- Home
- Lisa Black
Evidence of Murder Page 20
Evidence of Murder Read online
Page 20
Perhaps she was wrong, biased, overreacting in her grief. “At the tech show, you said something about a release date.”
He stopped beaming. “Yes. Polizei Two was supposed to be out five months ago. Evan has been too distracted with his factory and his virtual-reality tie-in to finish it. Not that it isn’t all going to make money eventually-I’m not as enamored of the virtual-reality hardware as I am of Polizei Two since it doesn’t have a proven track record, but I do recognize the potential.”
“That’s why you agreed to finance it. Does-”
“Not the hardware. Just the game, Polizei Two. Say, I’m stuck at an awards banquet this weekend for the city business council-it would be a lot less boring if you’d come along.”
“You’ve only financed the game? Then where did he get the money for that reality ball or whatever it is?”
“The virtual-reality sphere? I assume he used his profits from Polizei One. And what does all this have to do with his Jillian killing herself? Not that I believe she’d do that.”
Theresa had opened her mouth to make one response, and now made another. “You knew Jillian well?”
Did that half-a-heartbeat moment of hesitation spring from a disinclination to speak ill of a client, or something else? “We loaned Evan Kovacic a great deal of money, Mrs. MacLean. Even though all went well, I still spent a lot of time with him and his concerns in the past few months. And frankly, I still don’t see what it all has to do with his wife.”
Theresa kept her voice calm. “When people are unhappy with their lives, it’s usually because of love or money. She seemed happy with her husband, so that leaves money. This must be an interesting job, trying to figure out what’s a good investment and what’s not. You must have to consider every factor that could affect the outcome, just like Evan designing his game.”
“Sure. Except that in my case, it’s real. No vampires or zombies, only interest rates and stock market dips. Which are a lot scarier.”
Theresa worked on a smile. “So you investigated Evan’s finances before you agreed to take him on, of course.”
“Sure. Sterling, absolutely. Yet another reason we felt confident investing in Polizei Two.”
“And he had the money for the factory and the hardware line?”
Cannon paused. “Some, yes. But he formulated those plans after our agreement had been reached. I believe he has separate financing for the factory.”
“Not with you?”
“No. As I said, Polizei Two is a sure thing. Virtual reality, well, that’s like gasohol. People keep trying to get it off the ground, but the runway is littered with aborted flights.”
“Who did finance the factory?”
“I’m not sure anyone did. He probably used the profits from Polizei, as I said. It would have been tight, but apparently he’s doing it.”
“Did he ask you for funds to purchase the factory?”
“I don’t recall, really. He might have run it up the flagpole, but we wouldn’t have saluted, so that would have been that.”
“You don’t know if he has arrangements with any other venture capital firm?”
“He doesn’t. That’s a detail we make sure of, to avoid scams where a fake entrepreneur gets financing from several sources, then the next thing you know the money has been transferred to the Caymans and there’s no sign of your guy. We wouldn’t automatically nix the deal, but we’d definitely be aware of any such arrangement with another firm.” He pulled at his lip, apparently toying with the interesting question. “Unless he had an angel.”
“What’s an angel?”
“The corporate world’s version of a loan shark.”
“Like Griffin Investments?”
The name did not produce a reaction. “I’m not familiar with them.”
“Never mind. What does an angel do?”
“Exactly what we do-provides the start-up capital for a growing firm, but is an individual person instead of a group of investors like we are.”
“Is that legal?”
“It’s perfectly legal,” he said. “In theory. In execution, of course…the arrangements can be whatever the two parties agree on, and depending on how desperate and/or optimistic one party is, well, you can get into loan shark territory. Outrageous interest rates, percentages of the gross-”
“Murder?”
“I doubt it…well, the CFO of a start-up pharmaceutical turned up dead in California last year, but I think that’s a story brokers tell each other around the campfire with flashlights under their faces. Besides, if Evan had some angel he had to pay off, he would have been asking me for a capital increase, and he never mentioned it. They have plenty of money. At least they will once Polizei Two hits the shelves. This banquet I mentioned is on Saturday night-”
“Except that Polizei Two is late. Is he worried that you’ll pull the plug on his cash flow?”
She expected him to pooh-pooh the idea, but in a somber tone he admitted, “There’s always a danger. If the delay goes on for too long, we could decide to cut our losses and leave him with big bills and a game he doesn’t have the means to finish. Kind of like a Hollywood producer making a movie and having the studio bail out before he’s finished shooting. Everyone loses in that situation. Happily, there’s no need for anything that drastic. Evan will be finished with the game soon, the money will start pouring in, and all will be right in our world.”
“Even though it’s five months overdue.”
“That’s part of the business. No one’s too concerned about it.” He tapped the blotter again, compressing his lips in a way that made her think he overstated his sangfroid. He and his partners had been shelling out money five months longer than they had expected to, without a definite end in sight. But if they were still supporting Evan, why would he need Jillian’s money?
She needed to know how much Evan had profited from Polizei the first, and what he had done with the money. And she doubted this man could, or would, tell her that. She got to her feet. “Thank you so much for your time, Mr. Cannon.”
He guided her back down the sumptuous hallways. “Not at all. Anytime you’d like to hear about the oh-so-glamorous world of venture capital, please call on me. And I do hope we can do lunch sometime.”
She paused at the exterior door. “And would your wife be joining us?”
The question apparently surprised him. No doubt most women didn’t ask, played along with-
“My wife died two years ago. Cancer.” He glanced down at the ring on his hand, for a moment with the same empty, desolate face she saw in her own mirror every day. “I just can’t stop wearing this.”
“I’m sorry.” The words left her throat in a choking rush, and she fled to the elevator bank without waiting for absolution. Gulping in huge, deep breaths, she made it to the lobby before the tears came.
“But it’s just his finances,” she protested to her cousin. The Justice Center sat only two blocks from the venture capital firm and she had walked it, putting her hands over her ears for the last half block to protect the thin flesh from the lake air that whipped past the old courthouse in arctic bursts. Now she sat at the desk across from Frank’s, the desk that had been Paul’s. The cracked Formica top held nothing but dust, a stapler, and a bit of overflow from Frank’s work files. Oddly enough this did not affect her. She had rarely visited the plain, brightly lit, and largely impersonal homicide unit and did not look for traces of Paul there. “Can’t you subpoena Griffin Investments to find out if they gave him the money to pay for the factory?”
“No.”
“You can’t just call them and ask, then?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t already.”
“I did.”
“Tess!”
“I’m establishing Jillian’s frame of mind, and she may have been acquainted with Evan’s financial manager at Griffin. He may even have been her financial manager, for all I knew. The receptionist didn’t find it that bizarre.”
“Unless the receptionis
t doubles as the firm’s legal counsel-”
“It doesn’t matter, because I didn’t get anywhere. You know why? Because Evan’s financial manager at Griffin is on a second honeymoon in Asia and refused to take his cell phone with him. The receptionist-she found this very romantic-said it was a dream of the guy’s wife but they’d never wanted to spring for it until a generous client gave them the trip as a thank-you. Want to guess who the generous client was?”
Frank pulled at his lower lip. “Evan?”
“That’s my guess too, but I can’t be sure. The receptionist either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell. They left Detroit yesterday, Frank. I had to open my mouth when Evan complained to the coroner about me. He wasted no time in getting this guy out of the country for a few weeks. If I had called Griffin the minute I learned their name-”
“They wouldn’t have told you anything anyway,” Frank stated.
“I know, they probably wouldn’t have…you can’t find out that information somehow?”
“I’m sorry, Tess, but no. This isn’t communist China or something. We have a little thing called civil rights here. Not that I’m always fond of them myself, but if I want to keep my job I have to get something like a warrant. Which, as I believe I’ve explained, no judge is going to give me based on your-what, hunch?”
She had warmed in the interior temperature and now removed her coat. “Means, opportunity, motive. He had opportunity. I want to find out if he had motive.”
“What about means?”
“I’m still working on that.”
“Work harder. We don’t even need motive. Besides, they were married, that’s motive enough.” She gave him the look she had learned from their aunts and he added, “Sorry, but it’s true. Husbands and wives always have motive, anything from a million-dollar insurance policy to a piece on the side to leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube. You don’t need motive, you need concrete facts. The kind that will convince a judge that Evan Kovacic murdered his wife.”
“Like what?”
“How about some evidence? Isn’t that your stock in trade?”
“Anything he left on Jillian, hairs, fibers, bodily fluids, is not significant. They lived together. You would expect to find his trace on her and vice versa. That’s the problem with family killings. If he used some kind of weapon, poison, pills, I don’t know what it is and I won’t know if it’s on his property without getting a search warrant to search it, and you say I can’t get the warrant unless I have reason to believe the weapon is there.”
“Welcome to my world.” Frank sipped from a porcelain mug, then made a face as if the coffee had gone cold. “So the body isn’t going to help you.”
“Except for the fact that it was moved. He somehow got Jillian from her apartment to Edgewater Park. Maybe in the middle of a freezing-cold night, so no one saw him. Maybe she was somehow still conscious, so he might not have had to carry her.”
“Then why would she agree to go to the lake in the middle of the night? Especially if it meant taking the baby out in the cold or leaving her alone in the apartment?”
“She wasn’t thinking clearly, perhaps. Even if she had been…Jillian was too sweet for her own good. Evan could have convinced her to go there. He probably could have convinced her to jump in.”
“So that brings us to his car. What did you find on the stuff you stole from it?”
“Two of her hairs and one pink cotton fiber in the cargo area.”
Frank saluted her with his mug.
“But that doesn’t mean anything, as I said. She could have gotten stuff in and out of his car a million times. The only really interesting item is the diatoms in the tire treads. That proves he drove to a location near the lake.”
“Even better.”
“Except that the whole city is on the lake.”
He scowled. “So you stole this stuff and now you’re telling me it’s worthless?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m going to get samples of other lakeside parking lots, anyplace he frequents near the water, and see if there’s any difference in the diatoms. I never had marine biology, so I don’t know if diatoms are homogeneous throughout the lake or if different types flourish in different areas. And I didn’t steal it.”
“Yeah, yeah, abandoned property.”
“If I could tie him to Edgewater Park specifically, he’d have no explanation for that.”
“Unless he went there for a walk, before her death or since.”
“He doesn’t strike me as the outdoorsy type.”
“He snowboards.”
“That’s true.” Their sentences had overlapped as the words spilled out; now she slowed. “That’s true. And he’s got a huge bag in his closet for the snowboard. Slender Jillian would easily fit in it.”
“He could have used the board to transport her.”
She tried to picture this. “Only if she were still in the bag; otherwise her arms and legs would overlap it, and they showed no signs of dragging. But it would leave a distinctive track in the snow.”
“We got four inches on Sunday night. It would have covered the tracks.”
“Hefting it over his shoulder would still look less suspicious, I think, but either way I need a search warrant for his house and car.”
“A series of guesses does not constitute sufficient probable cause. Look, I’m glad you’re trying to get back in the game-”
“I’m just doing my job. It’s not a game, and even if it is, I never left it.” This sounded pale and unconvincing even to her, and she avoided his gaze by opening and closing Paul’s desk drawers. Not even a paper clip remained.
“You don’t think you’re overcompensating a little bit for your, um, lack of job enthusiasm during the past few months?”
“Enthusiasm? I work with dead bodies. Exactly how enthusiastic am I expected to be?”
“Okay, forget that. But are you maintaining some sort of objectivity here? At least the possibility that Evan might not have done it?”
“Like you and Georgie?”
“I can admit that nothing is turning up to implicate my Georgie. Can you admit that you are, perhaps, overly sympathetic to this Drew character?”
This stumped her. “Drew?”
“He lives at the edge of the crime scene, he’s squirrelly, and he has a better motive for murder than Evan does. Yet you immediately eliminated him. That’s not like you.”
“I know there’s a remote possibility-”
Frank rubbed his face before going on, uncomfortable but determined. He leaned over the stacks of folders, notes, and encrusted coffee cups to keep his voice low. “He lost his beloved. So did you. You haven’t noticed that you and he have a lot in common?”
“Like insanity?”
“Like intensity. Hell, your cat died three years ago and you never got another one.”
“I got tired of fur coating every surface of my house.”
“You don’t love easily, Tess. That’s my point. This situation is affecting your judgment. You’re gunning for Evan Kovacic to take your mind off-” He stopped.
“I’m trying to put a man in jail because I need a hobby, is that what you’re saying? I believe Evan Kovacic killed his wife and that he’s going to kill her daughter. That isn’t grief talking, it’s logic. And I’m not going to let him get away with it!”
She slammed a drawer shut and stood up, nearly knocking down a dark-haired woman holding an overstuffed carton, a bulging briefcase dangling from one shoulder. “Oh! Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” Detective Sanchez, normally the picture of confidence, shuffled her feet. Theresa assumed she had overheard their conversation until she noticed that Sanchez kept glancing at the desk. Nor did she leave, but stood there staring into her box as if it could help.
Theresa glanced at Frank, who had the same concerned, waiting expression he’d worn around her for months.
“Are you moving in here?” she asked Angela Sanchez.
The woman’s eyes were full of sympat
hy. “Yep. I’ve been assigned to work with Frank.”
Theresa instantly smiled. The smart, attractive Sanchez would keep her cousin on his toes, and they would work well together… “Good. I’m so glad.”
The woman’s olive skin seemed to melt in relief.
Theresa got out of her way. “Put that down, it looks heavy. Did you think I’d get hyper over Paul’s desk? Please! It’s just a desk, and frankly, I can’t believe they left it empty this long, space being at such a premium around here.” She watched Sanchez unpack her belongings, noting with approval the neatly labeled files and the framed family photos, knowing that she was talking too much but made verbose by the opportunity to put someone at ease instead of making them uncomfortable. Was Sanchez divorced or never married? Not that workplace romances were ideal, but the female detective would be a huge improvement over Frank’s usual choice of date…Theresa moved behind Frank and patted her cousin’s shoulder. “If he gives you any trouble, just call him Francis. That slows him down. If that doesn’t work, you can add the middle name, L-”
“Hey!”
“Okay, okay. I’ll save that tidbit to blackmail you with later.” Glad to see a genuine smile on her cousin’s face and vaguely aware that it might have something to do with her own, she donned her coat and prepared to leave. “I’ll be calling later.”
“Should that worry me?”
“Not at all. I just meant I’ll give you a ring when I figure out how Evan Kovacic murdered his wife.”
CHAPTER 20
Soft notes tinkled from the baby grand in the corner, over the crystal and china set at the tables; the place settings and their linen napkins were ignored, however, in favor of the bar at the other end of the room. At least ten couples mingled there, some by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out on downtown Cleveland and the lake from twenty-five stories up. The women-girls, really-were slender, well built, and uniformly coiffed in long hair of varying colors. The men all wore suits and had gone gray years previously, whether they let their hair show it or not. The restaurant’s name, Macy’s, decorated each pane of interior glass that closed off this private room from the rest of the facility. Theresa had never been there before. From the prices on the menu she had perused while waiting, she never would be again.