The Will to Die

by Joe Pulizzi

  “Agreed,” Robby said.

  “Of course,” Sam said.

  “Okay, then. Robby, you have the honors.”

  Chapter 22 – The Video

  Robby typed the URL into the browser and hit Enter. The page was blank except for a box in the middle: Password. Robby entered the password exactly as it was written down on the piece of paper from my dad’s office.

  The screen returned blank, same as the first page, this time saying, Enter a Name.

  “What is it, Will?” Robby asked.

  “Try Pollitt,” I said. Robby hit Enter, and nothing happened.

  “Abraham?” I said. Again, nothing happened.

  “Try Will or William,” Sam said. Robby tried both. Nothing.

  “How about Laura or Linnie, my mother’s name,” I said.

  This time, the screen changed. Under Enter a Name, it read, You have one more try or the system will lock. Please call administrator.

  “Are you seeing this, Will?” Robby asked.

  “No, I was looking at the décor. Of course, I’m seeing this. Isn’t there a hint button anywhere?”

  “Not that I can see. Will, if this was meant for you to find, you should know the name your dad would use. One only you would know. Some secret between the two of you. Something you shared perhaps?” Sam asked.

  “My dad wasn’t much of a sharer. We didn’t have any secrets. At least nothing that I can remember.”

  “Didn’t your father collect baseball cards, just like you?” Robby asked.

  That’s it! “God, you’re brilliant.”

  “What?” Sam said.

  “My dad took me to a sports card show years ago. I must have been about five or so. He was looking through the 1957 commons from a dealer and found an absolutely perfect Rocky Colavito card. That was Colavito’s rookie card. The dealer was selling the cards in that box for a dollar each, but the Colavito was worth a hundred dollars. My dad carefully pulled the card out of the stack and took it to the dealer, who immediately saw the mistake. After a bit of back and forth, they agreed to twenty bucks. Then Dad gave him thirty. A few weeks later, Dad took the Colavito rookie to a professional card grader. It came back rated Gem Mint 10, which increased the value tenfold. I’ve never seen my dad so excited about anything in his life. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another card from 1957 rated Gem Mint.”

  “Great story, Will,” Robby said. “So what am I typing in here? And make sure you’re sure because this could be our last shot.”

  “It’s Colavito,” I said, spelling it out for him. “Dad even mentioned it in his will that I should remember the name Colavito. I didn’t think of that until just now.”

  Robby typed it into the space. “Is this correct?”

  “That’s perfect. That has to be it.”

  Robby hit Enter and the screen changed again, this time with a list of dates starting with today’s date and going down, each line a previous day. Robby hit the page down button to the last line.

  “This earliest date is from two weeks ago,” Robby said. “You think he smelled trouble and installed the camera?”

  I ignored the question. “All I want to do right now is see what happened on Sunday, the night he passed away.”

  “Do you want me to watch it first, Will?” Sam said, reaching across and putting her hand on my shoulder. Then she quickly removed it.

  “I can handle it. But thanks.”

  Robby clicked on the day my father passed away. A page loaded that had twenty-four icons, one for each hour in the day, starting at midnight to one a.m. “What time?” Robby asked.

  “I was told it happened late at night, between ten and midnight. Is that right, Sam?”

  “That’s what the coroner said, and right now, we have no reason not to believe him.”

  “Start at eight, just to be safe,” I said to Robby.

  Robby clicked on the icon above eight p.m. to nine p.m. Another browser window popped up with a YouTube-like video screen. Robby hit the play button. The image was of my father’s desk. In the camera view, the desk was at the bottom of the screen with a couple feet free on either side. Dad’s swivel chair and the ledge behind the chair was visible. Robby turned up the sound.

  “Looks like just image,” he said. “There’s sound available, but I’m not getting anything. I’ll fast-forward a bit.”

  The video was counting down from 59:59. There was a forward thirty seconds and back thirty seconds button on each side of the play button. Robby kept hitting the forward thirty seconds button. We would see shadows off to the left side, most likely someone walking down the hall, impeding the light, but no one entered the office. It seemed that, if there were no shadows for a while, thus no movement, the camera paused recording, then picked back up when there was movement.

  “Okay,” Robby said. “Let’s try nine p.m.”

  Robby fast-forwarded through until nine thirty, and my dad entered the room. His back was turned to the camera. He was making a pot of coffee with the old percolator. Then he left the room. Robby hit fast-forward again, and Dad reappeared at 9:50. He poured a cup of coffee into his favorite mug and sat at the desk. He pushed the chair forward and took a quick glance at the camera, almost like he knew we were watching him.

  Someone entered the room from the bottom of the screen. The office door that led to the main entrance. Dad was looking at the person, apparently listening. His coffee mug was on the desk, but he was holding it by the handle. His right hand was under the desk. Suddenly, there was sound crackling through the speakers.

  “Turn it up,” I said to Robby.

  Robby turned up the volume.

  The first part was inaudible. Then you could clearly hear a voice. Jack. The top of his head was in view. He was talking about the call schedule for the rest of the week.

  “Thanks,” my dad said. “Now get home. It’s way too late to be here on a Sunday night.”

  “Well you’re still here,” Jack said.

  “I’m just finishing up some financials. Maybe another hour, and then I’m gone,” Dad said, but his tone was a bit off, and Jack caught it.

  “You okay, boss?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just tired,” my dad said. He paused. “You’ve always been a good friend.”

  “Now don’t get all mushy on me, boss. I already have to go home to my wife, and I’m feeling a bit queasy,” Jack said with a deep chuckle.

  My dad smiled. “Now get out of here.” And Jack was gone.

  Then my dad put his right hand underneath the desk and the sound cut out again. He sat back and raised his head looking at the camera. I could clearly see his eyes. They were the same eyes he had the day my mother passed away. Then he picked up his right hand, made a fist, and proceeded with a circular motion around his heart.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  “That’s sign language. He learned ASL about a year ago. He’s saying he’s sorry,” Sam said.

  My body started to tingle, like watching a horror movie before the climax. I wanted to look away. To leave. But I was frozen to the screen.

  Dad pushed the swivel chair back and stood. He removed something from his pants pocket with his right hand. A piece of paper? A packet of some kind? He opened it slowly, placing it directly above his coffee, and some kind of substance fell into the cup. I had the feeling it wasn’t salt or sugar. He brushed the inside of the paper with his index finger above the cup. He then crinkled the paper into a ball and walked out of the room through the back office door, leaving the coffee mug on the desk.

  He came back through the same door twenty seconds later. He took his index finger and dipped it into the coffee mug, stirring it clockwise three, four, five times, then wiped his finger on his right pant leg. He picked up the coffee mug with his right hand and held it in front of his torso. He took one deep breath, brought the cup up to his lips, and took what looked to be a long drink.

  And he stood there. No sound. Everything was still as a picture, almost as if the v
ideo paused. After what seemed like minutes, but was most likely seconds, his eyes widened, and he fell forward. His left side hit the desk hard, turning him midair, and he landed on his back. All that was left in the image was his lower legs, his shoes pointing up toward the ceiling, and half a broken mug next to his leg.

  Chapter 23 – Spock

  I sank back into the booth.

  “Nothing brightens your day like seeing your father commit suicide.” I thought I was going to be sick.

  “Are you sure he did?” Robby asked. “It could have been sweetener or something and he coincidentally had a heart attack or stroke.”

  “Will’s right,” Sam said. “Abe always took his coffee black. I’m so sorry, Will.”

  “Listen,” Robby said. “If that’s true, there’s a reason behind this. He wouldn’t kill himself unless there was something terrible going on.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better,” I said.

  “Robby’s right,” Sam said. “He set the camera up two weeks ago, so he’s probably giving us fourteen days of clues or information to work with.”

  “It’s more than that,” Robby said. “For whatever reason, your dad needed you to know, without a doubt, that he killed himself. By doing that, we already have some important information.”

  “Robby, you’re brilliant,” Sam said. “You know how we’ve been questioning McGinty’s work as coroner? He did a full autopsy and came back saying the COD was a heart attack. Now we know that the coroner, and whoever else is working with McGinty, didn’t want anyone to know that your father died by poison or whatever that was he put in his coffee.”

  “Good point,” I said. “But why couldn’t he just tell me. Or write something down. Why be so cryptic? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Spock,” Robby said.

  “What?” I said.

  “Spock from Star Trek. I can’t remember which movie it was, but he said something like once you eliminate the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be true.”

  “That’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” Sam said.

  Robby looked at Sam. “Whatever, whoever, doesn’t matter. The point is that it’s impossible Abe just killed himself on video for dramatic effect. He did it for a reason. If that’s true, he couldn’t write all this down or tell you in person. He had to communicate this way. He was being watched.”

  “And Will you said that you couldn’t find the last few months of Abe’s diary installments,” Sam said. “Either he stopped voluntarily because someone was watching him or someone took them or he hid them somewhere for you to find.”

  “Okay.” I paused, trying to collect myself. “Let’s say you’re both right. What’s next?”

  “Well, first,” Sam said, “we need to go through the rest of this video footage and see what’s there. And then we need to get those additional blood samples to my contact at the Clinic and see what we can find.”

  Sam had a good point. There’s no way my father would have gone through the extra work of keeping those samples unless he was planning on using them for something.

  “Robby and I have a meeting in Cleveland first thing Monday. I can take them to your contact at the Clinic. It’s right next to the PopC offices. If someone is tracking our movements, we’ll be able to get them there without leaving a bread trail.”

  “But we’ve got bigger issues,” Robby said. “Like the fact we’re all being tracked right now. We need to assume that our phones are bugged, our cars have tracking devices on them. It’s also likely that our houses are under surveillance. Will, I bet your dad’s house is completely wired up.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But we need to act in a way that shows we don’t know we’re being tracked. We use our phones for normal stuff. We use our cars as usual. Robby, do you still have that crate of phones from the LG marketing pitch we did?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Good. Get three of those. We can communicate with each other while we figure this out. Sam, I’ll come back from Cleveland after our Monday meetings and get one of the phones to you. Robby can program each of our numbers in to make it easy.”

  “What do we do until Monday?” Sam asked.

  “Just try to act normal I guess,” I said. “Don’t trust anyone, but don’t act like you don’t trust anyone.”

  “Great advice,” Robby said, shaking his head.

  “You got a better idea?”

  “No,” Robby said. “Sounds right. But what about calling in the po-po?”

  “I’m guessing the Sandusky Alliance owns the police. They all play Friday poker together or something,” Sam said.

  “Agreed,” I said. “Probably not safe. But I don’t think we have enough evidence to contact my old roommate that works for the Cleveland FBI. He would be our first contact when we have something.”

  “What can I do?” Sam asked.

  “You keep working on any trends you saw at the funeral home with the body count. Perhaps Dad was taking samples strategically and that will tell us something. Can you do that without being noticed?”

  “I think so,” she said. “I already have your dad’s spreadsheets from the last few years, so I’ll start there. As for the samples, I’ll get those ready tomorrow, and I’ll do it in a way no one would notice, even if there’s a camera in the embalming room that I’m not aware of.”

  “Can you imagine the sick freak watching those videos if there is a camera in there?” Robby said with a straight face. “What can I do?”

  “You’re leaving tonight, right?” I asked.

  “Yes. Was planning on it.”

  “You should stop in and visit your insurance uncle in Elyria.”

  “What are you going to do?” Sam asked.

  “I’ll find a place to watch the rest of these videos,” I said. “And I have a meeting with Xena tonight. I’d like to find out more about the Sandusky Alliance, and I have a feeling she knows something.”

  Chapter 24 – The First Date

  Sam left first, going out the way she came. Robby paid the bill and we walked back through the tunnel leading to the mall. We picked up our phones from the locker and zigzagged back to BAM.

  “Should we check if the SUV is still there?” Robby asked.

  We took the elevator back up to the second floor and walked the south side to the front windows. I approached the Harry Potter merch and peeked around it to get a view of the outside.

  “Yep. He’s still there,” I said.

  “Dedicated, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s in line to win asshole of the year.”

  Before heading to the escalator, I grabbed a large BAM shopping bag from the information counter and placed the computer in it. Then down and out the doors we came in.

  “Act like I said something funny,” I said. At that, Robby started to laugh, almost barreling over as we approached the car.

  “A bit much, isn’t it?” I said under my breath.

  Robby took the most conspicuous route back to the funeral home so I could pick up the van, then he headed off to Elyria. I ran in and picked up the keys Jack left for me on Janet’s desk and headed to the van. It took twice as long getting back to Dad’s with the Cedar Point traffic. First weekend of the year, and afternoon rates started at four. I stopped looking for the SUV entirely. I figured it was back there somewhere.

  I felt like I hadn’t eaten all day. I stopped at Chipotle to get a burrito bowl for early dinner. The kid taking my order looked like a clone from the information-desk kid at BAM. Everyone looks the same. I grabbed the order to go and pulled into Dad’s driveway just before five.

  Stepping out of the van, I thought I’d work on just being my normal self, whatever that meant. I called Denise. She was hanging with some friends tonight and seemed relatively okay. Then I called Jess, who was about thirty minutes outside of State College on Route 322. I grabbed the BAM bag with the computer out of the back of the vehicle.

  I tried to act normal once I entered the house,
but all I wanted to do was search for cameras. It felt like an episode of Survivor, without the prize at the end for being the last one standing. I went to the kitchen, pulled a beer from the refrigerator, and sat at the table to eat my bowl.

  I thought seeing the video of my father would bring peace, but it brought the opposite. Suicide? I guess everyone is surprised when someone kills themselves. When I was in college, one of my friends committed suicide, and our entire group of friends was shocked. He was the happiest kid in the world. Apparently not. That’s probably ninety-nine percent of suicide situations. No one ever expects it.

  But my father was a devout Catholic. He believed that taking your own life was a one-way ticket to Hell. No refunds. Even as a last resort, he wouldn’t have taken his own life. But he did. I saw it. He signed that he was sorry, put something into his coffee, and dropped dead.

  Patience, Will. Dad wouldn’t do this without a reason.

  I finished the bowl, grabbed a fresh beer from the fridge, and surveyed the house looking for a safe place to watch Dad’s video footage. The closet in my dad’s bedroom? The guest bathroom? Anything close to the bay lacked a solid Wi-Fi connection, so that was out. My paranoia ruled out every room in the house. I was afraid to even take the computer out of the bag.

  I set the half-finished beer on the counter and headed back to the van. Ten minutes later, I was downtown. I passed Uncle Dan’s office, the waterfront area that my father helped to build, the new police station and the library. I parked the van and headed toward the library entrance. Hours until eight p.m. on Saturday. Nice.

  Two elderly women behind desks were organizing books. They were talking about something they’d seen on the news regarding refugees. I gave them a smile and proceeded to the computers, which were in the same exact spot when Alex and I used to visit the library as high school freshmen. I actually watched him change his Religious Studies grade from a D to an A minus, just like Matthew Broderick did in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

  There were four rows of computers with only two computers being used. There was no one in the third row, and I chose a terminal in the back left.