The Kaleidoscope

by B K Nault

  Bossman’s smirk convinced Walter his plea had worked. “We’ll give you until Friday.” They headed for the door, but he launched a final warning as they exited. “But if you squeal, or you’re not here when we get back, we’ll hunt these two down.” He slashed across his throat with the tip of the gun. “Get it?” The door swung open, slamming against the wall.

  “Hey! Aren’t you going to untie me?”

  The SUV started up. Resigned, Walter wrung his hands, struggling for a way to undo the plastic ties. Pulling and yanking wasn’t budging them, he needed something sharp. Something low enough to rub against. The door hinges were metal, but not sharp enough. There was an old bottle cap opener screwed into the cabinet near the sink. He scooted, clumping and scraping heavily, the chair an unwilling dance partner in their zip-tied waltz.

  He would have to position his wrists so he could swipe them high enough to make contact with the opener. The metal was dulled by years of wear, but enough of an edge remained if he could tip the chair forward enough to reach a jagged strip across the front. He wobbled too far and caught himself before face planting. No good. Bracing against the cabinet with the back of the chair, he pushed up, knocking back to steady himself, his knees complaining against the straining stance. His left hand finally grazed against the metal, and he twisted, wedging the plastic inside the metal. Still unsure if the opener could even do the job, he pulled and sawed, hoping that the sheer force would somehow work his hands free. The thin plastic dug into his skin, and he held his breath against the pain in his joints as he had to stay in the awkward position long enough to fight plastic against metal.

  Then he heard voices outside. Hikers! “Hey, come inside, I need your help!” But then he smelled gasoline. The idiots had returned, and were setting the cabin on fire!

  Fighting panic, he pulled and pushed against the metal, but the tie had trapped him. He was an animal caught in a trap. Soon he would start gnawing on his own body parts to be free.

  Smoke seeped into the kitchen, and Walter’s heart pumped, his lungs filling with the smell of his own cremation. Through the gauzy curtain pulled across the cracked window panes, the SUV disappeared across the compound, leaving him to his death.

  “This is not how I’m going to die!” he shouted, and yanked until the ties almost sliced his skin, but something gave, and the plastic snapped. He clattered down onto the floor, the chair on top of him, a knee breaking his fall but twisting underneath him.

  Under the mantle of haze, he gasped in lungsful of clearer air, and then held his breath, righting himself long enough to reach for a sharp knife left in the sink. His ankles free, he stumbled to the door and into the yard to train a hose into a drum they’d set on fire to make their point.

  Walter hobbled inside and opened the windows to clear the air. He went to a small closet, removed towels, and found a musty set of old sheets. He shook out a flat one, and bit into the hem, tearing long strips. Dousing a towel with horse liniment he’d found under the kitchen sink, he wrapped his swollen knee. He righted the table and picked up the box, returning his few items to it, and set it near enough to reach in case he fell asleep. Grabbing a hunk of jerky and a mason jar of tepid water, he collapsed onto the couch, the shotgun across his chest.

  A glaring new hole had opened overhead in the last storm, and outside noises carried in on the breeze. When his knee could take his weight again, he would climb up and nail some plywood over the hole. At least for now it let in fresh air, as the tang left from the flames burned his throat, his eyes still watering from the sting, and he wondered how long it would take them to return.

  ****

  The next morning, Walter rewrapped the knee. The swelling wasn’t too much worse, so he made a plan. In the yard, he stopped to see if a roll of chicken wire around his vegetable seedlings was discouraging critters from helping themselves. A few new buds showed, and he salivated, thinking about the taste of vine-ripened tomatoes, slightly sweet, robust, and firm. If he made it back alive.

  In the shed, he slid the canvas cover off the LeBaron. His initial plan was to go over the car inch by inch, restoring it. Now that he’d found Morrie the Midget and his hideaway had been discovered, he needed the car to start. Today. After the goonsquad visit, he knew his time was up.

  He opened the hood. The engine was still in good shape. He’d bought a gallon of gas from the tow truck driver, and he poured a small amount into the car. The smell of gasoline would forever remind him of his near-death experience.

  A quick check of the tires. They were balding and brittle from age and exposure to the elements. A couple badly needed air, but they weren’t on the rims yet. He slid in, and held his breath as he turned the key. Would the battery kick over the starter?

  The motor ground over and over with no results until he finally shut off the key. He checked each chrome knob to ensure nothing was on to hog the whisper of a charge left. Again, he turned the key, and prayed. The grinding continued until he switched it off again and pounded the steering wheel, pleading into the universe.

  “Please,” Walter prayed, watching a startled crow fly from the rafters, “I need a miracle.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “The evidence seems to point to your dad, all right.” Stan sat across from Harold in the coffee shop.

  Harold tried to couch his reaction in aloof disinterest.

  “But when he disappeared without a trace, the trail went cold. Either someone helped him hide, or he was very good at disappearing.” Stan plunged ahead, the details of his research bubbling over in his enthusiasm.

  “He was always good at that. Disappearing, I mean.”

  Stan opened a briefcase and removed the case file, now thicker, more smudged and worn. “There’s something about this whole deal I just can’t put my finger on that doesn’t add up. Your dad had no criminal record, was never violent that I can tell. He didn’t have so much as a parking ticket.”

  Stan’s eagerness to finally be involved in a case again was working in Harold’s favor. Stan didn’t even notice Harold dribble coffee down his shirt when he pounded on a file in his exuberance.

  “Why all of a sudden would he commit such a horrendous act and on his own family? He’d been going to AA. He left the scene essentially on foot. The car he was driving was pristine except for a bashed fender.”

  Harold dabbed at the stain.

  “He was so far removed from the system, no one could find any real evidence of who he even worked for,” Stan continued. “The only thing I can guess is, he was working in the black and someone was protecting him until their cover was blown. You wouldn’t happen to know what he was up to, would you, Harold?”

  Harold snatched napkins from the metal container. “I was just a kid, I—”

  “It would help to know where he worked, but IRS records have huge gaping holes.” Clucking his tongue, Stan flipped another page over. “Actually, that gives me an idea. We could have him on tax evasion as well, get the boys in Justice to help out.”

  The blue and gray alternating striped shirt was ruined. “I was so young.” Helpless to offer anything useful, Harold searched vague memories.

  Usually, people spoke of his father in the past tense. His grandmother would only discourage talk of him, taking the opportunity to express her disapproval of her son-in-law. Harold had yearned for a role model like his classmate’s parents. Firefighters and bankers, cooks and car salesmen. Their jobs were admirable, something children could understand on career days. Be proud of.

  “Do you recall the day you were interviewed?” Stan’s question jolted Harold from his reverie.

  “Sort of.” A sketchy memory of sitting in a white room with plastic furniture and a box of toy cars formed.

  “It’s difficult to question a child who survives something as horrific as this.” Stan’s academic observation gave Harold permission to pass on commenting.

  That was the day he learned people would leave him alone if he cried hard enough, and then he learned how
to shut down completely. Closing himself off had become the only way to cope with what had happened that horrendous day.

  Stan leaned forward. “I have some notes from the child specialist who interviewed you.” His eyes moved back and forth across the page, and he tilted his head back so he could see the fine print through his glasses.

  The coffee shop was emptying out, and Harold knew he should get back to work. He wanted to get back to work. He didn’t want to have this conversation. Yet he didn’t budge. He had to stay. He had to know.

  Stan got up for a refill at the counter, and Harold returned in memory to the playroom. It was oddly sparse. The talkative woman brought out puppets, but the game turned ugly when she wanted him to relive the crash. “Here, Harry,” she’d coaxed. “Can you show me what happened?” She thrust two Matchbox cars at him. He’d taken them, and then thrown them against the wall. She tried again and he burst into a tantrum, and would only calm down when his grandma was called in to hold him while the tears flowed. He stopped when something sharp pinched his arm and he became groggy, and fell asleep.

  Stan came back, stirring his cup.

  “I can’t offer much information.”

  “It was obvious you were traumatized.” Stan skimmed the file. “They had to sedate you.”

  “You want me to conjure painful memories that won’t bring my mother back anyway?”

  “Well. Yeah. As long as it’s an unsolved murder, Harold, it’s important,” Stan told him. “Don’t you want to help me put him in jail? Now that we know where he’s living, it should be pretty open and shut.”

  Harold stood up and slid his trembling hand in his pocket to hide it. “I need to get back to work.”

  Stan watched his pocket. “There’s another way we can go, Harold.”

  “What’s that?”

  “People, specifically your grandmother, suggested he was mentally unbalanced. That would change how he’s handled. It’s not an easy process, but you understand it might mean the difference in sentencing.”

  Harold watched his lips moving, speaking aloud what he’d feared all his life. A few days ago he was free to ignore the possibilities of his dad’s existence, much less his mental status. Now he was not only alive, but his grandmother’s prophesy that Harold carried the evil gene would be confirmed once and for all if Walter was found to be unstable.

  “There’s no way I could know that for sure.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t.” Stan’s steady voice evoked calm authority. “Unless someone else in the family manifests the same psychoses. Is there anyone in your family who’s mentally unbalanced? Harold?”

  No one glanced up from their PDA’s or stopped thumbing their smartphones. No one else could hear the whirring in Harold’s brain. He sank back down. “No one is left but me.”

  Stan clicked his briefcase closed. “If that is your dad up there, we need to go get him, and find out once and for all what happened. If he didn’t kill your mother, the actual culprit may still be out there.” He thumbed a stumpy finger at his own chest. “And I don’t mind telling you, I want to be the man to solve this. Ever since my own injury I’ve been shoved aside, disregarded. Well, I’m not a useless doorstop. You don’t know how it feels, but it’s awful to be scrutinized like that constantly.” He tapped his forehead. “Does crazy things to you.”

  They walked together to the door and stepped outside, and Harold sneezed as his eyes adjusted to the bright light. His shirt had dried with a giant mark down the front. “I appreciate your help.” He estimated how long it would take to go home and change.

  “Not only that, but it’s my duty. This bullet may have forced me into retirement, but I’m not dead. Now I have the time to really devote to a cold case such as this.”

  “I really have to go.” Harold reached to shake his hand.

  “Why don’t we reconvene, say eighteen-hundred hours and do some more brainstorming. I have another buddy sending me what he can find—”

  “I’ll have to work late tonight.”

  “Then tomorrow? I expect to receive the files from storage, my sergeant’s letting me—”

  “All right. Tomorrow.”

  “Bring your friends if they’re able to help. We’ll have a ton of reading and reports to go through.”

  ****

  Harold asked Pepper, and she was eager to go. After making excuses that he was too busy, Morrie changed his mind and said he’d come along. By nightfall, Stan’s kitchen table was papered with files, testimony, diagrams of the crash intersection, and interview notes. Pepper and Harold read articles and eyewitness testimony, even down to the insurance adjustor’s summary of the impact. Stan instructed them to keep an eye out for clues as to what Harold’s dad was doing before the crash, and anything that would jog Harold’s memory, or that might tie Gus, aka Walter, to the tiny cabin in the mountain town.

  Several times Pepper had to help Harold read through a painful paragraph of information about the crash, but the more they dug, the more determined he became to uncover any details that would move toward closure.

  Finally, at about ten o’clock, Harold pushed back, tired of sitting. He could not inspect one more file. “It doesn’t seem possible that we’ll find something a trained detective would have missed.”

  “You may be the missing piece since you were there that day.” Stan studied Harold over his bifocals. “Can you think through what you saw, what you felt? Anything you remember, no matter how small or insignificant, could help.”

  “Have you ever meditated?” Pepper’s eyes followed Harold pacing. “Even a small child has eyes and ears. You’re just so used to repressing the memories, it could take some real work to blast through. What about the Kaleidoscope?” she prodded. “Did you try looking in it again?”

  Harold shook his head. “It only shows the future.”

  “That we know of!” Pepper could see through his refusal to admit he’d seen nothing. “Try, Harry.”

  “Keith told me about the toy.” Stan’s calling it a toy irked Harold for some reason. “Perhaps it works by the power of suggestion?”

  “Don’t be so quick to discount it. That toy is why you’ve got your son in your life again,” Pepper scolded, and Harold gazed at her. She understood so much. About him. About life.

  Pepper told Stan about the other visions, and why they’d taken the trip to Yosemite in the first place. “Morrie would like to find his cousin. Instead we found the man who may or may not be Harold’s dad.”

  Stan regarded Pepper. “Did you see any evidence of drugs, or anything else we could check out? For the purposes of a warrant.”

  “I saw a shrine of some sort!” Pepper told him about looking for the bathroom and stumbling upon Gus’s wall covered with articles and pictures.

  Harold stood at the window peering between the blinds at the street while they discussed the implication of pinning newspaper articles to your bedroom wall. He was tired, his ribs hurt, and he was ready to give up. To return his life to normal. None of this would bring back his mother, anyway.

  “I want to take a step back and reconsider everything we know.” Stan folded his hands across a stack of folders. “We keep going over everything as if something new will occur. But it’s possible they’re all taking us down the wrong trail.”

  “What do you mean?” Harold turned around. “What else is there? My father was whacked, he lost it one day, and rammed my mother’s car in a rage, killing her. Then like a coward, he runs away.”

  “Or…?” Pepper swiveled from one to the other. Morrie held a file open, but wasn’t reading it.

  “It’s a method I learned when you don’t seem to be getting anywhere in an investigation. When all your trails seem dead ended, back up and go down another.” Stan drummed fingers on the tabletop. “Harold, did you know your father was actually a genius?”

  Harold thought about that. “He had advanced degrees, but his research went in so many directions I don’t know if he arrived at any real breakthroughs or eve
n anything useful. That’s why my grandmother hated him so. Absentminded professor type maybe. But a genius? I’ll need more proof.”

  “Oh yes,” Stan insisted. “By peer accounts and papers written before he disappeared, he was most definitely. Misunderstood and controversial, but not absentminded. So instead of thinking of him as having anger issues, let’s focus on his other traits and how that might play in. Neither one is illegal.”

  “But rage can lead to murder,” Pepper half whispered.

  “Like I said, he was never known for physical violence.” Stan examined a sheet of information.

  “What does frustrated academic genius lead to?” Harold wondered. “Lashing out at those closest to you? I’ve heard of misunderstood geniuses who resorted to jealousies, turning on their own and—”

  “Corporate espionage!” Pepper shrieked. “Of course! This is not about a man angry with his wife for leaving him!”

  “She has a point,” Stan agreed. “Your father may have been tangled up with someone who was jealous of his advances.” He flipped over several sheets of paper. “Let’s review all his contacts at the time your mother was killed. It’s possible she got caught in the middle. People, even someone you may not suspect, can do horrible things to each other when money is involved. Especially if they are desperate.”

  “So what you’re saying is, he was innocent, and someone else killed her.” Harold tried to understand the implications. “He could have been framed? What possible gain would that have earned someone?”

  Pepper unfurled her legs, tapped a pencil on the pile in front of her. “We see this all the time at the firm. When a lot of money is at stake, look out, mister. All bets are off.”

  Stan removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “If he had been working on some kind of breakthrough and someone realized what he was on to, he would have attracted a lot of attention.”

  “How would they know?”

  Stan shrugged. “Peer review? Copyrights? I’m not sure.” He shuffled through another stack. “If he was working for government agencies on secret programs, there will be information we don’t have access to. But just because we don’t have access doesn’t mean we can’t follow the trail. Harold, what was your dad’s degree in?”