“Massey made a disparaging comment about the Tampa police,” Kowalczyk said, adding to the conversation, “and clearly he’s targeting Briggs’s company, so unless they’re aggrieved former employees or contractors, which we have no record of, then maybe there is a tie to his wife. Or at least what he believes is a connection.”
“Briggs is a major contributor to the university Olivia Massey worked for, and both Skylar and her brother, Grayson, have been enrolled in classes there. We’ve discovered that much,” Beth offered. “Skylar wasn’t there long and transferred to another school about eight months ago. One of her arrests was a few weeks before that, so potentially related. Grayson graduated this year. Neither appears to have taken a class with Olivia Massey.”
“Could the link we’re looking for be something to do with Skylar leaving?” Whittaker asked. “But the school probably booted her and kept it quiet as the father makes significant donations. Called it a transfer.”
Beth shrugged her shoulders. “Skylar left after Olivia’s accident. A few days after, I believe. Could have been revenge I suppose, if Olivia had an involvement in the girl’s expulsion, but seems risky after the fact.”
“What about all this environmental stuff Massey keeps rattling on about?” Kowalczyk asked. “It must have something to do with it. He’s just thrown the Florida Governor under the bus, and by the looks of things, a group of politicians and businessmen are next,” he added, throwing a thumb towards the monitor. Various dignitaries continued praising Briggs Paper & Packaging International.
“Olivia Massey taught environmental science, and Grayson Briggs took an environmental course, but he was under another professor according to what we’ve found,” Beth confirmed. “Skylar was enrolled in the same course as her brother before she quit, or was asked to leave.”
“Her social media feed is full of environmental save-the-whale shit,” Kowalczyk added. “Looks like she went on rallies and various fund raisers for manatees.”
“Seems like the Briggs family wants us to believe they care about the environment,” Whittaker said.
“Skylar may well,” Beth replied, “but records indicate Donovan Briggs didn’t do squat to help the environment until he was forced to. The company was cited multiple times for waste over the years. His conversion to cleaner production came after big public pressure three years ago.”
“Where is Grayson now?” Whittaker asked.
“In Tampa. Our office has spoken with him over the phone,” Beth replied. “He works at the paper mill with his father.”
“Hey, what’s the name of the university in St Pete?” Kowalczyk asked.
“University of St Petersburg,” Beth replied. “Oh, here we go,” she added, following her partner’s gaze to the television.
A man stood on a stage singing the praises of Briggs Paper & Packaging International in a large auditorium. Across the back of the stage was a large banner for the University of St Petersburg.
24
Speak No Evil
I blinked against the bright lights that weren’t very bright, but I’d been in the dark for what felt like hours. The room was small and did not contain any obvious sharp objects or electrified railings. In fact, it held nothing but my chair and a white dry-erase board mounted to the wall beside the only door. Three dry-erase pens lay in the shelf at the base of the board, along with an eraser. The walls of the room were draped with black cloth, and I got up and pulled the material back to reveal bare studs and panels. No windows I could see. The wood was fresh untreated pine but dry, dark green paint had leaked through the seams in the plywood panels, suggesting the exterior had been painted.
I tried to wedge or hook the cloth back in the hope the broadcast may catch the construction on one of the many cameras I noticed blinking red lights from the dark corners of the ceiling. A single sealed light fixture was mounted to a rafter, illuminating the whiteboard. It was an exterior style fixture, with screws fastening the lens, preventing me from darkening the room or using the glass bulb as a weapon. Even the wiring was tightly pinned to the rafter and disappeared through the ceiling, making it useless to me. I nudged the chair, and it didn’t move. It too was screwed to the floor with metal brackets.
Stepping to the board, I took the cap off a blue dry-erase pen and wrote in big letters on the board, ‘Small wood building in Barkers’.
I moved back to give the cameras a clear view.
“I’d be disappointed with anything less, Nora,” came Massey’s voice over speakers I hadn’t noticed tucked away in the rafters. “But please erase that and we can begin the third challenge. I have a button in my hand at all times to switch the feed, so attempts at signals, messages and clues are pointless. They will also forfeit the challenge, for which Skylar will suffer, as you know.”
Well, at least I was keeping him on his toes. I looked up at the camera aimed down at me from above the board and nodded. I couldn’t think of a way to delay any further, so we may as well get on with whatever his next bag of tricks contained.
Detective Whittaker and the two agents turned their attention back to the monitor where the pre-produced video ended and Massey appeared on screen standing behind Skylar.
“Welcome back ladies and gentlemen around the world. Thank you for tuning in and following along with the story I’m unfolding for you. Speak no Evil is the subject of the moment, and the lost art of speaking the truth. Our third challenge today provides an opportunity for our players to demonstrate to us the difficulty involved in providing clear and accurate facts. ‘Listen and Draw’ has been used for decades. From school rooms to test laboratories, the process of one human describing an image to be drawn by another is a lesson in communication, precision, and attention.
“Our teachers use this as a game to teach young children how to diligently listen to directions, an ever-losing battle with a world that’s training our kids to have attention deficit disorder. Intelligence services use the process to train their agents in carefully paying attention to instructions and gathering minute details from conversations and surroundings.
“For our challenge, Skylar Briggs will have five minutes to accurately describe an image I will reveal shortly. In a separate room, Constable Nora Sommer will attempt to recreate that image from Skylar’s directions. Skylar must not say what the image is or represents. She may only describe the shapes and forms that make up the picture. Breaking the rules forfeits the challenge, and I think we all know what’s on the line by now. Skylar will lose a finger if they fail this, the third challenge. Next, will be the final test, where they’ll play for much higher stakes.
“But now it’s time for our ‘Speak no Evil’ challenge, and their five minutes begins now.”
A countdown clock started in the corner of the screen, opposite the ever-increasing viewership number. The tape had already been removed from Skylar’s mouth, and Massey reached over and hung a large white card on the wall in front of her.
“What the hell is that?” I heard Skylar say over the speakers.
I’d listened to Massey’s diatribe and was poised with a pen, ready to start drawing – which wasn’t one of my fortes. I was good at stick figures and snowmen. Unless we were drawing sailboats. I could draw the sailboat I’d lived on from memory. But I guessed that wouldn’t be today’s challenge.
“What do you see?” I asked, trying to kick-start the young woman.
“It’s like a science fiction-looking logo thing,” she replied, sounding baffled.
“Do not say what it is,” Massey reminded her, “I’ll let that one slip, but not again.”
“How can I say what it is when I don’t know what the fuck it is,” Skylar whined.
“Hey, Briggs,” I snapped. “Focus. It doesn’t matter what it is, just describe what I need to draw. Circles, squares, rectangles, lines.”
“It’s got a bunch of circles and parts of circles,” she mumbled back.
I pictured Skylar in the back of a classroom making snapping sounds from the
bubblegum in her mouth while she scrolled through social media on her mobile. Her teachers must have loved her.
“Start with what’s in the middle of the image, the centre,” I persisted.
“A circle, I guess?” she replied.
“Okay, how big? Half the whole image, or one tenth the size?”
“Jeez, I don’t know,” Skylar mumbled. “Closer to a tenth I suppose.”
I drew a circle on the board.
“You said it’s a bunch of circles, so what’s the next one?”
“There’s a bigger circle,” she replied, “But it’s not really a circle.”
“You mean it’s an oval?”
“No, no, it’s round, but it’s got a hole in it,” she said, and I was as confused as she sounded.
“A circle with a hole in it?”
“Yeah, you know, like a doughnut.”
“A fat ring?”
“I guess you could call it that,” she replied.
I seemed to remember the Egyptians were considered the originators of geometry, so I presumed they named it that. But if Skylar Briggs wanted to give me credit for inventing the shape known as a ring, I wasn’t going to argue with her. Time was ticking away.
“How much bigger than the first circle is the ring?”
“Um,” I heard her deliberating.
Maybe I was wrong. I was starting to doubt she could chew gum and operate her mobile at the same time.
“So, if you drew another circle next to the first one, making it the same size as the first one, it would touch the inside of the doughnut,” she declared, “Except there’s not another circle there, I’m just saying so you know the distance.”
“Are they concentric?” I asked, then realised I’d have to phrase it differently.
“They are,” she replied before I could come up with another way of asking, “if that means they have the same centre?”
“It does,” I confirmed, and drew a second circle next to the first, using it as a guide to make the inside circle of the ring. She was chewing gum again in my mind, and had graduated a few IQ points.
“How wide is the ring?” I asked. “Use the original circle as a reference.”
“Two thirds-ish.”
I drew the outer circle of the ring.
“What’s next?”
“Now it’s the goofy bits,” she replied. “There are three of them and they’re like circles, but not really. They’re more like moons, or you know a moon having an eclipse or something.”
I was confused and thought about what she was saying. The moon is a circle, but an eclipse has one planet passing over another, like two non-concentric circles. Off to the side I drew one circle and then another smaller one inside the first with their edges touching.
“Halvmåne,” I blurted. “Damn it, what’s the name in English? A crescent?!”
“Yes, yes, that’s it. A crescent,” she replied excitedly. “But most of a full circle so it looks kinda like a pincer.”
That threw me for a loop again until I looked at my two circles off to the side. I took my finger and erased the edge where the two circles touched, and it sort of looked like a pincer.
“Okay, where do I draw these relative to the other circles? There’s three, right?”
“Yes, three,” she said, and I gave her a moment to think. “The first one is upside down on the top. I think the bottom would go through the centre of the first circle you drew, the small one.”
“That’s good,” I encouraged. “And how big are these crescents?”
“Kinda the same size as the doughnut.”
I drew a new circle straight above the original circle, passing through its centre.
“How thick is the back of the crescent?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“The pincer shape. On one side the two circles touch, but on the other side they’re how far apart?”
“I don’t understand,” she replied, and I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to ask in a different way. This was pushing the abilities of my second language.
“On one side the pincers come to sharp points, but on the other side, how far is the inner circle away from the outer circle?”
“Oh, a little thicker than the doughnut,” she replied.
I drew the second circle to form a crescent and erased the section where they were tangent. I now had three concentric circles and a crescent resting over them.
“And there’s two more crescents, or pincers? Are they all the same size?”
“Yes, same size,” she said. “One points towards the lower right corner and the other points towards the lower left corner.”
“Do they look evenly spaced,” I asked. “Think in degrees.”
That brought silence.
“The first crescent is at 12 o’clock – are the second and third at 4 and 8?” I continued.
“Oh, yes, I see what you mean. Yes, they are.”
I drew two more pairs of circles and erased the edges to form crescents. The image began to look familiar, but mine was now a mess of lines.
“Is some of this filled in?” I asked. “Is it multiple colours or just one colour?”
“It’s black,” she replied, “And the doughnut and crescents are black, but the doughnut has bits missing.”
“Wait, what?”
“The doughnut has the places next to where it goes through the crescents missing.”
“The ring, or doughnut, is black, yes?”
“Yes.”
I coloured in the ring.
“Okay, so where the doughnut meets the crescents, the borders are missing?”
“Yes, so the doughnut isn’t really a doughnut,” she tried to explain. “It’s really three pieces inside the crescents. I just said it was a doughnut so you could draw it.”
“One minute left,” Massey said calmly.
“Shit, we’re running out of time,” Skylar said, sounding panicked.
“It’s okay, stay focused,” I urged, not that I felt calm either. “Are the crescents coloured in too?”
“Yes, yes, but not the middle, not the original little circle and some other bits.”
Faen, this was the first I was hearing about other bits. We really were running out of time.
“Let’s start with the doughnuts. How thick is the gap between the doughnut and the crescents where they meet?”
“Like a third the thickness of the doughnut,” she said.
I erased a small path through the ring, leaving three segments, as she’d mentioned. I had to guess that was right.
“If I colour in the crescents, I need to leave the original circle open, right?”
“Yes. But did you do the gaps?” she said, her voice rising, “There has to be gaps between the doughnut and the crescents.”
“I’ve done that, I’m colouring in the crescents now, all except the centre circle.”
“Okay, so the doughnut bits and the crescents are black now, you’ve coloured them in?” she asked me.
I finished colouring and looked at the image. It was now familiar.
“I know what this is!” I whooped.
“You do?” Skylar asked.
“Yeah…” I stopped myself before I said what the icon represented and gave Massey an excuse to forfeit us.
Then I remembered we weren’t finished.
“Times up,” Massey announced, and something in his voice told me we’d failed.
“I think we did it,” Skylar shouted. “I think we got it. Can I see what she drew now?”
I looked at my shaky drawing and tried to picture what we’d missed from the logo commonly displayed as a warning of toxic substances. I wasn’t familiar enough to remember what I’d screwed up, but something didn’t look right.
“Hey, why are you tying me down again? Let me see her drawing!” Skylar yelled, and I could hear her voice through the wall and the speakers.
“Did we get it right or not, you fucker?” she screamed.
Everything went quie
t, and I hoped he was showing her on a monitor. I spun around and wondered which camera was on the whiteboard.
“Fuck,” Skylar groaned, “those stupid little bits.”
“Hey, let me see. We had to get it pretty close,” I shouted and banged on the wall. “Close enough! I know you don’t want to do this, drittsekk, let’s move on to the last challenge.”
“No, no, you motherfucker, let go of me!”
Skylar’s words echoed around the little building, and the scream she let out next pierced my ears. I felt every ounce of pain in her voice.
25
He’s Not a Violent Man
Whittaker turned away from the screen as the garden shears sliced through the pinkie finger on Skylar’s left hand. She screamed in agony. The detective glanced up to see Massey visibly shaking. The kidnapper dropped the bloodied shears with a clatter to the floor.
“Just remember,” he said into the camera, his voice cracking. “I take full responsibility for the awful thing I’ve just done. But all this is happening because of those people who haven’t taken responsibility for what they’ve done. Greedy, evil, deceitful people are getting away with their violence and lies because those in power to stop them are just as corrupt.”
Massey took a look at the young woman sobbing in the chair beside him and quickly turned away. He reached for something in his pocket.
“We’ll be back shortly to conclude today’s broadcast. Meanwhile, here’s a reminder of why we’re here.”
The feed switched to a replay of the video he’d shown before the third challenge. The Florida Governor launched into his speech and one of the IT techs turned the volume down.
The dock area had fallen eerily quiet. The background buzz from reporters and news teams constantly talking, broadcasting and lobbing questions from behind the police barriers had subsided to whispered comments.
“That was awful,” AJ commented, standing by Casey at the edge of the tent.
Deadly Sommer: Nora Sommer Caribbean Suspense - Book One Page 14
