My Boss is a Serial Killer (34 page)

I finally fell out onto MBS&K’s floor and
through the lobby doors. Lucille looked up from People magazine and
screamed—one can scream with a Southern accent—causing me to scream
in return because she’d startled me so badly. On her feet, our
goddess of gossip raced around her counter to stare at me, and I
gathered my sense of purpose enough to ask, “Where is
Charlene?”

“
Oh mah God, what happened to you?”
shrieked Lucille.

In response to Lucille’s scream, footsteps
scurried toward us, the clack of business-casual heels on tile. I
heard expletives, none of which seemed horrified so much as wildly
entertained. “Holy shit!” “Look at that!” “Is that Carol?” “What
the hell happened?”

“
Charlene Templeton!” I shouted at
Lucille. “Did she come this way? Is she back at her
desk?”

Lucille’s mouth opened and closed for a
moment. Finally she pointed toward the main room, but when I rushed
past her, she announced, “Ah’m calling an ambulance!”

“
Good! Yes!” I blundered on, hearing
more cries of surprise as I went.

Lucille added, loudly, “And Terry Bronk wants
to see you!”

I’m sure you’re thinking that going to
Charlene’s desk was a stupid idea. “She just confessed to murder
and then tried to kill you, Carol,” is what you’re thinking. You’re
probably also wondering what she would be doing at her desk. But
secretaries—particularly ones like Charlene, who have been at it
for a couple decades—have a chip implanted in their heads which
makes leaving before all the work is done very difficult, even in
the most pressing circumstances. I once saw a woman stay at her
desk with a gushing nosebleed, typing with one hand and jamming
paper towels against her nostrils with the other. “Just let me
finish this letter,” she’d said. So finding Charlene at her desk
would not be outside the realm of possibility. I figured at least
she would have come here to get her things before going on the lam,
which was where I would be going, if I were Charlene.

I hurtled into her cubicle, but it was empty.
Behind me, an ancient, technology-impaired attorney named Paul
shuffled to a stop and said, “Carol, can you help me send a
fax?”

“
I’m in such a hurry,” I replied
apologetically. Paul had not looked up at me yet. “I bet one of the
file room clerks could help you out.”

Now the old guy looked at me and frowned.
Perhaps he did not trust his vision. He tried to raise the fax
pleadingly toward me.

Somewhere across the room I heard Junior
Gestapo Brent’s loud, vindictive voice: “Oh, she’s back now?” and I
knew I had to move. To Donna’s office now, ignoring various
interested questions as I passed my coworkers. “Is that blood?”
“Did you know Terry Bronk wants to see you?” “Are you hurt?” “Did
you fall?” And my favorite, “Carol, did you know your head is
bleeding?”

Luckily, being covered in blood and dirt, and
spouting insanity, keeps people from wanting to touch you, so no
one dared to put a restraining hand on me. At Donna’s office door,
I stumbled to a halt and said, “Have you talked to Charlene?”

As she looked up at me, all the blood drained
from Donna’s face. Her hand reached blindly for her phone and
picked it up, holding it in midair as if it might offer some
assistance.

“
Charlene Templeton!” I shouted at
her.

“
Carol!” barked the scariest voice at
MBS&K. No, it was not Terry Bronk. It was Lloyd. I whirled
around with claws bared.

“
Charlene came into the file room,
grabbed a red-rope file off the shelf, and ran out again,” Lloyd
explained. His appraisal of me was no different today, as I stood
wavering and covered with all kinds of interesting gunk, than it
had been on the day I’d curled my hair and put on extra
makeup.

“
She, she,” stammered Donna, “she said
she had an emergency and had to leave.”

“
Well crap!” I yelled at no one in
particular. I hurried back toward the front of the office and
Lucille.

Right into my pathway stepped Junior Gestapo
Brent. He raised a finger to point at me in accusation and victory
but, thanks to horror at my appearance, was unable to complete what
I’m sure had been a well-rehearsed telling-off. I shoved past him.
Behind me he said weakly, “Hey, you can’t come to work looking like
that,” and Donna’s voice came right behind it, “Carol, what’s
happening? Do you need a doctor?”

I did not fully realize until I was back in
front of Lucille that I had picked up a parade of followers: Brent;
Donna; elderly Paul holding his fax; bold Melinda and her groupies
Mary and Daphne; and Lloyd and the timid little file clerk, Eric. I
gave them an unsure glance as I asked desperately, “Did Charlene
come back this way?”

“
Ah haven’t seen her since she came
back from the storage room. Ah’ve called an ambulance. Don’t sit on
the furniture.”

“
Where could she have—” I began, then
to Lucille, “Don’t sit on the furniture?”

“
It’s new. You might bleed on
it.”

“
She took the stairs?” asked Lloyd, who
seemed to be the only one who understood that I wanted to get to
Charlene badly enough that I was willing to run around bleeding to
death to do it.

“
Well, crap!” I shouted again and
pushed toward the elevators. Over my aching shoulder, I added to
Lucille, “Call Detective Haglund at the KCPD and tell him that
Charlene Templeton confessed to me and to get over here as fast as
he can. I’ve got to get down to the garage.”

“
What’s happening?” Donna, Brent,
Melinda, and Eric the File Clerk cried almost simultaneously as we
waited for the infernally slow machine to haul itself back to our
floor.

“
Charlene Templeton told me that she’s
been killing the widows,” I said.

Some of the responses I heard to this comment
were, “You’re kidding,” “You’re crazy,” “You’re full of it,” and
“Your head is really bleeding a lot,” but I’m not sure who said
what because I had closed my eyes to try and gather the focus I
needed to stay coherent for maybe five more minutes. All of us
piled into the elevator, though I think that they were mostly going
along to see what I was going to do next, or how far I’d make it,
and not so much to aid me in any attempts at apprehension.

Leaning against the elevator wall now and
speaking through a furry-sounding haze, I said, “If I’m right,
Charlene’s leaving here with a file full of evidence that she’s
been hoarding. I’m not positive that a case can made against her if
she gets away and destroys it. And if we can’t make a case, then
we’ll never really be able to clear Bill.”

Donna was the only one of the bunch who
wanted to get near me. Standing at my side she said, “Carol, I want
you to sit down. I don’t think you realize how badly you’re
hurt.”

“
I will. In just a minute. Just let’s
get to her first.”

We were in the basement, spilling into the P2
level garage, when I saw Charlene’s red Corolla at the garage
doors, just sitting there, idling. Why, it was almost as if she
couldn’t get out the door. Ha ha.

As a group we approached, with bloody,
bedraggled me at the head. When Charlene finally realized we were
there and focused with horror on my face, I pulled her keycard out
of my pocket and waved it at her.

She flung her car door open and leapt out.
Her car, which had been in “drive,” rolled forward and thunked
loudly against the garage door. Eric the File Clerk hurried over
and leapt inside, nimble youngster that he was, and put the car in
“park” while Charlene stood before me, hands spread.

“
Oh my God,” she said directly to me,
“Carol, I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m sorry I had to hit you, but I
have a right to defend myself.” Now to the crowd she said, “Carol
was accusing me of killing the widows, and I was trying to tell her
that accusing other people wouldn’t keep them from discovering what
Bill had done…but she was so insistent. She’s determined to protect
her boss!”

“
Is this the file you meant?” asked
Eric, lifting the red-rope file off the front seat of Charlene’s
car. He yelped and dropped it, when what appeared to be a hunk of
hair fell out. Looking a little queasy, he got out of the
car.

Charlene looked at him sharply and then
turned her extremely annoyed eyes back to me. “Give me my damned
keycard. You’re always doing this. If you use something, put it
back where you found it. It’s not hard. But all the time, you’ve
got the high-volume, three-hole punch just sitting on your desk
when it should be back in the file room, or you’ve got the packing
tape stuck in your drawer—”

“
What do you mean, all the time?” I
demanded, plucking her card out of her reach when she made a grab
for it. “One flipping time I had the three-hole punch, and I wasn’t
finished with it!”

“
You never fill out your docket sheets
correctly! Plus you’re a mouse-clicker; didn’t anyone ever teach
you how to use a keyboard?”

I drew back in shock—what a nasty thing to
say. I cried back, “Well, you’re the food bandit, and I’ve known it
for months!”

“
Shut up!” Charlene gasped at
me.

There was suddenly hushed silence in the
crowd surrounding us.

“
Ladies,” Donna said loudly, “I think
what we need to do right now is have everyone just come inside, and
we’ll wait for the police and Carol’s ambulance to come. Let’s go
back upstairs now.”

Charlene glanced toward the glass exit door
as if she might run for it. But, let’s be serious here, a nearly
fifty-year-old, out-of-shape secretary was not going to be able to
outrun any of us, except for me in my present state and elderly
Paul with the fax in his hand. Brave little Eric the File Clerk,
who had stopped the car and touched the hair-filled file, was now
placing himself between her and the door because he had decided to
continue his fine tradition of heroism.

“
Good,” said Donna, as if she had
understood both Charlene’s intent and her rethinking of it. “Come
on. Everybody inside.”

“
Yes, let’s all go inside and wait for
the police,” announced Junior Gestapo Brent, probably so he could
claim that his cool-headed thinking had saved the day. If I fell
against him, I could get blood all over his shirt and tie…but no, I
didn’t like the thought of touching him.

The elderly attorney Paul turned away,
murmuring something about someone maybe helping him send his fax,
and Eric the Heroic File Clerk went to take care of Charlene’s car.
I vaguely saw Charlene snatch her arm away as Junior Gestapo Brent
tried to take her in hand.

Donna gently suggested, “Carol, let me help
you.”

“
Oh, that’s okay,” I said. I had quite
suddenly lost my ability to remain upright. “I think I’ll just wait
here.”

I did not crumple, precisely, but I did sink
with unexpected grace (unexpected to me, anyway) to the garage
floor. The floor was hard and filthy. Still, it seemed cool, and I
thought I might like to rest my aching head against it. There were
voices all around me, but until one of them said something
interesting or useful, I thought I could just tune them out.

If you’ve ever been to the emergency room,
particularly if you’ve been escorted there by a couple of
football-league sized paramedic women, you know that the medical
community enjoys hearing the story of your injuries almost as much
as a bunch of detectives at the Kansas City Police Department
might. But after the third or fourth time I said, “My coworker
beaned me twice with a file cabinet bracket and then pushed a shelf
on top of me,” it didn’t even sound like the truth any more. I got
a lot of significant “looks” from my listeners.

The paramedic women, who rescued MBS&K
from the chance that I might bleed on the furniture, exchanged so
many “looks” that I thought they might drop me off at the local
insane asylum rather than the hospital. I was willing to forgive
them because they gave me a whopping dose of pain medication and
let me lie down on their gurney—at that point, they could have left
me on the side of the highway and I would have been at peace. I
didn’t even notice them strapping immobilizers onto my neck. I was
breathing and drugged, and that’s what was important.

At the Emergency Room, I was forced to rouse
myself out of the drug stupor and tell four doctors, eighteen
nurses and seven radiologists the same blunt sentence. Their
reactions were even less supportive. People wanted to know why my
coworker would do such a thing. “That’s a damned good question,” I
would respond. I was given a CAT scan, and they x-rayed me from
head to toe, which took forever. The two lacerations on my head
were stitched closed. Though the young intern who did the stitching
assured me that it had taken a total of seventeen stitches, I will
bet money that it was more like seventy. In a strange turn of
events, the anesthetic he used to numb my head was more painful
than the fishhook he kept cramming into my cranium.

When he was finished, I begged for more
painkillers, and they were given to me willingly. Apparently I
looked a fright. I know that my entire body was beginning to feel
like I’d been dropped from a tall building onto a parking lot and,
when I dared to look down at myself, I saw some startlingly large
bruises forming on my arms and legs.

I was wheeled back into a room that looked
temporary, helped onto a reclining examination table, and informed
that I should make myself comfortable while I waited for all those
scans to come back. I looked up to the nurse who had brought me
here, a small dark woman with a reassuringly sweet face and a name
tag that said “Serita,” and asked, “Where are my clothes?”