New York City
May 4
Caleb Cain sat at his desk in the spare bedroom of his Upper East Side apartment. The place was nondescript, in a forgettable building—one of hundreds, probably thousands of fungible apartments off of beige hallways in characterless high-rises on interchangeable blocks. The perfect apartment for a ghost.
Despite its irrelevance to his business, the Van Gent murder was nagging at him. He flipped through the employee files an associate had acquired for him and sighed.
All the employees were accounted for. They only had to swipe their access cards to enter or exit the building before 8 a.m. or after 8 p.m., so it was impossible to track who had remained at Gentrify Capital that night. The lobby security camera would be useless for such an exercise as employees and clients came and went in droves, faces in their phones. Any one of the fifty-some-odd Gentrify employees could have stayed behind that night.
Caleb, however, had one piece of information the police lacked. In Caleb’s assessment, the killer was not a professional hitter; the choice of weapon, the number of shots, and the clumsy exit all spoke of an amateur. Why then, would a nervous, inexperienced shooter stop at a vending machine for a soda? He glanced at the open file on the desk, then flipped through a dozen more. That’s when he saw it. Freddy Kerr. He was a Canadian, single, and a recent college grad.
He was also diabetic.
Gotcha.
He woke his laptop and started digging. He wanted to find out everything he could about young Freddy Kerr. Two hours later, he changed into running clothes and headed downtown.
On the corner of Spring Street and Lafayette, Freddy Kerr passed off the last incriminating piece of evidence, the Knicks duffle, to the homeless man in a team hoodie and wandered down the street to grab a slice.
Freddy had loved Phipps once—back when Phipps was Phil Malone—maybe even more than he loved his mom. Phil had taught him to snowboard and ski, had praised his schoolwork, and encouraged his love of astronomy. He had sat with him when he had the chickenpox; they had binged classic comedies and talked about nothing. Phil was just getting his investment business off the ground, but he always had time for Freddy, taking him to Canucks games and playing one-on-one in the driveway. Freddy would close his eyes at night and thank God—thank you, thank you, God—that his mother had been so lucky to meet and marry Phil Malone. A kid couldn’t have asked for a better stepfather.
Then his grandmother died.
Freddy’s mom had been in a good place financially. She was an executive at a pharmaceutical company, and they were never strapped. Freddy’s grandmother, however, was rich. Phipps, aka Phil Malone, had bided his time. He set up Canada Sky Investments and managed about eleven million dollars from a dozen clients, including Freddy’s mom. When Freddy’s grandmother died, his mother inherited six million dollars and immediately handed the money over to her husband to invest. A week later, Phil Malone told his wife and stepson he was going to Toronto on business, packed a bag, kissed them both, and disappeared off the face of the earth. Freddy had been one day shy of fourteen.
Despite his mother’s suspicions, for years Freddy was convinced his stepfather had been murdered, or some bizarre tragedy had befallen him causing amnesia or paralysis. The brutal reality hadn’t settled in until Freddy was seventeen, and he, quite by accident, came face-to-face with his stepfather.
He had been on vacation with the family of a school friend in Gold Coast, Australia. After souvenir shopping in town, he’d stopped to watch a street performer when the door to Up and Over Investments opened, and his stepfather and another man walked out into the blinding sunshine.
Freddy raced to Phil Malone and threw his arms around him, tears racing down his cheeks. Phil had returned the embrace with equal enthusiasm.
“Who’s this guy, Flip?”The other man inquired.
“My stepson, Freddy. I never get to see him.”
Freddy cocked his head at his stepfather’s Aussie accent.
The other man smiled and walked off tossing over his shoulder, “I’ll see you Saturday, mate.”
Phil Malone, now Flip Treavor, embraced Freddy again.
“Damn, Fred, you’re a man. It’s so great to see you.”
Freddy was flabbergasted by the greeting, confusion marring his features. But Flip continued, “Are you free for dinner? I want to catch up, hear all about your life.”
Freddy met Flip for dinner at a posh oceanside restaurant. Flip ordered a $2000 bottle of ‘94 Lafite, and they each had the most expensive steak on the menu and the restaurant’s signature dessert. His former stepfather expertly steered the conversation, turning the evening into a bizarre reunion.
Halfway through dessert, Flip excused himself to use the washroom. Freddy was urgently texting his mother when the next thing he knew, the waiter was presenting him with the bill. When Freddy explained that his stepfather was treating him to dinner, the manager insisted that Flip was a regular customer, and he had left saying Freddy had offered to buy him dinner to pitch an idea for a financial app.
By the time Freddy’s host family arrived to help, and the local police had been apprised of the situation, Flip Treavor and the thirty-three million dollars he had under management had vanished. The locals were left reeling from the understanding that they had been harboring a con artist. Freddy, however, had come to a realization: Phil Malone/Flip Treavor wasn’t a con artist; he was a psychopath.
From that moment, Freddy was primed for vengeance. He figured out how to find his former stepfather by creating a computer algorithm that tracked trading and investment patterns—it was that invention that had gained him admission to Vanderbilt. The man who now went by Phipps Van Gent had gone to New York. Phipps had taken a position at a well-respected investment bank, and by Freddy’s junior year, Phipps had established Gentrify Capital Partners with staggering success.
That’s when Freddy had hatched his plan. His senior year, Freddy flew to New York and met with his former stepfather. Freddy explained that he wanted to learn the business. He would work hard and do everything he could to make Gentrify Capital a financial giant. Phipps had beamed with pride and hired Freddy on the spot. Both men agreed that their former connection was irrelevant, and Freddy would begin work upon graduation as a junior associate in client relations. If Phipps had been suspicious of Freddy, his suspicions were misdirected. He hadn’t the slightest inkling that Freddy was there to kill him.
Freddy’s grandfather had taught him to hunt and had given him the 12-gauge for his tenth birthday. The widow next door had given the old Winchester to Freddy’s grandfather when her husband passed away, a memento from their hunting trips. The thing was a cannon, but untraceable.
He got to know the security guards, the most affable and least attentive of whom was Griff, a retired New York City beat cop. Freddy suspected he took the job to spend less time at home in Long Island City–his wife monitored his diet like, as he put it, she was handing out rations at the zombie apocalypse. Freddy’s morning greeting and occasional box of donuts bought him a reprieve from having his bag inspected.