Sea of Crises (3 page)

As they made their way down the hall, Nate paused at two other light fixtures and tightened the bulbs. He did likewise with the lamp just outside the door to his condo. He made a mental note to say something to the building manager. It was one thing for the kids to engage in activities where
they
could be hurt. It was another to create dangerous conditions for the rest of the residents.

He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and was again met with darkness. That’s odd, he thought. He was sure he’d left the light on in the den. He stepped inside, and his senses prickled.

A strange odor permeated the air. A musky scent, with a metallic tinge to it. He felt for the switch beside the door, found it, and clicked on the hall light.

He saw immediately that the left half of the floor at the end of the hallway was covered with something dark. Light from the overhead fixture shimmered off its surface. Slowly, Nate lowered the computer bag and took a couple of cautious steps forward. Around the corner to his left, the small kitchen island that contained the sink and dishwasher came into view. Above the island was a rack from which normally hung a collection of pots and pans. Instead of the usual kitchenware, however, there dangled a single large object. It was in shadow, and Nate again reached for a switch.

A series of lights came on, brightly illuminating the kitchen. The sight that greeted Nate caused him to gag, and he stepped back involuntarily, his shoulder striking the frame of the bedroom door.

“Oh my God,” Peter said from behind. His eyes were wide, and he’d put a hand up to his mouth.

Nate’s eyes darted from his brother back to the horrible tableau.

Suspended above the kitchen island was the mutilated body of a small animal, impaled on a metal hook, the point of which had been driven into the lower abdomen between the hind legs, its sharp tip poking out near the stubby tail. Drenched in dark crimson, strips of flesh dangled off the body in grotesque random patterns. The poor creature appeared to have been decapitated. Blood in copious amounts had poured out, collecting on the counter below, the overflow running down the front of the dishwasher and pooling on the floor in a mass of congealed maroon, almost black.

In the puddle on the counter below the hideous thing lay a dog collar. A green tag with the name “Buster” in florid script lay half-submerged in the coagulating mess.

Lightheaded, knees weak, Nate’s heart pounded in his chest; his stomach heaved. He shook his head, slowly at first, but then with vehemence as anger welled up through the revulsion. Breathing heavily, he looked back up at the gruesome remains, opening his mouth to vent his rage.

Then he stopped. He frowned, studying the corpse. Something about it was wrong.

He looked at Peter. There were tears in his brother’s eyes. Peter pulled away the hand that had been covering his mouth and said in a choked voice, “Buster.”

“No,” Nate said.

His brother started to say something else, but Nate held up a hand, cocking his head and listening intently. From behind came a faint scratching sound. Barely audible.

Nate whirled and stepped quickly into the bedroom. At the far side, the door to the master bathroom was closed. In rapid strides, Nate covered the distance, gripped the handle and pushed the door open. He stared for a moment at the floor tile. Then, to his immense relief, Buster poked his head around the door. His tail end jerking back and forth with excitement, the little dog emerged and did a quick figure eight through Nate’s legs before Nate was able to reach down and pick him up. Hugging him with relief, Nate carried Buster back to the front hallway, the dog wriggling in his arms and licking his face with unabashed gusto.

When Peter saw them, he blurted, “Thank God.”

The phone rang.

Peter froze and stared at Nate.

The phone rang a second time, sound reverberating throughout the otherwise quiet condominium from multiple extensions. Nate looked at the nearest one, which was mounted on the kitchen wall near the hallway. Unlike the hands-free devices in the den and bedroom, this was an older unit, the handset attached to its base by a long cord that dangled almost to the floor. There was no digital readout to indicate the source of the call. Not that it really mattered. Nate knew with a cold certainty that the person on the other end of the line had been in his home earlier, and he knew there would be nothing to learn from any such readout.

He handed the squirming Buster to Peter and stepped forward, lifting the handset and cutting short a third ring. He held the phone up to his ear, but said nothing.

There was silence on the other end. Nate waited. After a long moment, a man’s voice, deep and gravely, said, “Did we get your attention?”

Nate bit back a retort.

“That’s ok,” the man said. He spoke in a flat tone, with no accent and almost no inflection. “I’ll do the talking. You do the listening.”

“You didn’t need to do that,” Nate said quietly.

“Sure I did. You wouldn’t have taken me seriously otherwise. You see,” the man continued, and his voice took on a hard edge, “you need to know what kind of person you’re dealing with.”

Forcing a calm on himself that he didn’t feel, Nate reached his free hand up to the bottom of the handset, pinched the tab on the jack and slid the end of the cord out, severing the connection to the base of the phone. Holding it an inch away from the handset, he said, “Who are you?” and then he immediately slid the jack back in place.

“Who I am is not important.” The man seemed to hesitate halfway through the last word. There was a long silence. When his voice came again, it had, if possible, an even harder edge to it. It also, Nate realized, had a very distinct southern accent. “Don’t get cute with me, Cartwright.”

There was another pause. Then, returning to the same flat intonation, the man said, “Believe me, if it were my call, you wouldn’t even get this one warning. If I were you, I’d heed it. Because, if you don’t, I’ll be back. And this time it’ll really be your dog. And then it’ll be you and your brother. You’ll be last. I’ll make you watch the first two.

“Now,” he continued, “here’s your warning: Forget about Apollo 18. No more questions. No more investigation. It’s over. Done. Follow that advice, and you’ll live a nice, long life. Don’t, and I’ll be coming for you.”

The line went dead.

#

They took down the carcass, hook and all, and put it in a trash bag, which they then placed into yet another bag. The blood they mopped up with several towels, and those went into a separate trash bag. They wiped down the counter and cabinets, using copious amounts of disinfectant.

They worked in grim silence. After Nate had hung up the phone, he’d looked at Peter, tapped his ear and swung a finger around, indicating that there were listening devices. It was the only way the man on the phone could have heard him after he’d disconnected the phone jack. Peter had nodded his acknowledgement.

Through his shock, Nate had realized belatedly that the body hanging in his kitchen wasn’t a dog, but a pig. The person who set up the macabre scene had mutilated the ends of the legs, but the vestiges of hoofed toes were still visible. Nate hoped the animal was one that had been acquired from a butcher and not one killed in his home. There was no sign of the head, and he didn’t think the noise a squealing pig would have made could possibly have gone undetected by the rest of the building, so he felt reasonably certain it had to have already been dead before being brought in. He also doubted that the amount of blood deposited in his kitchen could have come from just the one animal, so he assumed whoever had staged the scene had brought the blood in a separate container.

Nate carried the two large bags to the trash chute in the small room next to the elevator. Then he packed an overnight bag. He’d carefully cleaned the collar, put it back on Buster and attached the leash they used for their walks. The little dog was delighted with the attention, his animation a stark contrast with the gloomy mood of the two brothers.

When they left the condo, Peter took a step toward the elevator, but Nate reached out, lightly touched his brother’s shoulder, and nodded his head in the other direction. He led Peter to the stairway, picked up Buster, and they wordlessly descended.

When they were three flights down, Nate stopped and whispered, “I don’t trust the elevator. For that matter, I don’t trust any place we’d be expected to go.”

Peter nodded. “What now?”

“I’m working on it. Better not talk in the car though.”

“What about the police?”

Nate had considered that. “I don’t think whoever did that is worried about the police, do you?”

Peter grimaced, then shook his head.

They continued down another five flights and stepped out into the garage below the building. As they approached Nate’s car, he studied it suspiciously. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. However, if a listening or tracking device, or both, had been installed, Nate knew it would take him longer to find than they could afford.

Fortunately, he had a backup.

When they pulled out of the garage, the sky was just beginning to lighten. It was early enough that traffic on the Santa Monica Freeway was moving well. At Overland, Nate exited and made his way north to Century City. His office was in one of the twin towers. He did not, however, intend to go to the office.

Considering he had a staff of one - and he was the one - he knew he wouldn’t be missed.

Nate had started out years before on a career track much different from his current one. An honors graduate from Northwestern, he’d had his pick of law schools, and he elected to go to the University of Chicago, staying close to the family home in nearby Indiana. When he took his law degree, he again had plenty of options, including offers from a number of top law firms throughout the country. He settled on a blue chip Wall Street firm and quickly established himself as one of the top young litigators in New York.

Shortly after Nate became a partner, the youngest in the history of the firm, the partnership decided to expand to the West Coast, and Nate was tapped to head up a new office in Los Angeles. At the time it seemed a good opportunity, and Nate agreed to make the move, swapping the small midtown apartment in which he’d spent little time over the previous few years for a beautiful new ocean front condominium, in which, it turned out, he wound up spending even less time.

Nate had always worked insane hours, routinely staying at the office late into the evening and working through the weekends. If anything, the move to Los Angeles intensified the demand on his time. He made good money, but it came at a heavy personal price.

He took no vacations, rarely socialized. Though he dated sporadically, he never was able to sustain a meaningful relationship. None of the women he’d gone out with had been able to understand, much less tolerate, the hours his schedule demanded. And, truth be told, he’d considered none of them worth making the effort to try to change.

At least that’s what he kept telling himself.

Then, when he had turned forty, it was as if he’d hit a wall.

His birthday was on a Monday. He arrived in court for an early morning hearing on a discovery dispute, one of those mundane battles that took place constantly in the give and take between attorneys. This one was over whether or not opposing counsel should have provided answers to interrogatories posed weeks before. There was no reason why the other side hadn’t responded. In the scheme of things, the questions hadn’t even been that controversial. The refusal to answer was just part of a game litigants played on a regular basis, forcing their opponents to incur fees, needlessly wasting the court’s time, and ultimately costing taxpayers money.

Suddenly, the thought of standing before the judge and participating in the charade had been too much for Nate. He asked the bailiff to pass a note to the clerk informing her that he’d become ill, and, just like that, he walked out. In the seven years since, Nate had yet to set foot again in a courthouse.

He’d managed to burn himself out, and he knew it.

Employing the same rigorous scrutiny he’d given to his cases, Nate re-evaluated his life. Fortunately, one of the things at which he had excelled as an attorney was making sense out of chaos. His talent at analysis had contributed to his always being in demand. Even though he’d carried his own heavy slate of cases and borne management responsibility for the office, he stepped in regularly to consult on his colleagues’ matters, particularly the complex ones with voluminous documentation and massive amounts of testimony. Nate, it turned out, had an uncanny ability to ferret out and connect sometimes wildly disparate facts, bringing into focus things that no one else could see. Lawyers at other firms clamored for an opportunity to engage Nate as co-counsel, even at the eye-popping hourly rate his law firm charged for his services.

What if, Nate had asked himself, he were to strike out on his own? He wouldn’t even have to practice law, a priority in his then-state of mind. As he’d mulled it over, a plan took shape.

He gave his resignation to the firm a week after his birthday. A month later, he opened the doors on a new venture,
Cartwright Consultants
. Since he was the only consultant, he worried that maybe the name was a tad presumptuous. No one seemed to mind, though, and he’d had plenty of business from day one.

Old habits being hard to break, Nate still worked like a dog. Of late, however, he’d found himself in unfamiliar territory, the rock-solid foundation on which he’d built his life shifting beneath his feet at weird and unexpected times. The latest upheaval had come a week before.

He’d returned to the office after a long day in El Segundo culling through records at one of the large defense contractors, his arms weighed down by the banker’s box full of documents he’d copied and was planning to review that evening. To his surprise, waiting for him in the small lobby of the executive suite he shared with a group of accountants was the woman he’d been seeing on and off for the past few months. She was dressed in a long blue silk gown, her honey blond hair done up in a way she’d never worn it before.