Dominion

by Greg F. Gifune

  Brad Shaffer, a tall and lanky man with dark hair and hazel eyes, was already waiting for him in the doorway to his office. With a suspect smile, he offered his hand. “Good to see you, Danny.”

  Daniel shook his hand. It was larger than his own but Shaffer’s grip was rather limp, odd in a man his size. “You too, Brad, how are you?”

  “How are you?”

  “As well as can be expected, I guess.”

  Brad ushered him into the office and closed the door. He had the kind of square-jawed but uninspired looks models in department store catalogues possess, and a similar kind of vacuous stare. “Did you want to chat here, or would you rather go downstairs to one of the restaurants and get some lunch?”

  “No, this is fine, thanks.”

  Brad motioned to a chair in front of his desk. “Please.”

  Daniel sat in the chair, noticing how immaculate and organized the office was. Nothing out of place, everything just so, much like Brad himself. “How are Clara and the girls doing?”

  “Everyone’s well, thanks, just fine.”

  “Be sure to give them my best.”

  “Absolutely, I sure will.” Brad made his way back behind the desk and took up position in a black leather swivel. On the wall behind him he had hung numerous framed advertising awards along with his degrees, one of which was from Rutgers University. Displayed prominently at the front of his desk were silver framed photographs of his wife and two daughters, and one of Brad and his wife Clara that had been taken while on vacation in Hawaii. Another photograph featured him standing side-by-side with a famous rock group he had once worked with on an advertising deal. But it was the final photo that held Daniel’s attention, a shot of Brad with Lindsay at a convention they had attended together two years ago. He’d never seen the picture before, and hadn’t expected to see her smiling face looking back at him just then. “That’s actually from a couple years ago,” Brad said once he realized Daniel was looking at the photograph. “The convention in Los Angeles, remember?”

  Daniel smiled blandly. “I remember Lindsay told me what a great time she had there.”

  “It was work, but on the off times it really was a blast.” He cleared his throat, looked down at a neat pile of paperwork on his desk and softly said, “Good times.”

  “You miss her, don’t you?”

  Brad gathered the paperwork then spun in his chair and slid the papers into a file cabinet next to his desk. “Very much,” he said as he spun back around. “Lindsay was a lot more to me than just a coworker and business associate, you know that. She was one of my best friends, and I cared for her very deeply. I’ll miss her for the rest of my life.”

  “I’m with you on that one,” Daniel said.

  A clumsy silence followed until Brad said, “I’m just grateful they got the bastard.”

  Daniel had decided prior to coming that he wouldn’t tell Brad about the phone calls, but he also had no desire to discuss the man that had killed her either, in derogatory terms or otherwise. “Yeah, me too.”

  “Hey, everyone has problems, I can sympathize. I’m not some heartless jerk, you know? But that guy? Come on.” He shook his head. “He should’ve been locked away or put in a hospital long before he got the chance to hurt anyone. The papers said he’d been a heroin addict for years, had a record for car theft a mile long. Strung out and crazy, driving a stolen car and just mowing down an innocent person like that and—and then he keeps going? No mercy, sorry. I admit it, I was glad when they found the bastard dead. If only he’d overdosed a night earlier, Lindsay would still be alive.”

  Daniel hadn’t seen Brad since the wake. He’d spoken to him once on the telephone about a week later, when Brad called to see if there was anything he needed, but since then they’d had no contact. In those early weeks after Lindsay’s death nearly everyone Daniel knew—and even a lot of people he didn’t know that well—had checked in on him constantly and offered whatever they could. He’d received numerous invitations to dinner, most of which he politely declined, and at times felt suffocated by all the attention, well-meaning as it was. Over time the majority of that attention died down and eventually ceased altogether, only to be replaced with an uncomfortable and guarded distance, as if he were someone who brought with him a dark cloud that might also rain on others if they weren’t sufficiently cautious. It was neither something he could, nor something he was certain he wanted to extricate himself from, but at times rendered him an unintentional pariah of sorts. “I was hoping we could talk about the night Lindsay was killed,” he said. “I’ve been trying to piece some things together about that night.”

  “OK.” Brad leaned forward until his forearms and hands rested on the desk in front of him. He slowly interlocked his long fingers. “How can I help?”

  “I know we talked about this once before not long after Lindsay’s death, but could you walk me through that night again?”

  The muscles in Brad’s cheeks reacted, twitching a bit. “Well, like I told the police, we had a meeting with clients at the Park Plaza. It wrapped up at about seven-thirty. We’d driven there together in my car, so I drove Lindsay back here to the garage.”

  “And that was the last time you saw her, right?”

  “Yes,” he said gravely. “I remember she got out of my car, walked over to hers and then gave me a little wave and smiled. She had her keys in her hand when she waved. I remember because she waved with the keys, you know what I mean? It’s so strange, the little details we remember sometimes. It’s become a snapshot of her frozen in my mind. She looked happy. Tired—it had been a long day—but happy.”

  “What was she doing over by the mall?”

  “Danny, if I knew, I’d tell you.”

  “Would you?”

  He shook his head as if he’d just been slapped across the face. “I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but if you’re suggesting I’m somehow withholding information about Lindsay or that night then quite frankly I think—”

  “I need to know the truth, Brad.” Daniel sat forward. “I need to know it, do you understand? Whatever that truth may be, I need it.”

  “And what makes you think I know any more than I’ve already told you?”

  “Lindsay didn’t have many close friends. You and Audrey, that’s about it.”

  “True enough.”

  “I know you were always a loyal friend to her, and that you want to continue to be loyal to her now, but I need you to tell me what you know.”

  “Are you accusing me of doing something other than that?”

  “Are you guilty of something other than that?”

  His attempts at being gracious now gone, Brad raised his chin a bit and gave Daniel a look of contempt. “We’re all guilty of something.”

  “What was she doing that night after the meeting?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was Lindsay doing by the mall at that hour?”

  “I don’t know. I went home after I dropped her off. My wife can verify that, if you’d like to question her about what time I got home. Lindsay was my friend, nothing more was going on between us. And for you to even imply that—”

  “I’m not implying anything,” Daniel snapped. “If I thought for a second you were sleeping with my wife, we wouldn’t be having such a civil conversation.”

  Brad laughed uncomfortably. “Oh, is that what we’re having?”

  Daniel drew a deep breath then let it out slowly. “I didn’t mean to come in here and—I didn’t mean for this to go this way, all right? I just need some answers.”

  Brad’s posture loosened. “Whatever answers I have you’re more than welcome to.”

  “You said Lindsay was happy that night.”

  “Yes. As I say, she was tired—we both were—but I don’t remember her being in a bad mood particularly. She seemed her usual self.”

  Daniel swallowed so hard it was audible. “Was she happy in general, Brad?”

  “Far as I know she was.” He hesitate
d in anticipation of a response, but when none was voiced he said, “Lindsay adored you, Danny. Look, I don’t understand, where are you going with all this? From everything I know you two had a good solid marriage. She confided in me now and then—sure—but even if she was annoyed with you at the time it always had to do with fairly trivial things, you know, typical married stuff, an argument here or there but nothing of any real importance. Actually, she often talked about how you’d helped to bring her into her own, and how she could’ve never been the person she was without you. She said she was very shy growing up, not very confident, and credited you for helping to make her the woman she became.”

  Daniel nodded, remembering a wallet-sized photograph Lindsay had given him not long after they’d graduated college, a beautiful shot of her with that brilliant smile. On the back, she’d written: Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. When he asked her what she’d meant by that, instead of answering, she kissed him and told him she loved him. Now all these years later he finally knew. “Yeah, believe it or not, Lindsay was shy when I first met her,” he said softly. “I helped her out of her shell, but she deserves the credit for being the person she was, not me.”

  Both men tried not to notice the other employees hustling about the office beyond the glass walls surrounding them. “I know I don’t have to tell you this,” Brad finally said, “but Lindsay was an exceptional person. Take what she accomplished here, for example. She started off as a secretary and worked her way up into an executive position. That kind of thing does happen, but very rarely. What’s more, she earned every bit of it. A woman with her looks and savvy had to take a lot of crap along the way, and she could’ve cut corners, know what I mean? But she didn’t. Again, I’m not telling you something you don’t already know, but the business world is still very much a boy’s club. Women often have to deal with things men don’t. It’s not right, it shouldn’t be that way, but much of the time it is. I personally don’t approve of it, I find it repugnant, but the reality is that much of the business world is set up that way because it’s still largely run and controlled by men. But Lindsay didn’t have to crawl under a desk to get a promotion or sleep with a client to land an account.”

  “She didn’t have to,” Daniel said, “but did she?”

  Brad’s face turned dark. “How can you sit here and ask me that?”

  “Do you think I like asking these questions?”

  “I don’t know, do you? Lindsay and I were colleagues, I wasn’t her boss. I didn’t sit in on every meeting, lunch or dinner she had with the higher-ups whenever she got promoted. Frankly, I’m sure there were plenty of overtures. But to my knowledge Lindsay never did anything like that. She was outstanding at what she did. One of the best advertising executives this company had. Lindsay didn’t have to give blowjobs to some V.P. to get ahead.”

  “I’m not suggesting she did, Brad, I’m—”

  “The way she was going, in another five years she could’ve written her own ticket, even opened her own agency. She was that good. And everybody knew it.”

  “I already know how good she was at her job. I need to know what the hell she was doing that night.”

  Brad leaned further back in his swivel, grabbed a pen from his desk and fiddled with it nervously. An inordinate amount of time passed before he offered a response. “I know there’s a motel there, and I’m relatively certain that’s about the only thing that would’ve been open at that hour, but what she was doing there I couldn’t tell you because I honestly have no idea. I’ve thought about it and tried to remember if there was any indication she might’ve been involved in something, but I come up empty every time. It just wasn’t Lindsay, not the Lindsay I knew.”

  “But she was there.”

  Still playing with the pen, Brad glanced at him quickly and nodded. “No question. I just don’t know why any more than you do.” He brought the pen to his thin lips and let the cap rest in the corner of his mouth. “All I can tell you is that if she was doing something she shouldn’t have been doing, I had no idea about it then and no theory as to what it could be about now.”

  “Could it have been related to business?” Daniel asked.

  “It’s possible, but highly unlikely.”

  “Do you know if she’d ever been to that motel before?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think she was doing there?”

  “Danny, for God’s sake, I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t ask what you know. I asked what you think.”

  “It seems reasonable she was meeting someone there,” he said. “But as to whom it could’ve been, or why, I have no idea. I’d like to think I knew Lindsay quite well, and I can tell you this: If she was having an affair or anything along those lines, I think I would’ve known or at a minimum had some suspicions. I didn’t then and I don’t now.”

  “OK.” Daniel sighed. He believed him, but that did little to alleviate his frustration. “Is there anything you can think of, Brad—anything at all—that seemed strange or out of the ordinary with Lindsay in the days before this happened?”

  He nibbled on the end of the pen a moment, eyes narrowing in thought. “I don’t know if it means anything, but there is one thing. I never mentioned it to the police detective that interviewed me, and I didn’t bring it up when you and I talked before because I really didn’t think it was relevant, but I remember a few days before Lindsay was killed we went out to lunch and she told me about these dreams and feelings she’d been having.”

  Flashes of Daniel’s nightmares blinked in his mind. “What kind of dreams?”

  “She said she’d been having strange ones for a few days, about seeing herself or following herself or something. I honestly don’t remember the specifics, but it was like one of those Freudian deals where you’re chasing yourself or something along those lines. She said she was having premonitions too. She felt the dreams had brought them on, though, so she wasn’t that concerned about it. That’s why I never mentioned it.” He sat forward in his swivel, dropped the pen into a holder on his desk. “I know maybe it sounds ominous now, but it was just a conversation. I didn’t get the sense at any point that she had real concern for her well-being.”

  Daniel remembered Lindsay the night the hot wind had blown through their bedroom, the look on her face as she crossed to the window.

  Strange night, her voice whispered to him. Wind isn’t supposed to feel like that.

  “Can you remember anything specific about the premonitions?” he asked.

  “She couldn’t put her finger on them. It was just this odd feeling she said she had that something was wrong. Maybe premonition is too strong a word. The dreams had spooked her a little, I guess, put it that way. We didn’t discuss it at length, she just happened to mention it. I remember her laughing it off and saying she was way overdue for a vacation.” Brad smiled fondly, looking past Daniel now, as if Lindsay were standing behind him. After a few seconds the smile slipped away. “It’s a bit unsettling in retrospect, I admit, but even now I doubt it necessarily means anything. I think we’ve all experienced peculiar dreams that leave us with troublesome premonitions from time to time. The fact that something awful did happen not long after Lindsay experienced it can only be coincidence, far as I’m concerned.” He again made eye contact. “Other than that, I can’t remember anything Lindsay said or did that might relate to any of this.”

  “I don’t know if you’re aware of this,” Daniel said, “but Lindsay briefly regained consciousness just before she died.”

  “No, actually, I didn’t. God.”

  “The EMT told me her last words were: ‘It’s not me. Tell him it’s not me.’”

  Brad seemed genuinely baffled. “What did she mean?”

  “I was hoping you might know, or at a minimum have a theory.”

  “Sorry, no. Did she say anything else?”

  “No. It may have just been confused speech, the EMT thought it probably was. Lindsay was just seconds from death when she
said it and obviously in pretty bad shape.”

  “It’s certainly odd, granted, but the EMT was probably correct.”

  “Yeah, probably.” Daniel embraced the silence a while. “Do you know if Lindsay chatted online a lot, you know, in chat rooms?”

  Brad raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t think she was into that.”

  “I don’t know that she was, just asking.”

  “I remember her saying once she’d been in chat rooms before—hell, we all have now and then, haven’t we?—but far as I know she didn’t really care for them. From what she told me I took it to mean she’d tried them but hadn’t found them terribly interesting.”

  “That was my take too,” Daniel agreed. “I was just curious if you knew of anyone she might’ve spoken to regularly online.”

  “If she was doing such a thing—and I seriously doubt she was—I wasn’t aware of it.”

  Daniel was about to ask another question when Brad’s phone rang.

  “Excuse me a second.” Brad answered the phone, said something quietly in response to whoever had called then hung up. “Sorry, I’ve got a one o’clock at the Four Seasons.” He stood up and grabbed a large portfolio folder with a carrying handle that had been leaning against the wall behind his desk. “Come on, I’ll walk down with you.”