Window of Guilt

by Spallone, Jennie

*

  Laurie sipped her herbal tea as she immersed herself in Griselda’s tale. Focusing on something other than her jailed husband, even an intrusive visitor, provided a welcome diversion.

  “After the fifteenth year flashed by with nary a response from Elizabeth, my employer sought the assistance of a private investigator,” said the secretary.

  “He does that a lot,” said Laurie grimly.

  Griselda reached across the table and patted her hand. “Mr. MacFerron meant you no harm by trailing your family.”

  No harm? Laurie enunciated each word as if her life depended on it. “What does your employer and his former lover have to do with us?”

  “The private investigator traced Elizabeth Grabowski to a two-flat in Edison Park,” said Griselda. “Elizabeth and her husband lived on the top floor and let out the apartment on the first floor to a family of three. However, the only person to come and go from that first floor abode was a blond, blue-eyed teenager, birdlike in stature. He appeared to be a wary sort, looking to and fro each time he exited the apartment building.

  “One day, a tight-lipped police officer confronted the young man and pushed him into the back seat of his squad car. Mr. and Mrs. Grabowski argued vehemently with the officer. The husband was restrained by another officer when he attempted to extract the boy from the vehicle. Mr. MacFerron’s private investigator deduced this young man was a close family member.”

  “Did Gerald suspect this boy was his son?” asked Laurie, sipping her tea.

  “Patience, madam,” Griselda said, smiling politely. “The downstairs apartment remained vacant for the next three years. Prospective renters were refused. Then one day, a blond haired young man with muscled yet lean arms rang the second floor apartment bell. Elizabeth buzzed him upstairs. She greeted her visitor with kisses and hurried him into the apartment.”

  “The investigator reported all this?” asked Laurie. People’s lives were so transparent.

  Griselda nodded. “Miniature video cameras in the hallway. Evidently, the boy had been adopted at birth by a loving Polish couple that already had three children of their own.

  “A sickly sort, Terrence had been the victim of schoolyard bullying. He developed an affinity for violence. By the time he was fifteen, he’d been in juvenile detention for beating up his brothers after they’d told him he was adopted. Somehow, the young man learned of his birth mother’s whereabouts. He escaped from detention and arrived on the Grabowski’s doorstep. Elizabeth and her husband hid the boy for several weeks, culminating in the police confrontation.

  “Terrence dabbled in assorted mischief while in juvenile detention. He remained at the center until his eighteenth birthday, at which time he was released. The young man then returned to the home of his birth mother.”

  “What’s taking you so long in there, Mom?” Rory’s voice echoed into the kitchen. “You said we could go to Blockbuster!”

  “Give me five minutes,” Laurie yelled into the family room. Then she turned back to the older woman. “Was Helga in contact with Elizabeth?”

  “The PI’s report indicated no telephone records or personal encounters between Helga and the housekeeper until last June.”

  “Gerald must be rolling in dough to track his ex-lover for twenty years,” mused Laurie. “Especially when all his letters to her came back unopened.”

  Griselda’s eyes flashed for a moment. “Mr. MacFerron is a persistent man.”

  “Did Gerald keep in touch with his sister after he found out she’d sent Elizabeth away?”

  Griselda shook her head. “Upon learning of his sister’s duplicity, he ceased all contact with her. Helga recently desired to reunite Elizabeth with her younger brother, thereby easing her own way back into his life. Yet she wanted to ascertain whether her former housekeeper was worthy of her efforts. Thus, she arranged a temporary job placement at the group home.”

  “Apparently Gerald wasn’t the only one with inside information on Elizabeth and her son,” Laurie said wryly.

  “Helga moved up to Oconomowoc soon after the dissolution of her relationship with her brother,” Griselda said patiently. “She married a farmer who passed away in 1975, leaving her with a formidable first and second mortgage on their home. It is doubtful Helga would have had the financial ability to track Elizabeth.”

  “She assumed Elizabeth returned from Poland and was working as a housekeeper in Chicago,” Laurie theorized. “Helga couldn’t command the woman to appear before her, so she set out to create a believable scenario. When the temporary housekeeping position at Arnold’s group home became available, Helga made her move. Establishing a relationship with Helga’s grandson would be unlikely. Elizabeth was there to clean, not fraternize with the residents.”

  The older woman applauded. “Bravo, my dear. You are a woman of great insight, which leads me to now reveal why I phoned one week ago to warn that your life was in danger.”

  Laurie pounded the kitchen table so hard her visitor’s teacup jumped. “You called to warn me to be on the lookout for Brad Jr.”

  Rory skipped into the kitchen, waving a plate and cup in the air. “Here you go,” he said, plopping the dirty dish in the sink.

  Silence permeated the cracks in the wall. Finally Griselda spoke. “Bradley was not the focus of last week’s telephone call.”

  *

  Gerald MacFerron stood over the hospital bed of his business partner’s son. Try as he might to conjure up empathy for the corpselike figure attached to a mass of tubes, disgust was the only emotion he could invoke.

  “Gerald MacFerron?” A deep-throated woman’s voice called his name from the door.

  “Yes?”

  Detective Maggie O’Connor flashed her badge. “Would you mind following me, sir? Just need to ask you a few questions.”

  “I’m here to pay a hospital visit.”

  The detective smiled brightly. “This won’t take long, sir.”

  Gerald followed the detective into a small conference room. “What relationship do you have with Brad Hamilton Jr.?” asked Detective O’Connor.

  “You must know that answer if you know my name,” Gerald said in a haughty tone.

  “We know Hamilton is the son of Great Harvest Insurance Company’s CEO, as well as the vice president of the company. We also know you and Brad Hamilton Sr. are business partners.”

  Gerald smiled condescendingly. In reality, he was the brains behind the insurance company, while Brad Hamilton Senior was just a handsome face.

  “Brad Jr. is accused of attacking your former employee’s wife.”

  “Glad somebody finally brought him down,” Gerald muttered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bradley’s a womanizer. This time he took it too far.”

  “What was your relationship with Brad Jr.?”

  “Bradley routinely sought my counsel. I attempted to steer Bradley in the right direction. Little good that did.”

  “You advised Brad Jr. about the insurance business?”

  Gerald nodded.

  “Did you cover for him, too?”

  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 sh
are.”

  “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 know
n 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.