Fool Me Once

“So,” Maya said, feeling the answer start to well up, “you got Claire to do your dirty work. And it got her killed.”

A shadow crossed his face. “Not just Claire,” Corey said.

“What do you mean?”

“She worked with Joe.”

Maya let that sink in a moment before she shook her head. “There’s no way Joe would turn in his own family.”

“Your sister apparently thought otherwise.”

Maya closed her eyes.

“Think about it. Claire looks into it. She ends up dead. Then Joe looks into it…”

The connection, Maya thought. Everyone was looking for the connection.

Corey thought that he knew what it was.

But he was wrong.

“Joe reached out to me after your sister died.”

“What did he say?”

“He wanted to meet.”

“And?”

“I couldn’t. I had to stay off the grid. I’m sure you read about it. The Danish government was trying to nail me on trumped-up charges. I told him that I could find secure ways to communicate, but he wanted to meet in person. I think he wanted to help. And I think he found a secret that got him killed.”

“What were Claire and Joe supposed to be investigating?”

“Financial crimes.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“You know the phrase that behind every great fortune is a crime? It’s true. Oh, I’m sure you could find exceptions, but scratch the surface behind every major corporation and someone got paid off or someone intimidated the competition.”

“And in this case?”

“The Burkett family has a long history of paying off top politicians in this country and abroad. Do you remember the case of the pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy?”

“Vaguely,” Maya said. “Fraudulent drugs or something.”

“Close enough. The Burketts are doing something similar over in Asia with one of their pharmaceutical holdings called EAC. People are dying because the drugs don’t meet specifications, but so far, the Burketts have managed to hide behind claims of local incompetence. In short, they claim that they didn’t know anything, that their testing was sound, whatever. It’s all lies. They fabricated data, we are sure of it.”

“But you couldn’t prove it,” Maya said.

“Exactly. We needed someone from the inside to get the data.”

“So you sent in Claire.”

“Nobody forced her, Maya.”

“No, you charmed.”

“Don’t insult your sister’s intelligence. She knew the risks. She was brave. I didn’t make her. She wanted to do the right thing. You, of all people, should understand that-that she died trying to expose injustice.”

“Don’t,” Maya said.

“What?”

She hated when people made comparisons to soldiers and war. They always managed to be both patronizing and inept. But again, now was not the time.

“So your theory is that someone in Joe’s family killed Claire-and then Joe-to hush up exposure?”

“What, you think they’re above it?”

Maya thought about that. “They might not be above killing Claire,” she said, “but they’d never kill one of their own.”

“You may be right.” He rubbed his face with his hand and looked off. From the other room, Maya could hear the song “Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast, adding new meaning to the line “put our service to the test.”

“But,” he continued, “I think Claire found something else. Something bigger than manipulating a drug test.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Lulu told me you found her burner phone.”

“Yes.”

“I won’t go through how the machinations of our communications worked, how the calls here can be rerouted via the dark web and eventually find their way to me. But still. We had agreed on radio silence. We would only communicate when she was ready to give me the final material or if there was an emergency.”

Maya leaned forward. “But Claire did reach out.”

“Yes. A few days before her death.”

“What did she say?”

“That she’d found something.”

“Something other than drug tampering?”

He nodded. “Something potentially bigger,” he said. “She said she was still putting it together, but she wanted to send me the first piece of evidence.” He stopped, stared ahead with his pale blue eyes. “It was the last time we spoke.”

“Did she send you that first piece of evidence?”

He nodded. “That’s why you’re here.”

“What?”

But she knew, of course. He had known where she was the entire time-that she had visited the club, that she had talked to Lulu, that she was following him. Corey Rudzinski had not set this up casually. There had been a purpose to all of this.

“You’re here,” he said, “so I can show you what Claire found.”

* * *

“The name is Tom Douglass. Two S’s.”

Corey handed her the printout. They were still in the private back room at the strip club. This was a pretty great spot for a clandestine meeting. No one paid you any attention, and no one wanted you to pay any to them.

“Does the name mean anything to you?” Corey asked.

“Should it?”

Corey shrugged. “Just a general question.”

“Never heard of him,” Maya said. “So who is he?”

According to the printout, there were monthly payments to “Tom Douglass Security” for nine thousand dollars. Maya noted the obvious: It was the same amount as the purported secret payments to Roger Kierce.

Coincidence?