Gardener: The Roots Of Ancient Evil (8 page)

              “Hey, how’s everything so far?” Tommy asked.

              “Better than I thought. But there’s still a storm coming,” she replied.

              “What do you mean?” he asked.

              “Well, so far we’re just focusing on getting the funeral, coordinating with the coroner’s office, trying to find her guest list from her phone, mostly housekeeping stuff. We haven’t really talked about the big elephant in the room,” she said.

              “Sounds like me and my dad for the last fifteen years. Don’t be an idiot like me,” he said.

              “I know, I mean, not that you’re an idiot,” she said, laughing, “but once the funeral’s done, I think we’ll go talk to a counselor or something. I don’t want to leave them unless we at least talk about it, so we don’t just ignore it. Not that I’m saying that’s what you’re doing, I mean, with your dad, I’m sorry, that’s none of my business, it’s just—”

Tommy cut her off. “Relax, it’s OK, it will be fine,” he said, forcing a laugh. “Hey, I’m in my new office,” he added, changing the subject.

              “Really? When did that happen?” she asked.

              “Just started yesterday. Had an interview earlier, about twenty guys, and they picked me,” he said.

              “That’s great! What kind of work?”

              “Well, I work for a mysterious real estate magnate, owns a bunch of property, and wants me to help him acquire some more,” he explained.

              “So, where is this new office?” she asked coyly.

              “About twenty-five minutes from your secret laboratory,” he said.

              “Well, that is convenient,” she said.

              “And”—he paused—“I operate largely without any oversight,” he said, enjoying the sudden change in mood.

              “What does that mean exactly?”

              “Well, I have these goals, but they are really long range, so I can work wherever I want, from here, from home, do what research I need. Hire whatever staff I need,” he said.

              “So you’ll be getting your own place then?”

              “Yes. Maybe when you get back you can help me shop for furniture. I need some new suits too, I only have one,” he said.

              “OK,” she said softly. “That sounds like fun. I gotta go, but call me later, OK?”

              “OK.” Just after Tommy hung up, the office computer vendors arrived, and needed to wire in the large computer system that he’d ordered yesterday. They said it would take about an hour to get set up, so he decided to take a walk around. He knew the land itself was very large, but he’d only been in this small office.

He went out to the front and walked to the right. There appeared to be a small path leading up a small grassy hill. He walked to the top in about fifteen minutes. It afforded a decent view of the place, but he couldn’t quite see all of it. There appeared to be another building a couple hundred yards away. He couldn’t tell if it was a residence or another small office building.

Tommy didn’t recall Shea mentioning where he’d lived, on the land itself or somewhere else. He would need to research the property thoroughly, find out its history, how Shea’s family had acquired it, whatever land grants or deeds were involved. Tommy knew that some areas of the United States were wholly owned by private individuals, but leased to the city for public use on very generous terms. This gave the owners certain control over the use of the land, including any home ownership requirements for any new developments. That might be something worth looking into.

As Tommy began walking back to his office, he spotted what looked like a greenhouse. He made a mental note to find out about that later. All he knew about greenhouses was they were very hot on the inside, and he was beginning to perspire in his suit.

              “Hey, there you are, we’re just about finishing up,” the computer installation tech said when Tommy walked back inside. He’d gotten a fairly large server with a dedicated T3 line, with enough processing power to handle five workstations, in addition to wired setups for five desktop PCs. He had no idea what he’d be using it for, but Cristina had been specific to spare no expense. Tommy signed the invoice and thanked the technicians. Once in his office he spent about an hour configuring it to his liking, syncing it with his own cloud settings from his laptop at home. As he was doing that, his cell phone buzzed. He didn’t recognize the number.

              “Tom Ricker,” he answered.

              “Tommy, it’s Santiago, we met at GenSpan, what’s up?”

              “Oh, not much, just settling into my new office. I ended up taking that job at Shea,” he said.

              “Oh yeah? Good for you, man, that’s actually why I was calling,” he said.

              “Yeah?”

              “Yeah, you asked if I knew anything about the guy, so I asked around. One of the directors, or consultants, here, he heard I was asking around and he called me. Guy’s super rich, anyway he said he wants to talk to you. He told me to tell you to call him if you want,” Santiago said.

              “He say why?”

              “No, just for you to call him when convenient. It didn’t sound like a big deal, though. So how’s your lady?” Santiago asked.             

              “She’s doing OK. She had to go back to see her folks, so she’s out of town for a while,” Tommy said, wondering what the protocol for something like that was.

              “Cool, bro, here, let me give you that guy’s number,” Santiago said.

Tommy wrote it down and also gave Santiago his work number and email. He decided to call Santiago’s man out of curiosity.

              “Hello, this is Tom Ricker calling for Mr. Prieto, it’s regarding Dominic Shea,” Tommy said to the middle-aged-sounding secretary. Tommy was told to please wait, which was surprising. He didn’t expect to actually get through to a major funding source for a venture capital outfit.

              “Mr. Ricker, thank you for calling,” Prieto said after coming on the line. “How well do you know Santiago?”

              “Well, to be honest, I only talked to him for a few minutes while we were in GenSpan, where my girlfriend works,” Tommy admitted.

              “I see, and now you work for Shea Industries. Is that correct?” he asked.

              “Yes, what exactly is your interest, if you don’t mind me asking?”

              “Well, I have been interested in doing business with Mr. Shea for quite some time. His family has quite a bit of influence, and to get funding from them would be quite an accomplishment for an investor like myself. I was just curious as to what capacity you were fulfilling for Mr. Shea,” he asked.

              “Well, to be honest, today’s my first day, and from what I’ve gathered, I’ve been tasked with acquiring some property, in addition to some property he’s recently acquired,” Tommy explained.

              “I apologize for putting you on the spot, have you signed any nondisclosures?”

              “Uh, no, actually, I haven’t. He didn’t even mention that.”
              “I see. May I offer you a proposition? Please say no if you’re uncomfortable,” Prieto said.

              “Shoot, I can only say no,” Tommy said, wondering what it could be.

              “In order for me to better approach Mr. Shea, I would be interested in knowing his specific purposes for increasing his holdings there in Colorado Springs. So, if you could find out, so long as you don’t feel uncomfortable doing so, any information you provide to me that would help me facilitate any business deal, I would give you a very healthy commission,” Prieto asked.

              “You wouldn’t be asking me to divulge any personal or private information of Mr. Shea’s, would you?” Tommy asked. Was this guy asking him to be a spy?

              “No, no, of course not. Just if you’re comfortable, if you could find out anything that may help me convince Mr. Shea to invest in assets other than real estate. Perhaps his motivations or long-term interests. Like I said, anything you could help me find could be very lucrative, Mr. Ricker.”

              “How lucrative?”

              “Well, any deal we would make with Shea Industries could be worth billions. Any help you give us would be worth one or two percent,” Prieto said offhandedly.

Tommy nearly choked. One percent of a billion-dollar deal was ten million dollars.

              “Yeah, well, I don’t see why not. Of course, I’m not promising anything,” Tommy said, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.

Sixteen

              “So where are we with Berg, anything new?” the lead detective asked a roomful of subordinates. Two officers had been assigned the case, and they glanced at each other before one of them responded.

              “This is a dead end, kind of a working girl met a client via a website, and she winds up dead,” she explained. Her partner had his notes ready in case she needed them.

              “No help from the website?” the lead asked. She shrugged, shook her head.

              “The server is in China, the company that runs it is in Russia, they don’t do any background checks, so long as their clients pay their bills,” she said.             

              “What about subpoenaing the client’s pay history?”

              “We tried, but it’s passed through so many levels of encryption, nearly as much as porn sites, to protect the identities of the users.”
              “But he paid in dollars; doesn’t that mean it went through a U.S. bank? No help there?” he asked, but suspected what the answer would be.

              “Well, all due respect to the victim, but if you want us to go that route, you’re talking a lot of layers of administration to wade through. I really don’t see us getting resource approval for this, unless you’re saying this is a, uh, high-level case,” she said. Sons and daughters of senators might get follow-up, but not a borderline working girl.

              “Yeah, I get your point. Nothing on the body?” he asked.

              “No. Guy was meticulous. No prints, no fibers, nothing,” she said.

              “So you’re saying he’s a pro? He’s done this before?” the lead asked.

She looked at her partner and then nodded. “I’d definitely say this guy has done this before, but that’s only based on the specific lack of evidence. I want to say this guy is a repeater, but all we have is lack of evidence, which puts us in same boat,” she explained.

              “So you’re saying that without anything specifically to connect this to any other open cases, there’s really no argument to pursue this,” he said. The two officers in charge of the case glanced at each other, and then nodded.

              “Well, keep this on the back burner, anything else you can think of, but don’t spend too much time. Release the body to the family, tell them the investigation is pending, but let them know it may be a while. Next case,” he said and closed the Berg file and opened another one.

              Tommy arrived in his office early. He had a couple ideas of how to start, and was excited. He’d called Mallory last night and she’d congratulated him, but made him promise to bring Viviana by, explaining that without Mallory and Selena, they wouldn’t be together. Tommy promised to give credit where credit was due. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was out of town, or why.

Tommy suspected that Shea may monitor all of his computer-based activities, so he’d have to keep some of his activities on his laptop and off of the cloud, where it would automatically sync with his work computer. Even if Prieto was reaching at straws, Tommy didn’t want to inadvertently get fired for corporate espionage. For all he knew, Prieto and Shea were archenemies. His cell buzzed, and he smiled as he answered it.

              “Hey,” he said, enjoying the privacy of his own office.

              “Hey back, how’s your new job?” she asked.

              “So far so good. I haven’t gotten fired yet. How are things with you?” Tommy asked.

              “Good and not so good,” she said.

              “Oh no, what happened?” he asked.

              “Well, the coroner has released the body, so the funeral is the day after tomorrow. But they said they don’t have any leads, and they aren’t sure if they’ll be able to find out who did this,” she explained.

              “But they met on a website, right? Can’t they track him that way?”

              “Well, they didn’t really get specific, but the way she described it, it didn’t sound like they had high hopes.”

              “Vivi, that’s horrible. So they just leave it like that? We don’t know who did this, deal with it?” Tommy said, not hiding his frustration.

              “I don’t know, Tommy, the way she met him, some rich guy, maybe he planned this. I didn’t really expect them to figure this out, but my parents,” she said, pausing. Tommy suspected she was trying to keep her emotions in check, but didn’t know what to say. “My parents don’t even want to talk about this. Every time I mention going to see a grief counselor, they just say they want to wait until the police find out more.”

              “Give them time; you can remind them in a couple months. I won’t let you forget,” Tommy said, hoping she wouldn’t mind he was assuming they’d still be together in two months.

              “Thank you,” she said softly.

              “Hey, what about hiring somebody?” he asked.

              “What do you mean?”

              “I mean if the cops can’t find out, maybe a private investigator or somebody can. There have to be records, I mean if this guy paid through a website, and he paid for her tuition, right?”

              “We’ll talk about that when I come back,” she said.

              “When are you coming back?”

              “Um, funeral is day after tomorrow, so next day or two after that, maybe? Unless my parents make a sudden reversal, which I doubt.”

              “OK. I miss you,” Tommy said, hanging up. He sat, thinking. Objectively it wasn’t likely that the police would find somebody. Especially the way the body was found. He Googled crime statistics, surprised at the low murder solve rate. Unless the victim was killed by a known associate or spouse, the police records were dismal. Tommy spent the next several minutes looking up various “sugar-daddy” sites, of which there were plenty. If some rich guy wanted to have plenty of young girls spread out across the country, it was clearly easy enough.

For part of his MBA, Tommy had studied various aspects of commercial fraud, and had been amazed at how many angles people came up with. He made the decision that before Viviana returned in a few days, he would have gotten a few quotes and an expectation of success from various private investigators. But he would need to do that from his PC at home; he didn’t feel comfortable taking care of personal business at work, especially on only his second day.