Get Geri

by Woods, Karen

  “Yes. Momma and I were sometimes too much alike. And it didn’t make life particularly easy at times.”

  “My father and I were the same way.”

  Josh’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open. “Sutherland,” he answered. “Your cousin wants to talk to you,” he said as he handed her the phone.

  “Brad?” Geri asked.

  Her cousin told her, “The body they found in your apartment was Aunt Gina. We need to circle the wagons.”

  “Yes. I think that you are right about that,” Geri agreed tightly, as she fought her growing anger. Damn Albert for this!

  “Let me talk to your husband, Gee,” Brad demanded.

  “He wants to talk to you,” Geri told Josh as she handed him the phone.

  “I’m here,” he said into the receiver.

  Geri looked out the window of the car as they rode along. Albert had taken her mother’s body, kept it somewhere— probably in some sort of cold storage due to the fact that the body wasn’t decomposed, before he had planted it in her apartment before the explosion. This was all almost too much for her to handle. She wasn’t paying any attention to Josh’s conversation with her cousin because she was lost in thought.

  Albert was finding whatever means he could find in order to hurt her. Stealing the body had been the act of a profoundly sick mind. But, then, she had always known he was intelligent and capable of plotting things out well in advance. There had to be a way of beating him. There just had to be a way.

  Josh folded up his phone. “Geri?” he asked in concern.

  “Let’s just get there, Josh.”

  “I don’t think so. We’re going home. Walking into the morgue would be walking into a trap. I won’t let you do that.”

  “It’s my mother!”

  “She’s dead, honey. It won’t do her any good for you to go there,” he said. “She won’t be helped for you to get yourself killed.”

  “Brad’s expecting me.”

  “No, honey, he’s not. He’ll meet us out at the ranch later this afternoon.”

  “I feel sick.”

  He nodded. “I can understand that. This is all a nightmare for you. I’m so sorry this is happening.”

  “We still need to go to Church to file this paper with Padre.”

  “That can wait. Call your minister and explain. You’ll need to make the arrangements with him to rebury your mother anyway, when the body’s released.”

  After returning to the ranch, Geri swam lap after lap, trying to work of the tension and anger. But, it wasn’t working. She couldn’t get rid of her anger and outrage at Albert’s actions.

  Josh stood beside the pool, holding a terry robe and a towel. He had changed into old jeans, a casual shirt and riding boots. “Feel better?”

  “Not really.”

  “Brad just called. He’s on his way out.”

  “That’s good. I’ll just go rinse the chlorine out of my hair.”

  “Geri,” Josh began, “I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll deal with this. We’ll deal with it. I’m not going to think about it, right now.”

  * * *

  But, that was an easier resolution to make than to carry out, Geri thought as she worked conditioner through her hair. The warm water cascading down her back should have helped relieve her tension. Yet, it did nothing to help lessen the threatening headache.

  Josh was sitting on their bed when she came out of the bathroom, gingerly combing her hair.

  She forced herself to smile at him, even though the last thing she felt like doing was smiling at anyone.

  “You have a headache, don’t you?”

  “There are times, husband, I think you are a mind reader.”

  “I don’t need to read your mind, wife, just the set of your shoulders and the gingerly way that you hold your head.”

  “I’ve always thought I was better than this at maintaining a calm façade.”

  “To those who don’t know you, you are. Most people never take the time to look below the placid surface to the woman beneath. But, my dear wife, I do know you.”

  “You think so?” Geri questioned as she walked over to him untying her robe belt and letting the garment fall to the floor. “Careful husband, I may do things that will shock you,” she warned.

  “I’m unshockable, wife,” he said as she climbed onto the bed astride him on her knees.

  “Are you?”

  “Geri, keep that up, and you won’t get out of this bed until morning.”

  “Maybe since this is the only place I feel safe, I ought to stay here all the time,” she offered in a whisper as she unbuttoned the waistband of his jeans.

  It was a short and turbulent time later when Josh, still mostly clothed, lay beside her. “I knew you were going to be a demanding lover,” he teased. “I just didn’t think you would be this aggressive.”

  Geri kissed the side of his face. “Do you mind?”

  “Baby, a man would have to be crazy to mind having a woman want him the way that you want me,” he told her just before the phone rang.

  Geri reached for the phone. “Erikson, er, Sutherland… I’ll be down shortly.” When she hung it up, she looked at Josh. “The sheriff and the detective from the Houston P.D. are both here. When did you say Brad was supposed to be here?”

  “Any time now. Get dressed, sweetheart.”

  “We’ve got the engineering meeting at two thirty.”

  “I rescheduled it for tomorrow morning.”

  “We’re going into the office, tomorrow?”

  “At least for the morning. We’ll see what happens after that. Now, go get dressed before I call downstairs and tell everyone to go away.”

  “Would you?” Geri asked, hope in her voice.

  “They probably wouldn’t comply. Law enforcement people are notorious about hanging around when they have business to conduct.”

  “Daddy was the same way. I remember Momma keeping many evening meals warm for him because he worked a lot of overtime on his cases.”

  “Your father was a police officer?” Josh asked.

  “He was a detective on the Memphis P.D.”

  “You were born in Memphis?”

  “And lived there until I was four years old.”

  “There’s not much southern honey in your speech.”

  “My years in Germany when Nate was stationed there took most my accent away from me.”

  “You’ll have to tell me about that sometime. But, right now, you need to get some clothes on that delectable body of yours, before I pounce on you again.”

  Geri giggled. “Funny, I thought I was the one doing the pouncing.” Lord, this man makes me happy. I can almost forget he is still in love with a dead woman. Almost. “You go on down. I’ll be down in a few minutes, when I’ve had the time to make myself presentable.”

  He headed towards the bathroom. She heard the water run in a basin as she pulled on underclothes. She looked at her closet and pulled on a pair of black slacks and a cream silk shirt, before sliding her feet into a pair knee high hose and black dress shoes. She was seated at the dressing table and pulling her still damp hair up into a loose knot at the back of her neck when Josh came out of the bathroom.

  * * *

  Brad and the two law enforcement officers were in Josh’s office.

  “Gentlemen,” Geri greeted them as she sat on the front of Josh’s desk. “What do you know?”

  Josh sat behind his desk.

  The sheriff, Ray Norbert, spoke, “The Houston P.D. and my department are working together to try to catch this person. Photos of Albert are out in patrol cars. If he shows his face around here, we’ll get him.”

  “Thank you, Sheriff. I do appreciate whatever help your department can give,” Geri said.

  “You probably know by now the body found in your apartment was your mother,” Detective Matthews said with obvious reluctance.

  “I’ve been so informed,” Geri replied, feeling nauseous at the very thought of Albert having h
ad custody of her mother’s body, however temporary. “Are there photographs of the body?” Geri asked. “I don’t want to, but I think I had better see for myself.”

  Brad handed his cousin a digital camera. “I took those in the morgue this morning, Gee.”

  Geri walked around Josh’s desk, sat down at his computer table, plugged the camera into a USP port on Josh’s computer and downloaded the pictures to a folder she called “Apartment body”. Then she began viewing them on the monitor.

  When she turned in the swivel chair to face the officers, her eyes felt way too moist. “That’s Momma. Well, he wanted to hurt me. I’d say he got that job done, although I won’t admit that outside of present company. It would give him entirely too much satisfaction.”

  Josh took her hand.

  She forced a smile for her husband and blinked back tears. Then she looked at the detective, “I guess the only question I have is what was in her coffin. There had to have been something. There was nothing said about the casket being lighter leaving the church than it was when it was brought in.”

  “The only items in the coffin that was dug up this morning were three twenty-five pound bags of sandbox sand that could have been gotten at any hardware store, a couple of plastic ice cream tubs containing more sand and a plastic zipper bag containing a typed poem,” the detective said.

  “Momma weighed only eighty pounds when she died. Cancer does terrible things to people, Detective,” Geri said. She wanted to cringe at the amount of pain she heard in her own voice.

  “Yes, m’am, it does.”

  Josh squeezed her hand.

  “What did the poem say?” she asked.

  The detective handed her a photocopy of the poem. It read: “Here lies a lie. Like her mother, she will die.

  Until then, all she can do is sit and sigh.

  Sigh and fear! The end is near

  The body gone To be found fore this is done.

  Sigh and fear! The end is near.

  All too easy To make the corpse all frosty freezy

  Sigh and fear! The end is near.

  Even her Church will leave her in the lurch

  Sigh and fear! The end is near!

  Look over your shoulder, then look once more

  Look ahead, look to the floor

  Try to keep me out, but I’m in the door.

  Sigh and fear! The end is near.

  Poetry is not what I do best So, I’ll just get on with the rest

  And put Ms. Geri to the final tests.

  Sigh and fear! The end is near.”

  Geri handed the photocopy to her husband. “Poets that bad should be taken out and shot,” she said. “It would be justifiable homicide. Any judge with a literary bent would gleefully concur.”

  The county sheriff, Ray, chuckled, then spoke, “The Houston P.D. and my department are cooperating fully on this investigation. My budget isn’t big enough to put a man on you at all times. But, we will have increased drive-bys of the ranch and Sutherland Industries headquarters. And I can give you an escort from the ranch to the office and back.”

  Geri shook her head. “I’d rather not have my comings and goings broadcast over the police bands. Chances are that he’s keeping me under surveillance, at least loose surveillance for part of the time. If he saw I was regularly escorted by police cars, it would be an easy enough thing for him to monitor the radio from somewhere nearby and spring a trap. I’d be more vulnerable, not less. So, thank you, but I respectfully refuse your kind offer. I’m going to be doing the best I can to randomize my life, without rhythm or pattern in order to be less predictable, and thus less vulnerable.”

  Ray looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Remind me never to play chess with you.”

  Geri had to smile at that. “Well, thank you, I think.”

  “What did you do to deserve her, Josh?” Ray asked.

  “Well, Ray, a good woman is a lot like salvation. A man can never deserve her, no matter how hard he tries.”

  “Careful, Josh, you’re sounding perilously like the MacIntyre,” Ray, the sheriff, teased.

  The detective cleared his throat. “There’s more,” he said.

  “What else could go wrong?” Geri replied.

  She watched the detective shrug. “Your friends— Roberta Runyon, Clare Jennings, and Thomas O’Neil…”

  Geri sighed raggedly. “I can guess. He got to them, right?”

  “It looks that way. They’re all dead,” the detective replied.

  “May their souls and the souls of all faithful departed rest in peace,” Geri prayed as she crossed herself. “Could I have a look at his current photo?”

  The detective handed Geri an eight by ten enlargement of the one shot he had been emailed earlier in the day.

  Geri took one look at the photo. Then she looked up at them in alarm. Her eyes returned to the photo. “I’d never have recognized him as Bill Albert,” she said quietly as she continued to look at the photo. “But, I’ve seen him. He’s on the computer maintenance staff at work. Goes by the name of Brooks.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Are you sure?” Josh demanded.

  “Do you think I would have said anything otherwise?” Geri challenged. “I don’t like it anymore than you do.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Ray, the sheriff, demanded.

  “Tuesday afternoon. He came into my office and swapped out my old workstation monitor for a new one,” Geri replied, her voice tight.

  Josh went to his computer. Within two minutes he had the human resources system up and had given a command to display the information about all the members of the computer maintenance department. He paged through five faces before a match came up for the photo. Will Brooks was the name associated with the photo.

  The law enforcement people stood just behind Geri and Josh. With a punch of a key, a hard copy of the screen report was coming out of the laser printer.

  “This won’t do any good, Josh. He wouldn’t have given his correct address,” Geri dismissed.

  The detective looked at the print out. “Probably not. But, procedure requires I have it checked out.” He flipped open his cellular phone and punched in a number. “Yes. This is Detective Matthews,” he began.

  Meanwhile, Josh began to read through the man’s personnel file, one screen at a time. Brooks’ age was listed as forty-two. His file said that he was retired from the US Navy.

  Geri turned to Bradford. He was already on his cell phone. “Pete, Brad Bennet. I need a favor.”

  Josh and Geri continued reading “Brooks” personnel records. His marital status was that of a widower without dependents. His supervisor’s note said that the man had asked for an indefinite compassionate leave of absence on Friday morning so that he could care for his dying brother in California.

  “Bill Albert was an only child,” Geri stated in response to that notation on the electronic file.

  “He should have never been hired. Someone slipped up in Human Services. The background check should have been done,” Josh said.

  “Maybe it was done,” Geri said. “Keep looking.”

  “It couldn’t have been done,” Josh stated. “Unless this man isn’t Albert. We run a fingerprint check for criminal records with the FBI, on everyone from executive staff all the way down to the cleaning crew, as well as security clearances for everyone in the buildings. There’s something seriously wrong here, Geri.”

  “I’m sure the Iowa conviction for killing his parents was expunged when he turned twenty one. And he was never convicted in Massachusetts,” Geri thought aloud. “So, maybe he doesn’t have a criminal record. Or maybe, he somehow switched fingerprint cards for one with innocent prints. We don’t use anything special in the way of fingerprint forms, just what the FBI requires.”

  Bradford hung up his phone and sighed. “Okay. My friend in Naval personnel says that there is a Will Brooks with that social security number who retired more than three years ago from the Navy. He spent his
twenty years as an SP. He’s faxing me a Brooks’ photo here in a few minutes.”

  “Shore Patrol?” Josh asked. “What does a cop know about computer maintenance?”

  “Hey,” Ray, the sheriff, protested, “two of my guys and their wives build and repair computers.”

  Geri looked at the next screen. “Brooks has been employed at Sutherland for three years! He hasn’t missed a day in the time he’s worked for us…until this leave. And he is an exemplary worker having gotten regular merit increases during this time. Oh Lord, this doesn’t make any sense. When did Albert walk away from the nursing home?”

  “March of this year,” the detective answered, even though he was still on the phone.

  “Stranger things than look-alikes have happened before,” Josh allowed after a long moment. “It does strain credibility, though.”

  “If Albert looks like Brooks, it’s because of the plastic surgery,” Geri replied. “We need to verify this record is true. It could have been falsified. If he’s had access to the intranet, then I won’t believe anything I see there without independent verification.” She picked up the telephone and dialed the corporate computer maintenance department.

  “This is Geri. I need to speak with Roger Quinn, please… Roger, Geri. Tell me about an employee you have in your department named Will Brooks. When was he hired, what kind of an employee is he?”

  Geri listened carefully to Roger sing Will Brooks’ praises. “Okay, Roger. Thanks.”

  She hung up the telephone and sighed. “He’s worked for us for over three years. Brooks is an exemplary employee. Never late, never out sick. Hard worker. Smart. Quiet. On leave of absence to go be with his dying brother in California.”

  Detective Matthews clicked his cell phone into standby mode a few moments later. “The address checks out. There is a Will Brooks living in that apartment. But, according to the building super, he left for California on Friday morning. The building super ID’d Brooks from the photo two uniforms showed to him. Brooks has lived there for nearly three years.”

  Geri looked at the detective. “Find out for me how Albert came about having this particular face.”