Mania (13 page)

“So you went into business together?”

Werner shook his head. “I invented Zarconia, I told you. When I was at Harvard. That’s what I did. It was Sam’s idea to start the company, Matrix Zarcon. Give him credit for that. Your brother was one smart son of a bitch, friend. He convinced me to put the patent in the company’s name. What I didn’t quite understand was that the company belonged to him. Once he had what he needed, I was history. He kept the prize for himself.”

Appalled by what he was hearing about his brother, Nick nevertheless didn’t doubt that Werner was speaking the truth. “Wasn’t there anything you could do?”

Werner smiled. “He fired me, friend. Kicked me to the curb.”

“There wasn’t any way you could protect your interests? Legally, I mean. Couldn’t you have sued him for fraud?”

“What would have been the point? You’re not listening to me, friend. Zarconia was more dangerous than good. Like brushing your teeth with nitroglycerin. As far as I was concerned, there was zero chance of ever getting it tested.” Werner again raised the crook of his elbow to his mouth and coughed. “And then anyway, there were the pictures.”

“The pictures?”

“The photographs, friend.”

Nick was lost. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“You should remember. You took them. The day we first met. At the marathon.”

“I remember,” Nick said. “I took photographs of Sam and you, crossing the finish line. But I can’t see—”

Werner waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the diploma he had tacked to the wall above the bureau. “The day I was running the marathon in Seattle, I was also in Boston, taking my final exams for my master’s. Or a friend of mine was. All Sam had to do was bring the pictures to the university. I would have lost my degree.”

The information stunned Nick. “The pictures were proof you cheated on your exams,” he said, remembering how vehement Sam had been. “That’s why he wanted me there.”

“Like I said, friend, how well did you know your brother?”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Sam had us both fooled.” Werner’s smile could have been a wince. “As far as I could see, my degree at Harvard was worth a hell of a lot more than a share of Matrix Zarconia. I never imagined that Sam would pull off the financing he did. How could I? Jason Hamlin’s a pretty big fish to reel in your first time out.”

“So he forced you out of the company.”

“Check. But hell, I’ve still got my diploma, right? And as for your brother—” Werner laughed, fastening Nick with a blurry stare. “All that stuff he was doing with Hamlin? Raising funds.
Capital
, he called it. Testing the drug. The FDA in one hand. Hamlin’s venture capital in the other. You know what it was, friend?”

Nick looked at the broken man in front of him, waiting. Sorry for him, sorry for himself. But somehow most sorry for his brother.

“A house of cards. That’s what it was. A goddamned house of cards. He knew how dangerous Zarconia was. He knew the potential, but he knew the risks, too, friend. He knew. He was playing with fire. Looks like he got burned.”

Nick handed the bottle of whisky back to Werner on his way out of the small, filthy room. As he pulled the door closed, Werner was sitting unsteadily on the edge of the bed, holding the half-empty bottle to his lips and taking a greedy swig. The vision remained with Nick in the elevator as he descended to the lobby, serenaded by the whining groans of the ancient cables overhead.

Nick woke in a sweat at dawn the next morning, gasping for breath, in the throes of a nightmare. He placed where he was. He recognized the door in front of him, the doorknob as he reached his hand to turn it. He had stood in this short hallway a thousand times before. The door swung slowly open in front of him. And he took a cautious step into his parents’ study in Madison.

Seated behind his desk, examining some papers, his father looked up at him, surprised. Nick’s first reaction was to approach his father and to embrace him. Nick realized only slowly that his father was dead. His face was bloodied, disfigured from the accident with the truck that had killed both his parents. His lips were swollen, purple. Like Sam’s, his teeth had been broken, forced backward into his mouth.

Lying in bed, Nick’s eyes were open already, but he struggled to open them wider, trying to see, writhing to untangle himself from his heavy blankets. At last the dark bedroom in Seattle came fuzzily into focus, replacing the vision from his nightmare. Nick settled back into bed, his heart racing in his chest, his breath caught in his throat. He dragged his hand across his sweaty face, through his hair. It felt as if he hadn’t slept a single minute since the cops had unzipped the body bag and he had looked into his brother’s lifeless eyes. Trying not to wake Sara, he crept out of bed. It wasn’t yet six
A.M.
, but he didn’t want to close his eyes again. He looked around the grungy room, then decided to head in to his office.

The rain was coming down hard, and Nick got drenched running from the parking lot to the doors of the
Telegraph
building. He slid his cameras and his phone across the table to the security guard.

“I haven’t seen you in this early in six months,” she said, leaning back in her chair to look up at him.

“It’s been awhile,” he acknowledged, grateful for the small, everyday banter.

“I thought they fired you, didn’t they? Hey, you got your security pass or an ID card or something?”

Nick reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “They didn’t fire me.” He held his ID out for her to see. “I quit. But I still work freelance.”

“Were you right there when it happened? Did they catch him yet?”

“What?” Nick wasn’t certain what the guard was asking him.

“If it was me, I’d a killed the man.”

Incensed, Nick gathered his things into his hands. “You can give Laura Daly a call,” he said, “if you have an issue with my clearance.”

At six-fifteen, Daly stopped in front of the desk Nick was using. Nick looked up at her as the editor lowered herself into a red vinyl chair. She flinched a little as she sat down, like she was feeling some pain in her knees. Nick assessed her dispassionately, waiting for her to speak. Dressed casually against the morning cold in a thick navy Mariners sweatshirt over her usual white cotton shirt and dark gray trousers, there was little soft about the senior editor’s appearance. Nick had always thought that she went to pains to remove any hint of the feminine from her bearing.

This early in the morning, the office was almost empty. Several reporters were sitting in front of computer terminals, working on stories with imminent deadlines, and a few stragglers from the night shift were gathered at the coffee machine. Their voices rose and fell indistinctly across the huge newsroom, but the voluminous space was otherwise silent.

“I think I owe you an apology,” Daly began. Her tone was deliberately casual. Nick, though, was aware of the depth of her sincerity. He understood that she was worried that she had offended him, that she didn’t want to lose his regard. “About the gala, I mean. You left the restaurant pretty upset.”

“Forget it, Laura. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. I’ve been pretty stressed.”

“I didn’t mean to push you,” she continued. “This is all new to me as well, you know what I mean? I don’t know what to expect. I thought maybe it might help to have something concrete to work on.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m figuring things out.”

Daly shifted a little in her seat, settling in. “When Harold disappeared, I forgot how to sleep for a while.”

Waiting for her to continue, Nick watched her brush a few strands of gray hair behind her ears. He knew the stories. In her thirties, when Daly had gotten pregnant accidentally, outside any serious relationship, she had decided to have the baby herself. She had raised her son alone, all the way through high school, only to lose him in a tragic twist of fate when he was eighteen. As long as Nick had known the editor, however, this was the first time she had ever herself mentioned her son to him.

“It got so bad I went to see a shrink—though that’s not something I tell too many people. You know what the therapist told me?” Daly raised her eyes toward the ceiling, remembering. “She said, as hard as it is to accept, Harold made his own choices. Not me.” Daly paused, as though she was once again listening to the therapist’s counsel. “I can’t blame myself.”

Nick remembered that Daly’s son had traveled with the high school baseball team to a state tournament a few hours away in Spokane, just a few months shy of his graduation. Harold didn’t want to go. He hadn’t wanted to try out for the team in the first place. Daly had pushed her son to make the overnight trip. Then Harold disappeared when the team stopped for dinner at a fast food restaurant. He had gotten up to use the restroom and had never come back. No one saw him leave the building, and no body had ever been found. Laura used the paper to organize a statewide search. Harold, though, had vanished.

Daly blinked back the memory. “I think I was
afraid
to sleep, because every time I did I would dream that Harold was in the room, reaching out for me. And every time I woke up, I lost him again.” When she glanced at Nick, her gentle smile caught him off guard.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said. He wasn’t certain what else to say.

“Don’t be.” Daly reached out to touch Nick on his arm. “I don’t think about it so much anymore. You should know that. I’m only telling you because I want you to know I understand. I was pretty upset with my shrink when she told me that Harold was the one who was responsible. That he was gone and that I should stop waiting for him. Looking back, though, I think I understand what she was trying to tell me. Not to internalize the loss. Not to spend too much time looking for answers inside myself. There’s a lot in your life that is simply outside your control.”

Nick didn’t know how to respond. “Yeah,” he said at last, trying to return the editor’s smile. “You’re probably right. I’m doing the same thing.”

“Well, it’s natural, I guess. But heaping guilt onto yourself isn’t going to bring anyone back.” Daly straightened in the chair. “Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, either. So I worked instead. I spent so much time here, Hamlin ordered a wardrobe into my office for me and told me I might as well bring in a change of clothes. It’s still there—the cedar wardrobe in my office.” Daly nodded and pointed toward her office. Nick could see the large, misplaced piece of furniture through the glass partition that separated the senior editor’s office from the rest of the newsroom. “You don’t think of Hamlin like that, do you? This was seven years ago now, back when Jason first bought the paper. Back then he was the first man in every morning. When he bought the paper, we were losing ten thousand dollars a day. He came down here and ran the place himself, turned the paper around.” Daly stopped speaking when she realized that Nick wasn’t following the story, and Nick became aware of the woman’s careful scrutiny.

“You really don’t need to worry about me,” Nick repeated.

The senior editor continued to examine him. “It’s only been a few days,” she said. “I’m just making sure.”

A thought occurred to Nick. “Listen, Laura,” he said, determined to change the subject, “what can you tell me about Adam Stolie?”

“Stolie?” Daly narrowed her eyes. Nick could see from her expression that she, too, was grateful for the change of focus. “The detective?”

Nick waited.

Daly pursed her lips. “I haven’t had much to do with him. He worked the Henderson case, I think. He was the one who made the arrest. Three, four years ago—a bit before your time—when they arrested the wrong man. He’s on homicide. One of Lieutenant Dombrowski’s boys.” Daly seemed lost in the train of her thoughts, then put two and two together. “He’s the one they got assigned to your brother’s case?”

“Yeah.” Nick hesitated, uncertain how much to share. “You know, I’ve butted heads with this guy before at crime scenes. As far as I’ve been able to tell, he doesn’t like me. Now he’s the only one standing between me and a jail cell. I’m not sure what’s motivating him.”

Daly considered the point. “Maybe it’s the Henderson thing,” she said. “Maybe he doesn’t want to make another mistake like that.” She searched her memory. “If I remember correctly, Stolie experienced a family tragedy, too—about the same time as the Henderson arrest was going bad on him. I’m not sure I’ve got this right, but I think his brother died about that time. Leukemia maybe. Something prolonged. I can look it up.”

Nick remembered how much genuine concern the detective had shown him. “That would make sense.” He squinted, shaking his head. “You don’t have to look it up.”

“Lieutenant Dombrowski, on the other hand, that’s a man to watch out for. I’ve crossed swords with him a number of times.” Daly scowled. “He’s a political beast, that man—and heading straight for the top. He’ll be our police chief when Gutterson steps down, mark my words. If he’s the one who’s got you in his sights, I’d—” Daly stopped herself. “You sure you’re up to this?”

Nick forced a thin smile. “I’m fine,” he said. “Really. It’s good to know what I’m up against. If this is actually going to happen, I’m not going to be able to avoid it anyway.”

“You might as well be prepared,” Daly agreed.

Nick looked away. One of the men on the other side of the newsroom was laughing, and Nick followed the sound to its source. The man leaned forward and looped an arm over another man’s shoulders.
You’re killing me, Tom
, Nick heard him say.
You’re absolutely killing me.

“Listen,” Daly said, shifting forward in the chair, “something occurred to me when I was thinking about the crime. Something that might be of interest to you. A story came across my desk about a month or two ago, out of Milwaukee. You hail from Wisconsin, don’t you?”

“From Madison,” Nick confirmed.

“I doubt you’ll remember the story, because it didn’t get much play. A suburban couple, well-to-do, were murdered a couple of months ago—pretty brutally, in their sleep. Their teenage kids were at home at the time. Apparently they didn’t hear a thing. The police thought it was odd the boys could sleep through the noise, and they were considered suspects for a couple of days—that’s what made the story interesting. Long story short, the murder turns out to have been committed by a homeless man with no connection to the family at all. He just wanders in off the street one night and kills these people in their bed. Stabs them each twenty or thirty times.”

Nick felt himself shiver. An image from his nightmare flooded his mind. His father’s eyes were hollow sockets. Opening his mouth to speak, blood spilled down his chin. Sam appeared in the study with them, and Nick cried out to him:
He’s dead, Sam. Dad’s dead
. Sam’s face twisted into a smile, and Nick realized that his brother was holding a bloody knife in his hand.

Nick fought off the vision, focusing on Daly instead. “How did they end up catching him?” he heard himself ask the editor.

“The police found the homeless man dressed in a pair of the victim’s trousers, selling some of the wife’s jewelry.”

“In Milwaukee, you said.”

Daly nodded, then pushed herself up from the chair, once again wincing as she straightened her knees. “I’ll send you a link from my office. I thought maybe it was something you’d want to check out. Another homeless killer.” She stretched and looked around the newsroom. “Yeah, it helps to keep yourself busy. Especially if there’s no baseball to watch.” She rapped her knuckles a few times absently on Nick’s desk, then wandered off toward her office.

When the rain cleared later that morning, Nick ducked out of the newsroom to visit the mortuary. The director had called to let Nick know as a matter of procedure that the cremation would be carried out in the afternoon. There was nothing for Nick to see. Sam’s remains weren’t resting in a casket. No funeral would be held. Sam wasn’t religious, and the body itself was too mutilated to view. Nevertheless, Nick understood that this would be his last chance to say good-bye to his brother.

Nick sat in the small chamber where the mortuary held its memorial services. Sam’s body was lying somewhere else inside the building, Nick didn’t know where. In a refrigerated drawer in the basement, perhaps. Nick was holding a large yellow envelope in his hands—Sam’s personal effects, which the director had turned over to him a few minutes before. Nick hadn’t been expecting the rush of emotions.

An image of his brother’s face hovered in front of his eyes. Not a memory of Sam himself, but of a photograph taken when they were kids. In the snapshot, Sam was standing next to him in front of their house in Madison, holding his lunch box, on their way to Nick’s first day of school. Nick was remembering how brave Sam had always looked to him in that picture. Nick had been smiling, too, but he understood that his ease belonged to his brother. Sam had always made everything so effortless for him. He had blazed the trail, Nick only had to follow.

Something kept tugging at Nick. An impulse that wouldn’t go away.
He wanted to see Sam.
Until he saw him again, he couldn’t accept that Sam was dead. This thought brought him back to Laura Daly and to the loss of her son. Harold Daly had simply disappeared. Laura never had the chance to close the door. The days she had spent expecting her son to reappear in her life had melted into a tragedy too slippery to grasp. Nick glanced at the raised platform at the front of the room, where an empty coffin was staged, surrounded by a profusion of flowers.
What would Sam have done? Would he have demanded to see Nick’s body?
Nick knew that Sam wouldn’t have accepted
no
for an answer.