Dead End Job (17 page)

“Beep Beep Beep!”
“Briiiiiiing!”
“Beep Beep Beep!”

Oh my god, what the hell was that?
The thought jolted me from my slumber. The sun had not yet risen, so the large window next to my bed provided no light as I rolled over, searching for my end table and the source of the horrible loud beeping noises. I kept my eyes closed while my hand groped around in the dark. Instead of finding an alarm clock to smack or my phone to turn off I found something warm and solid.

Rocky.

“Oh, man,” he said groggily, putting his hand on top of mine. “Oh, hey there, Cuteness.” He reached over to caress my naked body. “Ugh, what time is it? And Jesus Christ, how do we make that beeping stop?”

The night came back to me in a rush. I smiled and cuddled up to his warm body. I yawned, rubbed my eyes and squeezed up a bit closer to him. “I have no idea what time it is, and I don’t really care either,” I said. “But that alarm has to be stopped. Let’s throw it out of the window.”

He chuckled and, ignoring the blaring noise that had woke us, reached towards my head and grabbed it long enough to give me a quick kiss on the lips.

“I know how you feel. Do you have a light in here? I think that’s me.”

I leaned over and clicked on the lamp by the side of the bed.

“Thanks, it is me—my station phone,” he said. He lifted his body over the top of mine under the covers, and I got a fantastic view of his firm butt as he slipped out of the bed to reach for his jeans. Sure enough, the noise was coming from a sturdy-looking black cell phone that he picked up out of the back pocket of his pants.

He sat back down on the bed and ran his fingers through my hair as he flipped the phone open. I smiled as he pushed buttons and tabbed through the messages on his phone, but then stopped smiling as soon as he spoke. The tone of his voice and his stiffened shoulders told me it was bad news.

“It’s about Merit,” he said. “There’s been another homicide.”

“WHAT?” I asked, a little louder than I intended to.  I had expected it to be something about Sarah’s death. Maybe some bad news about Ari—certainly not another homicide. “What are you talking about? When? Who?” I sat up in the bed and looked at him, suddenly overtaken with fear and adrenaline. “How is that possible? Ari is still in jail right?”

“It’s going to be OK, Hon.” He reached over to me, wrapped his big warm arms around me, and held me for a minute. I knew he was trying to comfort me, but I didn’t really want to be hugged at the moment—I was shaking with anger and fear. “Calm down. Shhh.” He rubbed his hands up and down my back for a couple of seconds until I couldn’t stand it anymore and I pulled away from him. “I have to head down there now, but I will call you as soon as I find out, OK?” I nodded, trying to listen, but I think I was going into shock again—the same numb feeling that I’d had after Sarah’s death was overtaking me. “You just sit tight. Don’t go into work today, just take the day off.” 

I sat there, mutely staring at my white duvet cover while he gave me another quick squeeze and then got up.

“Do you mind if I use your shower?” he asked when I didn’t respond. Realizing he was waiting for me, I slowly got up, picked up the robe I’d thrown onto the floor the night before and wrapped it around my body. My manners kicked in and I managed to grab him a towel and even rustled up a new razor (pink) and spare toothbrush that I’d been holding onto.

“Here you go,” I said.

“Thanks. This will work just fine.” He gathered up his jeans, shoes, socks and boxers (I think his T-shirt was still somewhere in the kitchen) and went into the bathroom, where he wasted no time getting into the shower. As the water ran I clumsily searched around on the floor of my room until I found my cell phone and looked at the time. It was only 5:05 AM. 

I slumped back into the bed, confused. With Ari in jail, the fear and shock of what had happened to Sarah had waned around the office. No one, especially me, thought there would be another murder—why would we? The killer was in jail, justice would be served and we could all move on. Now that that door had been re-opened, there was no appropriate reaction I could muster besides that of sheer horror. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I had a bad feeling about Sarah’s death, a bad feeling about Leila Carson’s death and I had an especially bad feeling about Maya. She was there in the office after everyone—who knows how late last night. I was really hoping she was OK, but my rational mind told me that she was not.

I was still milling over the details of the last twenty-four hours when Rocky emerged from the bathroom, shirtless, shaved and smelling like my coconut shampoo.

“I’ve got to go now babe,” he said. “Don’t worry, we’ll find whoever is doing this.” He leaned over me on the bed, rested his hands on the mattress and kissed me goodbye, which for me completely lacked any of the passion or excitement of the night we had spent together. Apparently he felt differently. “Whoa, if we start this again, I’ll never get out of here,” he smiled. “I’ll talk to you in a little while. Try to get some sleep.”

Then he was gone.

After a couple of minutes of tossing and turning I knew that I was too shaken up to go back to sleep, so I flipped on the TV to one of the early local news broadcast, trying to get any information I could about the second murder at Merit within the week.

It seemed that someone at the news station had already been tipped off. After the traffic report the anchor cut to a “breaking news” segment titled “Serial Homicides at Merit.” The news crew stood outside of the building, directly across the street from the 5th Avenue Theatre, pointing the camera at the main entrance to the Rainier Tower. Although the sun had begun its ascent over thirty minutes ago, the morning was still dark enough to require the spotlight from the camera crew. It shone brightly onto the young blond reporter’s face as she dramatically described the scene:

“Thank you Matthew. We’re here outside of the Rainier Tower in Seattle’s downtown financial district, where early this morning a second body was discovered in the offices of Seattle-based Public Relations firm, Merit Inc. Officials have reported to us that they believe that the first victim, Sarah Lieber, was murdered on the evening of Tuesday, June 16th, and are holding in custody her former lover and co-worker Ari Klein. With the shocking death of a second victim who is yet to be identified, I would imagine that police have to be questioning the guilt of Mr. Klein and perhaps looking into a serial case here at Merit. Although we can confirm that Mr. Klein has not yet been charged in the case, we have not been able to reach the DA for further comment at this time, but we will keep you updated with any breaking information as it comes our way. Matthew, now back to you in the studio.”

The reporter’s excitement was palpable; though she spoke calmly she looked as if she was ready to jump up and down for joy. I hated her for her thinly veiled glee. White collar murder was a rare occurrence in our peace-loving city, and it was being treated like the winning lottery ticket by the local stations. In addition to being excited, the reporter was also probably right: the likelihood of two murders at one company perpetrated by two different people was thin. The SPD had the wrong man. It was a huge relief to hear that Ari was probably innocent, but the ramifications of that discovery were terrifying. Who was killing the women of Merit? The question had staged a violent coup in my mind—pushing away all of my other thoughts and taking up permanent residence. My hands trembled as I struggled to answer it.

I scanned through the other local news channels for the next hour. On every station the outside of our office building crawled with hoards of excited news teams, and the story dominated every broadcast. Unfortunately they all contained the same generic information as the first: not one mentioned either the victim’s name or the name of a suspect, but they all mentioned the fact that Ari was in jail for Sarah’s murder and questioned his guilt.

I half-heartedly went through the cell phone numbers of the employees that I had stored in my phone, but it was still before 7:00 and I was pretty sure they weren’t awake yet. At 7:45 I finally fell back into a restless sleep. I was dozing on and off, only to be awakened by a very loud pounding on the door at 8:15.  I rushed down the stairs, hoping the visitor was Rocky, back from the murder scene with all of the details for me. Instead when I pulled the door open I was greeted by an unenthusiastic Detective Schreck.

“Ms. Hallstrom,” he said. “I need you to get dressed and come with me.”

Shit. Not this again.

“Uh, sure. Give me five minutes,” I replied, then opened the door and let him come in. I left him at the landing and went upstairs, where I quickly brushed my teeth and threw on some clothes. When I got back downstairs I made eye contact with Detective Schreck as he was just coming out of Kathy’s bathroom. Oh crap—I’d forgotten to warn him about the mess. He looked as mortified as I did. Neither one of us said anything when we walked out the door and over to his beige Chevy Impala.

When we got to the station he brought me back to the same crummy little interrogation room I’d waited in last week. He told me to stay put and someone would be in shortly to talk to me. For some reason I had been trying to play it cool—the strong, silent type—but as he turned to leave I couldn’t help myself, I had to ask.

“Detective Schreck?” I ventured. “It was Maya, wasn’t it?”

He paused and looked back at me, deciding whether or not to answer, then he nodded, slowly and solemnly.

My eyes brimmed with tears as the door closed. At first I tried to blink them back, but then decided to let them flow. I cried out of sadness for Sarah, sadness for Maya, and an intense fear that was part my own safety and part for the conundrum of my legal situation.

I had wiped my eyes dry on the sleeve of my sweatshirt and sniffed back my runny nose by the time Detective Lopez entered the room. In addition to her unkempt hair, she had not a spot of make up on and had large blue bags under her eyes. I guess it was a bad day for all of us. She sat down across the table from me with a pad and a pen and sighed wearily.

“Ms. Hallstrom,” she began formally, “I’m Detective Rachel Lopez. Do you know why you were brought in this morning?”

“It was Maya,” I answered. “She’s dead.”

“That’s correct,” she replied. She looked down and scribbled something down on the pad, then continued. “Now, we have the key card logs from last night and we know you were there alone with Maya Abrams. You were the last person to buzz out of the building at eight-eleven. You were also the last person to buzz in and out of the building the night of Sarah Lieber's murder. Now, you might agree that these facts seem a bit more than coincidental. Do you want to take this chance to talk to me and explain what happened?”

I let out a long sigh. I had already decided that telling the truth was the only way I could get out of this. Getting Detective Lopez to believe what I was saying would be another thing completely.

“Well, I was working on a big project for the merger with Maya and Priti,” I started. “We were all working late. Priti got done around eight so she left, then Maya told me to go home and she would take care of the rest of the project. When I left, about half past eight, Maya was fine. I didn’t think anything would happen to her. I mean, we all thought this whole thing was over, with Ari in jail and all.”

“Don’t you find it strange that you were in the office late twice in the last week? We’ve reviewed that past six months of your key card data and you have never come into the office after business hours, in fact, you’ve never even worked late. You always leave by four o’clock.”

Hmm. She had another good point. She calmly looked on while I squirmed.

“I guess it would seem odd to you,” I finally said.

“Very odd.”

“But it
is
just a coincidence. I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Maybe it was an accident?” Her tone changed; it was softer now. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it,” she said, almost comforting me.

“No, no, no! It wasn’t an accident,” I replied, frustrated.

She jumped at that opening. “So you’re admitting that the homicides were pre-meditated?”  She was excited now, her voice was loud and her dark her eyes were gleaming.

“I am not admitting anything. This is ridiculous!” Frustrated, I found myself standing. “I don’t know what to tell you people. I didn’t kill anyone! I am not a murderer. I am just a freaking admin for Christ’s sake!”

She took me in without speaking as I marched around in the tiny room like a maniac. I hadn’t meant to have such a dramatic outburst.

“Ok then,” she responded as I gathered myself and sat back down at the table. “If you weren’t killing Maya Abrams, can you tell me what you
were
doing last night?”

Oh God. This was going to be seriously awkward. I wanted to tell her about Rocky coming over, but I didn’t know if that would get him into trouble. There was probably some kind of police/suspect rule that he’d broken last night, before we knew that Maya had been killed. Plus, I just felt a little awkward telling this detective about my sex life – she didn’t really give off that “one of the girls” vibe. But my night with Rocky, along with his ability to verify my story, would go a long way in clearing my name.

“Well, I was with someone,” I began. “At my house.”

“Who was it?” she asked, either ignoring or not understanding my insinuation.

“It was… a guy. I had a guy over and he stayed the night.”

Don’t ask who, don’t ask who, lalalala!
She scribbled something down on her pad, interested.

“What’s this ‘guy’s name?” She asked, clearly not willing to let this go.

I gulped and steadied myself. “Well, I think it’s someone that you maybe know,” I began cautiously. “He works here—Rocky Evans?”

Detective Lopez had a very odd reaction. She dropped her pen and scrunched up her mouth, her face slowly turning a deep shade of red. Breathing heavily, she leaned forward across the table. Holy crap, she was freaking me out. She motioned for me to lean in so I could hear her. I cautiously leaned in. She was inches away from my face when she said, almost in a whisper: