by John L. Monk
“What?”
“There’s probably something you should know.”
He laughed. “Like what?”
“I need a favor,” I said. “What’s the mailing address of our … uh, where we work?”
“Why you wanna know the address for?”
I thought for a second and said, “I need to fill out a survey for jury duty.”
He laughed. “Oh yeah? Like they can’t get that from their computer, right? Hold on…” The phone went quiet for several seconds before he picked back up. “You know, Fred, I don’t think they care about the warehouse. They probably just want the office address.”
“Can you give me both?”
Whoever he was mumbled something that rhymed with duck. “One second…”
When he picked up again, he quickly rattled off two addresses, then told me the first one was for headquarters.
“Seriously, Fred, I gotta go home tonight,” he said. “How long you gonna be?”
“I’m leaving now.”
“Good,” he said, and hung up.
Though I was tired, I was also interested in anything Fred was up to, including his job. If I didn’t like whatever it was, I could always leave. Warehouse work sounded difficult. Fred didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d be up for moving heavy boxes, so I was curious about what he did.
It was around midnight when I pulled into an industrial park with big white buildings spanning huge blocks. I drove around slowly, wondering where the heck the front door was to wherever I was supposed to be. When I got to the end of a long road that ended in a chain link fence, I circled back.
In the middle of the street was a man standing and waving a flashlight at me. He’d come out of a tiny trailer I’d driven past. There weren’t any parking spots, just a gravely ramp up to where the trailer was. A big black pickup truck was parked next to it.
I pulled up beside it, parked, and got out.
The man was young with wiry brown hair and tough-looking facial hair trimmed to look like spikes flaring up from his jaw. He had on a security guard’s uniform and carried a big long flashlight, as much weapon as light source. He didn’t look happy to see me.
“You forgot your uniform, too?” he said, shaking his head at all the rules I was breaking.
I tried to say something but he waved me to silence.
“Never mind that,” he said. “I need to go. This happens again, I gotta say something to Cliff, okay? Nothing personal, you know I like you. But you also know I can’t leave until you get here. It’s just not fair, man.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He got in his truck, backed out, tossed me a grudging wave, and then drove off.
I stared around at all the big warehouses, holding however many millions of dollars in merchandise and equipment, then at the trailer.
“I’m actually in charge,” I said, mildly surprised at the absurd notion. It was pretty cool.
Such power…
I climbed the two metal steps and opened the door to the trailer. It was a singlewide with lots of shelves and a few tables, so it was hard to maneuver around. Ten monitors were mounted on one wall over a desk where I assumed Fred and the other guards sat to fight crime. On the desk was a thick three-ring binder opened to a half-filled page. Some sort of status log with entries for every hour and a signature beside each one. The entries were a long string of the same thing written over and over: “Nothing to report.”
A small refrigerator sat in the corner with a stack of magazines on top. After looking in the refrigerator, which was empty, I picked up a magazine: Deer and Deer Hunters. The other magazines were different issues of the same periodical. A subscription sticker was affixed to each one with someone’s name and address on it. Brad Ratcliff, of New Haven Connecticut. I checked the others and they were all addressed to the same person.
Using my uncanny detective skills, I noted the last entries in the ledger were by someone whose first name might have been Brad if I squinted, but whose last name was definitely Ratcliff.
“Very interesting, Mr. Ratcliff,” I said, savoring the triumph of my clever observation. It had been so long since I’d had one I’d forgotten how fun they were.
I looked up from the ledger and examined the monitors. The top row showed the insides of different warehouses, and each of the lower monitors covered various outside locations. Each of those was sectioned off into four small windows. There was a row of buttons that, when I pushed them randomly for fun, cycled one of the monitors through all the other views for a closer look.
It was late and I was tired. Fred was feeling his age, so I didn’t go back outside. I tried reading one of the magazines, but then dozed off. Some hours later, I woke up with a full bladder and a dry mouth.
Out of nowhere, a car drove through the corner view of one of the monitors. The view wasn’t great, but I caught a brief image of a smiling young woman in the passenger seat. The car passed through one monitor and then through another. Then another and another. Finally, it pulled into a dark patch way behind one of the buildings and parked.
Chapter Seventeen
The woman had seemed happy, not a kidnap victim, which was my chief worry considering how fond the Great Whomever was of coincidence.
I figured out how to angle the camera where I wanted and also how to zoom in. Mainly I hoped to see another smile—to be sure whatever was going on was consensual. I’d seen so much bad in the world. Sometimes it was hard to whistle and look on the bright side of life. To imagine a world where people didn’t cut up other people and paint the walls with bloody satanic symbols.
The camera was zoomed-in as far as it would go, focused on the windshield, but I couldn’t see anything. Then, after a while, the car began rocking.
Which begged the question: should I go a’knocking?
In high school, taking a date to a hotel was a mythical idea. Hotels cost way too much. Also, they’d ask for an ID, and no guy really believed he’d be allowed to get a hotel room at seventeen. The idea of sex with another human was foreign enough to begin with, never mind where it happened. When I talked about it with my friends, it was a given that any such miracles would happen in a park or somewhere called “lover’s lane,” or possibly with a prostitute way out in a swamp like in the movie Porky’s. Just our luck, none of us knew where any swamps were.
I’d been a virgin until I met Sandra, in college, so I’d missed out on whatever was going on in that car out there. Part of me mourned for those missing experiences—to be the good-looking kid with the cheerleader girlfriend, the fast car and the cool friends. Shy as I was back then, I never dated.
Having a car was the dream that kept me going, and with permission from Mom and Dad, it could have come true. Such a wonder would have snagged me a shallow girlfriend who only wanted me for my car—thus rounding out my high school experience perfectly and setting me on the path to a suicide-free life.
As it happened, I’d ridden the bus until the very last day of twelfth grade. And whether through laziness or some desire to turn back the clock, I left whoever was in the car alone and minded my own business.
By morning, I’d fallen so soundly asleep I didn’t notice when my relief arrived.
“Fred, wake up, man,” a voice said, laughing.
My eyes snapped open and I wondered where I was. Then I saw an old man wearing a security uniform, like Brad Ratcliff from last night.
“Hi,” I said, rubbing my eyes.
“You look half dead,” the man said.
The clock on the wall showed it was seven o’clock in the morning. Brad had called me sometime after eleven last night. So, an eight-hour shift.
Glancing at the monitors, I saw the lovebirds had moved on. Probably hours ago.
“Jesus, Fred,” the guy said, disgusted. “You didn’t fill out your report.”
“It’s not that hard. Everyone just writes in ‘Nothing to report.’ Gimme a second.”
“Sleeping on the job, not doing your report? And where’s your uniform? What
if Cliff sees you without your uniform?”
What indeed?
I stopped writing and gazed at him fearlessly, as if I were the mighty Cliff. The man held my gaze a moment, mumbled something about coffee, then turned to brew a fresh pot.
A minute later, after writing Nothing to report eight times in a row and feeling like a schoolboy in a teensy weensy amount of trouble, I said, “All done.”
Then I got up and left.
Sleeping in a chair all night hadn’t been very comfortable. So when I got to the house, I went back to bed and snagged two more hours. After that, I made a Jenkins-sized breakfast with the food I’d bought the day before.
As a precaution, I also checked on Sally to make sure the motor hadn’t blown out or the breaker hadn’t tripped from cooling an entire human body down to freezing. When I lifted the lid and felt around with my hand, the air in the box seemed cold enough. Also, Sally was frozen solid when I poked her with a spoon.
Day two into my Fred adventures and everything appeared to be going perfectly: working credit cards, a comfortable house with a creepy kidnapping room in the basement, and a job I could actually do. Weird as it seemed, I loved the security guard job. Having to show up and be a productive member of society was a rare experience for me. What a special joy, this strange fear I might get in trouble if I showed up late. There had never been a time in my life when I’d had to fill out a report.
Nice as all that was, there was a sicko running loose named Gerald Ross. There were sickos everywhere, but few of them had been on TV before.
Years ago, Gerald had gotten away from justice, then yesterday from me. I consoled myself with the knowledge that even if I had caught him, there wasn’t much I could have done. He was about twenty years younger and in better shape, and my casual search of Fred’s house hadn’t turned up any weapons.
But the Great Whomever doesn’t care about excuses. And when it comes to kids, I guess I don’t either.
I went back to the mall. More magazines, more books, more food court fun, and the rest of the day spent staking out children’s stores and the big jungle gym where I’d first spotted Gerald.
All for nothing. I’d either missed him or he hadn’t come to the mall that day.
When I showed up to work that night, wearing a uniform I found in Fred’s closet, there was a different guy there—young, like Brad was—and he chuckled when he saw me.
“It’s your day off, man,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Day off?”
“You don’t remember? You better hope Cliff don’t see you here. All that guy needs is an excuse to bitch.”
He pointed at a dry-erase calendar I’d overlooked. There were names in all the little boxes for this month. Fred had the eleven to seven shift, Sunday through Thursday. I saw the problem right away: today was Friday. Brad’s days paced with mine, except he worked three to eleven.
I didn’t see Cliff’s name anywhere. He sounded like a hard-ass. I wondered if he owned the warehouses or if he was just the security supervisor.
“So, Bill,” I said, inferring the man’s name from today’s spot on the calendar, “how’s Cliff doing these days?”
Bill laughed. “Don’t go asking for trouble. That guy has issues. He sees you here, he’ll make a big deal about it and show up more often. I don’t want to be rude or anything, but…”
He looked at the door, then back at me, and shrugged apologetically.
“Oh,” I said. “Should I go?”
I’d hoped to stick around and give it my all, be part of the solution, take a licking and keep on ticking, rise to the occasion, burn the midnight oil, push the envelope, hit the ground running—
Bill said, “It’s just he’ll wonder why you’re here, you know?”
It was nice having something to do. I liked walking around the big warehouses at night and looking at the constellations. I knew them by heart, and they were fun to find. Also, if I were being honest, staying in the house at night with Sally’s corpse creeped me out a little bit.
“What if I took your place tonight?” I said. “Tomorrow too?”
Bill eyed me warily. “What the hell you talking about?”
“You gotta get sick sometimes, don’t you?”
Nodding slowly, Bill said, “Yeah, so?”
“Well, what do you do when you get sick?”
He shrugged. “Cliff calls around and gets it covered. But I’m not sick. And I need the money.”
“Of course you need the money,” I said. “What if I worked for you and you still got paid?”
Bill’s eyes narrowed. “What, like for free?”
I nodded.
“Why the hell would anyone do that?”
For a second I wasn’t sure who he meant.
“Me or you?” I said.
“You—what’s this about, man?”
Sighing like I was about to admit something embarrassing, I said, “You’re a young guy, Bill. You live alone?”
Bill shook his head.
“Well I do,” I said. “And I’m going to be up all night, alone at home on a Friday night. If I have to be alone, I sort of like there being a reason for it, know what I mean?”
“So you don’t care about being paid?”
“Nope,” I said. “I’ll sign your name for you like you were here, and you can do something better than waste your best years sitting in this crummy trailer.”
I could see him thinking about it, trying to convince himself it made sense.
“What if Cliff comes by and sees you here?”
“Then I’ll tell him you’re sick and I’m covering for you.”
He smirked like he’d found me out. “So then I don’t get paid.”
“If that happens,” I said, “I’ll pay you myself. I don’t need the money.”
Bill laughed nervously. “So then why do you … oh. Yeah. Right. Sorry…”
I smiled sadly.
“All right,” Bill said. “But … you know … with Cliff, if you see him, you gotta tell him I’m really sick, okay? Not just a cold. Got it?”
I nodded. “Typhoid, yeah, totally got it.”
Bill’s eyes grew wide. “Not typhoid, man. Jesus! Just like the flu, see?”
“Swine flu,” I said. “Got it.”
Bill shook his head. Then he shrugged, picked up a small blue canvas lunch cooler off the desk, and left.
I stood in the door and followed Bill’s slow, hesitant progress to his car. When he looked back, I smiled encouragingly. Thumbs-up. He didn’t smile back, he didn’t thumbs-up back—but he did get in his car and leave.
I went out to Fred’s minivan and brought in my books, magazines, and a six-pack of diet soda for the empty refrigerator. Then I leaned back in my chair and caught up on my reading.
That night, the lovebirds stayed away, and I fell asleep around 3 a.m. Later that morning, when my relief showed up—someone named Steve—I told him Bill and I were switching spots and not to tell Cliff.
Steve shook his head like I was crazy.
“I don’t want to know about it,” he said.
For the next two days and nights, I kept a steady schedule: the mall during the day and work at night. On the second night, a different group of people showed up with entirely different intentions. For the next half hour, I watched them spray-paint an incredible graffiti mural on one of the pristine-white warehouses, visible from the main road. All kinds of colors and shadings and big cartoon bubbles for words. I couldn’t make out the letters, let alone the words, but it was pretty cool. I did recognize a question mark in there, which made me think it was something socially relevant. It was an election year, so maybe that was it. I wondered who the candidates were.
Technically, I should have done something about the vandalism, but I’d wanted to see how it came out. Now that they were done and it looked so cool, I didn’t have the heart to call the cops. Also, I hated talking to cops. They were pushy, and I never did well with pushy.
When m
y relief arrived, he asked me about the graffiti.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” I said.
The guy laughed and said, “Make sure you put that in your report. I don’t want Cliff thinking it happened on my watch.”
After adding my first reportable incident to the logbook, I decided I really had to meet this Cliff character.
Chapter Eighteen
Later that afternoon, after my nap, I caught a break—Gerald Ross had returned to the mall.
He was at the jungle gym again, clutching that pink backpack in one hand and carrying that same teddy bear under his arm, smiling and watching the kids like he was just another parent. Most of his attention was focused on the entrance to the shiny red tube that led up into the thing. But he was also eyeing the parents, some of whom weren’t watching their kids half as much as they needed to be.
Torn between wanting to protect any kids he tried to snatch and a desire for a more permanent solution, I left Gerald there and followed the same course he’d taken last time, out to the parking garage.
This time, I’d parked Fred’s minivan in the same garage.
Hoping he wouldn’t give up and leave too quickly, I got in and drove slowly through the structure, level by level, examining every bumper in search of Gerald’s blue car. It would have been so much easier if he’d parked like a normal person, with the back bumper facing out, but after going through every level twice I concluded he hadn’t. And of course I’d been too caught off guard that day to remember the model. So much easier if I could die and come back with the memory permanently etched in my mind, but the Great Whomever sucked at easier.
I found a likely candidate on the second level of the garage. A blue sedan, unremarkable. After a quick look around to see if anyone was coming, I got out and checked the back bumper, about a foot from the concrete wall.
There it was, just under the left taillight, creepy and sinister: I Love Kids!
Unfortunately for Gerald, I happened to love kids, too.
There were several exits out of the garage, but the one he’d used last time was the quickest way to the access road. I would have parked near it but all those spots were taken. There were plenty near where Gerald had parked, up on the third level.