Burke's War: Bob Burke Action Thriller 1 (Bob Burke Action Thrillers)

by William F. Brown

  As the morning wore on, Linda still hadn’t heard from her friend and she was getting scared. If Eleanor really did go out of town, as Greenway told her, she would have called by now. When that maniac from the airplane claimed he saw Greenway strangling a woman up on the roof, a woman in a white dress, and repeated it again last night, it struck a raw nerve. Eleanor wore a white dress yesterday. Tony Scalese might have tried to hush her up, but Linda had even complimented her on it when she walked in that morning. Did that man Burke see her somewhere else earlier in the day? Did he see someone else on another roof? Or was it really Eleanor he saw up on this one? Linda tried to block that from her mind. Whether he was drunk or crazy, that thought was too horrible to contemplate.

  It was almost noon, more than twenty-four hours since she last saw Eleanor, and her friend was still missing. Linda looked into her lap and slowly opened her left hand. The sweaty, crumpled business card, which that man had thrust into her hand the night before, was still there. It read Robert Burke, President, Toler TeleCom. As the minutes slowly dragged by, he wasn’t sounding nearly as drunk or crazy as he did yesterday. Maybe he really did see the unthinkable. All that Linda knew for certain was that she must find out what happened to Eleanor. She owed it to her friend.

  Most of the employees in the building went out for lunch right at 12:00 noon, or they brown-bagged it in the break room at the far end of the first floor hall. Linda knew that would be her best chance, perhaps her only chance to get into Eleanor’s office and see what she could learn. She asked Patsy Evans, one of the new girls in accounting, to cover the reception desk for a few minutes while she distributed some reports. To make it look legitimate, she grabbed two file folders and a half-dozen copies of the business magazines that routinely came to the office, and headed for the elevator, trying to walk slowly and keep her nerves under control.

  Eleanor’s office was on the third floor with most of the other managers and department heads. Hers was in the middle and Dr. Greenway’s was at the far end. When the elevator door opened on three, she stuck her head out and looked to her left. Greenway’s door was closed. Still, the mere thought of his door suddenly opening and of the doctor stepping out and seeing her at Eleanor’s door froze Linda in her tracks. She stood halfway in and halfway out of the elevator, staring at Greenway’s door, knowing she must do something, but she could not move. In all likelihood, Eleanor’s door was locked, but she had given Linda a set of keys the week before. There was one to her office, one to her desk, and another one to her house. Linda didn’t want to take them, but Eleanor had insisted. That was the night they met for dinner after work and too much wine in one of the restaurant bars down the road from the office. Eleanor put her hand on Linda’s wrist and told her, “There’s something you need to promise me, Linda. I know you’re going to think this is crazy, but if anything ever happens to me, there’s a small envelope inside a box of Cocoa Puffs in my pantry that…”

  “Cocoa Puffs?” Linda giggled. Each of them consumed several drinks too many that night, and the image of Eleanor sitting at her breakfast table in her “jammies” leaning over a cereal bowl and reading the back of a box of kids cereal was too much. “You gotta be kidding.”

  “I know, I know. That’s why I got them, because I knew I would never eat them. Now listen to me!” Eleanor closed her hand tightly around Linda’s wrist. “There’s a note inside the box, pushed down between the bag of cereal and the box itself. If anything happens to me, anything, you must go there, get the note, and do exactly what it says.” Eleanor insisted, holding Linda’s wrist in a death grip, begging. “Will you do that for me? Please?” Linda’s giggle quickly faded when she saw the deadly serious expression on Eleanor’s face. “Promise me you’ll get that note and do exactly what it says.”

  “Okay, okay! I promise, relax,” Linda finally answered. Crazy? Eleanor was right; Linda did think she was crazy.

  “You can’t say anything to anyone about this, especially to Greenway. He’s… he’s evil.”

  At the time, Linda didn’t fully understand what Greenway had done to Eleanor, but she understood the terrified look in the other woman’s eyes. “Sure, sure I’ll get the envelope.”

  “And stay away from him. Whatever you do, don’t let him get you alone.”

  “Okay, okay. Hey, you’re hurting my wrist,” she said and Eleanor quickly let go, embarrassed. “What’s this all about?” Linda asked, but her friend refused to tell her any more. That was a week ago. Since then, everything Linda had learned made her more and more afraid.

  As she looked out into the third floor hallway, she saw it was empty and knew she couldn’t stay in the elevator any longer. With Eleanor’s office key in her hand, she stepped quickly to the door, put the key in the lock, and slipped inside. The ceiling lights were off, but the curtains were open and the sun poured in through the window. She walked to Eleanor’s desk and sat in Eleanor’s chair. Linda had been in here many times before, and she knew Eleanor was anything but a neat freak. Today, however, there wasn’t a single sheet of paper on her desktop, no sticky notes, no stacks of correspondence, nothing in her In or Out baskets, and nothing in her trashcan or on the credenza behind her desk, either. There was a small conference table in the office, with four chairs and a couch behind it, but there was nothing on any of them or the end tables, except for a few Annual Reports and business magazines.

  She stopped to collect her thoughts, slowly looking around again. The company had been stressing document security for weeks. Even so, this was not like Eleanor. Normally, her calendar and weekly planner lay open, next to her telephone. It was gone too. Eleanor used a small laptop computer and a “docking station” with a separate desktop monitor when she worked in the office. She took the laptop everywhere she went, so it was no surprise to find the dock empty, the laptop gone, and the monitor turned off. Still, there was a cold, empty feeling in here, as if someone had moved out and was never coming back.

  None of the desk drawers were locked, which was odd. Looking more closely, she saw deep gouges in the wood above the locks. Someone had used a screwdriver or a knife to force the drawers open, and didn’t care if anyone knew it. Linda opened the center drawer and took a quick look inside. It was completely empty — no paperclips, no pads of paper, no sticky notes, not even dust or lint. Nothing! There were three more drawers on the left side of the desk, and what looked like three on the right, but the drawer panels on that side were actually a door, which opened to reveal a pullout rack of hanging files. She grabbed the handle on the top drawer on the left side and pulled it open. That was where Eleanor kept makeup and personal articles. It was empty. The two drawers under it were also empty, as was the large pullout file rack on the other side. Turning around, the credenza’s drawers also appeared to have been broken into, and they were completely empty, too. Now, Linda was truly afraid, but there was nothing to learn in here. Eleanor’s office had been stripped bare.

  She knew she’d been in here too long. Someone would surely be looking for her in the lobby by now and asking questions, so she rose, tiptoed to the office door, and listened. The hallway seemed quiet, so she slipped outside. She closed Eleanor’s office door behind her, ducked into the fire stairwell at the end of the hall, and dashed down to the first floor. This situation was cascading from bad to worse, she realized, and she knew she had taken far too many risks already. She paused halfway down, dug into her purse for a pill bottle, fumbled with the cap, and picked out two Valium. Her mouth was dry, but she managed to swallow them, hoping she might actually make it through the rest of the day without falling apart.

  When she got back to her desk, Patsy handed her a note and said, “Doctor Greenway called down for you a couple of minutes ago.”

  “Doctor…?” Linda felt the blood rush from her head and she began to stammer.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I told him you were on break, so he asked if you could stop up at his office when you got back. He didn’t sound like it was a big deal.”

&n
bsp; “Doctor Greenway?”

  “Yeah,” she smiled. “He sounded okay about it, kind of friendly actually. You want me to watch the desk while you go up?”

  Linda nodded nervously, knowing there was no choice. The girl was new. Maybe she didn’t know, or hadn’t heard yet. “Look,” Linda turned and looked at her. “I’m going to run up there and see what he wants, but I’m going to tell him you and some of the other girls are waiting down here for me. So, if I’m not back in five minutes — five minutes — I want you to call up there and ask for me.”

  “Call up to Doctor Greenway’s office?” The girl asked hesitantly.

  “Yes, call up there in five minutes. Use the intercom. Say there’s a package of checks down here that I have to sign for. Only me. Promise me you’ll do that, Patsy.”

  Linda held the stack of magazines and file folders in her arms and clutched them to her chest as she turned and headed back to the elevator. She got inside and pushed the third floor button again, thinking how slow they move when you’re in a hurry, and how fast they move when you don’t want them to go at all. When the door opened on three, she turned left and walked slowly down the center of the hallway toward Greenway’s office, her eyes moving left and right as she looked into the other offices she passed. It was still lunchtime. The doors were all closed and the lights inside were off, and she realized that she and Greenway were probably the only people up on the third floor right now. The door to his office stood open about six inches. Stepping forward, she peered around the edge of his door and saw him sitting at his desk as Eleanor’s words rang in her ears, “Stay away from Greenway. Don’t let him get you alone,” but it was too late for that.

  “Ah, Linda!” he looked up at her and smiled. “Come in and close the door, my dear. There are several things I need to discuss with you.” She did what he said, closed the office door, and walked slowly forward, clutching the stack of magazines even tighter. “Oh, don’t worry; I won’t bite,” he said as he rose and stepped around the front of his desk to meet her. The closer he got, the taller he seemed, as he looked down at her and grinned. She paused, unsure what to do.

  “Here, come sit on the couch with me,” he said as she felt his cold fingers on her elbow, steering her toward the large leather couch along the sidewall. He saw the stack of magazines and files she was clutching, almost like a shield, and said, “Oh, set those on the table, my dear.” She did what he said, and sat on the end of the couch as far away from him as she could get. Unfortunately, that was no deterrent. He grinned and sat next to her, putting his arm over the rear cushion behind her and leaned in closer.

  “Linda, I need to talk to you for a few minutes about Eleanor. I know the two of you were quite close. As I told you, she is out of town on a trip, but I’ve become concerned about her over the past few weeks,” he said, looking deep into her eyes. “Eleanor is a very important member of my staff, as you are, but she seems to have become very tense, very nervous lately. I wonder if there are any changes going on in her personal life that you might be aware of? Has she said anything to you? Is there anything she’s upset or worried about?”

  “I, uh… No, nothing that I know of, Doctor Greenway.”

  “Nothing? Do you know if she has been talking to anyone outside the company? Has anybody been bothering her or upsetting her?” he asked, as his dark, hypnotic eyes bored into her. “By any chance, did Eleanor give you anything, perhaps some papers or reports she asked you to keep for her, or maybe a CD, a DVD, or a flash drive from her computer?”

  “No, no, Doctor Greenway, nothing like that.”

  “You wouldn’t be betraying a confidence if you told me, Linda,” he said as he placed his hand on her knee and leaned even closer speaking to her in that soft, calm voice, his eyes drawing her in. “I’m only trying to help her, and to help you; but I need your cooperation, your full cooperation. After all, you have that lovely little daughter of yours, Emily, is that her name?”

  “My daughter?” Linda reacted, getting flustered. Those eyes, that voice, his hand, and the Valium were all affecting her now, and she felt lightheaded. “What… What are you…?”

  “And there’s that new house you bought in Des Plaines last year, that little white Cape Cod,” he went on, slowly rubbing her knee with his long, soft fingers. “I bet that house payment takes a bite out of things. How much is it, eight hundred and fifty a month? I’m sure that’s quite a strain for young woman like you.”

  Her eyes went wide, suddenly terrified to realize how much he knew about her. She tried to push his hand away, but he leaned closer, his long fingers slipping down between her knees, rubbing the inside of her thigh, then higher, insisting, his face only inches from hers. “I can help you with that, Linda. Relax, problems like those are very easy to solve, Linda. You can have a great future here at CHC, if you only learn to cooperate with me, and relax.”

  “I… I don’t know anything, Doctor Greenway. Please!” she said as she tried to push his hand away, feeling weak, but managing to get to her feet and stumble toward the door.

  “Oh, I think you know a lot of things Linda, and you do want to help me, don’t you?” he answered as he quickly followed her. “You see, we have some files and reports missing.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, Dr. Greenway,” she said as she reached the door. Her hand found the doorknob, but he was on her before she could open it, engulfing her. He seemed like a large jungle cat, tall and powerful, as one hand closed over her mouth. There was something in it, a damp cloth. She took several deep breaths and suddenly felt very lightheaded. His other arm reached around her waist and she went limp. Almost effortlessly, he picked her up, carried her back to the couch, and bent her forward over the armrest. His left hand pressed her face into the soft leather cushion, while his right hand raised her dress over her back. He pressed his knee between her legs, separating them, ripped her panties down, and began to explore.

  “I don’t think you and I started off on the right foot, did we, Linda?” He leaned forward and spoke softly into her ear in that sleepy, dreamy voice, those long fingers rubbing ever so gently. She struggled, but her arms were limp. Her shoulders were pinned against the couch, and there was nothing she could do to stop him. She tried to scream, but her face was pressed deep into the cushion and all that came out was a muffled moan.

  “That’s better,” he whispered softly into her ear. “I saw you sneaking out of Eleanor’s office a few minutes ago,” he said as he kept rubbing, beginning to probe with his long fingers.

  “No, no, please,” she managed to whisper, feeling so tired, so limp, as if she were caught in a dream.

  “What were you doing in Eleanor’s office, Linda?” he asked as he gently raised her head far enough for her to speak.

  “Nothing, nothing!” she gasped. “I was delivering…”

  “No, no, no, we both know that’s a lie, now don’t we?” he said as he pressed her face back into the cushion and began probing harder now with his fingers. “Did Eleanor leave something in there for you? Something you could use against us, against me? Last night, I saw you talking to that fellow Burke. I don’t know what he promised you, or what you promised him — was it those papers that Eleanor took? I dislike disloyal employees, Linda. What do you think I should do when someone is disloyal to me?” he asked as his voice suddenly turned angry and he grabbed a handful of her hair, yanked on it and twisted her neck up. That snapped her wide awake so that she could see the cruel look in his eyes and realize what was happening and what he was doing to her was all too real.

  “You were Eleanor’s friend — her only friend, as far I can tell,” he continued. “I figure you were her insurance policy. Is that what she talked you into becoming, Linda? Her insurance policy?”

  “No, no, please, Dr. Greenway, I swear I haven’t.” she gasped, pleading with him.

  “Linda, if you continue to lie to me, you leave me no choice but to discipline you; and that can be very unpleasant, for you anyway. Like any g
ood employer, I always prefer to handle those tasks myself,” he said as he pressed her face back into the cushion again and used his free hand to unbuckle his belt and let his pants drop to the floor. “What did Eleanor give you?”

  He raised his shirt, looked down at her lovely, smooth skin, and smiled, feeling himself get hard. She was trembling now and he heard her sobbing into the cushion. “Eleanor took some company papers from us, maybe some reports, a data disk or a flash drive,” he said as he stroked her with his hand, getting rougher and more demanding. She was helpless and completely at his mercy now, which was the way he loved it. “So tell me what Eleanor gave you,” he asked as he leaned forward, his flesh against her flesh so she could feel him about to thrust himself into her.

  “This is your last chance, Linda. I can tell you are wide awake now. To tell you the truth, some of the girls prefer a little hypnosis or a sniff of my ‘joy juice’ the first time, like I gave you. That way, they are never quite certain what happened, who said what, and what they might have done to encourage me. I’m sure you know what I mean. Personally, however, I prefer they be wide awake, as you are now, because I want you to be absolutely certain that it was rape.”

  As he spoke, a loud, grating voice called out to him from the intercom on his desk, breaking his concentration. “Doctor Greenway, is Linda Sylvester up there? Would you please tell her there is a special FedEx shipment down here that she has to sign for.”

  “You have to let me go!” She managed to twist her head far enough to get the words out. “You have to,” she gasped. “They know I’m up here, and those are checks I have to sign for. They’re going to come up here looking for me any minute now.”

  He laughed and was about to thrust himself into her, but he suddenly stopped. Instead, he merely leaned against her, rubbing his bare skin against her as he pressed his face into the nape of her neck again. “You are a clever girl, Linda,” he breathed heavily into her ear. “But do you really think your friends down there are going to come up here and break into my office to save you? Into my office? And if they do, who do you think they’re going to believe?”