Retreat

by J. F. Gonzalez

  “Why not? Carmen told me that he had some dealings with some characters in Boise that could only be described as shady.”

  Another new bit of information for Rick. The more he learned about the work-release employees, the more he didn’t like the program. Rick wasn’t responsible for their hiring; that usually fell under the jurisdiction of the Board of Directors, who did all the direct hiring for that particular program. “Color me surprised,” Rick said. He leaned back in his chair. “How am I supposed to know these guys’ backgrounds as Director of Operations if I can’t even have access to their HR records?”

  “Hey, you’re preaching to the choir, buddy.” Paul Westcott rose to his feet and stretched. “I’ve complained to Wayne about this before. All he tells me is that their charter prohibits it. Something about how these guys aren’t even real employees of the company but just indentured servants or some shit. You ask me, every last one of us is an indentured servant to these bozos.”

  Rick cracked a smile at that. Paul smiled and laughed.

  “Seriously, though,” Rick said, as he rose to his feet behind his desk. Paul moved toward the door and Rick stepped around the desk to show him out. “I like to run as tight a ship as I can, and it’s pretty hard to do when I’m not allowed to know the complete criminal background of these work-release guys. It would have made things a lot easier had I known Brian’s background beforehand. I wouldn’t have assigned him to work that section of the suites. I would’ve put him on common-area maintenance duty.”

  “I hear you,” Paul said. He stopped at the door, hand on the doorknob, and paused. “I’ll tell you something,” he said, turning to Rick. “Brian’s not the only work-release guy to skip out during the season. We’ve had others. Every single one of them has had something going on outside, too. A scam he’s working with buddies back home, a girl he’s pining for, that kind of thing. Brian’s no different. When I finally got a look at his complete record, I saw he had ties with a fencing ring in Boise. You ask me, that’s where he’s headed.”

  “To Boise?”

  “Why not? Boise’s a real city. Unlike bumfuck, Wyoming.” Paul opened the office door and bade Rick a farewell with a wave. “Don’t worry about it, Rick. Brian’s gone, and my team is questioning the rest of the employees over the next day or two. We’ll find Mr. Goode’s money.”

  “Let me ask you something else,” Rick asked.

  “Shoot.” Paul hung back in the hallway. Rick stood in the threshold of his office and glanced both ways—his office was at the end of the hall; there were three other offices set up along this hallway that housed other administrative employees. They were all out to lunch, so it was just Rick and Paul. “Has there ever been a theft of this magnitude at Bent Creek before?”

  Paul’s features were serious. His gaze was direct. “There’s never been a theft at Bent Creek, period.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Gone was the slight joking manner Paul exhibited in Rick’s office. Now he was dead serious. “Not so much as an incident of pick-pocketing or petty theft. Bent Creek’s clients don’t play that. If any of them are crooks, they’re of the high-level white-collar variety, and I’d be hard-pressed to find any that are engaged in that kind of activity, even if we do have a few hedge fund managers on our client list. For the most part, our clients are high-level corporate executives and lawyers, Wall Street players, or they’re genuine blue bloods. They don’t have to steal from each other. Why would they? The lowest net worth of some of them is around twenty million or more. A lot of them are worth much more than that. Quite a few of them are at the Mitt Romney level of the wealth scale, or for all I know the George Soros or Koch Brothers billionaire level. Once you have that kind of money, why would you need any more? You know what I mean?”

  “Very well,” Rick said. He couldn’t comprehend having that kind of money.

  Paul stepped away. “I’ll report the result of our talks with the other employees sometime tonight or tomorrow.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Paul headed down the hall and Rick retreated back into his office and closed the door.

  When he sank back into his chair, his mind was a whirling maelstrom of thoughts. Carmen had been making noise about Brian’s disappearance since yesterday. She was very upset by it, and that told Rick that she wasn’t involved in the theft if Brian masterminded it. If Brian had taken the money, he would’ve trusted Carmen with it, no question about it. Rick saw how close the two of them were, and if a search of her quarters hadn’t turned up anything, her vigorous demands that management do something about Brian’s disappearance was further proof. Rick still found it hard to believe that Paul had dismissed Brian as a likely suspect in the theft of Mr. Goode’s money, but it was a real possibility he had to keep open for now. The report Paul submitted to him and the rest of the board this morning was conclusive: there was no forensic evidence showing Brian Gaiman had broken in to Mr. Goode’s room. In fact, there was no evidence Mr. Goode’s room had been broken into at all. Naturally, that led Rick to believe it was an inside job—either somebody with Mr. Goode’s key card or an employee with access to the room had stolen the money. The question was, who?

  Rick tapped a key on his computer’s keyboard and the screen saver disappeared. He was hungry. He clicked on a web browser to do some casual web surfing, letting his mind wander. He couldn’t help but think about the theft of all that cash. Surely it couldn’t be somebody on staff; everybody that worked at the Bent Creek Country Club and Resorts—with the exception of the handful of maintenance guys on the work release program—had undergone criminal background checks prior to their being hired. They’d also undergone credit checks. Those with credit scores below 700 were not hired, period. With the exception of those few employees involved in the work-release program, everybody on staff had a spotless record. So if it wasn’t an employee who’d stolen the money, who did it?

  The sound of chattering voices entering the hall shattered his thoughts and Rick stood up, his stomach rumbling. It sounded like Karen and Jay were coming back from lunch. He poked his head out the door. Jay was just entering his office when he saw Rick and nodded. “Hey, Rick.”

  Rick nodded back. “Jay. How was lunch?”

  “Good. Karen, Geoff, and I went to the grill. It’s pretty empty now if you want to go snag something.”

  “Thanks. I think I will.” It was common for the office staff to come back and inform Rick that business at the grill had died down, allowing Rick to take a quick trip to grab a sandwich and head back. Rick patted his slacks’ pocket to make sure his wallet was there, then he closed his door and headed out to lunch.

  * * *

  He wheeled the body into the cutting room on a stainless steel gurney.

  This was one of four he was dealing with. Two had been dispatched and were already prepared, sitting in the freezer to await the main event. The third was tied up and would be dispatched later—probably tomorrow. This one had just been killed a few hours ago and it couldn’t have gone better.

  He stood over the body, breathing deeply. This specimen was young and well built, with the body of an athlete. Sharply defined chest and arms suggested he’d been a body builder. That was good. Personally, he liked body builders. He was a muscle man.

  He walked around to where the head of the victim was. The body was lying on its back. He could see the bullet wound’s entry and exit clearly—big hole above the right temple, large gaping maw of flesh and bone toward the rear left of the skull. He frowned. A specimen this well nourished and in such good physical shape, it was a shame the head was not intact. Apparently the client didn’t care for this one’s head. Their loss.

  He glanced at his watch quickly. He had an hour before he had to get to work. This shouldn’t take that long.

  Grabbing his heaviest, sharpest butcher knife out of the sheath of his leather apron, he moved around the table and ran his fingers down the nude body. He felt his cock stir and begin to rise beneath the le
ather apron that covered his waist. He couldn’t help that. Preparing them always turned him on.

  He was quick and methodical. His first cut was precise, slicing from below the breastbone and down toward the naval. He reached in to the abdominal cavity and grabbed a hold of the muscle and skin, peeling it back from both sides. A strong smell of bile wafted up, but he ignored it. It was a smell he was used to.

  He eviscerated the body, making sure to examine the liver. It was in good shape. Healthy. He put the liver in a special stainless-steel bowl. Everything else—stomach, gall bladder, spleen, intestines, he placed in a larger stainless-steel bucket. He frowned as the viscera plopped into the bucket amid great gouts of blood and tissue. Sometimes the intestines could be put to good use. He made a mental note to himself to inspect them more closely when he was finished.

  When the internal organs were out of the body, he reached for the rib sheers and cut through the ribs. There was an audible snap and crack as ribs separated from the breastbone. Grunting with the effort, he set the rib sheers down, then reached his hand inside the chest cavity and grabbed the heart. It felt good. Nice and strong. A few quick slices with a scalpel and the muscle was free. He examined it, noting that it was as healthy as its former owner’s exterior self had been. Nice.

  He placed the heart in the same bowl as the liver and continued.

  He set the scalpel down and reached for a second knife, this one sharper, with a heavier blade.

  The head came off at the second and third neck vertebra. The torso was bisected between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth lumbar vertebrae. He performed a thorough inspection of both halves, breathing heavy now and rubbing his engorged cock occasionally through the leather apron that concealed it. When he was finished here, he would play with himself, but not now. He had work to do.

  The limbs were separated at the shoulders, hips, elbow and knee joints, and the feet and hands were removed. He picked up the left thigh, inspecting it, his stomach fluttering with anticipation as he poked the nimble flesh. So nice! And supple!

  Then, humming a tune, and trying to keep his lust in check, he started to carve flesh from the leg.

  When he was finished with that leg, he started on the other one.

  CHAPTER 10

  Fifteen Months Ago

  “So what did you find out?” Joe Taylor asked. He was on the phone with Dean Campbell and had taken the call in his living room. He muted the sound on the television with the remote control and picked up a pad and pencil to take notes. Outside, spring was in full bloom. Down the street, he heard the neighborhood kids begin some kind of game in somebody’s backyard basketball court.

  “It’s official,” Dean said. “I traced her to Casper, Wyoming. She was very careful to not leave a paper trail. She didn’t use a credit card or a debit card, but she did open a bank account and she rented an apartment. The landlord says she moved out four months later, after she lost her job at Braun & Meyer’s.”

  Joe nodded. He’d asked Dean to make the investigation thorough and official. He was operating on the assumption Carla had moved to Casper, based on the conversations he’d had with her friend, Danielle. Those conversations had been backed up by Human Resources representatives at Braun & Meyer’s, who would only confirm Carla’s hiring date and the date she’d been terminated. Everything else was hearsay. Joe wanted concrete evidence. “I see,” he said. “Anything else?”

  “I talked to her supervisor at Braun & Meyer’s” Dean said. “A guy named Allen Davidson. He said he was very sorry to let her go, but he had no choice. He was directed by his superiors to cut staff, starting with those that had less seniority. He had ten staff members that fell under this category. Out of those ten, he told me he went to his director and appealed to him that he wanted to make an exception for Carla. Apparently, your daughter had become a very strong asset to Mr. Davidson’s team and he didn’t want to lose her.”

  Joe smiled at this, but hearing this bit of information didn’t make him feel better. “That’s my girl,” he said. That was just like Carla. When she wanted something, she put everything she had into it.

  “It sounds like she was very well-liked there,” Dean continued. “I talked to a couple of her co-workers. They all liked her. Despite that, she’d made few friends at the job. Everybody I talked to said she was extremely sociable and likeable, but she didn’t make a lot of strong friendships there save for a few. I’m going to talk to those people tomorrow.”

  Joe Taylor nodded. He jotted down a few notes. “Her boss, this Mr. Davidson...did he tell you what his director told him when he appealed Carla’s layoff to them?”

  “Just that he was denied the request,” Dean answered. “That they were very hard-lined about it. No exceptions.”

  Joe sighed. That was a very corporate thing. When it came time to cut staff, the trend was to cut the correct percentage regardless of how valuable those employees were to the organization. Decisions like that almost always wound up costing the organization more money in the long run than they would have saved, since the valuable employee was no longer an asset. When faced with similar decisions at the various companies he sat on the board for, Joe was always in the minority opinion—sometimes employee cuts were necessary, but Joe didn’t believe in such drastic cuts in staff without any regard to how such cuts would affect the company, much less the personal lives of those employees. “Did Mr. Davidson give Carla a recommendation for her next job?”

  “Absolutely,” Dean said. “He told me he talked to her perhaps four or five times in the months that followed. He was dismayed to hear she could not find a comparable position.”

  “And the few people she formed friendships with at Braun & Meyers,” Joe continued. “They still kept in touch?”

  “It sounds like it. I’ll learn more tomorrow.”

  “Good. Keep me posted. Give me a call after you talk to them.”

  “I will.”

  When the call was ended, Joe finished taking notes, then read them over. Whatever game had started down the street had been joined by even more kids. Their squeals of play were background noise, taking him back to his own childhood, to Carla’s childhood when he and Nina were married and struggling to raise a family and forge ahead in their careers. It brought him back to those days when he would come home from the office on a late Friday afternoon, completely exhausted from the week, and recline on the living room sofa, listening as Carla and her brother, Robert, played outside with the neighborhood kids, not even aware of what their father was going through to make their lives better. It had been important for him to shield them from all that. He’d wanted to give his kids the childhood he’d never had.

  Joe looked out the living room window.

  Nina wouldn’t talk to him. She’d been increasingly hostile and uncooperative since the divorce, but she was downright cold to him now that Carla was gone. They communicated through their attorneys. He was on good terms with Robert, but he had a feeling that his son was wary around him, as if he was being careful about what he said around his father. He also got the feeling that Robert was feeding information to Nina. Every time he saw Robert, Lester Connolly, Nina’s lawyer, would contact Dennis Lawson, his attorney, and ask for clarification on certain things pertaining to the terms of their divorce, which had been finalized three years ago. Nit-picking things; was the Henderson fund yielding proper returns and, if so, Nina required her portion since, as per the terms of their divorce, she was entitled to half of everything he earned for assets accumulated during the years of their marriage. Joe played the game, but lately he’d been too distracted to engage in it vigorously with her. His complete focus was on finding their daughter. On making amends. On setting things right.

  Joe set the note pad and pen down on the coffee table. It was comforting to know that Carla had started to make connections in her new life. That was important. He was hoping that Dean would elicit valuable information from her new friends. It was quite possible she had confided in them, that she’d sha
red things with them she would not share with Danielle. If this was the case, it was quite possible they would know where Carla had gone.

  The clock over the mantle on the hearth read four-fifteen. Joe stood up, and headed to the kitchen to prepare a light meal for this evening’s supper.

  CHAPTER 11

  It was two hours into dinner service, and Anna was at it in full force, taking orders, delivering entrees and appetizers, serving drinks. Service so far was going well. There appeared to be a festive mood in the air. It was the last night of the season; a quarter of the quests had checked out earlier in the day, but the vast majority of them would not leave until tomorrow. Unfortunately, Shane Daniels and his wife, Jackie, were not among those who had left. They were seated at her station and were not as annoying to her as they usually were. Instead, Shane appeared to leer at her in a subtle way, his eyes roaming over her in full view of Jackie, whose smile seemed to conceal a secret joke. Anna ignored it, realizing she probably should have talked to Rick about them, but she was on strained terms with Rick now, especially since she’d been avoiding him following the evening she’d spent in his suite five nights ago.

  Well, he did come on to me.

  Anna put in her latest orders at the pass and checked to see if anything had come up. Nothing so far. She surveyed her station, mind racing briefly on Rick and her feelings. She hadn’t meant to lead him on, had tried to be brutally up front with him during the heat of their passion, but he hadn’t taken the hint. Sure, he was subtle about it—he obviously knew every trick in the book about not coming across as a sexual harasser in the work-place. For her part, Anna simply wanted to keep her head down and get through the next few days. What they’d had five nights ago had been nice, and it had served her purpose, and that was the extent of her feelings toward it. To go to Rick about the Daniels couple really would be fruitless at this point.