Seeing Red

The floor of his office had been swept clean of broken glass. He checked the file cabinet. The meaningless paperwork that had been scattered about the office had been arranged into meaningless stacks inside the drawers. The sofa was a carcass, but the stuffing that had been pulled out of the cushions had been gathered and removed. All the furniture was upright.

He hung his coat on the rack behind the door, walked over to his desk, and sat down behind it. The surface of it gleamed with polish, which was, to his knowledge, a first. He opened the drawers one by one. The bottom one contained basic office supplies. The middle held empty file folders and a roll of the plastic bags he used to preserve the photos he took of illicit rendezvous. The only thing remaining in the lap drawer was the magnifying glass.

He left it where it was and closed the drawer.

Swiveling his chair around, he noticed that the electrical outlet plate had been replaced, the Sheetrock patched and repainted.

He wondered who had watched the dirty videos on the flash drive. Jenks? Glenn? Wilcox himself? Wilcox had pretended not to know what the flash drive had on it, but Trapper trusted nothing anymore.

He stretched out his leg and dug in his jeans pocket for the other flash drive. He bounced it in his palm, thinking with self-deprecation how clever he’d believed himself to be, shipping it to Marianne and then pretending to Wilcox that his hidey-hole had been discovered and his own insurance policy heisted.

He’d played it up big, but just subtly enough to make the ruse convincing. Wilcox had been fooled. Even Kerra had fallen for the bluff.

Trapper bounced the flash drive one time more, then his hand fell still. He went still all over. He even stopped breathing.

Seconds later, he came out of his chair as though it had launched him. He left it spinning as he dashed from the office, barreled through the fire stairs door, and leaped the treads three at a time until he reached the first floor.

He barged into Carson’s office, startling his former stripper-turned-receptionist. “He’s with a client,” she said.

But Trapper was already pushing through the door into Carson’s private office. “What couple of guys?”

Carson’s client had the reflexes of the guilty. He sprang from his chair, whipped a knife from his coat sleeve, and brandished it.

Carson stood up and patted the air. “Put the blade away. He’s harmless.”

“Long way from harmless,” Trapper told the sneering miscreant. “Get that knife out of my face or I’ll break your arm.” The client obviously believed him. He did as told. Trapper went back to Carson. “The repair to my office. You said a couple of guys. Who were they?”

“I don’t know. Guys. In coveralls. With tools and paint cans and shit.”

“Whose name was on the invoice for the job?”

“No invoice. Cash got me a ten percent discount.”

“Do you have a hammer?”

Carson looked at him like he’d asked for the tail of a mermaid.

“A hammer, a hammer.”

“What would I need with a hammer?”

Trapper left three stunned people behind as he left as rapidly as he’d appeared and ran back up the stairs to his office. He gave his desk chair a shove that sent it rolling out of his way, then kicked the wall just above the outlet plate, striking it with his boot heel until it caved in.

But the hole he’d made wasn’t large enough to get his hand through.

He opened his lap drawer, got the magnifying glass, and wielded it as he would have a hammer, beating the metal casing of it against the Sheetrock until chalky hunks of it were chipped away and he had an opening large enough to work his hand inside and up to his elbow.

The cell phone was duct-taped to one of the studs.

After pulling it out, he tapped it against his forehead in time to his whispered chant, sonofabitch, sonofabitch, sonofabitch. Wilcox’s contingency.

He allowed himself about ten seconds to be overjoyed.

And thirty seconds to be terrified of how he would be impacted by what he held in his hand.

He had to know.

He turned on the phone and was relieved that it didn’t require a code to open. He accessed photos. There were five in the folder.