Wrecker

by Dave Conifer

  “Shhh,” he said. “I don’t want Allie to hear.”

  “She’s dead to the world,” Jane told him, immediately regretting her choice of words.

  “Everybody dies,” Creedmoor said. “I’ll be dead of this tumor in a few weeks.”

  “You don’t have a tumor. You’re sick from all the steroids you took.”

  “She wanted me to.”

  “She did not,” Jane snapped. “No wife would want her husband to poison himself to death, even after she’s gone.”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  She fought the rope until she was able to wriggle to her side. “What was your wife like?”

  “Jess was an angel. Always there for me. Never a cross word, no matter what. There’s never been another like her. And never will be.”

  “How about your daughter? Sara was her name?”

  “She was so sweet. A lot like Allie. I was the luckiest man in the world.” He stopped to clear his throat. “And I knew it, too. I wasn’t one of those assholes who doesn’t know what he’s got until it’s gone. I wasn’t like your husband. I knew what I had.”

  “I’m so sorry for what happened,” Jane said.

  “I should have been there,” he said. His voice was huskier now. “If I’d been there it never would have happened. Jess couldn’t drive on snow. There wasn’t even supposed to be any snow.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Rob. You’ve tortured yourself for all these years but it wasn’t your fault.”

  “You know whose fault it is, don’t you? Tell me, why do you think I had to stay home to defend my company when Jess and Sara headed off to Maine? Who do you think it was that was wrecking my company? I’ll wreck him!”

  ~~~

  “There’s one thing I still don’t understand,” Eddie said after listening in silence. “I’m not getting this.”

  “Okay, but keep your speed up, man,” Steve told him. “We’re almost there.”

  “You knew they were in Atlantic City because Creedmoor told Jane,” Eddie said, glancing at Steve. “But how did you know, Sergeant? And why did you know?”

  “My partner back at headquarters picked up something on the wire,” Rockingham explained. “I didn’t want to mention this yet, but Steve’s Audi exploded in a parking garage. That’s how I knew that at least one of you was there.”

  “What? She took off in that car just a little while ago!” Steve said.

  “Relax. She wasn’t in it at the time. Nobody was. And my partner back at headquarters did some digging,” he continued. “Turns out that Creedmoor owns a condo on the strip. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that’s where he’s got them. Because as far as he’s concerned nobody knows about the place. That’s why he told Jane to meet him at the Tropicana, and why he made her tell you they were going to Maine. To throw us off the trail.”

  “What if he’s got them in the condo?” Steve asked. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’re going to have to talk about that. It could be a tricky deal, especially for an off-duty sixty-year old cop and the likes of you two. But that’s exactly where I think they are.”

  ~~~

  “Rob, did you do what they said you did?” Jane asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did you turn off the machines?”

  “That’s none of your business,” he said.

  “Yes it is. I’m going to die over this. I’d say that makes it my business. Did you do it?”

  “Yes!” he yelled. Jane tensed, hoping Allie wouldn’t wake up. She was much happier wherever she was in her head at the moment.

  “But why?”

  “Because they were already dead. They were bodies without a mind. Once they got connected to those machines they would have lived forever that way. They had machines for eating, for breathing, for going to the bathroom, you name it. That’s not living. I wasn’t going to sit by and let anybody do that to them. I didn’t care what the doctors and lawyers said. That’s not living.”

  “Why were you so sure they wouldn’t come out of it?” Jane asked. “I mean, you didn’t give them much time.” He didn’t answer. Jane thought by the uneven sound of his breathing that he was trying not to cry. “Maybe all of this didn’t have to happen,” she said softly.

  “I gave them three months. There wasn’t any hope. You didn’t see them,” Creedmoor said. “My daughter’s face was so swollen that she looked like a baked ham. I could hardly find her eyes. There wasn’t a doctor anywhere that said she was coming back. Not a one of them.”

  ~~~

  All three men looked ahead at the shining Atlantic City skyline. “We’ve got some decisions to make,” Rockingham said. “Do we go it alone or do we beg the local police for help? You already know how I feel.”

  “I say the more, the merrier,” Eddie said. “If anybody’s asking me. Let’s bring in anybody we can.”

  “Okay, but here’s what we’re looking at,” Rockingham warned. “First off, we have to convince them that we’re not a bunch of crackpots from the mainland. That could take hours. Hours we ain’t got. To them I’m just some country boy with a pretty badge. And then, if we talk them into it, we have to hope they can move quietly. But they won’t, because they won’t understand what they’re dealing with. If they go in like a herd of elephants, well, that’s not going to work. But I don’t think we could talk them into it anyway. Not soon enough. They’d have to call supervisors, and their supervisors. It would take a long time.”

  “What’s plan B?” Steve asked.

  “I’ve got a few pistols in my bag,” Rockingham told him. “You guys ever handle a gun?”

  “Wow,” Eddie remarked. “Shouldn’t you deputize us or something?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Rockingham asked.

  “I’ve been to the shooting range a few times,” Steve said.

  “Not me,” Eddie said. “All I know is what I see on TV. Point and shoot.”

  “Ever heard of a Glock?” Rockingham asked. “As in Gaston Glock?”

  “It’s a handgun, right?” Steve asked. “Automatic? I don’t know what a Gaston Glock is.”

  Rockingham smiled. “He’s the guy who invented it,” he said to Steve. “And it’s not automatic, it’s semi-automatic. That shouldn’t make a difference to you. What worries me is the beating you took. You’ve been holding your gut ever since I got here, and you took a pretty good shot to the head. Can you shoot straight? Are you up to this?”

  “Definitely. You have Glocks?” Steve asked incredulously.

  “Lots of police departments use Glocks. That’s what’s in the bag. Three of them.”

  “Well, I tell you one thing,” Steve said. “I hope I get to use it tonight.”

  “I hope you do, too,” Rockingham told him. “Sounds like we’re going it alone, then.”

  They were across the bay and on the island now. It was the middle of the night but the city was lit up and the casinos were busier than ever, Rockingham knew. Atlantic Towers turned out to be a grubby brick building jammed between two sparkling hotels. They drove around the block twice to get a feel for where they were and then parked in the potholed lot in back. “Now what?” asked Eddie.

  “Damn,” Rockingham said. “It’s bright as daytime here. But that shouldn’t matter. We’ll be fine once we’re inside. In a small condo unit we have just as good a chance as a squad of police. If he doesn’t know we’re coming in, that is.”

  “And if he hasn’t already slipped away to Maine,” Steve added glumly.

  “He’s here. You can bet on it.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Eddie said. “We sneak up, find the room and kick the door down?”

  Rockingham snorted. “Kick the door down? This isn’t some Claude Van Damme movie. By the time you broke your foot kicking at the door he’d either be gone or have a shotgun in your face. I brought a battering ram. Forty thousand pounds of force per swing. If the inside of this old barn is anything like the outside, the door should go down easy. Then we
rush in while we still have surprise on our side.”

  “Then what?” Eddie asked.

  “We have no idea what we’ll find in there,” Rockingham warned. “It might get ugly. It might already be ugly. If we can, we take this guy out. Any way we can. And that’s the plan.”

  Nobody spoke for a moment. “Do you think it’ll work?” Steve finally asked.

  “Fifty-fifty chance,” Rockingham replied. “It’s the best shot we have. I’m going in. You boys have to decide for yourselves.”

  ~~~

  “It’s got to be the sixteenth by now,” Jane said. “What are you waiting for?”

  “I’m not a murderer. Jess and Sara weren’t murdered. It has to be the same,” Creedmoor told her in a hushed voice.

  “The same as what?” Jane asked.

  “The same as how they died.”

  “Why? What’s the difference?”

  “He has to feel like I did,” he insisted. “He has to feel like maybe there was something he could have done. If I did it now, there’s no way he could have stopped it. I want him close, but not close enough. That way the hurt will be the same.”

  “My husband doesn’t love me the way you loved Jess,” Jane told him. “It still won’t be the same.”

  “I think it will.”

  “All right,” Jane said, trying to stay calm as she discussed her own death. “So it has to be a car accident. Why not just do it now, before you get caught?”

  “A car crash on some dark road that nobody even notices for hours? Jess and Sara were better than that. If you hadn’t brought in that cop it would have been simpler for everybody. I could have waited another day instead of this mess.”

  “What about Steve?” Jane asked. “You’re not going to kill him, are you? Because you want him to end up like you.”

  “He’ll wish he was dead when it’s all over. Nobody wants to live after burying their wife and little girl.”

  “That’s not an answer,” Jane countered.

  “Yes, it is. I told you everything you need to know.”

  Chapter 21

  It shocked Jane that her captor felt calm enough to sleep but it sounded like that was his intention. In a way she was envious. She’d been awake for nearly twenty-four hours and could use the sleep too, but that just wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t even try. What she really wanted were answers. Maybe she could get him talking again. It couldn’t hurt to try.

  “When did you find time to put a bomb in my husband’s car?”

  She felt the bed move as he changed positions. “I was at your house for what, six or seven weeks straight? There was plenty of time.”

  “Why did you do it? You already said you weren’t planning on killing Steve.”

  “I’m not. I had my reasons,” he said. “I had to be prepared for any situation. Look at it this way. I had to use the bomb, didn’t I? It’s a good thing it was in place. Good for me, at least. It worked out just right and it was easy. The hardest part was keeping track of everything I’d wired.”

  “Like what? What else?”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter now. For starters, there’s about twenty-thousand dollars worth of surveillance equipment in your house. Was, anyway. It probably all burned up.”

  “Thanks to you.,” she said. “What kind of surveillance equipment?”

  “Phone taps. Microphones. I listened to every phone call and read every email. I even sent some. I installed keystroke recorders on the computers. Every key you and your husband hit was emailed to me.”

  “Even on my laptop?”

  “Yes. And your husband’s. Especially your husband’s.”

  “Wait, is this how you made phone calls using my phone number?” she asked.

  “No, no, that’s different. That’s called spoofing,” he explained. “I can do it just by using a phone card from CVS. Anybody can do that.”

  There was a brief silence before Jane spoke again. “You were spying on us the whole time. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “It is. See, that’s why I was there, Jane. Not on you, so much,” he said. “It was your husband that I was interested in. Everything he took away from me I’m going to take from him. That means his career and everything that matters. It’s not so simple to pull something like this off. I had to have information, Jane. I had to know how to take his life apart.”

  Jane sat up. “What do you mean? What about his career?”

  “What do you think I mean? I mean his job. He was a shoo-in for that promotion. But he didn’t get it, did he?”

  She gasped. “How do you know about that?”

  “Come on. Aren’t you paying attention? How do I know about it? I did it. Did you think he lost his job all by himself? He had a lot of help. From me. I had access to his work email and his personal email. I had access to his computer accounts and phone mail at work. I had access to his cell phone. I read his messages. I sent messages to him. I sent messages from him. What do you think I did with those gadgets I installed? Think about everything that happened. I trashed files and programs at work. He told you all about it. You probably thought he was lying when he said he couldn’t understand what was happening, didn’t you? Well, he wasn’t lying. And he made some bad guesses. I knew he would.”

  “So Cindy had nothing to do with any of that?”

  “Of course not. She’s a nice woman. She’d never do anything like that. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “You really are a monster, you know that? And you were doing this all along?”

  “Payback. It was payback.”

  “Payback? I trusted you. I tried to be your friend. I did nothing to you.”

  “It’s not about you. It never was.”

  “It is now.” She paused. “What would Jessica think about what you’re doing?”

  “Jessica? She’s dead, Jane.”

  “I know. But what if she wasn’t? Or what if she’s somewhere watching you? What would she think?”

  “She’s dead. That’s what this is all about.”

  ~~~

  “Come over here for a second,” Rockingham said to Eddie after they parked. “You’re about to get your assignment.” They walked to the back of the van where Rockingham opened the back hatch. It took both hands for him to pull it out. Eddie bent for a closer look at the tool, a two-foot long black iron cylinder with heavy duty handles welded to the top. “That’s for breaking down doors, right?”

  “You got it,” Rockingham answered. “Works every time.”

  “I’ve seen them on—“

  “Don’t say it,” Rockingham interrupted. “I don’t want to know. Since you don’t want to handle a gun you’re going to be the one to use this. Ever knock a door down?”

  “Doesn’t look too complicated,” Eddie said as Rockingham passed the ram to him. “Whoa. It’s heavy,” he grunted after taking it by the handles.

  “It’s supposed to be. It weighs about forty pounds.” He dug out what looked like a portable spotlight and stabbed a button with a finger several times, temporarily bathing the van in flashes of light. “This too.”

  “Damn,” Eddie said. “That’s bright.”

  “That’s the point, in a way. It’s going to be lighting our way in and it’s also going to blind whoever we shine it at. You’ll break down the door, aim the light and try to stay out of the way while you’re doing it.” He smiled when he saw the worried look on Eddie’s face. “You’ll be fine,” Rockingham promised. He pulled the duffel bag out by its two looped handles. “Close that hatch, will you?” he told Steve, who’d wandered back to join them behind the van.

  Steve and Eddie followed Rockingham to the back of the building. Strangely, their surroundings got darker as they got closer. By the time they reached a grease-spattered loading dock it actually felt like it was nighttime again. “One of you hop up there and check that door. We need a quiet way inside.”

  Using both hands Steve vaulted onto the cement pad and tugged on the door, which didn’t budge. “Nope. Lock
ed.”

  “Maybe we should try this,” Eddie said, hoisting the battering ram a few inches above his waist.

  “Won’t work on this door,” Rockingham answered. “It has to be a door that opens in. And that’s not the worst problem you’d have. This is a steel door set in brick. It would take a lot more force than this ram can bring. And who knows who can see us.”

  “Why can’t we just go around front?” Steve asked. “We need to get going. Who knows what’s going on up in the condo?”

  “Here’s the thing. I don’t think we want to walk in the front door with all this equipment. There might be some kind of security guard, or a check-in desk. You can bet there are video cameras all over the place,” Rockingham said. “I have about twenty reasons. One of us will go in and try to find this door and open it up from the inside. Then we’ll all sneak in this way. I think it should be me. If anybody says anything I’ll flash my badge at them.”

  ~~~

  “How about Facebook?” Jane asked.

  “What about it?” Creedmoor asked.

  “Did you do anything on Facebook?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Jane thought about that and decided that meant that he had. Did she dare ask for details? It was important enough to her that she wanted to. He didn’t make her wait.

  “I know what you’re talking about. Yeah, I was Mike Albemarle. I made the whole thing up.”

  Jane drew in a breath. “You mean, my husband didn’t…” her voice trailed off. She couldn’t bring herself to say it with Allie in the room, even if she was asleep.

  “Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “That changes things,” Jane said quietly. “But—what about the pictures? I saw pictures.”

  “Those took about an hour in Photoshop,” Creedmoor said. “It’s the digital age, Jane. You can’t believe everything you see anymore. Come on, now.”

  “You got me with that,” was all she could think of to say.

  ~~~

  Rockingham left them on the loading dock with the guns and equipment. He walked about two blocks before coming to a break between buildings that allowed him to get to the boardwalk. It was too early for sunrise but he could see a sliver of light over the ocean’s horizon toward the east. Despite his earlier insistence he wondered if Creedmoor and his hostages – because that’s what they were now – were still in the building at all.