The Consultant
Page 23
“Whichever,” she replied, looking up from her plate for a moment. “Just get it recorded and saved. You’re the computer teacher.” Jared coiled the wire around his finger, tucked the plug, and dropped it into his jacket.
“Fine,” he said. “You visiting spy shops now?”
“Yeah. Big spy shop called Amazon.”
Deanna remained cold, though not as intense. She continued to eat, head down. Jared’s fork mostly made patterns in the vegetables. He didn’t speak and that was fine with Deanna. She wasn’t saying anything and didn’t have much of anything left. It was clear her life was on hold until this thing was resolved.
“We still going to your father’s on Sunday?” Jared finally said.
Deanna stopped chewing for a second, then swallowed. She took a breath, a swig of merlot, and then looked to Jared, who was waiting patiently for a reply.
“I’m watching things go missing from my life. I’ve been dealing with Trisha, and then someone gets behind my car and tried to make me disappear. Then I sat around and cried all day and night since they put me out of that school like a dog.” Jared reached over and took her hand.
“Dee, I know—”
“But fuck that,” she said as she jerked her arm back, eyes piercing. “The only way I’m going to live though this and have my life back is to shut that thing down. So if your question about dinner at my parents’ is really asking me how my father will affect my decision to continue living, I say this—it will be his choice. I already turned over the laptop and I met with the detective. The ball is rolling and I cannot control what role my father decides to have in this.”
Her gaze was unflinching, but her eyes welled.
“I don’t know what he’s already done, but that’s not for me to worry about. From this point on, how he handles what he’s done is his decision.”
A tear crept from her eye and she immediately blotted it and stood, throwing her bag over her shoulder.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said, looking down at him. “For the record, I think he’ll do the right thing.” She watched Jared nod along. “Don’t lose that microphone.”
“Right.”
“Good.” She headed toward the restroom.
FIFTY-EIGHT
WHOSE LAPTOP WAS that?
Alexis Diggs got to the security desk before Officer Moore that morning and went into the bottom drawer to stash her cell phone and purse. It was locked but she had her key. She was surprised to see a new-looking laptop in the normally empty drawer. Maybe it was bought for security. Or maybe it was Moore’s.
He’d never brought one before, not that she noticed in the couple of months since he’d arrived. Alexis didn’t pay much attention to the temporary replacement guard. He was older and cranky as hell. He’d be gone soon anyway, as soon as Officer Carmen returned from maternity leave.
She took the laptop out and opened it. As soon as she did, that tickle started at the base of her spine. Years ago when it first began, she thought it was from aggravating that awful lower back sprain. Back in her senior year of high school she wrenched it coming down after grabbing a rebound. She was headed for the all-county team had she not been forced to hang up her season and her basketball future.
By the time she was a junior she’d stopped counting how many times she’d been written about in The Hudson County Dispatch and The Star Ledger. Colleges started showing up halfway through that junior year. Her future was on track—a solid one. But fate intervened during that game against Memorial High School. She was sidelined, suffered through two surgeries, and the superstar bound for big-time college sports stayed local. Without basketball, the big schools weren’t an option. She did some community college and got back into the Carson school system, this time as a security guard.
At seventeen years old, on the single worst day of her life, she took the cardboard box that held letters, applications, and brochures from dozens of colleges, and put it out with the recycling. She cried for a week, her mother beside her, listening to her baby let it out, and fighting the tears herself. Why had such a gift been stifled so quickly?
But that tingle wasn’t born from the injury to her back. It was there before. She’d always remembered a faint little flutter that was barely detectable. But as she matured, the feeling grew with her. It could have been exacerbated by the injury, but that wasn’t what caused it. That smoky wave started to cover too much of her stocky, little, point guard body. Then it started covering her mind.
Today, the laptop sitting in the drawer had triggered it, for sure. The Smoke started the second she’d opened it. She watched the laptop power up as her mind began to wash clear. By the time the desktop was up on the screen, Diggs followed a calm instinct that made her close the computer, slide it under her arm, and head off with it. She went down the rear stairwell, toward the dumpster in the loading area of the parking lot.
Moore stayed at the front desk past quitting time. Alexis Diggs had signed out an hour ago but Principal George was still in his office. He wanted to see him leave with his own eyes before going into the main security computer that stored the video camera files. It was almost five o’clock and George was usually gone by then.
Moore checked every single drawer in the security station again, as if the laptop would come back. Diggs said she didn’t see it. She said it all three times he asked her, saying she opened the drawer to drop her phone in there, and it was empty. As far as he knew, the main office didn’t even have a key to the security drawers. Most weren’t kept locked, but Moore was certain he’d locked the one with the missing girl’s laptop the day Deanna gave it to him. The lock wasn’t punched, didn’t look tampered with in any fashion. Custodians didn’t have the keys to the security station, that he knew.
I locked it, damn sure.
Moore paced the first floor and kept an ear out for the squeal of the main office door hinges that would signal Principal George’s exit. Moore had been rolling the whole thing around in his head and still couldn’t make any connections. He forced himself off the hamster wheel and stopped trying to see a bigger picture. They had a girl missing, and now they had her laptop. Deanna’s claims about not being responsible were probably true if she was being this proactive with the investigation. But he would double-check that.
That little voice that called him a screw up when he got dressed every morning was piping up. He fought the voice, loathed the voice, and believed the voice. Mostly, he’d fought himself and loathed himself since handing in his Carson PD badge. Detective O’Malley had trusted him and involved him in this investigation beyond what was necessary and, probably, allowed. When he rode with the detective they brainstormed like partners. They good-cop/bad-copped Albrecht. He’d found a crucial piece of evidence that the police hadn’t even known about.
And then he’d frigging lost it. Gone. Was it age? Absentmindedness? O’Malley was miffed as it was, knowing that Moore had a piece of evidence he hadn’t turned over. Dude was probably more pissed the cops didn’t find it first.
Of course, in truth, that Anastas girl walked in and handed it to him. That could easily be used to support that voice calling him a big goof. But he had it. Not the cops, and not even the lead detective. Arthur Moore had it. How was he going to tell O’Malley he’d lost it? That would be the end of this de facto partnership. O’Malley would probably be kind about it, feeling sorry for this big sack of shit. Moore would shake his hand before heading back to his perpetually annoyed wife in their perpetually cold apartment.
Or maybe O’Malley would think this implicated him in some way. Deanna’s comment about Moore being like her and Trish—and not like the others—was pretty slim evidence in exonerating him.
The main office door creaked and shut from around the corner. Moore had wandered well around the bends of the first floor and started to make his way back to the security station. He rounded the final turn in time to hear the heavy, metal front door shut. When he got to the desk he watched George descend the steps on the
front door camera.
He sat at the desk and opened the bottom center drawer, which held hanging file folders with blank indecent reports and carbon copies of any previously filed reports. That was the folder that Moore retrieved. It was stuffed with pink carbons of any incident report that security handled to date that year. Fights, graffiti, thefts, and slips and falls all told the tale of the guards’ days at P.S. 21. From the amount of pink forms he’d flipped through already, he realized it had been a busy few months.
There it was, on sheet #0981733—McAllister: lost computer.
Nothing on that report was of interest to Moore except the date it was filled out. He put the sheet back in the folder and slid it back into the drawer. He turned to the desktop computer at his left. Atop the computer tower was the monitor showing the display of all the building cameras.
Moore typed his password into the computer and a list of files came up on the monitor over the camera images. All of the files were date and time stamped, sorted chronologically. Moore scrolled down though March, February, and stopped at January. He clicked on a file.
A choppy, recorded display of all the cameras filled the screen. He slid the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen to 3:00 p.m. There was one camera image he was watching—one little box in the checkerboard of twelve, playing back its view of the building many weeks ago. It was dismissal time so the hallways in all the cameras were swarming with students. Moore slid ahead a half-hour and the action in all the cameras zoomed ahead comically.
Moore watched the camera positioned down the hall from Trisha’s room. It didn’t show anything inside the room, but her open classroom door was clearly visible. Moore brought the cursor arrow down to the slide bar and slowly advanced the time. Onscreen, a couple of teachers flew by at Chaplin-esque speed, heading down the hall. Willie passed carrying garbage bags. More teachers. Willie again with boxes on a cart.
4:00 p.m. onscreen. No activity until 4:07 p.m. when Willie passed again with an empty cart. Once he was down the hall and out of the shot, there was nothing for a while.
Moore slid ahead a little faster, passing 4:40 p.m. Faster still. The theft could’ve happened overnight.
Then a dark shape shot into the frame and into Trisha’s room. Moore moved the slider backward and stopped on the image of Principal George going into the classroom. Moore clicked the play button and watched in real time as the principal disappeared into McAllister’s classroom and emerged a minute later, carrying a laptop.
Moore stopped the video and leaned back in his chair. Principal George. He was the only cat in that entire building that Moore got on well with. If it was just the laptop issue, that would be one thing. But the implications of this single action could be more far reaching.
Moore reached into the center drawer and fumbled through pens, pencils, and spare change until he found a flash drive. He stuck it in the front of the computer.
“Amigo!” came from behind Moore. The loud greeting from behind Moore almost knocked him off his chair. He swung around to see Rey, one of the school district electricians who he’d known from his home school downtown.
“Hey, slick, what’s going on?” He reached out and offered a very shaky hand to Rey, who shook it.
“Missed you downtown. They said you were covering up here.”
“Yeah, for now,” Moore said.
“Seems okay over here, right? Anastas is cool.”
“He’s alright, good man. What about you? What are you doing up here?”
“Light flicker in the library. This is the third damn time they put in a work order and every time we come, nothing is flickering. Breaker is fine, bulbs replaced. I don’t know what to do for them. The building is a million years old, what do they want?”
“Crazy, man. Crazy. Listen, I’m gonna be wrapping up here and getting lost. You don’t be a stranger now.”
“Okay, man. Buzz me out.”
Moore pressed the button to unlock the front doors and Rey was gone. He took a deep breath and stood. He looked to both ends of the empty corridor then leaned down to the computer. His vantage point would be better from a standing position. He started to save the file from the day George took Trisha’s computer onto his flash drive. A progress bar came up and indicated there were two hours remaining for the save.
Moore was the last security officer there, and maintenance would be cleaning for a few more hours. There were no events at school that night. Everything should be fine. He turned off the monitor and left the flash drive inserted into the tower to finish its task. He’d come in a half-hour early the next morning and it should be done.
Before he left, he taped a piece of paper onto the monitor that read, OUT OF ORDER.
FIFTY-NINE
TRISHA SMILED A lot.
Even in candid pictures, when she was just caught by Deanna’s camera, she usually had a smile on her face. It made scrolling though all the old photos even that much more wrenching. A soul so pure.
She just couldn’t be gone. Deanna still felt her in the world, and it was ridiculously perplexing that her physical presence was absent. When Deanna let herself go down that rabbit hole, disturbing questions would rattle her. She wondered if Trisha was in pain. Was that porcelain heart breaking somewhere? Did she need help? This ordeal has likely destroyed it, regardless of the outcome.
Deanna found herself wiping tears from her face yet again as she sat on her living room couch. Jared was safely asleep, but she was beginning yet another sleepless night. He’d tried to stay up, get her to talk. There was nothing to say. It was just pain. All pain.
Deanna reached over to the end table and grabbed a tissue. She wiped her eyes and scrolled though more pictures. Trisha’s eyes were the centerpiece of her smile. They were impossible to ignore, and it was even more impossible to resist putting a smile on your face when seeing them. What had become of them? Would they smile again?
Deanna looked at the image of Trisha’s eyes with an abrupt honesty, one born of the grief of the past few months. She looked through the phone, at still more pictures of Trisha in states of joy. Deanna looked at her friend’s eyes, asking Trisha if she forgave her. Time had recently given Deanna enough time to honestly reflect. With each passing day taking Trisha farther and farther away, all Deanna wanted to do was see her, listen to her, and be with her. Now, in her absence, suddenly that would be enough. Being with her to just be with her. How goddamn selfish had she been?
On this night, feeling so guilty and alone, Deanna needed a piece of Trisha. She opened the green messages app and scrolled back through all the unanswered texts she sent Trisha. She wanted to get to their discussions and relive them. Seeing the very words Trisha typed would bring her there, into the living room. And there they were—innocuous comments and abbreviations that suddenly became a hand to hold.
Deanna swam down through the LOLs and TTYLs and then the life trail goes cold, with Deanna’s texts sent that fateful Saturday that floated past Trish into nowhere.
Hey when r we going today?
Wake up bitch! Seriously wat r u doing
Where was Trish when Deanna sent those? Was she okay? She probably hadn’t even seen them.
But seriously—where was she when Deanna sent those?
But Deanna scrolled down to the unanswered texts, the ones with no response from Trisha after she was gone. There were so many, but Deanna was looking for one in particular. It wasn’t asking where she was, or begging her to send a sign that she was okay—those all came later. There was one text that Deanna realized the detective should know about.
Hey what time tomorrow
That was the one and only text Deanna sent her after leaving school that Friday in January. On Saturday they planned to go to lunch and then look at an exercise bike Deanna wanted at the mall. She’d reached out the next day, but the detective said Trisha’s phone was completely inactive after Friday at midnight. But that one text at 8:08 p.m. landed on Trisha’s phone. It wasn’t answered, and the phone was active.
SIXTY
ARTHUR MOORE WAS up the front steps of school shortly after sunrise. He was early enough to ensure he’d be the first security officer in the building. It was unlikely that anyone in maintenance or administration beat him in. The camera file should be saved to the flash drive and he’d be able to deliver it to O’Malley, who’d already texted him twice about the laptop. Moore intended to look around some more for the computer, but his having the video file showing George stealing it out of Trisha’s room would be a great consolation.
Moore liked Principal George, the little he knew of him. He always greeted Moore but for the most part left him alone. That was fine with him. Moore noticed George seemed to get along with his entire staff and there was no tension in the building, beyond the ordinary stresses of the job.
Why did he take the computer, and did that act necessarily implicate him in Trisha’s disappearance? Not really. And he didn’t steal it. Deanna mentioned finding it in someone’s office, albeit someone she didn’t think was responsible. If that were true, then George took the laptop out Trisha’s room and stashed it in his office. It hardly seemed a motivated crime.
But this was one of so few available pieces of evidence in the Trisha McAllister story it couldn’t be ignored. Besides, it was reported to the office as a missing item, possibly stolen. And George never mentioned having it. Was he just a weirdo?
Moore keyed himself through the front door and started up the steps toward the security station. Before Moore reached the top step, George stepped into his path and stuck out his hand to stop him. Moore stopped midstep.
“Thanks for helping us out,” George said, holding out a letter envelope. Moore reached out and took it.