Termination Man: a novel (38 page)

“No, Officer Owen,” Bruner said. “Shut the door. I can handle this. We’re finishing up.”

“I—”

“Please leave, Officer Owen.”

The chief took a deep breath. The interruption had backed us both down a bit, though the police chief and I were still staring each other down. Our faces were less than a foot apart.

I sat back down in the little visitor’s chair. I had almost crossed a fatally dangerous line a moment ago. Then I decided to make one last attempt. “I believe that Shawn Myers is a dangerous man,” I said quietly. “Or a
potentially
dangerous man, at the very least.”

The chief sat down as well. “And I’ll tell you what I believe. I believe that you are a disgruntled employee of UP&S. By your own admission, you physically assaulted Shawn Myers—”

“Only because he was forcing himself on a fifteen-year-old girl.”

“So you say. But nothing you’ve told me so far establishes that as a fact.”

I pointed to the business cards on the chief’s desk.

“It looks to me like you’ve made up your mind,” I said. “And it looks like Kurt Myers has already beaten me here.”

Chief Bruner didn’t rise to the bait. He eased himself back into his chair and sighed.

“Thank you for stopping by, Mr. Parker. I will make note of your statement today. And let me leave you with a piece of advice in closing: It's never a good idea to assault anyone. Especially if that person happens to be your employer.”

I walked out of Chief Bruner’s office, the reproachful stare of Officer Owen following me to my car. My attempt to make things right had been an utter disaster. Not only had I failed to help Donna and her daughter—I had also made an enemy here in town. Even worse, I had taken tangible steps to undermine my client.
Surely my obligation to speak on the girl’s behalf outweighed my obligations to the TP Automotive management team. But I doubted that any of them—most of all Kurt and Shawn Myers—would see it that way.

I started my car—not the Lexus, but the Camry that I had rented for my undercover identity. This could go one of two ways from here: Dave Bruner might be the sort of public official who merely wanted to avoid conflict. In that case, he would simply file away his notes from our meeting, and do his best to forget that I had ever entered his office. Kurt Myers and the other managers of TP Automotive would never know about my turncoat operation.

On the other hand, Bruner might be the type who would actively try to ingratiate himself with a powerful man like Kurt Myers. If that were the case, then he was probably already calling Kurt Myers to report this treachery from within his own ranks.

I had no way of knowing. And since I had no way of knowing, I had only one choice: I would have to continue my work at UP&S as if the meeting with Chief Bruner had never taken place.

I drove back to the plant and arrived at around 12:45 p.m. This gave me enough time to join Lucy in the cafeteria. She was eating one of her usual salads—typical of the overweight person’s perpetual struggle to shed pounds. When she saw me in the entrance of the cafeteria, she beckoned me over with frantic hurry-up gestures.

Lucy’s best friend at UP&S had been gone only a matter of days. She was still inconsolable about Alan. But something that she had noticed in the “Police Beat” section of the
New Hastings Journal
had brightened her spirits.

It wasn’t much. But it did mention Shawn Myers by name.

December 5:
New Hastings police took Shawn Myers into custody regarding an undisclosed incident that occurred at the United
Press &
St
amping
facility at 2345 Plainview Drive. Myers, 34, is a senior manager at the company.

Police released Myers several hours later. No formal charges were filed.

“Whatever it is,” Lucy said. “I’m glad to see that Shawn Myers has finally stepped over the line, and that someone who can do something about it has noticed.”

“I’m glad, too,” I said honestly. The Myers and TP Automotive might have been able to buy or cajole the New Hastings Police Department into silence; but at least they hadn’t been able to muzzle the town’s only newspaper.

“What do you think the son-of-a-bitch did?” she asked.

I shrugged, almost tempted to tell Lucy what I knew about Shawn’s unwholesome interest in the cleaning woman’s daughter. I could easily imagine how much Lucy would enjoy learning about the dark side of the boss she so despised. But, of course, that was out of the question.

This little turn of events was what a dramatist would call a
deus ex machina
; and it could possibly serve to pull my chestnuts out of the fire. When a person is distracted by large problems, he tends to overlook the smaller ones. I hoped that this new bout of trouble would deflect any suspicions that Kurt Myers had developed about me. With a bit of luck, I might yet be able to complete this job without becoming further enmeshed in the sordid misconduct of Shawn Myers.

“What do you think he did?” Lucy repeated.

“How would I know?” I said.

It was a few mornings later that I arrived at work to find the note from Donna folded on my desk.

The note was a simple sheet of legal paper, folded once in the middle and placed in the center of the desk, where she could be sure that I would not miss it.

Having spent years in the workplace as an undercover consultant, and a few years before that as a regular employee, I’d learned that first-thing-in-the-morning notes on your desk are usually harbingers of bad things to come.

“
Thanks for everything you’ve done
,” the note read. There was no signature on the note, but I didn’t need one. In the weeks that I had been at UP&S, I hadn’t done any favors for anyone else, save the management team. And neither Kurt Myers nor Beth Fisk seemed like the types to leave handwritten thank-you notes.

But this was more than just a thank-you note. Beneath the line of thanks was a single sentence suggesting that this was about to get much, much more complicated.

“There’s more to this.
Can we talk?
Please. Call me.”

At the bottom of the page was a cell phone number.

I quickly folded the paper and stuffed it into my breast pocket. Questions were racing through my mind:
Did anyone
see Donna Chalmers
leave the note
?
Even worse: Had anyone else read it?
I knew that no one on the TP Automotive management team would think twice about reading a private message written by the mother of Shawn’s accuser to their undercover consultant.

I considered throwing the note away, and then playing dumb the next time I saw Donna Chalmers. In fact, I could swing things so that I never crossed paths with Donna Chalmers again. Donna never arrived at the factory earlier than 6:30 p.m., and I could easily make myself scarce by then, without seriously jeopardizing my undercover identity.

This thought persisted for about ten seconds. I knew that I would call Donna Chalmers. Somehow she had gotten under my skin during that short meeting in the parking lot, working her way into my head as few people had over the years. Maybe it was my desire to somehow atone for my recent sins against Kevin Lang and Alan Ferguson by helping her teenaged daughter. Maybe it was the fact that while she was not nearly as glamorous or stunning as my current bedmate, I found her contrast with Claire to be refreshing.

There was another possibility as well: Perhaps I was developing an interest in her that had nothing to do with my desire to atone for my many petty sins. It could be a mild case of thirtysomething puppy love, a whimsical crush.

No—on closer examination, I didn’t think it could be that. It was simply that recent developments in my professional and personal life had given me a bad case of self-doubt—something that I had almost never experienced before. That self-doubt had made me open to someone else who was feeling vulnerable.

Still, I knew that I was going to contact her. It wasn’t only that Donna Chalmers had worked her way into my head. It was also the fact that by meeting with Dave Bruner, I had involved myself. I wasn’t a mere bystander anymore.

When I called per the request on her handwritten note, Donna did not answer my call; but she responded with a text message, asking me to meet her at an Applebee’s on the west side of Columbus. We met that night at 5:30 p.m., in between her afternoon cleaning jobs and her work at UP&S.

You might be surprised to learn that Donna was still cleaning the UP&S facility. However, that sort of situation is common in the corporate realm: Two parties often preserve their economic exchange even while they are attempting to sue the pants off each other. In this particular situation, both sides had an interest in maintaining the status quo for the time being. Donna needed the work and the money, plain and simple. TP Automotive did not want to cancel the cleaning contract: Any lawyer worth his salt would be able to paint such a move as a large corporation’s flagrant attempt to cover up its guilt by resorting to economic intimidation.

To my surprise, Donna was not the only one waiting for me in the booth at Applebee’s. Another woman was with her. The woman introduced herself as Tina Shields.

Tina Shields was perhaps in her mid-thirties
, with s
houlder-length auburn hair and a petite figure.
S
he was loosing her youth prematurely.
It wasn't merely
the frown lines that creased her forehead
; she had the overly guarded bearing of a person who has seen too much of the darker sides of the world.
Superficially, she was prettier than Donna, but she lacked the warmth and empathy that gave Donna a softer and more inviting edge. Tina Shields barely accepted my handshake; and my smile elicited only the barest traces of a smile in return. The trademark good looks and charm of Craig Walker had no effect here, it seemed.

“I’ll get right to the point,” Tina Shields said, dispensing with all preliminaries. “I’m here tonight because of Donna’s daughter, Alyssa. I was also sexually assaulted by Shawn Myers.”

“I see,” I said, as delicately as I could.

“This was back in January, 1997. Shawn Myers and I were both students at Ohio State. One night I had the bad luck to attend an off-campus party in which Shawn was already in attendance. Then I had the even worse luck to attract his attention.

“At first I was mildly interested, I’ll admit. I don’t know what he looks like now; but back then Shawn was tall and broad-shouldered, and possessed what you might call a certain boyish good looks. But then he made it pretty clear—within the first five minutes of our conversation—that all he wanted was a sexual act. He was upfront about it. More than upfront—offensive and crude, like I was nothing but an object for his pleasure.”

Tina paused for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Every time I tell this story, it’s like I’m back there, you know?”

“You don’t have to tell us if it’s too uncomfortable,” I offered.

“No, you have to hear it. Just give me a second here.”

Donna and I waited for her to continue.

“I probably could have gotten off without a problem if I had simply feigned shyness and walked away,” Tina resumed. “But I was young and I believed myself to be invincible. No one had ever hurt me before, and I believed that no one ever would. Certainly not a guy who I met at a college party. So I told Shawn off. There were other people around. I humiliated him in front of his friends. That made him angry. He followed me home from the party. Then he beat me up—and—he raped me.”

She gave us some additional details, and a somber tale soon emerged: Whereas Shawn’s attack on Alyssa was interrupted, there was no mop-wielding mother present on the night that Shawn Myers decided to add Tina Shields to his list of conquests.

“I suppose I was lucky, in a way,” Tina Shields said. “Shawn might very well have killed me.”

“Why would you say that?” I asked.

Tina Shields hesitated for a long moment. Then she shook her head. “Never mind. The important thing now is that he won’t be able to victimize Alyssa again. Donna told me about everything you’ve done for her daughter. That was very brave of you.”

“I didn't do much,” I said, recalling my failed meeting with Dave Bruner. “How did you know about all of this?” I asked. “How did you know about Shawn and Alyssa Chalmers?”

“I’m a volunteer counselor for a statewide agency that counsels women who have been the victims of sexual abuse. Donna called me a few days ago. It didn't take long for all of the dots to come together.”

Donna nodded. “The county prosecutor gave me Tina’s card—right after he told me that he wasn't going to press criminal charges against Shawn.”

“If someone had only stopped Shawn Myers years ago,” Tina said. “Stopped him before…” Her voice trailed off.

I watched Tina Shields’s hands on the surface of the table. She was shredding a paper napkin that bore the Applebee’s logo. Tina was reliving her own ordeal with Shawn Myers, no doubt. She had probably relived it everyday since that night in 1997.