The Shallows--A Nils Shapiro Novel Page 24

  “Doesn’t matter. Luke’s behind bars for three murders and bombing this place. Kind of seals the deal, don’t you think?”

  “You’re naïve, Nils. Karin Tressler has all of September and October to recover. That’s plenty of time. She could still win this election.”

  I stood and walked over to Susan Silver’s window. I looked out on the city and counted eleven construction cranes. All the people who would fill those new office buildings—what in the hell would they do in there all day?

  Susan said, “Todd and I each had electronic copies of the damaging information on Luke. I stored a copy of the files on my computer. Todd stored a copy of the files on his. But both disappeared. Could have been an inside job. Could have been an outside job. We considered having our I.T. people investigate, but that could expose what we knew. Fortunately, we’d considered the possibility our computers might be compromised, so we made plenty of hard and digital copies. There are more thumb-drives hidden around this country than you can imagine.

  “But the situation had grown dangerous. Whoever erased those files from our computers knew we had dirt on Luke and the campaign. We were concerned for our safety, so we tried to bait the person who erased our files into exposing themselves.”

  “And how did you do that?”

  “We played dumb. We pretended we didn’t know our computer files were missing, which was plausible because we’d each buried them deep within our hard drives—it’s not like they were sitting on the desktop or in our documents folders. Then Todd sent me emails about having hidden a hard copy in the mail room, where he had set up security cameras. The cameras weren’t online. They were self-contained because our network had been compromised. The night after Todd set up the cameras, he was murdered. And all that awful business with the fishing stringer through his jaw, I believe that was a message for me.”

  “Because you’re a master angler,” I said, pointing to the tiny pike mounted on the wall.

  Susan nodded. “Actually, I love fishing. I know, I know. Everyone’s surprised. I learned at summer camp when I was a kid and have fished ever since. But that little guy is a practical joke. We had a company retreat up at Grandview Lodge. I was fishing with a live minnow and caught the baby pike. Unfortunately, he’d swallowed the hook. By the time I got it out and put him back in the water, he was dead. One of our lawyers scooped him out when I wasn’t looking, had him stuffed, and presented me with that plaque.”

  “What’s the inscription say?”

  “It says Susan Silver Killed Me.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why I kept it, but it’s a running joke in the office. Whenever I go on vacation I get an earful about not killing baby fish. That’s why I think Todd’s gruesome death was a message for me. Back off or I’d be next. So I decided to lie low until I could retrieve the video footage from the mail room, but the mail room was blown up, and the cameras were completely destroyed.”

  “Blown up by Luke Tressler.”

  “Yes. And now he’s in custody. Which is a huge relief. Thank God this is all over, even if Karin Tressler wins in November.”

  “Except for one thing,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  There was another knock at the door. Celeste Sorensen entered. “Susan, some police officers are here to see you.”

  39

  Susan Silver left with the police. When they were gone, I walked into the reception area.

  My friend on the rolly chair said, “What’s happening?”

  “It’s not my place to say.”

  “Is Susan in trouble?”

  “I wish I could tell you but I can’t.”

  Sheryl rolled herself toward me and said, “After all we’ve been through together.” I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or not.

  I said, “All right. Maybe we can make a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  “Do you know where they put the Arndt Kjellgren sculpture that used to be in here?”

  “Yes.” She said nothing more.

  “Well,” I said, “if you can get me access to it, I’ll share what I know about Ms. Silver.”

  Sheryl Glass looked at me long and hard. Then she pushed herself along the reception desk, disappeared underneath, and popped back up with a Diet Coke for herself and a Halferin Silver bottle of water for me. She said, “All right. Follow me.”

  I followed her out of Halferin Silver and down the hall. She used a key to open a door near the elevators. We stepped into the dark until she found a light switch that revealed a storage room full of desks, chairs, lamps, and dead computer equipment. Some framed prints were stacked against one wall. A muslin tarp covered something large. Four-feet-ten-inch-tall Sheryl Glass waddled toward the tarp and said, “I’ll need some help.”

  I found a chair, carried it over, stood on it, and removed the tarp. Arndt Kjellgren’s sculpture was underneath and intact. I said, “Can I have a few minutes alone with it?”

  Sheryl said, “My answer should be no. But you promise to tell me everything about what’s going on with Susan?”

  “I promise.”

  She thought about that then said, “All right. But you’d better keep your end of the deal, Nils Shapiro.”

  “Of course I will. My reputation is all I have.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m worried about. Just turn the lights out when you leave. The door will lock behind you.”

  “Thanks.” She started toward the door. I said, “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know if there’s a tool kit in here, would you?”

  “Oh boy, you are going to get me in trouble.” She found a plastic orange case on a shelf. She walked it over and handed me a cheap IKEA tool kit that contained a crescent wrench and screwdriver with multiple tips.

  I said, “This should do it.”

  Sheryl Glass left, and I started my search. Ten minutes later, I found it. A small, inconspicuous door on top of Arndt Kjellgren’s sculpture. It was invisible from the ground and held in place by four sheet metal screws. I had to replace the chair with a stepladder to get a look at it. I removed the door and used the flashlight on my phone to peer inside. Arndt Kjellgren’s word was good. He had done something he wasn’t proud of.

  I refastened the door onto the sculpture and returned to Sheryl Glass to tell her about Susan Silver.

  * * *

  By the time I walked into Arndt Kjellgren’s studio, they’d dropped the needle on over two hundred records. Ellegaard, Emma, and Annika had formed an assembly line to pull records from the shelf, remove each sleeve from its jacket, remove the vinyl from the sleeve, place it on the platter, give it a listen, then out of respect for what human beings make, carefully reverse the process.

  It took another three hundred plus records and an order of sandwiches before we found the first one. They were scattered randomly throughout his massive vinyl collection because Arndt Kjellgren knew if anyone found out what he’d done, his career would be over, he’d be sued into poverty, and he’d probably go to jail. That’s why he could only drop hints at the Greater Lake Minnetonka Police Station—I wish I’d figured them out sooner.

  We found Arndt Kjellgren’s confession on a disc pulled from the sleeve of Yes’s Close to the Edge. I wouldn’t find out for days where he’d had the vinyl pressed. And it took two weeks to find where he’d hidden the original discs.

  His voice amplified through McIntosh vacuum tubes and projected out Klipsch horned speakers, complete with the pops and hisses you’d hear on any vinyl record. In his recorded confession, Kjellgren admitted to hiding voice-activated recording devices in his sculptures. He was spying on his customers. No way around it. He said it started as market research but morphed into an audio scrapbook of how art is perceived in private collections. Because his sculptures were kinetic, they had to be maintained. Kjellgren said patrons were surprised the artist did the routine maintenance work himself, but he told them he insisted because his sculptures were an ongoing, fluid creation.

  That was a lie. The frequent
maintenance allowed Kjellgren to refresh batteries and remove high-capacity SD cards filled with voice recordings and replace them with new, blank cards. He combed through the recordings. When he heard something worthwhile, he had it pressed onto vinyl discs. He put a fake label on the disc to make it look like a real record album then erased the SD card so he could use it again. At the end of Arndt Kjellgren’s confessionary monologue he said, “I have not documented what recordings are on which discs. I have not documented which album jackets have fake discs inside. Whoever discovers this is on their own.”

  The day felt like a treasure hunt.

  At one point, Annika said, “I can’t believe you figured this out, Shap.”

  “Right place at the right time. The night Kjellgren was arrested outside Robin’s house, he told me he’d done things he wasn’t proud of and that he had recordings. He emphasized and repeated that word—recordings. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but it stuck with me. So did a nagging question: How did Kjellgren know Luke Tressler planned to break into the Rabinowitz house that night? Couple that with Kjellgren maintaining his sculptures himself. Eventually the idea of Kjellgren bugging his sculptures not only made sense but seemed a likely explanation for Kjellgren’s seemingly crazy accusations and erratic behavior.”

  Ellegaard smiled. “This is why I keep you on the payroll.”

  Emma said, “Yeah, right.”

  Around 6:30 P.M. we discovered it on what looked like Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model. Arndt Kjellgren’s voice said, “The law firm of Halferin Silver purchased a sculpture for their reception area in 2009. Nobody in the reception area talked about it much. I guess they were there for lawyer business and didn’t give much of a shit about art. My sculpture was just another thing in an office building. Something to impress somebody and show wealth and taste. To them it was anything and everything except what it was, a piece of art made by an artist. Something someone had put their soul into to create beauty or find beauty or say something. Whatever. And the receptionist was in there answering phones so the voice-activated recorder picked up everything except what I wanted to hear about, which was my sculpture, which every motherfucker didn’t mention ’cause you got to play it close to the vest in the business world. So I stopped servicing that sculpture and stopped listening to those recordings.

  “But then I fell in love with Robin Rabinowitz. And she told me Todd had been acting weird. So I started up again listening to the recordings from Halferin Silver, especially after business hours when he’d stay late sometimes. Or at least that’s what Todd said he was doing. Robin was hoping she could find out he was having an affair so that she wouldn’t have to be the bad guy ending the marriage. Problem was it wasn’t Todd who said the interesting stuff.

  “I pressed those recordings onto another disc. Maybe you already found it. Or found it and didn’t know what it was. Now you do. Sorry for the runaround but I’m trying to cover my ass here.”

  Annika said, “That motherfucker.”

  Ellegaard said, “Pizza and salad good for everyone?”

  We continued our search. The food came. We ate and searched some more. Then shortly after 10:00 P.M. we found it.

  40

  It was on a fake disc of Joni Mitchell’s Blue, side B. They spoke freely in the Halferin Silver reception area.

  A woman said, “He thinks I’m on his side. I told him I have more incriminating evidence on your past. That you didn’t just attend Charlottesville, but you led a local group of white nationalists. That you planned to assassinate our Muslim congresswoman.”

  “Did he believe you?” Luke Tressler spoke in a soft voice. He was not the leader of these two. The record turned but we only heard the needle on vinyl. Then the soft smack of a kiss.

  “Yes,” she said. “He agreed to meet me at my boat in St. Alban’s Bay at midnight.”

  “All right. But … does it have to be this way?” said Luke Tressler.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do we have to take him out? We can’t just make him disappear until after the election?”

  “No, Luke. Think. I set him up. Even if he somehow thought you weren’t involved, which he would because this is all about you, but even if he didn’t, he’d know I set him up. You have to kill him. And you have to make it ugly and frightening when you do.”

  Another long silence, then Luke Tressler said, “I know how to do that.”

  “Of course you do. But you’ll run it by me. Two brains are better than one.”

  Luke said, “I want to touch you.”

  “Give me your hand.” Another soft smack of a kiss. “Here? Do you want to touch me here?”

  Luke said, “Yes.”

  “And…” the record popped and hissed “… here?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like that.”

  “Me, too.”

  I texted Gabriella: Please confirm police officers have eyes on Susan Silver.

  The woman on the record said, “Do you feel how happy you’re making me?”

  “I do,” said Luke.

  Ellegaard blushed and didn’t dare look at his daughter.

  The woman said, “Midnight tomorrow night.”

  Luke Tressler said, “Yes.”

  She said, “Undo your belt.”

  It was quiet for a little while then Luke said, “Celeste?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You’ll leave him, right, Celeste? You’ll leave him and marry me?”

  “Yes, Luke,” she said, “I’ll leave him the day they swear Karin into office.”

  The recording ended.

  Gabriella returned my text: Yes, Susan is with two uniformed officers.

  Keep them with her. Celeste Sorensen conspired with Luke. She has a gun.

  * * *

  Around midnight, a uniform led us into the Halferin Silver office. Ellegaard stayed outside with Emma. But Annika and I headed toward the offices.

  Gabriella emerged from the corridor. She said, “This way.”

  We followed her down the hall and into Ian Halferin’s office. He lay dead on his back, his eyes staring at the fluorescent lights in the ceiling like Todd Rabinowitz had stared at the night sky. Ian had two little holes in his chest. Blood leaked onto his white shirt. But not much.

  The safe door was open. Celeste Sorenson had taken everything. She was gone.

  The photographs of Ian’s wife and two children smiled. They couldn’t see what I could.

  * * *

  I said, “It’s been almost three weeks. We should have found her by now.”

  She said, “Is that why you can’t sleep? Celeste Sorensen is still out there?”

  I turned onto my side to face her. My left shoulder was up and over the sheets. The plastic surgeon had done a pretty good job on my arrow wound thanks to Jameson White keeping it clean, but there was still a scar. I didn’t mind. It was about time I had a scar on the outside. I wished it would hurt like Harry Potter’s so I’d know when evil was near. If it was that kind of scar, Celeste Sorensen would be in custody. But it was just a regular scar—no magic in it whatsoever. At least we helped bust Detective Norton for giving his fellow white nationalist, Luke Tressler, the tool.

  I watched her eyes drift toward my scar. It did something for her. At least it had that going for it.

  I said, “Are you jealous of my scar?”

  She smiled and shook her head. “No. I’m just not used to it. And every time I see it I think how close I was to losing you. It reminds me how fragile everything is.”

  “I prefer the word delicate. I am delicate. Never forget it.”

  “Oh,” she said, “you make it impossible to forget how delicate you are.” She paused and stared at nothing. “I pretend I’m strong. It’s an act. I just move forward regardless.”

  “You’ve accomplished so much. Whatever lie you’re telling yourself seems to be working.”

  “For some parts of my life. But it almost ruined a chance for this.”

  I had
a big smile on my face. A kid’s smile. Then I grew conscious of it and killed it. We were quiet for a long but comfortable minute and had a conversation with our eyes that seemed to go well. Then I said, “I’m sorry if I’m a little preoccupied.”

  “Occupational hazard,” she said, and reached over with her right arm to run a fingertip over my non-magical scar.

  “What Ian Halferin did seems so stupid,” I said. She put the flat of her palm on my chest, not pushing but just there. “He overlooked Luke Tressler’s past and character because he thought Luke supported his interests. Ian saw only what he wanted to see because he thought he was getting what he wanted. Instead, he got killed.”

  She moved closer and held my face in her hands. This side of her was new to me. Touchy and affectionate. I tried to act as if it didn’t blow me away.

  I said, “We all do it. I did, too, with Celeste Sorensen, by having Annika befriend her in hope of getting information on Halferin Silver. I could see who Celeste was from day one. But I thought she could help me so I looked the other way.”

  She removed her hands from my face. “Is that what we’re doing right now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She said, “Are we ignoring character for the sake of what we want?”

  I shook my head, reached out, and pulled Gabriella Núñez’s hands back toward me and kissed them. “No,” I said. “This is not a mistake. Even if it doesn’t work. This is an honest attempt at something good.”

  Gabriella’s eyes shined but she didn’t cry. She just nodded her head and said, “I think so, too.”

  Acknowledgments

  This novel-writing business plops a writer on an uncharted island and says, “Make something from nothing, then deliver it to the world.” So a novelist needs help. For that I thank my agent, Jennifer Weltz; my editor, Kristin Sevick; and everyone at Forge for their wisdom and hard work. I thank the booksellers and librarians and journalists for their passion and helping readers find the books that will speak to them. I thank the mystery community, readers and writers, whose kindness and inclusiveness make me wish I had written my first mystery decades ago. I thank Steven Selikoff and Bob Getman in Los Angeles for their support and friendship and patience. My family is everything. Every day. To my wife, Michele, like book-writing, I found you midlife, and what a find you are. Thank you for your love and loveliness and for the beautiful people you’ve brought into my life.