The Consultant

by Sean Oliver

  “I think it’s Moore,” she said. “That’s what his badge-thing said.” Jared typed the last name into the search field and six names appeared, a thumbnail of their ID photo beside each name.

  “There he is—Arthur Moore,” Jared said, floating the cursor over the security guard’s picture. “Birthdate 12/16/1959. Looks like he has an evaluation coming up. Wonder if he knows.” Deanna rolled her eyes. Comedy wasn’t registering with her that night. “Home school is P.S. 2, downtown. He’s been temporarily assigned to us to cover a maternity leave for Officer Carmen. Scheduled to go back to P.S. 2 after that.”

  He clicked around Moore’s HR page some more, looking at past evaluations, location assignments.

  “Anything weird?” Deanna asked, leaning over to look.

  Jared wasn’t clicking around the page any longer. His hand was on the mouse pad, but his eyes were staring beyond the laptop screen, past the coffee table. He was fixed on the particular newscast on the TV.

  “Um, hello?” she said.

  “Hang on.” Jared got up and grabbed the remote, walked to the center of the room, and stood before the large, flat screen. On it, a massive inferno was raging, shown from a few angles, each illustrating the enormity of the fire. Street level shots showed a large building, engulfed. A helicopter angle made the building look like a shoebox billowing with smoke and flame. Jared wasn’t blinking.

  The lower-third graphic on the screen said Elizabeth Township School of Technology. Jared raised the volume.

  “…earlier this evening. First responders described the blaze as most intense in the boiler room area of the building, but spread rather quickly through the basement and first floor. This is still very much an active scene, as the fire is quite ferocious right now and appears to have extended to the second floor at this point. We can see fire trucks from some neighboring cities beginning to arrive. This appears to be far from over—”

  Jared hit the Off button. He remained in place, standing and looking at a black screen.

  He remembered the wispy feeling of freedom he’d experienced driving home earlier that day. He also remembered a red light, and the question of whether or not he could just leave the district. And now he had his answer—the one he’d known all along.

  “What was that story?” Deanna asked.

  “Nothing. I thought it was something else.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THEY COULDN’T EVEN spell her damn name right.

  It was a small detail, but it was getting to Willie. He sat at his kitchen table, staring at the logo for the Carson Housing Authority, which sat atop the letter. The unfolded paper on the table before him had just denied his mother access to the low-cost, senior citizen living that the city offered so many. According to the letter, demand was currently high, as were the expenses of maintaining those new high-rise buildings the authority built. Couldn’t take everyone.

  And they wouldn’t be taking Glenda Rogers—or Glinda, according to the envelope.

  Willie twisted open the cap on another bottle of Bud, leaned back in the creaking chair, and looked out past the kitchen doorway to Mama. She was sitting in her favorite chair, oblivious to the contents of the housing authority letter. Willie had been prepared to carry that old blue-cloth rocker right into the new senior complex and onto the freight elevator. He was going to ensure she had every one of her comforts from their apartment, even if that left him with nothing. She asked for so little, had given him so much. They still lived in the same place they always had, and that gave him peace of mind as she climbed on in years, her health now challenged. He told her he’d be there for her and see to it she was safe.

  Willie had the terribly difficult discussion with her about moving out of their home and into city housing. The units were actually nice, newly built in a decent part of town. It would be a perfect solution for Willie and it came at just the right time.

  Mom’s health hadn’t necessarily nosedived. The diabetes sure didn’t get easier to manage as she got older, and now issues with diagnosed hypertension were getting thrown in the mix. She was stable, effectively medicated. She could get around and had her wits about her. But Willie would simply not let her out of his clutches. His siblings were lost causes, bouncing around the state and, in a couple of cases, the law. Willie always kept Ma close.

  Willie himself hadn’t been as lucid as usual for the past couple of weeks. That feeling always started small but was getting more intense—starting in his back, his shoulders. His mind was always being drawn back to getting his mother set up in housing and on her own, looked after by professionals. Then he’d fight the feeling and himself, getting angry for even considering the thought. But that smoky tingle changed his mind like real good weed. Except he wasn’t smoking.

  He’d tried to resist the Smoke. It made him numb, made him stop feeling. His body would start acting on its own, kinda. That’s what happened when it came on real strong. And now it was here all the time. Kept rolling in—working his body, taking his heart, his mind.

  Some way into the school year he’d lost resistance to the idea of senior housing. He’d become singularly driven to move his mother out of the house. Struggling against the idea was no longer a problem, and that overprotective son no longer existed in his memory bank. He’d focused on this move like a mission, in a very mechanical way. He called the housing authority and went in to meet with a representative. Paperwork, medical records, proof of address—Willie got it all together, organized it, and turned it in with the application.

  Now, with this rejection letter, he’d failed her. He’d failed himself in his mission to cut ties and ready his own life for this all-important school year. Increasingly, that feeling, that Smoke, would waft in and hyperfocus him on tasks. He was becoming a series of those tasks, devoid of passions, smiles, and the things that once made up Willie Rogers.

  He was done staring at the rejection letter from the housing department, and he was no longer disappointed by it. That tingle already made its way from his spine through his shoulders and up the back of his head. His mind now cleared, he stood and grabbed the letter. He balled it up and dropped it in the trash can. He stood at the can a moment, beside the doorway to the living room. The TV was on but Ma was snoring quietly, mouth open, reclined in that old chair. Same one she’d had forever. Much of what filled their second-floor apartment was what had filled Willie’s childhood home.

  He crossed the kitchen to the basket holding all of Glenda’s prescription bottles. He tore a piece of paper towel off the roll and took it to the kitchen table, along with the medication basket. For the next half-hour, he opened each capsule in her prescription bottles and poured out the powdery contents onto the paper towel. He reconnected the empty capsules and tossed each back into their respective bottles. Glenda now had two bottles of empty capsules.

  When he was finished, he balled up the paper towel with the spent medicine and threw it in the garbage can. There were traces of powder left on the table, so he reached in his pocket and retrieved a card. He scraped the remnants off the table and into his hand with the edge of a business card from the Elizabeth Township School of Technology.

  He went back to the garbage can and dumped the residual powder, along with Principal Martin Andrews’s card that he’d picked up off the floor earlier that day at school, helping his friend who’d dropped it along with keys and a phony doctor’s note.

  He stood at the sink and washed the powder from his fingertips. It came off easily, but it seemed no matter how many times he washed, that smell of gasoline remained.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT LOOKED LIKE Deanna would be late. She never went out for lunch for that very reason. She always ordered delivery or brought some leftovers from home. Teachers got forty-five minutes for their break, so it was a gamble if you had to negotiate city traffic, parking, and eating within that time.

  Today was different, though. She’d left the building and forewent food altogether.

  She sat at Detective O’M
alley’s desk, looking up at the clock as it neared 11:40 a.m. She had five minutes until her next class, and the ride back from the precinct alone would likely take the full five.

  O’Malley returned to the room. He was tall and thin, with ruddy cheeks and more gray than brown in his hair. He looked like he’d have to hold out another five years or so until retirement. He was flipping through some papers as he came in.

  “Sorry for the delay,” he said as he got to his desk. “We never have ink for that printer. So I guess my rap sheets are printed in pink today.” He held up the discolored printouts.

  “Same stuff happens in school,” Deanna said. “I don’t know why they order ink at all. We’re out of it by November.”

  “Not surprised. We’re both victims of the same bureaucracy.”

  Deanna gestured to some Wanted posters on a corkboard behind O’Malley’s desk.

  “But we get our shot at fixing them first,” she said.

  “Yeah. We just clean up.” He smiled at her, which she returned but did so as she looked down at the papers he was holding. She needed to get on with it and get back to class. She’d decided to come to the precinct when she felt she could no longer stand the stagnation. The lack of information about Trisha was torture, and she was pissed that the cops had spent so little time in the school. She knew they talked to her father, then hit up the two teachers who worked beside Trisha. That was it so far.

  They might be chasing hot leads, maybe had some physical evidence that was leading them down a path to Trisha. But Deanna could not dismiss the behavior of the teachers in her building toward Trisha as simply inconsequential. Jesus, their behavior in general had been wacko this month. It all just sat very badly with her.

  O’Malley dropped the printouts onto his desk. “Well, you already know they couldn’t have had a record coming into the job. And you also know that there probably would’ve been some disciplinary action taken if they got into any real trouble after they started, right?”

  She’d come in with a handful of names and told O’Malley that they’d had interactions with Trisha that were unfriendly and, in the case of the security guard, Moore, outright hostile as he took the laptop report. She fibbed a bit on people like Mary Edison, who was certainly doing her best to stand apart from normal society by dragging her dumpy self onto a window ledge and standing there, though she’d done nothing aggressive.

  Arlene and Ellie were certainly a little standoffish.

  But going to the cops? Really? Deanna felt like an idiot sitting there. She must’ve been wearing her disappointment.

  “But, hey, something brought you in here,” O’Malley said. “On your lunch hour, no less. I was coming back to your school anyway to talk with more people. I’m gonna move these names to the top of my list. Sound good?”

  Deanna felt like a kid who was having a small, second-place trophy made for her.

  “Whatever you have to do,” she said. “It’s your case. I was just trying to help.”

  “I appreciate it. I’ll keep the workplace-bullying thing top of mind when I swing back over there. Talk to these folks.”

  “Don’t use my name. I have enough issues with some of them.”

  “I would never,” the detective said, raising his hand.

  “Actually,” Deanna said, something dropping into her head, “use my name. That might draw something out of those people.”

  “Draw what out?”

  “Everyone knew Trisha and I were best friends. Anyone mad at her would have also felt that way about me. And visa-versa.”

  “Let’s see where the discussions go. I have this new knowledge now, so that might add something to it.” He smiled at her as she stood to leave.

  “Thank you,” she said, offering her hand.

  “My pleasure. And since you’re here,” he said as he opened an accordion folder and withdrew some files. He showed Deanna a photo of a car parked on a street corner. “Is this the car you always knew Trisha to drive?” Deanna looked at it for only a flash, then away.

  “Yes. That’s her car.”

  “Would she have lent it to anyone?”

  “Who?”

  “Well, that’s just it. Who would Trisha have been with? Who would she have gone there to meet?”

  “No one,” Deanna said. O’Malley didn’t look surprised.

  He did look disappointed. He dropped the photo down onto his desk and sat.

  “What?” Deanna said.

  “Seems like your friend’s life was pretty simple. Predictable. You always hope there are a couple of roads to head down—drug problem, boyfriend problem. Boyfriend with a drug problem—something like that. Maybe the missing person ran away with a guy.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Well, sometimes you never know.”

  “I would know. She didn’t.”

  O’Malley shrugged. “How about that area, Grove Street? She know anyone down there?”

  “Not that she ever told me about, and she told me everything.”

  “How about a casual acquaintance? Even a store or restaurant that she frequented, that she’d be comfortable going into if she needed help with something?”

  Deanna froze. It was the first hint of information she’d heard about her best friend and it came out of the lead investigator’s mouth.

  “Help with what?”

  The detective looked down at the photo of Trisha’s car and pointed to her front passenger tire. It was flat.

  “Grove Street is very crowded at that intersection. You have the subway station across the street, three office towers on the corners, bunch of restaurants. So she could have parked there if she was taking the train to New York City, eating at Cuba Libre down the street, or visiting a boyfriend in an office building.”

  “She goes home every day—straight home. And if she’s stopping at the mall or something, she tells me because she always wants company. I was the only… I am the only friend—”

  She was getting emotional and stopped short of it pouring out. She got a grip.

  “Cameras?” she managed to ask.

  “They shoot north-south—the offices, subway entrances, and parking lot. We don’t have the side street where the car was parked. We looked at video of people pouring down the subway stairs for the entire evening rush, but it’s a sea of coats, hats, and scarves. She could be any of a thousand women.” He gave a small shrug, like he was saying he wished he had more. Deanna was struggling with it all. “Help us out and try to remember if she had a connection to that area,” he said.

  “I’ll save you the time and tell you right now that she didn’t. So forget that area and forget the car.”

  “So let’s assume that’s all true—that she didn’t simply stop somewhere and then return to a flat tire. She could have been driving and popped the tire, right? Why would she stop the car right there? She even took the time to park it. Who did she know in that area that she would have approached for help with the tire?”

  Deanna shook her head. She was frustrated by the whole situation and more so that she didn’t have any answers for him. Or for Trisha.

  “What about her phone?” Deanna asked.

  “No outgoing activity. It didn’t ping any cell towers outside Carson at all. By midnight the battery probably died because we have no action at all beyond that.”

  Deanna put her head in her hands. She felt as lost as Trisha.

  “Hey, we are gonna keep looking,” the detective said to her. “We just may find something in an unexpected place. And I’m not ignoring what you brought to me here, with the bullying. We all have to stay open, not lock into anything. That’s the key to a successful investigation. Just don’t lose hope.”

  Deanna nodded and forced a smile. Her forty-five minutes was no doubt up, and she needed to head back to the place she knew in her heart had betrayed her friend.

  TWENTY-NINE

  JARED COULD SEE straight down the basement hallway. He was peering out through the doorway, cracked open just a bi
t. He was finally using the boiler room for something other than sipping an occasional coping elixir and smoking cigarettes with Willie. He was in there alone and had been keeping watch on Doris Calhoun’s library for most of his prep period. It was getting hot as hell in there and just before he thought he’d pass out, Calhoun left her room. Bingo.

  She headed out and went up the staircase nearest to the library. Her door was never left open when she intended on being out of the room for long stretches. But if you wait people out long enough, you catch them acting careless here and there. Jared left the boiler room and crossed the hallway into the library.

  She probably didn’t go far and wouldn’t be out for more than a few minutes. She couldn’t possibly be out lollygagging around the building with an open door to her sanctuary. Jared listened from the hallway—everything seemed quiet. He should probably poke around the room and look for that serial number now, while it seemed he could.

  Earlier that morning he’d gone into the Google Docs form that served as a master sheet for all the technology in the building. Jared, as the computer teacher, logged all new laptops into the sheet as they were received, so he had access to the form listing which computers were given to whom.

  He pulled a Post-It from his pocket and read the code he’d written on it. Trisha’s laptop was serial number QQ8617631V. All the laptops in the building were assigned from Calhoun’s library/media room. And when they cycled out of the classrooms for whatever reason, they ended up back down there, in charging cabinets. It would be pretty easy to bury Trisha’s stolen laptop among the dozens down there, then just assign it to someone else.

  Did Calhoun have the laptop?

  Even if he found it down there, it could’ve been dropped off by someone else. But anyone in that building knew they could not just drop off a laptop and escape a line of intense Q&A from Calhoun. If it was in there she probably snatched it, and that would add her to Deanna’s list of freaks under suspicion for Trisha’s disappearance.