Tainted Pictures (5 page)

           “I know, I’ve missed seeing you!”  Kate greeted back, completely avoiding the topic of why she hadn’t been there.  

           “How is the family?” She immediately followed up by turning the focus on him, hoping he wouldn’t notice her artful dodge.  She continued walking as he handed her badge back to her and spoke to him over her shoulder as she pressed the lobby button for the elevator.  

           “They are wonderful as always, grandkids in college costing me a few pennies here and there.  Just trying to help out the kids.  Junior, though, he has a scholarship for the football so he is doing just fine.  Good grades too!  There are some brains in these genes, you know.”  Herbert bragged about his family, not noticing her clever evasion.  

           “I can imagine!  That is so wonderful to hear!”  Kate responded as the elevator door chimed, announcing its arrival.  

           “I’ll see you later, Herbert!”  She called back to him as she quickly scooted inside the doors and waited for them to close safely behind her, a shield to ward off anymore undesired questions.  The elevator slid up towards her office as she realized for the first time that Herbert wasn’t going to be the only one with questions.  Kate’s sister, Annie, had told her job that she had been in a car accident.  At least, she was pretty sure that that was what Annie had said.  

           She had spoken to her sister late last night on the phone and it hadn’t been one of their more pleasant conversations.  Annie was upset that Kate was going back to work only two weeks after the attack.  Somehow the roles had reversed and now Annie, the little sister, was trying to take care of Kate which Kate was automatically resistant to.  She was the one who had always been in charge and always handled everything.  She didn’t want her little sister carrying that burden.  

           On top of that, Kate couldn’t possibly stay in her house another minute.  The days were becoming endless and spending hours in the same place you were attacked in makes it pretty hard to move on.  She needed a distraction and a purpose to get her out of bed every morning.  Being  an employee was better than being a victim.  

           At least for today.  

           A nervous feeling clouded Kate’s mind as she thought of the stares, the questions, and worst of all, the concern of her colleagues.  She didn’t want their pity, she didn’t want their curiosity, and she certainly didn’t want their attention.  She was the opposite of her mother, the more she could fly under the radar, the better.  Whether she liked it or not, the moment came and the doors opened into the office floor and Kate stepped out trying to look as confident as possible.  Completely the opposite of what she felt inside.  

~~~~

           Kate’s predictions had been pretty spot on, as she quickly came to find out.  She had barely finished hanging up her coat in her cubicle when her neighboring coworker popped her head in.  Janet was a middle aged woman who Kate often ate lunch with or chatted with over the water cooler.  The conversation was always about Janet’s children and all the different activities and achievements.  Janet rarely, if ever, inquired about Kate’s life mostly because she was just more interested in talking about herself.  Kate had no problem with that though, she had never wanted to be in the spotlight and so she was completely fine focusing on other people.  She never had much to tell about her own life anyways.

           Until now
, she thought ironically.  

           “Kate!  How are you doing!?  This place has been just falling apart without you, dear!” Janet said kindly, even though Kate knew that was not the case.  She sold office furniture to industrial companies.  Her job could literally be done by an online shopping search engine.  

           Her Uncle Lenny owned the company and had gifted her the job when she got out of college and had been unable to find employment due to the rough economy at the time.  However, as the years went by, Kate just became comfortable and stayed.  Don’t confuse comfortable with happy, because Kate was certainly never happy with her job.  Sometimes she wondered how she didn’t just fall asleep at her desk or snap at a customer on the phone and tell them just to go shop online.  

           But it was a job and a paycheck and the current economic state made just having a job a prize in itself.  The honest truth was that Kate didn’t really know what it was that she wanted to do.  Even with a bachelors degree in psychology and a desire to help people, she didn’t know how to translate that into a career or what direction she wanted to go.  Selling office furniture was not going to be her career, at least she hoped it wouldn’t be.  For now, though, it was a good place holder and allowed her time to contemplate life’s choices.  

           She was always grateful to her Uncle Lenny for everything he had done for her, even though he wasn’t technically related to him, so she tried to do her best at the job. It wasn’t easy though because he ran the company in an old school way that didn’t include a lot of today’s technology and so the business was starting to dwindle as online shopping became more and more popular.  After she finished settling her things into her desk and hanging up her coat, she wandered down the hall to find Lenny and say hello.  

           She had asked him to keep a distance as she had most people over the last two weeks because she didn’t want everyone to see her looking so vulnerable.  She still didn’t feel particularly shielded now but at least her heavy make up job covered most of the bruises and only some of the healing lacerations showed on her face.  She rounded the corner and walked up to her uncle’s assistant, Frank Bild.  

           Frank was sitting at a desk, busily tapping away on an ancient computer.  He wasn’t particularly tall or handsome, but he wasn’t ugly either.  He just wasn’t very noticeable and you could probably meet him ten times and still not recognize him.  That is until he opened his mouth.  

           Every office has that one jerk that no one can stand and Frank had signed, sealed, and displayed that title all over himself from the first day he arrived.  Lenny was the only one who seemed oblivious to Frank’s lack of charms.  Kate didn’t care very much because she rarely had to interact with Frank.  He was more an annoyance than anything else.  

           “Hey Frank, is Lenny in?”  Kate asked, gesturing to the closed door near Frank’s desk that had Lenny’s name on it in gold plating.  Frank just glanced up at her for a brief moment, then looked back at his computer and continued typing.

           “You look horrible.” He said simply.  Not an insult, not a compliment, he just stated it like he was stating a fact that he couldn’t care less about.  Kate sighed and rolled her eyes.

           “Thanks.” She sarcastically responded then pointed back to her uncle’s office door, waiting for him to answer her question.  He didn’t look back up or say anything to her until he finished typing a moment later, then he turned his full body to face her and folded his arms across his chest.

           “What do you want with him?” Frank narrowed his eyes and looked at her with disdain, as if he couldn’t understand why someone like her would have anything of value to say to his boss.

           “Uh, I just wanted to say hi. He is my uncle, I haven’t seen him in a few days.  Is he available?”  Kate started getting exasperated and you could hear it in her voice.  Frank just stared at her, looking like he hadn’t decided whether or not he was going to let her in.  He had the tiniest smirk on the edge of his lips as if he really got off on wielding his control over other people.  

           “You look like someone knocked the hell out of you.” He said to her, ignoring her question as he leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet out, crossing his ankles.  The smirk still decorating his lips, now almost in a snarl.  She just stared at him, her eyes slimming into a squint trying to hold her irritation at bay.  

           “Car accident, right? At least that’s the word going around the office.”  He said to her, not even pretending to be concerned.    

           “Yeah, thanks for your concern.”  Kate responded sarcastically, noting that her sister must have told everyone at the office that she had had a car accident and that was why she had been out for two weeks.

           “He’s free.”  Frank said to her in a gruff voice after staring at her for a moment and sat up, going back to typing at his computer.  He nodded his head towards Lenny’s door and just like that, she was completely off his radar, absorbed back into his own world.  

           “Thanks,” Kate mumbled, walking to the door and then mumbled, “for nothing.”

           She walked into Lenny’s office without knocking, which was not really unusual since he was her uncle.  He was sitting at a round table to one side of his office instead of the desk in the back center of the room.  The round table had four chairs around it and stacks of papers spread out across it, including a legal pad that Lenny was currently writing on while punching numbers into a large print calculator, staring carefully through his thick glasses.  

           He glanced up when he heard the door open and then beamed, smiling at her and clearly glad to see her.  Kate was surprised at how happy she was to see him in return, because her entire body suddenly relaxed and she breathed a huge sigh of relief.  She felt the first true and genuine smile spread across her face since before her attack.  The entire sensation shocked her because it was new.  There is a genuine feeling of happiness and relief that most people think that they have experienced before, but Kate realized then and there that this wasn’t the case.  

           What Kate had once thought was happiness and joy in the past was nothing compared to what she felt seeing her uncle for the first time since her attack.  Here was a friendly face, a familiar face, and someone who loved her no matter what.  She had never truly appreciated that or felt these emotions before because she had never experienced the opposite until two weeks ago.  Until she had been subjected to some of the worst experiences a human being can go through and felt the emotions so far from happiness that happiness wasn’t even a speck on their horizon, she couldn’t have fully felt real and true happiness.  

           Happiness is the face of someone who loves you.   

CHAPTER FOUR

           Both detectives weren’t even fazed by Craig’s cussing and angry retaliation as he stood up out of his chair in the interrogation room and walked back and forth angrily.  Snow continued to sit in the chair across the table from him and McCraig leaned against the concrete by the mirror, unwavering in his cold stare towards their suspect.  Craig was pacing now, his face clearly a flurry of emotions and thoughts that Snow was trying her best to decipher.  She couldn’t form an opinion yet about whether this was Kate’s attacker, but she was carefully looking for any signals of guilt.  

           “Well, who the hell is it now?  How am I supposed to have done anything?  When was it?  I bet I have an alibi, I’m not alone all that much and I work a lot.  I am not even dating anyone, let alone doing anything that could fuck with my probation.  So who the hell is this woman picking my picture out?”  Craig turned to face Snow and asked her pointedly, purposefully avoiding eye contact with the more frightening detective in the back of the room who had scared him earlier in an angry outburst.  

           “Where were you two Sundays ago?  All evening.” Snow replied, careful about how much information she revealed.  

           “Sit down, McDermott.”  McCraig said firmly from the back of the room where he continued to loom, saying just enough to remind the suspect that he was there but not enough to overtake the interrogation.  Snow’s bedside manner was easily better than McCraig’s and they tended to let her play the good cop as often as possible.  

           Craig sheepishly looked towards him and then decided that it would be a good idea to follow his instructions.  He sat down across from Detective Snow and sighed.

           “Two Sundays ago?  Damn, I don’t know.  Let me think.”  He looked up at the ceiling and fiddled with his thumbs on top of the table.  

           “I think I was working.  I work every other weekend and I didn’t work last.  So yeah, I was working at the Java Jolt, it’s a coffee shop.  My parole officer knows about it and I do good work there.  It’s not much but I’m good at it and making some money to take care of myself.  That can’t be a crime now, can it?”  Craig taunted the officers.  

           “What time did you leave work?” Snow countered, not feeding into his remarks for even a moment.  

           “I don’t know.  The normal, ten o’clock probably?  I wasn’t keeping track, I mean I have an eleven o’clock curfew on work days so I know I was home before then.  It’s not like I was writing it down though, I didn’t know I would need a fucking alibi because I didn’t fucking do anything to anybody.”  Craig said, getting irritated again with his voice escalating in volume.  

           “Who saw you come home?  Who saw you leave work?”  Snow continued, not missing a beat.

           “My boss saw me leave work and I live with my cousin, Jimmy.  He works with me but he wasn’t working that night.  I don’t know if he saw me that night.  We don’t like hang out or anything.  I probably just made some food and went to my room, played video games and went to bed.” Craig replied.  Snow pushed a pad of paper and a pencil towards Craig across the metal table.

           “I’m going to need everyone’s names and numbers.”  She told him and then stood up from the table and left the room.  McCraig followed her, staring menacingly at Craig the entire time as he picked up the pencil and began writing on the paper.    

           The detectives watched him finish writing the information down through the one way window, carefully watching his facial expressions as he looked angrily around the room and then back at his paper.  

           “You think he is telling the truth?” Snow asked her partner, her arms folded across her chest as she continued to stare through the window.