I nodded. “Actually it did. She was never the plant owner type. For that matter, Yolanda really never expressed herself much at all.”
“Tell me about it,” Tony agreed. “I had to fight, just to get her to open up about her feelings. I still don’t know much about her life before we met.”
I looked at him, shaking my head. “You’re preaching to the choir.”
We maneuvered around a couple of corners before stopping at Yolanda’s cubicle. “Here we are.”
Tony looked inside, scanning every inch of it. “It’s not much.” His eyes stopped at a pile of paperwork. “I see she’s as cluttered at work as she is at home.”
“Yet, she’s strangely efficient at what she does. Her work is either done before or on schedule. I think that’s the only reason my office manager never got on her about the mess.”
Tony stared at the half full plastic trash can. “Did the janitorial staff have the day off or what?”
“Yolanda didn’t want them in her cubicle. She was afraid they couldn’t distinguish between her garbage and her clutter. Whenever she wanted them to take out the trash, she would place the can outside her cubicle. When she stormed out of here yesterday, I guess she didn’t even bother with it.”
Tony looked satisfied with the answer and then stared at me, asking, “So where do we start?”
I pointed at one end of the cubicle nearest the computer. “I’ll poke around this pile.” I said, and then indicated another. “You take that one. Good hunting.”
Tony sat in the chair used for clients and didn’t hesitate going through the mound of paperwork. Not having a clue of what might be constituted as evidence of her disappearance, we knew we were looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack. We searched for nearly twenty minutes, sorting through everything on the desk, in the drawers and cabinets, before taking a break.
“Have you seen anything out of the ordinary?” he asked.
“No,” I said frustration in my voice. “You?”
Tony let out an exhausted breath. “Nothing.”
“Maybe there’s something on her computer,” I suggested, spinning around and switching on the monitor. The computer was already powered. On the screen the user login waited for a password. I stared at the image as if I were reading Latin. “Crap. I wasn’t thinking. I don’t have her password.” I had my fingers hovering over the keyboard about to type anyway.
“No, don’t,” Tony yelled, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Most IT departments only give you three tries before a user is completely locked out.” Tony automatically jumped into tech geek mode. He worked in an Information Technology department. “Let me try.”
I scooted my chair to the side giving him plenty of room to roll his beside me. My gaze went from the screen to his face. “So what are you going to do? Use some kind of software to hack the computer.”
“No,” he said, studying the display. “You and I are going to work together to figure out her password. Remember, we have three tries. And this is all dependent on how fast the university’s IT team is. Yolanda’s access might already been deactivated.”
She wasn’t exactly the technical type, so we knew she wouldn’t use anything that was too complicated. At the same time, she wouldn’t use anything that was easy to break. We discussed possible words and number combination that Yolanda would use, listing the top five. Odds were definitely against us, but we had to at least try. Tony typed in the first code. Nothing. He typed in the second. Nothing. He wiped sweat from his head. “We’re down to the wire,” he said.
We look at the three remaining choices, unable to decide which to enter. All three were related to the few sentimental things she shared with us. Like Tony said earlier, she kept her feelings bottled up. I couldn’t imagine she would use something she felt sentimental about as her password. Then it struck me that Yolanda had a sick sense of humor. I put myself in her place, recalling times we shared a laugh. Only one instance stuck out in my mind.
Tony was about to type the next password, but I said, “Stop.”
He looked at me curiously. “What is it?”
“Try, ménage à trios,” I said, remembering the night a smooth operator tried to pick Yolanda and me up simultaneously at a club the night we met Tony.
Tony winced. “Excuse me?”
“I’ll explain later.”
He typed it and hit enter. The login screen faded. We accessed her computer. Tony scratched his temple. “I can’t believe that worked,” he said, and then stared at me. “Maybe I don’t want to know why Yolanda had that as her password.”
We went through her files and emails with a fine toothcomb. After an hour of searching we decided that nothing relevant was there. “What a waste of time,” Tony said, his head slumped. Frustrated, he picked up the keyboard as if to throw it.
“What’s that?” I asked pointing at a slip of paper hanging limply from the bottom.
Flipping the keyboard over, he scanned it then pulled the sheet free. “Looks like a prescription of some type. But I can’t make out the writing.” The paper had been underneath the keyboard for so long, much of the lettering had faded. The only thing visible was a name: Milroy. He glanced at me. “I’ve never seen her take so much as an aspirin. Have you?”
“No. She didn’t even like taking vitamins,” I said, shaking my head.
Tony balled up the paper and threw it into the half empty trash can. “Big waste of time,” he repeated. Then we looked at each other. We checked everything in the cubical, except the trash. He said, “I guess it’s worth a shot.”
I picked up the can and we began rummaging through. Sitting on the top of the pile was a manila envelope. There was nothing inside. Flipping the envelope over, written on the face: Lightning Strike Courier Service.
“Didn’t you say you saw someone leaving Yolanda’s cubicle, when she suddenly started yelling at you?”
I nodded, recalling a woman walking away. She was wearing a one piece number, like a jump suit, a uniform of some kind. “It could have been a delivery person. The university doesn’t get many female couriers.”
Tony snatched the trash can from my hand and dug deeper. He came out with a handful of photos. He brought them so close to his face I couldn’t see what they were shots of. Tony scanned each with numbed horror. “Oh my God,” he said.
“What?”
His hands dropped to his lap. “God, no.”
The pictures were face up. They were of Tony and me from various camera angles. We were naked and making passionate love.
The Bald Man
“You blew it,” the voice yelled in his ear, his irritation palpable.
“How many times are you going to remind me?” the bald man retorted.
Earlier, while he was sleeping, the target had somehow slipped in and out of pretty Pamela Reeb’s apartment without detection. If he hadn’t overheard the two talking about the break-in, he wouldn’t have known anything about it. The bald man had been getting berated ever since, being reminded ceaselessly of his failure.
“The entire operation could be over, if not for your blunder.”
“I told you, it won’t happen again,” the bald man said for the umpteenth time. He wouldn’t say it again. “Now get off the air so I can concentrate on Reeb and Holman.”
With a heavy sign the voice in his ear warned, “One more failure and I will bring in another team. Your contract will be terminated.” He snapped off.
The bald man knew what termination meant, his death at the hands of another assassin like himself to his target. Switching his mind to his mission, he looked up at the HR building where the duo had been searching for clues of their friend’s whereabouts. He had followed them first to a coffee shop and then to the university. They’d been inside for nearly two hours. The bald man wondered if maybe the duo became aware of him and left through another exit. He quickly let the notion pass. Reeb and Holman weren’t professionals. They wouldn’t have been able to detect him.
Still, he was getting impatient. What if the target had snuck inside the university and was with the pair? From his vantage point, it was impossible to see a thing. He needed to observe things first hand. Lowering his gaze, he looked at the front entrance. Through the glass doors, he spotted a single guard sitting in the lobby, looking bored. There were also security cameras throughout the building, but he could easily avoid those.
Making his decision, he made sure a round was chambered in his pistol. Storing the weapon beneath his suit jacket, he got out of the car and proceeded to the front doorway. As he expected, once the guard saw him, he got out of his chair to greet him. The bald man smiled, reached into his jacket, pulled out the pistol and fired through the glass two times.
Small holes appeared in the glass and then through the guard’s chest.
The bald man pushed the glass doors open, stepped over the dead body as if it wasn’t there and headed directly to the stairway.
Pretty Pamela Reeb was only three floors up.
The bald man hummed, Pop Goes the Weasel as he scaled the steps.
Anthony
“What the devil is going on, Pam? This never happened between us.”
“I’m aware of that,” Pam answered, sounding stunned.
I stared at the pictures again and again, unable to comprehend any of it. Who would go through all the trouble to doctor pictures of Pam and me sleeping together and then have them delivered to Yolanda? At least it explained a lot, like why Yolanda slapped me and called Pam a slut.
“The police found pictures. Maybe they’re as fake as these,” Pam said, thinking the same as me. “Someone is setting you up for a major fall.”
“But I don’t have any enemies. Why would someone do this?”
“Maybe you’re not the prime target,” she said almost to herself.
“Yolanda never mentioned enemies to me. You?”
She shook her head. “No, but that doesn’t mean anything.” Looking directly into my eyes, she asked, “What do we really know about Yolanda, really? I mean beyond the two years we’ve known her.”
I saw where she was going. “You’re right. All that I know is that she has a brother somewhere. I found his picture stuffed between pages of a book.” Then more slowly, “Like she was trying to hide it.”
Pam touched my arm. “Maybe the way to find out who’s after Yolanda is by figuring out who she was before we met her.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“We start at where she used to work. If anyone can tell us anything, surely her old employer can.”
I stood up, rubbing at the back of my neck. “I don’t have a clue where that was. She never talked about it.”
Pam gave me a reassuring smiled. “It’s on record here at the university. All I have to do is access her personnel file.” She spun around, jumped behind the keyboard and began typing.
While I waited, I decided to get something to drink. My throat was dry. “You want a pop or something from the machine. I saw one in the hallway.”
“Mountain Dew,” she said, never looking away from the screen.
I hoped I could find my way out of the dark maze. Luckily the layout wasn’t as formidable as I thought and it didn’t take me long to find the hallway. At the vending machine, I punched in the code. It dispensed the Pepsi with a loud thud. Lifting the bottle, I thought I heard a noise from down the long corridor, something like humming. Listening, all I heard was silence and decided it was just my nerves. The machine made another thud as the Mountain Dew came sliding out.
To my right, I thought I saw movement. I looked, expecting to see the security guard, but there was no one. “Hello?” I yelled. When no reply came back, I suspected paranoia was kicking into overdrive. I carried the soft drinks back to Yolanda’s cubicle.
Pam peered up at me, grinning. “I found it.”
“So where’s it located? In Timbuktu, I suppose.” It wouldn’t surprise me if she really had worked in some faraway place. After all, I was finding that I really didn’t know Yolanda at all.
Pam stood, handing me sheets of paper she’d printed while I was gone. “Actually, it’s only an hour’s drive away. The company is called, The Erikson Group.”
“Never heard of it.” Scanning the printed pages, the company described itself as a consulting service. But it didn’t say what exactly it consulted. “This is all you could find on it?”
“The internet is surprisingly vague when it comes to The Erikson Group. It’s strange, even its own website only shows a photograph of the exterior of the building. There aren’t any pictures of the interior or its staff. All I could pull up was an address and phone number.”
I scratched my head, confused. “What kind of consulting firm can do business that way if no one knows exactly what it does?”
“Only one way to find out,” she said, moving past me.
“Where are you going?”
“To The Erikson Group building. Where else?”
“Can’t you call them?”
“Tried that. All I’m getting is the runaround from the person answering the phone. Though I was told, they were open on Saturdays.” She grabbed me by the arm and began pulling me along with her.
“So we’re just going to barge our way in through the front door and expect them to tell us everything about a former employee? If they’re so secretive that they don’t supply basic information about themselves, what makes you think they’ll talk to us?”
“We can try at least. Otherwise, there’s nothing else for us to do but twiddle our thumbs.”
She made a good point. So I stopped resisting and let her lead me out into the hallway. I handed her the Mountain Dew. “Last thing you need is caffeine in your overactive system, but here it is anyway,” I said.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” she joked.
That reminded me of the prescription we’d found. I couldn’t remember what I had done with it and checked all my pockets. Pam seemed to sense what I was searching for, reached inside her purse and pulled out the prescription, showing it to me.
“I dug it out of the garbage in case it was important,” she said.
Taking a quick peek inside her bag, I also spotted the doctored photos and her gun.
“Is that really necessary?” I asked.
She snapped her purse closed. “You never know. I feel safer with it than without it.”
I wasn’t worried that she didn’t know how to use it. She’d told me her father had been taking her to firing ranges since her breasts started to show. I was more concerned that we may find ourselves in a situation where she might actually have to use it. Down the corridor, the unmistakable sound of a door creaking closed reverberated. We looked at each other. Maybe the humming sound I thought I heard earlier wasn’t my imagination after all.
“Is there someone other than the guard working this weekend?” I asked.
“I checked the schedule, yesterday. No one was on it.”
“I thought you might say that.” Suddenly I was glad she had the gun.
Pam opened her purse and stuck her hand inside, but she didn’t pull out the weapon. Just because there was a creepy creaking door in a completely empty dark floor, didn’t necessarily mean that we were in danger. But if I heard the all too familiar ch ch ch, ma ma ma, theme from Friday the 13th start playing, we would be making a break in the opposite direction.
The sound of retreating feet padded down the stairway. Pam turned to me. “Well, whoever it was is gone now.” Taking her hand out of the purse, she said, “It was probably the guard just doing his rounds.”
Taking the elevator, the doors slid open to the lobby. The front desk was empty. Maybe she was right about the guard walking his rounds. The lobby was well-lit and a lot less scary than the darkened floor upstairs. There was a huge section of the tiled floor covered in water, like the cleaning staff did a half baked job.
“Sloppy work,” I said.
Pam shook her head. “What a mess.”
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As we circled around the puddle, I took note of something being mixed in with the water, floating to the top. It was red and thick. I wondered if someone had spilled some paint and did a quick and sloppy job of cleaning it up. Pam was giving the floor the same interest, although she appeared to be more concerned about it than I was. There was also a strange coppery smell. I was about to ask if she noticed it too, when Pam grabbed my arm just under the elbow.
“That almost looks like—” Her cell phone rang, interrupting her.
We continued outside, the sun immediately assaulted us. I was thankful for the Pepsi and drank some while she listened intently to someone on the other end and then gave short, quick answers. When her bottle shattered on the ground, I almost choked on the drink. After nearly hacking up a lung to clear my throat, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
Pam looked catatonic, staring off into space. She slowly pulled the phone away from her ear, her gaze falling on mine. “That was my father. He asked me if I knew where you were. I told him no, because he didn’t want me helping you.” She paled. “There’s a warrant for your arrest.”
“What? Why?”
“The police found Yolanda’s car. It’s being pulled out of the river as we speak.”
The Bald Man
After getting close enough to overhear Reeb’s and Holman’s conversation, the bald man scarcely had time to make it down the stairway and clean up the mess he created. The bald man dragged the guard’s body behind the front desk. When the next guard came in for his shift, he’d be in for a big surprise. The hardest part was filling the mop bucket with water and cleanser before the duo came down. But he’d done it. If he hadn’t, his controller would surely have sanctioned the bald man before the day ended.
Coming out of his hiding space, he watched them standing in the parking lot. Pretty Pamela Reeb had dropped her soda and looked dumbstruck. Bad news, he supposed, wondering exactly what she had been told. Holman looked as if he had seen a ghost as she relayed information to him. The bald man had to admit, he was impressed by their ingenuity and dedication to find their friend. He never expected them to go as far as wanting to go to Yolanda’s former employer. The bald man considered if he should allow it, or simply take them out before they became a bigger problem.
Crossroads: An Anthology Page 32
