by K. T. Tomb
“What do you want?” the man behind the door asked.
“Would it be okay if we came in?” Mark asked.
“Depends. What do you want?” the man said.
“We want to talk,” I said quickly.
“Talk about what?” the man said. “I’m busy—I don’t really have time for this.”
I could tell Mark’s brain was in overdrive. Even my hackles were up. I didn’t even know I had hackles until that moment. I shifted my position slightly so that I could see the man hiding behind the door. He was disheveled, in a white T-shirt and faded, stained blue jeans. He was wearing slippers, and he had more than a day’s worth of facial hair growth. His eyes were red-rimmed; he clearly hadn’t slept for a couple of nights. He smelled unclean. Maybe I imagined that—my subconscious playing tricks on me, filling in the blanks. He held the door slightly ajar with his left hand. I could make out a pale streak on his left ring finger where a wedding band used to be. Why doesn’t he have it on anymore?
“I think you’re gonna want to hear what we have to say,” Mark said. “It’s about your wife,” he added. Mark’s hand drifted to the pistol hidden at the small of his back. I can’t tell if it was on purpose or not, but I am comforted knowing that Mark was on edge as much as I was, if not more.
“I don’t think so,” the man said and he moved to slam the door in our faces. Mark shoved his foot between the door and the wall. The door rebounded on the man, and I slammed the door inward, catching the man square in the nose. Before he could do anything, Mark entered the house, with me close on his heels. Blood poured from the man’s nose.
“I’m cawing dee copsh righ’ nawh,” he shouted. “You cad’t ju’tht do dhat!” he exclaimed, the words came out garbled because of the blood spurting out of his nose.
“Well, we did,” I repied. I was surprised by my own voice. It came out sounding as hard and gravelly as a granite countertop, with an edge like diamond. Mark closed the door behind him and locked it.
“If you call the cops,” he added “you’re going to have a lot of other questions to answer anyway, so I don’t think you want to do that just yet.”
“Whad do you wadnt wid me?” he asked. His voice contained an edge of panic.
“Like he said earlier,” I responded, my voice still like cold stone, “we want to talk. To you. About your wife.”
“Okay,okay, fine.” He walked deeper into the house. I knew, instinctively, that we were in the right place. There was a ladies’ jacket hanging on the banister at the bottom of the stairs. Heels littered the front entryway. I spotted the purse almost at the same time Mark did. We looked at each other and locked eyes. I knew from that look that he knew we were in the right place as well. Now all we had to do was get this guy to admit what he did and why he did it and we would be home free. I was already thinking about how I would make it up to my date from the other night. I surprised myself, looking forward to a romp with her in the bedroom. The ones that have kept themselves from having fun were always a great roll in the bedroom.
The man walked us back to the kitchen. Our suspicions were further confirmed by the stack of dirty dishes by the sink. There were only a few dishes, though. That told me right away that there was one person here, and that that person was not used to taking care of things around the house. The TV was muted, but Sports Center was playing. I couldn’t help myself; I checked the scores of the college games quickly and tried to read the lips of the anchor who was giving fantasy football advice at that moment. I missed most of what he said. It didn’t matter; we had found our man. It was time to turn the screws on this guy.
“Okay, so you want to talk about my wife. Fine. Talk,” the man said, flopping down into a chair at the cluttered kitchen table.
“She’s dead,” Mark said bluntly.
“Wh… what?” the man stammered. “Wh… what do you mean she’s dead? How can you know that?”
“Because,” Mark said. I worried he would blow our cover. If we told a stranger that we had found a body with a bullet hole and then found the gun that caused that bullet hole in my truck, and we had the wrong guy by some slim chance, we would end up in jail no questions asked. Who in their right mind would not call the cops at that point? I needn’t have worried though.
Mark continued.
“I am a private investigator. I work for people who have an interest in your wife. And she’s dead.” He left it at that, waiting for the man to say something.
“I don’t believe you,” the man replied flatly. “Someone would have contacted me before you. The police, an ambulance or a hospital. Someone would have contacted me.”
Even though we were in polo shirts and jeans, he leveled an accusation against us. “I bet you guys are scamming me. What do you do? Go to people’s houses, break in and tell them their spouse is dead and then what? Try to sell them something? Life insurance? Is that what this is?”
Mark was clearly taken aback by the man’s resolve. I was too, I had to admit. If this was our guy, we should have expected this. I was no expert, but his ability to change the topic and completely throw us off guard was something we should have anticipated.
As it was, Mark recovered quickly.
“Don’t play games with us right now,” Mark said. “Neither my partner here, nor myself, are in the mood for any games. Play it straight and we’ll do our best to make sure that the consequences you face are slightly reduced.”
“Ha! Ha ha!” The man laughed in Mark’s face. “That’s a load of bull. Look, I didn’t do anything wrong. You guys can get the hell out of my house. Now,” he said forcibly.
“Your wife is dead,” I said, hoping my voice didn’t sound as enraged as I was. “We know for a fact that she is. If she isn’t,” I said quickly, cutting him off before he could get rolling, “then where is she now?”
“She’s at work, since it is, after all, a weekday,” he replied. “That, and she left me a week ago. I keep hoping she’ll come home, but…” He shrugged his shoulders as he trailed off.
His explanation was plausible. She very well could be at work, and she very well may have left him. It’s unfortunate, but the divorce rate in this country was somewhere north of fifty-percent. I was not buying it. I had one way to know for sure though. I got up and made a move to open the door that I thought led to the garage door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the man asked.
“Bathroom,” I said curtly.
“No,” he said. “Your time is up. You guys get outta here. Now, before I really do call the cops.”
“Fine,” Mark said. “Fine. We’ll get outta here.”
I looked at him incredulously. We had him—he was right in front of us, and Mark was going to let him go. He gave me a warning look. I read the message in his eyes: keep your mouth shut and we’ll talk in the truck.
We got up, and the man said to us, “I’d usually walk guests to the door. Since you’re not guests, show yourselves out. I’m sure you remember where the door is?”
Outside, I couldn’t even wait to get into the truck before my outburst.
“Now what?” I said. I was angry. Very, very angry. This was our guy. I knew it down to my bones that this was who we were looking for. Mark basically gave up in there. “We had him—he was right in front of us and all we had to do was push! He would have cracked!” I’m not typically so hysterical. In my line of work, you had to be able to keep cool.
“Easy,” Mark said. “Just take a deep breath alright? We’re not letting him off the hook and we’re not gonna give up that easy. We just need to regroup and put together another game plan.”
“What do you mean, another game plan?” I asked him. My heart was pounding, the blood thrumming through my veins felt like a marching band bass drum section. I had never felt so vengeful. It was not productive, and I knew that. I couldn’t think straight—all I could think of was hauling him down to the police station and beating him to a pulp until he confessed.
“I think I finally kno
w how we’re going to play this,” Mark said. “You’re going to become my ‘client’ and then we’re going to investigate this guy. We’re going to tail him, figure out why he picked us, what his end game is. That way, I have a file on him, and we can get all of this looking legit. Then when we have enough, we’ll take it to the police.”
“Okay,okay.” I started to feel better knowing Mark had a plan. I liked plans. My blood started to cool.
“Drive a couple of streets, turn down one of them and park a few houses away, facing the main road. When he leaves, we’ll go back in.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I drove off.
***
“What the hell happened to your face?” Brenda, a co-worker, asked as soon as he stepped in the door.
“It’s nothing. I’m just so worried about Carrie. I must have been too freaking tired. I got up to take a piss last night and ended up walking right into the bathroom door.”
“Oh my God!” she replied. “I guess you haven’t heard from the cops yet or whatever.”
Adam hung his head as low as he could manage and shook it slowly. A sad sigh escaped his lips. Brenda walked over to him tentatively and put an arm around his shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” she said softly, “something will turn up. Like, soon too. I’m sure of it. Like, positive, even.”
He walked away from her without another word, smiling to himself.
Oh, something is gonna turn up alright. Like, really, he thought.
His first review came in at one forty-five. It went smoothly enough. The employee was a young man named Dave. Dave was a student at the local community college and was working thirty hours a week in addition to a full course load to help pay for school. Dave did not know what he wanted to do with his life, so he was getting his core classes out of the way before finishing up at a four-year university. His numbers were average, but he did have a high customer service rating. Adam decided that Dave would receive a twenty-five cent per hour raise for that.
His second review also went smoothly, but Adam knew that he would be firing this person shortly. Greg clearly did not care one whit about his job. His shirt was wrinkled, he had not shaved, and his numbers were poor. Adam debated putting him on probation or giving him some kind of warning, but in the end, he decided that Greg was not company material and that his services were no longer needed.
Emily was his last review of the day. She knocked tentatively on the door, her knuckles making a soft rapp-a-tat before she opened the door. He always forgot how pretty she was. Clearly, she had been an athlete in high school. She kept herself in very good shape. He was sure she was popular with the boys on campus. How could she not be?
“Hi, Emily, c’mon in,” he said cheerfully. He noticed immediately that something was off.
“Okay,” she said.
“Take a seat,” he invited.
“Sure.” She sat down in the chair across the desk from him. Her eyes were wide, and they kept scanning the room, like a cornered animal looking for a way out of a trap.
“Before we get started, is there anything on your mind that you’d like to talk to me about?” he asked gently. There was a long pause before she answered.
“No, nothing I can think of,” she said demurely.
“Okay, well, I just want to take a look at a couple of things with you,” Adam told her. He pulled up her file, and they went over her hours, her numbers and her customer satisfaction rating, all of which were excellent.
“Emily, I have to say I’m impressed. It’s clear to me that you work really hard here, and that you do a very good job with our customers. I can tell I made the right choice when I promoted you to a shift manager.” He hoped the compliment would help her relax. If anything, it had a contrary effect; she started wringing her hands slowly under the desk.
“Thank you,” she softly replied.
“Just a couple more things, okay?” He knew that getting approval was a crucial part of all reviews.
“That’s fine,” she replied.
“Okay, great. It seems like when I was out yesterday, there was some weird stuff going on with a couple of clients that came in before you got here, but left after you started working. Did you notice anything strange about them?”
“Well, I know they spent some time looking around outside,” she told him. “I thought that was a bit on the odd side.”
“Yeah, it definitely is,” Adam agreed. He also knew that building agreement helped build confidence. “Do you have any idea what they were looking for? Did they ask you for help with anything specific?”
Again Emily paused for a long time before she answered. “Nothing really specific, no. I did my best to help them but…” She trailed off.
“But what?” He pressed her now.
“Well, it doesn’t seem like they were really looking to rent a car. It seemed like they were looking for like… something else?” The way she finished the sentence made it sound like a question.
“Did you bring that up with them?” Adam pressed more.
“No, I didn’t,” she replied. “I tried to stick to company policy as best I could. I even thought about calling the police because I thought maybe they were like... casing the place? Maybe they were gonna… I don’t know, like… try to steal some cars or something?”
“If you had that feeling, why didn’t you call the police? It’s always better to be on the safe side. If they had come back, and someone here had gotten hurt, wouldn’t that make you feel bad? Knowing you could have prevented it with a phone call in the first place?” Adam tried laying on the guilt. He was beginning to feel like Emily was the one who had given out his information. He hoped he was wrong. He would hate if this was the loose end that needed trimming. It would be such a waste.
“Well, yeah. I would have felt terrible. They just asked some questions about the place and then they left, so like… I figured that they weren’t going to do anything, so like… it wasn’t a big deal or whatever,” she replied, becoming increasingly uncomfortable with each question Adam asked.
“Can you help me understand what you mean when you say they asked some questions about the place?” Adam was trying to get a specific answer out of her; he wanted her to tell him what she did without him asking her straightforward.
“They just asked some questions about, like… if anyone had called in or if there had been any… loud noises or like… any incident reports. Stuff like that, ya know?” she said.
“Okay, so what did you tell them?” Adam questioned her further, his stomach sinking. It was her, he knew it. Such a waste, he thought.
“I just told them that I can’t like… talk about that kind of stuff or whatever because, like, they weren’t employees and then they took off so…”
“So you did exactly what you were supposed to do. Next time something like that happens, please go ahead and call the cops, even if I’m not here,okay?” Adam reassured her.
“Yeah, I can do that,” she said; relief at the thought of leaving was already spreading over her face.
“So with all of that, I’m still going to give you a dollar an hour raise. How does that sound?” Adam smiled as he asked her the question.
“That sounds good,” she said cautiously.
“Great. Well, that’s everything for me, so unless there’s something else, you’re free to go.”
“Okay. Thanks again,” she said cheerfully.
As soon as the door closed and he was sure there was no one else in hearing distance, Adam slammed his fists on the desktop. One fist followed in short order by the other. That lying little bitch, he screamed in his head. She sat there and lied to me. No one gets away with that. I won’t make it easy on her. Not a chance.
Adam finished up the rest of what he was working on, and when it was time for the evening shift to come on, he watched the security feed of the front desk. He would time his departure with Emily’s.
***
“We need to get into the garage,” I told him.
We were back at Adam Church’s house. The more we looked into the guy, the more it became clear that we had the man who had tried to set us up for the murder of his wife. The question that lingered now was… Why?
“Why the garage?” he asked.
“Think about it—if he works and she works and he told us she does, then they would have two cars. If there’s a car parked in the garage, that’s hers. He’s at work. So that’ll be further proof that something happened to her right?”
Mark did not bother with a reply. We worked our way around that side of the house and found a service door that had been left open.
“If it’s open, it’s open,” Mark said.
Sure enough, parked on one side of the garage is an SUV that was clearly a woman’s. We snapped photos of everything we could see about the car, especially the interior. There was another makeup bag and some women’s dresses fresh from the dry cleaners in the back seat.
“This thing is a gold mine,” I whispered. “This is seriously all the proof we need.”
Mark was not satisfied at all. He went to the entry door that would take us into the rest of the house. It was open too, surprisingly. Mark and I entered and I drew my gun, covering Mark just in case. Mark continued taking photos, paying special attention to the stuff that clearly belonged to Carrie—pairs of high heels scattered about, pink and orange running shoes, a baby blue tennis racket and even the throw pillows on the couch. We moved into the kitchen where Mark got extremely lucky photographing a stack of papers. He found a life insurance death claim form partially filled out with Carrie’s name.
“If that doesn’t seal the deal, I don’t know what will,” Mark said.
“Do we have enough?” I asked. I was starting to get jumpy. I had a feeling that something bad was going to happen. I’ve almost been busted a couple of times by cops. I would get this tension right between my shoulder blades, and then I would start to roll my head around trying to loosen it. I was starting to get that feeling now.
“I think we got plenty,” Mark said. “Let’s get back in the truck. We’ll drive down the road a ways so that we could still watch the driveway. When we see the car on the street, we’ll phone the cops. I’ll pull a few favors I’m owed over there to get a couple squad cars down here so they can make the arrest. Until they get here, though, we’ll have to get him holed up inside. When he gets here, we’re going to let him get into the house. We’ll move up slow; you cover the front and right side, I’ll cover the back and the left side. If he comes out the garage and around the front, you take him because I probably won’t be able to cover that much ground. Sound good?”
