Wrecker

by Dave Conifer

  It took five minutes on the internet to determine that the house was in Chesilhurst Township and ten more to learn that Chesilhurst was served by the Hammonton Police Department. It didn’t feel like an emergency so Jane dialed the regular number after taking the phone outside where Allie couldn’t hear. She had expected to be connected with a busy detective gulping coffee at his desk, just like on television, but when she finally reached somebody who wanted details it sounded more like a secretary. Jane explained what had happened as briefly as possible, which took much longer than she expected.

  “All right, Mrs. Havelock. I’ll file a report on this. I just need some details about yourself. And I’ll need some contact information.”

  ~~~

  Jane was still out back when the phone rang a few minutes later. “Mrs. Havelock?” a voice asked when she answered.

  “Yes it is,” she replied.

  “This is Sergeant Duane Rockingham from the Hammonton Police Department. I understand that you filed a complaint just a few minutes ago about Richard Creedmoor.”

  “Well, not exactly a complaint,” Jane replied. “I just thought I should tell somebody about what I saw.” She repeated the entire story, this time telling it quicker.

  “621 Falling Run Road?” he asked. “That’s out in Chesilhurst.”

  “Yes.”

  “And how do you know Mr. Creedmoor?” asked Rockingham.

  “Well, I don’t, actually. You see, I followed my friend there and I looked it up later,” Jane said. “It was this same friend that was there today. But I didn’t see anybody else there. I know this sounds crazy.”

  “What’s your friend’s name, Mrs. Havelock?”

  “I suppose you need that too,” Jane answered after hesitating. “You see, he’s not really my friend. He did some work around the house for us. I thought—“

  “His name, please,” interrupted the sergeant. “All I need is his name.”

  “It’s Rob Manteo,” Jane said. “I guess it might be Robert.”

  “And you’re concerned that Robert Manteo is in the house but none of the Creedmoors are there?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you don’t know the Creedmoors?”

  “No,” Jane conceded. “I know it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I guess I jumped to conclusions.”

  “I don’t understand why you called us but since you did, I’ll send a car out there to have a look around. I know where it is. If I have any questions for you I’ll get back to you.” The line clicked dead before she could answer.

  ~~~

  Jane’s cell phone rang two hours later when she was on her way home with Allie. She glanced at the screen, saw it was the Hammonton Police and punched the button to answer. “My men didn’t find anything out of order at the house,” Sergeant Rockingham told her without bothering to say hello. “Mr. Creedmoor answered the door and told them everything was fine. There was no trace of this Manteo fellow.”

  “Creedmoor was there?” Jane asked.

  “Yes he was,” the Sergeant told her. “His name is underlined in the report, which means he showed ID. I can’t account for your story but it sounds like everything is okay out there.”

  Jane didn’t know what to say. Based on everything she’d seen everything was definitely not okay in that house, but second-guessing the police seemed like a bad idea. Instead, she thanked him for calling back. He promised they’d keep an eye on the house and that he would get in touch with her if anything strange turned up. “You can count on it, as a matter of fact.”

  Chapter 13

  There wasn’t much conversation that evening after Jane and Allie returned after eating at the Shoreway Diner on route 9. Steve hovered around, always looking like he had something important to say, but he never did say anything. Surprisingly, that came as a relief to Jane. She wasn’t ready for any kind of reconciliation and she certainly had no use for the insincere expression of sorrow that he’d eventually deliver. Exhausted after a few fitful evenings on the couch, she went back to sleeping in the bedroom that night but it was as frosty as ever.

  ~~~

  The next morning was a rare Monday off for her. She pretended to be asleep until Steve was showered, dressed and had left for the office but she popped out of bed as soon as she heard his car pull away. It was barely after sunup but she had plenty that she wanted to do before it was time to wake Allie for pre-school. After setting up the coffee maker she retrieved her laptop and booted up at the dining room table. This Mike Albemarle person had done enough teasing and leading her on. It was time for him to start supplying some answers, and if he didn’t she’d find somebody who would.

  It didn’t take long after she sat down with her coffee before the plan went awry. The first disappointment had been that there was no answer to the message she’d sent to Albemarle the previous morning. Next, there was nothing new at all from him. Finally, and the most damning, was his complete disappearance from Facebook. She searched every way she could think of but he had vanished. He never existed as far as Facebook was concerned. All she had left were the cryptic messages he’d sent. Most importantly, the pictures were gone. It almost felt like she’d imagined the whole thing.

  But she hadn’t. It had been real and she wasn’t going to let it go. Albemarle had left enough clues that she was sure there had to be a way to find out for sure what had happened. But how? She glanced at the clock. A lot of time had passed while she’d searched. There was still almost an entire pot of coffee left but it was time to wake up Allie. It would have to wait. Just as well, she knew. She didn’t even know where to start.

  ~~~

  Steve had been at his desk for no more than a minute that morning when the phone rang. “Mr. Havelock?” a deep voice said without any explanation as to whose it was. “Please report to Mr. Ramos’s office.”

  “Excuse me? Who is this?” Steve demanded.

  “Mr. Ramos is waiting,” the voice told him before hanging up.

  “What the hell?” Steve said aloud as he stared at the receiver, which now dangled from his thumb and forefinger. “This doesn’t sound good.”

  When he walked out of the office he saw a beefy security guard standing a few feet away from his door. “How’s it going?” Steve asked. It sounded more like a greeting than a question. The guard nodded at him without a word.

  He considered stopping to grab a cup of coffee on the way until he saw another security guard watching from between two columns of filing cabinets near the kitchen. He could go without coffee, he decided. Another guard was posted near Ramos’s office, this one turned in another direction but obviously aware of who was approaching. Steve ignored him and slipped through the door, where Ramos was waiting behind his desk.

  “Are you firing me?” he asked immediately. “Look, I’ve seen enough layoffs and firings that I know what’s going on. I know why there are rent-a-cops all over the place. Is my office sealed yet?”

  “Have a seat,” Ramos ordered, nodding at something or somebody outside the door as he spoke. Steve sat.

  “Is this about the problem with Napagliptin? I already took my lumps for that.”

  “No, it’s not about that,” Ramos answered. “I was willing to forget about that.”

  “Then what?”

  Ramos sighed. “We saw your handiwork on the UNIX, Steve. We know what you did. You didn’t even try to cover your tracks. Did you want to get caught? Are you getting fired on purpose?”

  Steve stared, perplexed. “What handiwork? I have no idea what you’re talking about! Is this something new?”

  “Be aware that I’m recording this meeting so there are no misunderstandings,” Ramos said, gesturing at the computer microphone that was velcroed to the top of his monitor. “You understand that, right?”

  “What’s going on here?” Steve demanded.

  “So I’m going to lay it all out right here, right on the record. Nice and slow, for posterity.”

  “Please do.”

  “Y
esterday afternoon Cindy received a call from the statistician on the Maxor team. She did some work for them a few months ago and it’s time for the three month safety update. So of course she needed to get into her programs, write a few new ones, you know the drill.”

  “Sure. But what’s that got to do with me?” Steve asked. “I never worked on Maxor.”

  Ramos tore the velcroed microphone with a loud rip from where it rested and pulled on the cord until there was enough slack to place it on the table, closer to Steve. “No, you never had anything do to with it. Not that it matters.” He picked up a green folder and flipped through some papers. “She found that at least eleven of her programs were tampered with. And ‘tampered’ is an understatement. They were wrecked.”

  “And you’re accusing me? I don’t even know where to find the Maxor stuff.”

  Ramos pulled a computer printout from the folder after another nod at the doorway. He scanned the page for a moment before flipping it across the desk at Steve. “Here’s a copy of one of the programs. In most cases the original contents of the files are deleted and there’s nothing there except your comment. Does the phrase ‘Do not fuck with me you stinking bitch’ ring any bells?” He pulled out another. “How about ‘Watch your back’?” Again he threw the page in Steve’s direction. “Here’s my favorite. ‘Hey! You! Get off of my job!’ Do I need to go on? I wasn’t planning on reading all eleven of these into the record.”

  Steve picked up one of the pages and glanced at it. “You think I did this?”

  “Are you saying you didn’t?” Ramos answered, glancing at the microphone.

  “Of course not! Why would I do it?”

  “Are you kidding? Why wouldn’t you? She just beat you out for a job that you had no business losing out on. Somebody who worked for you. And she did it by fixing your programs and pulling your chestnuts out of the fire. I know you weren’t happy about that.”

  “She sure fixed them fast,” Steve said sarcastically. “I guess it was a coincidence that she knew where to look. But she gets the benefit of the doubt, unlike me. I had nothing to do with this!”

  “You weren’t even careful about it,” Ramos said as he flipped through the file again. “You could at least have asked your buddy in IT how to hide what you did. By the way, he’s out the door today. You cost him his job, too.” He found what he was looking for, pulled two sheets out and placed them on the desk. Steve reached for them without a word.

  One of the guards knocked on the open door before walking in with Steve’s red backpack dangling from a hand. “We thought he could take this. It was never opened since he got here.”

  “Thanks,” Ramos told him. “Just put it in the corner.” The guard looked Steve up and down before leaning the pack against the wall and walking back out.

  “Check those out. Those are two directory listings,” Ramos said after the security guard left. He was speaking more to the microphone than to Steve. “One from two o’clock Friday afternoon and the other from four o’clock. Two hours later. Just your luck. They were doing an emergency backup when you did this. We’d have found you out anyway but that made it a lot easier.”

  “If you’re claiming that I damaged these files Friday afternoon, I’m pretty sure I had meetings. I can prove I was nowhere near a computer.”

  “Not between two and four you didn’t. We checked. Your calendar was wide open. Now, take a look at the column in those directories labeled ‘last edited by.’ What do you see in the earlier ones and what do you see in the later ones?”

  “I didn’t do it,” Steve said without bothering to look at the printouts. “Somebody faked it. Probably Cindy. She’s been scheming against me all along. I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Just for the record, Steve. That’s your login ID in that column, is it not?”

  “Looks like it. But I didn’t do it. Somebody faked it.”

  “Nobody except the system guys could have done this without your password. Why would they do it?”

  “Why would I do it?”

  “Does anybody else around here know your password? If somebody does I’ll do you the courtesy of checking them out.”

  Steve looked down at his lap with a scowl. “No. Nobody.”

  “Not even your IT gofer?”

  “No. I doubt he would’ve needed it anyway. At least he said he didn’t.”

  “True,” Ramos agreed. “So, again, for the record, all eleven files had the same kind of one sentence message in them. All eleven last edited by you Friday afternoon.”

  “Javier,” Steve said, “I didn’t do it. I’m not stupid. Even if I wanted to I know I’d get caught. Can’t you see that? Maybe you think I’m an asshole but do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Well, this is your chance to convince me. Do you have an explanation for all this? How did your name get on every damaged file?”

  “How the hell should I know how it happened?” Steve answered. “Why should I have to explain it? Why don’t you ask the morons in IT who let it happen under their noses? I’m sure it can be faked. All I know is I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “The facts say different,” Ramos said calmly.

  “You’re making a big mistake. I didn’t do this,” Steve insisted.

  Ramos scooped up the pages and jammed them back into the folder, which he slid back into his desk. After slamming the drawer closed he looked Steve directly in the eye. “You have an appointment in HR.” With that he nodded toward the door. Two guards entered the room to be Steve’s escort. “Don’t forget your backpack,” one of the guards said as Steve walked out the door behind the other.

  ~~~

  “Is Daddy home?” Allie asked that afternoon as they pulled into the driveway behind Steve’s car.

  “I guess he is,” Jane answered. “I wonder what’s going on.”

  “Maybe Uncle Rob is here, too.” Allie said hopefully.

  “I don’t think so. I don’t see his truck. Come on. Let’s go see why Daddy’s home.”

  Steve was standing in front of the house when Jane closed the rear door of the car after freeing Allie from her seat. There had to be a good reason if Steve had left work early, which he obviously had. She wondered if it could possibly have something to do with Manteo or the Creedmoors. She hoped not. The last thing she wanted to do was explain everything she knew about it, and how she had come to know it.

  Allie bounced up the steps to her father but her grin was short-lived. “Go ahead inside, Allie,” Steve told her when she reached the top step. By the time she’d worked the door open and gone inside Jane was there.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. The sound of her own monotone voice reminded her that she was still livid at her husband for so many different reasons.

  “I got fired this morning. I got fucking fired! Escorted out of the building and everything. I felt like a criminal.”

  “Oh, boy.” She took a deep breath and blew it right back out as she thought it over. “Not suspended? Just plain fired? I thought it was all smoothed over.”

  “That bitch is at it again. She fucking did it to me again. Supposedly a bunch of her programs got trashed and they accused me. She did it herself and found a way to put my name on the files. I just know it. And all those dopes fall for it every time! I’m so mad I could kill her right now. I’m not kidding.”

  “What are we going to do?” Jane asked. She saw Allie’s face peering through a window at them. She was ready for lunch, Jane knew. “I guess you better start looking for a new job. We can’t live on my salary for very long.”

  He glared at her. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say? What about me? I’ve been through hell and back and it happened again today! Don’t you even give a shit anymore?”

  “I have to go feed Allie,” she told him, hoping he’d get out of the way. He didn’t.

  “What’s going on, Jane? I know I’m not perfect but I don’t deserve this. You’ve been dogging me for weeks now. Can’t you even pretend you feel bad
for me?”

  “I’m just tired, I guess,” Jane answered. “You’re either going to have to let me by or go make her some lunch yourself.”

  ~~~

  Jane and Allie settled into their weekday afternoon routines, but of course Steve didn’t have one. He seemed to know to keep his distance from Jane but didn’t know where to go. He spent an hour hauling in cardboard crates of his personal office items, the ones that the security guards had packed for him. After they were stacked neatly in the foyer on the ceramic tile that Manteo had laid, he sat on one and leaned back into the wall.

  “They didn’t give me all my files,” Steve said when Jane was passing through. “Not all of them. I understand they can’t give me the work stuff but I had a lot of personal shit in there. I wonder if I can still get them?”

  “I guess we don’t know how any of this works,” Jane said. “You could always ask.”

  “But I’m sure they’ll look anything over before they pass it to me. They sure as hell won’t give me the file I want.”

  “What’s in it?”

  He licked his lips and scratched the back of his neck. “Remember that Narvatek mess a few years ago? The time when we sent a lot of bad tables and listings down to the FDA with the report? We ended up blaming it on the software vendor. They got into a shitload of trouble. Better them than me.”

  “Yeah, I remember. It was a pretty big deal. It lasted for months.”

  “It sure did. A lot of it was my fault. I admit it. But I think Cindy’s on the hook for some of the errors, too. I took the brunt of the shit because she worked for me and it was my responsibility.”

  “All this is in your file?”

  “Pretty much,” Steve answered. “I knew this was big. As soon as it started I thought I might have to protect myself so I kept a lot of emails, notes from phone calls, QC paperwork with signatures. Everything that had anything to do with the project. It was about six inches thick. I never told anybody about it. You know me. I always want to keep a paper trail of everything.”

  “And you thought you might be able to use some of it against Cindy?”