Murder at the B-School Read online

  Interesting that you set yourself up as a knowitall, it began. The typeface and margins appeared to be the same as on the crumpled-up note. When in fact you know almost nothing. It just means that you fall from a higher place when you fall. It means that those of us who you try to doninate and intimidate are less likely to reach out to you as you head for the rocks. Which your about to hit in a big way.

  “Ugh,” Brouillard said.

  “Yeah. Nice imagery from the pampered rich kid. And stay with me, because there’s another little thing going on here.”

  She wanted to savor this new scrap—to roll it around in her mind, hold it up against its predecessor, probe for nuances. But Deming was opening something up on the other monitor.

  “What we have here is the computer’s operations log. You wouldn’t have this on an older machine, or on a Mac. Okay, so you and I are now officially glad that Bill Gates’s dark legions out in Redmond don’t have enough to do with their time, and that they keep adding all this unnecessary junk. And we’re also glad that young Eric’s family bought him the latest version of Windows, which includes this particular junk.

  “Basically, this log tells you everything that’s been done to this machine, dating back just about as far as you want to look. And trust me, I went back farther than you want to look. The interesting thing happens right here, right down at the end of the log.”

  He tapped the screen once again, like a geologist tapping a revealing seam in a rock face. “Somebody went in and changed the computer’s clock. They backdated it a day. Then they reset it to show the right date again.

  “Now, you have to ask yourself: Why would somebody want to do that? Somebody just playing around, to see how the date and time function works? Maybe. But not likely. It doesn’t feel like our Eric, right? He’s got better things to do with his time. He doesn’t do housekeeping. And anyway, there’s still more to this little mystery.”

  Deming, rolling out the details, was showing a little flair for the dramatic. And now, he knew, he had an attentive audience.

  “What you discover when you line things up,” he continued, pointing back to the monitor closest to her, “is that that little story, and only that little story, was written in the window created by the bogus time stamp.”

  Brouillard shook her head. “I’m sorry. Try it again.”

  “Okay,” Deming replied. “It’s Sunday night, ’long about midnight. Eric sits down at the keyboard. At twelve fourteen a.m., for reasons known only to himself, he changes the clock on his computer, turning Sunday into Saturday. He then writes his little haiku about Humpty Dumpty heading for the rocks, and saves it. Then he changes his mind about the whole thing and throws Humpty Dumpty in the trash. At twelve twenty-one a.m., he changes Saturday back into Sunday. And as usual, forgets to take out the garbage.”

  “And then,” Brouillard said slowly, nose wrinkling, “he goes out and dies.”

  14

  IT WAS VERMEER’S IDEA TO MEET AT THE STOCKYARD FOR lunch.

  “Doesn’t exactly strike me as your kind of place,” Brouillard said skeptically on the phone.

  “See how little you know about me?”

  It was a former train station on the once-proud Boston & Albany’s main line—an impressive heavy granite-and-sandstone Richardsonian edifice with lots of dark brown gingerbread, from back when railroads were the dot-com equivalent. Most of Boston’s slaughterhouses, Vermeer had been told, used to be located in this vicinity. Cows came east in their boxcars, got off the train in what was then rural Brighton, and got turned into hamburgers.

  The Stockyard had excellent hamburgers. It also had a kind of cheesy red-Naugahyde decor that appealed to Vermeer. And best of all, it was the kind of place where, despite being only a few miles from the Harvard Business School, you were absolutely guaranteed never to run into anybody from the Harvard Business School. Guys with thick necks, yes. Thoroughly guilty-looking couples, almost always. But never any senior professors of finance.

  Brouillard was late but unapologetic. Sliding into the booth across from him, she looked more frazzled than usual. She took off her trench coat, foofed her hair out of her eyes, and looked disapprovingly at Vermeer’s beer.

  “A little early in the day, don’t you think?”

  “In this place, a beer is simply camouflage. Helps you blend in. A mixed drink works even better.”

  “Not for me, thanks. I’m sometimes called upon to fire a weapon.”

  Waiting for their food, they made small talk. Occasionally a commuter train rumbled by, shaking the foundations of the building and releasing a few bubbles from Vermeer’s beer. Brouillard told a colorful story, involving a container ship and one Tony “Carbine” Carbone, from her days in East Boston.

  Vermeer couldn’t think of anything comparable in his own background. So he challenged the detective to a game of snapshot.

  “Don’t know it.”

  “Easy. We pick someone nearby. But not so close that they can hear us. We each make up the guy’s life story. Then we compare stories.”

  They agreed on a victim: a fleshy-looking character in his late fifties at the end of the bar. He looked prosperous but not healthy. His silver hair, combed straight back from his forehead, had an odd yellowish tinge. He was drinking shots.

  “You’re up first,” Vermeer said.

  “Okay.” She thought for a minute. “His name is Joseph D. Whitelawn. He wants to be called Joseph, or at least Joe, but everyone in the world calls him ‘Whitey.’ It bugs him. He was born and raised in the D Street projects. Comes from a family of six kids; on-again, off-again father. Fell in with a bad crowd. Did just enough time to scare himself straight. His family pulled some strings in their state senator’s office and got him a job with the Edison. Been there ever since. Started on a line crew thirty years ago, and now he supervises a couple of line crews. Except that they don’t really need much supervision from the likes of Whitey. He doesn’t bother them; they don’t bother him. Three years from retirement, and counting the days.”

  Vermeer was impressed. “Excellent. But no. In fact, his name is Michael Maffeo. He tries to get people to put the accent on the second syllable, but everybody calls him ‘Mike Mafia.’ Which is completely unfair, because in fact he’s an aluminum-siding salesman from Fitchburg, with almost no connections of any kind, good or bad. He used to have a couple of strong commercial accounts in this neighborhood, and he started bringing customers here twenty years ago. It got to be a habit. He’s nervous about using the company card for a liquid lunch, but so far, nobody in Accounting has objected, so he’s still doing it. He doesn’t like the way the neighborhood around here seems to be heading. Too upscale. Too much glass and brick. Not enough siding.”

  They played a few more rounds as they ate their hamburgers. Brouillard’s characterizations always drifted into life on the edge of the law, although usually with some kind of redemption involved. Vermeer’s characters were all strivers, salesmen, ladder climbers. He didn’t redeem any of them.

  “Okay, time to talk business,” Brouillard said, signaling the end of the game as their coffee arrived.

  “That’s what this place is all about. Here, even love is business.”

  “Right. So tell me what you learned down in New York City.” She took out her notepad and pencil.

  Vermeer gave her a brief rundown of his visit to 343 Atwater. There wasn’t much to tell, he admitted. He described Ellie Donahue and Dan Beyer. He described the passkey security system. He described Libby MacInnes’s room, its lone knickknack, its high-powered computer setup. And he described the fury on Dan Beyer’s face when he caught an intruder in Miss Libby’s private bedroom.

  “Interesting,” Brouillard responded, jotting some notes. “So she knows her way around computers. The systems looked like they might be used to run a business?”

  “Just a guess. In any case, there was way more there than you’d need to order stuff from L.L. Bean online or look up nursing trivia.”

  �
�And you have no idea what the award was all about?”

  “None. The something-something recognizes Libby and the something-something for all their good work.”

  She sighed and tapped the rubber end of her pencil, slowly but forcefully, on her pad. “These are the kinds of details you’re supposed to pay attention to. They may be important.”

  “Well, I was going to write them down. Then I got interrupted by a mountain on its way to being a volcano.”

  She snapped her notepad shut and reburied it in her oversize bag. “Well, under those circumstances, I guess I can’t blame you.” She paused as the waitress refilled her coffee cup. “So now what? You’re heading for the hills?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m driving Eric’s car and some knickknacks back to the country house. In a town called Middleford, somewhere out west of Albany.”

  “What time are they expecting you?”

  “Midafternoon. It’s about a five-hour drive.”

  “If you’re willing, I want you to do something for me out there.”

  “Okay. What?”

  “I want you to have a conversation with a guy who lives in the same town—Middleford. His name is Dave Westerling. A pal of Eric’s who turned up on Eric’s computer. Here’s the info.”

  Vermeer looked at the page, obviously torn from one of Brouillard’s notepads and written out for his benefit. Name, phone number, and screen name. “AOL nickname downhilldave13740,” he read out loud. “You wouldn’t think that there were 13,000 guys out there who wanted to call themselves ‘downhilldave.’”

  “There aren’t. That’s a zip code. Middleford.”

  “Huh. Your powers of deduction at work?”

  “Yeah, that,” she said. “Plus, he was in Eric’s address book. Plus, it’s the same zip code that shows up on Eric’s checkbook, bank statement, passport, and so on. Middleford seems to be one of those little towns they own out there.”

  15

  BROUILLARD STOOD MORE OR LESS HALFWAY ACROSS THE BROAD span of the Lars Anderson Bridge, leaning against the chest-high wide concrete sidewall and looking over the edge. The streetlights on the bridge didn’t cut very far into the winter darkness. She suppressed a shiver. Yeah, it’s cold up here in the wind, she scolded herself. And it’s a hell of a lot colder down there.

  The vista below her had a ghostly, otherworldly quality. The ice on the Charles River was translucent rather than transparent. The flashlights of the divers below it sent out cones of light that the slow-moving water beneath the ice grabbed and distorted, then briefly set free, and then distorted again.

  The divers had slithered their way out onto the ice from the Harvard boathouse on the Cambridge side. Jurisdictional issues would be addressed later. For the moment, the Metropolitan District Commission police, who in warm weather patrolled these waters in high-speed powerboats, were working with the staties, with Cambridge and Boston (including herself) just as happy to watch from the sidelines.

  As a result, much of what Brouillard knew came thirdhand. The state police sergeant in charge of the scene, recognizing “Ms. Biz,” had taken a few minutes to brief her. Apparently, Jeannette Bartlett had left the Cambridge bar by herself shortly before midnight. She had seemed increasingly disconnected and subdued in the previous day or days; her friends had decided to take her out to get her mind off her troubles. Yes, some drinking ensued, but not so much that anyone’s judgment was impaired. Not so much that anyone worried about Bartlett walking back across the river by herself.

  Three hours earlier—at exactly 12:16 a.m., according to a passing motorist with a digital clock readout—the dark form that shouldn’t have been perched on the bridge wall midspan suddenly stopped perching there. Yes, he might have had a few pops himself, but not so much that he wasn’t aware that something odd had just happened. He put his flashers on and pulled over. He found a wallet and a woman’s wristwatch on the cold concrete surface.

  He looked over the edge, more or less as Brouillard was doing now, and saw a hole in the ice. He dialed 911. Several police forces arrived; he told his story a dozen times—no, he hadn’t touched either the wallet or the watch; did they think he was stupid?—and was finally allowed to head home, with the promise of more interrogations to follow. People wearing plastic gloves examined the wallet, which turned out to belong to one Jeannette Bartlett.

  Brouillard guessed that unless the divers got real lucky, unless the body had snagged on some obstacle near where it had slammed its way through the ice, Bartlett would not be found until the ice broke up in the next thaw. Right now, that increasingly rigid mass might be only ten or twenty feet away from the wet-suited divers. Or it might be well on its way to the dam down by the Museum of Science. A messy case. Brouillard sighed. Like a sword hanging over the head of the MDC police. All you could hope was that you found the body, rather than some family of tourists picnicking on the Esplanade in May.

  “You did this.”

  She had assumed that the dark form approaching purposefully from the Cambridge side of the river was some sort of cop, since it was well within the cordoned-off perimeter. But now she recognized the gait and voice of James MacInnes. He had on a down coat but no other winter gear.

  “You’re not supposed to be here, Mr. MacInnes. This is a crime scene. You need to get back behind the yellow tape. Better yet, you should go home.”

  He was flexing his bare hands. It didn’t look as though he was doing so to keep his fingers warm. “You’re damn right it’s a crime scene. A crime committed by you.” He came closer, index finger jabbing toward her chest.

  Not giving ground, she watched the finger. “Mr. MacInnes, you don’t want to get any closer to me. And you certainly don’t want to lay that finger on me. If you do, you’re going to get a free ride in one of those patrol cars. And they won’t be taking you anyplace you want to go.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’re tough, all right,” he snarled, now stopping short. “You’re especially tough on young women who can’t defend themselves from your assaults.”

  Of course, the thought had occurred to her. Standing in this biting and unforgiving wind, exhausted enough to let her mind wander, she had already replayed the encounter in Shad many times over, wondering whether her questions had helped push Bartlett to this miserable end. But she didn’t want to hear the same possibility raised by the likes of James MacInnes.

  “Judging from those bruises on your wife’s wrist, Mr. MacInnes,” she said evenly, “I would have said that assaulting young women was your specialty.”

  “Who the fuck—”

  “Shut up and listen to me very carefully,” she interrupted, loud enough to get his attention but not loud enough to further fuel the fire. “You’ve now accused me three times of causing Jeannette Bartlett to do this to herself. I don’t like it. In fact, it really pisses me off. So if I hear it from your rich-boy mouth one more time, I’m going to put a pair of handcuffs on your rich-boy wrists and run your rich-boy ass in on a spousal abuse charge. And Massachusetts takes that kind of thing very seriously. Okay, so maybe the charge won’t stick. But it will take days to sort it all out. I can guarantee that.

  “So get off my bridge,” she concluded. “Now.”

  Now the cold seemed to be catching up with him. He shoved his fists into his coat pockets and hunched his shoulders to cover his neck. But another kind of cold was coming out of his eyes. She could feel it washing over her, challenging her, on its way to the frozen ground.

  “Captain Brouillard,” he said, just before turning on his heels, “you don’t have the slightest idea who you’re dealing with.”

  16

  THE FIVE-HOUR RIDE OUT FROM BOSTON WAS UNEVENTFUL, but only because Vermeer had resisted his impulse to put the car through its paces.

  The Acura NSX, teal green, with two seats and an excess of swooping body angles, was unlike anything Vermeer had ever driven. The dings and scrapes in its fiberglass body were merely protective coloring: This was more a projectile than a car.

  Th
e car’s true nature began to become clear in the Business School parking lot, when he happened to glance at its overwide tires. No treads. Then there was the front seat, which urged you into a semirecumbent position. And once ignited, the car made two noises at once: a throb and a whine. When you stepped on the gas, the throb got bigger and the whine got higher. And because the engine was right behind you, almost square in the middle of the car, it seemed to be taunting you, behind your back. Egging you on.

  Turning left onto Western Avenue and tapping the accelerator just a little too heavily, Vermeer learned what the no-tread tires were all about. They allowed the car to talk back from street level: Really? You want to do that? Well, okay. On the next right-hand curve, he tromped on the gas pedal going into the turn. Centrifugal forces mushed him against the driver’s door. The car hugged the pavement.

  Several miles later, as he reached up far above his head to pull his ticket out of the machine at the Mass Pike tollbooth, he was reminded that his butt was only inches above the road surface. And well before the Newton exit, he found out how quickly this car could hit 120. He now understood the voice behind him: The faster you go, the happier I am.

  And that was when Vermeer decided that he wouldn’t get into a conversation with this car. His quick riffle through the minuscule glove compartment before blastoff had turned up no registration papers. Although the registration tag on the New York license plate was current, the inspection sticker on the windshield had expired months earlier. Vermeer imagined explaining the whole messy situation—dead rich kid, Harvard, and so on—to the state trooper who flagged him down doing 120 through the moneyed western suburbs.

  Reluctantly he slowed down. He had had a motorcycle once that talked to him in the same kinds of ways. He had finally had to get rid of it.