The Dead Peasants' Contract: A Sequel to The Dead Peasants File (The Dead Peasants' Series Book 2)

by L. Craig Harris

  He saw that he could also set an alarm if a blue signature went near a location. So he set an alarm a thousand feet around his house and around Christopher’s house. He looked at the clock. It was nearly midnight. He wondered if Christopher was still awake. He figured it would be worth waking him to tell him what he had done.

  “Hey Ryan, I’m going for a smoke break,” Dillon said to the man he worked with.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Ryan said.

  “Well, I just started.” Dillon walked out of the room and out into the parking lot. He padded Christopher’s number.

  “Hello?” Christopher sounded groggy.

  “Hey, did I wake you?”

  “Uh, yeah! It’s midnight, but it’s okay. What’s going on?”

  “I have some news I thought you would want to hear.”

  “Well good. I love good news.”

  “I set an alarm on my phone through the Morgan system. If anyone from Corporate comes within a thousand feet of your house, I’ll know it.”

  “That is good news. I’m glad you woke me for that.” He cleared his throat. “How did you do it?”

  “Our system is set up to alarm us when workers go where they shouldn’t, I simply set a perimeter around our houses.” He looked over his shoulder. “I’m just using Morgan’s technology against him.”

  “I’m glad you’re my friend, Dillon. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing you’re watching over us. You’re my guardian angel.”

  “Well I don’t know about that, but I’m glad to be of service.” Dillon took a drag on a cigarette and exhaled.

  “Are you smoking?”

  “Yeah, I just started again. It gives me something to do on my breaks.”

  “What does Gabby think about that?”

  “Well, let’s just say she doesn’t know yet. She won’t like it. I’ll have to keep it our little secret.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I better get back to work. Just wanted you to know.”

  “Stay in touch Dillon. And thanks again for calling.”

  Dillon crushed the cigarette out under his foot and went back into the store. Morgan had paired him with a neophyte named Ryan. Dillon figured he was way too young to be some double-agent henchman from Corporate, sent to spy on him. This kid was fresh out of high school. Dillon couldn’t believe he was dumb enough to sign the contract, but all Ryan could talk about was the new truck he bought with his last paycheck. Ryan was charged with watching hundreds of Morgan workers, and Dillon didn’t figure he was old enough to vote.

  “We’ve got an alarm going off,” Ryan said when Dillon got back to the room. “Some lady is in a red box.”

  Dillon walked up to the screen. “Where is she?”

  “Drug store.”

  “Yeah, Morgan says that’s our competition.” He looked to see her name and the address. “Who’s turn is it go confront her?”

  “That’d be yours, sir.”

  “Good. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Dillon turned and left the room. He liked to go out to confront workers who had strayed where they shouldn’t. It got him out of the room for a moment. They were never dangerous, at least so far. They knew they were out of line.

  He drove to the address of the drug store, just a mile and a half from the store, keeping an eye on her signature on his phone as he drove. It showed that she left the store and went home, a couple of blocks away. Dillon followed her to the house and caught up to her as she got out of the car. Her hair was mussed and she was wearing purple pajamas and house slippers.

  “Mrs. Diaz, you know you’re not allowed in that store, it’s our competition.”

  “Oh, Mr. McGee, I just ran in to get some cough syrup for my daughter. That pharmacy is only two blocks from here.”

  “You signed the contract. You know the rules.”

  “Oh, can’t we forget this one?”

  “As far as I’m concerned we can. I don’t care. But Morgan sets the rules and pays the salaries.” He filled out and signed a form on a notepad, then handed it to her. “Here’s your first warning. Don’t get another one or I’ll report you.”

  She grinned at him. “Ok, I won’t.”

  Dillon got back in his truck and headed back to the store. He had noticed that every couple of days a new red box would appear on his screen. Corporate had blacklisted another company. The workers were finding fewer and fewer places available to do business. Dillon couldn’t help but notice a lot of insurance companies were being redlined. His fear was that one day, there would be no insurance for anyone, except what Morgan offered. It looked to him like that’s where it was going.

  He wondered if the government would step in and stop this, but no one was even talking about it.

  On break, he sat in the worker’s lounge and watched the television that was on the back wall. The news channel was airing a story on a Morgan worker in Texas filing a lawsuit for what she claimed was a civil rights violation. She admitted she signed the contract, but said it was unfair for Morgan to keep her from going to stores of her choice. It robbed her of a basic, constitutional right. Dillon jumped and turned up the volume with the remote. This was what he had been waiting to see. This represented hope. But the reporter said the woman mysteriously disappeared before the case ever went to trial.

  Dillon shook his head. He turned the volume back down and turned to the janitor who was in the room with him. “What we need are term limits in Congress. Then politicians would not be in office long enough to be paid off by huge companies.”

  “Yes, that would be good,” the man said, “but politicians have no desire to set limits on themselves.”

  Dillon looked back at the television. The man was right. There was no end in sight to this. It was going to keep getting worse. He rubbed his hand over the scar on his abdomen. Whatever was going to happen, he was going to feel it. No matter what, he had signed the contract.

  He went back into the surveillance room and sat in front of the screens. He watched the signature dots for a moment. Most people were asleep and motionless in their homes, but some were in the store with him or over in the warehouse. He could hover over each dot and get information on the person it represented. That gave him an idea. He began to put in names of workers to see where they were. He looked at several of his friends and coworkers. He put in Christopher’s nemesis, Wesley Boyd, expecting to see his blue dot somewhere in the city. But it wasn’t there. He studied its history. Boyd’s signature hadn’t been present on the screen for more than two weeks, which was how far back the history went. He typed in the name Kurt Gregory. He wasn’t anywhere to be seen either. He had also been gone at least two weeks.

  He waited until eight the next morning, then called Christopher to tell him.

  “That’s interesting,” Christopher said.

  “I flagged them so I can let you know if they come back into town.”

  “Thanks Dillon. I appreciate what you’re doing for me.”

  It was about three the next morning when Ryan startled Dillon. Dillon was sitting at his post in front of the screens. It had been really quiet and Dillon was biding his time.

  “Dillon, take a look at this.”

  Dillon rubbed his eyes. “What is it?”

  “Well, I got these codes from an email account that I hacked into–”

  “Stop right there. You hacked into someone’s email account?”

  Ryan shrugged. “I like to keep up with the corporate suits. That’s where the action is.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Ryan pointed to the screen. “See these red signatures? These are people that corporate is watching. It’s not normal microchips, though. This is something different.”

  “What do you mean?” Dillon could see several red dots around Missouri, including a cluster in Springfield.

  “Well, you have a red signature and a green one.” He pointed at the screen. “And I know this guy, he doesn’t even work for the company.”

  “How do you
know him?”

  “He lives on my street. He’s a cop.” Ryan glanced back at Dillon. “But look, the signature is in his driveway if you zoom in.”

  “They must have his car bugged.” Dillon looked back at his own red signature. “Mine seems to be right here with me.”

  “You have a bug.”

  “But where?” Dillon knew they had put the microchip back in, but he had disabled it. His green signature was coming from the chip in his pocket.

  Ryan pointed at him. “I bet it’s in your phone.”

  Dillon stood up and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Let’s try something.” He left the room and took his phone out to his truck, and then came back into the room. “Where is my red dot now?”

  Ryan studied the screen for a moment. “It looks like it’s out in the parking lot.”

  Dillon could feel his heart elevating. “Let me see this.” He sat in front of the screen and began to hover the mouse over the red signatures. He knew most of them. One of them was Christopher Forrest. He turned around and glanced at Ryan. “Can I widen this out?”

  Ryan tapped the minus tab at the bottom of the screen and the area began to widen. The signatures got smaller and more clustered together. Ryan pulled out to show all of the western hemisphere. “I can pull out to see the whole world, I guess.”

  “Wait, stop right there,” Dillon said. “Zoom in on those two signatures.”

  Ryan manipulated the screen until he brought Central America into focus. There were two signatures off the east coast of Belize.

  Dillon hovered over them and saw their names. He wanted to call them, he wanted to call Christopher, but it was the middle of the night. He would have to wait until day. He studied the red signatures the rest of his shift, trying to figure out a pattern. When he changed the screen to history mode, more signatures appeared. He hovered over one of the signatures that had disappeared and got the person’s name: Jackson Holland. He remembered that name, but from where? He opened a search engine on his desktop and entered it. He immediately found it in a news story. Jackson had been killed a couple of weeks ago. He had driven his car off of a cliff south of Springfield. Dillon felt sick to his stomach. He looked over at Ryan. “Can I see the emails you found?”

  “I guess.”

  Dillon began to look through them. He couldn’t make much out of the first several. Some were personal and mundane. He continued to scroll through them. A name caught his eye: Jackson Holland. Jackson’s name was listed among five others. All of them had the word insurance typed beside them. Dillon looked up at the time stamp at the top of the email. It was two weeks before Jackson was killed. He looked up each name on the list and all of them had recently died.

  “You see this?” Dillon pointed to the list. “These are Morgan workers who were killed so corporate could collect their insurance.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Ryan said.

  “I wish I was. Morgan has been doing this for years.” He turned and looked at Ryan. “I don’t know how they’re getting away with it.” He looked back at the screen. “They have someone murdered, make it look like an accident or something, then collect their corporate-owned insurance.” He turned to face Ryan. “They target people they don’t like. Maybe some manager who isn’t reaching his quota, or some worker who is sick with high medical bills.”

  Ryan stared back at him. “Or some kid who hacked into corporate’s private emails.”

  “That’s right.” Dillon nodded. “You need to be very careful and don’t get on Charles Morgan’s bad side.” He looked back at the screen. “That man holds a grudge for a long time.”

  Dillon continued to study the emails. He printed a copy of several of them, along with the news stories that matched the names, using a laserjet on the counter. He searched in a drawer until he found a thumb drive and inserted it into the computer tower. He saved the most incriminating emails and files to it, then ejected it and put it in his pocket. He stuffed the printed sheets into a manila folder and put it under his arm. Then he turned and looked at Ryan. “You didn’t see any of this.”

  Later that morning, after he had helped his children get ready and leave for school, he drove over to Christopher’s house.

  Christopher met him at the door. “Come on in, Dillon, we have coffee on.”

  “None for me, thanks.” Dillon shook his hand. “Let me see your phone.”

  Christopher handed it to him.

  Dillon took it out to his truck and left it there, along with his own. Then he followed Christopher into the living room and sat on the couch. “Morgan bugged our phones. That may have been why he lured us to Denver. I don’t know.”

  Christopher leaned forward. “How do you know this?”

  “The guy I work with figured it out.” He glanced behind him. “He got Travis and Julia too.”

  “Why would he bug our phones? What good is that?”

  Dillon shook his head. “I don’t know what he wants, but we may be in danger. He may be monitoring our calls, or he may be able to hear everything we say, I’m not sure. But I do know he can track where we are.”

  “I’ll just smash my phone and get another one.”

  Dillon shook his head. “No, we can’t let them know that we know. We’ve got to be smart about this. But we’ve got to be careful.” He looked at Christopher for a second. “When was the last time you talked to Travis?”

  “It’s been a couple of weeks.”

  “Let’s call him from Rachel’s phone.”

  Christopher called to Rachel, who was in the bedroom. “Honey, can I use your phone?”

  She came in a joined them. “Sure.” She handed her phone to Christopher, then looked at Dillon. “Good morning.”

  Dillon nodded at her. “Mornin’.”

  Christopher held her phone, selected Travis’ number, called it, and waited. He glanced at Dillon. “Voicemail.” He left a message, then tried Julia’s. He got her voicemail too and left a message. “Hey Julia, this is Chris. I haven’t heard from you in a couple of weeks. Give me a call when you get this. Hope all is well. Love you guys.” He ended the message and looked at Rachel, then Dillon.

  “Try Jonathan,” Rachel said. “See if he’s heard from them.”

  Christopher looked for and found his number, then called it. He put the phone on speaker and held it out. “Hey Jonathan, this is Chris Forrest. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Chris. It’s good to hear from you.”

  “Say, I was wondering if you’ve heard from your folks lately?”

  “It’s funny that you called,” Jonathan said. “I was going to call you. I’ve been trying to call them all week and they won’t answer. Karen is trying too. I was hoping you knew where they were.”

  “No, I haven’t spoken to them in a couple of weeks. Maybe their cell service is down or something.” He glanced over at Dillon then spoke back into the phone. “Well, if you hear from them, let me know, okay?”

  “Will do, Chris.”

  Christopher ended the call and looked again at Dillon. “So what do we do?”

  Dillon stared back at him for several seconds. “I guess we need to go check on them.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dillon waited for Christopher to come pick him up. He stood in the driveway in the morning sunshine. He and Christopher had found a flight to Belize for the next day. Dillon had something he wanted to do before they left so that suited him fine. He wanted to take the copy of the email with the list of names to the police. Christopher had agreed to go with him and was on his way to get him to drive them to the police station.

  Dillon was leaving his car and microchip at home so no one would know that he was going to the police.

  He and Christopher left their phones in the car when they went inside the police station. They waited in the lobby to see a detective. Dillon was uneasy being in there again. The last time he had been there, the officer had thrown him in jail. He sure didn’t want to do that again.

  After sitting more
than thirty minutes, a large African-American detective came through the door. Both men knew him well, Isaac Goodman, the same detective they had dealt with before. They stood to their feet when he came into the lobby.

  He grinned at them. “How can I help you this morning?”

  Dillon held up the manila folder he was carrying. “We’ve got Morgan this time. I have proof that he’s killing his workers to collect their insurance.”

  Isaac immediately began to shake his head. “No, no. Not that again.” He turned and opened the steel door leading back to the offices and jail cells. “Follow me.”

  They followed him back to his office. The memory of the place came back to Dillon as he went in and sat in the padded steel chairs in front of Isaac’s desk. Dillon slapped the manila folder on Isaac’s desk in front of him.

  “What is this, McGee?” Isaac opened it and began to thumb through the pages.

  Dillon pointed to the first sheet. “See that list of names? They all have the word insurance beside them. And they’re all dead.”

  Isaac glanced up at him. “Maybe this means the company collected their insurance when they died.”

  “I would think that too, but the email went out before any of them died. You can see the date stamp at the top right, and I have the news stories showing when they died.”

  Isaac nodded. “Well, that is more interesting.” He studied the sheets of paper for a moment, going back and forth comparing the news stories to the list of names.

  Dillon and Christopher sat quietly watching him.

  Isaac looked up at Dillon. “So, how did you get these emails?”

  Dillon glanced over at Christopher. He was afraid his case was about to fall apart. “Well, uh, a guy I work with hacked into the corporate email server–”

  “Let me just stop you right there,” Isaac said. “This would never hold up in court. I couldn’t even get an arrest warrant with stolen email, and you know emails are not admissible.” He shook his head. “In fact, Morgan could press charges against you for looking at these.”

  Christopher spoke up. “Show him your stomach, Dillon.”