Termination Man: a novel (34 page)

McKnight raised his palms in a hands-off gesture. “I’m merely trying to make you aware that we face an uphill battle here, Ms. Chalmers. I would be doing you and your daughter a disservice if I didn't tell you that there are political considerations. At the end of the day, though, your daughter’s testimony—combined with your own—will count for a lot. We don't have an airtight case, but we will have a case. You can bet that Shawn Myers is squirming right now. If he’s convicted, he faces jail time, and the end of a very promising corporate career.” 

It was dark by the time Alyssa arrived home from school. The street on which she and Donna lived was older and comfortably residential, a working class neighborhood that
clung to respectability even th
ough it had seen better days. And the house was within easy walking distance of her school.

She had stayed late for a meeting of the French club. The club was planning a trip to Paris next summer. The mere thought of Paris conjured up a panoply of mental images, all of them inviting. She saw herself riding up the elevator of the Eiffel Tower, walking along the Seine at dusk, and having lunch in one of the open-air cafes for which Paris was so famous. And of course there would be the opportunity to practice the French that she had learned in nearly two full years of study. Since beginning French her freshman year, she had managed to acquire a solid working knowledge of the language. She was by no means fluent—not yet—but she had earned an A in French every single quarter.

Then she came down to earth:
Whom was she kidding
?
Given her mother’s finances, she knew that any notion of going to France in June was probably a vain hope. But then she remembered that old saying:
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
She was good about saving her money; it might be possible to raise the money needed for a summer trip to Paris if she picked up an extra job somewhere.

She now had time for such a job. She would not be helping her mother clean the offices of UP&S any longer—not after Shawn Myers had attacked her. Donna had informed her that she would need to give an official statement to the county prosecutor. That was sure to be nerve-wracking. She didn't want to tell an adult man she didn't know about how she had been groped by another adult man whom she barely knew.

Think of Paris
, she thought.
Just think about Paris.
Someday you might get there.

She began the walk up her driveway, pretending—half fancifully—that she was walking toward the entranceway of
le musée du Louvre
.
The museum had originally been a palace that belonged to the French monarchy. During the French Revolution the majestic, imposing structure had been transformed into a museum, which had been its function ever since.

She imagined herself passing through the glass pyramid that dominated one section of the museum’s vast cobblestone plaza. The museum—and the pyramid—had been prominently featured in
The Da Vinci Code
.

These were her thoughts as she used her key to let herself into the empty house. Her mother was cleaning the UP&S plant tonight, and wouldn't be home until much later.
I hope Shawn
Myers
doesn't make trouble for her
, she thought. But maybe Shawn Myers was too wrapped up in troubles of his own. Being questioned by the police had to be scary—even if you were a powerful man like Shawn Myers, who had far more money than her mother ever would.

The interior of the house was dark. There was a large floor lamp by the door—an ancient contraption that had belonged to her grandmother. It held four 60-watt light bulbs. The floor lamp was activated by the light switch just inside the front door.

Alyssa flipped the switch. However, the expected flood of light did not appear.

This was odd. She flipped the switch several more times. Nothing.

The front drapes were drawn; but the streetlamp in front of the house cast enough light through the gauzy material to enable her to discern basic shapes and shadows in the living room. She fumbled around until she found the little knob on the floor lamp. She turned the knob. No light. Then she tried the wall switch again. Still nothing.

“I unplugged the lamp,” a voice said. 

She heard a click, and a little wedge of light cut the darkness from the far side of the living room. There in the living room of her mother’s house, Shawn Myers was sitting in the big recliner that faced the television set. The little flashlight that he held in his lap was pointed upward, so that its beam of light formed an inverted wedge, illuminating his face. Shawn was smiling at her. His face made her think of a Halloween jack-o-lantern.

“Hello, Alyssa,” he said. “I hope you had a pleasant day at school.”

Alyssa felt as if her legs had turned to water. It was one thing to encounter him at the UP&S plant—even at her school, for that matter. To find him waiting for her in her own living room was another matter. Alyssa’s first impulse to turn around and run back out the front door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Shawn said, as she reached for the doorknob. “Look at this. Here. Do you know what this is?”

Shawn momentarily shifted the light so that she could take a look at the metallic object in his hand. It was a pistol of some sort.

“I’m going to assume that you aren’t particularly knowledgeable about guns,” he elaborated. “This is a Smith & Wesson 9 mm semiautomatic. I brought it along just in case your mother was to show up unexpectedly. I haven’t forgotten about her hitting me with that mop handle, you know. I didn’t think I would need to use the gun on you. But if you’re going to be uncooperative—”

He raised the pistol and pointed it directly at her. She could see its black muzzle in the glare of the flashlight. Would he really shoot her, right here in her own living room?

There was no telling what Shawn Myers would do. He was obviously crazy.
Insane
. She couldn’t take the chance. She folded her hands in front of her, feeling herself tremble.
Why had this man come here? What did he want?
Then she considered what he had wanted that night in the hallway at UP&S.

He seemed to be reading her thoughts. “No, I’m not going to rape you. Forget about that.” He waved his hand dismissively, as if the sexual assault had been nothing more than a minor misunderstanding. Then he looked at her as a man might look at something disgusting that he had just stepped in. “To tell you the truth, you’ve lost your appeal for me. You’ve been an awful lot of trouble. A lot more trouble than you’re worth.”

Alyssa felt a momentary surge of relief. At least this man was not going to finish the assault that her mother had interrupted.

“But,” he said. “That doesn't mean that you’re off the hook. This matter with the police: You and your bitchy mother have landed me in a heap of trouble, with your little tattletale routine. I’m a busy man, Alyssa. I don't have time for this sort of crap. That means that you have to change your story.”

Of course. Now she saw what he wanted. This man
was
in a lot of trouble. According to her mother, the county prosecutor, Mr. McKnight, had said as much. Alyssa also knew that the sexual assault charges could cause him a great deal of embarrassment, even though he had somehow managed to keep the matter mostly quiet so far.

“I can be a bad person when I want to be—when I need to be. I did something really bad once.” He paused for a moment, as if deciding whether or not to reveal more details about this. Finally, he shook his head. “No. You don’t need to know exactly what that was. And maybe it would be better to let you use your imagination, anyway.”

This apparently struck him as funny. He let out a low, nervous little laugh. Alyssa could feel gooseflesh rising on her arms.

“Are you scared yet?” he asked.

“Yes,” Alyssa answered truthfully. Lying would have been beyond her.

Shawn considered this. “That’s good. Very good, in fact. Here’s what you need to get through your head: If you don’t change your story, I’ll kill you. But first I’m going to rape you. And before that, I’m going to rape and kill your mother.”

He said all of this very matter-of-factly, as if he were relating tasks that he had performed at the office earlier in the day.

“You tell that prosecutor,” he went on. “You tell him that I never sexually assaulted you. You tell him that it was a misunderstanding. I’ll let you figure out the details. You’re a smart girl. You’ll be able to make it work. I have confidence in you, Alyssa.”

He turned off the flashlight, and the room plunged into total darkness again.

Abruptly, Shawn stood up from the chair. Before she could react, he was on top of her—towering over her. He had not been this close since the night when he had assaulted her.

Only now she was alone with him. Her mother would not appear from nowhere with a makeshift weapon. Nor could she count on rescue from the other man. The man who had slammed Shawn up against the wall that night.

He was so close that she could take in his scent, a combination of rancid sweat, men’s cologne, and of course, some sort of liquor.
Was it beer? Or whiskey?
She didn’t know.

And there was something else in that swirl of odors of well: the smell of raw masculine desire. He had said that he no longer desired her; but this had been a lie, she knew. A man’s empty display of bravado.

She wanted to run—wanted to punch him in the groin. She wanted to scream. But she couldn’t make her body follow any of the commands inside her head.

He bent down and kissed her on the forehead. There was something about the gesture that was almost courtly.

“Remember,” he said. “First your mother, and then you.”

Then he turned and walked away from her. She closed her eyes and stood there, trying to catch her breath. Her heart seemed to be beating impossibly fast. At any second, it might explode outward through her chest.

She could hear Shawn making his way through the darkened house. She heard his footsteps in the kitchen. Then the sound of a doorknob turning, the back door being opened.

So that was how he had gotten in.
Perhaps he had picked the lock. Or maybe he had found the key that her mother kept beneath the flowerpot on the back porch. Alyssa recalled that Donna had placed the spare key there as a backup, after she had forgotten to take her key to school one day. Or maybe Shawn had simply found the backdoor unlocked; every once in while, either she or her mother forgot to lock it. These were all possibilities.

She stood there in the living room for quite a while, listening to the sounds of the empty house. Somewhere above her, a piece of lumber, perhaps one of the house’s main support beams, shifted and settled. This nearly caused her to cry aloud. She kept expecting to the hear the back door open again, kept expecting to hear Shawn’s footsteps on the kitchen floor. Then he would announce that he had changed his mind—that tonight would be as good a time as any to rape and kill her.

But Shawn did not return. After a long while—she didn’t know if this was a half hour or an hour—she was able to summon the composure to move from the spot where he had left her standing.

Alyssa was sitting in Tim McKnight’s office with her mother when she derailed the criminal proceedings—just as Shawn had ordered her to do.

She didn’t exactly change her story. That was impossible, given what her mother had witnessed. She merely indicated that she didn't want to testify—wouldn’t testify, in fact.

“What are you saying?” Donna asked, aghast, when Alyssa dropped this bombshell.

As expected, her mother received the news like a slap in the face. Alyssa knew, of course, that her own timing could not have been worse. She should have spoken with Donna before this meeting, in private, without the county prosecutor for an audience.

But she had been procrastinating—wavering. She knew that her mother was dead-set on moving the legal process forward. She also knew that Shawn Myers would kill them both if she went along with it.

“So you’re saying that I attacked our largest customer by mistake?” Donna went on. “Is that what you’re saying?”

Alyssa could see the color rising in her mother’s cheeks. Now the interrogation would follow. If only her mother would let this go. She had no idea that both of their lives were in danger. She had no idea that this was the only way she could possibly save them.

Alyssa had briefly contemplated telling her mother about Shawn’s visit. She had just as quickly decided that this would only make certain that Shawn would carry out the worst of his threats. She couldn't tell Donna the whole truth. Given her mother’s volatile temper, that news would send her off the deep end. She would take some precipitous step that would only get her killed. Her mother was impetuous. She always wanted to “take the bull by the horns,” didn’t she? Well, that wouldn’t work with a crazy man like Shawn Myers.

Donna would immediately call the police, and then she would confront Shawn Myers. Probably take after him with the mop handle again. Shawn would deny that he had had ever been in the house. She knew that he would have been clever enough to cover his tracks, to leave no fingerprints.