Every Move She Makes (2 page)

I wanted to be on the road to
Napa
, not here at a homicide playing
twenty questions with my partner, despite that it was only Reid waiting
for me. "Tell me." "Your dear friend. Nick Paolini." I hoped like hell
Scolari was joking, but even in the worst of moods, I didn't think he'd
do that to me. Nicholas Paolini was an affluent businessman who
specialized in soliciting donations for a worthy cause namely, Nicholas
Paolini. Over a year ago, when I was assigned to the Narcotics detail,
I'd arrested Paolini on drug charges. Had that been the end of it,
hearing his name wouldn't have bothered me, but I'd received numerous
death threats since then, all attempts to keep me from testifying at his
trial.

"You okay?" Scolari asked, watching me carefully.

"Yeah, fine." I was determined not to let him see how much the very
mention of Paolini's name bothered me. Shining the light at the corner
where the two walls met the floor, I saw the receptacle end of a black
extension cord dangling about an inch off the floor. I ran the beam of
light up the cloth-covered cord, revealing its frayed and tattered
length; the thing must have been as old as the building. It disappeared
into the ceiling, presumably over to the other side of the common wall
of the warehouse next door. "Wonder if Hilliard Pharmaceutical knows
their electricity's being sucked to store a frozen corpse," I said.

Scolari didn't answer. He shuffled out, and I wondered what was up with
him. It wasn't like him to let me get in the last word. I followed,
squinting in the afternoon glare. Thinking of Paolini, I shivered,
feeling as cold as the body we'd found. Scolari called the main Hilliard
Pharmaceutical facility to get someone to let us in next door. While we
waited, I leaned against the side of the building, watching Scolari
pace. At one point he paused beneath the Hilliard Pharmaceutical sign
above the entrance. "Who would have guessed?"

"Guessed what?"

"That Hilliard's nickel and dime stock would take off like it did." His
gaze narrowed as he stared up at the sign. A vein in his temple pulsed.

"WISH I'd bought some." You and me both. I kept my thought to myself,
however, since at the moment, Scolari seemed to be suffering from a
major case of sour grapes. Hilliard Pharmaceutical researchers had taken
the pharmaceutical world by storm. What started with an expedition in
the jungle to find ingredients for Hilliard's wife's environmental
project, Lost Forest Shampoo, ended with the discovery of a rare plant
that had the potential to cure a number of cancers. Suddenly they were
converged upon by Fortune 500 conglomerates eager to assimilate the
moderate-sized company. I imagine those who had missed the boat with
Apple computers, Microsoft, and California Cooler felt the same way.

"Why were you late?" I asked, figuring from his mood that he didn't want
to talk about Hilliard.

"Signing loan papers."

"For what?" "New car for the wife." Then again, maybe the subject change
wasn't so good an idea. "The wife," as Scolari so eloquently put it, was
Doctor Patricia Mead-Scolari, a pathologist at the morgue. She'd
recently booted Scolari from the house after allegedly walking in on him
with his pants down around his ankles and a records clerk beneath him.

"I don't think a car's gonna do it," I said. He stopped his pacing long
enough to give me a sarcastically paternal look he felt was his right to
bestow. "I'm supposed to take advice from you? A woman whose marriage
lasted all of what, five, six months? Hell, you've barely been divorced
six months. Come back and talk to me after you been married twenty
years." I didn't comment. I knew better. Scolari made it a point to
voice his disapproval of Reid as well as my failed marriage, though what
made him an authority, I didn't know. Reid and my brother Sean had been
college friends, up until the time Sean died of a drug overdose twelve
years ago. Their friendship played a small part in why I married Reid,
mostly because Sean had always been the biggest influence in my life. In
fact, Sean's overdose was what made me want to follow in my father's
footsteps and become a cop-to fight the ravages of drugs. "the arrival
of a gray Nissan pickup put a halt to any further conversation about my
marriage, which was just as well. A man exited the truck, and as he
approached, his sport coat blew open in the wind, revealing a gold pen
in the pocket of his white shirt. Something about his craggy face and
pale blue eyes looked familiar, though it wasn't until he held out his
hand that I placed him.

"I'm Dexter Kermgard," he said. "Chief security officer for the lab."

"Dex?" Dex Kermgard, a regular in my father's late night poker games,
used to be an officer, before circumstances and opportunity led him to
the more lucrative job at Hilliard Pharmaceutical. He gave me a
searching look. "Son of a gun. Kate ' Gillespie. How are you?"

"Fine," I said.

"Haven't seen you since-well, forever." Since my brother's funeral. Dex
had left SFPD under a cloud about twelve years ago, right after my
brother died. He'd killed a man in a narcotics-related offense, and
his use of deadly force as well as some missing drug money had been
brought under scrutiny. I hear you made Homicide," he said. He reached
into his left coat pocket, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. He held the
pack out in silent offer; I shook my head. "So, how do you like it"'

"Not bad. You remember my partner, Sam Scolari?" Their gazes locked. Dex
broke contact to light a cigarette. "We go way back," he said on the
exhale. Scolari stared, the vein in his temple pulsing again.

. Although Dex had been absolved of any wrongdoing, his reputation as an
officer had suffered-there were still those in the department who
believed him guilty. Scolari, apparently, was one of them. For a moment
I thought Scolari intended to ignore Dex's outstretched hand.

Finally he gave it a gruff shake.

"You better be taking good care of this girl, here," Dexter said,
seemingly unfazed by Scolari's reaction. And then, as if he suddenly
realized the significance of our presence, he tensed. "Anything I should
be worried about?" "Hopefully not," I said. "At the moment, we can't
release any details-but if possible, we would like to get inside the
warehouse. Have a look around." After Dexter tossed his cigarette into
the gutter, he unlocked the door to let us in. "It's used primarily to
store old research files. They're scanned into the computer banks, then
boxed up and sent here." Row upon row of metal shelves revealed just
what he said. File boxes. Thousands of them. The place smelled of dust,
but even so, appeared sterile. Fluorescent lights overhead and the
cement floor painted white below made it seem as though we'd stepped
into a different world from that on the other side of the wall. We
walked down one aisle toward the back, past neatly stacked boxes, each
dated and labeled with unpronounceable compounds. I suspected the
company gave them those convoluted names to keep the public in the dark
as to why one simple prescription for the newest antibiotic could
possibly cost twenty-five dollars a pill. Dex gave us a running
narrative, probably to avoid direct conversation with Scolari, who was
pointedly not making eye contact with him. "I don't know who occupied
the place before Hilliard Pharmaceutical," Dex said, looking back at me
over his shoulder as he led us to that end of the building, "but I
understand it was built in the forties, and was retrofitted in the
sixties with cinder block separating this side from the other. The
electrical on this side has all been reworked, and is self-contained, if
that's what you're wondering. Since we were using it to store files, we
had a sprinkler system installed, and the lights put in ..." Personally
I found the file boxes more fascinating, especially as I began to
recognize a few of the brand names I read on some of the labels. Some
had color names. Project Yellow, and Red. Others were more scientific
sounding, such as Vir-unex, the plant derivative that was supposedly the
promising cure for some cancers.

There must have been three dozen file boxes on this drug alone.

Scolari wandered about, looking for any hint of the power cord. False
ceiling panels impeded our visual inspection, and we couldn't tell if
the cord made it to this side of the building. I looked around and saw a
ladder on wheels. It reminded me of something you'd use to board an
airplane with, only on a smaller scale. "How about this?" I asked. I
wheeled it toward them, and the cardboard lid of a file box fell to the
floor. I picked up the top, but the file box it belonged to, labeled
"Project Green," was just out of reach. "I'll put it back later," Dex
told me, so I set it against the bottom row of shelves, out of the way.

Scolari climbed to the top platform of the ladder. He lifted a ceiling
panel, then shined his flashlight, eventually discovering the power
source. "Got a mouse condo sittin' on top of it," he called down. "Looks
like it's been here forever." He climbed down while Dex related more of
the building's history. Hilliard Pharmaceutical bought the warehouse
after the earthquake of '89 damaged their storage facility. They leased
out the other half, which had had two tenants since then, most recently
an export business-undoubtedly Paolini's front. After Dex locked up, he
took my hand in his, shaking it warmly. "It was good to see you again,
Kate. Give my regards to your aunt." "I will." Scolari took my spiral
notebook from me, scrawling something in it as though taking copious
notes of our visit. He managed a curt nod when Dex left, never looking
up from the paper. The moment Dex got into his car, Scolari quit
writing.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"Don't like the guy. He was a bad cop."

"He was cleared."

"Was he?" With that, Scolari returned my notebook. Without another word,
he headed to his car, leaving me to wonder what had crawled under his
skin. At the Hall, Scolari and I interviewed the two boys, but learned
nothing more than what we were told at the scene. Their parents arrived
about twenty minutes later, and we released the kids with a stern
warning about trespassing on private property. "Whoever stuck that
freezer in there knew that power cord had juice," I said after they
left. Scolari didn't answer. He took his mug and poured himself a cup of
day-old coffee. I found his quiet as unsettling as the thought that
Paolini might be involved in this latest homicide. It was well after
eight Pm. Outside, the wind had died, allowing the fog to slip in. I
wanted nothing to do with Paolini, except to see him in jail. I'd
settled that part of my life. "Let's see if we can get a lead on the
last two tenants," I said, "make a connection to the deceased." Scolari
grunted something sounding like a response.

He swallowed the sludge he'd poured, then sat to type his daily report.

We were alone in the office, and after finishing my own report, I felt
compelled to say something. We'd just viewed a corpse together.

Sometimes we tended to forget how much the dead really affected us. I
thought about the car he'd bought.

"What'd you end up getting? For your wife?" I asked, pulling on my coat.

"Range Rover. Dark green. Might as well have bought her a Ford Pinto for
all it worked. She told me I should've donated the money to the Save the
Rain Forest Foundation. She's gone all environmental these days." He
eyed the empty coffeepot. Several seconds of silence were broken when a
police siren wailed outside our window, fading in the distance. Finally
he said, "She still wants a divorce."