The Coworker: The First Nate Castle

by Vernon Rush

  Yvonne Winters went to school with him that day. She was such a strong presence in his mind, it was as though she were right there with him like Daria usually was. He left the house early. No doubt, the fact of his unscheduled absence from a critical lecture the day before would warrant a discussion from the department head, his supervisor Bill Merit. Nate tried to dismiss his shirked responsibility by telling himself it was just community college. Frederick Community College was hardly Johns Hopkins. Frederick CC was his demotion job, down from the prestigious university position from which he was asked to quietly leave when he decided to take a pee during class. He didn't know what he was going to say to Merit, but he knew he was going to have to say it.

  He had already received a text to "come see me" from Bill. Nate was pretty certain he was not being called in to be briefed about an award he was going to receive. Oddly, with Yvonne Winters on the brain, he felt comforted, as though he was not alone and he had a higher calling to forgive anything that happened up to that moment.

  ***

  Bill Merit made a special trip to the campus for their meeting. Nate realized his boss had forfeited his usual morning off to come in to lecture him. Merit was collegial enough, though, in his greeting and his invitation to have a seat.

  As soon as his boss prefaced the conversation with "the reason why I wanted to speak to you," Nate fired, with no forethought, "I'm so glad you did. I was going to call you, but you beat me to it."

  Bill looked as puzzled as Nate felt, leaving Nate unable to find his next words. It was as though someone was speaking through him. It was an old lawyers' trick, one that was a favorite of one of the Coworker Murder victims—that you go first whenever you are able to in making your case and put your opponent on the defense.

  "As we both know," Nate winged it, "I have had my struggles with controlling my drinking and yesterday got the better of me. I've decided to sign myself up for outpatient. I can still manage class and get help."

  He almost giggled at the curve he threw his boss, who sat processing the confession. Nate had a problem. Anyone who spent any time around Nate for any length of time knew Nate was an alcoholic. There was no question, he had a problem. But not just any problem, it was a disability. Nate gambled that his employer—a college in a liberal, artsy little community—would feel obligated to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  "You sure you can keep this thing under control on an outpatient basis?" Bill asked.

  "I can't explain it, Bill. I have only been to treatment once before," Nate lied his head off. "But it took away the compulsion. As they say, it was a miracle. I was in the middle of a drink last night and made the decision. I kid you not. Right in the middle of a drink, I decided to quit. How does that happen?" Nate rapped. "God is how that happens."

  Bill Merit shrugged and threw his hands up as though to wish Nate well.

  If Nate could have high-fived the ghost of Yvonne Winters, he would have. He had been in so many situations—whether in his position as an amateur sleuth or a drinking man—from which he'd had to bullshit that he knew when he had worked his magic. In his impending delirium, he imagined Winters—who as a lawyer was a professional bullshitter—was there to behold his art. He had Merit so turned around with all the buzz causes of liberal social morality that Merit had to concede.

  Merit extended his hand to Nate. "Well, good luck to you, buddy. We're behind you. Glad to see you're back on track."

  Nate was giddy as he left his meeting, over before it started. He had showered that morning only a couple hours before but he was already breaking out in the oily diaphoresis of detox. He had to keep it together to get through class before he slammed into the detox wall. He checked his watch. He had a little over two hours before he could permit himself to freely question his reality. He would call a doctor, hit a meeting, and begin officially to find the murderer of now three beautiful young lawyers.

  His pocket buzzed. Daria calling. "Hallo," he answered.

  "Is there some reason, Dr. Castle, that Frederick Community College would be calling me at, oh, 7 a.m.?" she asked, as though she already knew the answer to the question.

  Nate chuckled as he walked to his office. "I think they were looking for me. They found me," he said.

  "Oh no," Daria answered. "Do you live?"

  "It's all good. I need you to get a list of all employees on the Weston & Hall website. First of all, you don't know anyone there, do you?"

  "No," Daria answered sharply.

  That answer was confusing to Nate. He knew Daria was connected to some source but she was always evasive as to who it was. He appreciated it was a scary thing that a serial killer was someone among them. And her source probably felt vulnerable about speaking up. Still this, was now murder number three. They had to change up their tactics because the status quo was not producing results.

  "Are you still pals with the secretary supervisor at Dublin & Meyers?"

  "Sorta," she said.

  "Okay, first, I want you to see if you can be in touch. What was that other contact you had, at the agency?" he asked.

  Daria got short with him, though she tried to disguise it. "Hold on there, cowboy. Don't go upending my pals. These are crimes against women and my women friends get very afraid. Let me know what you want and I will see what I can do. I will handle it more delicately than you."

  "Fair enough. Ask him or her how everyone is taking the news blah blah and see if he knows any gossip. Second, start by downloading every bio on Weston & Hale's website. Chances are, they probably removed Winters's bio already. Most importantly, I want to know what the configuration is for their email. Full name and then the 'at' sign, or first initial plus last name, that sort of thing."

  "Just go on their website for that," Daria mocked. "And you need their email why?"

  "Because I am going to see if I can hack into their intranet via Citrix tonight, if I am not too busy convulsing." Nate was only half kidding, for the detox nausea with gathering force.

  "I'm dropping off a care package. A couple bags of lollipops. You know the kind with the chocolate chewy centers? And a gallon of OJ. Question is: should I put them in your fridge or on the back of the commode? Which place are you likely to see first?"

  Daria's voice had an urgency when she spoke that, even though he was not feeling so hot, it warmed him. Even at his worst, she was his friend.

  His own voice was a bit strained as well. "Don't make me laugh," he begged her, for fear that any sudden moves would cause him to throw up for sure. It would be a miracle if he could pull off lectures without reaching for a trash can to hurl. Conducting class sick on booze was way easier than conducting class sick because he was off of it. "Thanks, nurse, by the way," he said to her.

  He got off the phone quickly and chased the idea Daria gave him. He rushed to the Quickie Mart on the corner for candy and sweetened iced tea. The thought of chilled, sugared wetness consumed him. Nate felt himself wavering in and out of reality, receding into the comfort of his own mind so much so that he nearly grazed a lamp post and under estimated the location of the corner of the building as he turned it to go to the store. It was becoming too much of a strain to pay attention to details. He just had to wing it. But once inside the fresh, revitalizing air conditioning of the store, Nate nearly ran smack dab into a beer display.

  "Watch it!" the guy behind the counter snapped. Nate's first thought was how out of place the clerk looked to be working there.

  Nate wiped his face with the hem of his shirt. He parked in front of the walk-in door and let the air blast him, to let the cool air minister to his poisoned body. Slowly he focused on a couple of glass bottles of iced tea, which seemed all the colder because they were in glass, and moved to the aisle to scan them for a couple of bags of hard candy. He placed them on the counter without much finesse, aggravating the clerk further.

  "Are you loaded, buddy?" the clerk demanded.

  "What, are you a cop?" Nate squinted.

  The guy didn't answer.
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  Nate softened. "No, this is me not loaded. I just have the flu. I have to go to class in a minute. I just need these to get me through."

  "Class, hunh? What are you, one of those professional students?" The clerk was a tall white guy who was probably a bit younger than Nate but definitely had hit the middle age transformation. Slight recession of the hairline, a layer of body fat that could probably go. He was bitter, whatever his problem was.

  "No," Nate shook his head. If he wasn't fucked up on yesterday's booze, he would probably handle this guy. "I am one of those professional professors," he said stiffly.

  "Right and I’m an airplane pilot," the clerk replied sarcastically.

  Nate took a deep breath. This was not a good morning for this. "How much does this come to, please?"

  "That depends," said the clerk, folding his rather formidable arms across his slight paunch. "Empty your pockets."

  The jolt of adrenalin cleared Nate's mind temporarily. He was running out of what remained of his patience. "Excuse me?"

  This guy was just looking for a throw-down. "Professor, my ass. You were over there for quite some time. How do I know you weren't filling your pockets?"

  Nate blinked. He felt like he had just played a game of tackle football, he was so wiped out and sweaty, but he was awakened now. He smiled. "This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I am black, does it?"

  The clerk lost his spine. "You're not that black," he said.

  Without regard to his uneasy stomach, Nate lost it. "Oh, not that black. Because, like, I am light-skinned, or far as black people go, I am tolerable?"

  "You don't sound black," the clerk amended, dancing a little with awkwardness.

  "I guess that's a good thing," Nate responded, "because, as it turns out, I do teach class and I want to make just the right impression on my students." He was in a hurry and he made his point. He pulled out the lining of his pockets so they drooped as though his hips had white tongues and they were sticking them out. He turned his back to him. "You're welcome to feel if you like. I don't go that way but if you need to rest assured I haven't been shifty, why—"

  The clerk quickly rung up Nate's purchase. "Everything about you people is about race, isn't it? Couldn't be because you came in here tripping over yourself and you smell like the freakin' zoo, could it? Get the fuck out of this store. Don't let me catch you in here again," the clerk growled.

  Nate picked up his stuff and put his bank card back in his wallet. "I think I may write a letter to the Quickie Mart Clerks' Union about this one. Or the grand dragon. Can't decide. Good day, sir."

  Nate rushed out of the store and to the college as though he had stolen something. He had just enough time to hit the men's room down the hall from his class room. He swallowed half of the first bottle of sweet tea, knowing that it was going to come right back up. And it did, right on time. He bent over the commode and hurled. He retched with such force that it felt as though his stomach was tangling up into his esophagus. The act strangely relieved him. He threw up hard and long, till his legs danced in little bounces trying to appease the urge until it was satisfied.

  He rose from the toilet a new man. It was a brief respite but a respite nonetheless, that elevated his blood sugar, made him feel better. Now he could take a few more sips of the first bottle to get right. He rolled the cold glass on his face to sooth himself. In dire times like these, he was grateful for small things, like a chilled empty bottle the contents of which made him dry heave. He nursed his fevered skull, waiting to make sure he would keep the second dose of tea before rinsing his mouth out with sink water. He washed his face; practically stone cold sober. He popped a cherry hard candy in his mouth, and clutching his second bottle of tea and the scrunched neck of the bag of hard candies, he went to class.

  ***

  Once he uttered the last word of his lecture, he high-tailed it straight home and crashed. It was amazing that a couple hours without active drinking and the perspective of gratitude started to already began to restore his system. He passed out on his bed and came to hours later, with the light on. His bedding strewn with stapled bios of the people of Weston & Hale. Either Daria had come into his house and dropped them off on top of him while he was asleep or he had lost some time. As in a blackout. Like he'd picked them up on his way in and forgotten about it. He would make up for his nap by beginning to review the material right away.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sobriety at Sunrise

  One of the perks of detoxing off booze was insomnia. It also happened to be a symptom of alcoholism, period. If, while drinking, the user starts to wake in the night and can't get back to sleep, that's a sign the user has progressed into the latent stages of drinking. That was the case for Nate. Once the alcohol wore off, he went straight into detox and there was no sleep without chemical intervention or the passage of time. Eventually, if he stayed sober, that would straighten itself out. Inundated by the layer of papers courtesy of Daria McCarroll, he made use of the time.

  He gathered up the printouts and began to sort, solely based on intuition. Daria was able to snag a bio of the dead girl before the website was modified. He stared for a very long time, fixated on the shine of her lip gloss. The way her lips bowed in front of rows of white teeth, straightened but not perfect. Not ugly but not perfect. Like it was the best rendering the orthodontist could yield, given what he had to work with. If Nate wanted to be a total asshole, Yvonne Winters was really cute but not beautiful. Her first impression was she was a great looking woman, but Nate was a critic—either the result of being a forensic scientist and a philosopher or an alcoholic whose problem really was his personality, and his booze abuse was but a symptom.

  He regressed Yvonne Winters, envisioning her as her baby self, her toddler self, on up to the ages. He imagined her home life, not derived from any fact—strictly based on the reasonable construction of both a philosopher and a psychologist—at holidays, and Sundays, and homework time. He crawled inside her parents' heads and watched her take the walk to receive all of her various diplomas. High school, college, law school. There was something sweet and mild about her. In Nate’s estimation, Yvonne was not a courtroom tiger, nor would she ever be. She was a research jockey. A gopher. A grunt. He didn’t know this to be true because she was ultimately a victim, but he believed she was a victim because it was true. He believed this potential characteristic of her irked the killer. If so, then the looks thing was an envy thing.

  He sprawled across his bed to reach under for his "kit," which had been stowed under there for ages. He had overextended himself, threatening to topple heels-over-head; it would be easy to just get off the bed and go after what he was looking for. He was bound and determined to ascertain it this way, balancing like somebody surfing a king-sized mattress. His fingers disturbed the cold empties of battles past, hibernating beneath his bed. I really have to clean up, he thought. There was absolutely no telling how long those had been there.

  At last, he pulled out a stack of well-worn moleskin notebooks and skimmed them off of one another, for the one entitled Coworker Murders. He folded a page in half, and on a clean fresh leaf he recorded the date, such as he could. He was shaking pretty bad and his writing was ridiculously scribbly. Still, he forged on and made bullet points of his next steps. He was going to will himself to sleep and soon, for he was beginning to hear things. He would go to a crack-of-dawn AA meeting down towards the industrial end of Frederick, and then see what was what on Yvonne Winters’s murder. He would pay the Frederick PD a visit. And if he wasn't completely miserable and able to eat, he would meet Daria some place completely void of triggers. Because at now 3:45 in the morning, he, Nate Castle, was jonesing for Kentucky bourbon something bad and he was wide awake. It would take everything he had to get through the night without picking up, strictly to take the edge off.

  ***

  The Sobriety at Sunrise meeting in the equivalent to the mission district in industrial Frederick was a cliché of itself. But that very
fact, from a psychological vista, undoubtedly buttressed authority in the 12 Step Program because it delivered the symbolism of recovery to the attendees. Despite having a hell of a time with uncontrollable sweating and raging halitosis, Nate caught himself feeling superior as he walked into Room 503. His mouth was never without hard candy for more than a couple of seconds as he sucked on one after the other to deal with the shakes, but still . . . . He had been coming to meetings on and off and on for nearly eight years. In his head, that meant for a fleeting second that he'd had eight years of continuous sobriety and all the work that went along to maintain that. He was already a know-it-all, which could prove to be a fatal flaw to any potential recovery. The idea was that drunks needed meetings but if they knew everything, why did they need meetings? They would stop coming and ultimately drink again. Nate's thought was that he was getting sober because he was solving a murder. Anybody else present had issues.

  He moved around the room like he owned the place, helping himself to coffee, speaking over his shoulder to the next guy in line behind him, pointing out where the powdered creamer and the stirrers were.

  "Thanks," the guy responded.

  It was a rather solid delivery, almost mocking, thought Nate. He turned around and blanched. He had just shown the Quickie Mart clerk where everything was, for which the clerk was now grinning at Nate, from ear to ear.

  "Still getting’ over that flu?" the clerk asked sarcastically. "I guess you never know when you'll run into a friend of Bill's. Any friend of Bill's is a friend of mine. I should make amends." He extended his hand for a handshake. "Jack."