by J. M. Barlog
Old ‘Perky’ Perkins had told Rick he was crazy for even looking twice at the Garrett case, warned him from the get-go it would get nasty if he took it on. The complete lack of physical evidence is always the first sign of a ringer. Even with Dugan’s report, pulled out of thin air a la David Copperfield, there was little, if any, chance they could make anything stick. Rick, however, loved a challenge. In return, he offered old Perky no more than a faint smile.
Mentally, Rick lined up his arguments, knowing he would have to cross every t and dot every i if things were to go his way. Even after his interviews with the principals involved in the case, he had precious little to go on.
The Jenny Garrett interview proved the shocker, though. Rick never dreamed she would be unable to remember the days or weeks leading up to the accident. Now he was going before the captain with little more than his original supposition. What had changed from day one to day sixty-three, based on Dugan’s findings, was that he was looking for a killer rather than a yuppie driving under the influence.
Rawlings motioned Rick in as a junior grade detective exited. It was his time now. Rick opened his files, sat across from Rawlings, and positioned his papers so the captain could read the reports from his chair.
Rawlings, surprisingly, waved off the paperwork.
“I just want to know what you turned up to justify the supposition that the Garrett case is really attempted murder.”
“I wish I had more to offer.”
“We always do. That’s why we get the tough stuff. Talk to me about witnesses.”
“Right now, only the woman driving the car that was hit.”
“And she says?”
“She says the Garrett car crossed the line out of control as it came around the bend. After the car hit hers, it caromed over the rail and down the hill.”
“And Garrett says?”
“Nothing. She still claims no memory of the accident.”
“Any other witnesses?”
“None. The other driver reported that she thought she saw a car immediately behind Garrett’s on the hill. But no one has ever come forward.”
“Do we have a case? Is there anything we can show the State’s Attorney?”
“I didn’t have a case when we went in on the Baby McAllister death. Everybody said SIDS. You trusted me then. I turned up evidence that the mother had killed her own baby. You’ve got to give me time to work the principals.”
“Who are the principals?”
“At this point, the husband. There’s a long shot with the business partner. But I’ll need time to uncover the information to know the truth.”
“Maybe the truth is: she just did a dive over the guard rail with her car because she had been sucking down martinis at dinner.”
“And maybe the truth is someone tried to kill her. And failing the first time, he may just try again. Let’s face it, it’ll be much easier to have a case once we have a dead body.”
Rawlings’s hair-trigger temper began rising to the top.
“What’s the status on the little girl?”
“Still comatose. Doctors are saying the kid may be brain dead. May never come out of it.”
“Great. And we have to walk away.”
“You want my gut on this? I think Dugan’s right. Everything so far indicates the Garrett woman’s not a drinker. If she wasn’t drunk behind the wheel, she either lost control on her own, or the car went out of control as a result of tampering.”
“You got motive?”
“Not yet.”
“How about opportunity?”
“No...but I just started working this new angle.”
Rawlings leaned back into his chair, signaling a willingness to listen.
“I’m not totally convinced about any of this,” Rawlings added.
“Cap, let me have a shot at this. I don’t turn up a motive, we’ll call this one a ringer and bury it.”
“You got two weeks to make me smile, or we call it an accident, pure and simple.”
Rick accepted what Rawlings was willing to give and collected up his files. He walked out debating whether what he had just said was good or bad.
****
Warren harbored sufficient doubt in his own mind that he agreed to drive Jenny to the university. He would lose a whole trading day, and that might very well cost him dearly. But if this trip meant Jenny could gain peace of mind, it was worth every dollar he lost. He bantered back and forth whether Jenny could handle a two-hour drive, but upon arriving, he was surprised at how well she held up. Though he attributed that to the reason for the trip in the first place.
The only difficulty in the drive came when a teen changing lanes without signaling forced Warren to brake hard. In a panic, Jenny braced herself against the dash, digging her nails in until her knuckles paled, despite the fact there was no imminent danger. At first, Warren thought Jenny was going to pass out; her face had turned a ghostly pallor and her breathing seized, preventing her from inhaling. Warren witnessed the terror in her eyes. He expected it would be a long time before Jenny would be ready to get behind the wheel again.
Pillows employed to cushion her in the passenger seat eliminated much of the discomfort that sitting for a long period would have brought on. Jenny’s eyes contained a melange of relief and anxiety as they crossed the busy congested campus to locate Wilford Hall.
Warren and Jenny blended well amongst the hoards of students flowing up and down the walks between buildings. Most avoided eye contact with the two, though a few stared curiously at Jenny’s face. Jenny decided it was something she had to deal with and turned her eyes elsewhere in response to their stares. If she could deal with strangers looking at her, she reasoned, it wouldn’t be long before she could face her friends staring at her. Just being there brought back memories of their own college days. A time she sorely missed now. The toughest thing to face in college, she recalled, were finals. At the time, she never dreamed she’d be doing what she was doing now.
Jenny occupied a hard wooden bench outside Dwight’s door in an out-of-the-way corridor. The journey to get to this point had exhausted her, but adrenaline kept her from feeling the fatigue or the pain.
Warren paced. Not a minute passed without him confirming it on his watch. Time. To a trader, time is money and opportunity. Wasting time is like pissing away dollars. He had to tell himself he was doing this for Jenny and she was worth every ulcer he got.
The translucent glass pane on the door had no lettering on it, unlike most of the other office doors they passed. Only the painted number 128 appeared near the top center of the glass.
Warren paused to rest for a minute, leaned against the wall, but started again, growing angry over driving so far to be stood up by some psycho-babble fruitcake flake. But when Jenny looked up at him with eyes that begged for his patient indulgence, he smiled and tucked his frustration deeper into the shadowy recesses, hoping to hide his growing fury.
Occasionally, passing students glanced at them with a curious interest, but no one approached the door they waited beside. Jenny reasoned those who gave them the once over must have known whose office they were waiting by.
“This is stupid, Jenny. This guy’s probably some yo-yo who could care less about you. Why don’t we just leave?”
“Can’t we hang on a while longer. He said he’d meet us here.”
“Sure. And what do you think is keeping him?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to wait another fifteen minutes anyway.”
“He’s already twenty minutes late.”
“But we came this far.”
“He’s probably chasing a ghost,” Warren muttered, unaware of how caustic the words were to Jenny. Insensitivity had usually been something Warren kept in check.
But if Jenny refused to let the pain of her healing body deter her, she would certainly refuse to allow Warren’s callous remarks dampen her spirit. Nothing would force her to deny what she had seen. Nothing.
However, she did have t
o spend the next ten minutes convincing herself to remain. Maybe Warren was right; maybe this was nothing more than a fool’s quest. This Mr. Mackenzie may never show up.
As Warren came about in his holding pattern to pace back in Jenny’s direction, a studious, sandy-haired young man, not much older than the students in the building, strolled down their corridor as if he were in no hurry to arrive at his destination. Actually, he acted as if he were in some parallel world, the way he mumbled to himself as he walked.
The afternoon sunlight reflecting off his glasses placed white circles where his eyes should have been. As he approached the door, he scratched at his scraggly adolescent beard with one hand and pulled out a ring of keys with his other.
The surprised look on his face was evidence enough that he had either forgotten or dismissed their appointment.
“Hi, Jenny Garrett, right?” he asked pleasantly enough. He wore faded corduroy slacks and a plaid shirt complete with a knit fabric tie; exactly what you’d expect from someone claiming to be a paranormal investigator.
“Dwight Mackenzie?” Jenny asked, taking Warren’s arm to steady herself as she rose uneasily to her feet.
“Sorry I’m late. I got tied up with administrative matters. Let’s go inside.”
Inside, sitting before a scratched up old desk, Jenny told her carefully rehearsed story—she had two hours in the car to smooth out the stutters.
Dwight listened. When she finished, Dwight asked Warren, who had remained dutifully silent during the exchange, what he might like to add to Jenny’s story.
“Not a thing. I see nothing; I hear nothing.”
“Ms. Garrett, yours really is quite a remarkable story. Are you absolutely certain that this ghost you’re seeing is of yourself?”
“Absolutely.”
“There’s no room for doubt? Could it just resemble you in some ways, like hair style or similar facial features?”
“I’m sure. It is me.”
“Ms. Garrett, I have to be perfectly honest with you. While your story is quite fascinating...I’m not certain there exists sufficient grounds for me to pursue a full-scale paranormal investigation.”
Warren shifted. Mr. Dick Head was obviously just jerking Jenny around with his paranormal crap.
“Look, if money’s a factor here, I’d be willing...” Jenny started.
Warren was quick to seize Jenny’s arm with a firm hand. Their eye contact was brief, however.
“Ms. Garrett...Jenny...it’s not money, per se. My work is fully funded under a university grant. It’s just that there exists almost no supporting case histories where a person was experiencing a recurring paranormal exchange with their own spirit. And I don’t believe we’re talking about astral projection here.”
“Astral projection?” Warren asked, feeling as if he were being carefully sucked into something by a seasoned charlatan.
“In simple terms, it’s when the astral body detaches from the physical body and the person goes through what’s called an out-of-body experience. What Jenny has told me sounds completely different.”
“Look, Mr. Mackenzie, we didn’t come here for some canned psychic phenomena bag-O-bologna. Jenny is seeing a ghost of herself. It has appeared before her more than once or twice. The goddamn thing is haunting her. Will you investigate it?” Warren forced in, as if he needed to speak for her.
“Is it a malevolent spirit?”
“Do you mean is it trying to hurt me?” Jenny took over.
“Yes.”
“I don’t think so. But how can I be certain?”
“Has it communicated with you in any way?”
“No. It appears. I see it, but it has made no attempt to speak with me in any form. Will you do something?”
“It’s not possible for me to give you an answer right away. But I will review the information you’ve provided, check with other sources, and let you know within a month or so if I will be looking into what you’ve told me.”
All the air left Jenny. She composed herself, the pains in her head came crashing in like angry waves against a rocky coast. She had endured so much to get here and now within the span of thirty minutes, this investigator had shredded her gossamer hope.
“Thank you. I really do appreciate your time,” Jenny said.
Their handshakes were cordial, but Jenny sensed a peculiar indifference from Dwight. Why, if he were in the business of investigating these things, would he hesitate? Did he think she was just a crackpot?
Jenny reviewed every word he had said. He seemed to take particular interest in the fact that Jenny had been in a recent automobile accident. Would he, like everyone else in the medical profession, try to pass this off as part of the healing process?
The moment Jenny and Warren left the office, Dwight jumped out of his seat and danced around his chair with the excitement of a teen who had just landed a date with the prettiest cheerleader on the squad. Then, he extracted a formal-looking manila folder from his desk drawer and opened it. The university had tendered official notification that they were declining his application for grant renewal, citing a lack of substantial data in his field as the cause, and further citing that his work no longer served any useful purpose to the academic milieu. Like it ever did, anyway.
Dwight, however, boiled the three paragraphs of administrative rhetoric down to a single word: money. He was staring at a polite pink slip on university letterhead...unless he could come up with something of substance.
There remained only three centers in the entire United States investigating paranormal phenomena, and Dwight’s center had been on an endangered species list for the last year. Up until an hour ago, he believed his extinction was inevitable. Now God had given him a chance to justify his funding, and just maybe, win another year out of the university. Ms. Jenny Garrett really had no idea of what she had just done. Even if she were just a crackpot.
14
Rick sat over his desk as outside day faded into night. His fluorescent desk lamp, bent over like an ostrich, sprayed white light over the clutter of reports and printouts.
His challenge sat before him on the desk. Uncover the motive. Find a reason for someone to want Jenny Garrett dead. Did she have something in her past that warranted a murder attempt? Rick doubted it. More likely there was another reason; a reason even Jenny herself might be unaware of.
Rick bounced back and forth between various sets of bank records that, when combined, represented five years of business transactions. Before long, a pattern began to emerge. Warren Garrett made it an almost regular practice of overextending his credit to keep his trading business afloat.
It appeared as if Warren’s business was again in a deep cyclical trough—deep enough that one or two consecutive bad trades could plummet him into bankruptcy. This guy was a gambler far beyond the scope of the average gambler, who habitually bets on races, sports, cards or dice. Warren regularly bet everything he had against the price of corn or oil, or the Japanese yen or German mark.
And it seemed that for the last six months, he’d been losing.
On the other hand, every cent of Warren’s money could be legitimately accounted for. He wasn’t dealing drugs. He wasn’t into loan sharks, and as far as Rick could tell, Warren couldn’t possibly be involved in any kind of money laundering scheme for organized crime. So, it would appear as if there was no dark shadow in Warren’s ear whispering, ‘Give me my money or the pretty little woman has a terrible accident.’
However, the paper trail illustrated clearly that Warren was falling deeper and deeper into red ink. At one time a year go, Warren had over four hundred grand in his bank account.
Rick only dreamed about money like that. His ex-wife popped into his head as he stared at the numbers. That was the kind of money it took to make her happy. Something Rick knew he’d never see in his lifetime.
But lately the cash flow had changed directions and as quickly as it flowed in, it was gone. By scrutinizing the Garretts’ banking records, it became obvious tha
t Jenny was, in fact, the sole provider for the household. Warren’s luck had turned to dust in his hand and his sporadic gains were constantly used to offset a seriously mounting debt load.
Rick jotted down all the places where the Garretts wrote checks of any substantial size. All appeared innocuous enough—at first. At the same time, he uncovered that the Garretts paid hefty insurance premiums. From the size of the premium, Rick deduced that a million dollar policy was probably in effect. He could confirm that in the morning.
But other things also didn’t add up. Rick scratched his head over inordinate sums spread around several jewelers in town in the previous year. Why would a guy plummeting into debt be so free with his cash for jewelry? Of course, no purchases had turned up for at least the last six months.
Good old Warren had slapped three mortgages on their home—thereby eradicating any equity he could ever hope to gain between the present and sometime into the next century. He only stopped there because he had squeezed every cent he could out of the property. Easy to see why Warren’s creditors might become nervous.
As he stretched in his chair to shake off fatigue, Rick felt no great sense of sleuthing accomplishment. Even the Keystone Cops could see Warren would gain from Jenny’s death. A million in insurance right now would put Warren back in the black and erase a ton of burgeoning debt. If Jenny had died in that accident, Warren would have turned his business around and left himself with a hefty reserve. But why risk murder when he seemed to have the moxie to accumulate significant wealth using his own brain? From the records, Warren had traded himself out of massive debt twice in the past four years.
Was the money a sufficient motive? Would Warren Garrett murder his wife for the insurance? Been done before. Why should Warren be any different than any other greedy shithead slob?
Warren’s business had been in a tailspin for months. It seemed possible, at least to Rick, that a string of good months could erase Warren’s debt and set him back on solid ground. So why risk murder...unless...you could be certain of getting away with it. And Warren’s string of bad months had yet to come to an end.