Grimm: The Chopping Block (19 page)

“Speaking of your business,” Nick said. “LC Leasing? You lease property?”

“Office space, primarily,” Crawford said. “Business to business.”

“Own any other restaurants?”

“As a matter of fact, no,” Crawford said. “Portland & Sea Tavern would have been our first.”

“Why now?” Hank wondered.

Bock—bock—bock!

“Let’s call it an attempt at diversification,” Crawford said. “The real estate market has gone through some… challenges in the last few years. Business investment down. Hiring down. The tavern would have been our first restaurant.”

“Restaurants have a high failure rate,” Nick said. “Not exactly a safe bet for diversification.”

Crawford squinted at him. “Are you questioning my business acumen?”

Nick shrugged, spread his arms. “Just thinking out loud.”

“Opening the restaurant was my wife’s idea,” Crawford said. “Not that she wanted any direct involvement in the enterprise.”

“As you know, we came from the restaurant.”

“Yes,” Crawford said, setting the pen down. “Again, I apologize. I intended to meet you there rather than bring police business here, but my health…”

“We couldn’t help but notice the restaurant is empty.”

“Except for a card table and couple folding chairs,” Hank added.

“That is unfortunate,” Crawford said. “As you said, restaurants are risky ventures in the best of times. With my failing health and the lost shipment, I took it as a sign to abandon the whole project. We may decide to use the rental space for some other venture. Or cut our losses.” Crawford took a deep breath, which did little to fill out his baggy suit jacket. “Well, if there are no further questions, I’d like to wrap this up.” He glanced at his gold wristwatch. “I have scheduled appointments this afternoon.”

Nick glanced at Hank, who returned a slight shake of his head.

They both stood, Hank propping himself up on his crutches.

“If you don’t mind,” Nick said. “I’d like to get a copy of the equipment purchase orders.”

“Of course,” Crawford said, rising unsteadily. “They’re in our computer system. Give Nancy an email address on your way out and I’ll have her forward copies to you.”

Nick had the impression a strong gust of wind could topple the gaunt man.

They turned to leave. Nick waited for Hank to exit on his crutches, and happened to glance down. A balled-up piece of tan paper had missed a trashcan flush against the side of the desk. Nick picked up the paper, intending to deposit it in the trashcan, but paused with it clutched in his fingers. The paper was mottled, not a solid color. Faux parchment paper. Curious, Nick opened the ball of paper, revealing a hand-drawn circle surrounded by a series of acute triangles above an address printed at the bottom of the page.

His gaze flashed to Crawford.

Standing behind his wide modern desk, eyes wide with sudden fear, Crawford woged, exposing himself as a Geier. Seeing Nick’s look and realizing that the homicide detective who’d been questioning him was a Grimm, the man’s fear became palpable. He gasped audibly, almost a croak of pain, and dropped into his chair.

Startled by Crawford’s sudden collapse, Hank glanced over his shoulder and caught the tail end of the unspoken acknowledgment between Wesen and Grimm. He shook his head.

“Should have known,” Hank said.

Nick placed the creased paper printed side up in the middle of Crawford’s desk.

“I know what you are and you know what I am,” Nick said with the forceful tone of authority. He jabbed his index finger at the center of the circle. “So explain this to me!”

* * *

In between other appointments, Juliette had covered her desk with reference books and textbooks, each flipped open to pages dealing with kidney disease and anything relevant to the constellation of signs she had noticed in Roxy or in line with the results of her blood tests. She’d cross-referenced this information with online materials available through her various reference subscriptions.

And she’d found a possibility.

Something that would require another test to confirm. Something she couldn’t share with the Bremmers because it might not pan out. Unfortunately, she only had a few hours before the family would arrive to say their final goodbyes to their beloved pet.

Roxy had been miserable and mostly unresponsive—barely a tail thump in greeting—when Juliette had drawn 3cc of blood and then hooked up an IV to give her one vial of Cortrosyn. An hour later, when she’d taken more blood, Roxy’s only physical response was an ear twitch, as if this annoying medical treatment was one more small piece of a bad dream she’d been having for far too long. With the ACTH stimulation test completed, Juliette submitted the blood work to the lab.

She collapsed in her office chair, feeling wrung out after the last few hours. A low tide of energy after the adrenaline rush of research and discovery had worn off. She stared at her cluttered desk, her hands dangling off the chair arms, and felt unequal to the task of cleaning up. All the heavy lifting had been mental. Yet the physical resources eluded her. She fantasized about the nearest hit of caffeine. Coffee pot in the break room. Vending machine in the hallway.

Somebody rapped on her office door.

“It’s open.”

Zoe poked her head in, then did a double-take when she noticed the mounds of books on the desk.

“Final exams coming up?”

“All done.”

“Pass or fail?”

Juliette frowned. “To be determined,” she said. “Fingers crossed.”

“You look wiped.”

“An accurate diagnosis,” Juliette said and sighed. “How’s the lobby?”

“Empty at the moment,” Zoe said.

“How’s the coffee?”

“At this time of day?” Zoe said. “Like tar, I imagine. I could start a fresh pot.”

“Would you?” Juliette asked, savoring the prospect of fresh, hot coffee.

“You need a hand with this stuff.”

“Books go on shelves, right?” Juliette asked, quirking a tired smile. “I seem to recall a connection between the two.”

Together they closed and shelved the books, in no particular order. Seeing the top of her desk reappear was its own reward. Zoe left to make the promised fresh pot of coffee. Juliette leaned back in her chair, head tilted up as she stared off into space, and hoped for good news.

That’s all she could do while she awaited the test results.

“Tell me what this means!” Nick demanded, his index finger pressed to the hand-drawn circle surrounded by acute triangles.

“How should I know?” Crawford said, refusing to look at the image on the faux-parchment paper. “It’s a flyer.”

“Did you print it?” Nick asked, glancing at an all-in-one personal laser printer on a small stand in the back corner of the office. The original design had been hand drawn with a black marker, but it could have been scanned and printed on a laser printer stocked with novelty parchment paper.

“No, I didn’t print the damn thing,” Crawford said, agitated. “I picked it up in the library. On a table with a bunch of other flyers and business cards. Anyone could have left it there.”

Nick glanced at the address printed below the geometric symbols. He couldn’t remember any libraries in Portland at that address. Barring an online search or physically visiting the address, he couldn’t know for sure.

“Why did you take it?” Hank asked.

“I don’t get your meaning,” Crawford said evasively.

“What was it about that symbol—or that address—that made you decide to pick up this particular flyer from that library table filled with other flyers and business cards?”

“No particular reason,” Crawford said, somehow looking more exhausted than he had mere minutes ago. “I grabbed it with other flyers.”

Nick glanced down into the empty trashcan.

“And where are they?” he asked. “I’d like to see the selection.”

“Look, I thought it looked interesting. So I picked it up. But, as you can see, it makes no sense. So I threw it away—or tried to, anyway.”

Nick tapped the address on the bottom of the page.

“What will we find here?”

“How should I know?”

“The flyer was interesting enough to take with you,” Nick said. “But it made no sense to you. So you threw it out, without bothering to find out what’s at that address?”

“That’s right.”

“You change your mind a lot.”

“That’s not a crime!” Crawford exclaimed, but the emotional outburst had drained him.

His phone buzzed, one light blinking insistently.

“That’s Nancy,” he said and grabbed the receiver before they could object. “Everything’s fine, Nancy,” he said. “No, of course not. They
are
the police. Just… stay out of this. It’s not your concern.”

The phone almost fell from his grip as he hung up. His hands were shaking.

“I don’t know what any of this means,” Crawford said, his voice quavering. “If you continue to harass me, I will call my lawyer.”

Nick had the sense that Crawford was on the ropes, ready to come clean with the proper encouragement, his threat to call a lawyer nothing more than a last-ditch bluff.

“This flyer you seem to know nothing about,” Nick said. “We found another one just like it at a vacant lot where multiple murder victims were buried in shallow graves.”

“And we can tie you to another missing person and likely murder victim,” Hank said. “The delivery truck driver.”

“I told you,” Crawford said. “I never met the man.”

“Murderers kill strangers all the time.”

Nick placed both hands flat on Crawford’s desk and leaned forward, fully expecting his superior position and proximity as a Grimm to intimidate.

“The driver carried a load of equipment for a restaurant you had no intention of opening,” he said. “The only question is: are you the ringleader in this series of murders, or are you working for someone else.”

“Somebody put you up to this, Crawford,” Hank said. “Give us a name and maybe you don’t spend the last few months of your life rotting in jail.”

Crawford clutched his expensive pen, squeezing the barrel as if it were an anchor to the comfortable and privileged lifestyle that was slipping away from him minute by minute. He took several deep, shaking breaths and finally calmed himself before he spoke.

“They promised me a cure…”

“A cure?” Nick asked.

“To this wasting sickness,” Crawford said, looking down at his hollow chest. “To human medicine, it resembles cancer, but is less treatable and always fatal.” He clasped his hands together, the pen trapped between them, to quell their trembling. “But they… With their experiments, and everything they collected, they told me… they offered a treatment that would prolong my life, if not cure the disease. A type of remission.” He ran one hand through his thinning hair. “I am not a young man, so the promise of five, possibly ten more years… that meant everything to me! I would live to see my son graduate from high school and college, maybe even marry.”

“What price for this treatment?” Nick asked.

“A simple thing,” he said. “Open a restaurant, for all intents and purposes, or at least begin the process. Then order the equipment.”

“Why?” Hank asked.

“At first, I thought it was a front,” Crawford said. “A legitimate business to launder money from some criminal enterprise.”

“But they wanted something else,” Nick said.

“The equipment, obviously,” Crawford said. “Untraceable back to them.”

“It wasn’t a front,” Hank concluded. “It was a cover.”

“They wanted anonymity,” Nick added.

“I should have known—from the start—what they were about,” Crawford said. “I participated last time, in Rio. So long ago. But it’s time again, and that’s what they wanted from me. Time.” He shook his head. “I wanted more time
from
them. Instead, I bought time
for
them.”

“Time for what?” Nick said.

“To finish,” Crawford said with a resigned shake of his head. “It was all a lie. The cure. The remission. They’ve given me a few so-called treatments to string me along. Placebos? Maybe. I believe they whipped up some kind of energy drink cocktail, of all things. To make me feel… invigorated. To think I had hope—and more time.”

He sighed, in defeat or resignation. Or so Nick imagined.

“But I know the truth now,” Crawford said. “There is no cure. They bided their time with me. It’s almost over and they no longer need my help. Only my silence. I’m an accomplice with a built-in expiration date. Untreated, I’ll die within the month.”

“Who? Who are they?”

He sighed again and exchanged his Mont Blanc for the computer keyboard.

“It’s all in here,” he said, tapping away on his keyboard, a look of determination on his face.

Nick glanced at the laser printer in the corner, expecting its motor to thrum into life and spew out a list of names. But after a few moments of uninterrupted sleep from the printer, Nick had a bad feeling.

“You won’t find them,” Crawford said.

“What—?” Confused, Hank looked to Nick.

“What have you done?” Nick leaned forward and spun the LCD monitor around to see the display. A red progress bar had appeared in the middle of the screen with one word flashing below it: “S
CRUBBING
…”

“He’s erasing the hard drive!” Hank exclaimed.

“No ‘Cancel’ button,” Crawford said. “Once it starts, you can’t stop it.”

Through the glass desktop, Nick saw the computer tower tucked under Crawford’s desk, and the cord cover concealing the wires sprouting from the back. The power cords exited the cover and ran to a wall outlet opposite the trashcan. Nick jumped up and pulled the power plugs from the wall. The LCD screen went dark, the tower’s fan fell silent, and the hard drive spun down.

“He stopped it,” Hank said.

“Whatever information your program erased,” Nick said. “You’ll tell us personally. Down at the precinct. I’m placing you under arrest.”

“I have a family,” Crawford said, his gaze lingering on the framed portrait at the corner of his desk. A fleeting smile played across his face. “A healthy family.”

He opened a side desk drawer in front of the monitor, the motion obstructed from Nick’s view.