Terminated

by Ray Daniel

  “What do you even care about me?” asked Jack. “I didn’t kill Carol. She killed herself.”

  The final tumbler clicked into place. It was time to end Jack.

  I heard myself say, “You’re gonna die.” The demons within me laughed and danced.

  I cracked Jack’s head with the laptop. It caught his temple. He bucked beneath me as his scalp split and he started to bleed. My vision narrowed. I pounded away. I saw Jack’s face mixed with my ghosts. Carol, rolling over in bed and ignoring me. Nate, looking sorrowful as he fired me and then surprised, with his throat slit from ear to ear. Roland, taking my job and selling my project. Dmitri, slicing my arm. And then Carol again, her hand clutching her slit throat.

  I smashed Jack’s other temple. Tears flew off my face and mixed with the blood running down Jack’s cheeks. His eyes closed, and I started smashing his face with the laptop flat on the bridge of his nose. I sobbed and gasped. I couldn’t catch my breath.

  My arms burned as I brought the laptop down. Jack coughed and spurted blood in an aerosol across my shirt. I remembered Carol hearing that I had another late meeting. She said, “No, Tucker. No, not again.” I remembered leaving. I could hear her standing in the door as I focused on Jack and cracked the laptop across his mouth. Teeth flew onto the carpet.

  Carol said, “Tucker! Tucker! No, Tucker!”

  I aimed the corner of the laptop for the center of Jack’s head. Time for the kill shot.

  Carol said, “No!”

  I said, “I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t Carol talking. “Stop! You’re killing him!” Dana screamed from the bed.

  I looked up and my vision cleared. Jack lay below me. He was unconscious. His teeth lay on the rug. The orbit of one eye was smashed. His face hung crookedly. Flecks of blood blew out of his lips as he breathed heavily. Dana was struggling on the bed.

  “Tucker. Tucker, please don’t kill him. Help me.”

  I climbed onto the bed next to Dana and unwrapped the tape from her arms. She grabbed me and pulled me close, her sobs shaking us both. I held her and said, “Shhh.”

  Bobby Miller walked into the room. “Jesus, what happened here?”

  sixty-one

  Bobby and I stood in the front room of Dana’s hotel suite. My shirt was ripped. My head was bleeding from where Jack had hit me with the phone. My knuckles were sore and made a new popping sound when I closed my fist. It hurt to breathe, and I was covered in blood. Again.

  Dana was gone. A Boston cop had taken her to Mass General. Meanwhile, the paramedics had reassembled Jack and strapped him into a gurney. They were rolling him past us when Bobby stopped them.

  “Just one thing, guys,” he said. He snapped a handcuff over Jack’s wrist and attached the other end to the gurney.

  I looked into Jack’s shattered face, cradled in a neck brace. He was unconscious, and a clot of blood flicked back and forth under his broken nose. I thought about what it would be like for him to wake up, his face destroyed and a handcuff on his wrist. I considered the shame he would feel when he learned that his secret was out. I remembered that Kevin’s wake was tonight, and spit in Jack’s face.

  “Hey! Hey! Cut that shit out,” said one of the paramedics. He wiped at the spittle with a latex-gloved hand.

  Bobby touched my shoulder. He said, “C’mon, let’s get you to the doctor.” As he turned me away from Jack, he whispered into my ear, “Good shot.”

  We walked onto Boylston Street. SecureCon conventioneers were everywhere. Some of them climbed into cabs to fly home, while others were heading out for dinner and drinks and would fly home tomorrow. They were all exhausted after the tough week. Now it was clear why Jack picked this time to kill. It was his way of blowing off convention stress.

  Bobby’s car was parked on Hereford Street. We climbed in, and he drove toward the Charles River. We turned right on Back Street, an alley that ran between Storrow Drive and the brownstones. Bobby drove slowly on the narrow street.

  “Your buddy Roland’s going to live,” said Bobby.

  “Imagine my relief.” I looked at a bum picking through a trashcan.

  “Of course, the same can’t be said of Dmitri Petracovich.”

  “So that’s his name.”

  “Jael called me and said she’d popped him.”

  “She actually said popped him?”

  “Oh no, she said something like ‘I have killed the gangster who was threatening Tucker.’ But she meant that she popped him. He was a bastard. She made the world a better place.”

  I settled deeper into my seat, wishing that we could just get to the hospital. Each breath was painful. I definitely had a broken rib. Bobby bumped along, stopping at each alphabetized street to look for traffic: Hereford, Gloucester, Fairfield.

  He said, “So, did you ever find it?”

  “Find what?”

  “That single key that opens all the locks.”

  “Yeah, I found it.” I dug into my pocket and pulled out Dmitri’s thumb drive. Handed it to Bobby. “Here you go.”

  “What’s this?”

  “It’s the key. A video of Jack killing Courtney Acres. It started the whole thing.”

  “How?”

  “Dmitri had a porn site called PimpCam. He used a secret camera to video guys screwing hookers. Then he sold the videos online. The cameras usually caught normal stuff. You know, some fat marketing exec humping a teenager.”

  Bobby interrupted. “Then he caught Jack killing Courtney.”

  “Yeah. Dmitri recognized Jack because he and Roland had been exploiting high-tech startup CEOs for years. They’d sell them cheap engineering services, and then loan money to the promising companies at ridiculous rates. Dmitri and Roland must have taken this video to Jack and demanded that he give them something huge.”

  “And Jack promised them Rosetta?”

  I said, “Right. Dmitri made Jack hire Roland to keep an eye on things, and Roland hired Alice to package the code.”

  Bobby said, “They fired you and killed Carol to make room for Roland and Alice.”

  Bobby was close to the last piece. But I didn’t want to give it to him. Instead I said, “They got suspicious of Alice, and decided to kill her. Jack must have jumped up and down and said, ‘Ooh ooh. Let me do it.’”

  Bobby said, “But why did they kill Carol? Why not just fire the two of you?”

  I said, “Damn, it really hurts to breathe.”

  “Almost there, buddy. We’ll have a doc fix you up.”

  Bobby was true to his word. The doc gave me a pill for the pain and popped the rib back into place. He stitched my lip and told me to ice my hand. He said I should go home and rest. I was glad to get out of there. I needed to get onto the Internet.

  I went home and fired up my computer. A little poking around showed me the movie I had expected to find. I watched it a couple of times. When I was done, tears had run down my face. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, and got dressed. I was heading to Revere. I was going to say goodbye to Kevin. I hoped Charlene wouldn’t mind.

  sixty-two

  Kevin didn’t look like himself. He didn’t look peaceful. He didn’t look like he was in a better place. He just looked dead.

  He was wearing the Boston Bruins tie that Charlene had bought for him when the Bruins won the Cup for the first time in forty years. He never liked that tie, but it was a gift from Charlene so he had praised it and worn it regularly.

  “He always loved that tie,” said Charlene, who had materialized next to me.

  “Yes,” I said. “He did.” I turned to leave. “I’ll get out of here.”

  Charlene touched my arm and said, “No. Please stay.”

  “You’re OK with me?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry, Tucker. I was a mess. I never meant those things.”

  “No need to apologize. Poor Kev
in.”

  “You were his best friend. He loved you. I’m glad you’re here.”

  Charlene started to weep, and that set me off. My eyes filled and my throat burned. Charlene handed me a tissue from the wad she was carrying, and I dabbed my eyes.

  She said, “He loved her, you know.”

  I said, “Who?”

  “Carol. Not in a bad way. But his eyes would light up when he’d see her.”

  “I never noticed that.”

  “You’re a man.” Apparently that explained it. She continued, “It was an innocent thing, but it bothered me. Then he came home Saturday night all excited about solving her murder, and the next day they killed him.”

  I opened and closed my mouth several times, trying out things to say. I had nothing to offer but sorrow. I was lost in my silence when Dana appeared.

  “Charlene, I’m so sorry,” Dana said. And Charlene bent at the waist to hug the much shorter woman. Dana’s mascara had been mixed with tears and smudged against her eyes. Her small arms wrapped around Charlene’s shoulders. I could see red patches on her wrists where I had torn the tape away. It amazed me that she was here.

  I let the women commiserate and knelt in front of Kevin.

  “I thought I’d let the girls have their moment,” I told him. I waited, half-expecting to see him standing over my shoulder.

  Kevin’s lips were glued together, and I could see the edges of the foundation where the mortician had given him color. His eyes were shut, and a little crucifix was intertwined with his fingers. “You’re really not coming back, are you?”

  Kevin’s dead mouth remained motionless.

  “Because, you know, if you ever want to do some haunting, I’d be up for that.”

  The fingernails were drained of color. The crucifix caught the light, but didn’t twinkle. It was a static symbol. I reached out and covered it with my hand. Kevin’s fingers were dead. I remembered Kevin using his fingers to measure his Scotch. “Two fingers, then ice.” That’s what he used to say. Now his fingers might have been made of wax.

  I said, “So long, buddy.”

  I stood and turned to see Charlene and Dana watching me. I hugged Charlene and pecked her on the cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  “Thank you for coming, Tucker,” she said.

  Dana followed me into the parking lot.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  Dana said, “Not so good. If it were anyone but Kevin, I wouldn’t be here. I’m going home to my parents for a few weeks.”

  “Are you coming back to Boston?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Can I call you?”

  “You had better. Otherwise I’ll break into your apartment again.”

  We hugged and kissed a goodbye. I got in my car.

  “Heading home?” Dana asked.

  “Going over to the beach,” I said. “I’ve got to see someone.”

  sixty-three

  I sat in the dark on Revere Beach and watched Graves Light blinking in the darkness. The night air was chilly. The sand was damp, and the surf pounded onto the shore, still agitated by the recent storms. I was alone on the beach, which curved away in a big arc that eventually formed Nahant.

  “Aren’t you cold, baby?” asked Carol. She sat next to me, her plum funeral dress shimmering slightly in the night. The ocean breeze waved strands of her black hair. Her dress outlined her thighs as she got comfortable.

  “Yeah, I’m a little cold.” I looked back at the ocean. It had been a long day. It would be a tough night. “I figured it out, you know.”

  “I know,” said Carol. “Congratulations.”

  “I just have to wonder why.”

  “Why I was killed?”

  “No. Why you betrayed me.”

  Carol was silent. She looked out toward the sea. Her eyes filled. She had been appearing to me for months, taunting, helping, guiding, but also hiding something I hadn’t wanted to see.

  She asked, “How did you know?”

  “It was the timing.”

  She nodded, her lip trembling.

  I continued. “I saw Margaret’s demo in her booth. Her software was a year-old version of our project.”

  Tears were rolling down Carol’s cheeks.

  I said, “Alice couldn’t have given Rosetta to her, because you hired Alice nine months ago. You gave Margaret our source code.”

  Carol blew air out between her lips. She wiped at her nose with her hand.

  “Was it the money?” I asked.

  The dam burst and Carol sobbed. She didn’t cover her face. Her arms lay at her sides, palms up as the tears spilled. She tried to speak, but couldn’t get the words out. Her sobs twisted my gut, and I wished I could trade places with her. Take her pain away. But I couldn’t even hold her, so I stared straight ahead and focused on the blinking lighthouse.

  Carol’s tears slowed. “The money? You know I never cared about the money.”

  “Then why?”

  “To get you back from that horrible project. I hated Rosetta, and Nate, and Huey, and the whole company, because they took you away from me. I loved you, baby, and I lost you to them.”

  “I was right there,” I said. “I was there the whole time.”

  “You know what I mean. You were mentally gone. Emotionally gone. You weren’t there for me anymore. You lived for that horrible project. It was all you talked about.”

  Carol’s tears had stopped and her breathing slowed as she spoke. “One day I caught Jack trying to make a copy of the code. He told me he was debugging it, but that was ridiculous. I could see what he was doing. He asked me what it would take for me to keep quiet about it. I told him that I’d make the copy for him if he’d fire you. I missed you so much. It just slipped out. It was stupid.”

  I nodded. Kevin had been right. If I had known the real reason Nate fired me, the whole thing would have fallen into place.

  “Then I was trapped and it all went bad,” Carol continued.

  “The movies,” I said.

  “That bastard Dmitri saw me. He actually walked up to me in Jack’s office and grabbed my boob, then he turned to Jack and Roland said, ‘Real ones. Wery nice’ in that fucking accent. He said that if I didn’t make movies, Jack would tell the police that I was selling your software. I’d get arrested and I’d lose you.”

  “Whose idea was it to do lesbian scenes?”

  “Mine. I told them I wouldn’t do it with guys. I didn’t want to cheat on you. So they made me do things with Alice while that bastard Roland watched.”

  “I know. I found your movie on that website.”

  Carol looked at the sand. “What did you think?”

  “It was the first time porn made me cry.”

  Carol stared into the sand. I peeked under her chin, and she was smiling her little “that’s not supposed to be funny” smile. She looked up at me, her blue eyes glistening.

  She asked, “Why did Dmitri kill me? I did everything he wanted.”

  I sighed and said, “You set yourself up.”

  “What?”

  “Jack finally got Nate to fire me. With me gone, they lost their hold over you. You became a loose end.”

  “And Dmitri cleaned up the loose end.”

  “Yeah.”

  Carol stood and I followed her lead. We looked out over the water. We were silent, breathing the salty air and listening to the rushing surf.

  Carol said, “We were good together, weren’t we?”

  “We were great.”

  “Remember that time we did this on the Cape, in Wellfleet? Looked out at the ocean? That was the night we built a bonfire, and stayed by it and drank tequila until the beach was empty.”

  I said, “I remember. It was the first time I’d made love on a beach.”

 
“The first time for me too, you know.”

  “Yeah, and the last.”

  Carol laughed. “Oh my God! Wasn’t it horrible? We got all gross and sandy and then we passed out and almost got caught sleeping there. What a hangover. I still hate tequila.”

  I could feel a change coming. Carol’s dress was shimmering more brightly. The string of lights from Nahant began to appear through her, like stars in the evening. She looked down at herself, then back at me. She smiled.

  Carol said, “I have to go.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ll be all right now.” She looked at the lighthouse and back at me. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Of course, you silly girl. I love you.”

  “Goodbye, baby.”

  I closed my eyes. A breeze came in off the water, and I felt Carol’s lips brush mine as her hand traced across my neck. I caught a whiff of her perfume. Then she was gone.

  I opened my eyes. Graves Light winked in the distance. I turned and walked up the beach.

  about the author

  Ray Daniel is the award-winning author of Boston-based crime fiction. His short story “Give Me a Dollar” won a 2014 Derringer Award for short fiction and “Driving Miss Rachel” was chosen as a 2013 distinguished short story by Otto Penzler, editor of The Best American Mystery Stories 2013.

  Daniel’s work has been published in the Level Best Books anthologies Thin Ice, Blood Moon, and Stone Cold. Terminated is his first novel.

  For more information, visit him online at raydanielmystery.com and follow him on Twitter @raydanielmystry.

  Author photo by Lynn Wayne.