The Whisper Box (8 page)

When he got back in the house he stopped for a minute to make sure that he had not awakened anyone. When he realized everyone was still asleep, he headed down to his office and began the fifteen-minute process to sign Johnny Martin up for Internet service and sign him on. He was now on the Internet as Johnny Martin. The computer was a laptop and could not be traced to one particular location. He got into the Republican chat room and named himself JohnnyM80 because Republican Stud had been discovered. Next, he found LadiesFirst. He had to figure out a way to approach her, knowing she would be on guard. He could not tell her his real identity. Obviously her computer was being watched also. He sat there staring at the computer for about fifteen minutes, trying to figure out a way to approach her before she disconnected from the Internet.

6

Mac was worried and excited at the same time. He had no idea who was on his trail or
if
they were on his trail. He drove around town, getting on the highway, then off, changing lanes somewhat recklessly with the intent of losing anyone who may be following him. When he felt convinced that there was no one on his trail he headed to his home base, his office.

He awoke Laura in the break-room the moment he returned, and then went with her to his office. They began opening the manila envelopes like children opening their presents on Christmas morning. There was no method to the madness. Videotapes and audiotapes covered his desk. They were all clearly marked with dates, and two word notes, such as “Other Woman” or “Admits Murder." Mac was salivating. Laura knelt on the floor next to Mac. She looked like she had been through a war. In a way, she literally had the pressure of the world on her shoulders. Not wanting to add to her worries, he did not tell her about the scuffle in her apartment. He told her about the problem getting up the stairwell, which explained all the bruises and stained, ripped clothes.

“OK,” he said, “make sense of all this for me. I'm patient. Start at the beginning and take me right up to today.”

Laura started flipping through notes and speaking. “All right,” she said reaching for a tape. “This is the first time I documented anything. This was the day after the incident I told you about before. Considering what I had seen, I knew I had to video or, at least, audiotape as much as possible. I had bought one of those small little silver audiocassette recorders that fit in my palm. It was great. The video recording was harder but I knew that I had to do it somehow, so I put an eight hundred-dollar recorder on my credit card. I needed one that was silent and small and finally chose the top of the line Toshiba. That video recorder fit inside my purse if you can believe it. I felt like I needed to act quickly because, at the time, we were almost about to go to war, yet he was doing this in his office. Honestly, it made me angry.”

Mac took the tape she was holding and almost ran to his cassette player. He had a very extensive sound system and was very proud of it. It was too expensive for what he needed for his practice, but it was paying for itself right now. First he had to rewind the tape, which took about two minutes, but seemed like two hours. When the tape finally stopped, Mac almost immediately pressed the “Play” button.

The sound was very muffled. At first he could not make out any of the muffled voices and was somewhat let down. He was about to tell Laura that she had wasted his time. After all, he almost died tonight to help her and the quality of this tape made it useless. Just as he was about to mention something to her, she held her index finger up, and then pointed at the stereo. She was motioning for Mac to keep his mouth shut. Obviously the good part was about to come up.

Suddenly the muffled voices cleared up enough for him to make out a few sentences,

“Forget it. Right now we have to conduct business. You have Neil killed. Talk to Anderson. He's the best we have. He'll take care of it quickly. Tell him there is zero room for screw-ups and this has to be done within the week. When you're done you come back here, then we'll take care of the pleasure part. Bring your friend. That's the last time I'm going to tell you.”

Mac had to keep telling himself that he was awake and that this was all real. The sound on the tape became muffled again. Obviously the person doing the recording was moving with the recorder. He pictured Laura backing out of her secret spot. Laura told him that it was all that could be heard on that tape.

Mac thought before he spoke. “This bastard is having sex with some woman and obviously some friend and, all the while, having people killed. Do I understand correctly so far?”

Laura raised her eyebrows and whispered, “Yup, there's more. Here's the next tape.”

Mac grabbed it with the same intensity as the first. Thankfully, this tape was rewound. He inserted it in the cassette player and pressed “Play.” More muffled sounds and voices filled his speakers, but then he heard faint moaning with unclear whispering. He sat there in shock. After about two minutes of moaning the voices broke in. “Put your clothes on, quick. You are both beautiful girls, the last thing I need is someone walking in here seeing my girlfriend and her friend in their panties,” said Farnsworth.

The second mystery woman's voice broke in. She had a Southern drawl, which made it easy to distinguish between girls.

“When do I get my job, sir?” she asked.

“You'll get your job in due time baby. Be patient, there is a time and place for everything. Meanwhile, here is your money.
Do not
deposit this into your account. Now let's talk business. Neil was disposed of yesterday. With that little problem eliminated we should have clear sailing from here. Go to Anderson after you leave here and tell him we need to have a boat in Miami tomorrow morning by five o'clock. When they get to the same dock as last time, they will receive instructions as to where to sail and what to pick up. The guy at the dock will have the money for the purchase and his money as well. This is important. Make sure Anderson knows that he can be disposed of as quickly as Neil and that he better not screw this up.”

The President's girlfriend broke in, “Understood. Should we call you after, or not?”

Farnsworth shot back, “You do not call me, I trust you will not screw it up. Get out of here.”

Again, in shock, Mac stopped the tape and looked at Laura.

“Who is Neil?” he asked.

Laura explained that Neil, from what she gathered, was a reporter from the Washington Post. The next morning Neil Becker was found dead in his car on the side of a small highway about two hours outside of Washington. There was no sign of foul play and no reason for his travels to this far off highway. The death was listed as an Unsolved Mystery. Laura explained that she thought he was snooping a little too close and unaware that he was very close to stumbling onto the biggest news story in the history of our country. Farnsworth had to quiet him before he got any further.

Again, Mac inquired, “So is our President responsible for drugs or something coming into the country also? I mean, what else do you pick up on secret boats with a bunch of money?”

Laura explained that there are more tapes with references to dollar amounts, specific drugs, and more names. Mac had known it would be a long night, but he did not know it would be this interesting.

They spent the entire night going through tapes and videos. The videos were more graphic than he anticipated. There were actual phone calls to Anderson regarding the disappearance of Neil and how the media was treating the story. There were orders to pay off police officers to cover Neil Becker's death. Another videotape actually contained footage of the President and the Southern girl having sex.

Mac knew this story had to break immediately. He was contemplating whom to call. Obviously, he had to have trustworthy and powerful protection. Who could be trusted? If the police had been paid off, who could guarantee their safety? There were no police officers' names mentioned on the tapes so Mac had no idea who to trust at this point. One wrong move could spell death. He wondered if he should call the local television station and help some of his friends out there that could use the break, or was this not the time for favors? Could he get in touch with Grant Winchester at CNN? Grant would love this, it would cap off his career. Mac loved Grant Winchester, as did most other Americans.

A thought hit Mac almost immediately. How could he call someone? What if his phones were tapped? He decided his phones could not be tapped yet. If the guys in Laura's apartment had no idea who he was, then they would not know to tap his phones. As Laura and Mac were discussing a strategy, the phone rang. Laura and Mac exchanged a troubled glance. It was five thirty in the morning, who would be calling now? Nervously, Mac picked up the phone. It was his wife. He motioned to Laura that everything was OK. Her widened eyes relaxed and she began to breath again. Mac explained to his crying wife that everything was going to be OK. He told her that, at this point, this was all he could tell her. He promised her that they would be anywhere in the world that she wanted to be soon and that her parents could come if they wanted. One of the hardest things he had ever had to do was to hang up that phone.

Mac told Laura how his wife was taking the whole thing, that she was very frustrated because of the secrecy. She must have been scared for her husband's life. Just as Mac was telling Laura that she would probably call five more times today, the phone rang again.

Mac shook his head and said, “Here we go again.”

He picked up the phone. “Yes dear,” he said.

The caller replied, “Yes dear? Let me tell you something
dear
, you are in the middle of a huge fuckin' storm.”

Mac looked helplessly at Laura.

The voice continued, “I don't know what you think you pulled off last night, but this just become personal. We're coming to your office. You can't run because we'll catch you. You can't go to the police, because we own them. You can't go to the media, because we own them too. If you cooperate, we might let you kiss your kids good-bye before we cut your fuckin' throat out.”

The line went dead. Mac bolted for the tapes and the envelopes. Laura had watched Mac's expression change from complacent to shock.

“What's wrong Mac? Who was that? What just happened?” she pleaded.

Mac thought brutal honesty was best approach at this point, “They're coming to kill us, Laura. Grab as much shit as you can and follow me!”

They managed to grab everything in less than thirty seconds, and then Mac led her to the back door. They hopped in the banged up Corvette and sped out of the parking lot. Mac was hyperventilating and shaking feverishly.

Laura just repeated over and over, “Please. Please, no.”

Mac had his Corvette up to one hundred miles per hour when he realized that he did not want to attract any attention. He got on the entrance ramp to I - 95 and slowed down to about seventy miles per hour. They just drove.

Every five minutes, one of them would ask the same question. “What are we going to do?”

After an hour of driving, Laura finally fell asleep.

There was definitely no one following them. Mac just continued to head south.

He felt like a bleeding man swimming in shark infested waters. What made it worse was that he could not actually see what was swimming below.

Just then, the Corvette jolted to the right. Laura woke up and screamed. Mac looked in his rear view mirror and saw a red Corvette right behind them and a black Ford pickup far off in the distance. The red Corvette smashed into them again. Mac was shaking with anger now, his pride and joy was a crushed, dented wreck. Oh well, he thought, as he floored the gas pedal. In seconds they were traveling over one hundred and twenty five miles per hour. Laura continued to scream and Mac fully understood why. These people were good at what they did. They got a Corvette to keep up with his Corvette. He could not outrun it.

As Mac was concentrating on driving faster than his newfound enemy, he was blasted into another level of fear. He heard shots clearly ring out. He could actually see bits of metal flying past his window. The small rear window was shattered with a bullet. Mac heard the window pop. Laura was screaming as loud as ever now. Mac, without thinking, screamed back at her, demanding her to stop. He could hear bullets flying off the edges of where the small rear window had been. He looked in his rear view mirror and saw the hit men pulling up to the driver's side of his car. The passenger was hanging out of the window shooting at them with a sawed-off shotgun. Laura had finally stopped screaming. Mac turned to her to tell her to look out for exit signs. If they came to a small town, he would pull off. He felt certain the hit men would not follow him into a small town and create such a disturbance.

As he turned to Laura he noticed that his right shoulder was drenched in blood. Immediately, he grabbed at his shoulder, assuming he had been hit. Then he realized he was fine and reluctantly looked up at Laura. The entire left side of her head was almost gone. She probably had not felt a thing. Mac knew he was next. As a child Mac was easily rattled, the doctors told his parents to stop babying him so much. The slightest things had made him nervous and uncomfortable, but he had outgrown it. Now, twenty years later, he felt it again, only magnified beyond anything he could have imagined. He was overwhelmed.

Once again, the red Corvette hit the right rear of his Corvette. He felt his car vibrating intensely. He could not negotiate the steering wheel so the direction the car was headed was now out of his hands. He felt the car spin once, and then he lost control. Suddenly, the car was airborne and spinning uncontrollably. This was not surprising; he was driving at speeds exceeding one hundred and twenty five miles per hour when the tire was pierced by a bullet. He saw a tree, then the ground and, after his head smashed into the steering wheel, another tree. He was losing consciousness. When the car finally landed, it skidded in circles, upside down, and downhill, still traveling at a high rate of speed. Finally, the car stopped, when it slammed into a concrete pillar. Mac heard a loud popping sound, followed by a crack, as his left shoulder hit the driver's side door. He knew instantly that it was broken.