Chapter Six
“Mira can see you in an hour, but she wants to come to you. She wants a look at your board.”
“That’s fine.”
“Have you ever thought of getting a decent spare chair? Wait,” Peabody held up a hand before Eve could speak. “Not a replacement. I realize you have a kind of weird attachment to the ass-biting chair.”
“It keeps people from sitting too long.”
“It keeps smart people from sitting at all. I mean a spare you could bring in when Mira or Whitney or like that comes to your office.”
“They can and do use my desk chair. I’m good with standing anyway. We’re going to run O’Brian and his admin. And see if you can dig up Mae’s full name.”
Because the visit had left her with an itch between her shoulder blades, she rolled her shoulders.
“Something’s off about that place. O’Brian’s wearing a lab coat, but how much of that’s for show?
I guarantee you he’s already played a recording of our interview with him for Wyst. Something’s off,” she repeated.
“Thirteen years,” Eve muttered. “The big payment, then an annual quarter million. No more, no less. Because it’s not a bonus. It’s payment.”
“I hear you on that, but what else I heard? They liked Chu. That didn’t feel or sound off.”
“Yeah, they liked him. Company man. At the base of it, that’s what he was. Maybe he always was, or maybe they bought his loyalty. And at the base of it, high probability, that’s why he’s dead.”
She turned into the garage at Central. “I’m wondering,” she continued, “if they’re in the dark about who and why, or they have a glimmer of light on it.”
The itch remained.
“Do the runs. We need to know the players—and Wyst is a player if I’ve ever met one. I’m going to dig back thirteen years, see what I can find out about what the company and the victim were up to.”
The elevator stopped almost immediately. A man with a short red ponytail and the stubble of a beard carried a baby in some sort of front-facing sack on his chest.
The baby, feet and arms waving, had a feathery shock of red hair, wide and intensely joyful blue eyes.
He said, “Bah, bah, GAH!” and blew a bubbling raspberry.
Peabody said, “Aw! He’s adorable.”
“Thanks, we sure think so. His mom works here. She’s just back from parental leave. She forgot a few things this morning.” He jiggled the bag on his shoulder.
The kid bounced like he had springs in his butt and said, “Ba ma ba ma DA!”
When the doors opened, and more people piled on, he bounced harder, clapped his hands, blew another enthusiastic raspberry.
Several hard-eyed cops went to putty.
The next stop, another huddle of cops, the kid’s opinion seemed to be, “GOO! Bahbah.”
Eve got off.
“Man, he was so cute. That hair! Those cheeks!”
“Yeah, he had those. How did you know he was a he?”
“He was wearing navy pants with trucks all over them, and a red race car shirt.”
“That’s sexist.”
“Yeah, sure, but also usually accurate.”
They rode the glides. As they topped the glide to Homicide, the elevator opened. A man rushed off. He had dark hair nearly to his shoulders around a sharply angled face. Dark eyes showed signs of weeping and fatigue.
Since her board carried his ID shot, she recognized Nathan Chu.
“Mr. Chu.”
“What? Yes?”
“Mr. Chu, I’m Lieutenant Dallas, and this is Detective Peabody.”
“I need to talk to you. I need to know . . . something. We’ve just come from seeing my father. My father,” he repeated, and pressed a fist to his forehead.
“We’ll go this way.” She led him down the hall toward the lounge.
“You’re here alone?”
“Yes. Brad and I, we went to see our father. Just the two of us. My family’s with my mother. Everyone’s with Mom. She’s—you can’t imagine.”
“I’m going to get you some water,” Peabody said as they walked into the lounge.
“Thanks, but I—I need answers. They warned us, even advised us not to see him. But we had to. We had to. Dr. Morris stayed with us the whole time. What they did to him, it’s . . . I need answers.”
“Sit down.” Because she sensed he could break at any moment, Eve urged him into a chair while Peabody got the water. “Mr. Chu.”
“Nate, just Nate. It had to be more than one person, didn’t it? To do that?”
“We believe there was a single attacker, one who had accessed your father’s security code in order to disengage the window lock on the office.”
“But why? For what reason? You had to hate somebody to do that. Nobody hated my father. He’s never hurt anyone. He works, he’s dedicated to developing ways to help people.”
“We can’t verify a motive at this time. We can tell you that your father is our priority.” She waited a beat until Peabody set the water in front of Nate, then sat. “We’re pursuing every avenue to get the answers you need.”
“Like what?” he demanded.
“We’ve just come from talking to his direct supervisor,” Peabody told him. “His team, Jacob Wyst.”
“What would they have to do with it? They valued my dad. I know he was a good boss because he taught me to be one. He’s won awards. He’s headed projects that have saved lives.”
“Nate.” Eve drew his attention back to her. “We have to pursue those avenues. Someone knew your father well enough to gain his security code, to gain access to his communications. This individual knew your father would be in his office, would be alone.”
“It has to be some crazy jealous competitor. Some corporate hit because of my father’s work. Why aren’t you pursuing that avenue?”
“Do you know what your father was working on?”
“No, not exactly.” He heaved out a breath, then drank some water.
“Usually several projects at a time, but with one prioritized. That’s the kind of thing we talked about because that’s how I handle my business.
That’s how he taught me. You might learn something from one project you can apply to another. ”
“Would you have any specifics?”
“No. I have some science in my work. With plants, soil, and my brother’s seriously smart. Brad might understand a little more than me, but Dad didn’t talk specifics much, not about the work, until the project was public. I mean he had top security clearance in Banner-Wyst. We didn’t.”
“What do you know about his relationships, at work, outside of work?”
“He got along with everybody. I like to say it’s his superpower. He’d just find the common thread.”
He took another breath, another drink. “I’m sorry.
I’m not handling this well. I don’t know how to handle it.
I came straight from . . . from the morgue.
I know I worked myself up, and I know it hasn’t even been a day.
I just hoped you could tell me something.
Something I could take back to my family. ”
“I’m meeting with the best profiler in New York, and, in my opinion, beyond that, within the hour. We’re looking at every angle, Nate.”
“Okay, okay, and you can’t do that if you’re sitting here patting me on the head. I’m sorry.”
“He’s your dad,” Peabody said gently.
“Yeah. Thanks for talking to me.”
“We will keep you informed,” Eve promised. “We may have more questions.”
“That’s okay. I want you to ask them. I’d tell you anything if it helps find who did this to my dad. We were all supposed to have dinner on Sunday.”
“Did you do that often?”
He nodded at Eve. “We’re all busy, work, kids, life. But we always made time. When I was a kid, he’d get caught up at work, a lot. We wouldn’t really see him sometimes for days at a time.
“I got in a little bit of trouble when I was about seventeen—senior in high school. You know, acting out, sneaking out. Looking for that trouble and finding it.”
“What did you do?”
“Other than letting my grades tank, giving my parents a lot of grief? Went out one night and drank my ass off with a couple of like-minded friends. Broke into the school, spray-painted crap on the walls. Got caught, of course.”
He downed more water. “They were going to boot me, and I’d do some time in juvie. Dad intervened, even took some of the blame because he hadn’t been around like he should’ve been. I got probation all around, mandatory counseling, had to work off the damage to the school, bring my grades up.”
Swiping at his eyes, Nate sighed. “I’m not sure I’d have done any of it if he hadn’t had my back, and worked with me.
It made all the difference, you know? I wouldn’t be where I am without him showing me I mattered more.
He was always available after that. No matter what, he made time, paid attention. ”
Nate held up a hand, shook his head. “Sorry, wasting your time.”
“Not at all,” Eve told him. “You can assure your family the investigation into your father’s death is active and ongoing, and that he is our priority.”
“I will. I need to get back to them. Thanks for talking to me.”
When he left, Eve rose slowly. “Family turnaround when he was about seventeen, which not coincidentally because otherwise bollocks, is right about thirteen years ago.”
“Yeah, I got that, too.”
“Do the runs, and I’ll start digging before I meet with Mira.”
Fueled with coffee, Eve sat to do searches on headlines, criminal activity, personal highlights, lowlights, on the company, on her victim, on Calvin Banner, Jacob Wyst. She tossed in John (Jack) O’Brian and his admin for good measure.
The company made headlines—at least in scientific articles and, she noted, in financial news.
Wyst made some of his own, lobbying Congress, golfing with presidents, attending major fundraisers, giving speeches, spearheading the Banner-Wyst Foundation, the Banner-Wyst scholarships—for innovation and excellence in science.
Banner, reclusive, made them when he deigned to speak or appear at a public event.
And she found plenty of not-so-complimentary articles and editorials on their practice of company towns. Some praise, some criticism—depending on the lean of the media venue—regarding their monetary contributions politically.
Conflicts of interests, suits brought by advocacy organizations.
Some tarnish on the silver, Eve thought, but nothing in those headlines that pushed her buzzer for murder thirteen years later.
But something did. Getting up, she paced as she wound through it all again.