11
Justin drove into Weston, Connecticut, exactly three hours and fifteen minutes after he left East End Harbor. On the ferry ride across the sound, he sat in his car, never even got out to lean over the railing and take in the fresh air. While he sat, he didn’t listen to the radio, didn’t read the newspapers. He just stared at a small spot on the windshield, stared through it really, trying to make sense of all the pieces of information he’d managed to put together. William Miller’s age. The murder of Susanna Morgan. The disappearance of Wallace Crabbe. He tried to keep his thinking as linear as possible, tried to keep his mind open to any and all possibilities that might pop into his head. None of that mattered. He came up with no connections, no logical conclusions. When the ferry landed on the Connecticut side of the water, he had exactly as many explanations as he’d had when the trip started: none.
He consulted his fold-out map, basically figured out how to get to Old Post Road, but when he filled up the gas tank of his four-year-old Honda Civic, he decided to play it safe and ask for specific directions. It didn’t take him long after that before he was on the rural-sounding Old Post Road, which turned out to be a decidedly suburban-looking thoroughfare. A few blocks later, he was in front of the address he had for Edward Marion. It wasn’t a house or an apartment building. It was a fairly large office building in the middle of a small strip mall. Although it was not what he was expecting, he realized he was not surprised.
There was no Edward Marion listed on the tenant directory in the lobby. Nor did the security guard know the name. The phone-company information showed that the number Susanna Morgan had dialed was in room number 301. The directory had that office being occupied by a company called Growth Industries, Inc. Justin asked the security guard what he knew about the company and the answer, also unsurprising, was absolutely nothing. Justin then asked the guy what his name was. He half expected the same answer: I don’t know. But this one the guard knew. He said his name was Elron.
Justin wondered why Elron was called a “security” guard, because when he asked if he could go up to the third floor and Growth Industries, the answer was, “Why not?” So he took the elevator up, walked down the hallway until he came to a door with the right number and the name of the company on it. He rang the buzzer and, when nobody answered, knocked loudly. Still no answer. Justin stuck his ear against the upper part of the door, which was beveled glass, but heard nothing. There didn’t seem to be anyone there. At three-thirty in the afternoon on a weekday. Either Growth Industries was not a very well supervised company or …
Or what?
Justin decided his imagination was running away with him. The various answers to his question all suddenly seemed foolish. Or it was a front. Or it didn’t really exist. Or—
Stop it, he told himself. This is exactly what you don’t do as a cop. You don’t imagine. You go for logic. You latch on to what’s real and understandable. There are no “or”s in police work. You eliminate them. That’s your entire job. You eliminate them and that’s how you find what’s real.
Justin went back down to Elron who, miraculously, actually knew how to reach the building manager, a man named Byron Fromm. Byron Fromm turned out to be puffy and pale and maybe forty years old. When Justin showed him his badge and explained what he wanted, Byron Fromm got even puffier and paler.
“Well, have they done anything wrong?” he wanted to know.
“What I’m trying to do, Mr. Fromm, is actually find out who they are.”
“You mean Growth Industries?”
Justin nodded. “What do they do?”
“Well,” Fromm said, his voice rising a notch above its normal pitch, “they’re in market research.”
“For whom?”
“Don’t know. For whoever hires them, I guess, but that’s really none of my business.”
“Do you know how long they’ve been here?”
“They were our very first tenant. They’ve been here since we opened in 1972. You know, at the time, we were the only mall in town. This was a very classy address then. It still should be but they’ve kind of let it run down a bit.”
“And who is that?”
“The real estate company that built it. Alexis. The Alexis Development Company.”
“Why do you think they’ve let it run down?” Justin asked.
“Why? Why does anybody do anything? Or rather not do anything? Money. Either they don’t have it or they have it but don’t want to spend it. Those are the only choices, aren’t they?”
Justin had to agree with him. But those choices weren’t what interested him. ”Do you know who owns this building?”
“I work for the people who manage the mall. That’s who I know. I deal with the individual tenants. I’m responsible for upkeep, within a budget, and day-to-day stuff like security and tenant complaints. The owner deals directly with my contact at Alexis. Bert Stiles.”
“Growth Industries,” Justin said. “They pay their rent on time?”
“Never been a minute late.”
“Why do you think there’s no one there right now? This is prime business time, right?”
“It should be. Although, I gotta say, this place hasn’t had a prime business time in quite a few years.”
“Mr. Fromm,” Justin said, slowly, “how’d you like to let me into room 301?”
“Detective, I would be happy to. Except I quite like this job. It’s easy and they pay me really well. And, aside from the fact that you don’t have a warrant—do you have a warrant?”
“No.”
“You’re not even local. So I can’t see as there’s anything in it for me at all if I let you in. Except trouble.”
Justin decided he’d hold off on his answer, give himself a few seconds to see if he could think of something other than trouble that just might be in it for Mr. Byron Fromm, but before he could come up with anything, his cell phone rang.
“Yeah?” he said, answering it.
It was Jimmy Leggett. “Where the hell are you?” the chief said. “Actually, I don’t care where you are. Just get the hell back.”
“I thought it was my day off,” Justin said.
“Not anymore,” Leggett said. “The shit’s hit the fan.”
“What happened, Jimmy?”
“We got another body, that’s what happened. We got another god-damn body.”
“Who?”
Leggett told him who it was and Justin heard his own sudden intake of breath.
“Where?” he said. “When?”
“I can’t give you any details over the phone. Just get back here.”
“All right,” he told the chief, glancing over at Byron Fromm. “I just need about half an hour here to—”
“No half hour,” Leggett cut him off. “I’ve been ordered to get you back ASAP.”
“You’ve been ordered?” Justin asked. “Ordered by who?”
“By me,” a strange voice said over the phone. Justin could hear the receiver being wrested away from his boss.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“Special Agent Leonard Rollins. FBI. And that’s the end of your little Q and A, Detective. Get your ass back here. Now.”
Justin heard the receiver at the other end of the line click off. His cell phone went dead. He stared at the pale, overweight man standing in front of him. A harsh rock song blared into his head. Nick Cave. Is there anybody out there, please? It’s too quiet in here and I’m starting to freeze. Under fifteen feet of clear white snow …
The words and music felt as if they were going to smother him. It was exactly the way he felt: freezing and isolated, buried under an unbearable weight.
“Something wrong, Detective?” Byron Fromm asked.
“Yeah,” he told the building manager, and he thought the man looked a little too gleeful, as if whatever information had just been transmitted over the phone had somehow gotten him off the precarious hook he was on in his shabby-and-getting-shabbier suburban sanctuary. “Life’s about as wrong as it can possibly be.”