Karen hadn't said a word to him this morning as he went about getting he and Billy ready for their morning routine. They'd left the house without saying goodbye. Billy had asked him if he was okay and Nick had lied and told him everything was fine.
Nick reached for the phone on his desk. He flipped through his day timer, located the phone number for his doctor's office and was about to dial when Mark entered their work area. "Ken's not coming in," he said. "He's been arrested."
"What?" Jay exclaimed.
All eyes turned to Mark, who looked pale from the sudden news. "I just got off the phone with his wife. He's been arrested for a double homicide in Arizona."
"That's crazy!" Jay said, glancing at Nick. "Ken wouldn't do that! What the hell is going on?"
"I don't know," Mark answered. "But a pair of detectives are coming here today to talk to us at ten."
What little they found out came secondhand from Mark, who learned it from Ken's wife. Ken was arrested for the murders of a woman named Rebecca Armstrong and her five-year old daughter, Jennifer. "When did this happen?" Nick asked Mark.
"Six months ago," Mark said, naming the date in question. Nick mentally rewound back to that time period. It corresponded with their time working with Stoner Bunting on a huge digital ad campaign for a major department store chain. The entire creative team had been pulling in ten and twelve hour work days, Ken included.
"That's impossible!" Jay said. "Ken was here!"
"I know," Mark said. He regarded each of them with a haunted expression. "And we are going to be truthful and allow the police access to every and any file they ask for so we can exonerate him. Ken did not commit this crime. It is physically impossible for him to have done it."
When the detectives arrived they interviewed each of them in the large conference room on the other side of the building. Nick didn't remember their names—he was too scatterbrained with shock—but he paid close attention to what they told him. Despite not giving out much in the way of details, they were very interested in hearing from Nick if Ken had told him anything about Rebecca. Nick shook his head. "No. He's never mentioned her to me before."
"Not even in passing?" The lead detective flipped through his notes. "His wife says he talked to you guys at work about her. About her paternity lawsuit against him."
"Oh, that," Nick said. "Well, yeah, he did talk about her. Not much, though."
"Tell us what he told you."
Hesitant, Nick told them the basics; how Rebecca had sued him for child support and claimed her daughter was fathered by him; how Ken's paternity test had proven he wasn't the father; how the state of Arizona considered him the father anyway due to his name being on the birth certificate and Ken's subsequent financial downslide of having to pay back child support while still keeping up with his current financial obligations. "He's been working himself ragged to pay for all this so he won't go to jail," Nick said. "There's no way he could have been in Arizona to do this."
"Are you sure there's nothing else Ken told you?" The lead detective asked pointedly.
"No."
He was in the conference room with them for thirty minutes. When they let him walk back to his work area, Mark had a talk with them. Later, that afternoon, the four of them had an informal meeting about it. "I gave them time sheet records that show Ken was here when the murders took place," Mark said. "They indicate they are going to issue a subpoena for Ken's computer records. We'll fight that on general principle."
"Can they really do this?" Jay asked. He was leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, nervously tapping his foot. "What kind of evidence do they have?"
Mark sighed. "They wouldn't tell me everything. They did indicate the crime scene evidence shows Ken was physically at the scene."
"What kind of physical evidence?" Nick asked. "Fingerprints? DNA?"
"Both."
Bob, Jay, and Nick looked at each other, stunned. Bob shook his head. "He was here. How can he be here and almost all the way across the country on the same day?"
"I don't know," Mark said.
NICK DID THE searches on youranswers.com later that night, after Karen and Billy had gone to bed.
When he slipped out of bed at two-thirty a.m., Karen was a vague lump beneath the covers, snoring loudly. Nick snuck out of the bedroom and headed downstairs, being careful not to make any noise. Once in the living room, he took his laptop out of its space beneath the end table by his chair and fired it up.
When the search engine was up he got right down to business. He typed, "Did Ken Atkins kill Rebecca Armstrong and her daughter Jennifer?" He hit the Enter key.
The search engine returned one link with lightning speed.
Nick looked at the screen, his heart beating wildly in his chest. That one link, denoted by a single underline that changed from blue to red when he placed his cursor over it, was ominous. There was no identifying text to accompany the link. Just that single line, beckoning him to click it.
Nick clicked the hyperlink.
The link took him to a website with an embedded Flash movie clip. There was no text anywhere else on the page. A moment later, the movie clip started.
The clip was in gritty black and white. The angle suggested a security camera mounted in the high corner of a suburban living room. A reasonably attractive woman in her early thirties dressed in baggy shorts and a tee shirt was seated on the sofa, watching TV. Nick watched, not breathing, and gasped as something in the shadows detached from the darkness behind her and entered the frame.
"Oh God," Nick said. He clamped his hand over his mouth. His eyes were wide, riveted to the clip.
There was no mistaking it. The figure that had come out of the darkness to stand behind the woman, who was clearly oblivious to the intruder in her home, was Ken Atkins.
Ken Atkins raised his right hand, clutching a large butcher knife.
The knife came down.
Nick fumbled for the cursor on the track pad as Ken began stabbing the woman. He clicked the stop button on the video clip. The frame froze mid-stab. Nick couldn't tear his eyes off the image.
"This is insane," he whispered. He felt his pulse race as he noticed the time stamp in the lower right hand corner of the clip. July 15, 2011, 10:35 PM. That was a Thursday. Nick remembered that day clearly. He and Ken had spent the afternoon working on a department store chain’s new web site redesign. The following day, after making significant progress, they’d gone out for Chinese food for lunch.
There was no way Ken could have done this!
Nick exited the browser, cleared the cache and Internet cookies, and then shut down his laptop. He stowed it away, then sat back on the leather sofa and tried to think things through.
The last time Ken had talked about his problems with Rebecca was close to a year ago. As far as Nick knew, Ken was still working his second job
As the months passed, he'd seemed happier. More relaxed.
Did Ken use youranswers.com to find a solution to his problem with Rebecca? And if he did, what search term did Ken use? Was that why he hadn't brought her up in conversation in almost a year? Did that explain his recent demeanor?
Nick realized he had to do something. He wasn't planning on killing Karen. He just wanted to leave as quietly and as painlessly as possible. Did Ken try to find a solution for his problem through the search engine using similar parameters and the result was the most convenient of solutions? For to eliminate the woman who'd brought on the lawsuit, as well as the child, all financial obligations would end for Ken.
Did Ken type in the term "How do I get rid of Rebecca Armstrong and Jennifer so I won't have to pay child support"?
Nick thought perhaps Ken had. And the results the search engine spit back had contained just the right solution, which Ken had somehow followed through on.
Nick sat in the darkened living room pondering this, his mind racing. He couldn't back out of his plans now, not while everything was already set in motion. He was just getting out of dodge. He wasn't
going to take the kind of drastic measures Ken had. He didn't want to get rid of Karen. He didn't want her to come to harm, didn't want her dead. He just wanted out.
Everything was going to be fine.
Nick went upstairs and slid back into bed. Karen slept soundly. He tried to get back to sleep but he lay awake for a long time.
WITH ONE WEEKEND left for him to launch his plan, Nick felt he had to follow up on one important thing that had suddenly come up in the midst of the latest turmoil at work.
He was sitting in the visitor’s area at Lancaster County Prison, waiting for the guards to escort Ken over. Karen was out with her friends Debbie and Cathy, probably bitching and complaining to each other about their husbands. Nick had dropped Billy off with a friend on the way in to Lancaster. The visiting area was noisy, a bare white room with multiple chairs seated in front of privacy cubicles that looked out into another area where the prisoners came through. A glass wall with holes punched in the glass to allow for audible conversation separated the prisoners from their visitors.
A flash of movement caught Nick's attention and he sat forward. Ken was being escorted over by a guard, a younger man dressed in a black police uniform. Ken was wearing the standard orange prison jumpsuit. He had a week's worth of beard stubble on his face. As he sat down opposite Nick, he noticed how pale his friend and former co-worker looked. His eyes had a haunted appearance, as if they'd seen things they shouldn't have.
Ken nodded at him. "How you doing, Nick?"
"I should be asking you."
Ken shook his head. "What's it look like?"
"Have you been arraigned yet?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
"I plead innocent. I didn't do this. What else could I plead?"
"Did they set bail?"
"Yeah. We can't afford it. My parents...they're trying to raise it, but they're having a difficult time doing it."
"I bet." Nick shook his head, still trying to grasp how everything could have turned out the way it did.
"Listen, I have something I need to tell you," Ken said.
"Sure, what is it?"
"Don't do it."
Nick almost asked, don't do what? but then he got the subtle message. Ken was looking at him apprehensively. He knows I'm going to follow through with the plans I found on youranswers.com. He also knows I haven't told the detectives about it...that Ken used it to solve his own problem. Because if they'd found out, there's a good chance I'd be in deep shit with Karen.
"Don't worry," Nick said. "I don't plan to do what you're worried about. I'll be fine."
Ken said nothing for a moment. His dark eyes never left Nick. When he spoke, his tone was low. Flat. "I learned about it from a woman I used to work with. Back at my old job." Ken's prior job before coming to Logan Advertising was at an Arizona company called Discount Tire. "She was in debt up the ying yang. Anyway, long story short, she wanted to make a million bucks. Thought it would get her out of debt, put some in savings for her kids college fund, which she didn’t have, and have some for retirement. She did a search on this term. The site showed her how to steal the money quite easily from a hedge fund manager."
"A hedge fund manager?"
"Yeah." Ken chuckled slightly. "Guys that make that kind of money, a million bucks is pocket change to them. She figured the mark wouldn’t miss it. Anyway, she did it. She quit her job. Unlike a lot of people, she didn't live large. Didn't go out and buy fancy cars and houses and stuff. Just paid off her debt in full, put some in the bank, and quit her job, started her own business. Not too long after that, she told me about the site. Anyway, years later, I learned she was the target of a financial crime that put her in an even deeper hole. She got popped big time. It ruined her family. It got so bad for them, she checked out." Ken placed his middle and index finger against his temple and pulled a mock trigger. "She couldn't bear what she'd inadvertently done to her family. It never would've happened if she'd just stuck it out, tried to get out of debt the old fashioned way."
"Her situation was different," Nick said, seeing where this was leading. "I'm not doing anything wrong. I’m just leaving a bad situation."
"I know. But you're using the site. I’ve figured it out now. You use it and follow through, whatever it was you did comes back to you. My friend got hit financially. I got hit this way. If you leave—"
"I have to leave," Nick said, his voice low and gravelly. He shifted in his seat. The pain in his balls had diminished greatly in the past few days, but they were still tender. An ultrasound performed at his doctor's office revealed that his testicles weren't ruptured, but next time he might not be so lucky. "I don't think you understand the hell my son and I live under. The constant physical and psychological abuse. The negative influence...it's all having a profound affect on Billy. He's...he's different now." Thinking about Billy and how he was dealing with Karen almost made him tear up. "I have to do it."
Ken looked at him silently. He nodded. "I understand. But be careful, Nick."
"I will."
The guard approached Ken. Visiting time was over. Nick got to his feet. "I'll be in touch."
"I hope so," Ken said.
Nick watched the guard lead Ken back out of the visiting area, then he left to go home.
NICK FOLLOWED HIS plans carefully.
He resigned from his job that Monday and requested a cash-out of his remaining vacation days. During the day he left the house as normal, taking his tote bag that contained his notes and his laptop. He spent his days either at the Barnes and Noble coffee shop following up on plans or making necessary trips to the bank to take care of things.
Karen left the house Friday after work with her mother to New York. The moment they were gone, Ken drove his car to a vehicle shipping company, then took a cab to the U-Haul rental company where he picked out a small truck. He drove it back to the neighborhood, parked it around the corner in the event Karen came home unexpectedly, and then waited for Billy to be dropped off by a friend. He told Billy that evening over take-out pizza what was going to happen.
"You mean we're leaving?" Billy looked at him with wide-eyed excitement.
"Yes. Tomorrow morning. You and me."
"And we're not telling Mom where we're going?"
"No."
"Yes!" Billy pumped his right fist in the air, then darted over to Nick and gave him a hug. The energy he felt coming from his son, the love, was overwhelming. It said, thank you Dad! Thank you for getting us out of this hell.
The next morning Nick followed the outline he'd plotted out thanks to the website he'd gotten from his search at youranswers.com. They packed two weeks of clothing, personal items that were near and dear to them, one of the televisions and VCRs, Nick's laptop, Billy's Game Boy console and the Wii Fit, some books and CDs. All this they packed neatly into the truck. They left the house and drove to the bank, where Nick withdrew his entire checking and savings account. He transferred two thousand dollars of it into traveler's checks. The rest he had converted into cash, which he placed in a secure briefcase they kept with them in the truck’s cab and took in to the hotel rooms they stayed at.
They made the drive to California in five days.
Their first night in California they spent in Barstow, a small town in the Mojave Desert. When Nick stepped out of their hotel room that morning and took in the warm, dry desert air he sighed in relief. They were free.
They settled in Redondo Beach, a small community in Los Angeles fifteen miles south of LAX. Following the instructions he’d printed out, they stayed at a small low-rent motel along the Pacific Coast Highway for a few days under his new identity, paying cash. Then he’d gone to the Social Security office in Torrance and explained that he’d lost his card and needed a replacement. He produced a birth certificate and the fake state-issued ID he’d obtained a few weeks ago. He left fifteen minutes later with a new social security card. From there everything else followed: driver’s license, bank account, which he deposited his money into, and f
rom there it was a quick upgrade to digs—a small two bedroom apartment on Lucia Street, just off Beryl Avenue. With the new digs came new furniture and household items. Nick even purchased himself a new laptop—a MacBook Pro. He retrieved all his old data from the cloud account he’d set up months ago and set about getting his new digital life in order. He also bought a second TV—a flatscreen—and a DVD player that also played Blu-Ray discs.
He had Billy's name changed to Craig. Billy picked the name himself.
Things only got better after that.
He enrolled Craig in school as a freshman at Redondo Beach High. With Craig in school, he moved into an entirely different career. He’d always been interested in real estate and took a real estate class, the state exam, and got his broker license in eight months. He sold his first property a week later—a beachside home in Malibu. Five months later, he and Craig moved into new digs up the coast in the Marina del Rey area.
Things continued to improve.
Craig was apprehensive about school at first. He and Nick spent a lot of time at the beach talking about how he should approach it, and Craig took his father’s advice. By November he had new friends, was outgoing, at ease; his old self. Nick kept tabs to make sure his son wasn’t falling into the wrong crowd and he was pleased to see that wasn’t the case. Craig had made a complete rebound. No longer was he the shy, withdrawn kid afraid of his own shadow due to his mother’s nit-picking and constant psychological abuse. Now that he was away from the negative element, he was blossoming.
Seeing that had a profound affect on Nick’s own sense of self worth.
Nick started socializing with a few of his co-workers. One of them, a real estate agent in the office, he began to see on a more serious basis. Once he felt comfortable with Craig’s friends, they began to date. The woman—Beth—was a single mother raising a young son of her own. Craig and Beth’s son met and got along fabulously, Craig taking the younger boy under his wing like a surrogate older brother.
Screaming to Get Out & Other Wailings of the Damned Page 12