Wrecker

by Dave Conifer

  The three of them moved to the den. All the furniture was in the center of the room, hidden beneath a blue tarp. Three walls, still wet, shone with a deep, even tan. The fourth was smeared with tan slashes. “I was the prime!” Allie gushed.

  “She’s hanging out with the caveman now?” Steve asked.

  “It’s fine,” Jane told him. “I’m right there.”

  “Are you right in here with them?”

  “I’m always close by. I can hear everything that’s going on.”

  “I don’t like it. What if he goes ape shit?” he whispered after Allie had crossed to the other side of the room to examine her work. “We can’t trust him like that.”

  She tried to remember if she’d told him about what she’d seen in the truck. She was sure she hadn’t. Now that was ape shit. “If he does, Allie and I are both goners anyway. Maybe you should take time off work and stay with us if you’re so worried.”

  “Jesus. I can’t get a break even at home now,” he snarled. “What are you getting on my case for?”

  “Because you’re getting on mine. He’s not going to hurt Allie or me or anybody else, but if he is it’s not going to matter what room anybody is in. He’s fine. Why don’t you get off his case?”

  “Wow. What’s eating you? I don’t know what to say. All of a sudden you’re best friends with the caveman. When he started you didn’t even want to look at him. Now he’s a super citizen.”

  “I have to make dinner before I go to work,” she said. “There’s nothing to worry about. I know him better than you do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

  “Nothing. Let’s just drop it. I have to make dinner. You know I work tonight, right?” She walked out of the room without waiting for his reply. Allie reached the kitchen almost before Jane did.

  ~~~

  Jane hoped to steer the dinner conversation away from what had happened at Regal Pharmaceuticals but she knew that wasn’t going to work even before everybody was seated. Steve picked up right where he’d left off in the den. “I’m thinking about going in to see the IT guys first thing tomorrow morning,” he declared. “Maybe if she was tampering with my programs there’s some kind of record of it. Because that’s what I think she did. The more I think about it the more sure I am that she masterminded this. She was playing me all along.”

  “Did Allie show you what she made at school today?”

  “Yeah, some kind of marshmallow guy. Hey, did we get a new phone bill recently? I need a record of whenever she called those nights. I think I can build a little timeline of all this.” Jane stared at the maple tree outside the kitchen window, hoping he wouldn’t ask again. He didn’t, or if he did she didn’t hear it.

  ~~~

  Steve surprised her by offering to clear the table and take care of the after-dinner cleanup, probably because he was too agitated to sit and do nothing. Jane headed upstairs for a shower but brought her laptop into the bathroom so she could privately re-inspect the photograph sent via Facebook. Maybe, she was hoping, it was all a joke that would be revealed to her the next time she logged on. Or maybe after a closer look it might turn out not to be Steve in the picture at all. It’s worth a shot, she thought as she waited for the laptop to boot up and then logged on to Facebook.

  There was a new note from Mike Albemarle. That’s bad. Or maybe it’s good. Maybe it’s the punch line to the joke. She clicked opened the message and read it quickly.

  Jane,

  You didn’t answer so now I’m thinking you aren’t taking me seriously. I tell you what. Go to my page and look in my photo tab. There’s an album there just for you to look at.

  I feel sorry for you because you don’t deserve this. My only aim is to let you see what is really going on behind your back.

  Sorry to be the one to give you bad news but somebody has to do it.

  Mike

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to go look at his pictures and she had a feeling they would still be there when she was ready to see them. Instead she tapped out a quick reply after making sure the door was locked.

  Mike,

  Who are you and why do you have pictures of my husband? I’m not even sure it’s him in that picture, anyway. Do I know you? I don’t know anybody named Mike Albemarle. I won’t look at any more pictures until you explain what is going on here.

  J

  She re-read her note a few times before clicking to send it. After checking for a second time to make sure the door was locked she climbed into the shower.

  ~~~

  A reply was already waiting when she finished her shower and toweled off, just as she’d hoped. She wiped the light layer of condensation from the laptop screen with the towel before throwing it aside. This can’t be good for a computer, she thought. The response wasn’t much different than she expected.

  Jane,

  Why do you care who I am? Of course that isn’t my real name. So what? The only thing that matters is that I’m telling you the truth. Pictures don’t lie and you should know the truth. Look at all my pictures and you will know for sure that it’s him.

  Sorry, I just can’t tell you who I am.

  Mike

  So that was that. She wasn’t going to find out who Mike Albemarle was anytime soon, she now knew. Still standing naked in front of the vanity on which the laptop was perched, she gave in and clicked over to his page. When it popped up she opened up the photo album labeled with her name before she had a chance to change her mind.

  There were more pictures of Steve and the woman, of course. This time they were set inside the Trop. All the clothing matched that of the first photograph. Apparently the pictures had all been taken the same night. There was a dinner shot, taken in a dimly lit but obviously upscale restaurant complete with a bottle of wine and a candle on the table. There were a few casino pictures, most of which featured the two wearing ear to ear smiles. The most disturbing one was a wide-angle of the two seated at a bar. The banks of slot machines in the background told her that it was in the casino. They were locked in a clinch so intimate that their faces were barely visible but she knew it was them because they were so similar to the other pictures in the series. That one hurt.

  Jane folded the top down and pushed the laptop away without bothering to log off. As she applied makeup she thought about opening it back up and removing the pictures from the screen just in case somebody else happened to open it up. With a shrug that nobody would ever see she decided not to bother. Why should I? I’m not the one who has anything to hide.

  ~~~

  Steve took a long sip of coffee the next morning as he pulled up his online address book and paged through it using his mouse. He’d changed his mind about making a formal request for an investigation. That would look bad, especially if nothing turned up. He remembered the name of the intern from the IT department that he’d helped with a resume a few weeks earlier – Nick Saluda. Maybe now Nick could return the favor. Sending an email was out of the question because that would leave a trail. So would a personal visit, at least in the memories of anybody who witnessed it. This would have to start with a phone call.

  What he wanted to know wasn’t very complicated. He wanted to know who, in the last few weeks, had edited any of the programs on a short list that he would provide. These were the dozen or so programs that had caused his career to take a sudden detour by simultaneously malfunctioning at crunch time. The day before he’d tried to find out on his own, but of course it was too late. Since he hadn’t initially suspected sabotage, he hadn’t looked closely at the program files at the time all the trouble went down. By the time it had occurred to him that somebody else could have been tampering with them, the tracks had already been covered up by his own actions when he tried to fix them himself. Luckily, the IT department maintained regular backups of everything on the UNIX mainframe computer.

  His idea was solid. If he supplied the names of files and the dates of possible tampering, perhaps the savvy intern who owed him a f
avor could be talked into ignoring the SOPs that prohibited this type of snooping long enough to determine who was responsible. “He probably doesn’t even know what an SOP is,” he said aloud to the empty room. Instead of calling from his office extension he pulled out his cell phone. One solid push off the desk and he’d succeeded in launching his chair into the corner, where he punched in the numbers and made the call.

  ~~~

  When the call was complete he sat back in the chair with the phone still clutched in his hand. The chair creaked as it tilted slowly backwards, his face angling upward. A knock on the jamb of his open door broke the stillness. His head lurched in that direction as he instinctively squeezed the phone.

  “Steve? Are you okay?” Cindy asked. “You look like you just came out of a trance.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Jane just called me on my cell. What’s up?”

  She ventured further into the office. “I just wanted to make sure everything’s okay between us. I haven’t seen you in a few days.” She smiled as she watched him use his feet to roll himself back behind the desk. “You look like you’re in one of those Fred Flintstone cars.”

  “Sure, yeah, of course,” he told her, gripping the armrests tightly. “Why not?”

  “It’s just that you didn’t come to my little announcement thingy. You know, about the promotion. I thought maybe you’re upset about it. They had a cake and everything.”

  “No, I’m not upset. I’m happy for you. I had a meeting, that’s all. I couldn’t get out of it.”

  “With who? Everybody was there but you.” She walked closer and put her hands on the desk. “Look, I wouldn’t blame you for being upset. I know you were up for this job. I’m sorry it worked out this way. I just hope it won’t change anything between us.”

  “Why would it? I love my job. I just applied for it because it seemed like I should. Everybody told me to, so I did. It’s not that big a deal to me.”

  “Really?” she asked. “What a relief. I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that.”

  “Really.”

  “That is such a relief, Steve. I thought about it all night.”

  “Nope. Don’t even worry about it. All I know is I haven’t given it a second thought.”

  ~~~

  “I found a way to check if it was Cindy that trashed my programs,” Steve told Jane as they attended Allie’s latest art showcase in the living room before settling in for dinner. “Remember that kid with the crappy resume that I fixed up? He’s an intern in IT. He can look at the files and tell me who was in them. And when.”

  “I hope nobody finds out that you’re doing this. It won’t look good.”

  “Even if I’m right about what she did? Anyway, I can trust him. He’s just a regular guy. I told him never to use my work phone. We’ll do everything by cell phone and on our personal email addresses. If he--” He stopped. Manteo passed through without looking up on his way to the front door, carrying a pile of tarps and rollers after another long day of painting. Jane guessed that he would only need two more days to finish the job.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It just seems like no good can come of it. What if the intern thinks he finds proof but he’s wrong? Then everybody’s in more trouble than ever. He’s just an intern. What if he gets it wrong?”

  “But what if he’s right?”

  “Can he really know for sure?” Jane asked as Manteo came back inside and disappeared down the hall.

  “Yeah, why not? It should be easy for him to see who edited the programs besides me. Either somebody did or nobody did. It’s not that complicated.”

  “Things like this have a way of complicating themselves.”

  “They already did.”

  “Let’s say he finds the secret file, or whatever he might find, that proves she did it. What would you do? Seriously? Go tell on her? I mean, wouldn’t that look a little unprofessional?”

  “Maybe,” he conceded. “But a lot less unprofessional than what she did.”

  She shrugged and headed for the kitchen. “Whatever. I better get dinner on the table. I’ve got yoga tonight.”

  Before she was gone Manteo emerged from the hallway with two empty paint cans hanging from each hand. “I’ll be back in the mornin’ if that’s alright,” he said to Jane without looking at her husband. “That might be it. No more than two days.”

  “Okay, Rob,” she said. “See you then. Thanks.”

  Steve waited for Manteo to close the front door before following Jane into the kitchen. “Whatever? What do you mean by that?” he yelled. “Come on, help me out here! Can’t you stand by me for once? Why do you have to be so bitchy about it?”

  Jane kept walking. She hoped he’d let it drop. She knew she had been bitchy lately but she didn’t want to have to tell him why. Not yet. Not until she knew for sure. When she looked back, just before she reached the kitchen, Allie was staring at her father. Jane knew she was about to ask him what ‘bitchy’ means.

  ~~~

  I wonder what he’ll be doing while I’m at yoga, Jane couldn’t stop herself from thinking as she changed into workout clothes. There was time for quick Facebook check but what was the point? More bad news? It could wait. She walked past her laptop and back downstairs.

  Chapter 8

  Jane heard the doorbell just after she had run back upstairs for her water bottle. Knowing Steve was down there she didn’t think anything of it, but casually asked him who it was that came to the door as she was looking for her car keys.

  “The caveman forgot some little bag,” he told her. “He just walked out the door with it. He was all sweaty. I guess he was pretty worried about it.”

  “He might have been at the gym. What bag was it?” Jane asked, remembering the small canvas one with the cell phone inside. “Was it brown?”

  “Everything about that guy is brown. I didn’t really notice.” He cocked his head and stared at her. “Sounds like you’re really getting to know each other.”

  “He’s weird about that bag, that’s all. It’s never more than an arm’s length away. I’m surprised he left without it.” She found the keys and headed for the door before he had a chance to ask anymore questions, and before Allie noticed that she was leaving. “I’ll be back at my regular time.” When it looked like he was angling across the room to meet her at the door she quickened her pace. “See you later,” she told him before slipping out.

  Since Manteo had just left it shouldn’t have surprised her to see him waiting for a traffic light in his truck on Governor’s Highway, but it did. He looks so out of place, she thought. It just seems funny to see him out on the roads just like everybody else. Like a normal person. Because he really isn’t one. He was in the left turn lane about three car lengths ahead of her. She could clearly see his broad shoulders and bald dome through the back window. That’s not the way to Pleasantville, she thought. Must be running errands. She checked the dashboard clock. Plenty of time before class. When the light turned green and traffic began to move she eased the car over into the left lane.

  After making the turn Jane could see the truck ahead, with three cars between them. They were part of a stream of traffic that was moving slowly along the main strip in town which was riddled with fast food restaurants, service stations and an occasional strip mall. Apparently the trip was taking too long for the driver of the soft-top green Jeep Wrangler that was traveling behind Manteo. It suddenly lurched into the middle turn lane and sped past Manteo’s rusty truck. The brake lights flashed and the jeep fishtailed back to the right in front of Manteo, somehow avoiding his front bumper.

  Jane realized what was happening without even looking when she heard the familiar roar of Manteo’s truck as he moved into that same center lane and surged past the jeep. Before he was able to return the favor and cut the jeep off, however, the jeep peeled off to the right where an exit ramp to the Philadelphia Expressway had opened up. She hoped Manteo would let the skirmish die, but he didn’t. Instead, he cut off as many cars as he needed to
in order to veer across two lanes and follow the jeep up the ramp.

  She’d seen this before, many times from up close in the passenger seat when her husband was behind the wheel. There was too much testosterone in play now for this to die down. Each driver had issued a challenge to the other and neither showed signs of backing down. Jane wasn’t even sure whether or not either driver had actually intended to merge onto the expressway until the conflict forced them into it. This wasn’t going to turn out well. Somehow she felt compelled to follow. Before she knew it and without much thought she had reached the exit ramp and found herself rolling onto the expressway in her Toyota. There would be no yoga tonight.

  The expressway wasn’t so busy that she couldn’t see what had become of Manteo and the jeep, but they were already far enough ahead that she didn’t know what was happening. They’re probably racing, she thought. Each looking for an opening to cut the other off. She jammed a foot on the gas pedal until she was doing eighty, causing her four-cylinder economy import to groan and shake. After a minute she could make out the white truck, but traffic prevented her from getting any closer. “Come on!” she yelled at the two cars that were blocking her from advancing. Brake lights were now splattering like fireworks up ahead. What was going on up there? She watched helplessly as the action faded away in the distance.

  The driver of the silver Chevy finally moved out of Jane’s way when she could barely see Manteo. She shot past, intending to catch up. As she passed car after car she asked herself what she thought she was doing, why she’d followed them onto the expressway and why she was now driving like a mad woman. She had no answers but maintained her speed anyway. It was a question for later.

  It took three minutes of leaning on the gas pedal for Jane to make up the ground she’d lost. When she was within a couple hundred feet of Manteo, who was also in the left lane, there were no longer any cars between them. By the distance that the other drivers were keeping from the two combatants it was clear that the battle had continued. Manteo was behind the jeep but there was very little space between their vehicles. Jane gasped with every flicker of brake lights. If this didn’t stop, somebody was going to get seriously hurt. It was time to show herself. Maybe if he saw her he’d snap out of it and come to his senses, the way he had when she’d found him screaming in his truck. She pulled into the right lane and accelerated, planning to pull alongside and attract his attention.