Line of Vision

by David Ellis

  I’ll sneak out of the back elevator into the main elevator. This time of night, security won’t be paying any attention; they’ll never notice me. Then I’ll go up to my office, turn on the light and my computer, and come back down after a hard night of work, signing out at around three-thirty. No, I was nowhere near the Reinardts’ house that night. You see, I was at work. I have the sign-out sheet to prove it.

  As the elevator stops, I hear the blaring of a walkie-talkie. A security guard.

  A chime, then the door slides open.

  I can go back down and out of the building. Abort.

  Footsteps on the marble.

  Sweat breaking out now, on my forehead, my neck. Panic, all of my deepest fears rising to the base of my throat, loosening my bowels, bringing a quiver to my limbs. What now? If I try to go back downstairs now, the guard will probably find me there, and what kind of song and dance do I do then? It’s better to stride through the doors with confidence, no, with indifference and maybe a hint of annoyance because I was working at home, yeah, and I left something at work and I’ve had to come all the way back and I’m so annoyed but then why am I still wearing my suit—

  Act normal.

  I step out of the elevator and turn left, toward the main elevator. A woman in a security uniform is standing by the elevators, her neck craned to look at the intruder, the walkie-talkie dangling from her hand.

  “Hello . . .?” she says uncertainly.

  I walk toward her. “Hi.” My voice is even. “I—left something upstairs.”

  “Oh—okay, no problem,” she says, and holds her look on me a little longer than normal.

  “Did I surprise you?” I ask innocently, as we walk toward the security desk side by side.

  “Oh, no.” She waves her hand. “I was a little confused, that’s all. You came in the south entrance and walked all the way around to the parking elevator.”

  “Oh, yeah.” I laugh. Fuck. “My knee’s been bothering me. I didn’t feel like taking the stairs.” Then why didn’t you take the escalator, you dumb-ass?

  But she rescues me. “Yeah. I don’t know why they turn off the escalators at night.”

  My heart is pounding through my chest now. I grab the pen for the sign-out sheet, my hand trembling. “Well, hey, what are you gonna do?” I say calmly, like an innocent person would.

  The security lady walks into her little room and watches a tiny TV set that sits next to the black-and-white monitors. It sounds like a comedy she’s watching; I can hear a guy’s animated voice and a laugh track.

  I pull the sign-out sheet along the marble top in front of me. There are three other people’s names on this page, none from my office. The last person to sign out left at 12:18. I scribble the name M. Kalish on the sheet. I move over to the next line and write McHS, for McHenry Stern, the name of my company. The next line is the time of arrival. Anyone arriving after seven P.M. has to fill in this space. Anyone who’s been working since that morning, of course, would skip it.

  “Three-fourteen,” the lady says to me with a sigh; she’s probably in midshift. My eyes drift up at her. She is about ten feet away from me.

  Here goes nothing.

  I skip to the next space on the pad, time of departure. I scribble in 3:20.

  I drop the pen and look up. She’s watching her little screen.

  “Thanks,” she says absently.

  I get into the elevator and wipe the sweat off my face. My pulse is thumping through my body.

  You came in the south entrance and walked all the way around to the parking elevator. So much for sneaking in. When the key card is activated to get into the building, security sees it. A light probably goes on or something. Of course! A real mastermind, I am. Like I’m gonna sneak into this building in the middle of the night without being seen.

  A fleeting thought passes through my mind: What else have I missed tonight? But I can’t think about that now. No no no. I have to execute this. Just a few more minutes, I can panic all I want.

  If she doesn’t pay attention to the sign-out sheet, she’ll never know that I fudged it. I hope that’s one fascinating, hilarious show she’s watching.

  I look at my watch as the elevator opens into our offices. It is 3:15. I walk through the front doors; my office is close by. I walk into the office, flip on the light, and walk over to my desk. I sit in my chair and turn on the computer. I pull up the contract I’ve been drafting for tomorrow’s meeting. I look over at my phone; the message light is blinking. No time for that. I reach for the coffee cup by the window that holds all my coins.

  I leave my office and take the internal stairs two floors up, to sixty-three. I reach the cafeteria and plunk change into the vending machine. I choose a muffin and some potato chips. Then I move to the coffee machine and buy a cappuccino.

  It’s 3:19 on my watch as I walk back into my office, food in hand. I open the bag of chips and set them on my desk. I take a handful out and stuff them into my mouth. I take the muffin out and toss it into my garbage, leaving the wrapper on the desk. I pour half of my steaming coffee into the sink at the minikitchen on this floor.

  I survey my office one last time before leaving. Opened bag of chips, muffin wrapper, half-drunk cup of coffee. The diet of a workaholic, spending half the night on a big project. My computer is on; the screen saver will come on after fifteen minutes. I’ll leave the overhead light on, too.

  Wait. One last touch.

  I walk over to the phone and punch the speed-dial button for my secretary.

  “Deb,” I say into the phone, “I’m gonna need the revisions on the Madison contract first thing in the morning. I’m done for tonight. I gotta get some sleep. Thanks.” The message will be recorded as having been made at 3:20 in the morning.

  I hustle back to the elevator and make my way down to the lobby. I very casually approach the security desk, careful to walk gingerly. My bad knee and all.

  She is still watching her show. She looks up momentarily, to watch me pick up the pen. I hold the pen over the space for time of departure.

  “G’night,” she says absently, then turns back to the TV.

  I make a writing motion with the pen, never touching the paper. Time of departure, 3:20. Time of arrival, blank.

  I walk down the dead escalator and out the building.

  I start my car, the sound of stringed instruments in short, crisp strokes blaring from the stereo. I lift my arms and conduct the music, my hands moving decisively.

  I’ve been working, I can say now if I’m pulled over. I’ve got a big deal going down tomorrow, and I had to finish my proposal. Oh, yes, I’ve been working all night at my office. Wanna see the sign-out sheet?

  4

  WHAT—WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?

  I pop up from my pillow, sucking deep breaths of air. I look at the clock by my nightstand. It’s 5:45. I’ve only been asleep for an hour. It’s freezing in here. I pull the blanket from the bed up around my shoulders.

  My head feels like it has swelled to balloon size. My nose is congested to the point that I’m breathing through my mouth. My throat is raw. I get out of bed to make some coffee, carrying the blanket over my shoulders. I sneeze, one time after another, and grab a tissue from the bathroom.

  The mirror reveals a ghoulish figure. Puffy eyes, pale face, and matted hair with a piece that stands almost straight up in the back. I look at the sports watch, resting on the sink. Last night’s events sweep back into my mind like an avalanche.

  “What—what are you going to do?” Rachel asked me.

  I wonder what she is doing right now. Is she at the police station? Is she scared? Relieved? Does she realize her life will be better now that he’s gone?

  That almost surreal sense of calm from last night is gone; absolute, pure terror has taken its place. A prominent member of the community is dead, and that community will put intense pressure on the police to find the man. I want to get back into bed. A nightmare would be better than this reality.

  I am g
oing to jail.

  All the rationalizing and wishful thinking does not change the fact that, at the outset, my fate depends on Rachel. She might crack and identify me. Or she might do a terrible job of lying, which might get her in deep with the police as well. Rachel is an open, honest person who couldn’t tell a convincing lie if she planned it out for weeks. With all the stress of last evening, the chances of her credibility are diminished all the more.

  At one point last night, I took comfort in the thought that Rachel would be so overcome from the beating, as well as the shock and grief, that the police would not expect her to give any details whatsoever. I envisioned her sitting in a chair covered with a blanket, stunned and disoriented, unable to speak intelligibly. That thought lasted about half an hour. Then I realized that, for all the police knew, Dr. Reinardt was still alive. There would be a manhunt for him. They would need to know everything they could immediately.

  I shower and dress for work. I’ll be there by 6:45, and with such an early start, I can leave early. A lot of people leave early on Friday anyway. That means I will have to spend only about five hours around other people before the weekend.

  I step out my door and see the newspaper on the porch in its blue plastic wrapping. My heart skips a beat. The first public description of what I have done is under that blue wrapping. I know that if I read it now, the reality of what happened might unleash some emotions I have bottled up. And I am never one to trust my emotions. It’s critical that I act normal today. I’ll read it when I get home.

  The routine of walking to the train comforts me. I try to think of the things that usually pop into my head during the two-block trek. Deadlines at work. Making partner. The blonde who lives on the corner, who is sometimes stretching for her morning jog as I pass.

  But I’m too early for her today. I stand almost alone on the platform, awaiting the train, just me and a guy with a crew cut and a muddy trench coat silently agreeing that it’s too cold and too early for conversation. When the train arrives I find a seat. This is the time I typically read the paper, which I have left behind. Other passengers, however, have their papers open. Most have them folded into halves or quarters, but the guy across from me has the front page open fully, so I can see the headlines and the back page. My eyes catch the large bold print. Something about the economic summit. For some damn reason, my eyes wander up to the top column, above that headline. I see the words “Prominent Surgeon” and look away. My heart starts racing, and I feel sweat breaking out on my forehead. The train is coming to a stop. I jump up from my seat and get off. I’ll take a cab. Best thirty dollars I’ll ever spend.

  McHenry Stern, Ltd., is an established downtown investment banking firm. Michael McHenry founded the firm in 1961, and it has grown to about three hundred people. I’m in Real Estate. I started with the firm after receiving my MBA, which I got after I bailed on law school. I’m a year or two from eligibility for partner, about the most pressurized time for an investment banker. Doing the legwork to close deals is no longer the sole criteria. You have to look, think, and act like a partner. Whatever that means.

  Frank Tiller and I have been trying to put this deal together for months with a group of investors from Texas. We’re trying to sell them on a piece of suburban real estate that we proposed would be a nice site for retail outlet stores. Frank is a partner, but he is also my closest friend at work. He really wants to make this deal, in part because he knows it will reflect well on me. This deal alone will get me more than fifty percent past revenue plan.

  I get to work about seven-thirty. I throw my coat on the back of my office door and survey the scene. Empty wrappers, cold coffee, computer turned on. Yep, a long night indeed at the office. I sit down at my desk. It will be good to be at work, lose myself in my routine.

  The message light on my phone is blinking, as it was last night, and I activate my voice mail. The first message is from Penny Quinn in Acquisitions, asking if I know some guy over at Bennett Stowe, another banking outfit. I don’t. The second message is from Nate Hornsby, a stock analyst in town who works with me at the Reinardt Family Children’s Foundation.

  The foundation is a philanthropic organization that reaches out to underprivileged and handicapped children in the county. It consists of businesspeople who like to get together at stuffy cocktail parties to raise money for the kids. Then we give the money to the people who really sacrifice their time and energy by implementing the different programs, spending the time with the kids. The cochairs of the foundation, of course, are Dr. Derrick Reinardt and his wife, Rachel.

  “ . . . tried to reach you at home . . .”

  I press 4 on my phone to replay the message from the beginning. The computerized voice tells me that the call was from last night at 9:35. “Marty, it’s Nate. Foster bailed on the luncheon next week. You were right. The fucker. I don’t know why the hell I thought he’d do it. Anyway, we need another speaker fast. If you have any ideas, let me know. I thought you still might be at work. I just tried to reach you at home, but you weren’t around, and you sure as hell don’t have a date. I’m still at work, if you wanna give me a call.”

  Beautiful. He tried to reach me at home last night. Now that you mention it, Officer, I called Marty at his house Thursday evening, right about the time Dr. Reinardt was abducted. And you know something, he wasn’t home. He wasn’t at work, either, ’cause I tried him there, too. Nope, I guess Marty wasn’t at home or work when the attack occurred. Why, did he tell you he was? Well, then, he’s a goddamn liar and a murderer!

  I look out my window to the south. Our building is the farthest south downtown, which leaves me with a view of little more than the expressway that leads out of town and a convention center being built. The cranes are already operating this morning, lifting girders and carrying them off; bulldozers are scooping up earth.

  Rachel is the person who makes that foundation run. The doctor is—was, I guess—the figurehead who drew the money. Rachel dutifully appears at the fund-raisers, but her real passion is working with the kids, most of whom come from broken families in the inner city. She’s happiest when she plays with the children in the after-school programs designed to keep them focused on something other than smoking dope or gang-banging, or when she visits sick or abused kids in the hospital.

  I don’t do much hands-on work for the foundation. I’m uncomfortable in those situations. I feel hypocritical, doing this charity work to soothe my conscience. It seems like the kids, much more than adults, can see right through that insincerity.

  But the kids really warm up to Rachel. Somehow, this wealthy, educated, beautiful socialite can sit down with a group of disadvantaged children and fit right in. It’s because she, unlike me, genuinely enjoys being with them. Maybe it’s her way of escaping her personal life. Maybe it gives her a purpose, a center. Whatever the case, I have seen her spend an hour with a child who is struggling to put together the simplest sentence in a picture book, sounding out each syllable and then making the child start again from the beginning, beaming with pride at the slightest hint of progress, cradling the child in praise at a job well done.

  A guy on the construction site below is chewing someone out now, pointing angrily as two guys in hard hats get to their feet and start hustling toward a pile of bricks. The sun’s peeking out, casting a shadow onto the half-built convention center.

  It was about as nice a day as you get in the city, a warm, breezy, sunny Saturday in the park. We had at least fifty kids running around, the girls playing jump rope or hopscotch or some version of tag, the boys either wrestling, throwing around a Nerf football, or just running for the sake of it.

  I was in charge of the food, which meant removing the fried chicken from the buckets and placing them into large serving trays lined with aluminum foil. I had even coaxed my friend Jerry Lazarus into helping, and he was dishing potato salad onto plastic trays with little enthusiasm. People were setting up the picnic tables and covering them with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths. />
  I could see Rachel in my peripheral vision, in a T-shirt and purple shorts, a piece of cloth tied around her neck holding a whistle that dangled at her chest, a clipboard in her hand. She was dictating orders to other volunteers, pointing them in this direction or that and looking around.

  “No,” she said forcefully to someone, “that’s after lunch. Right before the nature walk. Just let them run around a while.”

  I stopped what I was doing and watched her. She was surveying the entire situation with the concentration of a quarterback looking over a defense. She scanned the park, checking each boundary. The kids had specific instructions not to leave the borders, and Rachel the patrol monitor was checking. She turned around, glanced behind her, looked away, then turned back again. I followed her eyes and saw a little boy sitting alone against a tree.

  Rachel’s posture immediately softened. She slowly walked over to him, me following behind.

  The boy didn’t even look up at her. She bent down next to him slowly, sitting on both knees. I crept closer.

  “Hey, Jacob,” she said softly; she knew the name of every child in the foundation. “Don’t you want to play? David and Benjamin are playing on the slide. That looks like fun.”

  The boy couldn’t have been more than five or six. He had short, thick curly hair, and he was wearing an orange foundation shirt and stubby little shoes that I knew we had provided him.

  “Nope,” he said, without taking his eyes off the grass between his spread legs.

  “Do you want to help us get the food ready?” Rachel tried. “It’s an important job, but I know you can handle it.”

  “Uh-uh,” Jacob mumbled, without moving.

  “Okay,” Rachel said. “Well, do you mind if I sit here with you?”

  Jacob looked up at Rachel. “Where’s my mom?” he asked with a trembling voice.

  Rachel didn’t miss a beat. “She’s getting help, Jacob. She loves you a lot, and she doesn’t want to hurt you anymore.”