Chapter Fifteen
“EDD?” Peabody asked as she hustled to the glides.
“They’re working it. It sounds like Cruz arbitrarily changed the codes whenever he had the whim. We need that connection to Banner-Wyst to get in there, to find out what Redman knew that was so big they’d blow up a residential building to take him out.”
“And besides the satisfaction of helping Feeney take them down—” She caught Eve’s quick glance. “I can follow the dots on that, Dallas. They’re good dots. Besides, finding that out could be another dot, a big one, to finding Redman.”
“Finding and stopping Redman is and has to be priority. But it doesn’t mean we’re so narrowed on that we don’t dig out the root. We’re not going to let justice delayed be justice denied. However long they got away with it stops now.”
“They never saw it coming,” Peabody commented. “Redman, or us. They couldn’t take him out back then after he survived the explosion.”
“Okay,” Eve said as they clattered down the steps to the garage. “Why not?”
“Because most cops tend to agree coincidence is bollocks. The guy who goes out for ice cream and therefore survives the explosion, is under medical treatment due to his mental state, is suddenly offed?”
Peabody lifted her shoulders. “That’s a big dot, and cops start questioning. The company killed hundreds so Redman would be one of many. They don’t want him to be one of one.”
Peabody got in the car, strapped in. “Plus, he didn’t survive intact, not really. He’s out of it, and so no longer a threat.”
“You can bet they kept a close eye on that for the first year or two, and sporadically at least thereafter.”
“Yeah, they did.” Peabody shook her head as Eve drove out. “I didn’t really connect those dots. They probably got to someone on staff, or placed someone on staff, to keep watch.”
“And if he’d showed signs of improvement, if he’d started to come out of it, time to risk coincidence. Likely with a staged suicide. As things were, no, he’s not a threat.”
“Dallas, they’d have screwed with the records—whatever they needed to do they would.”
“That’s right. But if it was big enough to do what they did that night, it was big enough to either implement or keep working on. Something’s there. We’ll find it. Whatever it is, Redman still knows.”
“Here’s a thought. He left the way he left because he still knows, because he’s smart enough to understand they’d do whatever it took to silence him again. And you’d already connected those dots.”
As she pushed through an intersection, pedestrians on the corners revved their engines for the race at the Walk signal.
“Why is it dots?” she wondered. “Why isn’t it squares or triangles? He’s physically weak, without resources, can’t know who to trust. Cops? Maybe, maybe not. And he still has family. He didn’t protect his wife, his child. How does he protect what he has left?”
“By disappearing.”
“By disappearing until he could make them pay.”
Because she didn’t want to take the time to hunt for parking, Eve pulled into an already crowded lot and hunted there.
They got out for the walk.
“And they’re not going to go after his family now.” Peabody picked up the theme. “No point, plus they’re too busy trying to stay alive.”
“That would be number one,” Eve agreed.
“And trying to find him’s a close second.”
“Add covering their tracks. But he’s moving fast. He knows them, knows he has to move fast. They’d have looked for him, and hard, for a while after he poofed.”
“Then they’d figure—who wouldn’t?—he’d just wandered off, or left to kill himself. He doesn’t call the cops, go to the media, make any noise, any threats. Check him off.
“You know . . .” Peabody pursed her lips in thought. “I think it’s dots because they’re not distracting. You’d be tempted to fill in other shapes along the way instead of just following them.”
“Hmm. But maybe filling them in leads to other angles and theories.”
“Now I’m confused. Or maybe I’ll create those connect-the-dot puzzles using a variety of shapes. And if you fill in the right ones, you get other solutions. Whee. I could make a fortune.”
“Yeah, you do that in your spare time.”
Eve stepped into the dignified brick building.
Memorial centers, funeral parlors, they all struck her as the same whatever the decor, the shape, the footprint.
The scent of flowers, not only from the elegant arrangements carefully placed but, she expected, piped through the climate system. The hushed quiet and muted colors, the dark-suited staff who moved quiet as ghosts.
One of the dark-suited crossed to them, a woman with the palest of blond hair carefully coiffed, and sympathy surrounding her like the scent of flowers.
“How can I help you this morning?”
Eve lifted her badge. “Lawrence Chu.”
Sympathy turned businesslike. “Of course. Dr. Chu’s memorial program is underway in Solace on the second floor. You may take the elevator or the stairs.”
“Stairs are fine.”
“Solace will be to your left at the end of the hall.”
“I want mine outdoors,” Peabody murmured when they started up the straight beige carpeted stairway. “My, you know, this. Outside, trees, grass, sky.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She walked down the beige-carpeted hall to the door with the small plaque reading SOLACE.
She eased it open, and with Peabody, slipped inside.
A good-sized room, she noted, with privacy-screened windows that let in the light and muted the sounds of the city.
Some stood as she did, some sat, and her quick estimate came in at roughly a hundred and sixty attendees, including family.
Some she knew. Louise and Charles, several she’d interviewed from Banner-Wyst, the sons, the widow, Joleen Everly.
She saw Jacob Wyst, and deduced the two men flanking him were bodyguards.
She didn’t see Steven Redman, and hadn’t expected to.
He’d respect this, she thought, this memorializing, this solace. Because it was for the living. For family.
This ritual designed to comfort those who’d loved the man whose smiling photo stood on an easel surrounded by flowers, he’d respect.
On the wall screen, various points of Chu’s life flickered by. Childhood, adolescence, the proud college grad. Holidays, birthdays, big moments. His wedding, accepting his doctorate, holding his infant sons.
The years of a life slid by, decades summed up in minutes.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the image of a young Redman, his obviously pregnant wife, posing with Chu and his widow.
All smiles, arms curled around waists. And the little boy riding piggyback with his laughing face pressed between Redman’s and his mother’s.
Then that image passed into the next.
When they spotted Eve and Peabody, Charles and Louise moved over to them.
“I wasn’t sure you’d make it,” Louise murmured.
“We can’t stay long.”
“Neither can we. Brad will give the eulogy soon, and then I need to get to the clinic. Charles rescheduled some appointments, but . . .”
“Life marches on,” he said. Like Eve, he scanned the room, his vidstar face somber. “It needs to, or what’s the point? This, all this, gives family, well, solace. Then life marches. Not for them at first, but for the rest.”
The music that had played during the moments of Chu’s life paused. And the screen held steady with the image Eve remembered well.
The family photo Redman had turned facedown on Chu’s desk.
“That’s lovely.” Louise spoke softly. “The family they made, together, happy. Memories like that bring grief, but then they ease it.”
Bradley Chu rose, then bent to kiss his mother before walking to the podium below the screen to eulogize his father.
Eve watched the room.
She heard the words, the quiet weeping, the relief of laughter at an anecdote.
What she saw in Wyst? Nerves. He didn’t precisely fidget, but he shifted, glanced around more than he should have. He’d come because he remained the public face of his company. But he clearly didn’t want to be there.
And she was small enough to hope this ritual felt like torture to him.
When Bradley finished, his voice quavering more than a little at the end, he went back to his family.
Others stood to say a few words.
“We’ve got to go,” Louise murmured.
“We’re here a little longer.”
“We’ll see you at the party.” Charles leaned in to kiss Peabody’s cheek, then Eve’s. “I can’t tell you how much we’re looking forward to it.”
“Me, too.”
“I hope you find who did this.” Louise took Eve’s hand, squeezed. “And kick their ass for it.”
When they left, Eve waited. And finally the man whose ass she wanted to kick rose and walked to the front.
When Wyst spotted her, she saw him jolt, and lose a little color. Though the room seemed a bit too cool to her, his forehead showed a sheen of sweat.
Then he gathered himself, a man used to the public eye, and began to speak.
“Dr. Lawrence Chu’s contribution to the world can’t be summed up in a few words, so I won’t try.
He was valued at Banner-Wyst, a brilliant man, a dedicated scientist who worked tirelessly to make the world we live in a better place, a safer place, a more productive place.
And Larry, my friend of many, many years, was at the core a family man whose pride and love for that family was boundless.
He honored his parents, he treasured his wife, showered that pride and love on his sons, their wives, his grandchildren.
“The world is a better place, a safer place, a more productive place because Larry Chu lived in it. I speak for Calvin Banner and for all at Banner-Wyst when I say he will be remembered. He will be missed.”
When he stepped down, the soft music piped in again. Those who’d sat, stood. People began to mill or move to the light buffet set up by the side wall.
Wyst moved to the family, embraced the widow, shook hands with the sons.
Joleen Everly, alone, turned toward the door. She didn’t jolt when she saw Eve and Peabody, but Eve saw her sigh.
“I’m not doing this for Ezra.” She glanced back at the crowd. “He wouldn’t want it. We’re having a private family gathering. We don’t need a representative of the company to tell us how brilliant and valued he was. Right now we don’t care that the world lost him. Just that we did.”