Termination Man: a novel (60 page)

Donna spoke firmly this time, determined not to allow the other woman to out-talk her. “Ms. Porter, I’m afraid that I need to think about what is best for my daughter in this situation. I don’t think that it would be good for Alyssa to take part in a public news conference like you’re suggesting. This has been a very traumatic, very humiliating experience for her. And Alyssa is very shy and withdrawn among her peer group. If she were to make a televised statement, then everyone would know about her ordeal.”

“
But that’s precisely what we need, Ms. Chalmers!
We need to air the dirty laundry of TP Automotive in the light of day. That’s what we at Citizens for Corporate Truth do best as activists.”

“And what I do best—or try to do best—as a mother….a single mother, I’ll remind you…is to look out for the interests of my daughter.”

“Right now you can best look after your daughter’s interests by helping us bring down the arrogant leadership of TP Automotive!”

It was as if she and Janet Porter were speaking different languages. Janet Porter’s aim was the public humiliation of a large corporation; and if a single mother and her daughter were collateral casualties in that fight—so be it.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Porter. I’m already late for my next cleaning job. Good day, now.”

Donna pushed her cell phone’s call terminate button.

Janet Porter stared at the screen of her cell phone. Donna Chalmers had terminated their call.
The nerve of her.

Some people didn’t understand. They wanted to reap the benefits of social change, but they weren’t prepared to put themselves and their loved ones on the line. They valued their warm, secure homes, their safety, their petty bourgeois comforts.

Well
, she thought,
if Donna Chalmers won’t cooperate, then we’ll find another way to smoke the leadership of TP Automotive out into the open.

The private investigators employed by Citizens for Corporate Truth had obtained the cell phone numbers of most of the TP Automotive management team. The ones that could not be discovered through electronic means were leaked by subordinates among the company’s headquarters staff. Even the most loyal administrative assistant will consider handing over a list of phone numbers when offered several thousand dollars in cash, no questions asked.

This meant that Janet could call any of the TP Automotive managers assigned to UP&S. But she would have to focus on their weakest link. Kurt Myers, the senior man posted to New Hastings, had the bearing and self-control of an elder statesman. He was wily and skilled in the art of public relations warfare. It would be difficult for her to goad him into making a mistake.

The lawyer, Bernard Chapman, was similarly unflappable. Janet surmised that he was in constant communication with an outside counsel—probably a law firm based in Chicago or Detroit. He was not the ideal target.

The ideal target was, of course, the man who had committed all the crimes in the first place: Shawn Myers. Janet had done her research on Shawn Myers. If he was the man she believed him to be, then it would be easy to provoke him. And once provoked, he would say or do something stupid. Something that would expose him as the criminal he was.

Perhaps she didn’t need the help of Tina Shields or Donna Chalmers after all.

Janet Porter waited until Friday to spring her trap.

Throughout the workweek, she knew, a man like Shawn Myers would be restrained by his environment. The buttoned-down meetings held in plush boardrooms, the summation of complex problems in the sterile language of corporatese—all of these factors tended to blunt both rage and desire. Surrounded by more stable men like his father—and more rational men like the lawyer Bernie Chapman—Shawn Myers would hold back.

Janet knew that most crimes of passion occur on the weekend. During the long, solitary hours between Friday night and Monday morning, men are forced to be alone with their inner demons. This is the time when their baser passions can easily push them over the edge.

She called Shawn on Friday afternoon, shortly after the end of the lunch hour, when he would already be transitioning from the corporate Shawn Myers to the private Shawn Myers.

Shawn was surprised to hear her voice on the other end of the telephone line. That was good; her very presence on the phone seemed to disorient him—just as she had planned. After a brief preliminary statement, to which the stunned and tongue-tied Shawn Myers made little in the way of a response, Janet closed in for the kill.

“You can be sure, Mr. Myers, that Citizens for Corporate Truth is aware of all your crimes.
All of them
. I don’t have the evidence to prove it yet; but I know that you killed Tina Shields. And before you killed her—or had her killed—Tina Shields told me all about your extracurricular activities during your college days.”

Then finally Shawn spoke: “Talk is cheap. Jolly good luck proving any of that. No one is going to believe you.”

“Maybe,” Janet countered. “Maybe no one will take the word of a dead woman who had a substance abuse problem. A woman whose life you destroyed in more ways than one, Mr. Myers. But you’ve been a bad boy, haven’t you, Shawn? You never discarded your old habits. There is another woman who is very much alive, one who can give testimony regarding your more recent crimes. A woman who can tell the world exactly what you are. When we combine her testimony with the information from Tina Shields, it will all paint a very incriminating picture of you, don’t you think?”

Janet then terminated the call, before Shawn Myers had any chance to reply.

She looked down at the now silent phone in her hand, contemplating the implications and ramifications of what had just taken place:

Shawn Myers would now know that Citizens for Corporate Truth was specifically targeting him. And the man would already know that he was guilty. These realizations would bring his sense of desperation to the breaking point.

And when Shawn finally broke, Citizens for Corporate Truth would be there in the aftermath. Janet would not tell the world that she had told it so. She would not be so transparent. She would, however, lay out the evidence that Citizens for Corporate Truth had amply documented. The same evidence that she had alluded to during her interview on Channel 11.

It would all come true. And then no one would ever question the judgment of the organization again. No one would doubt the word of Janet Porter when she told the world that a rogue corporation had to be stopped.

She would appear on national television, and state that she had warned the world—she had warned Shawn’s final victim, in fact. She had exposed the atmosphere of corruption that was rampant at TP Automotive. But no one had taken her or her group seriously enough.

If only everyone had listened
, she would say.

Shawn felt his head grow light, with a combination of fear, confusion, and implacable rage. The Porter woman had terminated the phone call. Shawn checked his cell phone’s call log and saw—no surprise—that Janet Porter had blocked her cell phone number.
He couldn't call the woman back.

Nor could h
e
track her down i
n any reasonable amount of time—not that it mattered, anyway.
What could he say to say to her?
She had obviously called simply to rattle him. This was another way in which Citizens for Corporate Truth
had chosen to engage
in psychological warfare
, he figured
.

Then he remembered where he was, and he realized that his conversation with Janet Porter had taken place in the middle of the office. The location of his desk at the front of the room likely made his words inaudible; and little could have been gathered from his side of the conversation anyway. Nevertheless, he had been made to appear weak. He noticed that a woman in the accounting department was openly staring at him. Was his shock evident on his face?
And what about his guilt?

Shawn put his cell phone into his pocket, arose from his seat, and started toward the main entrance of the plant. He had to escape the confines of the office—he had to breathe some fresh air.

The parking lot was frigid, despite the winter sun that shone overhead. Shawn did not notice the cold. Nor did he notice the large truck that lumbered by on the adjacent rural highway.

Shawn was now elsewhere. He suddenly found himself back in an off-campus bar in the late fall of 1996. There were two young women sitting at a table. They had publicly humiliated him; and they mistakenly believed that they could walk away from their outrage without suffering any consequences. He had answered their conceits that very night in the foyer of their apartment, with a crowbar that he transformed into a tool of vengeance, the ultimate comeuppance for the two young women who had so grievously overstepped themselves.

It was time once again to take decisive action. No one who truly understood the situation could fault him,
could they?
He had given Donna Chalmers and her daughter Alyssa the option of walking away. Hadn’t he even gone out of his way to warn the girl? He had told her what would happen if she didn't call off the bloodhounds. But the girl had decided to test him. She and her mother had decided that they were going to ruin his career, his relationship with his father—his
life
. Who did they think they
were
, anyway?

And exactly who was
he
? He could run, sure—but that wasn't much of a solution. To spend his life moving from place to place, constantly looking over his shoulder, waiting for the day when his money or his luck ran out. Better to be dead.

Better yet to stand and fight. There was still time to engineer a reversal, to take the sort of proactive steps that men like his father always touted when rallying their troops for a new company initiative. He could
beat
this thing. But he had to act quickly.

He removed his cell phone and dialed Nick King’s number.

“Tonight,” he said, when Nick answered. “We do it tonight.”

It was Friday, the one night of the week when the one-woman operation of the Chalmers Cleaning Service did not clean any offices. I had made arrangements to take Donna and Alyssa out. We were going to drive into Columbus for dinner at the Barcelona Restaurant & Bar. From what I could see in the online restaurant directories, this was the city’s only source of authentic Spanish cuisine.

I was getting ready to leave when my cell phone rang. Donna. I assumed that she wanted to confirm that I was on my way.

“Be there in about thirty minutes,” I said.

The panic in her voice told me that his was no routine pre-date phone call.

“There’s someone sitting in a car outside the house,” she said. “A real shady-looking character.”

My first thought was Adam Seitz. That would have been annoying enough; but I was now convinced that Adam Seitz—large and physically imposing though he was—was just for show. Though I wouldn’t tolerate him harassing Donna and Alyssa, I didn’t have the authority to tell him to vacate a public street. Nor could I rely on the New Hastings police department for help.

I would have a little chat with Adam. Now that I knew about his upper-middle class background and law school fiancée, he loomed a lot less fearsome in my mind. I was still the Termination Man, after all; I could make life unpleasant for Adam if he tried to make further trouble.

“Is he a large bald guy?” I asked.

“No. He’s got sort of long hair. He looks mean. Wait a minute. I’m going to take a picture of him.”

I was about to tell her to stop, to take Alyssa, go into a bedroom and lock the door behind them. Before I could respond, though, I heard her jerk the phone away, and the whoosh of air as she carried it somewhere. In less than a minute she spoke again.

“I’m going to send you the photo now.”

A few seconds later there was the chime of the photo arriving as an instant message.  The camera on Donna’s cell phone could not have had a resolution of more than five megapixels; and she had presumably snapped the photo from her living room window. Nevertheless, the man in the photo—who was hunkered behind the wheel of an old pickup truck—was almost certainly Nick King.

I recalled the email that Shawn had sent to Nick King—the one I had detected using NetBit Sniffer. King had a criminal record and he was now out of work. He was obviously working with Shawn. If Nick King was outside Donna’s house, it was a serious matter.

“Did he see you?” I asked her.

“I don’t think so.”

“Listen: I know the man in that picture: He’s an ex-employee of UP&S. His name is Nick King.”

“Why would an ex-employee of UP&S be parking outside my house?”

“He also keeps company with Shawn Myers.”

“
Craig!
Does that mean—”

“I don’t know for sure what it means. But I’m going to find out. Take Alyssa and lock yourselves somewhere secure until I get there. I’m going to talk to Nick first. Then I’ll call you on your cell phone.”