Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  Sloane’s mouth curled around words, most of which got away. “Who? Wait. What?”

  Sirens. Definitely sirens now. The sound spiraling into the foreground. Rising up the stories like hot air.

  Corey separated from the group and let herself into an unoccupied office. She pressed her nose to the window. “There’s a fire truck down there,” she reported. Her hands left smudges on the glass. “A couple police cars. And an ambulance.”

  Beatrice had hung up. Deep parentheses burrowed into either side of her mouth. The line chirruped. “Bobbi’s calling.” She shoved her fingernails in between her teeth. Her cheek twitched. “Should I answer?” She looked across the desk to Sloane. Sloane pressed her hair back from her forehead. Her blazer hiked awkwardly.

  “Anna, check Ames’s office.” Sloane was already hustling down the east half of the hall. “Hold on, Beatrice,” she called. “Grace? Ardie?” She stuck her head in each of their offices. Both empty. She returned.

  “He’s not in there,” Anna informed them, grimly.

  Corey—“I said that there’s an ambulance down there. You don’t think he’s alive, do you? Do you think he’s alive?” She turned her face from the window, seeking opinions from the group.

  “We don’t know that it’s him.” Sloane’s heartbeat had picked up speed.

  “Bobbi’s calling still.” Beatrice’s hand clutched the cradled receiver. “What do I do?” She looked stricken.

  Sloane took a deep breath, thought, then swiped her cell phone off her desk and tucked it into her jacket pocket. “Give me ten minutes,” she told Beatrice. “I’ll go down there and see what’s going on. Hold tight. Don’t do anything yet. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  * * *

  Red and white lights flashed outside the revolving door. She pushed her way through to where people milled outside the front of the building. Two cops in dark blue uniforms were waving their hands at onlookers and yelling at them to back up.

  Sloane stood on her tippy-toes and shifted a few people to the left for a better view. A white sheet draped over a human-shaped mound on the sidewalk a few feet from the seam of the Truviv building. Sloane glanced around. Was it him? Was it Ames?

  Shit.

  Sloane skirted the crowd to the far side, where fewer people hovered. She was surprised at how orderly everything was, as though the street and those who occupied it had agreed to operate at half-volume. The sirens had been cut. The biggest source of noise seemed to be road traffic and the crackle of walkie-talkies pinned to the hips of policemen.

  She edged around the side, her eyes on the shrouded figure, her heart lodged in her throat. Sloane squatted down to one knee. She pulled out her cell phone and scrolled to Ames’s number. There, she inched as close as she could, and dialed.

  Her breath stilled. A beat. And then the trill of the marimba ringtone floated out from beneath the still, white sheet.

  From a phone that Sloane knew all too well was entombed in a bullet-colored, OtterBox protective case. The cell, intact; the man, not.

  Off, off. She rushed to press the red icon on her screen. The ringing—fuck, the ringing—stopped. Her stomach pruned.

  Ames was dead.

  Ames Garrett had jumped.

  The man had killed himself. Here.

  She had worked for him; she had endured him. She had been angry with him. She had sued him. She’d even kissed him, back in the day. But it was the thought of Ames’s two small children that choked her with a surge of pity.

  Jesus Christ, Ames.

  Why?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  13-APR

  The strangest part was how little happened right at the outset. Events came in snapshots those first few hours. Moments of darkness, then focus as the shutter twisted into a pinhole and then reopened. The first tent-pole event, which was to say the first noticeable climate change that happened when the General Counsel of one of the world’s largest sports brands jumped off an office building, was that everyone who worked on his floor left, scattering like ants from a flood.

  “That was a mistake,” Sloane was being told. In her mind’s eye, the lens had just opened again, bringing into focus the second tent-pole event: detectives. “To let everyone go. Who made that decision?” Detective Diaz was short with thinning, slicked-back hair and a stumpy mustache. His holster tipped down below the curve of his stomach. Beside him, Detective Martin had a shelf of bosom and thick, natural hair that sprung out of a ponytail positioned at the nape of her neck.

  Today the office was operating under only a thin guise of functionality, with staff walking back and forth carrying redlined documents from the printer while ostensibly attempting to eavesdrop. Beatrice glanced over the top of her vestibule every three or four seconds to where Sloane greeted the officers in the hall.

  “Please, come into my office and have a seat.” Sloane gestured for the pair to join her and at once became hyperaware of the mess of papers piled on top of her desk. She took her chair behind the desk and pushed her keyboard closer to the monitor to have more space. “To answer your question, I don’t think that anyone made the decision. I think everyone was just trying to get out of the way.”

  Detective Diaz had thick arms that took some maneuvering to fold across his chest. Wrap-around Oakley sunglasses with mirrored lenses perched on his head. “But you could have insisted everyone stay?”

  “Me, personally?” Sloane considered. “I suppose I could have tried. I’m sorry. I’m sure I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  Grace had been ashen. Sobbing. Katherine was shaky as she tried to help Grace. Sloane’s emotions had been whipping between shock that Ames would jump and fury that he had and horror that she’d maybe had a hand in his decision. Ardie hadn’t pretended to be sad, but she’d noted, almost immediately, that this would change everything.

  “How did you learn about Ames Garrett’s death?” Detective Martin’s hips pushed out from below the armrests. She extracted a notepad from her pocket.

  “I’m sorry, is this—” Sloane rested her elbows, clad in black silk, on the desk. She placed her chin on the backs of her hands. “Do you mind if I ask—is this normal for a suicide?” She pointed to Detective Martin’s notepad. The word—“suicide”—was hard to say out loud. It felt in poor taste. Sloane wondered if there was some other, nicer word she ought to be using instead.

  “We’re investigating all angles, ma’am,” answered Detective Diaz. The grease beads on his forehead reminded her of old cheese.

  “Which means … sorry, I’m not down with the lingo.” She reached into her desk drawer and extracted a legal pad and blue-inked pen. She clicked the pen top with her thumb. “I’ve watched shockingly little Law & Order in my life, considering I’m an attorney.” Nervous laughter bubbled out, a tic that had gone dormant after Derek had told her, in their early years of togetherness, that it made her sound unhinged.

  “That won’t be necessary.” Detective Martin peered down her nose.

  “Hm?” Sloane had just rested the tip of her pen onto the page and glanced up. “Oh.” She dutifully set down the pen, but now didn’t know what to do with her hands.

  “Suicide is one possibility, yes, ma’am.” As she talked, Detective Martin was scribbling down the date at the top of her notepad, followed by Sloane’s name, which she underlined. Twice. “Another was that Mr. Garrett’s death wasn’t voluntary.”

  Sloane’s eyes darted between the two detectives in front of her. “But he jumped off the side of a building.”

  “Like I said, that’s one likely scenario.” Detective Martin had a pretty smile.

  At this point, Detective Diaz leaned forward, elbows to knees, and rubbed his hands together. “Mrs. Glover, there was no note and Mr. Garrett was carrying a surprisingly small amount of life insurance for a man of his position. It’s our job to rule out foul play.”

  Why on earth didn’t Detective Martin want to allow her to write things down? “So then that would indicate—what—a lack of pla
nning?”

  “Maybe.” Detective Martin continued writing. “That does happen.”

  “Mrs. Glover.” Detective Diaz reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a toothpick, which he stuck between his teeth. “There was a scuff on the back of his shoe, a fresh scratch on his hand, and a cut above his right eye. A trace amount of blood—”

  “Still waiting on lab analysis.” Detective Martin didn’t look up at them.

  “—was found on the balcony near where he must have jumped or fallen from. Were any of those injuries that you’d noticed prior?”

  Sloane interlaced her fingers. “No. Not that I noticed, but we hadn’t … we hadn’t spoken in a few days at least.”

  He nodded and took a deep breath that fluttered several of the coarse hairs on his mustache.

  Sloane roosted at the edge of her chair, mouth pursed. And fine, she might as well just say it out loud: “Are you trying to tell me that you think Ames could have been pushed? That’s insane.” Except, even as she said it, she felt that inch of doubt announce itself in the back of her mind. That one percent chance.

  “Usually this is all sorted out in a few days, a couple weeks at most. It’s just with this high profile stuff.”

  “Like we said”—Martin rested the pencil on the pad—“we need to be thorough. Standard procedure.”

  “Of course.” Sloane moved her hands beneath the desk and folded them there while her mind already raced through the questions, anticipating, the way any good lawyer would. Any good lawyer—any lawyer at all, actually—had a duty to tell the truth. But no such requirement existed to volunteer all of it. So how much of it would she tell? How much of it did she even know?

  The lens had already begun to refocus and a new filter colored everything that had happened yesterday. Those hours leading up to Ames’s ending. If there was one thing that Ames Garrett loved, it was Ames Garrett. What had changed? Had anything?

  Detective Martin settled her attention on her. “So, Sloane,” she said. “Let’s start from the very beginning.”

  The Dallas Morning News—April 18: Opinion: How Three Women Pushed a Man Over the Edge

  The feminist witch hunt has claimed its first casualty and, excuse me, but where is the public outcry? In this search for the bogiemen who are supposedly haunting Dallas unchecked, it seems that, just like in Salem, those leading the charge have been allergic to cold, hard facts (likely because there are none or they are too inconvenient to bear repeating), and have instead focused on how those accused are making them feel. It started with an unverified list, moved into lawsuit territory, and has now resulted in a man plummeting eighteen stories to his death. Are we surprised? This country is supposed to protect its citizens from the taking of life, liberty, and property without due process, but what’s transpired in this town is an assault on men’s reputations and I, for one, would like to see justice served against the bullies masquerading as the bullied.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  13-APR

  The night Ames died, Grace had sex with Liam for the first time since the baby. She wore a black lace slip to avoid any confusion about exactly what she had on the menu for the evening’s entertainment. No Lester Holt for you tonight, Liam-baby!

  At no point did Liam think it odd that his wife felt frisky—finally!—on the day that her boss had died. On the contrary, he was happy to dive right in.

  Under normal circumstances, Grace would have said that she and her husband had good sex. She’d never understood her girlfriends who, in their twenties, prattled on about how you could never-ever marry a man with whom you didn’t have great sex. Grace didn’t think she’d ever had great sex. She liked sex. Very much. But great? She figured that if you loved someone, then surely you could sort out the details of mutual satisfaction in the first couple of years. And it wasn’t as if she’d ever had bad sex, either. At least, that had been true. Until that very moment. That moment when she had listened to Liam’s ragged breaths, feeling as though someone were stuffing her insides like a Thanksgiving turkey.

  Want to know what I did today, honey? she thought to ask him as she stared up at his bare chest.

  The sex hurt. There was no way around that. She winced silently. But then again, that was the point. She deserved a bit of suffering. Craved holy penance.

  Afterward, when the parts between her legs felt as if they’d been sandpapered, she slid from the bed and ran a damp towel over her body.

  Liam lounged on the pillow. Tufts of hair stood up from underneath each arm. “Are you okay?” he asked, watching her wet her face in the sink. She pulled a pair of matching J.Crew pajamas from her drawer and tugged them on. “With … everything?”

  Honestly, what was she supposed to think he meant by that?

  “You seem a bit, I don’t know, off.” He tucked the wrinkled sheets around his waist. Really, Liam, do I seem a little off? My, my, aren’t you observant.

  She was being mean. If only in her head.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “You know me.”

  He was a good husband. Dressed impeccably, bought jewelry, cooked dinners, called on his way home from the office each day, took shopping lists to Target. Here she was, defending her own husband to herself.

  He retrieved his cell phone and rested it on his stomach. They both did this: checked their work email up until the moment they went to sleep. “You’re amazing, you know that?” he said.

  She turned from the mirror. “I’m going to go get a glass of water. You want anything?” She sounded the same as always, so the fact that Liam—her dearly beloved—didn’t press her any further was almost entirely her fault. Just like everything else.

  For a moment, before she left, she watched the groove of his shoulder muscle deepen as he stretched across to turn off the lamp on his nightstand. And then it was dark in their bedroom.

  She padded out into the living room. The house at night was artificially cold—their electric bill another luxury in her life, proof that she had no right to complain—and her arms pricked with goose bumps. She found her purse slouched beside the front door. She reached into the middle compartment and pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. Quietly, she opened the front door and sat down on the porch. The paper tube stuck to the moist insides of her lips. She lit the end and breathed.

  As she puffed, she stared out into the night, out at her neighbors’ houses, with their attractive floodlights shining up the trunks of old trees. She wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t seen Ames’s message on her computer screen: I thought we were friends.

  Anything? The same thing?

  Friends.

  There were no answers out here on her porch. She walked to the road and rubbed the butt of her cigarette into the brick mailbox and then flicked it sideways into the bushes. Back inside, she washed her face again and swished mouthwash over her tongue and her teeth. Liam’s breaths were slow and even beneath the covers. She shook him awake. “Liam. Liam,” she whispered. “Emma Kate’s crying.”

  He turned over, his eyes adjusting in the dark. “Huh?”

  She listened.

  “Emma Kate’s crying.” Grace yawned. “Can you go give her a bottle?”

  Liam rubbed the heel of his hand into his eye sockets and propped his torso up with his elbow. “Bottle? Yeah. I can do a bottle.”

  “Thanks,” she whispered. “I stored a couple new bags of breast milk in the fridge.”

  A lie. Grace had stopped breastfeeding three days ago and had hidden a box of premixed formula underneath a tarp in the garage. What other people don’t know can’t hurt them, she thought, almost as a reminder to herself. And then, she went to bed.

  That was two days ago and, since then, she had hardly left.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  14-APR

  The tide had changed the moment Ames’s body hit the concrete. A high-powered PR firm couldn’t have orchestrated a more effective campaign to rehabilitate Ames Garrett’s image than the man’s own death. Ardie got an i
nkling of the aftereffects as early as the next afternoon when she came upon a knot of young associates—all male with pressed khakis and Ivy League rowing haircuts—as they leaned over the candy dish at reception, pinching out Skittles as they talked. “They should be sick,” she heard one of them say; she still didn’t know which one.

  She stopped behind them so that they had to turn and take notice. “Why?” she asked. She would have pretended not to have heard if they’d been older and more influential. “Why should I feel sick?”

  They didn’t try to deny they’d been talking about her. Not just her, but that made it no less personal. Their postures turned unconvincingly unapologetic, chests puffed out as though they would have said the exact same thing to her face. The third man-boy glanced at his friend, Adam’s apple bobbing, more expressive than a penis. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  Ardie gave them a look that would shrivel testicles into raisins, but thought that, when she’d passed, she caught a few nasally notes of stifled laughter.

  Later, she would return to her office and find a blank sheet of paper with the words “bitch” typed neatly across it and wonder if it had been left by the same young associates or if there were that many people in the office who hated her. She didn’t mention the note to anyone.

  It was as though someone had tapped the terrarium display case in which they were living and the glass walls had cracked. What Ames’s death had done was give everyone permission to come to his defense.

  It was dumb luck when she found Katherine alone. The usual influx of group text messages and instant messenger boxes had dried up and so had the ebb and flow of normal office conversation. Ardie believed it was instinct, that they all felt the loaded-gun quality of anything written down between them and thought: Don’t point the barrel at me. The word “liability” screamed in their lawyerly brains. So they’d stopped messaging.