[Whistleblower 01.0] Wounded Animals

by Jim Heskett

  She worked in the Denver suburb of Littleton, so I spent a good amount of time staring at the windshield over the next half hour. Instead of listening to music, I puzzled through the events of the last few days, but everything seemed to circle around and leave me no better than where I’d started. Tried not to think about the dead trainee in my bathroom, but his slashed neck and wrists pulsed in my head every few seconds. Blood on the tile. What a terrible waste of life, and for what?

  I parked outside Grace’s office building, a dilapidated two-story brick shack nestled in the middle of a maze of a business park. When I exited my car, I heard my keys jingle. My hands were shaking. I hadn’t realized I was nervous until then, but now that I had, my pulse skyrocketed with each step toward that front door.

  “Get ahold of yourself, Candle,” I whispered.

  Inside, soothing jazz muzak greeted me in the lobby. From behind a desk, an emaciated woman with massive eyeglasses smiled at me.

  “Good morning, sir, can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Rodrick McGuire, please.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  I stared at my hands, still a little shaky. “No, it’s about one of his employees, um… I’m Grace Candle’s husband.”

  Her mouth dropped into a toothy smile and her eyes shot wide open, raising the big glasses up off her nose. “Oh my, you must be Tucker. We’ve heard so much about you. How is Grace? She feeling any better yet?”

  Interesting. Grace almost never talked about work, except the occasional story about some coworker driving her crazy and how much busywork Rodrick was piling on her desk. “She’s fine. On the mend, I guess you could say. I’m in a bit of a hurry, so can I go in and see Rodrick, please?”

  She got out from behind the desk and then pressed a keycard against a box next to the door. The door beeped and unlocked, then she held it open for me and waved me inside. “He’s in his office, in the back on the right. Tell her we’re all praying for a swift recovery.”

  I walked inside and surveyed the layout. They had a cube farm setup, just like my office and the IntelliCraft office in Dallas, but they had only two sets of cubes with one long row between them. I paced myself going down the row, glancing in each one to find Grace’s cube.

  She was four cubes down and on the right. I recognized a framed picture of her parents. Grace had kept it from our old apartment, and I’d always wondered what had happened to that picture. Her cube was nondescript and much better organized, compared to her car. A couple pictures of her parents, a close friend from college, and two pictures of us: one during our honeymoon in Costa Rica and another of us at a Broncos game. I remembered that game. The Broncos had played like shit and I didn’t feel like smiling in the picture. I could look at my face and see the smile wasn’t genuine.

  I heard Rodrick laughing and looked over the cubes at the corner office in the back. I exited the cube farm and rounded the corner to see him chatting with some woman. He was behind a desk, and she was in a chair facing him.

  I clenched my fists and walked to the edge of his office. Leaned in and caught his eye.

  He started. “Oh, hey there. What are you doing here?”

  I took a few uneven breaths, trying to calm myself. I couldn’t form the words I wanted to say.

  The woman in the chair turned to face me. She was beautiful, tall, shapely, wearing a form-fitting dress. I noticed some flush in her cheeks. This was not Rodrick’s wife, I had met that woman before. What was he doing here with her, in his office?

  I couldn’t say why, but at that moment, I despised him. The look of surprise on his face registered as false as my smile in the photo at the Broncos game.

  “Is everything okay with Grace? There’s not something wrong, is there?”

  “You tell me, Rodrick,” I said.

  He cocked his head, an uneven smirk crossing his face. “I’m sorry, buddy, I don’t follow. What am I supposed to tell you?”

  “I’m not interested in playing games with you. Where is my wife?”

  The woman in his office shifted in her chair. “Should I leave?”

  Rodrick reached a hand across the desk and patted her on the shoulder. “No, dear, you stay right here.”

  I didn’t like the way he touched her, so I took a step inside the office. “That’s not your wife, Rodrick.”

  “I know it’s not, obviously. This is my sister. Why are you coming in here with that tone? What’s going on with you?”

  The woman frowned at me and I felt a stab of shame all through my chest. That had been a bad call. But it didn’t change the fact that I knew Rodrick was hiding something. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  He stood up and rounded the desk. I stepped back and then realized that my hands were instinctively out in front of me in a judo fighting stance.

  He looked down at my hands, then sighed. “I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but there isn’t anything I haven’t told you.”

  We were out in the main room now, among the cube farm. I caught a few people staring at us out of my peripheral vision.

  He reached out to put his hands on top of my hands. “If there’s some kind of problem between you and your wife,” he said in a low voice, “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about it. I’m really sorry, buddy, but I don’t know where she is. Like I told you, she called in sick, and that’s the last I heard about it.”

  I felt so ashamed and idiotic at that moment I wanted to run out of the building. Maybe I was unreasonable. Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he wasn’t. One thing for sure, though, I had made a total ass of myself by storming in here and accusing Rodrick of hiding something from me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said in a gravelly tone, my eyes low and cumbersome.

  He ducked down to meet my eyes. “Hey, now, it’s okay. If there’s something I can do to help, you be sure and let me know. Maybe you should get on home. She’s probably waiting for you there.”

  I nodded, defeated. With my head down, I walked back through the cube farm and out the front door, not looking at anyone.

  When I got back in my car, the weight of my actions pulled at me. I wanted to scream and cry and get drunk and forget about all of this. But I didn’t have any choice. I had to press on, and the next logical step would be to get the cops involved.

  Chapter Nine

  SHELTON’S BUSINESS CARD in hand, I dialed the phone number. My heart pounded and I braced myself against the counter in my kitchen.

  An operator came on with a warbling greeting, then said something unintelligible. She followed with, “how may I direct your call?”

  “Uh, Detective Stan Shelton, please.”

  “Of course, sir. One moment and I’ll connect you.”

  My phone squawked with a series of beeps and clicks. Finally, I heard a connection. “Shelton here.”

  “Detective Shelton?”

  “Speaking.”

  “Detective, this is Tucker Candle. We spoke yesterday evening.”

  “Of course, Mr. Candle. What can I do for you?”

  “I’m not sure if it’s been twenty-four hours yet or not, but I think I need to report my wife as missing.”

  “Didn’t come home last night, did she?”

  I closed my eyes. Hearing those words come out of his mouth drove a dagger into the middle of my chest. Above all, I wanted to avoid a repeat of the emotion-driven scene at her boss’ office. Keep cool, be logical, follow all the right steps. “No, she didn’t come home and I haven’t heard from her in several days. I’m worried something has happened to her.”

  “Most of the time it’s nothing, but if you’d like to file a report, we can do that. Why don’t you come down to the station on West 46th? I’ll get the paperwork started and we can finish it together.”

  My lips felt shaky, but I forced the words out. “Thank you, detective.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll find out what happened. Just keep a level head and don’t do anything rash.”<
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  I hung up the phone and caught a good whiff of my armpit, which was plenty ripe. Hadn’t showered since yesterday morning in Texas. I didn’t think Detective Shelton would care, so I threw on a coat, grabbed my keys, and headed out the door. I hadn’t bothered to check the bathroom to see what the cleaning crew had done in there.

  Traffic seemed light, which made sense since it was between the morning and lunch rushes. I wasn’t used to being on the roads at this hour. I’d already called my boss first thing and requested the day off. When I gave her a vague and made-up explanation why, she hadn’t seemed to care much, other than a mild annoyance that she would have to wait to be debriefed on the new trainees. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from her.

  The cop station was a brick building next to the street, big flags waving in the breeze out front. The idea of walking in there and setting the official process of a missing persons report in motion filled me with dread. It would mean she was actually gone. There would be cops looking for her, money spent on an investigation. So many things out of my control.

  I parked along the curb and spent a few seconds breathing deeply while looking at myself in the rearview mirror.

  “You can do this, Candle. Get out of this car and do what you need to do.”

  My foot felt heavy on the ground. I didn’t want to go inside, and I couldn’t say why. This was the right thing to do. This was the next logical step to finding my wife and unborn son.

  The flags in the breeze rippled, and the ropes clanged against the flagpoles below. Clouds parted, and the sun peeked out. The doors to the station in front of me were dark and grim. Something wasn’t right.

  As I started toward the building, a car screeched to a halt behind me. The squeal of tires and smell of burning rubber wrecked my concentration. For a second, I forgot where I was.

  Before I could get a good look at him, a man jumped out of the passenger seat, then stepped behind me. He was lightning-fast and I barely registered his movements. One second, I’d been alone, and then the next, a man was towering over me.

  “Get in the car,” he said, whispering it to the back of my neck. His breath was hot. “We need to do this quick, so don’t do anything stupid like run or yell.”

  The car was a Mustang, something late-model, and fast. I didn’t know much about cars, but I could tell from the growling engine that it was what they referred to as a “muscle car.”

  The driver was a man in a dark leather jacket with wraparound sunglasses. He hadn’t turned his head toward me, instead kept his hands on the wheel, gripping it like motorcycle handlebars as he revved the engine.

  Something poked into the small of my back.

  “Okay, just be cool,” I said. “Whatever’s going on here, you should know I don’t want to cause any trouble. I’m just going to walk away, then get back in my car and go home.”

  The thing in the small of my back pressed harder. Maybe it was a gun, I couldn’t tell.

  “You listen to me, Candle, because I’m not playing around with you. You’re not going to walk away from anything. Just get into the car and don’t make any trouble, if you want to live out the day.”

  Chapter Ten

  I LIFTED MY hands in surrender, and the man behind me smacked my arms back down. “Don’t do that, you idiot. Just get in the car right now. You have a lot of questions, we can answer them. But only if you get in the car.”

  I wondered which questions he might answer. Or if he was telling the truth, but I didn’t see how I had much choice. I could do as he said, or they could shoot me on the street in front of the police station.

  The driver patted the passenger seat next to him, then revved the engine.

  I slid in as the other, older man got in the back seat, then he mumbled something to the driver and we left. He’d been surprisingly lithe for a man with silvery gray hair.

  Neither of my kidnappers said anything for the first fifteen minutes. We drove out of Denver to the west, toward the mountains. The driver was a short guy with a scruffy beard, but I didn’t try to turn around to get a better look at the man in the backseat. Just a glimpse or two in the rearview. All I could see was that he was also wearing a leather jacket.

  The passenger leaned forward, between the seats. I smelled pickles—or something like pickles—on his breath. “Turn there,” he said. “Toward Eldo.”

  Eldorado Canyon? We were going near Golden, apparently.

  The driver nodded and turned at the next light. We had slowed sufficiently at a few stoplights that I could have jumped out of the car, but they’d promised me answers. Each time I thought fleeing possible, my brain went to war with itself.

  Was I foolish to trust that they weren’t planning to throw me from the top of a cliff in Eldorado Canyon? Maybe. But the temptation to find out what they knew was enough to keep me in the car, for now.

  If they could tell me where Grace was, it would be worth the risk.

  They didn’t speak again until we had driven through Eldorado Springs, a tiny little town that served as a gateway to a state park popular with hikers and rock climbers. Thirty minutes from Denver. We pulled up to a ranger station at the edge of the park, and the driver flashed a state parks pass to get in without paying a day fee.

  Inside the park, they pulled off at the first dirt parking lot, one half covered in the icy remains of a recent snow. “Out of the car,” said the passenger.

  I stepped out, feeling the change in the brisk air at the higher elevation near the foot of the mountains. A bit of misty fog hung in the air, cool and wet.

  The passenger opened the trunk. He removed four pieces of rubber netting, like spider webs, with metal coiled around the strands. He handed two to the driver, who put one on the bottom of each of his shoes. Crampons, for the snow. We were going hiking?

  “What are those for?” I said.

  “Ice,” said the passenger.

  “Do I get a pair?”

  He shrugged. “Only got two. You just be careful and try to keep up.”

  He lifted a full Nalgene water bottle from the trunk and passed it to me. I stared at it, unsure what to do next.

  The passenger laughed. “It’s water. Do you think if we were going to poison you, we would have brought you out to a state park to do it?”

  He and the driver marched off toward a wooden signpost indicating the start of a hiking trail.

  I hadn’t yet followed them. The lack of information weighed on me. “What are we doing here? You told me you’d answer my questions.”

  Passenger turned toward me, still walking backward. “I said no such thing. I said you have questions, and we have answers. I didn’t say I’d answer your questions. Well, maybe I will. Depends on what you ask. Either way, you’re going to have to come with us if you want to find out. I need to get in a hike today, and truth is at the mountain-top, my dear boy.”

  I felt like such an idiot. But what choice did I have? I was half an hour from home with no car.

  I followed them onto the hiking trail, a steep and rocky set of natural steps that crisscrossed a path to a mountain peak whose name escaped me. Some packed snow bracketed the sides of the trail, but no ice, at least not at our current elevation. Depending on how high we hiked, the path could become dangerous. Slow going when you have to watch every step.

  We trudged for a half hour, not passing a single other person, and neither of them spoke again. Crested switchback after switchback, as the skyscrapers of Denver slowly came into view, their tops slicing above the mist across the city. Grace and I used to hike here and up in Boulder most weekends before our main hobby became preparing our house for the arrival of Little Candle.

  I looked at the water bottle they’d given me, unsure if I wanted to drink. If they had poisoned it, that would make it easy for them to roll me off the side of the cliff once I was unconscious. Just another hiker standing too close to the edge who fell. Despite the dryness in my mouth, I wouldn’t drink it.

  The trail turned, and at the turn,
a bench sat on a lookout at the edge of a cliff. The driver and the passenger both walked toward the lookout, sipping their water bottles.

  “Are you going to tell me why the hell we’re up here?” I said.

  “I like the view,” said the passenger. “I don’t get to come to Denver too often. Bit foggy today, but still, this is lovely.”

  I heard a little bit of a southern twang in the last sentence.

  “Do you have answers for me or not?” I said, feeling ire bubbling up through my legs and into my chest. The full Nalgene in my hand was heavy enough, maybe I could crack it over his head. Or I might fall on the slippery ground and split my head open.

  “Maybe. First, I’m going to have to get you to tell me the truth about some things.” As the passenger spoke, the driver slowly circled around behind me. I didn’t like being in between them. Maybe I didn’t have any control to begin with, but not being able to see both of them at once unnerved me. This close to the cliff edge, the driver could easily rush me and knock me over. But he could have done that at any number of points along the trail so far, though. Poison me, throw me from a cliff… guessing their endgame was wrapping my head all in knots.

  “What do you want to know?”

  The passenger slipped a granola bar from his pocket and tore off a mouthful. He chewed with his mouth wide open, smacking his lips. One of my biggest pet peeves.

  “You called to report your wife missing,” he said, pointing the granola bar at me like a knife.

  Okay, so they had my phone tapped, or bugged, or hacked, or whatever it was they did now to access phones. That didn’t surprise me. “Yes. Do you know where she is?”

  The passenger lifted his palms to the sky. “I have no idea. Keeping track of your wife isn’t my business. What is my business is that you stop calling the cops about anything, because involving them is going to cause problems for everybody on down the line.”

  “Who are you people?”

  “It’s not your turn to ask the questions yet. As I was saying, you called to report your wife missing. As of this moment, right now, your interaction with the police is over. That little mess that happened at your house last night? That could be the end of it if you start doing the right thing.”