James Grippando - Beyond Suspicion

Jack was up to box twenty-two on the unloading end, moving at a fairly good clip. But Cindy was falling way behind him on the unpacking, still working on the first wave of boxes they’d brought from her mother’s. Jack flopped on the rented sofa and closed his eyes, more tired than he’d realized. He was almost asleep when he heard a shrill cry from Cindy.

“Jack!”

He sat bolt upright, but he was still only half-awake.

“Jack, come here!”

He got his bearings and ran to the kitchen. She was seated at the counter surrounded by open boxes and scattered packing material.

“What is it?”

“Look,” she said. “Our wedding album.”

Photo albums, home videos, and the like were among the things they’d taken from their house long ago in the first wave of personal possessions that the prosecutor had released from the crime scene. Jack glanced over her shoulder, and the sight sickened him. “What the hell?”

Cindy flipped from the first page to the second, and then the next. The bride and groom at the altar, Jack and Cindy getting into the white limousine, the two of them stuffing cake into each other’s mouths. All were in the same condition: sliced diagonally from the top left corner to the lower right by a very sharp knife.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

“I don’t know. This is the first I noticed it.”

“Did you check it before we took it from the house?”

“No… I don’t know. I don’t remember. I can’t believe she did this,” said Cindy, her voice quaking.

“I can.”

She looked up and asked, “What should we do?”

“Put it down, gently.”

She laid it on the table.

“Don’t touch another page,” said Jack. “Our wedding album has just become Exhibit A.”

“As evidence of what?”

His eyes locked on the slashed photograph before him. He was beginning to think that perhaps Rosa was right, that Jessie had killed herself. Or that at the very least she’d been driven to suicide.

Or that somebody had done an awfully convincing job of making it look like suicide.

“I wish I knew,” he said.

•

The blood business was booming, and Jack wanted a firsthand look. He found the Gift of Life mobile blood unit just a block away from the same street corner that his friend Mike had told him about after tailing Katrina. Mike, however, had only watched from a distance. Jack was there on business.

It was a cool afternoon, which made his disguise easier. He stopped at Goodwill and bought a crummy sweatshirt, a pair of old tennis shoes that didn’t match, black pants with a few paint spots around the cuffs, and a knit cap that was frayed around the edges. Then he went home and burned a pile of garbage in the backyard, standing close enough to the cloud of dirty smoke to overpower the smell of mothballs. With his bare hands he dug a little hole in the earth, doggy-style, getting dirt under his nails, soiling his arms up to his biceps. A swig of cheap bourbon gave his breath the right adjustment. Streaks of engine grease on his hands, face, and clothes provided the finishing touches, compliments of the grimy engine block on his old Mustang.

A half-block away from the blood unit, he stopped along the sidewalk and checked his reflection in a storefront window. He genuinely looked homeless.

Not that his disguise needed to be foolproof. He wasn’t hiding from Katrina. In fact, he wanted to talk to her, but a visit to her house or the main office of Viatical Solutions, Inc., could have put them both at risk, depending on who might be watching. A phone call wouldn’t work, either, since her line might be tapped. Staking out the blood unit, dressed like a homeless guy, seemed like the best alternative. He was pretty sure that the low-level goons who worked with her in the truck had no idea who Jack Swyteck was, and the disguise was enough to fool them.

“Need twenty bucks, buddy?” said the guy outside the unit.

Jack looked around, not sure he was talking to him.

“Yeah, you,” the guy said. “Twenty bucks, and all you gotta do is roll up your sleeve. You interested?”

Jack thought for a second, but this was even better than he’d hoped for. Here was a chance to look around inside. “Sure.”

“Come on.”

Jack followed him toward the unit, stopping just outside the door to let the latest donor pass. It was a woman, probably in her thirties, who looked about seventy. She appeared to be wearing every stitch of clothing she owned, several dirty layers that smelled of life on the streets and dried vomit.

She smiled at the doorman, half of her teeth missing, and then laid her hand on his belt buckle and said, “How’s about I collect some of your specimen, honey?”

“Get away from me,” he said, wincing.

“Whatsa matter? Your nice little nurse stuck me with her needle. You don’t want to stick me with yours?”

“Get lost.”

She snarled and said, “Needle dick.”

He pushed her to the pavement.

“Hey, go easy on her,” said Jack.

“Needle dick!” she shouted.

“You shut your trap, lady,” the doorman said.

“Needle dick, needle dick!”

He stepped toward her, fists clenched, but Jack stopped him. “Come on. I ain’t got all day.”

The man seemed torn, but finally his business mind prevailed. He hurled a few cuss words at the woman and led Jack up the stairs.

The air inside was stale, trapped by windows that probably hadn’t opened in years. The staff was minimal, just a phlebotomist, a cashier, and a thick-necked thug seated near the door. Jack presumed he was packing heat. Donors were paid in cash, so a guard with good aim and plenty of ammunition would have been indispensable, even if he was a blockhead, a matching bookend for Jack’s escort.

“Got another one for you,” the man said.

The phlebotomist put her cheese sandwich aside and said, “Come on over.”

Jack took a seat. A rubber strap, gauze packages, several plastic blood bags, and a needle with a syringe were spread across the table.

“You HIV-positive, partner?” asked the phlebotomist.

Jack looked around. The floors looked as if they hadn’t been mopped in months, plenty of dried blood spots on grimy, beige tile. The seats and tabletop weren’t much cleaner, and the windows were practically opaque with dirt. How this woman could eat in this place was beyond him. He wasn’t about to let her poke him with one of her needles.

“Yeah, HIV,” said Jack. “As a matter of fact, I got full-blown AIDS.”

“Perfect,” she said. “Roll up your sleeve.”

He tried not to look confused. “You want bad blood?”

“Of course. Now, come on. Show me a vein.”

He didn’t move fast enough, so she grabbed his wrist and pushed his sleeve up to his elbow. “Hmm. No tracks.”

“I shoot between my toes,” he said.

“Make a fist.”

Jack obliged, keeping an anxious eye on the syringe. “Is that a new needle?”

She chuckled, still searching his arm for the right vein. “Only been used once by a little old lady who likes needle dicks.”

“Don’t you start,” said Needle Dick.

She tied the rubber strap around his elbow like a tourniquet. If he didn’t think fast, he was about to share a junkie’s needle. “This is fifty bucks, right?” said Jack.

“I told you twenty,” the goon said.

“I ain’t doing this for no twenty dollars.”

“Shut up and be a good boy. Maybe I’ll throw in a half-pint of whiskey.”

“No. It’s fifty or I’m outta here.”

The other goon stood up beside his buddy. With the two of them together, it was like trying to blow by a couple of pro-Bowl linebackers. “Sit down and shut up,” he told Jack.