Daniel Palmer - Helpless

“What can I do to convince you?” Lindsey asked in a voice that pleaded for understanding.

Jill turned her gaze back to Lindsey. Her vision was blurred by gathering tears, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. “I thought if I saw you, I’d know,” Jill said. “I thought you could tell me that you didn’t do it and I’d believe you.”

“And do you?” Lindsey asked. “Do you believe me?” Lindsey’s voice came out sounding shaky like Jill’s.

“Yes!” Jill wanted to say. “Yes, I believe you!” But Jill only thought those words; she didn’t voice them. Instead, Jill stared at her friend and hoped to be convinced.

“Do you believe me?” Lindsey asked again.

This time, however, Lindsey’s right hand gently brushed her long hair back behind her ears.

Jill’s eyes went wide, and she quickly turned her head.

“I’m sorry, Lin,” Jill said as she studied the ground. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“What are you saying?”

Jill looked up and said, “I don’t think we should talk for a while.”

“Why?” Lindsey appeared to be on the verge of tears.

Jill thought about Lindsey’s right hand brushing back her hair. Was that her tell? Did Lindsey just announce her lie?

“I don’t know what to think,” Jill eventually said. “I don’t know how I feel. And until that changes, I’m not sure we can still be friends.”

Tom sat in his car, alone, keeping watch over room number 32. He’d been waiting in the Motel 6 parking lot for a little over an hour. He’d wait all night if needed. The motel was just off the highway in Framingham, Massachusetts. Tom had had no trouble finding out where his target resided. His contacts from the navy hadn’t vanished when he left the service.

Tom knew better than to bring a gun. His only weapon, a penknife, fit inside the palm of his hand and didn’t violate any bail conditions. It would work just fine on an untrained adversary.

At seven o’clock he saw his target’s car pull into the lot. None of the other motel guests, he presumed, drove a new black Infiniti M. Tom’s target passed in front of his Taurus. The man’s gaze was fixed, directed on the concrete path that ran along the front of the motel rooms. He took quick and purposeful steps.

Tom opened his car door. The man didn’t even look in his direction.

The man swiped his access card through the access card slot in the door’s locking mechanism. Tom timed his approach perfectly and stood directly behind his target when the lock light turned green. Tom’s target pulled down the door handle to enter the room. The door opened up just a crack.

Tom turned and shoved the man hard from behind. The man grunted loudly, then stumbled into the dark room, falling to the floor as he did. Tom stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him and locked it with the dead bolt and chain. Then Tom turned on the light.

His target, a gaunt man with sunken eyes marred by dark rings and a thick beard that dipped below his chin, cowered on the floor next to the queen-size bed. The target blinked rapidly to adjust his eyesight to the sudden change in light.

Child pornographer or not, Tom hated to see a grown man look so afraid.

“Who… who are you… ? What are you doing here? What do you want?”

“James Mann?” Tom asked.

“Yes…”

“If you try to run, I’ll hurt you,” Tom said. “If you make any noise, I’ll hurt you worse. Understood?”

James Mann just nodded.

“Take a seat,” Tom said, pointing to the bed.

“What do you want?” Mann asked, sitting as instructed.

“I want to know why the FBI thinks I sold you pictures of naked teenage girls.”

“What?”

“I’ve been arrested for distribution of child pornography in New Hampshire,” Tom said. “My name is Tom Hawkins. You can look it up if you want. The FBI came to see me.”

“Who? Who at the FBI?”

“Special Agent Loraine Miles,” Tom said. “She asked me about you. Do you know me?”

“No,” Mann said.

“Do you know her?”

“Yes,” Mann said. “She was one of the people who arrested me.”

“Okay. All right. That’s good. I think we’re getting somewhere now,” Tom said. “Have you ever seen me before?”

“No. No, never. Look… look, I’m being framed, too. Somebody set me up. I’m not a child pornographer. I’m a family man.”

Tom looked around the room. “Could use a woman’s touch, if you ask me.”

“I’ve lost my wife,” Mann said. “I haven’t seen my kids since my arrest. I’ve been fired from my job. I’ve been completely destroyed. Even my friends and family don’t want me living with them. That’s how I ended up here. I swear it’s all true.”

“Talk,” Tom said. “What happened to you? I want to know everything.”

“I live in Medfield, Massachusetts,” Mann said. A pained expression overtook his face. “I mean, I did, before I got arrested.”

“Go on.”

“A few weeks ago, I came home really excited. I had big news to share. I could finally tell my family about my promotion. You see… I used to work for PrimaMed.”

“The pharmaceutical company?” Tom knew all of this already. His information source didn’t miss.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Paul Rutledge, PrimaMed’s president, was retiring, and I’d been tapped by the CEO to become—”

Tom interrupted before Mann could finish. “The new president and chief operating officer,” he said.

“You know?”

“I know a lot of things about you.”

“Such as?”

“Such as you’ve only ever worked for PrimaMed. You started your career in sales, until your first big promotion into major accounts twenty years ago,” Tom said. “You were asked to lead a profitable business unit after only two years as a top performer. You held your current position as vice president of sales longer than any of your predecessors. You were a corporate superstar. Life had been good. Until PrimaMed’s rock steady stock tanked. Three consecutive quarters of missed Wall Street estimates. Tough luck. I’m guessing you didn’t receive a bonus like last year’s.”

“How… how did you?”

“What happened with your promotion?” Tom asked. “I obviously don’t know everything.”

“Four months ago I was called into a closed door meeting with the CEO,” Mann said. “I found out the FDA was close to approving our new drug application for diabetes. Internal projections predicted hundreds of millions in new revenue.”

“Interesting. Keep going,” Tom said.

“We came up with a public relations plan to announce my appointment to president and COO on the same day we announced the FDA’s approval. That way Wall Street wouldn’t think Paul was leaving because of the company’s health.”

“Sounds like a good plan. What happened?”

“The night before the press release was scheduled to drop, I got a call from our CFO, Sue Rossnick. She was in a panic. Said that message boards all over the Web were lighting up. Word was spreading that something big was going down. Somebody leaked news about the NDA. Our stock was moving in after-hours trading.”

“Was that a problem?”

“Not really,” Mann said. “It was close enough to the drop. But one of the guys contributing to the chatter online ran an influential message board. A lot of the after-hours traders follow it. He posted something about me. He wrote that he had a reliable source in the FBI who told him that I was going to be arrested for distribution of child pornography.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I guess you were arrested,” Tom said.

“You’d guess right.”