They both said their goodnights, with Deely sealing himself in his study while Abby ran off to Meri’s room with files in hand ready to get her mind focused on something other than Kat.
Chapter 8
Abby rushed into her room expecting to see Meri. It had gotten pretty late, but she still wasn’t there. She saw Meri’s laptop open on the dresser and walked over to see the keyboard. Each key was covered in small bumps and the letters that they corresponded to. Abby had always wondered how a blind person used a computer. She actually didn’t think that they could. She now saw how completely silly that thought was considering Meri seemed to be some kind of computer genius.
Abby sat down in front of the dresser and got to work. Cassalian didn’t leave much to the imagination about the kind of business it was. It was a simple security firm. Their website had several smiling faces and testimonies that read “Best choice in security!” or “Could not have been happier with their services.” They seemed to only offer anything from security guards to full home security systems. Everything about the website seemed normal. She looked through every section, coming upon the ‘About Us’ tab that read:
“Founded in 2040, Cassalian Corporation has always prided itself on trust. The people’s trust in us is and always has been our top priority…”
Abigail scrolled down past the history of the company to the CEO, Julius Cassalian. He was young with slicked back black hair that covered his entire head and he had an almost serene smile as if he was trying to force his calmness onto you. Abby took note of every part of the man’s face in case it’d come in handy later. And soon decided that she was getting all she was going to get from the website. The best way she was really going to find out what the company was up to was probably from the inside.
She picked up the folders and started reading through Pamatha’s file. A square photograph sat clipped to the inside of the folder. The woman’s hair was pale orange and her skin was covered in dark freckles popping out against her white skin. But Abby really couldn’t stop looking at her eyes. They were snake like. Thin dark brown eyes so that you couldn’t exactly see her pupils. It made her look sneaky and intimidating not being able to completely see into her eyes.
Pamatha Simmons. Red hair, blue eyes, 28 years old, 5’6”, 136 lbs., married. Working for Cassalian for two years now. Abby could see where Deely had made notes on the page for which details he thought were the most important. He’d written, “petite,” “new to company.” Maybe he figured that she’d be an easy way in because she wasn’t too ingrained in the company yet. But then again, she could also be so new that she doesn’t want to lose her job. Abby felt a bit guilty that one of them could lose their job just for Deely’s plan. Everyone couldn’t know the dirty business that went on there. Could they?
Abby kept flipping through the pages, seeing a few months-worth of text messages and emails that didn’t mean anything to her. Unless asking your husband to stop by the store on his way home was some kind of code for “take my money and hide what I’m doing,” Abby couldn’t see any way that Pamatha knew what was really going on. Her messages were followed by pictures of her, each in a different setting. The most incriminating being at the end, her and a man with a strange sort of baby face at a dinner table in a fancy restaurant.
Deely’s notes made a circle around the man’s face and in big letters right next to it, he wrote “NOT HER HUSBAND.” Abby turned the photo over to see more notes Deely had taken relating to the man who was barely more than a boy. He was 17 years old, which explained his very young appearance. Someone had to teach him to look like a man somewhere along the way. Another picture of the boy was on the back of the photo too with full details of where Deely was able to find him, at some other scummy online escort service and Abby didn’t feel bad about how they’d be affected anymore. Obviously Deely had chosen both of them for a reason.
She looked toward the next folder only expecting the worst as she opened it. John Patel. Brown hair, dark brown eyes, 53 years old, 5’ 10,” 350 lbs., divorced. Working for Cassalian for 12 years. Being with the company for that long, he had to know what was going on. In fact, he was probably one of the people that needed his dirty laundry hidden just as much as the others. The man didn’t look like much. His picture exuded nothing but lack of confidence and nervousness. His text messages and emails, like Pamatha’s didn’t reveal much of anything illegal or secretive.
Most of his messages revolved around seeing his children and those messages hardly seemed to garner any kind of reply. Then his photos seemed wildly more incriminating than Pamatha’s with several pictures of him with youngish looking women at bars or fancy restaurants. Each girl’s face was circled and had an arrow that pointed to the back of the photo. And like Pamatha’s boy toy, each of them had an accompanying description about where they came from. Abby didn’t feel one shred of remorse for anything that happened to them. And she fell asleep thinking of how she could help Deely.
The next morning, as promised, Deely brought Abigail along with him on his daily excursion. They made their way out of Section Four and stopped and continued on foot somewhere in the middle and moved on to Section Two, which was farther east than Abigail had ever been. The skyline disappeared behind them as they kept walking toward the suburbs, seeing big house after big house and a few gated communities. The houses here were far grander than the ones she’d witnessed in Section One. The sidewalks were well taken care of; the streets were pothole free; even the trees were aligned in a way that even nature couldn’t conjure.
Abby followed Deely closely until he suddenly stopped making her run into his back.
“Ow...Jeez walk much?” she whined.
“Oh, suck it up. You’ll be alright.” He pointed diagonally across the street at a medium-sized dull yellow house. The yard work was refined just like the houses next to it. They all looked like some OCD fairy had swooped in and had perfectly arranged each blade of grass and painted each home the exact same color, which just made it that much harder to focus on the property Deely was pointing at.
“That,” he continued, “is Pamatha’s place.” He pointed at the house labeled “536.” The door to the property suddenly opened.
It was unmistakably Pamatha with her disheveled ginger hair falling over her eyes and in a comfy looking puffy purple robe. A small Chihuahua came running from behind her out onto the neat lawn excitedly rolling and jumping around on it. Truly appreciating something that a human would find to be just ordinary. The dog sniffed around a bit before deciding where to empty its bowels and then ran back inside without an ounce of remorse for the sizable shit it left for Pamatha to clean up. She bent down with a purple doggy bag in hand and picked the up poop throwing it in the garbage bin in the driveway and turned to go back in, closing the front door behind her.
Abby was confused. What was the point of seeing that? “What are we doing?” she asked.
“We’re just watching her.”
“For what? I don’t see how watching her pick up dogshit will help us?”
“We’re waiting for her to go to work.”
“And then what? Are we gonna break in when she’s gone?” Abby felt like she sounded a little too excited by the prospect of breaking into someone’s house, but she was really excited to do anything to help even if it meant breaking the law.
“Do you really think someone who works for a security firm wouldn’t have the best home security available?”
“Good point… Then what are we looking for?”
“Just trying to figure out who’s our best way into Cassalian. I’ve been watching her for a few weeks now, and I’ve found out that the husband doesn’t live there anymore. He comes around sometimes. But I only see him here for at most a day or two. Maybe I could seduce her,” he joked, “but she is kind of a tight-ass.”
Abby rolled her eyes. “Well, what about the other guy? John.”
“He’s
a real slob, but a divorce and fierce custody battle will probably do that to you.”
Deely and Abigail continued watching Pamatha’s house until she walked outside again this time exchanging the fluffy robe for a formal pantsuit that looked a bit baggy on her small frame. As she walked out, the dog barked from behind the door eventually settling down when it realized that she wasn’t going to be back very soon. Then, Pamatha got into her glider and flew down the road that Abby and Deely had walked down and took a left straight out of their sights.
They began walking much farther past Pamatha’s house. It took 20 minutes for them to reach the parking lot of a motel, The Sunnyview Hotel.
“Is this really where he lives?” Abby asked taking in the entire scenery. The parking lot was cracked, and the lines were faded as if the lot had been neglected for at least more than a year or so. The motel only had two floors and a flat roof with some of the tiles falling off. Some of the windows were boarded up and taped with “CAUTION” in big letters written all over the yellow plastic ribbons. One lonely glider rested at the front of the parking lot looking about as old as Deely’s.
“Yep. He manages the place. Not very well, as you can see. That’s him, in there.” Deely pointed toward a small room at the entrance of the motel. A short and stocky middle-aged man sat at the counter looking despondent as he sat there hoping for someone to actually come in. “He’s much more of a mess than Pamatha could ever be. He’d probably give her nightmares.”
“Why isn’t he going to work right now?” Abigail wondered remembering how timely Pamatha had been in leaving her house to get to work.
“He got moved down to part-time. The whole time I’ve seen him, I’ve only been able to find him here. But of course, I don’t really have time to stand here all day and follow him everywhere. If he even does go anywhere.”
“Are we just watching him too?”
“Yeah. We’re gonna continue watching both, until I can figure out who’s the easiest target and how in the hell, we’d even get them to get us inside that building.”
Abby shrugged also not really knowing how or what they could do to start “Deely’s Grand Plan,” which is what she’d began calling it as she kept realizing how infeasible the plan was right now. Deely hadn’t even told her the specifics of what they were going to do, after they found a way in.
After about 15 more minutes of watching the sad man, Deely decided it was time to head back to the restaurant. They walked all the way back to the glider and returned home with Abigail taking her mind off Pamatha and John for now. They couldn’t be worried about them right now when there were more pressing cases to attend to. She remembered the case files she had yet to look at. She’d been so wrapped up in the whirlwind of Deely’s hero complex, letting herself get swept right off her feet with the hope that she could help in an immediate way that she’d forgotten about all the places she needed to go look at. They were the only thing she could really focus on, for now.
Chapter 9
The next few days, Abby spent all her time in Section One, which turned out to be much bigger on foot than she had anticipated. She never exactly had any issue with all the walking. It just took her legs a while to get used to the increased activity. The first place must’ve just been a test for her because this time Deely didn’t include any of his helpful instructions. Abby actually had to find these places even if they went outside the data range of the GPS. The GPS would take her down a long, winding street and when she didn’t end up at the exact address she wanted, she figured that the house must be at least within a mile of where she was standing.
In the beginning, it took much longer for her to track down the exact location having to circle back constantly whenever she stopped paying attention to the addresses around her. By the third house, she was able to get it down to an artform, reaching a fairly well-made house that rested in the middle of a field. Flowers lined the brick walkway up to the front door. And the porch was filled with everything that Abigail had only ever seen in home magazines: the furnished porch swing with tan pillows, decorative pots filled with dirt hung at the corners. Not one plant looked malnourished in any way. A stark contrast from Mother’s porch that had cracked pots with dried up dirt in them and no living plant to be seen. Or at least, Abby had never seen a plant there. She’d figured that they wasted away before she set foot there. Just another example of how Mother didn’t have the capacity to take care of anything.
Abby did what she always did. Hid behind brush and snapped pictures. Although, she’d gotten a bit more thoughtful about taking them. Going all the way around a house sometimes and trying to find some window that would let her see inside. But it was rare that she’d ever see anything incriminating through them. Though her tactic for seeing inside hadn’t changed much, it was probably the best it could be. She swung a rock at the window and a small, innocent looking old lady walked out. It was hard for Abby to believe that this woman who was so much different than her mom was also morality-wise exactly the same.
Having finished up her work for the day, Abby headed back to Ol’ Mike’s going straight toward Deely’s office at 4:30 p.m. sharp to hand over all the information she’d collected. He’d always sit there and scan through the pictures simply nodding as he went through each one letting an occasional “Mhm” slip out. But something was different this time. As Deely was looking through the pictures, nodding as he usually did, he stopped and stared at one photo much longer than he should’ve. Abby waited for the nod or the “mhm,” some kind of affirmation of her hard work.
“Fuck.” Deely sighed.
“What?”
“I know her.” He pointed at the small, old lady opening the door to her well-cared for house, looking for the culprit who threw the rock at her door.
“So, what?”
“So, I can’t do anything with this information. She knows my face.” He began moving the pictures related to the old lady toward a folder that said, “Save for Later.”
“Wait!” Abigail grabbed his arm with much more strength than she knew she had. “What if I go, instead?”
“You? Go and pretend to be a client?”
“Yes,” she nodded firmly, truly believing it wasn’t such a crazy idea. After all, there’s no way that it could be any more dangerous than what she’d already been through.
Deely sat for a moment looking as if he’d at least entertain the idea. “Ok. What would you even say to this little old lady?”
“Uh… I’m here for the girl?”
“No. From the exact moment that she opens the door, you’d have to greet her, like it’s a normal business transaction.”
“I’d say hello. I’m looking for a date.”
“And how would you explain how you even knew where to find the house?”
Abby was at a loss. She honestly never thought about how anyone knew where to find her. And that seemed to make up Deely’s mind.
“Exactly. That’s not your job. Here,” he went under his desk to grab another handful of files for her to work on next, “just stay focused on doing this. You’re doing a great job.”
Abby couldn’t even accept the compliment. She felt like she was being brushed off, like whoever was in the old lady’s house was being brushed off as just a small matter. She didn’t attempt to argue with Deely. She’d already made up her own mind about it. She was going to help whoever was in there, no matter what Deely said. Without another word, Abby took the files and went straight to her room and waited.
After a few hours, Abby couldn’t hear anything from Deely’s study but Meri still wasn’t anywhere to be found. Hopefully, she’d be gone until Abby was back.
Abby grabbed a small, girly backpack from Meri’s closet and stuffed the dress that she hadn’t worn in weeks inside with the pair of slightly muddied heels at the bottom. The entire restaurant was dark as she stepped out of her room and was only greeted by the dim street
lights from outside. It took all her focus to tiptoe down the hallway while also not crashing into anything. Her careful steps had gotten her all the way to the door, where she was unable to avoid the inevitable ring of the invisible doorbell.
“And where do you think you’re going, Miss Abigail?” Charlie, like always, jumped out of nowhere from behind the counter, giving Abby a small startle even though she did expect at least one thing the go awry in her poorly pieced together plan.
“I…” She trailed off thinking to lie to him, but she didn’t see the point. If her plan went south, she at least wanted one person to know what had happened to her. “I’m doing Deely’s job for him,” she said confidently though she could already hear the earful she’d get even if she came back successful in her plan.
“Oh.” Charlie didn’t seem to react positively or negatively to what she said. But Charlie did appear to know a bit of what she meant by that because he opened the cash register and pulled out a few hundred bills and held them out in front of him. “I think you’ll need this then. You do actually need money to pay for escorts, ma’am.”
Abby walked over to the counter and smiled at Charlie, “Thanks.”
“It’s never a problem, miss.”
Abby finally headed out, misjudging how cold it would be at this time of night. But, she continued to the transit station, this time absolutely nobody was in sight. She guessed that Downtown wasn’t really as lively as it sounded. She headed straight for the public restroom and switched into her dress clothes, making sure to place the cash inside her bra. She left what she was wearing before in the backpack in the back corner of the last stall.
She re-followed the steps she took earlier today, getting into the transport tube to Section One and then finding her way down the same long, winding street as before and to the front of the old lady’s picturesque property. The lights were still on, which was a good sign. Abigail hadn’t even thought if a lady that elderly would still be awake. But it still seemed she was.
Abigail Page 6
