Little Falls, page 28
“If you had any idea about going to the FB…”
Crack.
The iron frame strikes the back of Gary’s head with such force that my teeth chatter and the frame reverberates in my hands. A millisecond later Gary’s face smacks against the plastic-covered desktop. Whatever magical strength I was able to muster immediately vanishes and once again the weight of the frame sends me spinning away from Gary, the portrait threatening to slip from my hands and crash to the ground. I stagger back and forth trying to maintain my balance until my shoulder violently impacts the wall with a thump. I fight to steady myself long enough to lean the portrait against the wall and finally release it.
Gary stares vacantly towards me, glassy eyed, his cheek pressed against the desk. There is a sizable divot in the back of his skull that rapidly begins to collect blood in the depression before it overflows and runs down his neck staining his shirt a vibrant red. The stillness is short-lived. As I slide my back along the wall into a sitting position, Gary’s hands and legs begin to tremble and then jerk wildly. Foam begins to collect at the corners of his mouth, spilling onto the plastic. The chair beneath him jiggles wildly and then, as if a light switch has been flipped, stops. The room is silent.
CHAPTER 55
I sit against the wall with my knees pulled tightly against my chest, eyes fixed on the slumped figure in front of me. I eventually have enough sense to crawl across the floor to Claire’s door and lock it before retreating back to my inner sanctum, pausing to lock the second door for extra security.
I feel regret. Not for Gary. As far as I am concerned he got what he deserved. Nobody is going to miss a child porn-loving, identity-thief extortionist. What I do lament is that my full-on freak out eclipsed a rational approach to the matter. Now that I have the luxury of perspective, the tomahawk blow to the back of Gary’s head was idiotic. Sure he was asking for a ton of money, but I could have absorbed it and still ended up well ahead with my severance package. My father always said that I was too emotional and it would get the better of me. The old man was right about that.
With the shock subsiding, I go into damage control mode. My first thought is to call Agent Richards and massage the story. In my concocted scenario, a disguised Gary ambushes me in my office. In self-defense I fight off Gary with a painting to the head. Unfortunately, it was a solid frame, and poor Gary did not make it. Oh well, what choice did I have? I might even come off as an unwitting hero ridding the world of a dangerous pedophile.
I imagine how the interrogation would proceed:
“What did he want from you?”
“Money. He was a desperate man.” Should I go with the honest answer? I wonder. Maybe I should just go with a scenario in which Gary is talking gibberish and not making much sense. He’s a lunatic, after all.
“How did you come to strike him with a seventy-five pound portrait? It’s certainly an odd instrument to choose.”
“Well, Agent Richards. It was the only thing I could use to defend myself. The office is nearly cleared out. I thought of using a stapler but the man was a raging lunatic. Did I mention he was talking gibberish? The painting is heavy. Sure. They say that mothers have on occasion been endowed with superhuman strength in life and death situations, lifting cars from children pinned under the wheels. I don’t know how I found the strength to lift the frame but thank God I did or I probably wouldn’t be here speaking to you.”
“Uh huh,” Agent Richards nods. “If you don’t mind, can you run through how you came to hit him in the back of his head. You were standing where? And where was he at that moment?”
I point at locations in the room and shake my head. Actually better if I am standing by the door and Gary is to my left, I think.
“Ever play baseball, Ed? That’s quite a swing you have. Judging from the depression in the top of his skull you got pretty high.”
Good point…good point. I tap my finger against my chin. Agent Richards is pretty clever.
“He was sitting at the time.”
“Uh Huh,” the agent nods. “He was sitting and you hit him in self-defense?”
Better ditch the he was a raving lunatic story and go back to the extortion narrative.
“He was sitting…wanted money…” I’m rambling in my head.
“How much money? How was he going to get it from you? You said he was sitting? Was the chair here…or was it here? You were standing where.” The questions keep raining down on me.
“He had a phone…” I am now stuttering.
“A phone, you say. We’ll need to take a look at that?”
Fuck. The phone…the audio. Under no circumstance can the FBI get the phone. I’ll ditch mentioning the existence of the phone.
“How was he going to get the money? How much did you say? How did he get to the hospital? Do you have closed-circuit cameras on the premises?”
Fuck…fuck…fuck. My head is throbbing.
I pace back and forth in the office, taking care to step over the small pool of coagulated blood collecting on the tarp. I am beginning to believe that getting the FBI involved may not be the best course of action. What was it that Gary said before I cracked his noggin? He was threatening something about getting the FBI involved. Now I wish I just let the guy finish his sentence before clubbing him. What if incriminating material is on the cloud waiting to be discovered.
I gingerly approach Gary’s lifeless body and ease the cellphone from under his cheek. The wiggle of the phone shakes his head just enough to send a string of goopy blood down his neck. I seem to have gotten over my queasiness when it comes to bodily fluids. Dad would be so proud. Gripping Gary’s stiffened elbow, I lift his head and trigger the biometric sensor. The screen springs to life revealing some site’s timed-out session. The phone has only a couple of applications on it. I choose an icon for his electronic wallet and discover a virtual plane ticket Bangkok under the alias Hector Scoles. I bring up the audio file application and discover several more clips of Lucas going into further detail of my involvement in the crimes. Unable to discover more, I direct my attention to Gary’s pockets, removing a forged passport with the same alias and a photograph of the bearded imposter staring blankly at the camera. Other than this and two-hundred dollars in cash, his pockets are empty.
I note the time on the cellphone: 10:13 pm.
It is clear that Gary aka Hector was looking to disappear. It would be also best for me if he would just vanish once and for all. No FBI and no questions. Let the FBI believe that DarkLord139 slithered under some rock and was lost to the underworld. But how? How does one get a body out of a hospital without drawing attention? And even if I was miraculously able to physically transport a body out of the building, then what? Do I shove it in the Outback and drive to some secluded wooded area, bury it, and hope that no one spots me lugging around a dead body and a shovel? I’ve seen enough movies to realize that inevitably someone’s fucking dog goes to take a piss and comes back with a human femur. I plop into my chair across from Gary, place my head in my hands, and groan.
Think…think goddam you.
I glance at the wall clock resting upside down against one of the cardboard boxes. My mind flips the image: 10:16 pm.
Whatever I am going to do, I do not have unlimited time. The plant operation workers will probably be back in the office by 8 am. I imagine a bunch of guys expecting to spend a boring, uneventful day painting and instead discovering a dead body. I can envision the comedian of the group asking: “Hey, Joe are we painting the morgue or something?”
I stop swiveling the chair and freeze. The morgue.
Just might work, I mutter to myself. I look again at the clock and then at Gary. Could work. It would need meticulous execution but damn it, it might actually work. I hustle over to the cardboard boxes and start to dig through them, finding a pad of paper and a pen before returning to the desk. I begin to sketch out my plan, but the sight of Gary slumped across from me is seriously freaking me out. I scurry back to the tower of boxes, locate the framed photograph of my family at the beach, and stand it upright on the desk. Sitting down, I carefully turn the frame until I can no longer see Gary. Satisfied, I fully dive into making preparations. By 11 pm, the plan is complete and I flip through the pad with some pride. Success is not certain and I will need to rely on some degree of luck, but there is an undeniable truth that will aid me: this hospital sucks, and I know its deficiencies better than anyone.
CHAPTER 56
I sit at the desk watching the clock and trying to keep my nerves in check. The change of shift for the nursing staff is at 11 pm. From 10:30 to 11:45 pm, there is a temporary surge of hospital personnel as nurses beginning the night shift arrive and nurses ending their day leave. By midnight the situation is reversed. Visiting family members have gathered their belongings and long since departed the campus, and the night shift, significantly reduced in number from the day shift, are predominately confined to the patient floors except for those working in the blood bank or labs, the occasional orderly transporting a patient, radiology technicians, and the random janitor pretending to clean the floors. The first and ground floors, in particular, are nearly deserted in the wee hours of the morning, which will afford me the best opportunity for my deed to go unnoticed.
I wait until 12:30 am before I emerge from my office, propping open the door and peeking outside. The hallway is empty. I have mapped out the best path to get to the morgue in order to minimize a chance encounter in the hallways and also avoid being caught on one of the security cameras. Fortunately, the closed-circuit cameras on the ground floor have not worked for weeks—the benefit of working at such a broken institution. Lazily, I elected to ignore the security hardware problems and simply kick that can down the road for the new administration to tackle. Prescient, I suppose.
I move quickly, entering the closest staircase to the ground floor. Pulling open the door to the stairwell, I scamper down the stairs. Once on the ground floor, I hug the walls as I tentatively advance, taking care to peer around each corner. I am relieved to find the ground floor dead. I pick up the pace, treading as lightly as possible on the balls of my feet until I am finally standing in front of the nondescript door to M-15 a.k.a. the morgue. As I swipe my card in front of the reader beside the door, I am suddenly filled with uncertainty. What if my administrative access privileges have already been revoked? I would be locked out of the morgue. I hold my breath as I wait for the red light to turn green. Red. I swipe it again. Red. Again. Red. Again. Again. Again. Red. Red. Red. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Again. Red. I am frantic. I had not calculated on not being able to access the morgue. It is critical to the whole scheme. Part rage, part desperation, I grip the handle to the door and yank it. The door swings open nearly sending me tumbling backwards. The door was never locked in the first place. That was why it remained red. What kind of place would leave the door to the morgue open?
I’ve been to the morgue on only one prior occasion during my time at Little Falls Hospital. It’s pretty much as I remember it. There is a room that is little more than an antechamber with shelves filled with cleaning supplies and plastic bags and an old desk cluttered with stacks of paper. A metal door in the back leads to a large refrigerated room where the stiffs are stored. I quickly locate the items I am seeking. I grab an oversized empty black body bag and sling it over my shoulder followed by a yellow identification tag that will need to be attached to the bag, a handful of transparent plastic medical waste bags, white bed sheets, and several packages of gauze. Before I leave, I make sure to slip a plastic tub of disinfectant wipes under my arm. I wedge a piece of paper in the lock jam just in case the door relocks. I then dart down the hallway in search of a stretcher and find the mother load crammed into a large alcove off a hallway. As I near the storage area, a loud noise stops me in my tracks.
I inch closer to the wall and try to locate the source of the sound. I can make out the click-clack of footsteps and conclude that a person is moving towards me from somewhere up ahead. The footsteps grow louder and I am able pinpoint that they are originating from a hallway that runs perpendicular to the one I am in. A booming voice suddenly bellows sending me skittering towards the alcove.
“Mi amor…mi amor!” An operatic voice echoes.
I scurry the final steps and nearly dive into the nook. From the rising volume, the Spanish-singing lothario is nearing my position and I am forced to twist my body between the haphazardly discarded stretchers until I am hidden.
“Porqué …porqué…mi amor…mi Maria.”
The love song fills the hallway. I remain unseen, as Santiago, one of the janitors, strolls down the hallway with a mop perched upon his shoulder like a soldier at revelry. I have to give Santiago some props. That little guy sure has some pipes. Who knew? I remain concealed until I am confident that he has left the area. With a heave, I start the stretcher rolling, taking a moment to toss the contents in my arms onto the stained stretcher cushion.
Now I need to get this stretcher to my office. There are several elevators to choose from, but after much deliberation I have decided that the best option is a rarely used freight elevator on the ground floor. Although it will take me slightly farther away from my office than the nearest elevator, it will significantly decrease the likelihood that I will bump into anybody on the way up. I grab the back railing of the stretcher and jostle it forward, delighted to discover that I have randomly selected one of the few stretchers without a squeaky wheel. Mercifully, I reach the elevator without incident. I punch the up button and anxiously wait, repeatedly glancing over my shoulder, half-expecting Santiago to jump out with a thunderous encore. The elevator ride will be the most precarious portion of my plan. I have no way of knowing in advance if some random person has chosen to ride the elevator. If I am lucky enough to have a vacant elevator, I also have no way of knowing if there will be someone waiting for the elevator when I reach the first floor. I will be a sitting duck. In my head, I run through possible explanations that I could offer to explain why I am pushing around a stretcher with a body bag during the waning hours of my employment. They all sound ridiculous.
Ding.
The elevator doors slide aside with a chugging noise revealing…an empty cabin. Oh joy. I push the stretcher in before the door is completely open, the metal frame scraping against the edge of the door and smashing against the far wall. The trip to the first floor is interminable, a slow ascent that feels as if I am traveling to the penthouse of a gigantic skyscraper. When it finally halts with a stutter and the door opens, the appearance of a dark form standing in front of me causes my brain to freeze. What was the excuse I had? My mind is in a haze.
I moronically stare at a faux fiddle fig tree potted in a planter for at least ten seconds before I realize that I am not in fact encountering a person. Freeing myself from the stupor, I am once again on my way barreling the stretcher down empty hallways zeroing in on my office. In a single fluid motion, I swipe my card against the sensor just as I dig my heels into the laminate flooring halting the momentum of the stretcher. I slam my shoulder against the door the instant the sensor is activated and drive the stretcher through the opening. The metal frame of the stretcher bangs into the front of Claire’s desk with a deafening boom. Shit!
Nearly half the stretcher remains jutting out into the hallway with the opening in the doorway barely accommodating its width. Math was never one of my strong subjects, but from my calculations there is no way to angle the stretcher to the side of the desk as it is positioned. I take a deep breath, suck in my gut, and squeeze my body between the stretcher and the doorframe. I keep lurching sideways, inching further and further along, until I am spit out like a watermelon seed into the office. Suddenly free, I frantically maneuver to the edge of Claire’s desk, fearful that every second that passes will increase the probability that someone will stumble onto the stretcher with its ass sticking out into the hallway from my office. For the second time today, I am forced to activate some vestigial, primitive gene and harness a primordial strength from the days of cavemen. I lean my shoulder into the side of Claire’s hefty desk and push with such force that my eyeballs feel that they might pop out of their sockets. My efforts are greeted by a grinding noise as I am able to swing the desk to the side just enough to allow for the stretcher to clear the obstacle. Gripping the frame, I heave the stretcher fully into the room before leaping across it, closing the door, and locking it.
I remain prostate on the filthy stretcher for nearly five minutes trying to catch my breath before I have the strength to push myself off of it with my elbows. I assess the situation and realize that there is no way in hell the stretcher is going to be able to be maneuvered by the desk and into the inner office. It’s an annoying and unforeseen setback, but not an insurmountable problem. It will mean that I will need to transport Gary’s rigid body the short distance from the inner office into Claire’s section of the office. The rub is that Gary was not a slim guy. A diet of Doritos and Mountain Dew does have its drawbacks.
I slip into the inner office and examine the room. I make a cursory circle around Gary. He remains perched forward on the edge of the chair with his head resting upon the desk. I snap on latex gloves and begin to mop up the pools of blood collecting on the plastic tarp with handfuls of gauze before tossing the soiled rags into a medical waste bag. The tarp is left with smeared circles of red. Content that I have addressed the largest globs of blood, I move on to cleaning Gary. I return from the coffee room adjoining Claire’s office with a fistful of gauze moistened with water from the sink and proceed to wipe away blood from the back of Gary’s head and neck. I delicately dab at the depression in his skull, unnerved by the unnatural contour and unwilling to test the integrity of the skull. Once Gary’s skin has been sufficiently scrubbed, I embark on the laborious task of undressing him, a remarkably difficult feat considering Gary’s awkward positioning and rigid state. I place each piece of garment into the bag filled with soiled gauze. Once stripped, I grip Gary’s shoulders and pull his body backwards until his head and upper torso lift from the desk, teeter precariously for a moment, and sink backwards into the seat. Recognizing that there is no way I can come close to lifting the man, I enlist the aid of my wheeled desk chair. I move my chair next to the chair Gary is on. After a colossal effort I am able to transfer him to the wheeled chair. Once I am certain that Gary is secure, I heave the chair backwards in small increments across the plastic tarp and finally through the doorway to the waiting stretcher. I arrange the body bag on the stretcher, unzip it, and lower the stretcher as far as possible. Pumping the lever attached to the desk chair with my heel, I am able to raise Gary to the maximum height. The final relocation of Gary’s body from the chair to stretcher is a miserable exercise that is part brute strength and part whimpering desperation. It takes me nearly an hour, but I am ultimately able to get the body onto the stretcher and into the bag. I seize the zipper, and with one long fluid motion, slide it up, taking care to avoid dwelling on Gary’s vacant final expression. Shaking out a white bedsheet, I use it to cover the bag.
