Thomas Prescott Superpack (41 page)

Chapter 26

The security guards let me go. The only sound was that of Adam storming in my direction. He turned me around and pushed me forward through the double doors and into the hallway. We made our way to the elevators, called for one, and stepped inside. Adam hit the emergency stop button and said, “This better be good.”

Just to clear the air, if I was to go toe-to-toe with Adam Gray, I wouldn’t win.
But then again, neither would he. There’s a good chance we’d both end up paying for the other’s reconstructive surgery.

I brushed my tuxedo smooth and said, “I came here as a favor.”

“You call crashing my Christmas party and embarrassing me in front of my employees a
favor
.”

I laughed.

Adam didn’t.

I took a deep breath and said, “You said the night your car was stolen, you were across the street getting a drink, and was drugged, beat up, and your keys were stolen.”

He nodded.

“Then the next morning, you woke up in your condo. You had no idea how you got there.”

 
“Right.”

 
“According to the navigational system on your yacht, it was taken out that night at 11:25
P.M.
driven seventy miles out to the middle of the Sound, stopped for exactly two minutes, then driven to where it was found in Edmonds at 3:17
A.M.
”

“That’s what they tell me.”

 “According to you, you can’t account for your whereabouts from ten that evening until nine when you woke up the next morning.”

“Again, correct.”

“So, technically, you could have been on your yacht.”

He took a deep breath.
Let it out. I could see him visualizing twelve of his peers digesting this information. Finally, he said, quite objectively, “Technically, yes.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere.”

I smiled.

Gray lurched forward and hit the emergency stop button.
He said, “I think you’ve wasted enough of my time.”

I moved in front of him and slapped the button.
“If you’d give me one more fucking minute, I’m about to give you your life back.”

He squinted at me, as if he might be able to read my mind if he tried hard enough.

“When I was in your office that day, I noticed a stain on two of your couch cushions.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Stain? That couch is worth twenty-five large. I think I’d know if it had stains.”

“I’m sure you would.
It’d been scrubbed then flipped upside down.”

“I would never do that.”

“I know you wouldn’t.” That’s how I’d put it together. I had no problem flipping the cushion over, but OCD Adam could never. “The stain was blood.”

“Blood?
On my couch?” He looked queasy just thinking about it.

I helped him along.
“You made it back there that night.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m guessing you were drugged. Probably some sort of tranquilizer.”

“Okay.”

“Here’s my theory. October 15, someone abducts and kills your wife. They dump her body in the ocean, but somewhere they have access to. Maybe they weight her body down in a shallow area, or tie her up to a pier. Could be anywhere. I think this nut has it out for you too. Maybe he wants both Grays tied up to his pier. So, come the Sunday before Thanksgiving, he waits for you outside the bar, hits you with some sort of tranquilizer. But you don’t go down. You put up a fight and get away, but not before you sustain a couple injuries. Somehow the guy gets your keys—maybe they slip out of your pocket during the struggle. The guy finds the gun in your glove compartment and has this brilliant idea.

“Maybe he can’t kill you, but he can put you away for life.
He retrieves Ellen’s body from wherever he has it stashed, takes out your yacht, dumps Ellen’s body overboard, and plants the gun. As for you, you’re drugged up, bloody, moving on instinct alone. You’re close to your office building. By some miracle, you make it to the garage, the private elevator, and into your office. Then to the couch.”

Gray went quiet.
His brow furrowed. I could tell he was running this through his head. Weighing its plausibility. Finally he said, “If this is true, then I would be on the surveillance camera in my office.”

“Right.
Which you have done by a third party. They store the images on a hard drive. And if I’m correct, then you can’t alter any images.”

 
“Nope. But I can log into my account and watch the live feed from my office or I can go into the archives and watch any point in time.”

I cocked my head.

He hit the emergency stop button once more, then hit the button for the twenty-second floor. He said, “Business center.”

We stepped off the twenty-second floor and Adam slid a card in a conference room doorlock.
He pulled the door open and the lights went up. At the head of a large conference table sat a laptop. He flipped the top up, turned it on, and was on the Internet in a matter of seconds. After a couple of quick clicks, the image on the computer monitor was superimposed on the projection screen on the wall behind us.

I watched as he typed in his security company’s website, then his account number and password.
The page refreshed and nine separate images popped up; his desk, the bookcase, the bar, the aquarium, the filing cabinets, the elevator, the doors, the couch, and the back wall.

He clicked on Archives and typed in November 19—the night his yacht was taken out and presumably Ellen’s body was thrown overboard—then moved numbers around to start at 8:00
P.M.
The page refreshed but looked identical. The plant was smaller.

I said, “Fast forward.”

He hit the double arrows and we watched as the time moved quickly. By nine, nothing had happened. Then ten. Then eleven. Then the date moved to the twentieth.

Adam looked at me.

Shit.

He shook his head, “Happy?”

He started to flip the laptop closed when I said, “Wait.”

He turned and watched the big screen. The clock read, “12:11:54
A.M.
” The light over the elevator had just lit up. I pointed to it. “Someone’s on their way up.”

He clicked the play button on the computer screen.
We looked at each other, then back to the screen. After about six seconds the elevator doors opened and a body flopped out.

It was Adam.

. . .

We watched the rest of the video.

A bloodied and disoriented Adam crawled on his hands and knees to the couch.
Nothing else would happen for seven hours. 

At exactly 7:12:06
A.M.
, a head peeked into the office. It was an older woman with white hair.

I said, “Who’s that?”

“June. She cleans the office every Monday morning.”

The white-haired woman on the screen took another step into Gray’s office.
Maybe June saw the blood, or smelled it. Either way, she made her way to Adam and shook him. When he didn’t respond, she became agitated and frazzled. She attempted to flip him over. After a couple tries, she got him on his side. He was covered in blood. She started crying.

After composing herself, she dragged him off the couch, laid him on his back on the floor,
then walked out of the room. She returned with two bottles of cleaning supplies, a sponge, and a couple towels. She began scrubbing the cushions.

Adam was fighting down a smile.
I couldn’t blame him. This wouldn’t exonerate him completely, but it would put a large dent in the State’s case against him.

We fast-forwarded as June scrubbed for ten minutes, then flipped over the cushions and replaced them on the couch.
Adam hit play. June exited, then returned. She attempted to wake Adam for over a minute. He appeared to open his eyes once or twice, even murmur a couple words, but he was still very much under the influence of the drug. In a impressive display of strength, the tiny woman reached under Adam’s armpits and fireman dragged him into the elevator. Then the two disappeared.

I said, “I’m gonna take a stab in the dark here and guess that June also cleans your condo?”

He nodded.

“So she would have keys to the condo?”

“She would.”

“And I’m guessing she’s been with you a long time and is loyal to a fault.”

“Correct.”

So June thought he killed his wife.
But she kept quiet. I think it was safe to assume June had a substantial Christmas bonus coming her way.

Adam stuck out his hand and said, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

I told him he could start by dropping the civil suit and giving Resmelda her job back.

He told me to consider it done.
He removed a card from his pocket and handed it to me. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “If you ever need anything at all, don’t hesitate to call.”

I stuck the card in my pocket.
I wouldn’t.

Chapter 27

They celebrated Christmas on the twenty-second, which I found odd seeing as how it wasn’t Christmas, or Christmas Eve, or even Christmas Eve Eve for that matter. But they were old and if they wanted to celebrate Arbor Day in August, then I’d plant my tree in August.

Harold had mentioned on my last visit that none of his family was going to make it out for the holiday.
And it’s not like I had much else to do.

I knocked on the door and Harold answered.
He was wearing a red turtleneck and a Santa hat. Sort of like what Santa would look like if he was eighty-six pounds, had
extensive
electrolysis, and had died three or four years earlier.

I wasn’t exactly sure what one buys for someone who can say the words, “So
me and Patton are shooting the shit when Lee comes in . . .” and be completely serious, but I’d decided on a gift certificate for Lasik. Just kidding—I got him a subscription to
Girls Gone Wild
.

He took the two videos from me, looked around his small room for a good minute,
then slid them under the couch cushions. Good thinking.

Harold told me he had to go to the bathroom and to, “Sit tight.”
Fifty-five minutes later, he returned with a small gift in his little basket and held it up. It was about the size of a coffee mug and haphazardly wrapped. A large white bow was stuck to a crumpled section of wrapping paper at top. Harold held the gift out and said, “For you.”

Lacy had bought me tickets to the upcoming Seattle Seahawks playoff game, but the presents she’d sent wouldn’t arrive until after Christmas.
So there was a good chance the small package before me—which I was almost certain
was
a coffee cup—would be the only present I opened for Christmas. I ripped off the wrapping paper and revealed a coffee mug stuffed with half a banana and a Tapioca Snackpack.

I thanked him for his generosity and the guy waved me off like he’d just bought me a brand new Lexus.

We retired to the Christmas celebration and Harold and I ate at a table with two of the CNN-iles and their families.
It was a mix of young and old. Daughters, sons, nieces, nephews, and even a couple babies. The meal was good and after they’d cleared our plates, we played reindeer games for over an hour. Then a couple old-timers jumped on the piano and we sang Christmas carols and danced—or in the case of three couples in mobility scooters—played bumper cars.

At around seven, the party fizzled.
Apparently, colostomy bags don’t empty themselves. But I wasn’t ready to leave. I wanted to hear some more of Harold’s story.

I followed behind Harold on the way back to his building.
He stopped, turned, and said, “You know what I really want?”

I shook my head.

“A Slurpee.”

“A Slurpee?”

“Yeah. A Slurpee.”

So Harold and I went for slurpees.

. . .

Harold was buckled in the passenger seat, his walker lying across the whole of the backseat.
When we’d first made it to the car, Harold had asked if he could drive. I told him if it was up to me he could drive the car off a cliff, but according to the seven documents I had to sign and the urine sample I had to leave with the prune at the front desk, he wasn’t allowed to drive.

There was a gas station two miles up the road and I stopped, ran in, and grabbed a couple slurpees.
Back in the car, I handed Harold his
Mountain Dew Kryptonite Ice
slurpee and said, “Where to?”

He took a long slurp and said, “Just drive.”

So I just drove.

After ten minutes of just driving Harold had slurped up the majority of his slurpee, which after only a couple sips had given me a nice little hand tremor, heart arrhythmia, a headache, a toothache, and the sensation I was falling.

Harold took one final slurp, set the cup between his legs and said, “She was to meet me at the train station.”

After three years, Harold was finally set to go home. He had traded letters with Elizabeth for the last nine months. In one of her last letters, Elizabeth had sent him a picture. A black and white that just barely fit in the envelope. It was of her, her two brothers, her mom, and her dad. Harold couldn’t believe how much she’d grown. She was wearing a white blouse and a long black skirt. Her dark hair was long, disappearing behind her back. Harold didn’t know the right word to describe her. Perfect simply didn’t do her justice. 

In the picture, her father had his right hand resting on Elizabeth’s shoulder.
Harold remembered that right hand. Remembered it striking him in the face. But if he could make something as beautiful as Elizabeth, then he couldn’t be all bad. Could he? Plus, he would soon be Harold’s father-in-law. They would be forced to get along. He decided then and there to forgive the man.

In April, the day finally came.
Harold hadn’t slept in four days. In her last letter she had told him she would be waiting at the train station for him. That she couldn’t wait to hold him in her arms. She couldn’t believe she was actually going to see the man she so deeply loved. 

After two days of traveling, Harold was back at Fort Bragg.
He hopped on a train and three days later found himself arriving at the same train station he’d departed from over three years earlier. He thought about the young man—boy, really—who had left on that train. A boy who was now returning a man. And he had Elizabeth to thank.

The train ground to a halt and Harold pressed his nose against the glass.
His train was filled with a handful of soldiers and a large mob—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, and girlfriends alike—was waiting on the platform.

Harold’s hands were shaking so badly he was having a hard time holding onto his dufflebag.
He stepped off the train, the commotion thundering.

She had told Harold she would be wearing her favorite red blouse and a white skirt.
Harold walked up and down the small walkway. He scanned the masses, saw a girl in a red blouse. He ran up to the girl, but when she turned, it wasn’t Elizabeth.

The train emptied and slowly the throngs of people dissipated.
Soon, the only person remaining was Harold. Harold holding onto his bag. Harold, the tears dripping from his eyes. 

“She never showed?”

Staring straight ahead, he said, “She never showed.”

“But she had a good reason.
You went to her house and she gave you a good reason.”

He looked at me, but said nothing.

I said, “You went to her house, though.
Didn’t you?”

“Oh, I went to her house all right.”

Harold began walking in the direction of the King mansion. There had to be a good reason Elizabeth hadn’t shown. Had she simply forgotten? He didn’t see how. Harold’s stomach lurched. What if she was sick? Or what if it was something worse? It had to be terrible, just awful, if it would keep her from him.

He dropped his dufflebag and began sprinting the seven miles to the King mansion. He came abreast of the house and slowed.
He looked out over the small lake, the turquoise water whipping in the light breeze. That spring morning played over in his head in slow motion. The dog. Elizabeth screaming. The light touch on his arm. The soft whisper. Elizabeth never taking her eyes off him.

He ran up the drive and to the house.
He noticed there wasn’t a single car parked in front of the house. No shiny black automobiles.

He set his bag down and began banging on the door.
He must have banged for an hour. He banged against that door until his hands started to bleed.

He tried to tell himself they were at church.
Or on a vacation. These rich people were always taking vacations. But he knew. He knew they were gone. Knew she was gone. Knew he would never see his sweet Elizabeth again.