What the Dead Leave Behind Read online

  *   *   *

  I walked to my Mustang, slid inside, and started it. It had Intelligent Access, meaning its sensors could read the key fob in my pocket from three feet away, allowing me to unlock the door and start the engine with the push of a button. I sat there for a moment and revved the 435-horsepower V-8 engine because I liked the sound it made. Movement caught my eye, and I turned my head toward it. Jack McKasy was leaning against the garage, his arms folded across his chest, and watching me. He was dressed only in his T-shirt and jeans, and I wondered how long he had been standing there and how much longer he could continue standing there before frostbite set in.

  I revved the engine again.

  Jack didn’t budge.

  Maybe he’s already frozen solid, my inner voice said.

  The automatic heater kicked in—I keep it set at sixty-eight degrees—and soon the Mustang was toasty warm. I tapped the link for KBEM-FM radio; Moore by Four spilled out of the speakers, filling the interior with its cover of “Duke’s Place.”

  Still Jack didn’t move.

  One of you is an idiot, my inner voice said.

  I powered down the window.

  “Hey, Jack,” I said. “Is it true that guys think about sex every seven seconds?”

  He dropped his hands and straightened up.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked. What he meant was “Are you insulting me?”

  “See you tomorrow night,” I said.

  He didn’t like that, either.

  I closed the window and drove off.

  Fine, you’re the idiot, I told myself. But at least you’re not the one standing outside in the cold.

  SEVEN

  Diane Dauria didn’t flat-out refuse to see me. Since it was important to Mrs. Szereto that we get together, she said she was hopeful a meeting might be arranged sometime in the future when an opening could be found in her exceedingly busy schedule although, off the top of her head, she couldn’t imagine when that might be. Meanwhile, she would make her personal assistant available to me.

  I found Candy Groot sitting alone in the employee cafeteria and sipping a beverage from a tall cardboard cup with a plastic lid. It was a spacious room with plenty of natural light, wooden chairs and tables, carpeting on the floor, and several chandeliers. There were so many food stations located along the walls offering such a wide selection of cuisine that it reminded me of a shopping mall food court. All of them were closed by the time I arrived save one that provided gourmet coffee, light sandwiches, pastries, and snacks.

  Candy watched me cross the large room to her table. I waved at our surroundings.

  “Very plush,” I said.

  “We care about our employees, although—Mr. McKenzie, I decided I don’t care for you.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, because I like you just fine.”

  Candy gestured at a chair opposite her, and I sat.

  “You’re disruptive,” she added.

  “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “Going over Ms. Dauria’s head the way you did—that was unforgivable.”

  “Look at it from my point of view.”

  “I just don’t know what you expect to accomplish.”

  “I know about Jonny Szereto. I know that he abused women in this company.”

  Candy’s eyes clouded. There was some lightning in them, followed by thunder.

  “Now what?” she asked. “You want them to revisit their pain, their embarrassment, their shame?”

  “No.”

  “What do you want from them? What do you want from me?”

  The rain fell. Candy closed her eyes against the tears and grimaced as if she hadn’t meant to say those words and wished she could take them back. In that moment, I understood why. She had been one of Jonny’s victims.

  Goddammit, my inner voice shouted.

  Candy lowered her head, shook it a few times, and brought it up. She brushed the rain away with the back of her hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I did that.”

  Because the pain is always lingering nearby and some jerk just reminded you of it.

  “I cried at his funeral, too,” Candy said. “Do you believe it?”

  I didn’t say if I did or didn’t.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” she asked.

  “A connection between Jonny Szereto and Frank Harris.”

  “Does there have to be a connection? Must one thing be part of the other?”

  “No, but…”

  “But what?”

  “If there is a connection—listen, it’s not just about Harris’s son. Jonny’s son, too. Mrs. Szereto is afraid of the harm it might do him growing up not knowing the truth. The rumors he’ll hear instead.”

  “Is that why she’s letting you do this?”

  “It’s why she asked me to do this.”

  “Whether you find out who killed Jonny or not—how much truth do you think Evelyn will tell her grandson?”

  “Only what she thinks he’ll need to get by.”

  “A child should never suffer for the sins of his father, yet he will. The children of all those … people … will pay for it.”

  “Someone needs to.”

  “Should I tell you the truth, McKenzie? Should I tell you what Jonny did to me, the filthy names he called me while he was doing it? Forty-two years I’ve given to this company, to the Szereto family, from the day I graduated college until now. Should I tell you what that meant to him?”

  “Why didn’t you quit?” I asked. “Why didn’t you call the police? Why didn’t you burn the sonuvabitch to the ground?”

  I regretted the questions immediately. They made it sound as if I blamed her for what had happened. I knew better than that. I dealt with rape victims when I was on the job. I was taught how to behave, how to “chaperone” a victim. I was taught that rape was the ultimate violation, just one step short of homicide. I was taught about the fear, shame, anger, shock, humiliation, and guilt that a woman experiences. I was taught about her inability to sleep and the nightmares she’ll have when she does sleep, the erratic mood swings and the feelings of worthlessness that will come later. Yet there I was, piling on.

  I reached across the table and took Candy’s hand in mine.

  “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded,” I said.

  “I ask myself the same questions, though. I tell myself that I didn’t want to hurt the company. That I was protecting Mr. Szereto’s name, that good and sweet man. Only there’s more to it. I never married, McKenzie. Szereto was all that I had or ever will have. I can’t even imagine being somewhere else, getting another job at my age. Jonny knew it, too, and used it against me.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She looked down at my hand holding hers and shook it away.

  “Do you want to know something?” she asked. “Every morning when I look into the mirror, I smile because I know that Jonny’s dead. I wish I had killed him. I hope you never find the person who did.”

  “I understand.”

  “No man understands.”

  Fair enough.

  “I’ve been instructed to assist you,” Candy said. “Tell me how.”

  “I’d like to speak to your HR guy.”

  “Woman. Our director of human resources is a woman.”

  “Okay.”

  Candy stood.

  I stood.

  “I’ve been told to stay with you, not to let you out of my sight for a moment,” she said.

  “So you can report everything back to Dauria. I get it.”

  “And to Mrs. Szereto.”

  That, I admit, caught me by surprise. It made me feel like I wasn’t trusted.

  *   *   *

  The director of human resources was sitting behind her desk. Her name was Annabelle Ridlon, and like Candy, she was dressed in a fashionable outfit. I had noticed that all of the employees I saw while making my way to her office were stylishly dressed, mostly in black, and
I mentioned it.

  “The Szereto Corporation has an image in the beauty industry of chic sophistication, and the president wants the employees to reflect that at all times,” Ridlon said. “We do not dress casually here.”

  “If a woman came in wearing a pair of skintight two-hundred-dollar jeans with strategic rips in them?”

  “She’d be sent home.”

  “It’s the way the boss likes it,” Candy said.

  “Ahh.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. McKenzie?” Ridlon asked.

  Candy half sat, half leaned against a round table off to the side of Ridlon’s desk where she could watch us both at the same time. It was as if she knew something funny was going to happen and wanted to make sure she didn’t miss it.

  “I would like to read your files,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Especially those containing complaints from women—”

  “No.”

  “When Jonathan Szereto Jr. was president.”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Mrs. Szereto said—”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Ms. Ridlon—”

  “Mr. McKenzie. Any HR professional understands how essential it is to uphold employee privacy.”

  “You’re not a doctor. You’re not a priest or a lawyer. You’re under no obligation to maintain confidentiality.”

  “Hell I’m not.”

  “Everything in your files is discoverable.”

  “Are you a police officer? Member of a government agency? Do you have a warrant?”

  “Look—”

  “No, you look, McKenzie. What you’re asking for—I don’t have the time to list the many legal and ethical issues involved. I’m just telling you, you’re not going to get it. Not from me.”

  I gestured toward Candy.

  “Ms. Groot will confirm that I am inquiring with the permission of the chairwoman of—”

  “If Mrs. Szereto were standing right where you are now, then probably I would take the time to list the many legal and moral issues involved, and when I finished I’d bet she’d take my side. In any case, I’m not going to give up the files. I’ll make them fire me first.”

  “May I sit down?”

  Ridlon gestured at the chair in front of her desk. I sat.

  “I like you a lot more than the last HR director I spoke to,” I said.

  She shrugged as if she couldn’t have cared less.

  “May I ask a general, nonspecific question?” I said.

  “If you don’t mind a general, nonspecific answer.”

  “I know what happened here while Jonathan Szereto Jr. was president, what he did—”

  “None of that is public record.”

  “And what the former HR director did about it—”

  “If Stuart Mason discussed any of these matters with you, he’s in violation of the nondisclosure clause in his contract.”

  “Although I don’t know the identity of any of the women involved.” I added that last part because Candy was listening and I wanted to make sure she knew that I was on her side. “Now, I need to make some assumptions.”

  “Assume away,” Ridlon said.

  “I assume that Frank Harris had access to all of Mason’s files, that he knew which women complained of … Let’s call it harassment for lack of a better word.”

  “Let’s call it rape for accuracy’s sake.”

  “Could he have hurt them the way Jonny hurt them, thinking that since they gave in once they might give in again?”

  “If Mr. Harris had abused his position, I’ve seen no evidence of it; nothing to suggest that he victimized anyone. This isn’t a Ma and Pa operation, McKenzie. Mr. Harris was working with assistants, associates, and they tell me that while he often seemed distant, he behaved with the utmost professionalism. That’s probably why Ms. Dauria hired him without considering other applicants. Because she knew he could be trusted.”

  That’s right, my inner voice reminded me. Dauria hired him. ’Course, she didn’t know about Jayne at the time.

  Ridlon seemed to read my mind.

  “Could he have kept his criminal activities secret—assuming he was involved in criminal activities?” she asked. “I think not. In any case, no one came forward to complain after he died; no one sought redress or threatened to sue the firm.”

  “Perhaps his victims were embarrassed.”

  Ridlon regarded me for a few beats with such intensity that I knew she was trying to determine what kind of man I was.

  “I couldn’t say,” she said. “In any case, our security protocols have been updated since Ms. Dauria took over. Now all employees who use company computers or phones, or GPS-enabled company cars, are subjected to technological surveillance. We can track the specific content employees produce at their workstation down to the individual keystrokes. In addition, we’ve added social media clauses to employee contracts that allow us to monitor their personal Web sites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts. We do this to root out employees involved in industrial spying and corporate espionage. One woman—we had to let her go when she posted on her Facebook page that she was thrilled to be collaborating on a special project. She said she couldn’t reveal what she was working on, but wrote ‘Watch out, Gillette.’ In essence, she announced to the world that the Szereto Corporation was involved in designing the next generation of women’s razors.”

  “I would never have guessed that.”

  “In her personal information she listed her specific credentials and for whom she worked. Add that to her post—granted, the privacy settings on her account limited her remarks to only her friends, about two hundred I think it was. But McKenzie, if we’re monitoring our employees’ activities, what’s to stop our competitors from doing the same? I would wager that nearly everyone in the beauty industry has an organized system for collecting information on their rivals. They’d be foolish not to.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?”

  “We’re always searching for communications that undermine the company’s business strategies and public image, but we see everything. If Mr. Harris had abused his position, someone would have complained, even if it was only to her girlfriend on Twitter—and we would have known.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “I’d be happy to give you twenty minutes on paranoid, power-happy employers versus the individual employee’s right to privacy, but I doubt you’d want to hear it.”

  “Every employee of the Szereto Corporation is an ambassador for the Szereto Corporation.”

  “Yeah, well, I have a feeling you’ve given me all the help you’re going to.”

  “Funny, I wasn’t trying to help you at all.”

  I stood. Ridlon stood. I noticed for the first time that she was taller than I was by about three inches. I offered my hand. She shook it.

  “Believe it or not, I’m grateful for your time.”

  “In that case, as a wise man once said, don’t go away mad…”

  “Just go away,” Candy Groot said.

  *   *   *

  Candy walked me to the elevator.

  “What’s next?” she asked.

  “I think I’ve spread as much joy and sunshine around here as I can for now.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I’m leaving.”

  “Good.”

  “Tell Ms. Dauria that I still need to speak with her.”

  “Why?”

  Because, my inner voice told me. It isn’t only Szereto that connects Frank Harris and Jonny. It’s her.

  The elevator doors opened, and I stepped inside.

  “I’m sorry for your troubles,” I said. “I really am.”

  Candy didn’t answer. Instead, as the doors closed, I saw her take up her cell phone and start making a call.

  *   *   *

  Not long ago, something called the American Highway Users Alliance ranked the fifty worst traffic bottlenecks in the count
ry. Minnesotans were outraged—outraged!—that we didn’t make the cut. How could there be a worse snarl than the one that occurred when three lanes of westbound I-394 traffic were reduced to one lane so it could merge with three lanes of southbound I-94 traffic as it slowed to 35 mph and passed through the Lowry Hill Tunnel? At the best of times with weather not a factor, it was a ten-minute delay. At drive time with rain or snow added to the equation, it could take an hour or more. And it was snowing.

  I joined the long, slow crawl back into Minneapolis almost immediately after I left the Szereto parking lot, KBEM-FM turned up loud, the windshield wipers keeping time. The same vehicles in front and behind the Mustang stayed with me for several miles. Because I hadn’t expected the traffic to change, it wasn’t until I put the bottleneck behind me and managed to merge with the vehicles heading north on 35W that I realized I was being followed.

  A black Acura.

  Staying close, accelerating and slowing as I accelerated and slowed.

  I shifted lanes.

  It shifted with me.

  Who? my inner voice asked. Why?

  The freeway lights were already on; at that time of year in Minnesota, night falls like a hammer around 5:00 P.M. Yet I couldn’t make out the driver’s face in the rearview. My first thought—Jack McKasy. My second—whoever Candy Groot called while I was boarding the elevator.

  I flashed on what Detective Utley had told me earlier—her only reliable witness was sure the shotgun blast that killed Jonathan Szereto Jr. had come from inside a dark-colored Toyota. Yet it could have been an Acura, I told myself. Ever since the automotive industry decided that mpg was more important than character, most cars were given nearly indistinguishable aerodynamic designs. Since this one sped through a red light to remain on my rear bumper when I took the Washington Street exit …

  No, no, no, my inner voice chanted. You’re being paranoid. You haven’t done anything worth getting shot over. Yet.

  I moved to the right-hand lane.

  The Acura stayed with me.

  I slowed for a stoplight.

  The Acura twisted into the left-hand lane and halted with a jerk next to me.

  Its passenger window started to power down.

  I didn’t linger long enough to see who was behind the window or to get a good look at the driver. Instead, I threw the Mustang into reverse and stomped on the accelerator.