Take the Fourth (35 page)

Chapter 55
 

W
hen he woke he felt refreshed, even before his bathroom visit. The drugs worked. They always worked. There was no feeling of guilt or pain, no usual remembrance of the demons that haunted him. The usual was that almost every night he would slip out of consciousness and into the frightful worlds of his dreams. Almost every night his demons would return as his mind softened the logical boundaries of the physical world. He hated to sleep for he hated to dream. Most of the time they started innocently enough, with the mind shifting from glimpses of his daily mundane routine to the snapshots of the entertainment world of television. He flipped between the projected cerebral sequences like changing the channels on the TV, stopping only when something caught his attention. He stopped mainly for two things and like most men it was cars and women but in his case it was always one car, a 74 Mustang, and one little six year old girl.

The 74 Mustang was one that his mother left behind. It was bright red or 2B based on Ford’s color codes that year, with spots of rust around the wheel wells and fenders, pitted chrome bumpers, a white interior that had seen better days, and a white vinyl top—that too had seen better days. To the eyes of most it was a piece of shit, to the eyes of the beholder it was the shit. When he slipped behind the steering column and turned the key in the ignition he was easily transported into another world, his world, one where his demons simply faded with the static sounds of pop music filling the interior from the center dash speaker. With the music playing it washed away the sounds of a poorly maintained vehicle, he never heard the clunks, the knocks, the rattles. The car always started and got him from point “a” to point “b” in what he believed in “style”. He loved that car; he loved it almost as much as he loved his passenger.

His passenger was the little blonde hair, blue eyed, six year-old, doll baby, that he truly loved. She was cute as a button and when both his parents vanished from the earth she was all he had left in the world. His father passed from this world with the help of a mid-morning heart attack at the plant. By the time his mother and him made it to the hospital all that was left was a lifeless shell of a fifty-two year old man, which seemed fitting since even alive he was lifeless. He would come home from the factory, have dinner, and plop himself in front of the boob tube. Not once did he remember his father asking him how his day was or playing catch with him in the front yard, nor his mother for that matter. His mother died shortly there afterwards of lung cancer, which was not a stretch by any means. She was a three pack a day non-filter camels. She looked like she was sixty though only forty-eight when the Grim Reaper dialed her number for the slab. He was just sixteen, a junior at the time, when he was left alone to fend for himself. Even though the house was paid for from his father’s insurance, which was an unexpected surprise, he had to drop out of school in order to pay the bills. He couldn’t deal with the pressures of school and work and home and on top of all that raising a little girl so he did as any good parent would have done, he sacrificed his own life. He loved her so.

When his sleepy mind focused on one of his loves, his incubus would always return, always the same. The morning was hot and cloudy, it looked like rain but for now the clouds were holding back. It was a Saturday, which meant a day off from work, which meant a long ride with his little girl to a destination unknown until they were both in the car and decided. He helped her into the car, closed her door, and entered the driver’s seat. The engine choked a bit, he gave it some gas then it settled into a choppy idle. Any good mechanic would have told you it was a lifter hanging but to him it sounded cool along with the hole in the muffler. He asked her where she wanted to go and the same reply was always given—“I don’t care” “Fishing,” he said and she nodded with the biggest of smiles. He put the car in drive and headed towards the lake; he wanted to go fishing, catch some dinner, and save a bit of money. The memories of the ride were always a blend of past conversations about her dolls or doll house that he had bought her for Christmas or singing the wrong words to tunes on the radio but mostly it’s just an image of her sitting in the passenger seat with nothing but smiles and not a care in the world until… .

The rain was no longer holding back. On the way down to the lake via a dirt road it started to spit a little. His windshield wipers needed replacing; they smeared the dirt leaving him with an obstructed view. The sky is much darker now, he can’t see. He hears a definite popping sound and losses control. In actuality, the tire hits a good size hole, driving the strut lose and blowing the tire. Since the car wasn’t properly maintained, he could only afford the gas, it didn’t take much for the vehicle to basically self destruct. The car turned sharply to the left and down an embankment. The sounds of trees and branches scrapping against the metal rang in his ear, along with the sound of his screaming little passenger. Then total darkness. He awoke with the sound of very hard rain hitting the roof. His neck was stiff; his leg was unable to move. He looked around, he saw the windshield cracked in front of the passenger seat; he saw blood at the position of impact. He looked around for his little girl but she was nowhere to be found; her door was open. He cried her name and received no response. He screamed her name and got no response. He gasped for breath, in pain, he tried again. The rain was coming down harder and harder, he screamed again, louder and louder, thunder was clapping in the distance, drowning out his voice and then he passed out.

It was this point in the dream where he usually woke up, clutching the bed sheet, cold beads of sweat running down his face, and unable to breathe but today, thanks to his pills, there were no dreams this time around, not that he remembered anyhow. It was a little after one in the afternoon, he was so looking forward to this day and quickly cycled through his hygiene routine. Kyle eventually made his way down to the kitchen; he approached the basement door but wanted to try to subdue his hunger pains first. A quick peek in the fridge yielded three eggs, some butter, and some about to be expired milk. Even though it was officially after lunch, Kyle never missed breakfast. He turned on the stove, placed more than a tablespoon of butter in the pan and while he waited for the pad to melt, he quickly placed two slices of white in the toaster. He broke the eggs on the side of the pan, whisked them to form almost a froth, then added a splash of milk, and whisked some more. The toast popped with a golden hue almost the same time as the fluffy eggs slipped from the pan to the plate. A short order cook in a diner couldn’t have timed it any better. He searched for some juice but came up empty handed and poured himself some water straight from the tap and sat down to eat. He traded bites between eggs and toast as if it were a ritual of some sort, almost calculating the amount of each as to be finished in perfect unison with one another. While he ate he stared at the basement door as if it were alive and talking to him. He occasionally nodded as if in recognition. When his plate was empty and the last morsel of toast vanished between his lips, he stood up, went to the sink, washed his plate, glass and utensils, and placed them in the cabinet and drawer as he did a thousand times before. When his daily chore was completed he turned to face the door—he nodded again. He approached the door, opened the door, and proceeded down the stairs to his reward. He stared at the steel door that was before him knowing all too well what lay just beyond its portal. He approached the steel door almost in the same fashion as the basement door but he stopped, then elected to proceed to his watching room, and sat down in his chair.

Ripley was on the floor keeping herself occupied with a pink Corvette and an American icon.

The cogs of his mind sputtered as he watched his little girl, he took a deep breath, then said in a low calming voice, “Ripley,” annunciating the two syllables.

Like an acrophobic on top of the Space Needle, she froze. Her body tensed. The supple hair on the back of her neck rose. It was the first time she heard a human voice since being in the pink room. She didn’t like it.

He knew he had startled her and he waited a few moments, “Ripley,” in an overly concerned mother’s type of voice.

She didn’t even flinch. Her body still tense. Her young mind was still wheeling, trying desperately to grasp a handle on a similar past situation. Her feeble mind came up empty. She didn’t recognize the voice. Her brain scanned her callow memories and she still drew a blank She knew it wasn’t her daddy’s or Uncle Terry’s. The voice was male and came from behind the wall—that she did know; she also knew that it had scared her.

“Now now Ripley, it’s okay, I didn’t mean to scare you, I won’t hurt you.”

Her body was still tense but she turned her head ever so slightly towards the wall, the one with the mirror.

“Ripley”

And with one quick motion she sprang up from the floor, ran to the bed, and dove under it. She pressed herself against the far wall, cupped her hands around her ears, then curled up into a ball, knees pulled tightly against her chest, almost as tight as her eyes were shut. Her body started to shake uncontrollably from the fear. She didn’t say a word.

He got off his chair and onto his knees. He could barely see an outline of Ripley under the bed due to the heavy shadows. “Ripley,” in a very quiet voice.

She didn’t hear him. She stayed in her safe spot for the better part of an hour.

As did he.

She was now lying on her stomach with her eyes opened and fixated on the toys scattered about the fuzzy carpet. She was slowing drifting back to a child’s land of imagination. She eventually forgot the reason she was underneath the bed and crawled to the allure of Barbie’s Dream House.

He didn’t say a word. He just watched in awe. He too eventually crawled back into his imagination.

“I’m sorry to have scared you Ripley, I really am sorry.”

This time the voice didn’t scare her, it was familiar in a way. She still didn’t say anything.

“Are you hungry Ripley?”

She shook her head no, not even looking in the direction of the mirror.

“Are you sure?”

Again, she shook her head no.

“Is there anything you want?”

Without hesitation she said, “I want my mommy.”

Although he knew this was coming, the way she responded caught him off guard. “I’m sorry Ripley, your mother isn’t here?”

“I want my mommy,” being a bit more forceful then before.

“Again, I’m sorry Ripley, she’s not here”

“Where is she?”

“She’s, she’s gone.”

“Where?”

He knew he eventually had to break it to her gently but he so wanted his life to start, his life with his little girl. “She’s, she’s dead. I’m sorry Ripley your mother is dead,” in an eerie yet somehow soothing sort of way.

“I want to see her.”

“I’m afraid you can’t Ripley, she’s dead.”

“I want daddy,” she demanded.

“I’m afraid he’s dead too,” said as a matter-of-factly.

“I want mommy. I want my mommy… .mommy,” as she began to cry.

“Please don’t cry Ripley, please don’t… . I’ll take care of you, I will… . I will take care of you Ripley, I promise. I promise I will love you. I promise Ripley. I promise,” in the same soothing voice

“I want my mommy.”

He waited a bit, then trying desperately to change the subject, “Ripley, are you hungry?”

“No,” definitively.

“Are you sure Ripley? I can make you a sandwich. Maybe a peanut-butter and jelly?”

“I’m not allowed to eat peanut butter.”

“Sure you are, I’ll make you one, okay?” and with that he left his watching room and made his way back up the stairs to the kitchen.

 . . .

Chapter 56
 

S
omething happened and Reynolds racked his brain as to what it could have been during both his Bell H-67 helicopter and Lincoln Town car rides to the office. He arrived at the Beta Group just after nine with his fingers already tired from the constant Blackberry use. He didn’t want to work in the confines of the D.C. office but he knew Scott wanted him within strangling distance. His first order of business was to talk to Brickman one on one. No one at the Group knew Blake was dead, not that many people knew Blake to begin with, but nonetheless it was going to be kept that way. Although Brickman was in the dark, given the fact that Reynolds was in town and requested an immediate meeting, he had an inkling Blake was connected to this morning’s news events. His suspicions were laid to rest when he was told of Blake’s resignation and request for his login information. He complied with the request for his information and told Reynolds he will be missed and should anything change he would welcome Blake back to his present position. Anyhow, he played the game, this wasn’t Brickman’s first rodeo and he knew all too well that his former employee was lying on a slab in a morgue somewhere. They both knew, yet the unspoken word would remain so the game could continue.

Brickman exited the same conference room he last saw Blake and left Reynolds alone with the login credentials to his former employee. Reynolds went straight to work but he was far from being a computer genius, if truth be known he was still pretty much a hunt and peck typist and absolutely hated the touchpad on his IBM laptop. He reached into his over-the-shoulder bag for his optical mouse, plugged it into the USB port and waited for the system to boot. He then logged in as if he were Blake. Reynolds was using his own laptop to logon onto the network but was able to access Blake’s email account with the company and any of Blake’s information saved on the common folders. His folders were empty and his email account was just as bare aside for a few scattered emails from HR and the monthly newsletters put out by the marketing department. Leaving no stone unturned he visited Blake’s desk to see if any clues were left behind. His cubical was as clean as his email account with only a blue highlighter, three pencils in a tin mug from Pussers Pub, fifteen cents, and a nameplate littering his workspace. Reynolds turned into his favorite P.I., Jim Rockford, and did a little more investigating as he visited the HR department and walked away with Blake’s home address. He knew Blake for a few years and never once asked where he lived; they were colleagues not friends, so his personal life was left personal.

Reynolds didn’t make the trip directly to the address given to him by HR, instead he went to the bank in which Blake had a few personal belongings placed in a safe deposit box just in case of his demise. It was a mandate given to him and all of Reynolds’ direct reports. Reynolds was the primary holder of the box so getting the key only required his identification and signature. He went straight to the box numbered forty-two and laughed when he remembered Blake had told him it was the answer to everything as deemed by Douglas Adams in “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.” Hopefully it did contain all the answers, thought Reynolds, but when he opened it, all it contained was a set of house keys and the pin number for his alarm system. The answer would have to be in his home in order for the numerology to hold true.

When he arrived at Blake’s townhouse he was expecting to see the police or even yellow tape across the door but then again, they were still searching for Mr. Linge so there were none. Upon walking up the steps to the front door he glanced into the garage and noticed his Carrera was gone. He inserted the key, turned the lock, and immediately heard the alarm warning. He simply entered in the pin number and silenced it. Never being in the house before Reynolds was impressed of its cleanliness and proper placement of things and one word quickly came to mind—anal. There was no bric-a-brac or clutter, no piles of clothes, no dishes in the sink, no dust even; if he had a mother she would have been proud. He walked around the house as if peering beyond velvet ropes in a museum. This changed when he reached Blake’s office where his laptop’s screensaver was running in aquarium mode—exotic goldfish swimming to and fro.

Reynolds sat in the chair and wiggled the mouse. The screensaver disappeared and revealed a webpage for Google’s Gmail. On the webpage were dozens of conversations to and from Grace Carson. He clicked on one and read every word and deduced Blake could weave a wonderful web. If he hadn’t have known his assignment he would have truly believed the boy was head over heels for the senator’s wife. He clicked on the very first email to Grace Carson and read it; he did the same with the last. He read a few more and wanted to read them all but he felt as though a timer was ticking down to its last few seconds so he decided to pack up the laptop and take it with him. Reynolds couldn’t think of anything else to search for so he left through the same door he entered, setting the alarm beforehand. He quickly nixed the notion to go back to the office and elected to head to his normal hotel since it was closing in on the standard check-in time, not that he needed to wait for that given the status of his hotel rewards card.

Once in his upgraded room he moved to the desk and plugged Blake’s laptop into the hotel’s internet network and waited for it to boot. He then whipped out his cell and dialed the all too familiar number.

“I was just going to call you, what have you found?”

“Well, I was at Blake’s townhouse just outside the beltway, not much in the way of answers, however, I grabbed his laptop.”

“And?”

“And there are a ton of emails between the two parties and from what I gathered, some are pretty intimate.”

“I think that could go without saying given the positions they were found in.”

“The thing I don’t understand, his last email stated he was coming over to the house, now reading between the lines, it sounds as though it was going to be a rendezvous of a sexual nature but I never received an email pertaining to the fact… but maybe… .”

“That might be possible.”

“What might be possible?”

“You were going to say that maybe Blake did actually fall for the senator’s wife and that’s why he never called you.”

“Well… yes… but how did you…”

“That was my exact thought as well, maybe he got too close to his subject, it has happened before… when’s the last time you had communications with him?”

“About two or three weeks ago… it seemed things were going as planned, I had no reason to believe otherwise.”

“Do you still have his last email to you?’

“Yes.”

“Send it to me, in fact send all his emails to me, even the ones he sent to Grace.”

“Those are in his gmail account.”

“So?”

“Well it would be easier if you logged onto the site yourself, there’s a ton of them.”

“Then give me his login info.”

“Sure, let’s see… . shit.”

“What?”

“Hold on… . yeah… . it seems I don’t know his password.”

“What do you mean you don’t know his password?”

“Well his browser has automatic login, so it takes me straight to his email… . all I see for his passwords are eight dots.”

“What browser is he using?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Look up in the top left-hand corner, what do you see?’

“A little orange globe, then it says Blake’s email address, and Mozilla Firefox.”

Great, should be pretty easy to get this information. Follow these steps, go to tools, then options.”

“The options box appears.”

“Good, now click security and you should see a box labeled save passwords.”

‘Yep, clicked it . .wait… I see it, show passwords.”

“Look for something like gmail or google.”

“Got it, carrera nine one one, carrera with a capital c. That was easy.”

“I’ll take a peek, now that you have his other passwords for other sites besides his gmail account, I want you to do some more investigating, see what else you can learn.”

“I’ll call you if I find out anything else that might be interesting.”

Once Reynolds hung up the phone he went back to Blake’s laptop and entered a world he never knew existed. He went to sites such as Facebook, Linked in, Match.com, and Myspace using Blake’s logon credentials. He spent the better part of the evening and most of the next day following tangents upon tangents and slipping further from his original goal. He was astonished to find how much personal information people just put out in the open. Sure, he read stories in the news on how a teacher was fired for posting a picture of herself drinking a cosmo on her website or how an employee was canned after his blog made headlines in the Wall Street Journal, but to realize just how stupid people could be on the internet widened his eyes like Alex Delarge in Clockwork Orange. He was so enthralled with pointing and clicking to the nether regions of brainlessness and trying to absorb the display of moronic deposition he never heard the sound of the incoming message.

 . . .