The Door, page 9
I hollered upstairs, “I’m going out with Travis for a bit, back in a while. Dinner is on the stove.”
With no response, I walked out the door.
TWENTY-SIX
In my reality, Sparky’s was one of our favorite hangouts, right after The Booze Explosion. Every winter we would join a darts league at Sparky’s and drown ourselves in nachos.
I arrived before Travis, and even though I wasn’t hungry, I ordered a plate of nachos for us to share. I also paired the nachos with a couple drafts of the neighboring brewery’s best stout. Travis sat down as the waitress brought over the pints.
Travis was a stereotypical, normal guy. He liked sports and beer and spent most of his time working or with his family. On the street, he never commanded attention. He just ‘was’.
You could count on Travis being ‘plain’, wearing clothes he was comfortable in, not standing out in any way. His most daring could have easily been a new plaid shirt, typically coordinated with a pair of jeans. His hair was typically short and well taken care of and he seldom sported more than a slight stubble of facial hair. He wasn’t the guy that every woman wanted. He was the guy that otherwise may have been counted on as the backup plan.
After he met his wife, he opened up a little more. She made him happy. Along with the hardware store, he had all he needed to remain on course with his life projections.
His wife, Jazmine, was pretty. She was terrifically smart and had an allure to her especially when she wore her “brainy” glasses. She dressed in cute clothes, sundresses, cute active-wear most of the time. She had gained a little bit of weight after giving birth to their lone child. She loved Travis, but they also fought a lot and spent occasional time frames apart from each other to ‘mend’ whatever was broken. Marriage counseling was a common factor in their timeline over the years.
When it came to our trio, there had been many a night Travis had lamented about being the third wheel when in the company of myself and Will.
We’d become friends at Sparky’s during a darts tournament a few years prior. That particular year, Sparky had challenged everyone to swap teams and to play with someone new. It was very little-league-like. Travis and I had gotten along in the tourneys we’d faced off in previously, plus, surviving the month-long dart tourney with someone so vanilla, wouldn’t have been that difficult.
Upon his arrival, he sat down and quickly jumped into his questions. “Are you okay Max?”
“I’m not sure. The last 72 hours have been completely insane. Kara’s death, Andrew, Will... Shannon knows.”
He took a big swig of his beer and breathed out deeply.
“So Will,” another pause, “I’ve got proof he was at Shannon’s apartment the day she was killed.”
My eyes immediately focused on him, “what are you talking about?”
“I have some pictures of Will walking around Kara’s complex that day.”
“You have them now?”
“No, they’re in a safe place.”
“I’ve got to get those to the police. Can we go get them?”
He took a large tortilla chip, big enough to be the nucleus in Sparky’s supreme nacho. A small dollop of sour cream dripped off the chip onto the table as he brought it to his mouth. He just looked at me calmly before making the chip disappear.
He wiped his mouth and said, “I’m sorry I can’t do that.”
“What are you talking about? Why can’t you do that?”
“You know why.”
“What?” I cried out in the most irritatingly confused way possible.
He grabbed his beer, chugged the last swig and got up to go to the bar and order another.
It took but a few seconds for me to begin to wonder why he had those pictures in the first place. Clearly the reason he couldn’t give them to me was something the other me would know. But why was he at her complex to begin with?
I slowly swirled my glass between my fingers until he rejoined me at the table.
“Are you,” I paused not knowing how to finish the question, then forced myself to do so, “are you stalking her?”
No response. Would anybody answer a frigging question?
“Were you there?”
He tried to turn the conversation around, “why did you text and say Will just told you about Andrew?”
It was my turn to not respond. If Travis was stalking Kara, then he should likely be a key suspect. If I told him about the door, he could turn everything around on me just like Will was doing.
I finally pushed something out, “this whole thing has been weird and I didn’t know Will knew.” There were zero falsities in that statement. I continued and became more direct, “why were you there?”
Travis looked at me, eyes somewhat glossy.
“I, I gotta go,” he said as he fled his seat.
I got up to follow him and met him just outside the front door.
He spun around and pushed my hand off his shoulder. “She already had a restraining order against me, I can’t, I can’t...”
“Max?”
I turned around to find Sparky, the restaurant owner. “Everything okay? You got up and bolted leaving everything at the table,” he said. Adding a tongue-in-cheek, “even the bill.”
“Sorry Sparky, I’m coming back in,” I told him. I turned around to witness Travis throw his car into reverse before taking off.
“Damn,” I mumbled.
“What?” Sparky said as he headed back to the bar.
“Nevermind, send over my check please Sparky.”
I returned to the bar table and sat down. Within a few minutes, I’d paid our check and left for home.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Back at home, I walked into a quiet house. Dominic was in the living room playing e-games yet again with his friends. The only noise was the repeated clicks of the joystick button and occasionally him saying something through his headphones, largely inaudible to boomer ears like mine. Danica was upstairs in her room, likely studying with the door closed.
I said hi, but neither of them heard me. So, I moved myself to the kitchen and grabbed a beer. I sat at the bar and turned on the home theater system and just lost myself in thought.
As preoccupied as I was, I didn’t notice Shannon had come home until she was a few feet away from me.
She grabbed a beer and sat next to me at the bar table. She took a drink and put the bottle down on the Mardi Gras 2017 coaster we brought home from a previous vacation.
“That your first?” she asked.
“mmhmmmm?” I said trying to snap out of my daze.
She took another small swig of her beer and returned the bottle to its coaster.
The silence between us lasted a solid minute before she said anything again.
“I want to believe you Max,” she opened up for the first time since I told her about the affair.
“The beer?” I questioned, a bit confused.
“What? You’re an idiot! Everything else.”
I turned my head slowly to the left to look at her but before I could speak, she continued.
“I know you didn’t kill Kara, but I can’t forgive you for sleeping with her. I’m still not convinced about the door, but after talking with the girls today and the tattoo, I’ll bite for a bit to consider in some way that what you’re telling me is possible.”
“I, uh, don’t know what to say,” I was clearly taken back by this.
“I know everything about you, well I think I know pretty much everything about you apparently,” another little jab. She wasn’t drunk, but I could tell she’d already consumed a couple drinks to blow off steam. It was also probably the only reason she was talking to me in the first place. “You’ve made up some doozies in the past, but never stuck to them this fiercely or for this long. To be honest, I felt something was different over the past few days as well.”
“Really?”
“Yes, since the night you stubbed your toe in the bedroom, there’s just something about you that’s not right.”
“Gee thanks, I think.”
“I mean, your mannerisms, there’s something that just isn’t the same.”
“Right, I wish I had something more concrete to prove it to you Shan. I just want you to know that no matter what you believe about the door, just know that the affair...”
“Don’t, if we talk about it, you’re going to lose me again.”
“Understood,” I conceded. “I’m still puzzled by something Martin said this morning at his office.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I’m here, in my body, not in his. Where did he go?”
“So what do you think happened to my Max? Wow that’s very strange to hear myself say out loud.”
“My best guess at this point is he and I switched places. Where was he Thursday night?”
“Looking at you and talking like you’re some other person is very difficult, you know.”
“Yes, I get it, I’m sorry.”
“You went to the bar with Travis and Will, like you usually do on Thursdays.”
“For me, it’s a bar just down the street, I walk to and from almost every week,” I re-explained. “Here, that bar doesn’t exist, or at least it’s not in the same location, that’s a park.”
“You usually go to Sparky’s, then you take a taxi or Lyft ride home. Unless one of you offers to DD for the night, which isn’t common.”
“And he usually comes home right after the game?”
“Uh-huh, you, he, whatever, occasionally are later than usual, but it’s never like all night.” The way she slowed through that statement, came across like the lightbulb just went off and she realized where her Max may have been going when he was late.
“Does he text when he’s on his way like I do?”
She swallowed hard before pulling out her phone, “here, 11:15pm Thursday night. Says ‘b home in 20, cab driver slow’”
“I walked through the door at 11:52pm Thursday night.”
“No you didn’t, you came home a little after midnight.”
I began to correct her when she continued, “oh you mean that door.”
“For me the door was maybe 20 yards south of our house in the middle of the street. His timeline could put him outside at 11:52 to walk through the door at the same time.”
“You think the door has to be in the same place for both of you?” She took another big swig off her bottle and shook her head, again realizing how odd everything she said was.
“Was it just the three of you at the bar?” she asked.
“Yes, for me anyway. Did you know Kara had a restraining order against Travis?”
“What? Jaz never told me that! Even tonight she didn’t say anything.” She pushed her bottle away and scooted the bar stool back. “Okay Max, that’s about all I can digest right now, you’re still on your own for bed. Even if you didn’t sleep with Kara, that means I don’t know you.”
“I understand, that’s okay, besides the couch and I have become pretty intimate friends the past couple of nights.”
She let out a small laugh, shook her head and walked off.
I polished off the last of my beer, picked her empty bottle up and walked them to the recycle bin inside the garage. After I closed the door to the garage, I rounded the corner where she put her purse every night. I walked by and something caught my eye.
I went a few more feet to turn on the hallway light before returning to the purse.
Spying on Shannon was not something I ever did. Truly, the only time I’d kept super secretive would be consistent with lining up a surprise party or vacation or something similar.
It was partially open already. I didn’t initially see what originally caught my eye, so I went back and turned the light off again. As I returned to the purse, I saw the little glimmer again. I pulled my phone out and turned on the flash light, cocking it just above the purse to shine directly into the main pouch. Feeling a bit like a detective, I grabbed a pen from the drawer in the table where the purse sat and gently pushed on one side of the open cavity in the purse.
I still had no idea what shimmered at me, but I didn’t really care anymore after pulling out a photo and seeing Andrew’s smile on it. I went over to the stairs to make sure nobody was around, then returned to the purse and opened it to see the picture. In the picture, he was probably about two years old. I grabbed the photo by the edges, pulled it out and turned it over, there was a sticky note with a single word on it.
“Max?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
I’d already set a consultation visit with Dr. Stevens for the morning and arrived just before 9 a.m.
Dr. Stevens was older. In his younger days, he’d caught a break and played parts of 17 games in the NBA broken up over a couple years. After realizing his dream, he returned to Georgetown University where he finished his medical degree. He always claimed he wasn’t smart enough to be a basketball player.
His practice was small, but growing. He didn’t like to rush judgment and preferred listening to his patients.
We greeted each other warmly and sat across from each other at his desk.
“What’s going on Max?” he asked.
He was a good listener, but I wasn’t quite committed to telling him everything. I wanted a quick in and out.
“Just wanted to see if I could get a copy of my medical records.”
“Of course, any particular reason?”
Trying to think quickly on my feet, “Dominic has a family tree type of homework project.”
“Fun, my daughter Ginny did that last year, she found some more athletes in the family.”
“Nice, anybody I’d recognize?”
“Not unless you know a pair of twins that shot hoops during the Black Fives Era.”
“Can’t say that I do,” and we both chuckled.
“Everything else going ok?” he asked looking up from his laptop.
“You heard about the murder Saturday?”
“Yes, sad to hear. Young lass too right?
“Good friend of mine actually.”
“I’m sorry Max, how are you handling it?”
“It’s tough, I’ve learned a lot about myself over the past few days.”
“I imagine. Have they released much more information about what happened?”
I stayed a bit silent, trying to usher him back to what I was there for.
“If you need anything or to talk, you know where to find me,” he said as he searched on his computer. Dr. Stevens wasn’t like most other doctors. He had nurses and assistants, but he was as hands-on with just about everything he could be. “You know I can’t email you these right? Have to print ‘em.”
“That’s fine doc, do the records show everything as far as all my visits?”
“If that’s what you want. Most of that won’t tell you anything about your genealogy though.”
“Right, still might be interesting to look over,” I was running out of ways to avoid telling him about what was really going on.
“Does it also have my DNA results?” there really wasn’t a way to sneak that question in.
“We’ve never done a DNA test for you Max. We can certainly arrange to do one, or there’s always those online DNA apps and programs.”
“Can we arrange one?”
“Sure,” he continued. “Keep in mind, we probably won’t see the results for a few weeks.”
“Really? A few weeks?”
“Unfortunately, yes. We can gather whatever samples we want as early as today. Unlike normal blood or urine sample tests, there’s much more work involved at the DNA lab.
I paused as I glanced through some of the paperwork. I still had no clue about whether my DNA would differ from that world’s Max anyway.
Plus with any luck, not that I’d had too much luck over the previous few days, I’d find another door to get home before the results came back.
“Max?” Dr. Stevens asked, bringing me back to the conversation.
“Yeah, sure, let’s set something up. Never know what we could find out.”
“I’ll have Heidi get you on the schedule, how’s later this week?”
“Have her book it and I’ll be here,” I said as I reached for the door to leave.
I sat on a bench between offices in the entryway of the medical building and quickly browsed through my medical files.
Everything appeared to be pretty consistent. The frequent ankle rolls, notes about being terrified of needles, MRI on my shoulder.
Nothing jumped out as a potential lock to help prove anything.
TWENTY-NINE
Det. Pettigrew arrived at my home at precisely the same time I did.
“There’s a coincidence,” Det. Pettigrew said as he approached me outside my car.
“Hello detective,” I said placing my jacket in the back seat.
“Mr. Jorgens,” Det. Pettigrew began, “we need you to come to the station again.” Behind him were two officers in standard police attire.
“Can I change quick?”
“Yes, but we must insist you are within eyeshot of us.”
Shannon came around the corner as I let Det. Pettigrew and the other two officers into the house. “Everything okay Max? Hi Detective Pettigrew.”
“They have more questions for me at the station. I’m going to change quick.”
Det. Pettigrew and the shorter of the two uniformed officers remained downstairs with Shannon. The taller officer stood outside our bedroom door while I put on some fresh clothes.
“Why so early today officer?”
“We have some questions to ask you.”
“Do I need my lawyer?” although I already knew I’d be asking to call Martin as soon as we reached the station. I put my phone in my pocket along with my keys and wallet, and returned downstairs.
Shannon and Det. Pettigrew quickly quieted as we returned downstairs. The last thing I heard from either of them was a slight laugh from Shannon, apparently Det. Pettigrew had some quips in him.
“You ready Mr. Jorgens?” Det. Pettigrew asked me.
