Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“It’s that or string cheese, take your choice.”

Julia sighed with bottomless frustration. “String cheese,” she said sullenly.

The local news segment came on, and the anchorman, a lean-faced, slick-looking guy with shoe-polish black hair, said something about “found brutally murdered.”

“Where’s the remote?” asked Nick. When Julia was in hearing range, he normally muted any TV stories about murders or gruesome crimes or child molestation. She reached for it between the carton of organic one-percent milk and the sugar bowl, handed it to her father. He grabbed it, searched for the tiny mute button — why didn’t they make the damned mute button bigger, and a different color? — but as he was about to press it, he saw the graphic on the screen. A photograph of a horribly familiar face, the words “Andrew Stadler.” He froze, stared, his heart pounding.

He heard: “Dumpster behind Lucky’s Restaurant on Hastings Street.”

He heard: “Thirty-six years at the Stratton Company until he was laid off last March.”

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” Julia asked.

He heard something about funeral arrangements. “Hmm? Oh, nothing. One of our Stratton employees died, baby. Come on, get yourself some string cheese.”

“Was he old?” she asked, getting up.

“Yeah,” Nick said. “He was old.”

Marge was already at her desk when he arrived, sipping coffee from a Stratton mug and reading a novel by Jane Austen. She flipped the paperback closed apologetically. “Oh, good morning,” she said. “Sorry, I was hoping to finish this before my book group meets tonight.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

A copy of the Fenwick Free Press had been placed on his desk next to his keyboard. A front-page headline read: “Longtime Stratton Employee a Probable Homicide.” Marjorie must have placed it there, folded so that the Stadler article faced up.

He hadn’t bothered to look at the paper this morning before leaving the house; it had been too hectic. Luke hadn’t gotten up, so Nick had gone to his room to awaken him. From under his mound of blankets and sheet, Luke had said he had study hour first period and was going to sleep in. Instead of arguing, Nick simply closed Luke’s bedroom door.

Now he picked up the article and read it closely. Once again his heart was drumming. Not much here in the way of details. “...body discovered in a Dumpster behind a restaurant on Hastings Street.” Nothing about it being wrapped in plastic; Nick wondered whether Eddie had, for some reason, removed the trash bags. “Apparently shot several times,” though it didn’t say where the man had been shot. Surely the police hadn’t released to the paper everything they knew about the case. As nerve-wracking as it was to read, Nick found it oddly reassuring. The details formed a convincing picture of an unemployed man who’d been murdered in a rough part of town, probably having been involved in some street crime. There was a photo of Stadler taken at least twenty years ago: the same glasses, the same tight mouth. You’d read the article, shake your head sadly over how the loss of a job had caused an already troubled man to spiral into drugs or crime or something, and you’d move on to the sports.

Nick’s eyes filled with tears. This is the man I killed. A man who left behind one child — “a daughter, Cassie, twenty-nine, of Chicago” — and an ex-wife who’d died four years earlier. A modest, quiet-living man, worked in a Stratton factory for his entire adult life.

He was suddenly aware of Marge standing there, looking worriedly at him. She’d said something.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, it’s sad, isn’t it?”

“Terribly sad,” Nick said.

“The funeral’s this afternoon. You have a telcon with Sales, but that can be rescheduled.”

He nodded, realizing what she was saying. Nick usually attended the funerals of all Stratton employees, just as old man Devries had done. It was a tradition, a ceremonial obligation of the CEO in this company town.

He’d have to go to Andrew Stadler’s funeral. He didn’t really have a choice.

“You’re not helping me any,” Audrey said.

Bert Koopmans, the evidence tech, turned at the sink where he was washing his hands. There was something birdlike about the way he inclined his head, gawked at her. He was tall, almost spindly, with small close-set eyes that always looked startled.

“Not my job,” he said, dry but not unfriendly. “What’s the problem?”

She hesitated. “Well, you really didn’t find anything on the body, when it comes right down to it.”

“What body are we talking about?”

“Stadler.”

“Who?”

“The guy in the Dumpster. Down on Hastings.”

“The tortilla.”

“Burrito, really.”

He allowed a hint of a smile. “You got everything I got.”

“Did the body strike you as too... clean?”

“Clean? You talking hygiene? I mean, the guy’s fingernails were filthy.”

“That’s not what I mean, Bert.” She thought a minute. “The dirt under his fingernails — that got tagged, right?”

“No, I lost it,” Bert said, flashing her a look. “You forget who you’re talking to? Like this was one of Wayne’s cases?” Not all the techs were as meticulous, as obsessive-compulsive as Koopmans. He walked over to a black file cabinet, pulled it open, selected a folder. He scanned a sheet of paper. “Pubic hairs, head hairs, fingernails left hand, fingernails right hand. Fibers from shoe left, fibers from shoe right. Unidentified substance under fingernails right hand, unidentified substance under fingernails left hand. Want me to keep going?”

“No, thanks. What’s the unidentified substance?”

Another look. “If I knew what it was, think I’d call it unidentified?”

“Are we talking skin or blood or dirt?”

“You try my patience, Detective. Skin and blood, these are substances I’ve seen before, believe it or not.”

“Dirt you’ve seen before too.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “But dirt isn’t dirt. It’s... stuff. It’s anything. I made a note that it had a kind of greenish hue to it.”

“Green paint? If Stadler scraped his fingernails against the side of a house, say...?”

“Paint I would have recognized.” He handed her the chain-of-custody sheet. “Here. Why don’t you take a walk down to Property and get the shit? We can both take a look.”

The guy who ran the Property room was a clock-puncher named Arthur something, a flabby white man with a toothbrush mustache who wore coveralls. She pushed the buzzer, and he took his time coming around to the window. She handed him the pink copy of the Property Receipt, explaining that she only wanted item number fifteen. All the evidence — the pulled head hair, pulled pubic hair, the two vials of blood — was kept in a big refrigerator. Arthur returned a few minutes later and could not have looked more bored. As he went through the ritual of scanning the bar code label on the five-by-seven evidence envelope marked “Nail Clippings From Autopsy,” then the bar code on the wall chart to capture her name and number, Audrey heard Roy Bugbee’s voice.

“That looks like the Stadler case,” Bugbee said.

She nodded. “You working Jamal Wilson?”

Bugbee ignored her question. As the property guy slid the envelope under the window, Bugbee snatched it before Audrey could get to it. “Nail clippings, eh?”

“Just some more trace evidence I’m running past IBO again.”

“Why do I get the crazy feeling we’re not partnering on this, Audrey?”

“There’s no end of things I’d appreciate your help on,” she said uneasily.

“Right,” Bugbee said. “You going over to IBO right now?”