Jan Burke - Nine

“Eric Grady? God damn, this means we’ll have to reopen that one. This is going to be so hard on the family.” She was silent for a moment then said, “I can see how perfectly his identity would work for someone else, though. He was from Missouri, a good student, well-liked, but a little restless. He had decided to take a few months off from school, and his family disapproved. So, they weren’t communicating much. He worked as an extra in some films and made friends here, too, mostly in the Topanga Canyon crowd. He ran out of money, but he was one of those guys who could always find someone to stay with. I think that was losing its charm, though-he told some people at the party that he was thinking of going back home.”

“So everyone here thought he went back to Missouri, and everyone in Missouri thought he was still out here.”

“Right. So it was autumn before a missing persons report was filed by his family, and months before anyone even knew that the party was the last time he was seen. No progress was being made on it. I got called out to a scene that was just John Doe’s bones in a canyon, and we didn’t make the connection at first.”

“The remains were skeletonized?”

“Completely. In fact, we never recovered the complete skeleton-predators had made off with the smaller bones. We didn’t know it was Grady until the dental came in.”

Alex glanced down at the open folder on the seat next to him, open to the copy of Eric Grady’s driver’s license. He saw the young, hopeful face in the photo, and closed the folder.

“Well,” he said, “now we know what happened to his wallet.”

Nola was waiting in the reception area, standing very still and looking even a little more pale, ignoring the banter of the security guard who now sat at the receptionist’s desk. Her blue eyes were fixed on Alex’s face as he came in, and he tried to smile for her. She didn’t smile back.

You know, he thought. You looked at his employee records and now you know.

The guard slid a sign-in sheet toward him, and he filled it in and then silently followed her down the hallway, this time not to the glowing kingdom of dinosaurs and stars, but to a larger room on the opposite side of the hall. She flipped a switch and fluorescent ceiling lights hummed to life.

Four metal desks. Three were decorated with framed photos and plants. One was cleared off. She pointed to the empty desk as if accusing it and said, “That one was-” She had started to say, “Eric’s,” but caught herself. She dropped her hand. “That one was his.”

“Thanks.” He started toward it.

“He wasn’t Eric Grady.”

He turned toward her and said quietly, “No. Eric Grady is dead.”

She clenched her fists. “Did that asshole-who is he, anyway? The guy who worked here for almost a year, pretending he was Eric.”

“I don’t know. Not yet.”

“Did he kill the real Eric?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Probably yes.”

“Maybe. At the very least, he didn’t report Eric Grady’s death.”

“Oh, right, and then he went around hanging people upside down over bathtubs!”

He didn’t reply.

She splayed her hands out in front of her and said, “Sorry, sorry. I just-I’ll be okay. I will. Really.”

He asked if she had called Ty Serault.

She shook her head.

“Do me a favor and call him. Ask if he would mind if I had a crime lab technician come in and dust the desk for prints.”

“Do you need his permission?”

“It’s just easier this way.”

“Okay.”

She went to one of the other desks and picked up a phone.

While she made the call, he looked the desk over without opening it, then stooped to look beneath the chair. No wads of gum stuck to the underside. He put on a pair of disposable gloves and carefully opened the top desk drawer without touching any of the surfaces a person would usually handle when opening it. He looked into it and smiled.

“He wants to talk to you,” Nola said, holding the receiver toward him.

He took it from her, and she strolled closer to the open desk but didn’t touch it.

“Detective Brandon?” Serault was saying. “I can’t tell you how shocked I am.”

“Who does the background checks on your employees?”

“My HR person calls the references.”

“And all of Eric Grady’s checked out fine. Except it wasn’t Eric Grady who came to work for you.”

“I can’t believe this. I can’t, really.”

“I’ll want to see any payroll checks this employee endorsed. We’ll also want to talk to the people he worked with.”

“Anything. Anything.”

He paused, then said, “Mr. Serault, given the subject matter you cover on the program-”

“I know, I know, I should have been more alert than most. I can’t tell you how embarrassing this is.”

“I was about to say that you might want to increase security all the way around. If not for your own sake, for the sake of your employees.”

“Yes. Yes. I see that now. Whatever you say. You let me know what I should do.”

Alex nearly told him that at just this moment he was a little too busy to be doing private security analysis for free, but a thought struck him. “I know someone who’d probably enjoy coming out here and giving you advice. Retired sheriff’s deputy. I’ll ask him to give you a call. His name’s O’Brien.”

Serault readily agreed to this, and after offering more avowals of his chagrin, finally allowed Alex to get back to the task at hand.

He called for a crime scene technician, then moved back over to the desk.

As Nola watched, he opened other drawers, but he found little of interest.

“What made you smile when you looked in the first drawer?” she asked.

It was still open and he pointed to the pencils in the pencil tray.

“Mr. Phony is a pencil chewer.”

“That’s right!” she said. “He gnawed on the end of pencils all the time.”

“With any luck, we’ll get his fingerprints off the drawer pulls and his DNA off the pencils. By the way-can you warn the security guard that a crime scene technician is on his way over here?”

She made the call, then said, “Let’s go into my office. I printed out some photos for you.”

He followed her across the hall. His cell phone rang. It was Captain Nelson.

“I was just about to call you, sir.”

“I should hope to God you were.”

“Excuse me a moment, sir.” He covered the phone and told Nola that he would join her in a moment.

“You need privacy?” she asked.

“I’ll go in the other room. I should lock it up to make sure nothing’s disturbed anyway. Could I get the key from you?”

She handed a key ring to him.

Once back there, he said, “I’m sorry to make you wait, sir. I was about to take a look at some photos of a man I believe to be connected with this set of cases.” He told him about Eric Grady.

“Good work. Let’s get rolling on this.”

“If I may ask, sir, what prompted you to call me?”

“I’m over at the crime lab. They told me they were sending a tech out at your request. Keep me posted, Brandon.”

“Yes, sir.”

He locked the room. Nola’s door was closed, and he knocked softly.

“Come in,” she said.

She was standing near the desk, looking at a photo of the man she had known as Eric Grady.

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice the difference.”

“Not your fault,” he said, handing back the keys.

She didn’t answer. She gave him the stack of photos. “The one on top is the most normal.”

He thanked her, glanced through the others, then said, “It’s much better than the others. You said this is a digital photo, right?”

“Yes.”