Remember Me (43 page)

Brian L. MacLearn

company. I want to have them in my possession before I do.”

Again, it was a marginal lie, but effective. “I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes at most.”

“Do you need any help? Would you like me to accompany

you?” Patrick asked.

“No I can do it. Thanks anyway, but just keep doing what you’re doing and make sure the next guy on watch is on top of things—the way you are!”

“Will do Mr. Warren,” Patrick answered.

Patrick handed me my wallet back and stepped away from

my car. I let out my breath in a long sigh. I rolled my shoulders to get the stress out of them as I drove around E.M.J. to the back of the building. Not one perimeter light was on. In the darkness it was hard to see past the end of my headlights.

I could not make out much of the destruction to my company. What I did notice was that several of the windows had no glass. Even in the dim illumination of the car’s headlights, the brick exterior portions of the warehouse had a smoky color. I still had my window down from my conversation with Officer Farnshegen. From outside, I could smell the smoke along with the odor of burnt oil. It might just be my imagination, but I could swear I smelled a hint of burnt skin too.

I parked the car in front of the door to the trailer. I kept the headlights directed on the door. The big padlock was firmly in place and as far as I could tell, undisturbed. I opened my glove compartment box and took out the zipper case that contained the car’s manual. In a zipper pouch in the back, I kept a spare key for the warehouse and one to the trailer’s lock. With everything on my mind, I had neglected to grab the set of work keys from atop the dresser in my bedroom when I had dropped Emma off. I removed the trailer’s key and opened my car door.

The key slipped easily into the lock and with a quick twist it popped open.

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I took my emergency flashlight from the car and turned

it on once I was inside of the trailer. The fire had consumed mostly the front side of the warehouse, but the inside of the trailer had a damp feel to it. I chalked it up to my over-worked imagination. The main reason for the new concrete foundation was that Stebben and I wanted to keep the access hatch to the old storage pit undetectable and only accessible from within the trailer. I used the beam of the flashlight to seek out the release mechanism on the work counter. It would allow me to swing open the work counter and expose the trapdoor below.

The work counter sat opposite a small kitchen area. When it slid away from the wall, it blocked off the back of the trailer.

The counter locked in place at the floor. A wastebasket sat next to the work counter. I set it aside to reveal the linoleum floor underneath. You had to look closely to see that the tile under the waste basket was slightly brighter than the other tiles. On top of the counter I moved my coffee cup and the coaster it sat on. They concealed a knothole button. You pushed in the knothole button and then stepped on the pressure sensitive tile.

Done in the opposite order, nothing would happen. The best kept secrets are sometimes hidden best in plain sight.

I sprung the catch and pivoted the counter away from the wall. I used the padlock key on my car key chain to unlock the padlock securing the slightly recessed trapdoor. I set the padlock on the counter and lifted the trapdoor. It exposed the three steep steps down to the hatch cover. The old hatch cover to the pit had been replaced with one that could easily be maneuvered out of the way after it was unlocked. I kept the keys to the trapdoor and the hatch cover with my car keys. I believed it was best to make sure there was some separation between the different keys. Stebben had the other set, and I didn’t know where he kept his. I was so focused on retrieving the video tapes that I never heard the rustling sound behind S 325 S

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me. My foot had just found placement on the first step when I felt a wisp of air movements around my head. I sensed the danger a fraction of millisecond before I was knocked unconscious and everything went dark.

“Mr. Warren can you hear me?” Patrick said, as he gently shook me to bring me back out of the blackness.

The instant I became somewhat aware, I felt the room

starting to swim around me. It was like waking up with a two-day hangover. I opened my eyes and immediately had to roll on my side to vomit. I couldn’t think or even speak. The only thing I could do was to try and not pass out again.

“Easy Mr. Warren, someone nailed you good on the back

of the head. It’s been about thirty minutes since you drove back here. I was getting anxious when you hadn’t returned, so I came to check on you.”

“Hmmph,” was all I could muster and the world went black once more.

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Don’t say goodbye.

June 8th, 1990

The rain started
to fall, and then the clouds really opened up and it poured buckets. I flipped the windshield wipers on high, but they could scarcely keep up and let me see the road ahead. It really didn’t matter; I was the fifth car in a procession of over thirty vehicles. We were all following the lead car, a blue and black hearse. I was alone in my car. It was not surprising that no-one chose to ride with me. The last week had been one for the ages. “Too bad,” I mused, “that it couldn’t have been one of enlightenment rather than the endless onslaught of character assassination.” I had to give J.W. Winslow credit.

He attacked me where I had least anticipated it and been even less prepared for—my personal image.

After my two days in hell with insurance investigators,

police detectives, and the ongoing probe by the F.B.I., it was enough for most of the people I cared about to distance themselves from me. Conspiracy theories abounded in the

newspapers, some better than others, and a few were even pretty close to the truth. Generally, they had the players wrong, but the motives they came up with were amazingly

accurate. In most of them, I played the lead role. Sadly, it wasn’t the hero’s role, that honor was bestowed on Stebben. It seems that there were a few irregularities in my finances and my company’s insurance policy had recently been rewritten to cover more than we actually owned. The Fire Marshall had S 327 S

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completed his report…Arson without a doubt. Everyone was a potential suspect, but I was at the top of the list. During the interviews of my employees, the questions would always turn to my character, and if they knew of any reason that I would want to destroy my own company. They may have defended

me, but it did the job of creating doubt about me. I didn’t blame them at all—the fault was mine alone.

I was never personally charged, but still remained under suspicion of coercion. My alibi for the day of the explosion was airtight, a wrinkle that J.W. probably wasn’t too happy with. The police talked to several employees at the grocery store in Cedar Falls, and they confirmed I had been there. And as of last Saturday, the only reliable and corroborating witness I could use in proving the theft of our chip had died suddenly.

It didn’t matter that I had been attacked and knocked unconscious in my trailer by an assailant. There had been no police report turned in to bear witness to my assault. Who would have thought the conscientious officer, Patrick Farnshegen, was not officially recognized by any law enforcement jurisdic-tions. The West Des Moines police department had me spend hours going over mug shots, to substantiate my claim, and to try and pinpoint my imaginary officer. The massive knot on the back of my head didn’t seem to be enough. In the beginning, the injury worked against me. They used it to show that I had been trying to be deceitful. To make matters worse, I didn’t go to a hospital to be treated. I chose to instead keep the incident under wraps. My visit to the site had not been approved, and there were no witnesses to come to my defense. It wasn’t until several days later, after the incident at the trailer, that I learned the truth about Officer Farnshegen.

After the hit to the back of my head and my inability to stay awake for longer than a minute, I forced myself to sit up.

Sure that I wasn’t going to pass out, I gathered my collective S 328 S

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thoughts and loose brain matter from the imaginary floor in my head. I crawled to the edge of the trap door and looked down. The hatch was open. It wouldn’t do me any good to

check for the video tapes—they were gone. I had been so na-

ïve. Patrick had played his part perfectly, helping me with my injury and showing genuine concern. I did what I thought was a convincing con job on Patrick, and all the while I was the one being conned. He protested when I asked him not to contact the Department about the incident. In the end he said he had to, but he would be careful with the story he wrote up. He even offered to take the heat for letting me have access to the trailer. I thanked him, and he helped me to my car. I drove home and did my best to stay awake to avoid a concussion.

The actual police officer assigned to watch the warehouse was found, tied and gagged, in the trailer the next morning. He had no recollection of what had happened to him. His name was Officer Mike Clayton. He couldn’t implicate me, but he also couldn’t exonerate me either. Stupidity must run deep in my blood for I can think of no other reason that I had been so badly out-thought. I know it’s a harsh statement, but my current state of self-loathing was plentiful enough to have me hating the world.

The video tapes were gone and the equipment had been

destroyed. They used acid to ruin the internal parts. My initial guess had been that Tom was the culprit. It was easily dismissed when I learned that after he left the hospital he’d gone to get something to eat and drink. Not ten minutes after I left he was back and stayed at the hospital the whole night.

It was another lie of Officer Farnshegen. He was manipulating me, telling me that Tom had been to the site. If that had been part of J.W. Winslow’s master plan to take the focus off Tom, it worked perfectly. With my comments and his alibi, Tom was never seen as a suspect. It only made it look worse S 329 S

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for me. The Syncat Pro and Syncat 2 chip were both destroyed in the fire and the fake cell phone chip was lost as well. The inside of the safe was empty, just like I knew it would be. The word of our prized chip being stolen leaked out to the press.

The conspirator theorists bet that our highly awaited Syncat 2 chip was flawed and not as good as our competitor’s chip.

Having lost our edge, I turned to insurance fraud to stave off the inevitable financial ruin of E.M.J. The proof was gone as was the only other person who might have been able to help defend my reputation.

The rain suddenly let up, and instantly the sun broke out from behind the porous rain clouds. Pools of water lined the avenue as we made the last turn before Abram’s Cemetery.

It was one of the oldest and largest places for internment in Omaha, Stebben’s hometown. Some say it was a miracle he

survived as long as he did. Only Amy dragging him out of the warehouse had given him any chance to live at all. The day after the explosion, the doctors had suggested he was making slight progress, and then suddenly he had an epileptic-like seizure. The doctors official statement indicated that his death had been brought on by the trauma and chemicals he inhaled during the explosion. They nearly managed to get him stabilized before his vital signs ultimately weakened and all attempts at resuscitation failed.

“It was for the best,” became the mantra of the staff. “His life would have been painful, and his recovery marginal at best.

Who knows what brain damage he might have sustained or

even if he’d come out of the coma.” (I knew better.) There was no doubt in my mind that the reaches of J.W. Winslow and the family were immense. I had played my cards and then watched as my trump card had been seized by a “Joker.” Winslow had changed the game without telling me. He had set me up perfectly. I now even had doubts on whether Tom was a part of it S 330 S

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or not. I was suddenly an outcast and all alone…

Yesterday, I had my last meeting with Gregory Gallagher

of American Commercial Insurance. His tune had changed

since our first meeting. Once he’d heard from the WDFD that arson was suspected, I’d become his prime target of suspicion.

He had now determined that I was not involved in any capacity. This was due mainly to Stacy, and her attention to details.

The biggest concern in paying our claim and for also denying it, was the recent call to the local insurance office, supposedly by me, to increase our coverage by two-fold on the business equipment. My proported call had been followed up with an inventory record of falsified equipment purchases. After a quick investigation by American Commercial Insurance, and with the proof in Stacy’s documentation, he had determined I was not a part of the insurance fraud. He now believed me to be an unwilling decoy. Once I had been removed from the list of suspects, and with Stebben’s death, it began to appear more likely that the motive for arson had been to steal our chip. The insurance policy itself did not exclude arson, but did have clauses to deny payment on Acts of War, Civil Unrest, and any damages due to negligence or self-initiated destruction. Stebben’s death, my attack, and the missing chip began to build a strong case for industrial espionage as the motive.

Stacy had found a way to circumvent all of the hassle. Her attention to detail saved our proverbial rear ends. When it was determined that we had been the target of a larger conspiracy, then American Commercial started treating us with more concern. We would be compensated for the actual cash value of the building and equipment loss. We would also receive a monetary influx of cash to use for six months of payroll during reconstruction, or for two months if we decided against rebuilding. It would be the latter, E.M.J. was officially over.

My heart wasn’t in it to try again. Amy’s current state of health S 331 S