Kill Process

by William Hertling

  The thing is, that doesn’t feel like the right explanation. It wasn’t like a panic attack, it just felt wrong. Crap, make one, two really bad decisions in your life, and you spend the rest of it doubting everything.

  I lean back in my seat, keys still in my hand. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong about Jeremy when I met him. He was funny, charming. I was stressed about work and my life, and it seemed the only escape from that feeling was when I spent time with him. He was always concerned with my health, looking out for me. “Quit your job if they don’t respect you,” he said. “You’re worth more than that.”

  It seemed like a good idea at the time. When you’re stressed, and financially privileged, you take time off work. Totally logical. I had money saved up, and Jeremy had a great job at one of the investment banks. Income was irrelevant.

  It was a relief in the beginning to move the focus off me. Too long I’d been at the center of everything at Tomo. I let Jeremy be the center of attention for a change. It was so easy to go to his events, see his friends, be in the periphery without any pressure.

  Why would I even want to be at Tomo anyway? Not to hear recurring suspicions voiced that I purposely hired Neil and split the money with him.

  Then as the tech world heated up again, Jeremy got busy, too busy for social events with me. Cooped up in the house, I read about the next generation of hot startups that needed talent. I had skills.

  I started to look for my next job but Jeremy said talk in the tech world was people all through the community thought I had something to do with Tomo’s stolen data. All the Bay Area startups knew about it. I should wait a while until things died down a bit.

  I wasn’t happy about it, but it seemed like good advice, so I went along with it. When Jeremy proposed to me, I wondered if he was purposely distracting me, though he seemed so excited about the prospect of getting married. Money was good then, valuations increasing, and he bought us a new house. We moved in right after the wedding. It was a little further out, a little harder to see our old friends, but Jeremy said it was a good idea to escape the craziness of the valley. Everyone was going nuts, and we needed a retreat, someplace away from all the hubbub. He wanted peace and quiet, so we ditched the Internet and phones at home, because people were trying to reach him all the time.

  The more disconnected we got, the more angry and tense he became. I did everything I could to help, the dinners, keeping the house perfect the way he wanted. Somehow I’d become this domestic appendage, the exact opposite of everything I’d imagined for myself, and I wondered how I’d gotten where I was.

  The pressure kept building up, all the time, so much strain. One of his big clients failed, a huge investment, the bank was out tens of millions. He came home in a rage, clearly drinking on his drive home, because he was unsteady when he walked in the door. I tried to help him, and that’s when he—

  A jabbing pain in my leg breaks me free of my thoughts. I’m still sitting in my car, parked across from Morton’s. I’m stabbing myself in the leg with my car key. I feel cool wetness around the hot ache in my leg, like maybe I broke the skin.

  No, I will not think about Jeremy. I reach around, shove the key in the ignition, and slam the car into gear. The street is empty, so I jam my foot on the gas and speed down the road.

  I take the corner too fast, my tires chirping slightly before I climb the onramp to the bridge. Directly ahead, the primary steel girder of the bridge protrudes up from the deck, dividing the left and right lanes, only a small metal guardrail to keep a car from hitting it. Something comes over me, and I floor the gas, racing toward the heavy steel divider. I jerk the wheel at the last minute, getting the car over into the right lane, weaving back and forth before I regain control.

  I slam on the brakes, bringing the car to a complete halt. I’m gasping, my fingers coiled around the steering wheel so tightly it’s shaking under my grip. For a minute all I can see are the concrete columns of the underpass, and Jeremy passed out, drunk, next to me in the passenger seat. It was so easy, just a tiny press of a red button, and his seatbelt was undone. Maybe I would die, too, but I was beyond caring. Anything was better than my miserable existence. The underpass loomed large, the concrete column almost—

  A car horn honks, and I look up, realize I’m stopped in the middle of the Hawthorne bridge. I glance right, the passenger seat’s empty, although for a second I glimpse Jeremy’s body there, the way it was in the crime scene photographs. I can’t remember anything between releasing Jeremy’s seatbelt and waking up in the hospital, my arm gone.

  The guy behind me lays into his horn again.

  “Fuck you, asshole,” I yell, and give him the finger.

  The horn falls silent.

  I take my foot off the brake, and carefully step on the gas and drive the rest of the way home.

  * * *

  I call Charlotte’s emergency number when I arrive home, only to get an answering service. “I need to speak to her as soon as possible.”

  They promise to send the message to her.

  She calls me back fifteen minutes later, but by then, sitting in my living room in the glow of the moonlight, the past has loosened its grip on me. She agrees to see me early tomorrow morning, before her other patients.

  I grind my teeth on the drive over the next morning, angry I’m reliving these old events. By the time I take my seat in her office, I can barely stop myself from slamming my travel mug onto the side table.

  “I came in here last week, you got me talking about Neil and how I met my husband, which I didn’t want to do. Now I’m losing my mind. I want my past buried away where I don’t need to think about it.”

  “How’s that been working for you?” Charlotte asks.

  “What?”

  “The strategy of burying things. It’s really a good short-term strategy. When we experience trauma, the mind needs to protect itself, and which it can do by focusing attention elsewhere, trying to ignore those memories. It’s only effective temporarily.”

  “It’s worked fine for five years.”

  Charlotte waits.

  “Mostly fine,” I say. “I work, I have a relationship.”

  “I beg to differ. Your personal strength keeps you functional in spite of trying to bury those memories. You’re brave enough to place yourself in terrifying situations again and again, dealing with your male coworkers, surrounded by men in public spaces, even being touched by Thomas. There is an alternative in which you aren’t afraid, where life isn’t an ongoing battle between what you want and what you fear.”

  She stops and takes a sip of her tea.

  I fiddle with the edge of my shirt, not wanting to accept what she’s said.

  “You wouldn’t be here unless you believed that on some level,” she adds.

  I nod. I pretend the room is empty and I’m talking to myself.

  “After Jeremy became abusive”—abusive is an hollow word that can’t encompass what it’s like to be belittled and broken down by the man you love, a word that doesn’t evoke in the slightest way the terror of never knowing when the next outburst is coming or what might happen as a result, or the self-loathing that suffocated me when I lay there in pain knowing I hadn’t defended myself yet again, and this is why abusive is a safe word, because I don’t have to think about those things—“he didn’t let me talk to my family.”

  I shake my head. “No. That’s not true. It didn’t start then. It was earlier he cut me off from my friends and family. I’m not stupid, I knew my situation was twisted, but I couldn’t find a way out. I was confused all the time, like someone had convinced me up was down and left was right. In theory, all I had to do was walk out the door. But a thousand things kept me there. I didn’t have anyone to call, I had no money, I was convinced Jeremy would kill me or himself . . .”

  I’m losing my thread. I wanted to talk about my mom. I draw my knees up in the chair, wrap my arm around my legs, so I’m sitting folded up as small and cocooned as I can be.

&nbs
p; “There was this room Jeremy called his office, with a deadbolt on the door. That’s where everything important was, everything Jeremy didn’t want me to get my hands on. Bank paperwork, my license, the phone. One day he went to work, and after he left, I found the door unlocked.

  “I waffled, afraid to go in, but I eventually did. You know what I did? I looked through the mail. Such a little thing, but I hadn’t had the feeling of rifling through the mail in so long. There was so much mail! Buried in the stack was an open envelope from a New York lawyer, addressed to me. The lawyer’s letter was regarding the disposition of my mother’s estate. I had no idea she was even dead, or that she’d even been sick. Jeremy hid that from me, the bastard!”

  “I’m sorry,” Charlotte says.

  “It wasn’t until later I discovered how much he’d kept secret. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she hired someone to track us down. They never figured out where we lived, though they discovered where Jeremy worked. My mother flew out to California, confronted Jeremy at his work. You know what that asshole did?”

  My eyes focus on Charlotte momentarily, then I let her fade away. I’m in an empty room.

  “He called the police, and convinced them to haul my mother away, when it was him that should have been arrested and locked up,” I half yell, half cry, my voice ragged. “She never left. She spent the last months of her life looking for me, and failed. She died less than ten miles from where I was.”

  I don’t tell Charlotte the next part, although it’s connected, intrinsically part of the gestalt. That was the day I decided to kill Jeremy. It took me a while to figure out how to do it in a plausibly deniable sort of way, and I waited still longer for the opportunity to present itself. In the end, my plan didn’t survive the first encounter with the police. It’s why I’m so careful now. I can’t afford a second mistake.

  CHAPTER 28

  * * *

  THIS MORNING I met with the mortgage broker, and we began the process of refinancing. Even with 100 percent loan-to-value, I only have enough equity to last a few months. The thought of using what little financial safety net I have makes me sick, though the idea of failing is worse. I hound Mat for introductions to more angel investors, force myself to make cold calls, and work through the weekend.

  Thomas texts to ask me out to dinner on Saturday.

  “Only if you’re buying,” I tell him, which he does, of course. We laugh about it, and for a few minutes on Saturday, with a glass of wine in me, I’m . . . well, maybe not relaxed, but not exactly on the edge of my seat either. We go back to his place, get busy in his bed, and an hour later I’m headed back to Amber’s. She’s surprised when I show up, but I sit alongside her and we crank out code until two in the morning.

  I’ve got angel investor pitches lined up for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, all by videoconference.

  Including the work we do over the weekend, we now possess a working demo showing six different components working together: friend management, friend finder, status updates, notifications, news feed, photo upload, and selective sharing. This last piece is a huge deal. Up until now, if you want to share everything publicly, the existing, open IndieWeb movement could give you most of what you wanted simply by publishing content via your blog. If you want to share to a single person, there are dozens of texting and messaging apps, even email. Yet if you want to share privately to a group of people you select, then Tomo is the only real option. By supporting selective sharing of content, we’re on equal footing with Tomo.

  On Monday morning, I’m waiting in line for a coffee at Coava, stressing about the two investor pitch meetings scheduled that day, when my phone buzzes. I look down to see an email. The from: line says “Lewis,” no last name.

  I try to swallow, my saliva sticking in my throat as my heart pounds. I abandon the coffee line and look for something to lean on as I open the email.

  From: lewis (lewis@tomo.com)

  To: angie@angieb.me

  Hey Angie,

  I hear you’re working on some interesting stuff. We’d love to have a look, maybe help you with funding.

  - L

  Lewis is the CEO and founder of Tomo. I panic and half-run for the exit, pushing my way way rudely though the line. Outside I take gulps of air, but I’m afraid I might be sick. Lewis Rasmussen is literally the last person on Earth I want to know about Tapestry. He has bought, crushed, or rendered obsolete every company that has in any way competed with or threatened Tomo. In my car, my heart pounds as I read the message over and over. Why this message, why these words? He didn’t mention the non-compete, which isn’t in their database, but he’d certainly know it should exist. He could have threatened me. Of course, that is never his way. He doesn’t need to do anything like that.

  He can afford to be nice. He paid billions for Picaloo, because why not? He’ll offer to buy me, give me all the money I need to succeed, maybe even offer me a pick of staff from Tomo. I knew this message would come some day. I didn’t think it would happen so soon. I imagined it occurring when I had a product and users, millions of users. It is inevitable we’d eventually go head-to-head, only I imagined that would be when I was on equal footing, with an army of lawyers and executives on my side.

  To attract his attention now means he believes I’m dangerous. Powerful people don’t like dangerous things around them.

  When I call Emily it goes to voicemail. I hang up and call back. It takes four tries before she answers.

  “What’s up?” she says, the urgency in her voice making it clear she’s in the middle of something important.

  “Lewis emailed me. He knows about Tapestry.”

  She sighs. “It was going to happen sooner or later.”

  “Why so quickly?” I say. “Why Lewis and not a flunky?”

  “He knows you. You were an early employee and a veteran of the company. Seems natural they’d keep track of what you’re doing. Maybe he’s paying you the respect you deserve by contacting you directly.”

  How does Lewis even know what we’re doing? Is he spying on me?

  “Who’d he find out from? Practically nobody knows.”

  “There’s only so many people in tech,” Emily says. “Maybe those new employees you want to hire said something?”

  “Maybe he’s reading my emails.”

  “That’s paranoia talking,” Emily says, her voice suddenly stronger, like she’s paying attention to this conversation for the first time. “Look, there’s no point in worrying about any of this. You don’t want to hear Lewis’s offer, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then ignore the email, and go about life like you didn’t receive it.”

  We hang up a few minutes later, Emily’s reassurances failing to convince me. Lewis must be keeping track of me to know so soon, and with such perfect timing. Of course he’d approach me when I’m most desperate for financing. There’s an obvious answer: hack Lewis back and check all of his messages. Find out what he’s doing.

  * * *

  Lewis is on my mind as I go through my morning investor pitch. My delivery is off, and the investor knows it. We’ve scheduled a twenty-minute videoconference, yet after a few minutes all I receive are distracted nods while the investor does something else on his computer in the background. At ten minutes he says he’s not interested, and we end early.

  Amber hears my cursing and comes running from the living room. I quickly recap the call without saying anything about the email from Lewis. I’ll take care of that myself later.

  “Let that one go,” Amber says. “Let’s get you back in the game before the next pitch and grab some lunch. Boki Bowl?”

  I love the noodle shop, but it’s expensive for noodles. “Let’s do Thai.” Though I’m not sure saving five dollars on lunch makes a real difference, I feel sick with every extra dollar I spend.

  We eat, then Amber suggests walking up Mount Tabor. I huff and puff my way to the top, and we spend a few minutes circling the crest and gazing out on the city from
several hundred feet up.

  By the time we head back down, I wouldn’t say I feel good, but I feel normal enough to function for the second pitch. I handle the call better, and the investor asks me to send her the rest of my slides. That’s at least a little promising.

  I leave after the call and head home. I grab an extra laptop from our office, then image the laptop with a clean operating system. I drive across town to a dive bar on Alberta I know has deep booths. It’s early and the place is almost empty. I take a dark booth in the back, order the burger because it’s one of the least expensive items on the menu, and pull on my headphones. I’m not listening to anything, but it should keep the waiter from interrupting me too often. I pull out a little USB wi-fi adapter about the size of a deck of cards. It’s got a directional antenna in it, nothing as effective as a Pringles can or any of my good electronics gear, but it’s enough to acquire the open wi-fi of a coffee shop a block away.

  I pull down an encrypted disk image off an old website. Decrypted, it gives me enough basic tools to do what I need. After rerouting through a public VPN, I connect into Tomo’s network. Reading Lewis’s email and Tomo messages, stored on the Tomo network, couldn’t be easier. Of course, Lewis is a CEO, and his inbox is massive. He receives more email in a day than I get in a few weeks. I want to search his messages for any mention of me, but I can’t resist peeking through his inbox.

  His email is a gold mine. He’s got messages from everyone on his executive team, detailing plans for the next several quarters. He’s running a whole bunch of secret projects, PrivacyGuard being only one of them. I’m reading about their plans for providing free Internet access when I feel vaguely disgusted with myself.

  The net effect of Tomo is evil, but is Lewis Ramussen himself a bad guy? Is it right for me to read his email? I want to beat Tomo so bad, but what I’m doing essentially amounts to corporate espionage. I have no problem reading some asshole abuser’s email, but this feels dishonorable. I shake my head and take a bite of my cold hamburger. No. How can it be inappropriate? What Tomo does is unethical. Aren’t I justified to use any means possible to end their abuse of their users? I waffle back and forth, unwilling to look at any more of his emails. Why does this feel so wrong?