by Samson Weld
“Here twice in one day, Nick? You’re showing signs of being a workaholic, I’d be careful with that if I were you.”
Nick didn’t even hear the greeting because he was so focused on the secret which had finally been revealed. What he had seen on the screen was consuming him. He hadn’t thought of anything else for the entire drive over from the hotel.
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“It was me what?” Stanley asked in confusion.
Nick came closer and bent over the table so he could stare at Stanley directly in the eyes. “You killed her. You killed Suzy.”
“What? It’d be really great to know what the hell you’re talking about, dude.”
“Why did you do it? You know they’ve been talking to me about it? They think I killed her.”
“Time out here,” Stanley said while making a T sign with his hands. “Tell me what chapter of the book you’re on. I can’t follow.”
“Cut the bullshit, Stanley!” Nick shouted, slamming his hand on the table so hard that one of the printouts fell to the floor. “I saw the surveillance tape.”
“What surveillance tape? What are you talking about?”
“Suzy comes in, you meet her in the lobby, and you both leave together. You wanted people to think I killed her! Why? Goddamn it, why?!”
Calmly, Stanley pushed his papers away, as if he didn’t want anything else to happen to them in this confrontation, and sighed. He privately pondered the accusation and then looked again up at his colleague.
“How do you know it was her? I thought you’d never seen her before.”
Nick couldn’t breathe. This was essentially an admission that it was the truth. He hadn’t said so, but he wasn’t denying it. It was like getting punched in the stomach by Xavier again.
Jesus… Why was this happening to him? Why was he being betrayed by his best friend?
“That’s what you’ve been doing all weekend?” Stanley spat. “You left me to do the work while you were finding evidence against me. How did you manage that?”
“I met with Suzy’s sister. She showed me pictures of her. Then I saw the surveillance footage at the hotel.”
Stanley winced. “Impossible. The cameras were angled away.”
“The big flashy watch you wear on the wrong hand,” Nick spat.
Blankly, Stanley looked down at his watch and cursed under his breath. He was clearly angry at himself for the slip up.
“Why did you do it?” Nick pressed on. “How could you do such a thing? Shit, man, why?”
“You don’t know what it’s like, Nick. You sit in your corner office, basking in your millions, having your gold-plated sex with your gold-plated hookers. You have no idea what it’s like for me.”
“You’re jealous of me?” Nick asked with incredulity, this coming from left field. “That’s why you killed this poor girl?”
Stanley stood up, a desperate grin on his face. He began to pace along the room.
“You’re blind, man! I knew your peripheral vision only went as far as the next curvaceous whore, but I didn’t know you were so pathetic.” He paused for a moment. “I have a wife, a good woman.”
“Of course she is.”
Nick was taken aback. Amanda was great and he often joked that she was too good for Stanley. In reality, he’d often been envious of them as a couple. If he ever was to settle down, he had long ago decided, it would be with someone like Amanda.
“We’ve been married five years and they’ve mostly been good years. You know what her favorite sport is?”
“Tennis?” Nick offered with a shrug.
“Shopping. Whenever she spends money she gets wet, man. I swear to God, I could fuck her in the middle of a shopping mall, she’s so wet. A real Slip & Slide.” He looked out the window, lost in thought. “But shopping costs money. I sure as hell don’t make as much as you do.”
“Do you need a loan or something? Is this what that’s about?”
“What I need is for the world to get the fuck off my back!” Stanley shouted. There were burgeoning tears in his eyes. “I’ve been a servile minion for my entire career and what do I have to show for it? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. You don’t even hang out with me anymore.”
“So this is why you killed the girl?”
This whole thing was making no sense. As angry as Nick was, he was scared of his friend for the first time in his life. He was pacing right along with him, keeping the table between them.
“How else is anyone gonna get advancement in this world?”
Nick looked at him as if he had lost his mind. How does one deal with a person in this state of mind? Confrontation was out of the question. He had already pushed his luck enough and now it was time for a different approach.
“Look, Stanley… You need to come see the police with me, okay? You’ll tell your story and we’ll straighten this whole thing out.”
“Don’t you think I feel guilty enough?”
“Of course, of course. But I think the best thing to do is to come clean, right? It’s easy. It’s just like what you just did right now. Everything is gonna be okay.”
However, Stanley hadn’t heard a single word. It was obvious in the way his eyes were shifting back and forth.
He said, “This surveillance tape, it’s still at the hotel?”
At that instant, Nick understood his colleague had completely skidded off the rails. Everything was making sense for the first time. He whispered, “You’re fucking crazy.”
Stanley wiped his eyes with the back of his hands before grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair and storming out of the conference room. He hurried out and didn’t even notice Anne-Marie who had been standing outside the door since the beginning. She went in.
“Did he confess?” she asked breathlessly.
Nick looked at her with shock and disbelief. He shrugged, shaking his head.
“I don’t know what just happened in here.”
He replayed the entire conversation in his head. There was satisfaction in knowing who was framing him for murder, but he wasn’t off the hook yet. He’d made several mistakes.
He should have waited so he could involve Detective Bédard. He should have made sure that Anne-Marie could hear the confession from outside that conference room. He should’ve had a witness.
It was like he was back at square one. Stanley was going back to the hotel to get the surveillance footage, destroying the most damning evidence against him. If the chase with Xavier this morning had taught him anything it was that he was no action hero. There was no way he could run after Stanley to stop him.
But there might be a solution after all! He produced his phone and his hand was shaking as he scrolled through his contacts.
“Come on, come on…”
Finally, he found the Vu3 Hotel and called. He fumed at that automated system which guided him through several options and it seemed like forever until he managed to contact the front desk.
“Vu3 Hotel.”
“Is Henri there? I need to speak to Henri, please. It’s important!”
“Un instant.”
Anne-Marie came closer and Nick looked at her. “They put me on hold.”
Several seconds later, the overly cheerful music stopped. “Bonjour, ici Henri.”
“Thank God! Henri, this is Nick Eversull. Someone is coming for the DVDs. Please don’t let him inside. Call the police right now.”
“But I don’t understand. I…”
“Henri, the guy is coming to destroy that DVDs. Please do everything in your power to keep him away. You’re the only person who can help me, please!”
“Of course, sir.”
Nick breathed with relief. “Thank you. Thank you so much!”
As he hung up, Anne-Marie looked at him with anticipation. “You think he can keep Stanley from getting into the security room?”
“I don’t know. But Henri is a good guy. I know he’ll do his best.”
Nick put his phone away and slo
wly went over to the window. He looked down at the street below, anything to clear his mind and accept that he had done everything in his power.
Anne-Marie joined him. She reached for his hand which he gladly offered. This was the first moment of serenity he’d felt in forever.
“It’s over, Nick.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Her body pressed against his, they gazed down at what was happening down on the street. Shoppers and pedestrians were walking idly. Cars were driving along. The scene was oddly peaceful.
They then caught movement directly below. It was Stanley. He was running out of the building. He looked left and right, raising his hand to hail a cab. There were none, not in this direction anyway. Agitated, he crossed the street.
And then two high-powered gunshots rang out!
Stanley was thrown forward and collapsed in the middle of the road. Cars screeched to a halt to avoid hitting him.
“My God, he’s been shot!”
Nick didn’t answer and merely continued to stare expressionlessly at the pavement darkening around Stanley’s corpse.
Chapter 26
The recent developments were overwhelming and Nick had no choice but to contact the police.
This time he was able to get through to Detective Bédard who met him at his hotel. He explained that the day before he’d been called to a crime scene at a nature preserve up north in the Laurentians.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t stay in contact. Emergency, you understand?”
Body parts had been found and, for a moment, they had thought a serial killer was on the loose, that it was related to an investigation he was working on. There was no cellular reception in these woods and it took several hours to determine it was the work of a large bear.
So now they were in the security office at the hotel. Nick kept his eye on the top as he watched the video of the real Suzy getting escorted out by someone who appeared to be Stanley. The detective stopped the footage and turned toward Nick. Anne-Marie stood behind them, her arms crossed.
“So, I’m off the hook, right?”
The investigator grimaced. “It’s not as a simple as that.”
“What do you mean? You have proof. It’s right there on the video that the woman who was killed never came up to my room.”
“Not simple,” Bédard said again, shaking his head.
“Look, the reason you considered me a suspect was because you thought I was the last one to see Suzy alive, right?”
“Yes,” the detective conceded.
“But now, you have the proof that I wasn’t the last person to see her alive. That’s my colleague Stanley on the screen.”
Nick pointed at the monitor even though it was switched off.
“It’s not clear, you understand? Maybe you dressed like him to make me believe you were not the last person to see her alive.”
“Oh come on…”
“Maybe you arranged for this Stanley person to meet the girl in the lobby because you knew there were cameras.”
“That’s bullshit.”
He looked away and shook his head fervently. How could the man not see what was in front of him?!
“It’s my job to look at every angle, you understand?”
“But I’m not that evil!”
“That’s what everybody says. Okay, maybe it was him on the video. Maybe he’s the last person to see the girl alive. That doesn’t prove he killed her.”
“I told you already, he confessed the truth to me earlier.”
“And you have this on tape? You have a witness?”
With an audible sigh, Nick leaned back against the desk in defeat. “You know I don’t.”
He knew that Bédard was aware of Stanley having been killed. Three blocks downtown were currently cordoned off to inspect the crime scene and go after whoever had done this. At this point, Nick was sure that he was a suspect in the crime as well. Christ…
The cop sighed as if he was tired of having to explain the obvious to civilians. “Things are more complicated than they were before. By magic, the guy you say killed the girl is now dead. Very convenient, no?”
“Now you’re just twisting everything around. I’m telling you the truth!”
“If you leave the country and I have to have your courts extradite you back here, you will be in even bigger trouble.”
The investigator popped out the DVD and slipped it into a plastic evidence bag. He curtly nodded goodbye to Anne-Marie and left.
~ ~ ~ ~
With their hopes dashed, Nick led Anne-Marie up to his room. He needed to think, to try to figure out how everything fit together.
He needed to discover why the universe had it in for him. Was this retribution for a life of sin? He privately snorted at that. He wasn’t much of a spiritual man and believed that in life one made his own luck. Anne-Marie sat on the loveseat while he paced nervously.
“Can you believe what just happened downstairs?” he barked.
“Well, you’re one step closer to having your name cleared.”
“Or you know what they’ll do? When they get tired of investigating, they’ll simply throw the DVD into the river and have me around as their designated suspect.”
Anne-Marie rolled her eyes. “Now you’re just being paranoid.”
She patted the space next to her. Nick took a deep breath to calm down, telling himself he had to keep his head on straight, that he had to be rational. He finally sat down.
“It’s just that I’m used to solving financial problems, you know? Defending myself against the police is not what I usually do for fun.”
“I know. But let’s think about this whole situation. Let’s see if we can make sense of it. Again.”
“Okay,” he said while nodding thoughtfully. Okay, let’s do that.”
If anything, trying to solve a puzzle would keep his mind occupied. It would keep him from going crazy.
After a deep breath, he said, “Suzy is killed and the police think I did it because I was the last person to see her alive. As it turns out, the girl I saw that night was an imposter.”
“Suzy had a drug problem and owed money to some criminals who forced her to work in their East End agency, at that motel. But she was a model employee and everyone loved her even though that agency was more into juvenile prostitution.”
Digging into that lead had gotten that junkie killed. That’s what Charlie had wanted to tell them, that a gang was involved in human trafficking. They had killed him to shut him up. Nick felt guilty about his role in this, although, he reminded himself, that he hadn’t done anything wrong aside from searching for the truth.
Things were starting to fall into place in his brain. He stood up once more and resumed pacing around.
“After that turned out to be a dead end,” he said, “we look at the surveillance tape and see that Stanley met Suzy in the lobby. They went away together.”
“You go to the office and confront Stanley with this information.”
“That’s when he starts telling me he didn’t have a choice, having her die was the only way for him to prove he’s worth something. There was talk about him not having enough money for his wife. The guy was raving like a fucking madman.”
“Must have been the pressure of guilt,” she concluded.
Then there was Xavier the pimp. Nick hadn’t told Anne-Marie about him. For one thing, it seemed trivial. All he wanted from him was to write a review, to get some comeuppance for his business taking a hit.
On the other hand, Nick didn’t want to mention it to Anne-Marie because he was a bit ashamed. This was the first time he really was confronted with the dark side of his so-called hobby. Having a woman he cared for in his life for the first time in years was altering his perspective.
Could Xavier be behind everything? Killing Stanley, being behind Suzy’s murder? That seemed a little extreme for a bad review though. Unless there was a deeper connection, someone else pulling the strings…
All of a sudden, Nick
stopped in his tracks. A light bulb went off in his head. He turned back toward Anne-Marie.
“Wait a minute! He said something about not being in favor of renewing my firm’s investment in your company.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I said it should be a slam dunk because your records are fantastic and he said he had never seen a less deserving company, or something like that. And then there’s the fact that Helmbold practically begged us to give him a favorable report.”
Her eyes narrowed with concern. “You think maybe this whole thing has something to do with my company?”
Nick then recalled something else and smiled. “You remember when we were alone in your boss’ office?”
Her face reddened. “I’m not likely to forget that night so soon.”
“I was looking for a drink and I saw he had boxes in his closet. The boxes were labeled as being relevant to my analysis, but they were never passed on to me. I mean, there was something like New York Investors written on it. That’s me. Shouldn’t I have been given these files? That’s what an audit is, having to sift through every document.”
Anne-Marie nodded along with him, the excitement of approaching the truth getting to her. “Then we have to see what these files are about.”
Nick kneeled next to her. “You’d be okay with that? It’s basically breaking and entering. If anyone finds out you’ve been snooping, you could lose your job.”
“I’m fine.”
“At this point, I have nothing to lose, Anne-Marie. But not you.”
“I know a guy in New York, works for a rather large financial firm. I’m sure he would write me a great reference letter.”
“I’m sure he would.”
Their heads gravitated together and they kissed. If they got caught, it may just be their last kiss.
Chapter 27
They left the hotel and drove to her office, eager to get to the bottom of this once and for all.
Anne-Marie found a choice parking spot and left the car half a block away. Walking back to the building where Hozalex had its offices, Anne-Marie looked across the street and spotted a man who was staring at them. It wasn’t just a stranger glancing at them by mistake. It was as if he was spying on them.