Guilty by Association

by Brad Cooper

  Aliff’s eyes jumped open as he sat straight up in his chair. “You do? Just tell me what it is. It’s okay.” He held his breath and closed his eyes, waiting for her answer.

  “I have a video tape. It was really dark and I was pretty far away but I think it’s all on there. I know you guys can do some pretty amazing stuff with videos and all so maybe it’ll be okay.”

  “You’re telling me you have a videotape of the shooting? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “You didn’t really ask me!” she said. Her voice rose along with her anxiety. “I didn’t know if I should tell you that and I didn’t know who I could trust or anything and…”

  “It’s okay. What’s important is that you told me now.” He sighed and continued. “I need that tape, Lisa.” Ron was already making a mental note to call Darrell Sparks as soon as this phone call ended. At long last, the break that they desperately needed had arrived. “Do you think you can bring it to me somehow or…?”

  “Could you come and pick it up? I really don’t want to go out a lot right now. I’m just still a little uncomfortable going anywhere.”

  “Sure, I can do that. Don’t worry about a thing. Now what’s your last name, Lisa? We never got around to that.”

  “Taylor. Lisa Taylor,” she replied.

  “Alright. How old are you? You sound like a young girl.”

  “I just turned twenty-one a couple of weeks ago,” she said.

  “Good, good. Well, what’s your address? I’ll be down there tonight to pick that tape up. Maybe this afternoon if I can get there. I’ll be in my cruiser. We need to make sure what you have is in the right hands.”

  “Okay, sir, I’ll be watching for you.” Lisa read off her address followed by more detailed directions and said, “Thank you so much Mr. Aliff. I just hope all this gets taken care of. Am I going to have to testify or anything?”

  “Well, I don’t know about all that just yet. This is still all pretty new, you know. We need to see what’s on that video and everything and we’ll take it from there. If everything goes well, then, yes, you may have to but we’ll just wait and see. Don’t you worry about a thing. That’s why I’m here. I’ll be down there sometime this afternoon or tonight. I’ll see you then, Lisa.”

  A hesitation, then she said, “Oh, there’s one more thing, sir. I don’t have the tape.”

  Aliff was speechless. How could she not have the tape?

  He closed his eyes and said, “You don’t have it? Where is it? Is it somewhere that you have access to it or…”

  “No, it’s just over at my boyfriend’s house. I, uh, fell and broke my camera and thought maybe his friend could fix it or something.”

  “Do you think they would have watched the tape or anything? We’ve discussed the possibility of others knowing about this, Lisa,” he said with faux concern for her and real concern for himself.

  “No, they didn’t. They would have said something to me about it if they did. It’s not a problem. I’m sure of it.”

  Lisa ended the call and Aliff was finally able to relax for a moment. Everything was back under control. She had seen what happened but now they knew what she knew in every detail. The next step was to completely identify the threat and neutralize it, whatever that entailed. The most encouraging thing was that time was now on their side. The wildcard was now under control and Chief Sparks could be notified.

  The limited space behind the desk was filled with an interconnected mass of wires, a virtual fire-hazard’s worth of cords tangled with one another, void of any organization whatsoever. It was one of Ryan Clark’s pet peeves but not one so as serious as to motivate him to actually sort through them and rearrange them. One connector was pulled from its place and three others came free. Ryan frowned and stared at the mess in complete frustration.

  “This better be worth it,” he whispered to himself before continuing to disconnect the rest of the wires from the back of his computer tower.

  Ryan heard the front door open and quickly close followed by the jingle of keys landing on a table. Adam entered the room holding a bag overflowing with food from his favorite fast food joint and the cardboard box on the desk caught his eye.

  His mouth full from an early start on the fries, Adam asked, “What is all this stuff? Are you ordering more crap you don’t need, Ryan?”

  “DVD burner,” Clark replied. “They’re finally dirt cheap enough for me to afford one.”

  “Okay, but why do you need it? To backup all your porn?” Adam said with a smile.

  Clark glared at him silently then said, “No, genius, you know what it’s for. I’ve got tons of those old football games and movies and TV shows on tape and now I can just convert them to DVD and toss the tapes. They’ll last longer anyway. I might do some home movies for my dad or something, too.” He turned and continued working on the tower, removing every unnecessary piece before installing his new toy.

  “Right. Wait, how do you get the video from the tape into the computer?” Adam asked as he sat down and started unwrapping his lunch.

  “Got it covered. USB DV input. Hook it up to the VCR and record it onto the hard drive, edit it, and burn it to DVD. Simple.”

  “Wait, wait…” Adam mumbled before swallowing a mouthful. “DV?”

  “Digital video. Come on, Adam, you’re not that dense. You did grow up with technology just like I did.” Clark pointed at a wide, shallow box sitting on the floor beside Adam and said, “Hey, slide that over here for me.”

  Adam pushed the box across the carpet right to Ryan’s foot. “What’s that?”

  “VCR. No sense in unhooking the main one. Just got a new one. El cheapo. Like twenty-nine bucks and it doesn’t even record. It’s just a player. In a few years, the whole technology will be dead so I better do it all now.”

  “Hmm,” Adam said, nodding. His attention was turned more toward his double bacon cheeseburger than anything else at the moment.

  Ryan now had the side door off of the tower and was sliding the DVD drive into place, securing it with the screws, and attaching the appropriate cables. As he worked he asked, “You went over to Lisa’s, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Adam replied with his mouth still full.

  Clark’s head was almost inside the metal case. “How’s she holding up? Did she call while you were there?”

  Adam washed the last bite down with a drink of cola and said, “Yeah, she called the state police. Whoever it was that she talked to seemed pretty helpful. He said he’d get back to her later. Hopefully this’ll all be taken care of soon. I don’t watch soap operas and I don’t feel like living in one either.”

  Clark replaced the door on the tower and started reconnecting the cables. “I hear that.” With the computer back in place and operable again, Clark began setting up the digital video input device and the new VCR. It only required three more cables, power included, which came as a relief. “Hey, go get me a tape,” Clark said.

  “What kind of tape?”

  “Duct tape. What kind do you think?”

  After a few steps Adam turned and asked, “Which one do you want?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just grab one. I’m only testing it to make sure it works.” With Adam in another room, Clark raised his voice and asked, “Did the cop say anything else?”

  In the living room, Adam grabbed a cassette without looking and said, “No, not really. He just told her not to talk to anyone about what she saw and she agreed. She didn’t tell him that we knew or anything, which is probably a good thing.” Adam walked back into the room and handed the tape to Ryan who, without looking, pushed it into the VCR.

  As long as this all gets taken care of soon, I’m happy. Of all people to see what went on, it’d have to be your girlfriend.” Clark turned back toward the now fully setup multimedia device and said, “Time to pray that this works, huh?”

  He double-clicked the appropriate icon to open the video capturing program on the computer, pressed play on the VCR, and clicked the but
ton to start the encoding process. Inside the video window, the picture flickered and the image of Ryan and Adam playing chess appeared. Clark moved his bishop, placing Adam’s king in check, before the camera moved over to show Kara. The scene was Clark’s backyard. The tape was a familiar one.

  “Adam, which tape is this?”

  Adam walked over to the desk and said, “I don’t know. I just grabbed one on top of the pile. Why?”

  “I think this is the tape. The shooting. Isn’t this the stuff Lisa shot before she left?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Hold on, I’ll go get another one.”

  Clark stopped him and said, “No, never mind. I’m just testing this thing anyway. This one is fine.”

  After several minutes of the footage from around the fire, the picture went snowy. It remained that way for seven seconds, according to the counter, until the picture flickered back to life. The screen was dark until it focused on several men at quite a considerable distance, the area lit by a floodlight on the side of a neighboring building.

  “Let it play,” Clark said. “If nothing else we’ll see how good the quality is on the converted copy.”

  The video ended after an hour of encoding. Repeated viewings of the violent scenes had not desensitized the two viewers. Both men still cringed when the gunshot ran out. Both of their hearts started beating faster when the camera began to shake when Lisa fled before the crash that shut the camera off and ended the tape.

  They looked at each other, disgusted at what they had just seen yet again. Neither felt like speaking. The phone rang and broke the silence. Adam answered the phone and heard Lisa’s voice on the other end.

  “Everything okay, sweetie?” he asked.

  Clark smirked and rolled his eyes at his friend’s sudden usage of such talk. He looked at Adam and silently mouthed, “Sweetie?” to which Adam replied with an extended middle finger and a smirk.

  “Yeah, I’m okay,” Lisa said on the other end of the call. “That state trooper, Aliff, just called me again.”

  “What’d he want?” Adam asked, walking downstairs for the purpose of privacy.

  “He just wanted to ask me a few more things. I told him about the tape, too, and he wants it so they can go after those guys, I guess. He said he’s coming by sometime tonight to get it so I need it. Can I just run over there and get it real quick?”

  “Sure, come on over. Sounds like this Aliff guy is pretty easy to work with.”

  “Seems that way. I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  The call ended and Adam walked back up the stairs. Ryan was standing over the keyboard, staring at the screen, clicking indiscriminately on random buttons searching for the one that would produce the desired result. Adam walked up behind him and said, “What you are screwing with now?”

  “I know I didn’t encode that for nothing. I can’t find where the file went.” Finally, the directory appeared on the screen and Ryan double-clicked the video file. The system’s media player opened and the video appeared on the screen, the quality as clear as the original tape. “Perfect!” Clark said with a smile. “The file is huge but it looks great.” He picked up the tape and made his way back into the living room.

  “Well, it’s mid-afternoon and I’m out of things to do. Want to head out? Hit the arcade or rent a movie or something? I’m bored to death.”

  “Can’t. Lisa’s headed over for a minute. She needs to come get something.”

  “Oh, I bet she does.”

  Adam knew. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

  “This sucks,” Ryan said, “I should be enjoying the break and instead I’m stuck here with nothing to do but flip around daytime TV.” He fell onto the couch and tossed the cassette tape he was holding onto the pile of other tapes sitting in a basket beside the television.

  Lisa walked through the front door ten minutes later. She had changed clothes since Adam had seen her last. Wearing a jean skirt that barely extended halfway down her thigh and a small red t-shirt that clung tightly to her slender figure, she immediately caught his attention when she entered the room, just as she always did. Her shoulder length blonde hair retained its natural curl, as it always did if she did not straighten it after getting out of the shower and the auburn roots accented her natural color to perfection.

  Adam’s mother often told him in his younger years that staring was not polite but in Lisa’s case he couldn’t help himself.

  CHAPTER

  16

  “Hi, guys,” Lisa said as she walked through the door.

  Adam walked to her and had his arms around her before she had the chance to kick off her sandals. He offered a quick kiss hello and said, “Hey, baby. Everything okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said and she walked to the recliner in the corner of the room. “I’m just a little on edge right now. I think I’m just being paranoid.”

  “Something had to bring it on though,” Ryan said entering the room, carrying a glass of water. Instead of sitting, he leaned against the wall and sipped from the glass.

  “Not really. I’m just always looking behind me, you know? There was one thing though.”

  “What?” Adam asked quickly.

  “A police cruiser followed me here. I mean, he kept going after I turned off but he was behind me the whole way. He pulled out behind me as soon as I got on Main Street. I wasn’t speeding or anything. It’s probably nothing,” Lisa said, quickly blowing it off.

  Adam and Ryan looked at each other with concern before Adam said, “Probably, but I don’t like it. Was it one of the guys you saw the other night?”

  “I couldn’t tell. I just wanted to get here first. It was a black cruiser though. Look, guys, I can’t stay. I need to get back. Lieutenant Aliff said he might be by this afternoon to get the tape.”

  “The tape? When did you tell him about that? You didn’t mention it when you talked to him earlier,” said Adam.

  “He called back after you left and asked me a few more things. It came up so I told him. Look, it will really help and those guys need to get caught for this so I’m giving it to him. Where’d you put it?”

  “Ryan had it a minute ago.” Then to Ryan: “Where’d you put it?”

  “I tossed it over beside the TV I think. It should be right on top,” he said. Clark walked over to the basket beside the TV and started to reach for the tape on top of the pile but stopped himself. Then he reached down to the second side of the dual-deck VCR and ejected the cassette. After sliding it into an empty case he handed it to Lisa and aid, “There you go.”

  Lisa took the cassette from his hand, then removed the tape from the case and said, “This isn’t it. Mine was the small tape inside the VHS adapter.”

  Ryan looked at the tape in her hand and said, “That’s the copy we made.”

  “I didn’t know you made a copy,” Lisa said skeptically.

  “We ran one that night right after you got here. Adam took you downstairs and when I called him back up, that’s why. I showed him the tape and copied it. Just seemed like a good idea at the time so that’s what we did.”

  “They’ll want the real one though, won’t they?”

  “What’s the difference?” Adam said. “It’s just a copy of the original. Everything is on there and that’s all that matters. It’s not a problem. They don’t even know that you’re not giving them the original.”

  “Plus you want to keep the original copy, don’t you? I know you taped some stuff from that night on the front of the tape. I figured you’d want to keep that and just tape over the rest sometime,” Ryan added.

  “Yeah, I reckon,” Lisa said. Her slight Southern accent blended perfectly with her Southern dialect.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just give it to him and the sooner the better,” Adam said.

  “Okay, I’m leaving. Adam, I’ll call you tonight,” Lisa said before offering a quick kiss goodbye. Then a quick wave and, “I’ll see you later, Ryan. Tell Kara I said hello,” before walking out the door.

/>   Standing by the window, Adam watched her walk to her car and drive away.

  “You can stop staring now, Loverboy,” Ryan said, smiling behind Adam’s back.

  Adam replied, “Oh, shut up. You have no room to talk. You do the same thing when Kara’s here so you don’t have much room to talk, pal.”

  “Touchè,” Ryan said. “I don’t think going back and forth on this is necessary.” He started to leave the room but turned around and said, “Hey, don’t wait on her to call you tonight, alright?”

  “What do you mean?” Adam asked.

  “Call her before she calls you. I know that trooper is coming over to get the tape and all but I think we all need to be really careful right now. We don’t really know what all that guy knows, or what the local guys know for that matter. Just keep checking on her, okay?”

  “Will do,” Adam said. “That’s what I planned on anyway.”

  Ryan left the living room and headed back to the computer desk to play with his newest gadget. Before starting up the program, he clicked the icon to connect to the Internet. Spring Creek did not yet have broadband internet access, at least not at a reasonable price, so a dialup account on a regular phone line was still the only option for the fiscally challenged. It was frustrating for those computer users who loved to download music files or programs or videos, legal or illegal as they may be. It moved at a snail’s pace.

  Once the computer was connected to the internet provider, his instant messaging program automatically activated. As his contact list appeared, sorted by what users were online and those who were not, an instant message popped up.

  JPark407: hey babe

  Clark always took time to talk to Julie. He could spare a few minutes. His new gadget could wait.

  In the living room Adam slouched on the couch, remote control in hand. He flipped aimlessly from channel to channel in search of entertainment of any kind. Even Cartoon Network was useless for him at that point of the afternoon. “Ryan was right,” he grunted. “There’s not a thing on.” Boredom is one of life’s most wearisome emotions.