Deadly News: A Thriller (16 page)

Despite her earlier promise, she left the door unguarded, though a few minutes later as Bill was finishing up some paperwork he saw another officer dragging a chair toward the door and plopping down into it.

Later that night, Bill found out that a store had in fact been robbed. The strange thing was no money was taken, and no one else was injured. The robber reportedly left after Randall did.

The other witnesses confirmed that a single shot was fired, but no bullet was found.

The perpetrator was still at large.

Bill told his wife about it when he got home, waking her up several hours earlier than she normally would be getting up at.

She nodded through his story. It was interesting, but she hadn’t had her morning coffee and Dexedrine cocktail, and the combination of drowsiness and her ADHD made it hard to pay attention.

Bill slept until noon the next day—the same day, really, though it never seemed it to him—when his alarm clock wrenched him into the land of wakefulness.

He had just relieved himself when a knock came at the door, followed by the doorbell. “Babe?” he called.

No answer.

She was probably out. “Coming!” He washed his hands and proceeded down the steps.

The knock came again. More like a banging.

If it was that damn UPS guy— How many times did he have to tell him to stop banging before he got with the program and knocked like a civilized person instead of like his house was on fire?

He pulled open the door ready to give the kid an earful, but while it was a delivery person, it wasn’t UPS.

“Hi,” a young woman said. The heat from outside blasted into the air-conditioned foyer. It was hard to tell who she worked for, since there was so little of her uniform. When did shorts get so short? he wondered. Her button up shirt was unbuttoned all the way down, but tied above her navel, which prevented the flaps from blowing apart, and revealing what was underneath, which Bill couldn’t tell if would be bra or bare breasts.

“Bill Williams?” She held out a digital signature pad. “Sign please.”

Bill signed, then took a large envelope from her.

“Have a nice day.”

Bill stood in the doorway and watched her go, shaking his head. Her shorts were pulled up into her buttocks, like she tried to turn them into a thong.

He cringed at the thought and the imaginary pain it caused between his legs, shut the door, wondered the kind of attention that that woman got from men, and thanked God his daughter was gay. She’d gone through her rebellious faze, but bringing home other girls didn’t have the same punch-to-the-gut effect that boys would have had. And by the time she was bringing anyone home, his sons were grown and off to college. Which meant he would have had to be the one with the shotgun, and he was a doctor for Christ’s sake.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, which Matty would have set to brew just before she left. Judging by the taste, she hadn’t left too long ago.

He sat on a breakfast stool and turned on the TV. It was tuned to some movie channel, so he flipped through the stations until he found CNN.

This done, he turned his attention to the envelope in front of him. It was from work.

He sighed as he tore it open. What now, he wondered. Award? Or reprimand.

Something wrapped in cloth fell to the counter when he upended the envelope. He stuck his fingers in and pulled out a sheet of paper:

Bill frowned as he read. Had that father been on drugs after all? He looked toward the thing wrapped in cloth, and his stomach tightened. It was stained red.

He took a deep breath, then briefly closed his eyes. He pulled a pen from the smiling cow jar to his right—the blank shopping pad subconsciously confirming Matilda had gone grocery shopping—and used this to unfold the cloth.

Something bloody was inside, but it didn’t trigger instant emotion in Bill. He leaned in, then back, trying to get the thing in focus. It was a body part, but not human. No, two parts, stuck together. A heart—chicken?—and what looked to be a wing-part.

“The hell?” Bill whispered.

Suddenly he stood and walked quickly to his front door. Looking out the small window set to the side of the door, he saw an empty street. The woman and her van were gone. Had it been a van? He tried to recall exactly what kind of vehicle he’d seen.

It didn’t work. He called information and got the nonemergency number to the police.

“Yes, this is Dr Bill Williams. I was on duty last night when a man came into the hospital, he had been involved in a robbery.” Bill sighed. “I’m not looking for information. I’m trying to give it to you. I just received a package that I think may be related to this.

“Yes.

“Yes, that’s the address.

“Bill Williams

“Very well.” Bill stared at the objects as he waited for the dispatcher to come back on the line.

A few minutes later, the man did, and informed Bill an officer would be by within an hour.

An hour later, another loud knock on the door.

It was a different officer than the one from the night before. A large man in his forties or early fifties. His nametag said
Freeman
, and his face said
I will crush you
.

When Bill brought him into the kitchen, the first thing he asked after reading the letter without picking it up was, “Did you touch it?”

“Just the envelope and the letter.”

The officer glared at him, as if by doing so it would change Bill’s answer.

“It appeared to be from my work. I’m a doctor, not a crime fighter.”

The officer sighed deeply, then spoke into his radio. He returned his attention to Bill. “We’ll see what we can get.”

“You think it’s related then?”

“Unless you have a mistress with a strange way of showing her affection.”

“I don’t have a mistress.”

The officer waved this away in a way that said, Sure you don’t.

Nonetheless, Bill offered him coffee. And he couldn’t resist offering a doughnut.

The officer accepted both. If he noticed the humor, he didn’t show it. He half-heartedly asked Bill questions as he ate and took sips from the steaming mug, but rarely wrote anything down.

Soon more people arrived with cameras and other equipment, and Bill was ushered out of his own kitchen. He decided to wait outside until they were done, maybe snag one of his nosey neighbors before they could scurry back inside.

He almost caught Betty, a neighbor who made anyone’s—especially her neighbors’—business her own, but she pretended not to hear him and made it inside before he could cross the street.

With the huge headphones she wore, she had a probable excuse. Though, the long cord dangling freely and scraping the ground as she hurried in, and her general rush, were dead giveaways that not all was as it seemed.

Rupert Freel, another of Bill’s neighbors, wasn’t as quick, and seemed amenable enough to conversation when he realized he’d been caught. He was about Bill’s age, and given the neighborhood, also Bill’s demographic, so Bill got along better with him than some other neighbors he wouldn’t mention.

Bill told him about the night before when he asked what the police were doing.

When Rupert found out it wasn’t anything domestic or truly grisly, he lost interest, and the topic shifted to the delivery woman. He was much more interested in this, and kept asking for more details, and clarification: “Roughly, eh, eh, as a percent, how much was exposed? Like, full butt cheeks, just the bottom curve?” He made a rounding gesture in the air to illustrate this bit of anatomy. Seeing Bill’s look, perhaps remembering Bill had a daughter of his own, he quickly added, “That’s how they determine these things, you know, in schools and such. Break out the measuring tape!” He chuckled and elbowed Bill.

Bill smiled and nodded.

His memory of the delivery woman now refreshed and incredibly vivid, he went back to his house to see if he could find an officer to describe her to. He would have remembered if she had ever delivered anything before, so maybe it was something.

Officer Freeman didn’t seem to think so, judging by the expression he wore as he took Bill’s description of her. “And this was what she was actually wearing?”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at his pad, which had indecipherable blotches of blue ink spotting it. “You had just woken up, maybe your mind exaggerated some things?”

“No.”

The officer stared at Bill for an uncomfortable moment. Then he flipped shut his pad. “Okay. Well if anything else happens, if a stripper or a nudist visits, be sure to let us know.” Bill tried to say something, but the officer spoke over him, “In the meantime, we’ll see if your nymph actually works for DHS or is an imposter.” He smiled. “Have a nice day.” He left Bill, who was somewhat shocked, standing in his doorway. Bill wasn’t used to being on this side of a police investigation. He was always before on the sidelines, in the periphery, just scenery, environment, someone to avoid bumping in case he was doing something critical, or dangerous, someone to ask the occasional medical question, but otherwise unnoticed.

Luckily for the young techs, who had been traipsing around his house, getting dust on things and taking photos, they were gone by the time his wife got home. “Bill! You wore your shoes inside again.”

“Not me,” Bill called from the living room. He quickly changed the channel, fingers still stained with ink the techs had gotten everywhere as they were taking his prints, and then turned the set off.

She walked into the room, a grocery bag on her arm. She leaned down and kissed him.

“Need help?” he asked, standing.

“Just don’t wear your shoes inside.”

He headed to the door. “It was the police. I’ll tell you once I get the groceries in.” Slipping his shoes on, he watched the heat waver up from the asphalt. “It’s a hot one.”

He ended up telling her while he sweated and unloaded the groceries. She paced him, hurling questions as he carried bags from her SUV to the foray, where he dutifully deshoed, then proceeded to the kitchen and placed the bags on a counter that was rapidly disappearing under the bombardment. “Planning for the zombie apocalypse?” he asked, a bag with several cans clinking as he set it down on the counter.

“I told you you shouldn’t be watching that show. You already talk in your sleep, I don’t need you having nightmares.”

He reached the doorway and slipped into his shoes. He could feel the heel of his socks thinning from taking them on and off so many times. He once again reminded himself to buy sandals.

“If I have nightmares, it won’t be from a television show.”

“The little girl was all right, though?”

“Yes, babe, she was fine.”

“That just doesn’t make sense.”

“It is strange.” He hefted the final bag from the rear of the SUV, and slammed shut the hatch. He smiled at his wife. “Thanks for all the help, dear.”

Her mouth formed an O. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

He kissed her cheek as he walked by.

“Lock the door,” he said once inside.

“Already done. You have me all worked up now.”

“Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do about that.” He grinned at her.

The next day, the police informed Bill that there were no fingerprints other than his own on the envelope. This itself was odd, since there should have been the delivery girl’s.

They apparently didn’t think much of it though, and said to let them know if anything else happened. The mention of a store in the letter wasn’t enough for them, but at least they wanted him to notify them if something else happened.

Bill was off today, and so spent the rest of his free time searching for references to the robbery. There was nothing in the newspaper, but given when it happened, he hadn’t really expected there to be. He did find a short article about it on the newspaper’s website, but it was cursory. It didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.

That night, as he and Matilda were settling in to watch television—first some show she wanted to watch, then his zombie show, which Bill knew she secretly enjoyed as well—the phone rang.

“Hello William.”

“Hello.” Bill waited, but the caller said nothing. “May I ask who’s calling?”

“Of course.” Pause. “This is your friend, your closest acquaintance.” The voice sounded like a man’s, though it was high, and almost could have belonged to a woman. It sounded slightly strained. As if the man’s natural voice wasn’t quite so high.

“Who is this?”

“Oh, Willy, you’re so silly. Do you want to listen to me, or do you want to play twenty questions?” Laugh. “I could do either. I have all the time in the world.” He drew out ‘all’.

“You sent me that letter.”

“My, what a great detective. And here I thought you were a doctor.” His voice grew thoughtful. “They both do start with D.”

“Why did you hurt that little girl?”

“Why William, whatever are you speaking of? Hurt a little girl? I would never. No, William, this is about you. What did you think of your secret lover’s letter? Was it everything you hoped for?”

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but it’s sick.” Bad move, Bill thought. He shouldn’t provoke. Matilda was now by his side, staring a question at him. He scribbled ‘Guy I told you about,’ on the pad they used for shopping lists, though he thought she probably already guessed that by now.

“A game. I like that. Sure, Billy, let’s play a game. The prize is your life if you win.” A laugh. “And if you lose, it’s the same!”

“I’m not playing any game. Why did you contact me?”

“Simple. I have something I want.”

“What?”

“No. Who.”

Bill almost said ‘what’ again, but waited for the caller to elaborate instead.

“Now you are getting the hang of…”

“Hello?”

“Oh do not worry, I’ve not left you. So here is what we will you. You have something you want, and I have something I want. But how can any of us truly know what it is we want in this world? So I propose a trade. I proclaim an exchange. We will transfer these things we know, and all will be right with our little games.”