Unleashed (9 page)
AS YOU ARE READING THIS, YOUR EMAIL PROGRAM HAS SENT OUT A PHOTO OF YOU TO EVERY CONTACT IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. YOU’LL HAVE TO GUESS WHICH PHOTO. BUT THERE WERE A LOT TO CHOOSE FROM THAT MAKE YOU LOOK BAD. REALLY BAD.
I could see by Schmedley’s face that Bentley and I had scored a direct hit. His sloppy pale face turned even paler.
“Enjoying the conversation?” I said. “You don’t want to miss any of it.”
WE HAD FULL ACCESS TO YOUR COMPUTER. AND THE BACKUP DRIVE ATTACHED TO IT. AND FULL ACCESS TO THE CLOUD WHERE YOU HAD BACKED IT UP IN CASE YOUR HARD DRIVE FAILED. WHEN YOU SEE THE CLOWN FACE ON YOUR SCREEN, THE SOFTWARE PROGRAM TO DESTROY ALL YOUR DATA HAS JUST COMPLETED ITS
TASK, INCLUDING THE DELETION OF ALL YOUR EMAILS ON YOUR SERVER.
It took him a while to absorb that message. I was okay waiting. Putting it on the computer monitor meant that this conversation couldn’t be recorded. And that Bentley and I had the satisfaction of letting him know we knew what he’d done.
His expression was a combination of anger and horror when he turned back to me.
“It’s a dangerous world,” I said. “I sure appreciate your help in learning how dangerous it can be. Think others might hire you in the future?”
Again I pointed at the screen. “You seem distracted by emails. Don’t worry about me. Go ahead and read whatever has been sent to you.”
I felt savage satisfaction. He had no doubt whatsoever that the silent, onscreen conversation was everything I wanted to say to him out loud in his office.
WE HAVE YOUR DATA. IT WOULD BE BEST IF YOU DIDN’T LOOK FOR WORK AGAIN. FUTURE CLIENTS WILL GET EMAILS LETTING THEM KNOW WHAT YOU DID TO FORMER CLIENTS.
“Only one thing remains,” I said.
I waited for the clown face on his monitor. The clown face telling him that he’d just lost his professional life’s worth of information and that Bentley and I owned it, along with those incriminating photos of himself.
THERE WILL BE NO ONE AROUND TO HEAR YOU SCREAM. BECAUSE I AM GOING NOW.
The monitor went totally black except for a closeup of a grinning clown. Revenge. But revenge that left no proof it was me or Bentley.
I waved my fingers at Schmedley. And left him alone so that no one could hear him scream.
All was in place for a cheerful family gathering in the living room, beneath oil paintings of the generations of Croft men whose predatory assaults on the natural resources of British Columbia over the past 150 years had yielded the family wealth. One of the portraits was so large it had a set of drapes that could protect it from sunlight so that the oils wouldn’t sustain cumulative damage. On this morning, the drapes were bunched open, revealing the original Albert Croft.
“Shall I ring for more tea?” my mother asked, sitting neatly on the couch with her knees pressed together and slightly
sideways. Behind her, from the massive portrait, Albert looked sternly down, as if assessing whether her social niceties would reach his standards. “Winchester?”
I held back a sigh. My life—from the oil portraits to the little silver bell she held ready to summon a maid—was a cliché. Hypocrite that I was, I sipped at a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice from the breakfast tray that had just been delivered.
My father shook his head and refused to sit. He paced behind her couch. “I’m not interested in wasting much time this morning. Whatever Jace has called us to discuss needs to be finished by…”
He made a show of extending his left arm from his perfectly tailored suit so that he could look at his Daniel Roth Ellipsocurvex Tourbillon watch. All $150,000 worth of it. The semioval case was distinctive enough that anyone familiar with the world’s most expensive watches would understand immediately
what he was wearing. That excluded more than 99 percent of the population, which was one of the reasons to wear that kind of watch. Insiders liked having ways to signal status to other insiders, because that was the ultimate type of status: walking around with something so exclusive that the peasants couldn’t understand how exclusive.
“This won’t take long,” I said. “It starts with asking why Mother would send me an anonymous email directing me to ask questions about what happened at the hospital when Bentley was born.”
“What?” Mother said. Her voice held alarm.
“What?” Winchester said. His voice held anger.
I was sitting in a leather chair off to the side. I didn’t want to be opposite Mother on the couch and my father pacing behind her. That would put me in direct line with my imperious ancestors and their misguided attempts at
immortality via the oil paintings, and I was tired of seeing those ancestors and their smugness.
“Mother,” I said. “It wasn’t difficult to track down the source of the email. Heard of something called an ip address?”
“No,” she said.
“Exactly,” I said. “There’s no doubt it came from your computer, but what I can’t figure out is why you wanted me—or anyone—to dig up what happened at the hospital.”
“Perhaps we do need tea,” she said.
“My question is not going to go away,” I said.
Winchester had stopped pacing and was staring at her with a peculiar intensity. It was obvious that he too wanted the answer.
She spoke in a brittle voice. “I’ve hated your father for a long time. That’s no secret in this household. But divorce was not an option. There’s a binding prenuptial in place, and without sufficient cause for
divorce, it would have cost far more than I wanted the Croft fortune to lose.”
She made sure to focus on me as she spoke, as if pretending Winchester wasn’t in the room was a way to pretend he didn’t even exist. “Your father is a clever, clever man. He’s always had his eye on the bigger prize—the Croft fortune and all that it gives him. I’m sure he’s been tempted many times to have an affair, but he knows that would trigger one of the clauses in the prenuptial agreement, and I’d be able to divorce him without a huge settlement.”
Her smile became as brittle as her voice. “Ever since I was little, I was taught that the most important thing in my life was the Croft fortune. That nothing I did should ever threaten that legacy.”
This was no surprise to me. I’d been taught the same thing.
“Another reason for a low-settlement divorce was if he committed a criminal act,” she said. “Which he did at the
hospital when Bentley was born. At the time, I didn’t hate your father the way I do now. So I went along with it and was bound by a confidentiality agreement.”
Understanding washed over me. “But if someone else revealed the criminal act, and it couldn’t be proved you had led that someone else to knowledge about the crime, then you wouldn’t be in legal trouble for breaking the agreement, and your divorce wouldn’t drain anything from the Croft fortune.”
“I don’t deserve that scorn in your voice,” she said. “Your life and Bentley’s life would be much better without him in our lives. I have been a much better mother to you than Winchester has been a father. I refuse to ask forgiveness for sending that email and trying to expose him without it looking like I was behind it.”
Just as I would refuse to ask her to apologize. We weren’t that type of family.
“Then your tactic worked,” I said. “Yes, I know what happened at the hospital.
But did you know that Dr. Evans has been blackmailing Father all these years because of it?”
Mother waved it away. “I suspected, but all I cared about was that the amount never increased. Evans didn’t get greedy, and I was fine leaving that can of worms unopened. Instead, I’d rather hear from you what you discovered.”
“Of course you would,” I said. “It’s going to save you about half a billion dollars.”
“Think of it instead as taking that half billion away from your father,” she said, as if he wasn’t in the room. “Doesn’t that make you feel better? So go ahead. Tell both of us what you know.”
“How about we spare ourselves the dramatics,” my father said as he reached into his suit jacket. He’d stopped pacing behind Mother. “Yes, after he was born I tried switching Bentley for another baby. It was obvious that he wasn’t perfect. As I said then, I was just doing it to spare
both of us. If I hadn’t been caught, you would have never known. Just like the first time. Instead, we were saddled with Bentley for the rest of our lives.”
Even after learning the truth from Dr. Evans, I still hadn’t gotten over the emotional shock waves. To make sure the world believed his life was perfect, Winchester was willing to discard his own son and switch a baby at birth.
I was struggling to find a way to express my rage at this when, in one swift move, Winchester pulled out a hypodermic needle and jammed it into the meat of my mother’s shoulder. With the sureness of the physician he was, he thumbed the plunger and injected her.
“Winchester,” she said, slapping at her shoulder, “whatever are you expecting to accomplish with…”
Mother didn’t get farther than that. She slumped to her side.
“I knew you’d found out,” my father said to me.
“Yes,” I said. “The detective. I have one question for you. Whose idea was it to put curling irons in my hands?”
“Curling irons?” He was obviously puzzled.
I detested myself for my relief. It told me that I still badly wanted a father to love, and that at least the man in front of me had not been willing to torture me.
“He tried to torture me to find out what you wanted to know,” I said. “You should be more careful about the people you hire.”
“As should you,” he answered.
Touché.
I nodded. Or tried to nod.
He smiled at my slowing reactions. “Evans is a petty man. He took great satisfaction in calling me to tell me about your discussion with him. Instead, it served as a warning. I’ve been prepared for a meeting like this. Needle for your mother. Drugs in the orange juice for you.”
I was fading fast.
“Night-night,” my father said to me. “With both of you out, I’m sure I can rig some kind of accident that will take away all suspicion about your deaths.”
I fought hard to remain conscious. I succeeded just long enough to see Bentley slip out from behind the drapes, holding a baseball bat.
That was ironic. If Bentley were any bigger, he wouldn’t have been able to hide there.
With a mighty swing, he took out the side of my father’s knee. Father screamed and fell sideways, clutching the shattered bone. No way would he walk without major surgery.
“Wow,” Bentley said. “That felt good.”
Then I was gone.
Two weeks later, on a sunny Saturday morning, I sat outside the old courthouse on Hornby Street that had been turned into the Vancouver Art Gallery. I wasn’t interested in the gallery and its epic collection of Emily Carr paintings. I’d grown up with a scattering of her work in various homes. Nor was I interested in watching the jugglers or buskers nearby, or listening to a guy yell about why we needed to donate to an investigation of algae growth on whales in the wild.
I was focusing instead on the chessboard in front of me and the position of the pieces, highly aware of the chess clock
beside the board. It has two timers, which only run one at a time. The way it works is simple. Make your move, then hit the button over your timer. This starts your opponent’s timer. And vice versa. Run out of time, you lose.
My opponent and I had agreed on three minutes for the blitz chess match. Two twenty-dollar bills were under the board. We’d each contributed one bill, and the winner would take both.
I was hungry and needed the money more than the sunburned tourist in front of me. But he’d been better than I’d expected, and I was down to my final thirty seconds.
My queen was exposed, but protecting it would draw a knight.
My hope was that he wouldn’t realize it quickly enough. I was down to twenty-five seconds.
As I made the move to protect my queen and slammed the timer button to start his count, I became vaguely aware
of someone behind me. That was usual. Lots of people stopped to watch blitz chess. We were as much entertainment as the jugglers were. This was why I was here, hoping to fleece as many passersby as possible.
Sunburn hesitated, then made a bad move and hit the timer. I pounced, moving my queen. I was two moves from checkmate and victory.
Again he hesitated and made another bad move. I slid my queen to the right. He grimaced and toppled his king in surrender.
Then he gave me a sour look. “Always need help to win?”
“Huh?” I said.
“Nice try. Like you don’t know those girls?”
I turned my head and saw Jo and Raven. No wonder the guy had been distracted. I had to admit, they looked good.
“I don’t need them,” I said, knowing they’d hear it too. I slid back his twenty. “Let’s call it a draw.”
I ignored Jo and Raven and gathered my pieces, folded my board and walked away with the board and the clock. I knew they’d follow, but this gave me the illusion of control.
“We’ll find you again,” Raven said from behind me. “Might as well hear us out. Remember, you owe us. And remember, we helped you because of how often you told us we owed you.”
I moved to a bench. One sat on either side of me.
Jo said, “Want to tell us about your father?”
“You probably saw the headlines,” I said. “He’s been arrested. What more do you need?”
“You’re right,” she said. “It’s your business. Not ours.”
My business.
I’d learned that Dr. Winchester Wyatt had taken advantage of his position at the hospital and bribed the attending nurse and doctor at Bentley’s C-section birth to
switch Bentley with the baby of another woman who had delivered by C-section. That’s what made it possible—the C-sections. Because the mothers didn’t see and hold their babies until after the operation was complete.
What had exposed it almost immediately was a routine blood test that showed Bentley’s blood type was wrong for the mother who thought he was her child. And when the questions began, the doctor and the nurse crumbled under pressure and confessed. It had taken a large amount of money to settle all of it—at least, an amount large for anyone but a Croft.