by D R Sanford
His future was no farther away than the next distraction that crossed his mind. The household chores, meeting with those left who loved him, or a greasy burger down at the local charbroil diner. Nothing ambitious.
By the time August came around, his mother encouraged him to prepare for the upcoming semester of classes. Knowing he would have to return to work soon or go hungry, Cullen submitted to a psychiatric examination that confirmed he was within normal damage tolerances and fit to resume his professorial duties.
It was actually a relief to enter the third floor Anthropology department again. His mother must have prepped the staff well. They greeted him with smiles, handshakes, and claps on the shoulder. Only a few allowed pity to cross their faces before replacing it with a wave or grin.
Cullen settled into his familiar chair and took in the comfortable surroundings. Arlene, the office administrative assistant, must have corralled the mountains of mail and paperwork elsewhere. He turned on the computer and lost himself in the desktop photo of Nora blowing a noisemaker and wearing a paper tiara while celebrating the previous New Year’s Eve.
The ring of Cullen’s desk phone startled him. It was probably someone down the hall calling to welcome him back or let him know fresh coffee and donuts were in the break room.
“Good Morning.”
“Cullen Houltersund?” Cullen glanced at the phone display and saw he had answered a call from an outside line, unusual at this time of the year.
“This is. Whom may I ask is speaking.” The last thing he needed today was an unexpected call from the media he had successfully dodged for half a year.
“Uh, you can call me George.” The voice was hesitant, an adult male, but cracking like a teen’s. “I have information about your wife.”
Cullen’s heart clenched in his chest and sealed his lips for a moment.
“Mr. Houltersund?”
“Why are you calling me now? What do you know?”
“I uh, I know a lot, but we have to come to an agreement first. You did receive money from life insurance, didn’t you?”
“Say what? I don’t understand where you’re coming from. I posted a ten thousand dollar reward through the police department for any information leading to an arrest in my wife’s murder. You should be calling them.”
“No way, man. I can’t go to the police, and this is worth way more than ten thousand.”
“Are you blackmailing me?”
“Trust me. You want to know this.”
“What could you possibly know that months of investigation haven’t brought to light?”
“Okay, just a taste. You ready? Your wife, Nora Houltersund, is alive and eight months pregnant.”
Cullen’s vision blurred, somewhere on the spines of books shelved across the office. This was the reason he canceled phone service at home. After Nora’s funeral, crackpots were calling night and day to expound on their conspiracy theories. Not wanting to be rude and hoping for any clue possible, he’d listened to everything from sex slavery to alien abduction stories. Now they reached him on the first day back at work, the day he’d sworn to begin moving on.
“Hey, Dr. Houltersund, paging Dr. Houltersund, are you there?”
Cullen reined in a flash of anger and sighed into the phone. “Yes, I’m here. Listen to me. Nora is dead and buried. I saw her body, and there is nothing that can bring her back. So, why are you doing this to me?”
“Look, I'm not some nut job building a manifesto on government watchdogs and secret medical programs, though I think I probably could.” There was silence for a moment as the caller seemed to consider the idea. “Anyway, the fact is, I kind of got myself into a situation with this information and need to bail out, pronto. Are you in, or are you out?”
Fighting the urge to hang up, Cullen mulled over the possibilities that George spoke the truth.
Cons: He personally saw Nora’s charred body. The tip of her left ring finger identified her through prints and DNA testing. Analysis of the skeletal remains confirmed the body was female between the ages of thirty and forty.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“I’m thinking. Hold on a second, okay?”
“What’s there to think about?” the voice cracked. He continued in a conspiratorial whisper, “I’m telling you Nora Houltersund is alive.”
“I heard you, but I don’t have a good reason to believe you yet.”
Pros: He would do anything to have Nora back. But that was exactly what this shyster was counting on, and once Cullen paid up there would be no information and no way for him to recover his savings.
Before George could cut in again, a woman’s stern voice from the background interrupted, “George, it’s the beginning of the month. Do you have Dr. Patel’s July reports ready? I need them by noon.”
Cullen never heard the reply. The phone receiver dangled from his desk top and papers drifted to the floor as he ran out the door and dodged a mail cart in the hallway.
***
Cullen shot down three flights of steps, taking a few stairs at a time while reminding himself not to fall and break his neck. He burst out the western door of Dixon Hall and squinted in the morning sunshine, reorienting himself to the campus. The Bennett Hall of Medical Studies lay to the north and west.
Flashes of the last two years whirled in Cullen’s mind as he sprinted through pedestrians and skirted a parking lot.
He and Nora had hoped to start a family shortly after he became an associate professor and established some financial security. What they weren’t prepared for was the inability to conceive on their own, so they resorted to consulting the infertility clinic on campus. As an office of the medical college, it promised much lower costs and success rates that competed with private clinics. Dr. Sadish (Sonny) Patel was their good natured coach, cheerleader, and director of the clinic.
Cullen drove headlong down the slope of a gully and stumbled when he tried to clear a dry creek bed. His lungs burned. Tight hamstrings reminded him that he was far removed from the days he’d run sprints on his high school track team.
Clawing his way to the top of the rise, Cullen bent over gasping for air and identified, through a copse of cedars, the clinic’s brick exterior.
He sped over the blacktop of a rear parking lot, narrowly avoiding a collision with a hatchback pulling out of its spot. Inelegantly dancing around the car and waving apologies to the driver, Cullen bounded up the steps to the clinic’s service entrance. He waved his security badge once, twice, three times. Kicked the door, but it remained locked.
One jump led him back down the steps and on his way around the southeast corner of the building. Searing breaths tortured him. Lactate production in his cramping muscles signaled the need to slow down, but after seven months of dead ends he was ready to go the distance.
Light foot traffic stepped aside for Cullen as he barreled along the sidewalk, turned west, and made for the main entrance. Once inside, Cullen veered to the right. He arrived at Dr. Patel's treatment center and leaned on the door for support while sucking in deep breaths of air.
Definitely out of shape. He'd have to do something about that someday. What was he going to do after barging into Dr. Patel's office, anyhow? Without some excuse to be there, he couldn’t expect any cooperation.
The entryway was the same as he remembered it. Straight backed, barely padded chairs lined the walls. Old magazines littered the tops of a few end tables. The options were few. Cullen felt as though he ran on instinct in those surreal moments, stuck in fight or flight mode. With every step, his knees grew steadier, propelling him toward uncertainty. Cullen must have looked like a madman, scrutinizing patients and the personnel until the calm welcome of the medical assistant behind the counter drew him back to reality.
“Dr. Houltersund? That is you, isn’t it?” He glanced back to her, standing and leaning toward him against the desk. “What brings you back here?”
He focused on her and tried to get back to reality. She cocked her
head to one side, looking at Cullen quizzically. If he stood there dumbfounded any longer she’d start to get suspicious.
A smile twitched across his lips just before his eyes darted for her name tag.
“Hi, Nancy. How in the world did you recognize me?”
Her features relaxed, and a blush flooded her face.
“Dr. Houltersund, you came here every time for your wife’s appointments. I remember her saying that you’d take off time from work in the mornings just to hold her hand through the procedures.” Her eyes fell to the desktop and her voice dropped to a murmur. “That would have been enough to remember you, but all the TV coverage back in January makes you kind of hard to forget around here.”
“I’m a regular celebrity aren’t I?” he said, a cold breeze leveling out his voice. She must have caught it, because her head snapped up and shock showed in the wide oval of her mouth.
“I’m so sorry. No, that’s not what I meant.” The words tumbled from her, racing to pass one another. “What I mean is, we watched everything on TV for days or listened to the local radio. We prayed and prayed, not just here but in Church groups too.
She dropped back into her chair and seemed to be examining her shoelaces. “We always believed they’d find Nora and bring her back to you.” Her voice was a whisper, a child apologizing over a broken glass. Raising her head she looked at Cullen as though begging his forgiveness. Tears smudged her eyeliner as she spoke, “When they did find her we started praying for you, and nobody here believed that you had anything to do with it. That's God's honest truth.”
That was it. A dam inside Cullen broke. He used to cry when watching movies—not big waterworks soaking up tissues—but decent vision-blurring drops. When the underdog climbed his metaphorical mountain, or the bloody hero landed a final blow that sent his nemesis flailing off a rooftop into a miraculous special effects explosion. He was pretty easy to reach back then but not so much lately.
Cullen felt a spring leak in his right eye as he approached the counter and held up his hands to her.
“It’s okay, Nancy, please don’t cry. That’s really sweet of you to care, but don’t worry about me. I’m working through it.”
A lie perhaps, though a well disguised one. He leaned across the counter to grab a tissue from a box.
“Here, dry your eyes and let’s see if you can help me out today, alright?”
She dabbed the tissue at the corners of her eyes and adopted a quizzical expression again, her brows knotting together.
“I hope I can help, but what could it be?” she asked.
“I need new information to spur on the investigation for Nora’s abductors.” Nancy started mouthing the word abductor as though it didn’t fit in the sentence.
“Her murderers,” he corrected.
The word spilled out as though it were a confession, something he dared not believe in months ago. It was time to get to the point and see if he had it in him to lie to her face.
“George called this morning with information from Nora's last visit here, saying there was something I didn’t know about.”
Nancy blinked, processing the request and the repercussions of sharing his wife’s medical information.
“I’m not sure I can do that, Mr. Houltersund. What with HIPAA regulations and all we can’t share much of anything anymore. Jorge is actually with Dr. Patel at the moment—“
“Jorge?”
“Yes, Jorge is our systems administrator. He manages our records, reporting, even the server thingies in the back room. We all call him George,” she whispered. “Did he really tell you that was his name? I thought he hated it.”
“I'm sorry, Nancy. I guess we're getting off topic.” An urge to get on with it was creeping forward as he avoided her question and where it might lead. “I have court documents with me that I’ve provided countless times while putting her affairs in order.”
He reached into his sport coat and pulled out a tattered envelope. Three official documents unfolded before her that detailed his status as Nora’s legally designated power of attorney, sole beneficiary, and more. She gave it a cursory glance as he pointed at key sections and checked over her shoulder for Dr. Patel or George/Jorge.
Nancy must have been thinking Cullen came prepared, though he pondered the fact that he carried those documents far too often. At first they were used to release her body for final preparations and then, among other tasks, while battling the insurance companies for death benefits. Once, he realized he'd picked it up from the computer desk at home just to go for a walk.
Maybe carrying their marriage certificate would have been a bit less morbid, but those three pages seemed to confirm her love and faith in him. They were just paper, yet something that society had come to recognize as an affirmation of commitment.
She looked up from the documents still unconvinced, saying, “They're busy working on some month-end reporting right now, Dr. Houltersund, but I suppose I could call to see if it’s alright.”
Nancy was trying to defer judgment to someone else on this. The little hairs on the back of Cullen's neck started tingling. If Jorge was tipped off that Cullen was in the office, he might bolt and disappear with whatever information he was sitting on. He was still trying to grasp the possibility that Nora was alive somewhere and about to give birth to their child.
Clasping Nancy’s hand as it reached for the telephone receiver, he forced her to make eye contact. “First of all, Nancy, please call me Cullen. I think you’ve earned it for all your tears and prayers. Second of all, I can see that you're busy this morning.” She looked around him at the two women patiently waiting for their appointments. “If you could just direct me to Jorge's office, I'll go wait for him. There's no need to disturb a meeting in progress.”
Nancy leaned back and suppressed a chuckle with a hand over her lips. “Sorry, it's just that I wouldn't call Jorge's room an office. It's more like a closet filled with computers.” She rose and stepped around the counter, motioning for him to follow. “I'll walk you down there, just promise not to touch anything. George goes ballistic if someone messes with his office.”
Trying to keep the mood light and suspicion low, he replied, “And I bet that's precisely why someone would mess with his office?”
She responded with a devilish grin and a slow shake of her head.
—Chapter 7—
THE DISCOVERY
Nancy left him alone in Jorge's base of operations and walked back to the front desk. She was right by saying it wasn't much of an office. A tower of networked servers hummed quietly in the back right corner. The remaining space was a large horseshoe shaped desk that ran along the back and left wall, then jutted out toward the doorway. Four monitors met in the corner of his desktop, and cans of energy drink served as bookends.
There wasn't much space for visitors on the outside of the desk, and Cullen suspected that Jorge liked it that way. He quietly closed the door and made space by nudging a chair into the near corner so he could stand close to the entry. The last thing Cullen wanted was for Jorge to spot him sitting in a chair and take off running.
Leaning his shoulders and head against the wall, Cullen briefly closed his eyes to ponder the statement that plunged him into this risky confrontation. How could Nora possibly be alive? The police tested the remains, but now that he contemplated it, Cullen did not recall any analysis of the burned corpse, only the fingertip taken for evidence.
Why in the world would someone break into their home, take Nora, and then stage her death? Notions of infidelity sprung forth. Maybe she did have an affair and became pregnant with another man. Would it be easier to die and move on than suffer through a divorce? No, not Nora. That just didn't make sense.
A voice in the hallway alerted Cullen before he heard a jiggle of the door handle. He recognized the voice as Jorge's. Cullen’s nerves jangled and muscles tensed.
Jorge walked into the room with a cell phone against his left ear, swung the door closed behind him, and walked directly
to the server tower.
“No, I'm not going to tell you what's going on, babe. You have to trust me. Pack the biggest piece of luggage you have and get ready to do some island hopping.” He paused to listen. “I don't know exactly when... Yes, last minute flights are expensive, but that won't matter... Do you want to spend a year in paradise or not?... That's what I thought... Love me?... Love you, bye.”
Jorge ended the call and slipped his phone in a pants pocket. Stepping to his chair, he caught a glimpse of Cullen standing with his back to the door, hands clenched into fists at his sides.
“Hi, George.”
Jorge slipped off the front edge of his chair and practically bounced on the floor. Cullen's blackmailer was young, probably in his early twenties. He swept shaggy brown hair from his brows and stared upward in alarm.
“Judging by that call with your sweetheart, I bet you weren't expecting a visit from me, were you?” Cullen snapped his fingers in the air between them. “Close your mouth, George, you're catching flies.”
Jorge returned to his senses and started clawing for the phone in his pocket. Cullen's feet moved of their own accord as he stepped into the horseshoe and pressed the sole of his shoe on the pocket, securing the phone and the hand at the same time.
“Relax, George, I'm not here to hurt you, but I am awfully curious about the claims you made on the phone. Besides, if you're calling the police, we would have to get to the point where you were blackmailing me.”
Jorge's eyes darted toward the desk phone just out of reach from the floor. Cullen felt his patience reach an end. He quickly knelt down, applying more pressure to the trapped fingers, and closed his grip on Jorge's right ear. He yanked forcefully on the ear and earned the young man's attention.
“Talk to me, George. This is getting to be a painfully one sided conversation, don't you think?” Jorge rewarded him with a nod and whimper. “Now, how about you stand up and hand me your cell phone? I'll let go of your ear, and we can have a nice, calm talk.”