Chapter 1: Vanessa

It was one of those perfect winter evenings, crisp, clear and cold but with no wind, most unusual for Chicago, and most unusual for January. It was already dark outside but, in the office, the harsh florescent lighting accentuated every feature on the blonde woman’s face. Even at the end of a long day, and in this harsh light, this girl was stunningly attractive.

Vanessa was briskly storing away the remnants of the day’s work, leaving her desk top clear except for the small neat calendar which she left open at the page for the next day, the 13th. She always went through this routine at the end of the day, firstly because, being the company’s personnel manager, most of the papers she worked with were confidential and had to be stored out of public view, but mainly because that was the way she was, and always had been.

Jeremy put his head in the doorway, “Taking the day off”, he joked even though it was almost five after five. The voice was deep for a man as small as the fellow who had entered. He was the same age as Vanessa, around thirty-three, and very slim, if not thin. Without the glasses he usually wore, he was almost good looking, but being only five feet seven, most people would not have given him a second glance.

Smiling Vanessa replied, “I have a game tonight at the arena, and any way, I had put in a full day’s work before you had finished your first cup of coffee.”  They were old friends, having met over twelve years before when they both attended business school at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and each ribbed the other at every opportunity.  “Why don't you come and watch, it‘s just down the road, and we could pick up a beer afterwards at the Trader”.

“Well, it so happens that I have a break in my busy schedule this evening, so I might just do that, after I have finished up my work. Look for me in the stands in the third.”  The company they both worked for, Fraser and Fraser & Son was a small regional stockbroker, and Jeremy was a trader. Being relatively senior now, he had his cubicle in the very back of the large open plan room that housed the fifteen or so individuals who executed the customers buy and sell orders. The occupants referred to this space as the boiler room not because it was hot, but because it frequently cooked frenetically in the overheated market. Actually, it was rather pleasant work space compared to that found in the larger downtown firms, with the lines of cubicles broken by real potted trees and other plants. If the foliage didn’t really soften the lines, it at least absorbed some of the noise emanating from a dozen simultaneous telephone calls.

Jeremy smiled as he wove his way back towards his cubicle, amused at the contrast between the tidiness on Vanessa’s desk and the mayhem evidenced by the sprawl of papers, coffee mugs, and yesterday’s donuts which hid the desktops of almost all the traders.  His own desk was not the worst, but neither was it the best, and it was testament to his organized brain that he was able to keep on top of things. He was doing very well these days, not only because the general volume of the firm’s business had grown, but also because his reputation as a very astute trader had spread gradually, bringing him some larger and more active clients. The six-figure bonus he had received just a month ago told the story of his success but did not describe the effort he had to apply to achieve it. Twelve hour days were his norm, and now that he was dabbling in the Japanese market which only opened at ten in the evening, he was often still at his desk well after midnight. As a result his social life was, as he put it, on hold. Part of the problem was that he was frankly a bit of a geek, very bright and accomplished but just a little bit socially inept. As long as he kept a telephone between himself and any other human being he was erudite and amusing, but put him face to face and he turned into a babbling idiot. That is with everybody except Vanessa, and he knew he could never expect to be any more than old college pals with her.

As always, when he sat down at his desk, he was transported into a different world. He buried himself in completing the long list of tasks he had before his day was over, and before he knew it two hours had passed. “Damn,” he thought “if I don't get down there, I will miss the whole game again and then my stock with Vanessa will really tank.  I’ll have to come back and finish this later.” With that he walked quickly to his new BMW coupe and gunned it the two short blocks down to the Arena. Luckily the game had started a little late, because the men's game, which had preceded it, ran over time due to an excessive number of penalties, and the third period had only just begun. Vanessa’s team was winning as usual, thanks mainly to the prowess of their star player, Vanessa.  Although this was the highest level women's league in the area, she really was too good for it, having played internationally for Canada when she was younger, but the love of the game was too great for her to give up, and only men could make a living at this sport. Her compromise was to have a rewarding business career, but keep her skill with the puck alive as best she could. And even with all that bulky protective gear, she did look great on the ice.

As the game progressed with two more unanswered goals set up by Vanessa, Jeremy let his mind wander to the time when he and she had met as freshmen on the Queen’s campus just over twelve years earlier. The two were among one hundred bright young people mainly from Canada, but also from all over the world who were embarking upon a three year business science course that had just been launched at the school. Being one of the most prestigious schools in Canada, competition for the places in the course had been fierce, but both he and Vanessa had extremely good records, and their acceptance into the program was as expected. As time went on, the two seemed to gravitate to each other even though they were physically so different, she tall, athletic and large for a woman, but with everything in the right place, he as small as he was and seemingly with only left legs and thumbs. The truth most probably was that she was so accomplished at everything that most men and all the women were totally intimidated by her, while he could hardly open his mouth in the presence of anyone, so as two loners, they got together. By the end of the course in which both excelled, they were firm friends.

After graduation he had headed south for a job initially in consulting with a big apple financial services company, while she had taken a year off to travel with the Canadian women’s ice hockey squad, before doing her masters in personnel management at Western University in Ontario, another prestigious business school almost an equal distance to the west of Toronto, as Kingston had been to the east.

Having drifted apart as a result of the separation, it was a great surprise, and a happy reunion when they both began new jobs on the same day at the same firm in Oakbrook Terrace, just west of Chicago. Renewing their friendship seemed just the natural thing to do,

“Was that four years ago,” mused Jeremy as the final whistle blew and he made his way to the foyer of the arena where he always waited for Vanessa to emerge from the dressing rooms, which she did surprisingly promptly.  They moved quickly out into the crisp evening air escaping the admiring stares of every male older than twelve, and after throwing Vanessa’s sports bag into the trunk of her car walked the half mile to the Trader, a local sports bar frequented by the many stock brokers from the area. The place was nearly empty now as the after work crowd had long ago departed, so they could choose where they sat, and they moved into a quiet table shielded from the view of the mainly male stragglers by a row of shabby potted trees. They both ordered draft beer but were prevented from sharing a pitcher by the fact that Vanessa always quaffed a heavy dark European style ale, while Jeremy sipped an insipid light pale American beer.

It was after the waitress had brought their second round that Vanessa became aware of the two men talking animatedly behind the barrier of trees. Almost hidden from her view, she could only form a vague impression of what they looked like, but the sharpness of the almost whispered conversation conveyed a distinct impression of anger, at least on the part of the man furthest from her. She would not have taken any more notice of them were it not for the snippets of their conversation that she could hear. “You caused the problem, you fix it,” said the one man, “and do it tonight, before any more damage is done.”

“I will,” replied the second grimly, “but its not as serious as you make it sound. It was just a wrong click of the mouse; Baird and Brad were adjacent to each other in my address book. He won’t know where the message came from, I used my private AOL address.” 

“You had better, and don’t try to minimize the seriousness of what you have done. My operation is making us both rich, and you have put it at risk. You don’t fix it, I will, and you won't like the way I do.” With that the man who had spoken first stood up and quickly left the bar, leaving the second to stare into his drink. Vanessa could only see the back of that man’s neck where the short cropped blond hair glistened with his own sweat. The tension in the man’s body was obvious, the fear he felt was not.

“Well, I guess I must get back to the boiler room,” Jeremy was saying, bringing Vanessa’s attention back to her companion, “Tokyo is already open.” In reality he did not have any orders to fulfill on that market today, but the comment was in line with his image. They left the bar together and walked back to Vanessa’s car where they parted with a friendly kiss on the cheek. As Jeremy located his own vehicle and drove the 2 minutes back to the office, he couldn’t help wishing that the kiss had been something more.

As Vanessa drove the ten miles to her neat apartment in Carol Stream, she had the same warm feeling of contentment she always had after spending time with Jeremy, but tonight she could not overcome a mild feeling of unease, which she could not pin down. She was musing about the brief conversation between the two men that she had overheard, not knowing what it meant, but certain it was not good. Perhaps her concern arose because Baird was Jeremy’s family name.

 

Much later, in an office on the fifty-sixth floor of the Sears building downtown, the same two men faced each other, “Is it done?” asked the first man.

“Yes“, the other replied, “I have his computer, and the email was unopened. No one had seen it.”

“Was there any trouble?”

“Nothing I couldn't handle.” The blonde haired man dumped the computer onto the other man’s desk, “No harm was done.”

“For your sake, I hope you are right.” The tone in the first man’s voice was menacing, and the thin line that was his mouth conveyed the definite impression that he was serious, and that the consequences of even a minor problem would be just as serious. The blonde-haired man turned and stepped away, into the darkness. He was unaware that the blood on his shoe had left a small brown stain upon the carpet where he had been standing.  The first man did not notice it either.

 

The unease she had felt the previous evening returned as Vanessa Swift approached the building that housed her office at a little after seven fifteen in the morning. Chicago is on central time, and because of this, businesses generally open at eight not nine as they do on the eastern seaboard. Vanessa was always earlier still. The few hours she could get of quiet time before the rest of the horde arrived gave her a sense of being in control, a feeling that was most important to her performance as a senior executive in an industry that lagged the general trend of promoting persons of her gender. She had got the job because her qualifications were clearly superior to those of any other candidate, but she knew that had it been a mainline firm downtown, the competition would have been stronger, and although she probably would still have been the best candidate, she likely would not have got the job. 

This day she was a little later than usual, and clearly was not the first to arrive, as a few other employees were milling around the employee entrance in the rear of the building. Vanessa parked in her management spot close to the front door and moved to use that entrance for which she had a key. She was surprised to find it unlocked, but more surprised to find her way blocked by a policeman. “Sorry this is a crime scene” the man said. After some altercation and considerable discussion, Vanessa was able to persuade the man that not only was she the “person in charge” of the office in the early part of the day, but also, with her knowledge of the people who had access to the building, could be helpful to them in their investigation of the crime, whatever it was.

Concluding that whatever had taken place, had happened in the trading room, Vanessa pushed her way past the seemingly hundreds of uniforms to the back of the building, and, as a disturbing knot formed in her stomach, realized that most of the attention seemed to center on Jeremy's work area. “Do you know the guy who works here?” The question came from an unshaven man in a scruffy suit, seemingly the detective in charge of the investigation.

“Yes, his name is Jeremy Baird. He’s a trader. Is he involved in something?” The question was more to quiet the developing fear that something terrible had happened to Jeremy.

“Seems he got mugged by an intruder, just got him on his way to the hospital. He was discovered unconscious and bleeding by one of your employees about an hour ago.”  It took all her self control not to rush out of the room and head for the hospital, but Vanessa seemingly calm asked a few more questions and ascertained that Jeremy was quite badly hurt, would require some surgery to work on some fractures, but was otherwise OK and would certainly pull through. So her professional side took over, “What were they after?” she asked.

Another younger and much better dressed detective answered, “We are not sure, his wallet was gone, hence no ID, but we noticed also that this computer monitor seems not to be connected to anything, so it seems possible that a computer is missing”. “Yes, his operations computer is missing, the one he uses for communications and client records etc. You see all of our traders use two computers, one, that one still under his desk, is networked to the mainframe and through that, communicates only with the market. The other, the one that usually sits right there, is used for personal stuff, email etcetera. That’s how we separate the trading computers from the outside world. We’re scared of virus’s and hackers, so none of our trading machines are accessible to regular outside phone lines.”

“Anything else missing, and what was he doing here last night?”  Vanessa replied that she did not think so, and explained that he had returned to the office after ten to finish up some work, and that he often did that so many people would have known that he may have been there. “Well it seems to us that the guy who did this broke in a back window, and was after that computer. Finding someone here was a complication, and the stealing of the wallet was a cover up. The victim’s car and house keys were still in his pockets, and the only car in the lot was his beamer so a regular thief would have taken those. This guy just wanted that computer, and wanted it bad. Why do you think that was?”

The last question from the detective was not really directed at Vanessa, rather more a sort of personal musing, but she answered anyway, “If he was after client records there were better places for him to find them and anyway, Jeremy kept most of that kind of stuff in his head. His computer was just a glorified automatic dialer and email machine which is why he had not bothered to replace it in four years. Who would want an old four eighty six with a mere five hundred meg hard drive?” Leaving the rhetorical question hanging Vanessa hurried back to her office and the questions of the many staff members who by now had arrived and were gathered in several groups outside the front door. The police now opened up access to the front office, and the front half of the back room, but it wasn't until noon that most of the traders could go back to work. In the mean time those that could doubled up on computers in other work areas so the clients would not be affected, and Vanessa shared out outstanding buy/sell orders from Jeremy's desk to other traders to cover his clients.

The disruption kept everyone frantic until late afternoon, including Vanessa, but when she could she let her mind return to the puzzle of what the mugger was after, and for that matter, got.  “It must be in that computer,” she thought, “but there was nothing of any value. He’s not the sort to be blackmailing somebody.” Suddenly she thought of the email system. Maybe he had received something he shouldn't see, or at least something that the sender regretted having sent! The only place to find out would be on the missing computer because with the volume of emails moving in and out of the office they had a system installed with their internet provider that automatically downloaded emails directly to the individual PC’s every twenty to thirty minutes, and deleted them from the IP’s server.

She was just about to move onto other more productive areas of thought when she remembered the big brother factor which had, at the company’s request, been built in to the IP’s system. Every email in or out of their offices was secretly copied to a computer hidden in a small room which had a single door that opened into the boardroom, to which only senior personnel had access. She recalled the CEO saying at the time, “Sure it’s snooping, but by God if they get up to something, at least we will be able to find out how we were screwed.” She hadn’t liked it at the time but accepted that, in this litigious society, some principles of privacy had to be sacrificed.  Here, she realized was a record that may provide the key to the mystery. Continuing this line of investigation would have to wait till she had free access to the boardroom, and she knew the best time for that was in the morning before most of this staff came in and certainly before other senior staff deigned to show up. In any event it was time to visit Jeremy at the hospital.