ll be right back,” Royce said. Then he disappeared.

Bourden swiveled his eyes at me and shrugged, as if that was the end of the story.

“Do you think that may have something to do with why he was killed?”

“You want me to speculate?”

“Sure.”

“It’s a nasty business, industrial espionage. Very unsavory, as I’m sure you can imagine. Frankly, I have a hard time picturing Hartwell getting himself involved in something like that. But if he did, I could see him getting in over his head.”

I turned to Vinson. “What’s your impression of Miriam?”

He shrugged. “Seems nice.”

Bourden sat back, as if he was relieved to be talking about something else. I was surprised he thought it
was
something else.

“She wasn’t in today,” Vinson added.

“I’m sure she’s distraught,” Bourden said.

“I don’t know her as well,” Vinson said. “She’s a few levels below Ron in the company. She’s a nurse with our on-site health clinic, so it’s a different department, too. Human resources.”

“She seems perfectly nice,” Bourden said. “Of course, we’ve been looking into her, as well.”

“You think she’s involved?” I asked.

Bourden smiled, but he wasn’t very good at it. “If I had to speculate, I’d say she knew about it but wasn’t involved. But who knows, she could have been the mastermind.”

I nodded, studying him.

“Did they search his apartment?” he asked. “We’d be very interested in any intellectual property that he might have had there. Or anything to incriminate Ms. Hartwell. Or exonerate her, of course.”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” I said. Truth was, I didn’t know if they had or hadn’t. It should have been a no-brainer, but this was Mike Warren we were talking about. It was practically criminal negligence he wasn’t right there, asking Bourden and Vinson these annoying questions.

Then a voice in the hallway said, “Carrick? What the hell are you doing here?”

And there he was.

8

Warren looked annoyed and even more confused than usual. Royce was practically glowing with red anger. The muscles in his jaw were bulging, like he had a gerbil tucked in the back of each cheek.

“Hey, Detective Warren. Just asking some preliminary questions about the Hartwell case.”

“You mean
my
Hartwell case?”

I smiled. Then I turned to Bourden, whose mouth had fallen slightly open. “My colleague Detective Warren is here to ask some follow-up questions.”

As I squeezed past Warren, he grabbed my elbow. “I got this, Carrick,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Oh, sure,” I said, smiling. “Just trying to help.”

Bourden let out a quiet, aggravated huff. “And what can I do for
you
, Detective Warren?”

I turned to Royce, who seemed redder and shorter. “I’ll see myself out, thanks.”

I slipped past him and started walking down the hallway. I stopped when I heard Warren say, “Miriam Hartwell has gone missing. We think she might have killed her husband.”

I wanted to smack him in the head for giving away a detail like that. When I looked around, Royce was standing in the doorway looking back and forth between Warren inside the office and me outside.

When I turned toward the elevators, he was still there. But when I peeked back two seconds later, he was gone, and the door to Bourden’s office was closed.

Peering out over the maze of cubicles, I got the distinct impression they were all populated, but I couldn’t see anyone. The background hum of quietly clicking keys and human breathing was barely as loud as the ventilation system and the overhead lights.

As I approached the nearest cubicle, I could see a woman in her early sixties typing on her computer keyboard—old school, perfect hand positioning, never looking at the keyboard. She glanced up as I got nearer, startled but recovering quickly with a confused smile.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a hushed voice.

A younger woman popped her head over the cubicle divider, met my eyes, then looked back down.

“Hi.” I smiled, gentle and reassuring, as I showed her my badge. “I’m here because of what happened to Ron Hartwell.”

She stopped typing, and her face pinched into a sad grimace. “Oh my. Such a tragedy.”

“Did you know him well?”

“Not too well, really. He seems really nice. I know his wife better.”

“Miriam?”

She nodded. “I used to work with her in the HR department. They’re a really cute couple. They were.”

“Have you heard from her?”

She shook her head. “No, we’re not that close. I’m sure she’s devastated.”

“Had either of them been acting unusual lately?”

She cocked her head. “Unusual how?”

“Anything, really. Nervous or worried or angry or sad. Anything that sticks out?”

She shrugged. “They might have seemed a little more stressed than usual.” She leaned forward. “The scientists are always kind of stressed around here.”

“Did they seem happy? Together, I mean.”

“Oh, yes. Absolutely. If anything, they seemed closer than ever just lately.”

“How do you mean?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know really, just a sense.”

The head in the next cubicle popped up again. “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. You’re talking about Ron and Miriam, right?”

The woman I’d been talking to rolled her eyes. “Yes, Sheila, we were.”

“They did seem happy. Or closer or whatever. I noticed it too.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They seemed to be walking closer whenever I saw them together. And they were always whispering to each other, like they were in on this big secret no one else knew about.”

I smiled. “They seemed happy?”

She screwed up her face. “Kind of. More it was just like they were closer, like Lorraine said. Like it was them against the world.”

9

When I walked into the squad room, Danny was sitting at his desk. He looked up and opened his mouth, but I held up a hand.

“Me first,” I said, and I told him what happened at Energene. He listened, vaguely amused, as I told him the whole thing. “So I’m sitting there, talking to this jerk, and who do you think walks in behind me?”

“Mike Warren,” he says, like he wasn’t just guessing.

My shit-storm sensors started blinking. “How’d you know?”

“He asked me if that’s where you had gone. Someone saw you going in there. I said I didn’t know.”

“I was wondering what gave him the idea to go there. It seems kind of higher-level thinking for him.”

He shrugged.

“Come on, he’s an idiot,” I said.

He shrugged again. I knew he agreed with me. It annoyed me that he wasn’t conceding the point.

“Okay,” I said. “So he comes in all, ‘I got this, Carrick,’ and as soon as I walk out of the office, he tells these guys the wife disappeared and she’s the suspect. Didn’t ask them any questions, didn’t play them at all. Just gave it away.”

“So what are you saying?”

“I’m saying Warren’s a dumbass.”

He laughed and shook his head. “It’s not like you have to convince anybody of that.”

“Plus, I’m telling you, they were ready with the whole ‘industrial espionage’ thing. Be interesting to see if they keep going that way or if they drop it now that Warren told them the wife is his suspect.”

That’s when the door to the squad room swung open and Mike Warren stormed in. He didn’t look over at us—just stomped up to Lieutenant Suarez’s door and started knocking.

I looked at Danny and smiled. Danny opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “He’s not here,” I called out, trying not to laugh.

Then from inside the office, Suarez’s voice called out, “Come in.”

Warren flashed me an evil grin. Then he went inside and closed the door.

I looked at Danny.

He shrugged. “Budget meeting got rescheduled.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried to tell you.”

I scratched the back of my neck. “You could have tried harder.”

“You know,” Danny said, “this task force thing could happen any day. It’s not like we don’t have our own cases you could be working on instead of spending time trying to get into trouble or out of it.”

Suarez’s door opened, and he leaned out, glaring and beckoning me with one finger.

I got up and headed over.

Danny laughed and shook his head. “Tell Mike I said hi. And call me when you get out. I’ll be out there doing what all the other narcotics detectives do.”

I flipped him off jokingly as I went to accept my fate. Warren was sitting in one of the chairs facing Suarez’s desk. He looked away from me, his jaw set, breathing heavily through his nose.

Suarez grunted as he sat behind his desk.

“Carrick,” he said. “What the fuck?”

Warren turned to look at me, his head at an angle as he waited for my response.

I shrugged. “Danny and I finished surveilling Derek Hoyt, so I decided to stop by Energene and ask a few questions, see if anybody might have some idea why Hartwell was shot down on my front steps.”

“It’s not your investigation.”

“It was my front steps.”

“You’re interfering in a homicide investigation.”

“What homicide investigation? As far as I can tell, Warren already has it solved—domestic dispute, case closed.”

“Bullshit, Carrick,” Warren cut in. “I never said that. Besides, if that was the case, why was I there at Energene?”

I snorted. “From what I heard, someone told you I was there, and you didn’t want it getting out that you were neglecting such a basic part of the investigation. But once you got there, it seemed like your purpose was to tip everyone at Energene off to the fact that you already had a hard-on for the widow as a suspect.” I laughed. “I couldn’t believe you told them that, right off the bat.”

Suarez’s head whipped around. “You told them that?”

“Before he asked a single question,” I added.

Suarez looked down and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re a witness on this, Carrick, not an investigator. If you had a lead or an angle or something, you should have told Detective Warren so he could follow it up.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m sure he’d love to hear my ideas, and he’ll get right on it when I tell him.”

Warren snorted and looked away. Even he knew that was ridiculous.

“Just keep out of his way, all right?” Suarez turned to Warren. “Are we done here?”

Warren let out a disgusted sigh and stood up. “Next time, I’m not going to let it slide.”

I watched him storm out the door, then I turned back to Suarez. “The guy’s an idiot.”

“Yes, but he’s not my idiot. You are. And if you get in his way again, I’m coming down on you.”

I nodded. Whatever. “I’m telling you, though, you should have heard these guys spinning all this stuff about corporate espionage and stolen secrets, and then he comes in and gives it all away.”

Suarez let out a long breath. “Look, I know he’s a stiff. Frankly, if he was one of my guys, you wouldn’t be my worst. But he’s not my guy; this is not your case. Leave it alone. Besides, Warren’s keeping an open mind about things.”

“How so?”

“Combined the two angles, figures maybe the happy couple were in on it together, but she decides she doesn’t want to split the money.”

“Actually, makes sense,” I said.

“See? You’re not the only smart guy out there.”

“Fact remains, the only reason Warren went there was because he knew I had.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Does the wife have any priors?”

“No.”

“And his theory still doesn’t explain why Hartwell was coming to my house.”

10

I met Nola after work.

We were both still kind of freaked out about walking up to the front door. She, because of what had happened there. Me, because of the effect it was having on her. As we approached the front steps, I was relieved to see that the bullet hole had been patched and the center panel of the door freshly painted. We stood on the sidewalk, solemnly looking up at it for a moment. I couldn’t shake the sense that the life of Ron Hartwell was getting further and further away as the traces of his death were eradicated.

Still, it was nice to have the door fixed and not to be looking at the bullet hole every time we came home.

I was quiet when we got inside. Sometimes Nola likes to hear about my day. Sometimes, she really, really doesn’t. I wondered if news about the Ron Hartwell case would hit too close to home, so to speak.

“Any news on…” She nodded toward the front door, which now stood as some sort of icon for the nameless thing that had occurred there the night before.