“There used to be some in the old basement storage room, unless they got thrown away.”
Lucas turned to Sweeney. “Can we go look?”
They could.
On the way to the basement, Lucas asked if any of the picnic excursions went to Shawnee Park.
“I don’t know about that. I ain’t an executive,” Wall said.
The basement was a concrete hole under the building, with red-rusted steel beams and a lot of pipe and electrical conduits; it smelled of damp but seemed dry enough. Wall led the way to a metal door, pulled it open. The room behind the door was lined with wooden shelves, showing grime and cobwebs. “There you go,” he said.
A half-dozen woven-wood picnic baskets were stacked on the shelves. Wall pulled one of them off. The basket had folding handles, both broken. Wall pushed them back, pulled open the top of the basket. Inside was a plastic box full of miscellaneous stainless silverware. He took the box out, opened it, and Lucas poked through it, found a knife, held it up.
Virgil took out his phone, called up a photo of the knife found in the park.
“Ah, boy,” he said. “They’re identical.”
—
Sweeney led theway back up a flight of stairs to the main lobby, made a call on her phone as she walked, talked for a few seconds, listened for a few more, and as they came into the lobby said, “Cory Donner would like to speak with you. He’s the CEO.”
Lucas was carrying the box of silverware, and said, “Sure.”
Donner’s office was on the fourth and top floor. The office was obviously designed for work with an efficient, not overly large desk, a long side table stacked with paper and manuals, a wall of books, a wall of filing cabinets, and two modest windows overlooking a lifeless intersection.
Donner stood when they came in, nodded at Sweeney, and shook hands with Lucas and Virgil. He was as tall as the two cops, but stooped, balding, with quick dark eyes. A suit jacket hung from a wall hook, and he was tieless, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“When I read about the reward, I worried that the murder would come back to haunt us,” Donner said. “We’ve had several people try to push past our lobby, so they could ‘investigate’ the company.”
“Did Hester tell you what we found?” Lucas asked.
“She said something about silverware—that you’d found the murder weapon and it matches some of ours.”
“Some of your silverware way back when, not the current stuff,” Virgil said. “When the murder occurred, we interviewed some people here. The BCA did.”
“I know, I was one of them,” Donner said. “I volunteered for a DNA test. The investigators did it, but nobody ever told me what they found out. Nothing, I guess. I did have a solid alibi for the time of the murder. Tell me what’s happened now, to restart it all.”
Lucas and Virgil took turns filling him in, and when they were done, he asked, “You’re not certain that what you have is the actual murder weapon?”
“No, but unless somebody deliberately planted it, it looks likely,” Virgil said. “I wouldn’t put it past some of the treasure hunters we’re dealing with, but how would they know the style of your silverware from more than twenty years ago, and then find a corroded knife that matches it, and have time to actually plant it?”
“Yes, that would be improbable,” Donner said. He scratched a cheek, thinking about it. “I’ll talk to my board about this, but I can tell you right now that we’ll give you anything you want, cooperate any way we can.” He hesitated again, then added, “That would be our general policy, but our attorneys might not completely agree. They might want some technical legal stuff done…Whatever, if they have a problem, I’ll get them in touch with you or whoever you say.”
They thanked him, and Virgil asked, “How many people had DNA tests done?”
“I’m not sure. One of the BCA investigators told me that they were asking for the tests from people who they had some reason to suspect, even if it was slight. He said that they were more interested in Doris’s club activity than in her…her relationships in the company, since she didn’t seem involved with anyone here. You know, sexually.”
Lucas: “Was Doris pretty? Lively? Would she have caught the eye of guys working here?”
Donner shook his head, gave them a wry smile. “She was quite pretty, a blonde, athletic. You know.” He glanced at Sweeney. “Boobs. If she was never going to be Miss America, she was attractive. But. There’s a big ‘but’ here…that’s a but with one ‘t.’ ”
Lucas: “That would be?”
“In the early 2000s, mmm, probably about the time she started working with us, we had quite the little sex scandal here. We had a married couple working for us, and there was a sexual problem involving our then CEO, Dick McCann. McCann, I think it’s fair to say, was predatory. I was very junior at the time, not yet a partner, but everybody heard…”
“He jumped somebody’s wife?”
“Uh, no. At the time, he might have gotten away with that,” Donner said. “A wife. What he did was, to use your phrase, he jumped somebody’s husband.”
