Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

Oliver had been waiting for a phone call from Alex or Mark for three hours. He could hardly stand sitting in his apartment any longer, condemned to idleness and watching TV as it broadcast incredible cock-and-bull stories about Alex and St. John. Where was Alex? Why didn’t she contact him?

The buzz of the doorbell tore him from his thoughts. But instead of Alex, two police officers with weapons drawn and two plainclothesmen were standing in the doorway. His first reflex was to slam the door shut, but the men were already in his apartment. They brutally pushed his face against the wall and twisted his arms behind his back.

“Are you Oliver Skerritt?” one of the men asked.

“Yes,” Oliver said, wheezing in pain, “what do you want from me?”

“NYPD.” The first man presented his badge while the other searched him for weapons. “We just want to ask you some questions. Please come with us.”

“Do you have an arrest warrant?” Oliver’s heart was pounding.

“We just want to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?”

“About Alex Sontheim.”

“And what exactly would you like to know?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Come on, let’s go.”

They dragged him from his apartment, and Oliver saw the flabbergasted faces of the couple living below him as the police escorted him downstairs. His fear that Sergio Vitali must be behind this arrest grew inside of him.

As Alex waited for the departure of her Greyhound to Boston, she remembered the cell phone she had found under Zack’s desk and took it out of the pocket of her wet down jacket. It was set on silent, but still turned on. She dialed Mark’s extension, but he didn’t answer. Then she tried to reach Oliver. He also didn’t pick up the phone. Determined, she called the operator to connect her with city hall. It took a while to get through to the mayor, but at last she had Nick on the line.

“Alex!” Nick’s voice sounded tense. “Where are you?”

Alex closed her eyes with a sense of relief. The bus would leave in ten minutes.

“I don’t have much time,” she said quickly. “Please, listen to me! Nothing they claim on TV is true!”

“Alex—”

“No, please listen,” she cut him off. “An important deal went sour yesterday. St. John bought a hundred million dollars’ worth of shares for MPM whose value was cut in half overnight. Do you remember that partnership called SeaStarFriends that I told you about?”

“Yes.”

“This partnership was originally founded by Levy and Vitali to operate an investment firm called MPM. But since last night, St. John and I are listed as the sole owners. They wanted to blame the whole disaster on us and be done with it.”

“Hold on! I don’t quite understand—”

“Because of St. John, MPM is sitting on a huge pile of unsellable shares. The firm will file for bankruptcy today for failure to meet net capital requirements. Vitali and Levy obviously didn’t want to risk exposing their involvement with this dirty business, which is why they made St. John and me the owners. Zack probably found out and fought against it. That’s why he was killed.”

“Alex,” Nick said emphatically, “they say that you killed him. The police and the FBI are after you. Can’t you come here?”

“I’ve tried.” Alex looked around, but no one in the Port Authority waiting area seemed to take any interest in a woman wearing a baseball hat. “I ran into Sergio’s men at city hall and barely managed to escape. Nick, these guys want to kill me because I’ve discovered things that’ll surely put Sergio behind bars. I haven’t killed anyone. I went to St. John’s office last night because I wanted to talk to him about everything, and then I found his dead body.”

“Alex, for heaven’s sake. Tell me where you are. I’ll send someone over right away.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t do that. I don’t trust anyone anymore. There are too many people on Sergio’s side.”

“Then I’ll come myself.”

“Vitali is scouring the city for me. Nick, you must use the information that I’ve given you before Levy and Vitali manage to cover their tracks! Please!”

“Alex, let me come to you!”

“No. I’ll skip town for a while, but I’ll contact you again as soon as I can.”

There was a click on the line, and the call ended. Nick stared at the receiver in his hand and slowly put it down. Her voice sounded desperate, but the things she told him sounded plausible. It wouldn’t be the first time Vitali got rid of an inconvenient accomplice. And now he tried to blame the murder on Alex to discredit her. US Attorney John de Lancie appeared on TV. The reporter asked what kind of evidence the US Attorney’s Office had to prove that Alex Sontheim committed the murder of Zachary St. John.

“Ms. Sontheim was in Mr. St. John’s office,” de Lancie said in a serious tone. With perfectly parted hair and steel-framed glasses, he seemed authoritative and determined. “We checked the surveillance tapes numerous times, and there is no doubt that just Ms. Sontheim entered the office after St. John. He was killed by a shot to the head from a close distance. St. John held the weapon in his hand, which indicates that the crime was intended to be disguised as a suicide. Further evidence shows that Ms. Sontheim’s fingerprints were all over the desk, the computer’s keyboard, and the mouse. As we have learned in the meantime, she used her victim’s computer to transfer a large sum of money from a company account to her personal account. We assume that she planned to flee the country with the money after she learned that the front organization she had used in her large-scale illegal insider trading scheme was doomed to bankruptcy. In all likelihood, a fight erupted, during which she shot her accomplice in order to seize all of the remaining money for herself.”

“Where’s Ms. Sontheim at the moment?” a reporter asked.

“We don’t know. She’s still on the run. But since we issued a federal warrant for her arrest for the murder of Zachary St. John, she’s not only wanted by the police but also the FBI and the US Marshals Service. I’m optimistic that we will capture her by the end of the day.”

Nick stared at his successor’s face. The alleged evidence against Alex was overwhelming: fingerprints, surveillance tapes, and now also embezzlement! And on top of it, she was a fugitive. If she were innocent, she could turn herself in to the police—at least an outside observer would believe. Nick wished that he could trust Alex, but he started to doubt her innocence. He realized he hardly knew her, and he wondered if his past sympathy for her may have influenced his objectivity. Maybe Alex hadn’t accessed those bank statements by accident after all. It was certainly possible that she was not only in league with St. John, but maybe even with Vitali himself—until she had fallen out of favor with them.

Suspicion arose inside Nick, and he started to feel sick. Did Alex possibly just call on him to uncover the alleged bribery scandal to distract from her crime? How could he know whether these bank statements were real? It wasn’t difficult for a banker to falsify such statements. Nick felt miserable. What if Alex had planned all of this long ago? It was conceivable that she had just visited him at the cemetery that Sunday to trick him into trusting her. Maybe she got into a lover’s quarrel with Vitali and conjured up this perfidious plan to put one over on him. Who would make a more suitable ally than Nick Kostidis? But Alex’s compassion and her fear of Vitali had seemed so genuine. He had believed her unconditionally.