Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Is it this, or is it a woman?” she said.

He was laughing, enjoying himself, and she grew steadily more furious. “It’s funny to you?”

“You’re some detective,” he finally said. “That’s root beer.”

“Oh, so it is,” she said, embarrassed.

“I haven’t had a drink in seventeen days. You haven’t noticed?”

“Is that true?”

“Forgiveness is Step Nine. I’m nowhere near that.”

“Step Nine?”

“The Eighth Step is to make a list of everyone I ever harmed and be willing to make amends to them. I should do that too. You know I was never good about lists.”

“You — how come you didn’t tell me you’re doing AA?”

Now it was his turn to look sheepish. “Maybe I wanted to make sure it would take.”

“Oh, baby,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Hey, Shorty, don’t go getting all proud yet. I still haven’t gotten past step three.”

“Which is what?”

“Hell if I know,” Leon said. He put a big callused hand on her face, brushed away her tears, and leaned in to kiss her, and this time she kissed him back. She’d almost forgotten what it was like, kissing her husband, but she was remembering now, and it was nice.

The two of them got up and went to the bedroom.

Outside it began to rain, but it was warm in their bed.

In the morning she would get up early and arrange the arrest warrants for Eddie Rinaldi and Nicholas Conover.

On her way to the prosecutor’s office, Audrey heard Noyce’s voice calling to her.

He was standing in the door to his office, waving her in.

She stopped for just a moment.

“Audrey,” he said, something different in his voice. “We need to talk.”

“I’m in a rush, Jack. I’m sorry.”

“What’s up?”

“I... I’d rather not say.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Audrey?”

“Excuse me, Jack. I’m sorry.”

He put out a hand, touched her shoulder. “Audrey,” he said, “I don’t know exactly what they told you about me, but...”

He knew. Of course he knew. She fixed him with a level gaze. “I’m listening,” she said.

Noyce took a breath, colored, and then said, “Fuck it. I don’t want your pity.” He turned and went into his office, and she hurried on.

Dr. Aaron Landis’s habitual sneer had become an incredulous scowl. “We’ve been over this, Detective. You’ve already asked me to breach Mr. Stadler’s confidentiality. If you somehow imagine that your persistence is going to make me reconsider—”

“I’m sure you’re aware what the Principles of Medical Ethics, published by the American Psychiatric Association, says about confidentiality.”

“Oh, please.”

“You’re permitted to release relevant confidential information about a patient under legal compulsion.”

“As I recall, it says ‘proper’ legal compulsion. Do you have a court order?”

“If that’ll make a difference to you, I’ll get one. But I’m appealing to you not as a law enforcement officer, but as a human being.”

“Not the same thing, I take it.”

She ignored this. “Ethically you have the right to testify about Andrew Stadler’s history, especially if you have any interest in helping bring his killer to justice.”

Landis’s eyelids drooped as if he were deep in thought. “What does one have to do with the other?”

“Well, you see, Dr. Landis, we’ve found Andrew Stadler’s killer.”

“And who might that be?” His phlegmatic tone, carefully calibrated, didn’t quite mask his natural curiosity.

“That I can’t tell you until he’s charged. But I’m going to ask you to take the stand and testify to the fact that Andrew Stadler was, at times, violent.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t you understand what’s at stake, Dr. Landis?”

“I will not testify to that,” Landis said.

“If you refuse to speak for this man,” Audrey said, “his killer may not find justice. Doesn’t that make a difference to you?”

“You want me to testify that he had violent tendencies, and I’m not going to do that. I can’t. I can’t say what you want me to say — because it’s not true.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw no violent inclinations whatever.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I didn’t tell you a thing.”

“Pardon me?”

“You didn’t hear any of this from me.” He scratched his chin. “Andrew Stadler was a sad, desperately afflicted man. A tormented man. But not a violent man.”

“Dr. Landis, the man who killed him held him responsible for a particularly sadistic attack, an evisceration of a dog, a family pet. In fact, a whole series of attacks on the suspect’s home. It’s the reason, we’re convinced, this man killed Stadler.”

Landis nodded, a glint of recognition in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “That would make a certain sense.”

“It would?”

“If it were true, yes. But I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that Andrew Stadler never did these things.”

“Hold on a second. Last time we spoke, you talked about a pattern of sudden rages, brief psychotic episodes—”

“Indeed. I was describing a syndrome we call Borderline Personality Disorder.”

“All right, but you said a schizophrenic like Stadler could have this borderline disorder.”

“I’ve seen it, sure. But I wasn’t talking about Andrew Stadler.”

“Then who were you talking about, Doctor?”

He hesitated.

“Doctor, please!”

Ten minutes later, short of breath, Audrey raced out of County Medical, cell phone to her ear.

The special board meeting was set to start at 2 P.M., and by a quarter to, most of the invited participants had arrived in the narrow anteroom. Scott had come first, and he didn’t dance around the subject. Nick had a stack of unanswered phone messages from him, all from this morning. Marjorie had been instructed to keep him away from Nick’s home base.

“Don’t leave me in the dark here, Nick,” Scott said. Nick noticed he was wearing a brand-new shirt: white, narrow-point collar, looked like Armani, completely different from the frayed Oxford-cloth button-downs he usually wore. “Come on, Nick, I can’t read my lines if I don’t have a script, okay?”

“I thought we’d be spontaneous.”

“Spontaneous,” Scott repeated. “Spontaneous combustion. Spontaneous abortion. Spontaneous aortic aneurysm.” He shook his head. “I don’t like that word ‘spontaneous.’”

Nick cocked his head. “We’re trying something new, here,” he said, deliberately cryptic.

“I just want to help, Nick.” There was a sullen look in his lilac-rimmed eyes.

“I’m counting on it,” Nick said. “In fact, could you get me a Diet Coke? No ice if it’s already cold.”

Scott looked like he was about to say something when Davis Eilers — khakis and a white polo shirt beneath a blue blazer — slung an arm around Scott’s shoulder and took him away.

“So where’s the agenda?” Todd Muldaur asked Nick, as the anteroom started to grow crowded. “Dan, Davis, and I flew here on the Fairfield corporate jet together, and guess what — none of us got an agenda.”

“Oh, there’s an agenda,” Nick said with a smile. “It’s just not printed.”

“I never heard of that. Special board meeting but no written agenda?” He exchanged glances with Dan Finegold. “Hope this isn’t one of those panic moves,” he said to Nick with what was meant to be a look of kindly concern in his too-blue eyes.

Finegold gave Nick an upper-bicep squeeze. “Slow and steady, right?”