by Sandra Ryan
The wheels were turning in Holly’s head. Heather had told her that the people who were involved in the kidnapping were some big wigs, and Mr. Benson did look as though he wanted the case to be pinned on Clark. And Mr. Benson was a big wig, by every definition of the term. Was it possible that what he was actually depicting was not the concern of a father over the whereabouts of his missing son but something else entirely? Was it possible that the man was complicit in a way? She was not sure, but it definitely warranted some digging into.
She stepped out of the room again into the kitchen. She whipped out her phone and dialed Olga’s number,
“I think I would take you up on that offer to help.”
“What do you need?” Olga asked.
****
The same time across town, Kyle Burns stared at his television screen. He could see the passion with which Mr. Benson spoke. Underlying it was something else, something that looked a lot like vindictiveness. Prior to this time; he had already had his misgivings about Mr. Benson. There was just something glib about the way he handled the disappearance of his son. It was almost as though he was riding it out because of the popularly it gained him or something.
If the choice was his, he would have delved further into the man's past, try to see if he could find anything incriminating. Two things stopped him: First was the fact that he didn't want it to seem as though he was witch hunting the victim. Second, he had already received his orders. Special Agent Roderick had called him earlier that afternoon. Surprisingly, for the first time in many weeks, the man sounded happy to be speaking to him.
"I heard you are making progress." He said.
Burns had not known how to respond. Was that a bait?
"We are not doing badly, sir," He murmured.
"Well, I heard that there is definite proof that Samuel Clark himself kidnapped the child, in fact that he is even indicted in the murder of two accomplices."
Burns' mind was whirring. Who had leaked the information to his boss? What he had approved for release to the press was just that there was incontrovertible evidence tying Samuel Clark to the kidnap. Who leaked his connection with the murdered individuals?
"I know you cannot affirm or deny any of these speculations right now, I understand, I've been in your shoes a couple of times myself." The man chuckled. "However, we would love for him to be brought in as soon as possible. This has dragged on for rather too long."
"Well," Burns said. "We still have a couple of leads to explore before..."
"I am afraid I may not have made myself clear," the man interrupted Burns. "That was not a suggestion. It was an order. Bring the man in as soon as possible and close this case. That is all." There was a note of finality in his voice. Burns knew there was nothing he could do about it.
The call had happened almost 3 hours earlier but he had not been able to get himself to do what was required of him. Perhaps this was one of those instances where a subordinate defied orders from a superior, maybe this was one of those times.
CHAPTER 11
YOUR SINS WILL FIND YOU OUT
“My wife and I are deeply distressed by this recent development, especially as it has not led to the rescue of my baby. My wife is distraught; she can barely function as it is right now…”
Elizabeth Benson stared at the face of her husband on the TV screen and could not believe her eyes. Her brain refused to make the connection that the man who was on TV. showing such concern for his wife and their missing child was the same man who came home each night and went straight to bed without as much as a sideways glance towards her. During the early days when their baby had gotten missing, he had been so full of concern but there had been something about the way he showed the concern. It was almost as though it was forced. As though he was putting on an act. And as the weeks passed by his true colors began to show. It was then that she realized that he had really been putting up an act. But to see him donning the garb of the grieving parent again so perfectly, looking all concerned, even to the point of saying that she was distraught, she wondered what else he had deceived her about.
She watched as Nathan spoke a little more to the person conducting the interview, then enter his car and zoom off. She sank into a seat, her knees suddenly seeming incapable of bearing her weight. She could not even begin to contemplate what it would mean for her if it turned out that her husband was somehow complicit in the kidnap of their child. What would it mean for her marriage? Would it mean that she had been living a lie, that their marriage had been a sham? Her thoughts went back to the time the investigator, Holly, had come visiting; she had made some insinuations suggesting that Nathan may have been involved in the kidnap in some way. At that time she had been enraged at the thought of that, but now she could not deny the nagging doubts that were springing up everywhere in her thoughts. She was nobody’s fool and knew that she would not be at peace until she had confirmed her fears.
She was still sitting with the TV on full blast when she heard her husband’s car pulling into the driveway. The sound of it quickened her heartbeat. She did not need to turn when the door swung open and she heard footsteps, two footsteps actually. She knew it was her husband and his driver, Anderson. She eventually turned on her seat. Anderson is helping her husband out of his coat. Both men worked in silence, with the ease that came as a result of them having worked together for so long. At some point, Anderson looked up and caught her eyes.
“Hello Mrs. B,” he said cheerfully. He had always been helpful since the day of her child’s disappearance. An older man himself, he seemed to be able to understand the amount of grief and fear she had been going through. But this night she there was something in his eyes, something that almost looked like regret. Elizabeth brushed it off. Perhaps her mind was just playing tricks on her.
“Hello, Anderson. How was today?” she replied.
He shrugged as though to say, “so-so.”
Her husband walked towards her.
“Hello, babe,” he cooed.
He came to where she sat and placed his hands on her shoulder, massaging her shoulder blades gently. She flinched involuntarily.
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
“Oh, I am fine. It has just been a long time since you did that”“Nathan. I have a couple of things I need to take care of,” she said, twisting out of his reach.
“Very well,” he replied, dropping his hands to his sides and turning towards their bedroom.
“Anderson, my good man, It does seem as though my wife has plans she does not wish me to interrupt. What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“Find yourself something to do that does not involve her. That is how these things are done, sir.” Anderson was by the door, he was getting ready to leave. “Whenever my wife is in one of her moods where she does not want me coming near her, I bugger off and find me something else to do with my life.”
“You are a smart man, Anderson,” Nathan replied, then turning to his wife he said, ‘”Since it does appear that you do not want my company this night, I am going to head off to the gym and do something meaningful with my life.”
“Don’t be silly, Nathan, I did not mean it that way,” she said, laughing.
“It is cool. We’re cool,” he said, raising the palms of his hands.
He turned and walked away, whistling a tune.
“Ma’am, are you okay?” Anderson asked again. He was standing by the door, his hand on the doorknob.
“I am fine, Anderson. Thank you for your concern.”
“Very well then. Have a good night,” he said. He hesitated at the door for a few minutes and Elizabeth could have sworn that it seemed he wanted to say something else, but that moment passed. He broke eye contact with her, opened the door, and left.
Elizabeth sat in the silence for a while; she waited until she heard the sound of her husband's footsteps as he climbed down the staircase to the basement. She knew he would turn on the heater and wait for the room to warm up before venturing to the mach
ines to begin his workout. The basement was his personal space, but she was the one who picked out the furniture for the house and thus knew every inch of the place.
She got up and went to their room. She closed the door and turned the lock. Her heart was racing, it was beating so fast she was afraid it would leap from her chest on to the floor. She leaned back and tried to keep her get calm. If what she was suspecting was correct then her husband was a dangerous man, capable of committing unspeakable crimes and getting away with it. She would have to be careful, extremely careful.. If, he found her doing what she was about to do, he would most likely deal with her the way he dealt with all of the others.
She looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time. The bed was perfectly laid. There was a wardrobe by the left side of the bed. She began searching from the wardrobe for nothing in particular. She just had the inclination that whenever she saw it, she would recognize it.
She went through her husband’s clothes one at a time. In one, she saw the receipt for a speeding ticket. The ticket was addressed to her husband, so she wondered briefly where Anderson had been while he had been speeding. Then she saw a packet of condoms in one of his suits. She held it in her palm and sat heavily on the bed. It was still sealed shut, which ostensibly suggested that he had not made use of it. However, she was slightly worried that he even had a packet of condoms at hand in the first place. It was the kind of thing one got in the event of an emergency. Why would he need it? What kind of situation would it be that would necessitate him popping a packet of condoms anyway? She thought. But she pushed those thoughts away. She would handle the subject of his infidelity sometime in the future. As incriminating as it appeared, the packet of condoms was not the subject of her search.
She carefully placed the clothes back into the closet, taking care that she arranged them exactly the way the clothes were before she rifled through them. She thought hard about any other place that was her husband’s domain. She heaved a sigh of frustration when no place occurred to her. She was about leave the room when it came to her: his office.
Nathan had an office in the house. It wasn’t really an office, just an empty room he had converted into a make-shift office after the birth of their son to enable him bring work home so he could spend more time with the baby. Since the disappearance of their child, the room was one of the rooms she avoided at home, together with the baby’s room; it brought back too many hurtful memories. She could not bring herself to summon the mental energy she would need to deal with the loss she would feel if she entered the room. That was not the only challenge, the room was also next door to the basement and if she were to enter the room then she would need to have a reason to, in the event that Nathan walked in and saw her there.
Nathan usually spent a maximum of one hour whenever he hit the gym. She looked at her watch; he was twenty minutes in already. If she was really fast, she could be in and out of the room before he rounded off the rest of his routine. She exited the room and began walking down the staircase. She stepped on the stairs gingerly, careful not to make a sound. The stairs were not helping as they creaked under her weight; the stairs were made of wood. When she got to the door, she first peeped into the basement. Loud rock music was wafting off of the speakers. Nathan did not use earphones; he had installed large speakers in the room so he could feel the force of the rock songs as they came through the speakers. He was on the treadmill, walking to the beat of the song. She knew that next he would do the sit up and squats and that would be the end of it.
She walked past the open door to the other room beside it. She turned the lock and walked in. the music briefly stopped and she heard Nathan shout,
“Elizabeth, is that you?”
She held her breath and did not respond. She knew that if she told him she was there to feel the presence of the baby he would probably believe her, but something stopped her from doing so. The music soon came back on when he did not get any reply.
She contemplated turning on the light but decided that that might draw his attention further. She turned on the flashlight on her cellphone and looked around the room. The room was divided into two halves; there was a desk which held his computer and a few documents on one side of the room while the other side had a baby crib and some mattresses where Nathan usually lay whenever he put the child to sleep in the crib. She quickly walked to the side of the room where the table was and rifled through the document on the table; there was nothing of interest to her there.
Then she turned on the computer. There was the requirement for a password. She tried to remember if Nathan had mentioned anything relating to the password to her, she could not remember any in that instant. She then started trying out different combinations. She tried his social security number, it did not work. Then she tried his birth date. Then her birth date, none of them worked. Eventually, she tried her son’s birth date and the laptop got unlocked. She sighed with relief, but the relief quickly turned to bewilderment when she saw that on his desktop he had a folder with her name on it.
She paused with her finger above the ‘enter’ key. Was she mentally ready to confront whatever it was she could find in the files? What if they turned out to be so horrendous that it destroys her marriage eventually, was the snooping around really worth it? She sighed as her finger struck the enter button. She knew there was no going back at this point.
Her mouth fell open when she saw the contents of the folder. The folder contained documents that were relating to her. Bank statements that could not have been released except with her express permission, which meant that for them to be in her husband’s custody, it was either that he forged her signature, or that he found one of the corrupt bank workers and convinced the fellow to do his dirty work. She went through the rest of the documents. Her will was only there, as well as documents relating to several properties that her parents had left her. She was still wondering what Nathan’s interest was concerning her finances when she got to the last two documents and everything suddenly became clear. The first was a document tracking the growth of a trust fund her parents had set up for her as soon as she was born. She gasped when she saw the amount that had accumulated over the years; it was a little over 50 million dollars. She usually paid little attention to the amount that was in the fund as she had never had the need to withdraw the money. She skipped to the last document, and almost fell out of the seat. The document showed a series of transactions where money was moved from her trust fund to an account owned by her husband. The paper trail was all there. It appeared that the money was moved while she was in Trinidad with the baby.
She was just speechless. How had he managed to move the money from her account? He would have needed to have her authorization at least. The process of moving money from the account included an elaborate procedure which included a series of letters that were supposed to come from her as well as from the trustee. The fact that Nathan had managed to circumvent all of those processes left her nonplussed. He must have been planning it for a long time, waiting for just the perfect time to act.
Her heart was racing. She knew there was one other thing she had to do, one person she had to call to confirm if her suspicions were true. She dialed a number on her phone and put the phone to her ear as soon as it started ringing.
“Hello, Mrs. Benson, how are you?” an excited voice said over the phone.
“I am very good, Melvin. How are you doing?” she could hear excited chatter and music in the background. It was obvious that her husband’s assistant was out drinking with friends.
“I am fine ma’am. It has been a long while.”
“Yes, it has. I hope I am not interrupting anything?”
“No, you are not. As a matter of fact, I was actually about to start heading out. My guys dragged me out to a club to celebrate the birthday of a friend, but I have to leave now. There is work tomorrow after all.” He gave a nervous laughter.
“I am sorry about what happened to baby Benson. I cannot even begin to imagi
ne how anyone could be that callous. I am sorry I did not reach out more often. Mr. Benson said you needed the privacy, so most of us at the office decided to just stay away from the house,” Melvin said.
“Thank you so much for the concern. Extend my gratitude to everyone at the office. Perhaps I would send you guys a note or something.”
“I’m sure they would all appreciate.”
“I called because I need your help.”
“Of course, how can I help you?”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “Who actually arranged my travel arrangements when I traveled to Trinidad?”
“I did.”
“Was anyone else aware of my itinerary at all?”
“No. it was just I and Mr. Benson.”
“Okay. That is all, thank you.”
“No problems,” he hesitated for a moment and then added, “I do not know if this is important so I did not mention it to the police when they asked, but Mr. Benson asked me to change your seats from first class to the economy seat a few days before you were due to come back.”
That was not what Nathan had told her. He had simply said that the airline had a problem with her booking and asked that they changed her seating. She had decided to suffer that little inconvenience and come back anyway. Several times since the kidnap of her baby, she had gone over that particular tiny detail in her head. If she had been sitting at the first class cabin, it would have been near impossible for someone to grab her baby because that area was usually secluded and separate from the rest of the plane. Now Melvin was telling her that her husband had deliberately changed her seat and put her in a place where she was susceptible to the attack.
“Did he tell you why he did that?” she asked.
“No, he did not. I found it puzzling because we had had to pay extra to the airline to effect that change in the seating arrangement. It just did not make any sense to me.”
“That is okay, Melvin. Thank you for telling me this.”