Wrong Question, page 16
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I heard my cell phone sliding out of reach. It was my trusted source of light. If that disappeared I’d feel worse than if I were abandoned in a desert with no food or water. The dark world around me was tilting. I felt it. Then I heard it too. I was just trying to orient myself in the dark, move away from the great cracking surround-sound when the floor under my feet heaved. I pitched headlong into the wall. The pain came and was quickly forgotten; flash-burned by fear. The clatter was all around me as the contents of cupboard spilled out. Arms out, I tried to balance myself but I was on a steep incline and kept sliding. My shoulder slammed painfully into a sharp corner. I cried out and lost my footing. I heard a crash when whatever was on the bench-table landed on the floor and then swished past me. My laptop. I tried to find it in the dark but objects just started to rain down on my head. I had to protect it.
Somewhere to my left water splashed. Sounded like a lot of it so it had to be the sink. At least I hoped it was the sink in the kitchen and not the toilet. The trailer was still shuddering from the effort of moving in a direction it was never meant to go. It was far from over.
I had to get out. Obviously the trailer had fallen off the cinder blocks. Something must have shifted. But this was Idaho, a place that wasn’t prone to quakes. Suddenly a shower of sparks came at me as if a fire-breathing dragon woke up in the wall. I had to get out before an electrical fire swept through the structure. It wouldn’t take long for the trailer to burn down once all the wiring in the flimsy walls was torn by all the twisting and sliding. It may already be too late.
The problem was that I could neither see the door nor get to anything. My back was against something that was tilting even as I tried to keep my balance. If the trailer toppled completely then at least I’d be able to get out; through the window or the door, didn’t matter as long as the structure stopped twisting and sliding. Carefully, I felt with my hand along the paneling for something that would let me grab and hold while I tried to find something that could would let me hang on. A drop fell on my nose. It had to come from above. Where exactly was I in the trailer? Top, side, bottom? The box had only two windows. They were obviously not where I was or I’d be able to catch a glimpse of something…anything.
Yell for help, an idea lit up in my head like a star going nova. I opened my mouth, and started to choke. The air had suddenly turned so cold my nostrils stuck. The box was turning into a block of ice. Why? Was someone spraying gas from a compressed spray directly at me…or at least in my direction? If so, how could they see where I was when I couldn’t?
I strained my ears. Could it be that no one in our camp heard what was going on with my trailer? Or were they all down at the Paradigm, playing cards and asking about Ben’s dogs. I had to try to get out. Help was not coming anytime soon.
I could move my foot a few inches back and forward but nothing felt solid. If I lurched without knowing what was around me, I’d hurt myself far worse than I already was. My shoulder now burned so I probably had a good gash in my back. My throat was anesthetized by cold. I let go of the protrusion to my left and tried to feel my face. Immediately I regretted it because my hand became coated with sticky moisture in no time. I didn’t want to think about what it could be…what it had to be, given my situation. I was stuck, wedged in by cabinets that were torn off the wall and whatever was inside them. I wasn’t sitting and I wasn’t standing. The awkward position meant that my feet were not touching the floor. Whatever it was they were touching, moved every time the trailer shuddered. It was not yet finished with its great toppling act.
Suddenly I heard a ghostly voice, croaking. “Help me, help me.”
Finally, I was able to scream even if I couldn’t sustain it because once again I started to choke. With great effort, and rasping as much as I could get the sound out of my tortured lungs, I braced my right foot against something that was far from solid, and pushed. The searing pain shot through my foot and exploded in my brain. Sparks showered down on me. I knew exactly where each one of them landed because they left a trail of pain that sent me racing into oblivion.
I didn’t wake up as much as I came to in a slow, languid manner of a sleeper growing aware that he’s leaving dreamland and entering the realm of wakefulness. I did not feel anything. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing. The voices told me that I was alive. Then again, dead could hear just as well as the living. I didn’t have any information to the contrary. The first sign that my feeling was returning was the warmth that began to spread over my face. It felt oddly familiar. The slurping sound came just as I opened my eyes to catch a swinging tongue.
“Fang,” I murmured. The slurping intensified and so did the panting sound.
“The two of you,” I said, realizing it was Ben’s ‘boys’ but not Fang.
“Where am I?” I tried to lift my head but that wasn’t going to happen while I had a concrete block tied around my neck.
“Take it easy,” I heard Ben’s voice and his face swam into focus. He looked very rustic, and woodsy; very Jack London, framed by two muzzles that were trying to get at me.
“Where am I?”
“Immobilized, on a stretcher. We’re waiting for the ambulance. It’s coming from Mountain Ridge. But it won’t be long now.”
“What happened?” I knew. I just wanted to hear his version.
“The steel posts were in concrete but somehow shifted. Mind you, it’s been raining a lot. The ground was turning into a pool of mud. The blocks started to crumble once the posts were no longer stable. Your trailer fell off its supports. You were lucky the propane tanks had rolled the other way. If they’d stayed as the trailer was tilting and falling, you might not be alive.”
“What propane tanks?”
“The ones you use each time you turn on the hotplate in the kitchen.”
“Hot plate runs on gas? I thought it was electric.”
“They could have been for barbecue.”
“We don’t have a barbecue.” I felt argumentative and annoyed because he stopped the dogs from licking my face. It felt good. Their tongues were rough just enough to scratch all the places on my face that itched and burned.
“Why would he have brought them then,” I heard his mumble.
“Who brought them?”
“Rest. Don’t speak. The ambulance is here. Melina’s coming with you,” he said and I knew he was gone because the dog-muzzles now represented everything I could see.
They kept me overnight in the hospital for observation. There wasn’t much left of the night by the time the ambulance arrived at St. Michael’s Cross Hospital, but the sun had not risen yet. Considering that I only saw one doctor and one nurse that finished patching me up after the doctor declared me ‘lucky,’ there wasn’t going to be much observation going on anyway.
“Go home, Melina, get a good night’s sleep. I’m okay,” I said to her. She looked not just asleep but comatose in the flimsy plastic chair.
“And how are you going to get home in the morning? It’s only a couple of hours to sunrise.” She was awake and very much attuned to the situation; maybe more than I was.
“Taxi.”
“An hour ride—really? I don’t know about you but I’ve zero savings even if we’re living in a low-rent subdivision.”
I liked her sense of humor. Her company was good to have too. Still, she had to be at work in the barn in the morning. God forbid if Ganz called and she wasn’t there.
“Go get some sleep. Even an hour will help. Send Jake with the truck in the morning. You can cover for him for couple of hours. Besides, Ganz is going to find out, one way or the other. The trailer’s trash; in a real sense of the word. And these things were not built for double-occupancy. I can’t just bunk with you or Emilie. What? What’s the matter?” Melina was making faces all the time while I spoke.
“Ganz already knows. I heard Sheriff Burkhart say he was going to call the corporate in New York, regardless of time.”
“Oh, why would he do that?” I was dismayed. I wanted to put my own spin on the story of a toppling and rolling trailer.
“Because Jake’s dead.”
“What? What did you say?”
“They found him…his body under your trailer.”
“He must have heard my shouting and came to help….” But Melina was shaking her head.
“Sheriff brought his two deputies and four volunteer fire-fighters from Kinematic. They got you out and they found Jake’s body…and the tools he brought.”
“What tools?”
“Welding tools, acetylene torch, saws, crowbar, chains—you know, all the tools you need to fix something or break it up,” she said, spacing her words with uncharacteristic pauses.
I must have looked blank because she hissed softly and said, “The Sheriff thinks it was Jake who cut your trailer’s supports. His deputies checked the rubble and so did the fire-fighters. They all said the supports did not fail on their own; they were cut and the concrete was chipped enough for the blocks to shift…just not on their own.”
“But Jake was with you guys in the Paradigm.”
“He left soon after he came in. Said he had a headache. He asked me if I’d mind driving Noah and Emilie back because he needed his truck.”
Jake didn’t cut my trailer supports. He came back early and went to his trailer because he had a headache. Then he heard something or someone and came out. He got caught in the trailer’s roll and collapse. It was his voice I heard, whispering for help. Jake was another victim. I would have been too if not for luck. That’s what everyone seemed to think. The doctor and the nurse certainly did.
“Bree-Ann?” I was interrupted in my analysis of the horrible events.
“What?”
“I know what’s at stake but regardless of what Ganz said, I don’t think Jake would have done what they said he did,” Melina said.
“What is at stake?” I didn’t understand.
“What do you mean what is at stake? It’s up for grabs again.”
“Melina, why don’t you just spell it out for me? I’m still…trashed.”
She laughed and said I was a nutcase. “I’m talking about the email Ganz sent us last week.”
“I didn’t get any email from Ganz. Not a single one since I came here.”
“Maybe your spam filter ate it but that’s not supposed to happen.”
“Melina, what did Ganz’ email said?”
“Bestie quit. Couldn’t hack it. Had a scream-fest; collapsed right in the middle of the editorial meeting. The fellowship will fold if Ganz doesn’t bring in one of the top candidates and he said that you and Jake were number one and two. Naturally, he didn’t say who was number one and who was number two.”
“You’re thinking that maybe Jake knew?”
“It would explain why he did, what he did,” she said.
It was a plausible motive but I knew differently. I’ve only known Jake for over a month but that was enough to see that he wasn’t the type of person who’d poison a dog or try to kill a colleague-contender for the coveted internship in New York. He was set up. Plain and simple.
Someone, however, wanted me to think that he was my aggressive subscriber. It’s why his email account was hacked. It’s why Fang died because he liked Jake and took treats from him. Jake wasn’t down in the Keys at the time of Carmen Batista’s accident. He was in Kinematic, fact-checking for his masters in New York. While he could have been responsible for sending me the scenarios that fell into the ‘pattern,’ he had nothing to do with the one that defined the ‘purpose.’
Someone was spying on us, round-the-clock surveillance. How? Where?
I had no answers but I was going to get them; even if it was the last thing I did and the epitaph that went on my gravestone.
Two days later, I was back in the barn, trying not to keep turning my head to where Jake normally sat at his computer. His body was going to be released to his sister who was coming from Illinois to claim it. We were not expected to meet her or express our condolences; not just the Sheriff but every one of my colleagues believed that Jake became unhinged and tried to kill me to get the New York post.
Ben didn’t want to say whether he agreed or disagreed but I persisted.
“You think it was one of the ‘good folks of Idaho’ who profited from the hunting accident, don’t you?”
“I told you that small towns are dangerous places to pick on; there may well be a murderer hiding in each and every one of them,” he said.
I turned my back because if I kept looking at him he’d ask me what was wrong and I wasn’t sure myself. My nasty subscriber used about the same words of warning the first time he tried to intimidate me into compliance. Truth was that I wasn’t sure about anyone or anything. Who’d have thought that a small experimental town in the middle of nowhere would be able to bend me out of shape?
I finally got Ganz’ email. Not the one I should have received when the Bestie quit, but a note that sought to compensate me for the loss of my trailer. I could just see him frowning when it came to this part. He didn’t want me to get the wrong impression—in case it was something that gave me the ammunition I needed to sue the Times.
In view of things—and a terrible situation, just terrible—Ganz or rather the Times was going to lease two experimental structures for which Kinematic was renowned.
“Mel, come next weekend, you and I are bunking in the purple house,” I said, turning to where she sat, mouth partly open, reading the same email no doubt. She gave me a thumbs up sign. Noah and Emilie got the orange bungalow by default.
“I’ll have oranges on my mind all day long,” Noah mumbled but I knew he was pleased to be able to get out of the trailer and carry on his relationship with Emilie in the safety of a regular bedroom.
I had a blog post murder number six to get out—in less than twenty four hours.
“Better get cracking,” I murmured and cracked my knuckles instead.
My fingers were about to settle on the keyboard when a small yellow envelope with spindly white legs ran across the bottom. I had mail—again.
Thinking it was Ganz since he overdosed on post-scripts, I clicked to open up my Outlook.
I read the one-liner and chills attacked. He wasn’t finished with me because I haven’t asked the ‘wrong question’ yet.
“I told you there would be consequences.” It came from Jake’s email. But that could mean nothing…and everything.
The End
Thank you for reading Wrong Question: Bree-Ann Carver Suspense Blog: Volume 1. If you enjoyed this story, please consider taking time to post a review on your favorite bookstore’s website or social media pages. ~Edita
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