Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  Shoulder to shoulder he and Ramirez walked back to the Omni, their entire team already far ahead of them, cutting a trail for the conference room to prepare for the following day. Only Lauren lingered with the two lead counselors, falling in line a step behind, sensing her services would soon be needed.

  The trio walked the entire way back in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts. Every so often, one or the other would pass a glance between them, but no words were ever exchanged, even as they walked through the front door of the Omni and bypassed the conference room, heading for the elevator. Together they rode up to the top floor and waited for Reed to unlock the door to his executive suite, a somber tone hanging about them.

  Reed and Ramirez passed through first, ignoring their own rule and going straight for the mini bar. Reed upturned three glass tumblers and filled them with ice while Ramirez surveyed the fare, selecting a bottle of Knob Creek. He carried it over and filled all three glasses most of the way full, well past what would be considered normal working lunch levels.

  Lauren watched the proceeding with her back pressed against the door, the same position she’d been in since they arrived.

  “Boys, what have we done?”

  Reed turned and looked at her through heavy lidded eyes and blinked twice before gesturing to the glasses on the table. “Drink.”

  The two held the look for several moments before Lauren pushed herself away from the door and walked over, taking up her glass while Reed and Ramirez did the same.

  “Dare I ask what we’re drinking to?” she asked.

  “To Hell,” Ramirez said, holding up his glass and examining the light as it filtered through the dark brown liquid in his glass, “may it not be as hot as I’ve always feared.”

  Reed didn’t respond to the comment in any way, his eyes on the glass before him. He stared in stony silence for so long that Lauren and Ramirez both fixed their gaze on him, wondering what he was thinking. When at last he spoke, his voice sounded much older, graveled, weary.

  “That it just ends quickly, while I still have some shred of humanity left to hang on to.”

  He raised his glass into the center of the impromptu ring, the other two both touching theirs to his before all three drank in long swallows. Reed was the only one to finish everything in his glass, keeping his arm tilted towards the ceiling long after the others had placed theirs aside. Gulp by gulp he imbibed the whiskey, until there was nothing left but ice in the bottom of his glass. Even then, he continued tilting it upward, on and on until the ice cubes dislodged themselves and fell down against his lips.

  With a heavy sigh he lowered the glass and wiped a hand across his face. Lauren and Ramirez both watched as he placed the glass down and took his cell-phone from his pocket, scrolling through his call log until he found the number he’d dialed just twelve hours before.

  Only a single ring sounded out through the speakerphone before the same grating, malevolent voice filled their ears.

  “What?”

  Just hearing one word caused Lauren to shiver, taking several steps back away from the phone. Across from her a deep frown settled in on Ramirez’s face, his gaze fixed on Reed.

  “I thought we requested that nobody be hurt?” Reed said, no prelude, no introductions.

  “No, you said nobody gets killed. The little bastard will be laid up for a while, but he will survive. Word is he’ll even keep his arm.”

  The last sentence was added as an assertion of dominance, an unnecessary hat tip to make sure everybody in the room recognized he did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Reed knew the leer was there in his voice because he was a sadistic bastard and couldn’t hide it, not to further drive home a point.

  “You don’t think a car bomb was a bit over the top?” Reed asked, turning and pacing between the wingtip chairs, his colleagues both watching him.

  “Hey, you’re the one that told me we weren’t playing by the rules anymore.”

  “Yes,” Reed spat into the phone, his voice rising, “but I meant you grab one of them on the street, throw a few punches, tell them to back off.”

  “Well, what you got was even better, so quit your bitching,” Carbone retorted, an obvious challenge rising in his voice, the message clear that he did not appreciate the tone Reed was taking with him.

  “We asked that a message be sent,” Reed asked, his voice evening out a bit.

  “Trust me, that message was sent,” Carbone replied, biting finality in his voice.

  Reed shook his head, trying to keep the disdain within him from spilling out. “But you blew up a truck! How will Laszlo ever know that was a message intended for him?”

  A deep chuckle rolled out through the line, making Lauren again cringe. “I left a note.”

  “You did what?” Reed asked, his eyes open wide, his head leaned forward to speak right into the phone receiver.

  The line was silent for several moments before Carbone replied, his voice dripping with rage. “Are you telling me how to do my job?”

  Reed opened his mouth to respond, but paused and exhaled, stopping himself before he took the bait. He looked Lauren and Ramirez both in the face, his expression somber. “No, we wouldn’t deign to know how to best accomplish your objectives. We were just calling to say that you have completed your task, we will no longer be needing your services.”

  The line fell silent for several moments, the only sound the loud breathing on the opposite end. Reed’s face fell blank as he tried to determine what was happening, his eyes focused on nothing in particular as he listened.

  “Let me tell you something you arrogant prick, and this goes for the fat ass and the bitch cause I know they’re standing right there too, nobody tells me when I’m done.

  “Just remember, you’re the one that said we weren’t playing by the rules anymore.”

  Chapter Forty

  Tyler stared down at the tip of the blue and grey diagonal striped tie held between his fingertips, a gift from Shane before the trial started. Growing up in Worland there had been no occasion to ever wear a tie. While playing ball in college, every tie he owned featured the Crimson and black color scheme of OTU. Apparently there was an entire chart somewhere dedicated to tie colors and what they said about the person wearing them.

  To Tyler, all he ever thought about when seeing someone in a tie was how uncomfortable they must be.

  The tip of the tie was dotted with perspiration as he sat in the witness chair, the stares of over two hundred people in the courtroom burning hot against his chest. For the previous three years he’d played football in front of a hundred thousand people every Saturday, millions more watching from home, and never thought twice about it. Tucked away behind his facemask, attention locked on the field around him, not once did he think of how many people might be scrutinizing him.

  Now, sitting there in front of the room, knowing they were all hanging on his words, he was acutely aware of every last one of them.

  Just a few feet away, Shane walked back and forth, serving him up easy questions, letting Tyler tell his story. He asked just enough to keep Tyler on point, never once pushing him one direction or another. His voice even and conversational, he was doing everything he could to make Tyler feel comfortable on the stand.

  Still, Tyler couldn’t help but feel his shirt sticking to his back, perspiration bleeding through. Every few seconds he reminded himself to take a deep breath, just hoping to keep the jury, or the other side, from seeing him sweat. Still, after over an hour in the chair and the most important part of his testimony fast approaching, Tyler was starting to feel the wear.

  “So walk me through this,” Shane said, stopping and turning to face both Tyler and the jury. “You were in the indoor practice facility, just you and Coach Curl. Correct?”

  “Yes,” Tyler said, nodding for emphasis.

  “And then what happened?”

  Tyler continued to finger the end of his tie, his hands held too low for the jury to see. “Things started the same
as they have for years. Coach Curl put me through a basic warm-up before stretching me out. After that we spent about an hour doing conditioning exercises. Speed ladders, shuttles, sprints, sled work.”

  “Anything you haven’t done before?” Shane asked.

  “Oh, no,” Tyler said. “It’s the same program we’ve been on since I got here.”

  “I see,” Shane said. “Did you ever have any trouble performing these exercises before the injury?”

  Tyler paused and looked down at his fingers a moment, more dots of perspiration evident on the tie. “Never. They were hard for sure, always left me gasping for air, my muscles burning, but not once did I ever have any joint pain.”

  Shane paused and looked at Tyler a moment, shifting his gaze to the jury for effect.

  “During the course of this workout, did Coach Curl ever comment on the state of your knee? How you seemed to be moving?”

  “No,” Tyler said, shaking his head, his focus on Shane. “But while we were stretching, he did comment that my leg seemed to have an awful lot of bruising, more than he’d seen in the past.”

  “Objection, calls for speculation,” Reed called out, his chair scraping against the floor as he sprung to his feet.

  “Your Honor, my client is relaying a conversation that was had on the day of his injury,” Shane countered. “Mr. Curl is on our witness list should opposing counsel wish to question him about the intent behind those remarks in the coming days.”

  Judge Lynch worked his mouth up and down several times, his walrus mustache moving in a flapping motion across his face. “Overruled.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Shane said, turning his attention back to Tyler. “Did Coach Curl have any opinions on what might have caused the bruising in your leg?”

  “No, not really. He and I discussed it and I told him that Dr. Pinkering and Mr. Sarconi had assured me this sort of thing was normal. We both figured we weren’t doctors, so we’d give them the benefit of the doubt.”

  Complete silence fell over the courtroom for a moment, the statement hanging in the air. Tyler glanced up to see his mother sniffling in the first row, wringing her hands over and over again in her lap.

  “So you were working out,” Shane said, “almost done for the day. What happened next?”

  “One new wrinkle we’d added this winter to help strengthen my leg was lateral band work, where we’d put these big rubber bands around my ankles and shuffle from side to side. It was how we finished every workout.

  “That particular day I was doing my shuffles to finish up, moving from right to left, when I started to feel a little pain in the knee.”

  “And just to be clear,” Shane interjected, “moving right to left would put the bulk of the stress on the right knee, correct?”

  “Yes,” Tyler said. “The right knee would push out first, the left one would drag along behind.”

  “Okay, so then what happened?”

  “Like I said, I started to feel a little bit of pain in my left knee while shuffling, but didn’t think anything of it.”

  Shane held up a hand, motioning for him to pause. “And I’m sorry to interrupt, but why not?”

  Tyler raised his hands by his side, let them drop back against his thighs. “To be honest, I’d had pain in the knee since they put the KnightRunner in. They insisted it was normal and it didn’t seem any worse than usual, so I kept going.”

  “What happened next?” Shane said, his voice low, setting the tone for what everyone already knew was coming.

  “I started back the other direction. I made it about four steps when I heard a snapping sound, felt a searing pain rip through my entire leg. Still, I thought it must be part of the recovery process, so I gritted my teeth and took another step.”

  His voice low and cracking, Tyler stopped there. He shifted his eyes back towards the tip of his tie, willing himself not to cry.

  “After that, everything cut straight to black. Coach Curl told me after the fact what happened, but I don’t remember any of it. I just remember waking up in a hospital bed, most of my left leg gone.”

  Shane stood rooted in place, staring back at Tyler, the entire room silent. Tyler matched the gaze as long as he could before looking away, shifting his attention to the jury box. About half of the people were looking back at him, a few with tears in their eyes. The others were doing anything they could to avert their attention, supreme discomfort evident.

  Shane turned and walked back to the counsel table, pretending to consult his notes, letting the moment linger as long as he could. He had told Tyler beforehand he was going to do this, but Tyler had no idea it would seem to last so long. Several moments passed, people fidgeting in their seats, but still Shane did nothing.

  After an eternity, he raised his gaze from his notes and returned to the middle of the floor, skipping ahead in the narrative.

  “Tyler, when you were a college student-athlete, what would an average day consist of? We don’t need a perfect itinerary, just give us the general gist.”

  Tyler pushed a heavy breath out from his cheeks, thankful the uneasy silence was past. “Pretty much the same thing, day after day. Get up early and come in for a morning workout, flexibility and conditioning work followed by some weights. After that hit the training room, sit in the whirlpool, get treatment, that sort of thing.

  “Get out of there around nine, head back over to campus for classes, lunch, be back by two for film study and to get taped. Practice all afternoon, more training room afterwards. Dinner and homework in the evening, rinse and repeat the next day.”

  “And now,” Shane asked, “back home in Worland? What do those days look like?”

  Tyler’s lips parted, the reality of what he was about to admit setting in. He pressed them tight and looked down at his lap before raising his gaze back to Shane. “Get up, do some chores around the house, wheel myself down to the hospital for rehab, stop by the library on the way home for some reading materials, help mom make dinner every night.”

  The words rolled out just like he and Shane had practiced, minimizing every activity into as few words as possible, emphasizing how little he was able to accomplish day to day.

  “Forgive me,” Shane said, “but compared to the first schedule you gave, that seems pretty light.”

  Tyler gave an oversized nod to the question, the frustration with his situation on full display. “Light is an understatement. Simple tasks that I once did without thinking now take me a half hour or more to perform. Every day I find myself looking around, wondering where my time has gone, asking if this is the schedule I’m bound to keep for the rest of my life.”

  “Tyler, I have just two more questions for you,” Shane asked, walking over and standing right in front him, but a few feet away, one hand deep in his pocket, the other with his thumb and forefinger pinched together, poised in front of him. “If given the choice between never playing football again and keeping your leg, or having the possibility of playing again and going through what you are now, which would you choose?”

  Tyler shifted his attention from Shane to the jury box, his face beseeching them to listen to what he was about to say.

  “I would hang up my cleats without thinking twice. I would never wish this on anybody as long as I live.”

  Shane walked up even closer to the stand, resting his hand on the rail right in front of Tyler. “And were you ever given that choice?”

  “No,” Tyler said, no pause of any kind before responding, no elaborating on his response.

  Several moments passed before Shane patted the rail and retreated from the stand. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Over his left shoulder, Tyler could hear papers shuffling as the judge looked through them, taking notes and checking something before proceeding. Tyler remained still in the chair for several long seconds before looking up at the judge, wondering when his time would be up, praying for these endless stretches of silence to end.

  “Defense counselor, your witness,” the ju
dge said, his voice thick, bordering on sleepy.

  Tyler shifted his attention back to the front and watched as Connor Reed rose from his seat, staring down at handwritten notes on the desk before him. Shane had spent the last several days prepping him for this, pushing even harder on this aspect of his testimony than his own.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Bentley,” Reed said, his face still turned downward.

  “Good afternoon.”

  The man paused again, still staring down at his notes, before finding whatever he was searching for and walking out into the middle of the floor. Just as he had done in his opening statement, he found a spot in the exact center of the room and stood rooted in place, twisting at the waist to speak to Tyler or the jury.

  “Mr. Bentley, I have only a few quick questions for you. First of all, I would like to congratulate you on a very successful athletic career. The numbers and accolades that you and Mr. Laszlo went through earlier are nothing short of incredible. Tell me something though, in all that time, did you ever miss a single game?”

  Tyler paused for a moment, the question taking him by surprise, he made no effort to hide that fact from his face as he rifled back through the years in his head, trying to recall if he’d ever sat out.

  “No.”

  A look of surprise washed over Reed’s face. “Never? Not once?”

  “Not that comes to mind,” Shane said, shaking his head back and forth.

  “Okay,” Reed said, nodding pursing his lips in front of him, “how about practices?”

  “Objection,” Shane called, rising from his seat. “Relevance, Your Honor?”

  Judge Lynch paused for several long moments, debating the merits of the claim, glancing from Shane to Tyler and then to Reed.

  “Overruled.”