The I.P.O.

Home > Other > The I.P.O. > Page 20
The I.P.O. Page 20

by Dan Koontz


  “The only reason I’m even giving you a chance to try to wriggle your way out of this is that you’re one of ours, D – I – L – N.”

  Dillon leaned in to study Bradford’s expression. “I also know about the murder of Ryan Tyler’s parents,” he whispered.

  This time he saw something. It was subtle. But unmistakable in its abruptness. Bradford immediately tried to recreate his previous smug expression, but he fell just short in his attempt. His smirk was still there, but it seemed strained now. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” he said, shaking his head incredulously, but briefly breaking eye contact for the first time. “I’ve never had anything to do with his account, and his parents were killed in a head-on collision. I certainly wasn’t the one driving the car that hit them.”

  “That’s a pretty good memory for something that happened over ten years ago to ‘an account’ you had nothing to do with,” Dillon said. Now he was the one wearing the contented smirk.

  Bradford’s eyes narrowed. “I came here to give you an opportunity to defend yourself...”

  “You came here for extortion!” Dillon yelled, drawing a few glances from the neighboring tables.

  “Stupid little shit,” Bradford muttered out of the side of his mouth. “You’re making a grave mistake.” He grabbed his coffee, shimmied out of the booth, and stood up to glare one last time at Dillon. “You’ll be hearing from the FBI. Soon!”

  “Oh, I know,” Dillon said, reaching into his backpack. “But it’s not gonna be on your timetable.”

  The color instantly drained from Bradford’s expressionless face, as he stared down thunderstruck at the muzzle of a .22-caliber pistol aimed right between his eyes.

  ~~~

  “You were right,” Weinstien said just as Ryan’s phone reached his ear, not giving him a chance to say hello. “There were unusual circumstances surrounding your parents’ car accident.

  The car that hit them was a Chevy Suburban registered to a Tony Lafora. But he wasn’t in the car that night.”

  “So who was?” Ryan asked.

  “Some burned out drunk with three prior DUIs.”

  Ryan felt an unexpected wave of relief come over him at the news that the accident had indeed been random.

  “But I don’t think he was driving either,” Weinstien added after a dramatic pause.

  “What? Why? Was he at the wheel or not?”

  “He was at the wheel, but I don’t think he was driving. His blood alcohol content was .45, and his tox screen also came up positive for pretty high levels of benzodiazepines – you know, like Valium and Xanax. I don’t think he could’ve been conscious, much less driving, at the time of the crash.

  “Also, a quick review of his arrest records revealed that on every other DUI charge, he’d been pulled over for driving too slowly and swerving all over the road. The police determined that the car that hit your parents was going close to sixty in a twenty-five mile an hour zone.

  “Plus he’d never stolen a car in his life – much less this one.”

  “Well, he doesn’t exactly sound like a model citizen. He probably passed out with his foot on the gas,” Ryan said dismissively, stubbornly clinging to the hope that his parents were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Maybe. But get this. It turns out Tony Lafora, the car’s actual owner, had been working on tweaking driverless car technologies through a joint venture between Google and NASA’s Glenn Research Center here in Cleveland. And the Chevy Suburban he was tinkering with at his house had suddenly gone missing from his garage three days before the accident. He’d actually called the police to report it stolen.”

  “So did they ever find out who stole it?”

  “Not definitively. They blamed it on the drunk. I mean, I can’t say I blame them; he was in the driver’s seat when it crashed.

  “Lafora ended up losing his job at NASA for having the car off campus. But off the record pretty much everyone knew he’d keep it in his garage for weeks at a time. They only fired him to protect their image. They hired him right back a few months later with a slightly different title to do basically the same thing.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  “I talked to him! He still lives in Cleveland.

  “He says, beyond a shadow of a doubt, there’s absolutely no way a career alcoholic with no education could’ve pulled this off. Whoever stole that car would’ve had to have known not only how to override the driverless feature, which requires significant programming expertise, but also how to disable the tracking feature, which is even more advanced.

  “Lafora never even considered that the car would ever be stolen. He didn’t even lock it.”

  Exactly three months before the opening of Avillage, Ryan could hear Dillon whispering in his ear. “Maybe he wanted it to be stolen,” he thought out loud. “Maybe the guy who stole it didn’t know how to disable the driverless feature. Maybe Lafora disabled it – temporarily. Then he took back over when he was fed my parents’ location.

  “Listen, I know for a fact that someone, who was later gifted shares of my stock by Avillage, knew where my dad’s phone was at all times.”

  Ryan ignored a brief vibration from his phone indicating a new text. “You said Lafora still lives in Cleveland. Do you know where?”

  “I do,” Weinstien answered with no change in his tone. “In the same duplex he’s lived in for over ten years. He’s got no criminal record. He rides a scooter to work, and he still – ten years after the incident – works the exact same job. Doesn’t exactly sound like the kind of guy who would get into murder for hire. Good idea though. I think you’re probably on the right track – just not with him.”

  “Did anyone ever talk to the drunk?” he asked.

  “Not possible. He’s dead. Died in the accident. Or I guess I should say near the accident. He was unrestrained. Ended up 30 feet down the road from the crash site.”

  “So the case is pretty much closed?” Ryan asked, almost rhetorically.

  “Afraid so. No one really seems to be satisfied with the answers, but there are no other leads. Sorry I couldn’t give you better closure.

  “Oh, and obviously I haven’t looked into your grandfather’s situation yet. Gimme some time on that. I have to take care of some things back in Jersey first.”

  “Thanks a lot, Mr. Weinstien. I mean it. I’m really impressed. And it means a lot that you’d do this for me.”

  “Don’t mention it, kid,” Weinstien said just before hanging up, clearly not comfortable with compliments.

  Ryan set his phone down face up on his desk and stared blankly out his bedroom window. But before he could bury himself too deeply in thought, a tiny flash of green light from the corner of his phone drew him back to the present. He’d forgotten about the new text he’d gotten while he was on the phone.

  But it wasn’t a text message. It was a stock alert from his brokerage account. He’d set the account up to notify him if any of his stocks moved over 10% in either direction.

  Comfortable in the fact he wasn’t overexposed in any one specific holding, he tapped the link embedded in the message more out of curiosity than concern.

  As soon as the page loaded though, his jaw dropped to his chest. No! What did he do?

  DILN was down over 90%.

  ~~~

  “Move!” Dillon demanded over the shrill screams of the other food court patrons, half running for their lives and half huddling pitifully under their tables.

  “Alright! Alright! Just settle down,” Bradford stuttered. “You’re taking this way too far. I’m just a businessman. I didn’t do anything to you or your friends.”

  “Bullshit. I know what you did. And you’re going to admit it,” Dillon said confidently, directing him through the double doors to the parking lot. The ‘72 Impala was still waiting at the curb.

  “Get in the back!” Dillon shouted, trying to sound psychologically unstable and capable of anything.

  Bradford opened
the door and slowly lowered himself into the backseat.

  “Now shut the door!”

  Dillon got in through the front passenger side and slid himself across the vinyl bench seat to the driver’s side with his torso corkscrewed to keep the gun trained on Bradford’s forehead. He manually rolled the driver side window all the way down with his free hand and then fumbled with the key behind his back, finally blindly landing it in the ignition.

  Slowly he backed the Impala out of the rest area parking lot and continued in reverse down the right-side emergency lane of the exit ramp, against traffic.

  A few hundred yards after they hit the interstate, alternating focus between Bradford and the rear window, Dillon finally saw the “Welcome to New Hampshire” sign come into view. They’d made it back to Massachusetts.

  Leaving the engine running, he threw the transmission into park and rolled his window back up. He then pulled a small machine about the size of a walkie-talkie out of his backpack, and switched it on. The digital display read, “100 PPM.” Perfectly safe. Then he unfolded a sunshade and wedged it on top of the dashboard to cover the front windshield, effectively blocking off the only clear view into the car from the outside.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to his stone-faced captive. “I’m not going to kill you. Not because I don’t want to. I’d love to. But you’re not worth the death penalty – which I’d probably be eligible for, you know, with this being premeditated and all.

  “That’s why I brought the twenty-two. If I do have to shoot you, you probably won’t die.”

  Tiny sweat droplets began to bead on Bradford’s forehead. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to admit what you’ve done – to Ryan Tyler’s parents, to J’Quarius Jones, to Annamaria Olivera,” Dillon said, fidgeting with his phone.

  “Fine. I’ll admit anything you want,” Bradford blurted desperately. “But that won’t make it true. And you have to know that nothing I say would ever stand up in court. There’s no evidence for anything. Because I didn’t do anything!”

  “I’m well aware that a simple admission wouldn’t be any good in court. That’s why I want details. And if they’re not consistent with what I know to be true, there will be consequences.”

  Bradford’s mind raced. How much could Dillon really know about anything? There wasn’t much of any substance on the Avillage intranet.

  Dillon held his phone up next to the gun. “Talk!”

  “Ok! Ok! Where do you want me to start?” Bradford stalled.

  “Start at the beginning – with Ryan Tyler’s parents.”

  Bradford turned toward the side window to see a growing crowd of police cruisers congregating at a safe distance on the other side of the now roped-off interstate. From a distance he could hear the staccato “thwup-thwup-thwup” of an approaching helicopter. If he could just confabulate for long enough to give the cops time to figure out how to get him out, he might not have to give up anything incriminating.

  “As you may know,” he started, speaking very slowly and deliberately, “Ryan’s dad was a cardiologist in training.” True and verifiable, he thought. “Well, he’d been on call the night before the car accident, and, from what I understand, he’d gotten little to no sleep.

  “You can check this out yourself. It's all in the police report from the crash.” A lie, but there’s no way Dillon could know that. “The investigating officers speculated that he must have fallen asleep at the wheel...”

  “Wrong, asswipe,” Dillon interrupted, frustratedly gritting his teeth. “One. More. Chance. And I’m serious.”

  “Alright. You’re right. You got me. That’s not true – or it might be. I don’t know. Like I said, I had nothing to do with what happened to his parents!”

  He paused as if to regroup, stealing another look at the police through the side window.

  “But as for poor J’Quarius Jones, I do know about his death. Not a day goes by that I don’t question how I handled that situation.” Again he paused reflectively for as long as he thought Dillon would let him.

  “When Dr. Bennett first called to tell me that he’d passed out on the basketball court, I had literally just landed in New York from Panama. I mean, I was still on the plane.” True. “And I’d been seated next to some screaming baby, who never should have been let into first class by the way, who had kept me up the whole flight – except for the final half hour. I had finally just faded into a deep sleep when the plane touched down, and the stewardess shook me awake.

  “With the change in time zone and having just been woken up from a sound sleep, yet still sorely sleep-deprived, could I have potentially missed some details in the medical jargon Dr. Bennett was rattling off at me a mile a minute? It’s possible. But I don’t think so.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the University of Chicago Children’s Hospital actually chose to settle a malpractice case I brought against Dr. Bennett rather than risk taking it to trial.” True. “Personally, I was just ready to put the whole thing behind me, so I took their offer, and I donated...”

  “Just shut up,” Dillon sighed, shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry if...”

  “I said shut up!” Dillon lowered his phone back down onto the front seat. “I wasn’t even recording. I knew you’d never admit to anything.

  "But you weren’t the only one stalling.

  “The truth is I’m not after confessions. I know what you did, and you are going to pay.”

  He glanced down at the display on the device resting in the passenger seat. It now blinked, “400 PPM.”

  Dillon smiled as he turned back toward Bradford. “You like the ‘72 Impala? She’s a bona fide classic.” He rubbed the back of his free hand down the tattered top of the vinyl bench seat.

  “Here’s an interesting fact,” he continued. “Did you know that prior to 1975, cars manufactured in the U.S. weren’t equipped with catalytic converters?

  “Interesting, huh? So if something were to block the tailpipe, like some kind of debris, or snow, or something like... I don’t know... duct tape,” he said, holding up a half-used roll, “the interior of the car could very well fill up with toxic levels of carbon monoxide.

  “Don’t worry. We’re not there yet.” He put the tape down and held up the carbon monoxide monitor just before it ticked up from 400 to 800 parts per million. He then pulled a long piece of 1-inch PFA tubing out of his backpack and cracked the driver’s side window, just enough to thread about a foot and a half of the tubing out into the clean outside air. “Sorry. I’ve only got one,” he said sarcastically before sucking in a long drag of fresh air.

  For the first time since he’d first pulled the gun, he could see true terror back in Bradford’s eyes. And he relished it.

  “If you try to get out of the car, I promise you I’ll shoot straight for your spinal cord.” The pure hatred in his eyes convinced Bradford he meant it. He took another series of breaths through the tube. “Or you can stay in here with me and take your chances; I’m not gonna let you die.”

  The monitor emitted an agitated series of beeps as the display ticked up from 800 to 1600 parts per million of carbon monoxide.

  “You feeling ok?” Dillon asked pseudo-empathetically, unable to fully suppress his smile. “Because you’re not looking too good.”

  Bradford tried his best to stay stoic, but he couldn’t quite fight off an involuntary urge to swallow awkwardly as an unnatural rush of saliva filled his mouth.

  Dillon gleefully sucked in a few more breaths through his tube. “You’ve probably got a little bit of a headache right now? Yeah, unfortunately that’s gonna get quite a bit worse.

  “By the time this thing ticks up to 3200, you’ll probably be vomiting that eight-dollar latte you were so smugly sipping a little while ago all over the back seat.

  “If you’re still awake to see 6400, you won’t remember it.

  “But that’s right around the time I’m gonna give myself up, and one of those heroes over th
ere will rush in and save your life.”

  Not unexpectedly, Dillon's phone interrupted his soliloquy.

  “Hello? What? FBI? No, I’m sorry. I don’t know any FBI. You must have the wrong number.” He switched his ringer to silent and dropped the phone to the floorboard.

  Bradford’s sallow complexion was lacquered with perspiration, his lips pressed firmly together, completely devoid of color, and he seemed to be concentrating intently on not vomiting. That could only last for so long.

  ~~~

  Ryan anxiously turned on the TV and flipped to the news, where he found a field correspondent, just back from commercial, rehashing Dillon’s story from the southbound lanes of the interstate, flanked on both sides by the flashing lights of more than a dozen police cruisers. Mind-numbingly repetitive aerial and ground shots of the green Impala offered no clue as to what was going on inside.

  “CNN has now confirmed that the owner of the car is one Dillon Higley, a freshman at MIT,” the correspondent reported as Dillon’s high school yearbook photo flashed briefly on the screen. “And his hostage is believed to be Aaron Bradford, executive vice president of Avillage, Incorporated.”

  “Witnesses from inside the Southern New Hampshire travel plaza – just a few hundred yards north of us – state that Mr. Bradford had arrived at the food court alone but seemed to have been expecting Mr. Higley. The two men held a brief, but what some have referred to as ‘intense,’ conversation, after which Mr. Bradford stood, apparently with the intention to leave.

  “It was at this point that Mr. Higley brandished a weapon – a handgun of some sort – and forcibly led Mr. Bradford out of the rest area and into his car. From there, for unclear reasons, he backed up the exit ramp and continued southward down the northbound emergency lane, just past the state line into Massachusetts, where the car you’re looking at live still sits.”

  It all came together instantly for Ryan. A week earlier Dillon had told him he’d been reevaluating his priorities. And the last time he’d signed off on the walkie-talkie, there had been such an unmistakable finality in his tone.

 

‹ Prev