Window of Guilt (29 page)

Gerald stiffened. “In reference to what?”

“Business decisions gone bad,” said the detective.

“I offered my advice, that’s all.”

“According to Ryan Atkins, Brad Jr. saved his father’s company hundreds of thousands of dollars by denying those health insurance claims himself,” said the detective.

“I can neither deny nor affirm his assertion.” How many times had Gerald verbally boxed the boy’s ears for having committed such moral and legal violations? When he’d finally described to his partner the insurance travesties his son had committed, Brad Sr. had guffawed.
My kid might not have too much going on upstairs, but he sure is full of piss and vinegar.

“Laurie Atkins stated that prior to attacking her, Brad Jr. demanded to know if her husband had reported him to the Illinois Insurance Board.”

“Bradley exhibited a paranoid streak. A trait his father thankfully did not share.”

“How well do you and your business partner get along?” asked Detective O’Connor.

Gerald sat back in the folding chair. A small smile lit his face. “Brad Sr. and I fought in Korea together. We attended college on the GI bill, worked for competing insurance carriers. Thirty years ago, we called a truce and founded Great Harvest Insurance Company.”

“Brad Sr. hasn’t visited his son yet,” noted the detective.

Upon learning his son had brutally attacked the wife of a former employee, Brad Sr. had retreated to his home. “He had a personal emergency,” said Gerald.

“More important than being at his son’s bedside?” asked the detective.

“I’m really not at liberty to say.”

“One more question, Mr. MacFerron,” said the detective. “Why would Brad Jr. be concerned Ryan Atkins would turn him in to the insurance board?”

“I really have no idea. Am I free to leave now, detective?”

“Brad Jr. told Mrs. Atkins you hired a private investigator to track her and her husband.”

The insurance executive stared at O’Connor. “I employed a PI for a personal matter.”

“Good to know.”

Gerald turned to see a stocky, well-dressed man enter the conference room. “What are you doing here, Brad?” he asked uneasily.

“The officer guarding his hospital room filled me in about your whereabouts. I assume Atkins is still in custody?”

The detective nodded.

“He’s going down for putting my son in that hospital bed,” Brad Sr. said fiercely.

“Do you understand the particulars of this situation?” Gerald asked delicately.

“Sure I do. My son had the hots for Atkin’s wife and he acted on it. Atkins walked in on them having oral sex and attempted to kill Brad. Didn’t think Atkins had the balls.”

“Evidently he did,” said his partner.

“Sir, did you pay a private investigator to track the Atkins family?” asked the detective.

The CEO smiled. “That would be like running a steamroller over an ant.”

Detective O’Connor’s voice took on a hard edge. “In his statement to the police, Atkins maintains that, back in August, your son sent a thug up to their Wisconsin summer home to silence him and his family before he reported Great Harvest to the authorities.”

Hamilton squeezed his eyes lids shut so tight, his cheeks overtook his face. “Brad is a grown man, detective. I’m not responsible for every decision he makes.”

“An intruder was found dead on their property.”

Gerald put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “We should phone Allan.”

Hamilton brushed his hand away. “I don’t need an attorney. I had nothing to do with threatening these people.”

“Do you know who did?” asked O’Connor.

“You said yourself that my son despised Ryan Atkins,” said Hamilton.

“Why would he wait twelve months to carry out his vendetta?” asked O’Connor.

Brad Hamilton shrugged his shoulders. “My wife died when Brad was ten years old. I tried to compensate. He had nannies up the gazoo. The best clothes, the finest boarding schools, the most expensive cars, the most knowledgeable therapists. Yet, he kept screwing up.”

“Screwing up how?” asked O’Connor.

“By the time he was fifteen, he’d gotten a girl pregnant. At seventeen, he was having sex with a married woman twice his age. At
twenty, he was incarcerated for thirty days for raping the girlfriend of his college roommate.”

“Only thirty days?”

“I pulled in some favors.”

The detective scribbled furiously on her legal pad. “Problems besides sexual deviancy?”

“My son specialized in learning people’s vulnerabilities, then blackmailing them. In high school, he befriended a bulimic classmate, then threatened to blab unless she stole the bikini panties of the school’s most popular cheerleader. The bulimic girl hung herself.”

“You need not go there, Brad,” said Gerald.

Hamilton shrugged off his friend’s concern. “My son enjoyed shooting squirrels and rabbits with his BB gun. It’s as if all his humanity was buried in his mother’s grave.”

“You did your best,” whispered Gerald.

“I brought him into the business to keep an eye on him. His grasp of the ins and outs of insurance procedures was remarkable. And his ability to increase our bottom line by creating mutually beneficial relationships with big corporations was outstanding.”

“It was worth keeping him on, despite his problems,” said the detective.

“In the last three years, Bradley subdued his inclinations,” said Gerald. “He followed the rules without constant challenge. He attempted to relate to people in an authentic manner. He even followed through on statistical projects rather than pawning those tasks off on other employees as he’d done in the past.”

“For the first time since my wife’s death, we weren’t receiving police reports on him.” Then Hamilton’s voice hardened. “My son’s alleged attack on Laurie Atkins shocks me. If it’s true, he’s on his own.”

“Tough love’s overrated,” said the detective.

“I’ll pay for the best in medical care, the best in legal fees,” said Hamilton. “Then I’m cutting him loose.”

The detective directed her attention to Gerald. “How did you know the location of your former employee’s summer home?”

“Atkins must have mentioned it at some point,” Gerald said uneasily.

“Informal chat between an insurance adjuster and his boss?” asked the detective.

“This is ridiculous. On no account would I harass the family of a former employee.” MacFerron’s words reverberated through the conference room.

“It wasn’t just the reputation of Great Harvest that was at stake should Atkins blow the whistle,” said Detective O’Connor. “It was a personal assault against your own ethical standards. Anybody in your situation would feel booby-trapped.”

“This is crap,” said Brad Hamilton Sr.

Gerald spoke slowly, as if each utterance caused him severe pain. “Brad Jr. was obsessed with gaining his father’s approval, but there was more to it than that. Bradley had a vendetta against women, which he played out on Laurie Atkins.”

Hamilton hung his head.

Detective O’Connor turned her gaze to Brad Hamilton Sr. “I’m waiting for your son to regain consciousness so we can charge him with the rape of Laurie Atkins.”

33

Laurie Atkins sat on one of the fifteen stools covering the width of the visitation room and watched as a frigid-faced guard escorted her husband to a stool facing her own on the opposite side of the Plexiglas window. She surreptitiously glanced at the visitors on either side of her. Less than twelve inches to her right, an African-American teenage mother cradling a baby cussed at the bald-headed young man with lazy eyes who faced them. To Laurie’s left, a young Hispanic woman with three school-age boys rapidly shot out sentences in her native tongue. The stifling proximity of twelve other families conversing with their incarcerated kin made Laurie claustrophobic.

By the time Laurie’s khaki jumpsuit

garbed husband took a seat across from her, she could hardly breathe. There he sat, his expressionless eyes scanning her like a TSA officer. The words burst from her like a firecracker. “I’m so sorry I didn’t come to see you over Thanksgiving weekend. I’ve felt immobilized since getting home from the hospital.” Ryan leaned into the mouthpiece. “I didn’t want you to see me like this anyway.”

How many times had Rocky pressed himself into their bay window in just that way? Laurie traced the outline of her husband’s face through the plastic barrier. Then she spoke through the mouthpiece. “You’re my hero, know that?”

Ryan shook his head sadly. “A real hero would have incapacitated Brad before he attacked you, not afterwards.”

“It’s not like you have ESP,” she countered.

“I should have known something was wrong when you failed to pick up Rory from school,” Ryan said, his voice a monotone.

“The point is, you rescued me, Ryan. You showed your animal instinct.”

Ryan’s voice rose. “I put Brad in a coma. If he doesn’t die, he’ll be paralyzed for life. I’m not proud of that.”

Laurie stared at him in disbelief. “You’re down on yourself because you permanently incapacitated my attacker? If I were you, I’d be pissed I hadn’t killed him.”

Ryan punched the plastic wall between them. The guard came towards him, and Ryan threw his hands up in apology. Then he turned back to his wife. “You’ve got this vision of a superhero who knocks down bad guys with a single glance and doesn’t look back. Someone who rams you against the wall and takes you right then and there. That guy ain’t me.”

“I know,” Laurie muttered. Other conversations ricocheted across the visitors’ room.

Ryan continued, his voice filled with fury. “This joint is filled with people who think nothing of extinguishing another person’s life.” Laurie couldn’t argue with him. Not in here. So she switched gears. “Rory wants to visit.”

“Promise me you’ll never bring him,” Ryan said, his voice breaking.
Never.
The bald reality of her husband’s incarceration left her breathless.

“Rory needs to solely depend on you now,” said Ryan.

“You’ll be out soon,” she said brightly. Her perky tone sounded false to her own ears.

Ryan shook his head. “My dad can’t come up with the $80,000 bail.”

“But you’ve not been convicted of a crime,” Laurie protested loudly.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe the temple can do a fund-raiser.”

“By that time, I’ll be raped or killed.”

Laurie panicked. “Mitzy has friends in the print media.”

“Like they’re going to raise money for me,” he said, his voice despondent.

“You committed no crime, Ryan. You were protecting your wife!”

“I didn’t try to reason with Brad,” he lashed out. “God created us in his image, Laurie. We’re cognitively higher than the animals.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Ryan,” Laurie said bitterly.

“Lighten up,” he said with a tight grin. “I’ll be stuck in prison and you’ll get to start that new life you wanted.”

“Actually I was going to ask you to come back home.”

“That’s another option,” he said warily.

The visitors’ room stunk of sweat and cheap perfume. Yet Laurie’s senses gratefully absorbed the energy that had re-awakened Ryan’s voice. “Mitzy told me Brad Jr. sicked a lowlife out to our summer home to prevent you from blabbing to the Insurance Board.”

Ryan looked at her sharply. “What?”

“TG was smart. He took the money and ran.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“Before Brad attacked me, he blurted that Gerald MacFerron hired a private investigator to track our every move.”

“Gerald? No way.”

“They were even privy to our choice of fruit juice.” Visions of crawling through sticky orange juice made her nauseous.

“Die, asshole, die,” Ryan said bitterly.

Laurie’s eyes grew big.

“Happy now? You finally got the reaction you wanted.”

Hearing the forcefully spoken words made her feel empty inside. But why? She’d prayed for Ryan to act more macho. Now that he had, she felt lost, like a mountain climber in a snowstorm. Like a seal flailing in an oil spill.

Ryan rose from his plastic chair and signaled the guard. “Goodbye, Laurie.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you out of here,” she called through the mouthpiece. But he was already been led from the room.

As she watched her husband’s exit, she realized they were both flailing, just in different parts of the sea.

*

Gerald MacFerron fingered his sister’s letter. Should he even believe its contents? Gerald was no virgin to a woman’s betrayal. Early in his insurance career, he and Helga had shared a house on Chicago’s North Side. Helga hired a plump, blue-eyed Polish girl to do the cleaning. Gerald was immediately smitten. The attraction was mutual. The couple slipped away to the dark recesses of the house whenever possible. Soon they were talking about eloping.

Then Gerald was called away on an extended business trip. He returned only to learn that Helga had fired the housekeeper over a stolen crystal vase. His sister had destroyed the girl’s contact information. However, she told him she’d provided the girl with enough money to return to her family in Poland.