by Thomas Scott
Murton laughed and said, “Wow, those are going to be some fucked up fish for a while.”
Robert moved away from the water and over to Virgil’s side. His shirt was damp, his pants clung to his legs and his shoes made little squishing noises when he walked. “Maybe you lend me some clothes?”
“You bet,” Virgil said.
But it was what he said next that caused Virgil’s throat to constrict and his heart to skip a beat. “Your father…he look happy. Everyting gonna be irie, mon. You wait. You see.”
They all walked up to the house and when they got inside, Virgil wasn’t surprised to find his family physician, Dr. Bell, waiting in the kitchen. He was dressed casually, his black bag in one hand, a glass of water in the other. “You’ve been better, I understand?” he asked.
Virgil looked at Sandy, Murton, Delroy and Robert. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. How’d they get you here?”
Bell began pulling supplies out of his bag. ‘Ah, I bought a Porsche a few months ago…”
“So…a little trouble with the pedals?” Virgil said.
Bell nodded. “Just the one in the middle. Can’t seem to get to it quick enough when the radar detector goes off. Sandy and I made a little deal.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Let me just say it wasn’t the deal I would have liked.”
Sandy said, “Bell!”
He laughed and then looked at Virgil. “Sandy has agreed to take care of the next ticket, that’s all.” He pulled out a chair and sat down and as he did, the smile left his face. “I’d have been here anyway. Surely you know that.”
Virgil tipped his head. “I know, Bell. Thank you.”
“Come on and sit down. Let me have a listen.” He took Virgil’s pulse, blood pressure, listened to his heart and lungs, checked his reflexes, looked inside his ears, nose and throat and generally gave him a complete physical. When he finished the exam, he started on the questions. How long had he been on the narcotics? What dosage? Had he been taking any extra? Did he really want to stop? And on and on...
“Any more pain meds in the house?” he asked.
Virgil hesitated, but in the end he told the truth. “Top shelf of the kitchen pantry, behind the noodles.”
Murton shook his head, reached into the cabinet and rooted around until he found the bottle. “At least you’re finally using your noodle,” he said.
Doctor Bell looked at the bottle and then put it in his pocket. “Don’t throw any more pills of any kind in the pond. Your fish will be all fucked up.” He pulled three vials of drugs from his bag, lined them up on the table and then began to fit needles on the ends of three syringes that looked big enough to put down a horse with a broken leg. “I have to tell you, Virgil, you appear healthy enough.”
“Healthy enough for what?” Virgil said as he looked at the syringes on the table.
“There are two ways to deal with this kind of thing,” Bell said. “Three if you’re one of those twelve-steppers.”
“I don’t need a twelve-step program,” Virgil said.
“All right then. Two ways. First, you wean yourself from the medication little by little over the course of a month or two, gradually reducing your dosage and frequency until you’re off the meds completely. Quite a lot of people have had success with that particular method, though I’d be the first to admit, it often doesn’t work. It’s too easy to cheat.”
Virgil looked at Sandy, who was already shaking her head. Bell noticed too. “All right then, the other is what we are going to do here, starting right now, tonight.”
“Which is what, exactly?” asked Murton.
“We are going to bring him off all at once. I believe you are healthy enough and still young enough that you can handle it, Virgil. But I have to emphasize, it is a strain on your system. Your heart most of all.”
“My heart is fine,” Virgil said.
Delroy huffed a little. Bell didn’t notice, or if he did, he didn’t let on. “There are three things I want to give you. The first is a massive dose of vitamins. The second is a non-narcotic anti-anxiety medication that will help take the edge off.”
“And the third?”
“The third is the one you’ll thank me for,” Bell said. “It’ll knock you out cold as soon as I give you the shot. It’s similar to Jackson juice, but safer. You’ll sleep for at least the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours, which should get you through the worst of the withdrawal and anxiety. But make no mistake, you’re in for a rough couple of days.”
Virgil looked at Sandy. “I can do it.”
“I know you can, baby.”
Bell seemed to take note of everyone in the room for the first time. He looked at Delroy and Robert. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, gentlemen. I’m Doctor Robert Bell.”
Robert sort of sniffed. “Good name, you.”
Delroy just smiled.
Sandy, Bell, and Virgil left Murton, Delroy, and Robert in the kitchen. They went into the bedroom and Bell pulled some paperwork from his bag and attached it to a clipboard. “I’d like to go ahead and give you the vitamin and anti-anxiety shots now. Do I have your permission to do that?”
Virgil nodded at him.
“I have to hear you say yes, Virgil.”
“Yes, yes. Let’s get on with it.”
Bell raised his eyebrows. “Maybe we’ll start with the anti-anxiety shot.”
“Sorry,” Virgil said. He sat quietly as Bell gave him the shots, though he didn’t know in what order they were administered. “If I’m asleep, why do I need the anxiety meds?”
“Because without them you won’t sleep for long and when you wake, you’ll want to unzip your skin and leave it behind like a snake in the grass.” Then, “Relax, Jonesy. It sucks, but you can do it. The trick is to get in front of it. That’s what we’re doing here.” He finished with the first two shots, then handed Virgil the clipboard with the paperwork. “Read this and then sign at the bottom. Don’t forget to date it as well.”
“What is it?”
“Standard medical release. Informed consent and all that. Gives me permission to treat you and take any and all necessary measures to ensure your health and well-being while under my care or the care of those I designate, who, having been properly trained in the administration of, etcetera, etcetera and so on and so forth. Just sign and date at the bottom.”
Bell handed him a pen. Virgil thought there was a considerable amount of fine print. In addition, Bell kept speaking, which made any concentration difficult.
“I want you to eat nothing but fruit and raw or steamed vegetables during the day. You can have any different combination of vegetables that you’d like for dinner, but try to stay away from any type of starch and nothing except fruit after eight p.m. Also, no sugar or salt of any kind except what you find naturally in your fruits and vegetables. No other artificial sweeteners, either. And I know you’re going to think this is odd, but no water and I mean none at all for at least a week.”
“No water?” Sandy said. “How can that be?”
Virgil chimed in as well. “Look, Bell, I trust you and all, but what the hell am I supposed to drink if I don’t have water?”
“I’ve got a brand new juicer for you. Just bought it. Top of the line, too. Don’t thank me because I’m adding it to your bill. When you’re up and around you’re going to drink thirteen glasses of fresh juice a day—a combination of both fruit and vegetable—for at least a week.”
Virgil could tell that the anti-anxiety medication was starting to take hold because he was having trouble concentrating on what Bell was saying. He finally gave up on reading the form, signed and dated it, then handed it back to the doctor.
“Okay Jonesy, off with your clothes, then lie down in your bed here. You can leave your skivvies on if you like.”
Virgil got undressed and laid down on his back. Bell uncapped the final syringe and injected the medication into his arm.
“I’ll give the rest of the instru
ctions to Sandy. You won’t remember them.”
Virgil thought Bell might have said ‘sleep well,’ or something to that effect, but either way, he was out before Bell was finished with the shot.
14
Abigail Monroe had just finished one of the most stressful days at her job that she could recall. She’d spent most of the day with the programmers, listening to them drone on and on about how difficult it had been to sort through the code to ensure that Nicholas Pope hadn’t buried anything in the system. Every time one of them would come into her office and say they were ready, they had to take the entire system off-line to run the diagnostics. That involved notification of all retail outlets, a nightmare in and of itself. And they couldn’t take the system off-line without her approval, so she was stuck in her office for the entire day. The programmers ended up going through the entire process nine times before they were sure they’d covered everything.
In the end though, they assured her there was nothing. If pressed, however, Abigail thought they didn’t sound completely sure. Maybe ninety-five percent, but not one hundred. They said they were positive, but they didn’t sound positive. That was troublesome. For now though, the system was functioning perfectly, the security measures were in place and everything seemed normal enough. It was the ‘seemed’ that bothered her. When you were the executive director in charge of oversight on an entity that brought in and gave out hundreds of millions of dollars, seemed just didn’t cut it.
Plus, she’d had to sell her own story to the programmers about how she knew—suspected was the word she’d used with them—that there was a real possibility that something might be amiss in the system. Everyone knew Pope had been killed, after all. And not just killed, it looked like he’d been tortured to death. It was the ‘who’ and the ‘why’ that had Abigail stressed. Maybe someone had tried to extract some information from Pope as a way to gain access to the system. Had anyone thought of that? Or perhaps he’d been involved with someone and together they were going to try to cheat the security measures that the lottery had in place. Either way, something was going on. “Get in there and find it,” she’d told them.
She thought her performance was acceptable. Maybe not Oscar-worthy, but good enough to fool a few office nerds that sat at their consoles and stared at computer code all day. She’d certainly dressed for the occasion, wearing a tight, mid-length black skirt that looked like body paint, open-toe high heels that showed off her feet—she’d been told by more than a handful of men that she had great feet—and a sheer white blouse with a skimpy lace bra. It worked. The programmers were drooling like lap dogs by the time they left her office and it seemed like almost every one of them came back in at fifteen minute intervals with this question or that. If she’d taken a poll, she thought not a single one of them could have told her the color of her eyes.
Still, the stress. And she’d brought it on herself. She’d made a mistake and a massive one at that. My God, what had she been thinking? Well, greedy bitch, you knew exactly what you’d been thinking. You’d been thinking wouldn’t it be great to be sitting on the beach, sipping an umbrella drink and calculating the interest. Looking back though, it was one of the stupidest things she’d ever done…getting into bed with Nicky Pope. And what was it that Bradley had told her the other night? They needed to manage this thing on their end? Something like that. Well, that’s exactly what she was doing now, wasn’t she? And what about Bradley? Had he been the one who killed her Nicky? He found out they had been dating and he was pissed, but murder? Abigail didn’t think he had it in him. Still…Nicky…gone.
He’d told her they were going to be rich. Stupid rich was how he’d put it. Except now that he’d been murdered—Abigail shuddered at that thought—she was right back where she’d started.
Abby kicked off her heels, walked into her kitchen and poured herself a glass of red wine. She took a long swallow, refilled the glass, then picked up her iPad and walked into her study. That’s when the doorbell rang.
She tucked the iPad under her arm, walked down the hall and opened the door with her free hand. When she saw the man standing there, the thought that inflated inside her brain was: Cop.
The lottery office was located in a nondescript, brown-bricked, three-story building on Meridian Street about a mile north of the city’s center. A small sign hung above the door—a banner, really—that said Lottery Office. Other than that, the building looked like an office supply store or maybe an H & R Block tax center. Ron Miles had driven by the building or through the area about a thousand times over his career, but he’d never been inside. There was no real reason to drive by it now except for the fact that it was on the way to his destination, the home of the executive director of the state’s lottery, Abigail Monroe.
It would have been more convenient to conduct the interview at her office, but Miles knew that if he did that, she’d have the upper hand. Home turf and all. It might not be important with Monroe—she wasn’t a suspect after all—but she had been Nicholas Pope’s boss, so there was some amount of hope that an informal chat in her home would create a more comfortable environment, one where she might be a bit more forthcoming with any information that could help in the investigation.
Miles rang the bell and when Monroe answered the door she was still dressed in her work clothes, minus her shoes. It was the first thing Ron noticed. Her feet, specifically her toenails, were perfect. She held a glass of red wine in her hand and had an iPad tucked under her arm. When he looked up from her feet, Miles got the impression that he’d startled her. Caught her off guard or…something. He could see it behind her eyes.
“Hello. May I help you?”
“I’m Detective Ron Miles, Indianapolis Metro Homicide. Are you Abigail Monroe?”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Monroe, our office has been charged with the investigation into the death of Nicholas Pope. I understand he worked for you?”
“Yes, he was one of our programmers.”
“I have a few questions I’d like to ask you. May I come in?”
Miles got the impression that she had to contemplate her answer, but after a brief pause she said, “Of course” and opened the door for him to enter.
“I was just about to go sit out on the veranda and relax. I allow myself an evening cocktail. Would you care for something?”
“No, thank you,” Ron said as he followed her through the living room and then the sliding glass door that gave way to her back porch.
“No drinking on the job, I suppose?”
“That’s right.” Miles made a show of reaching for his pen and notebook. He kept a dummy set of keys in his pocket and he pulled those out and then set them on the table. Once they were seated: “Would you tell me what you know about Mr. Pope?”
“Well,” Abigail began, “I’m almost embarrassed to say that I don’t know very much at all.”
“And why is that?”
“Nicky was one of many programmers that we employ. As you might imagine, given what we do it takes quite a few people to maintain our type of system. Plus we have different levels—they’re actually separate departments, so maybe I shouldn’t say levels—anyway, different levels of programmers for different functions. Some handle basic functions like ongoing system maintenance, some take care of security, while others are responsible for writing new code for different types of games.”
“And what level, or department did Mr. Pope work in?”
Monroe crossed her legs, then reached down and massaged her left foot. “Let’s see, Nicky was, um, security I believe. Yes, security. I’m sure that’s correct. To tell you the truth, Detective, the programmers? They all sort of blend together in my mind. We have quite a few of them and frankly, they’re all a little peculiar. They work odd hours, they’re about the least sociable people you’d ever want to meet and, well…there’s no diplomatic way to put this I suppose, other than to just say it: They sort of look down on everyone else in the organization, like they’re better than the rest of
us.”
“I see. So if I understand you correctly, you personally did not know Mr. Pope any better than the rest of the programmers who work for the lottery, is that correct?”
“Detective, uh, Niles, is it?”
“Miles.”
“Yes, of course. Detective Miles, my title is Executive Director of the lottery. I report to the lottery’s board of directors. While I’m sure there are other organizations whose directors take a more hands-on approach with their employees, that simply isn’t my style. Not only that, but my position is one of development as opposed to straight managerial.”
“Development?”
“I am the face of the lottery, I guess you could say.”
“I see. But you still didn’t answer my question, Ms. Monroe. Did you know Mr. Pope any better than the rest of the programmers who work for the lottery?”
Abigail took a long deliberate sip of her wine. “I’m not sure I understand the nature of your question, Detective.”
I think you do, Ron thought, otherwise you would have answered me by now. He tried a different tactic. “Would you give me the names of your programmers please?”
Monroe blinked at him. “All of them?”
“Yes, please.” Miles had his pen and notebook ready.
Monroe set her wine glass down on the table with great care. Ron thought it looked like a practiced maneuver. “That would have to come from our Human Resources department. I’m afraid I don’t know. I mean, I know a few of their first names, but…”