James Grippando - Beyond Suspicion

Katrina had prayed for the safety of her coworkers, but she also thanked the Lord that she wasn’t the poor soul working one of those man-eaters. Years later, she still felt guilty about that. One nightmare, in particular, still haunted her. Never would she forget what happened on that cold night in January when machine number eight turned against its master, when her name was still Elena.

•

A loud pop rattled the factory windows, rising above the steady drone of machinery. Instinctively, Elena dived to the floor. One by one, the machines shut down like falling dominoes. A wave of silence fell over the factory, save for the pathetic screams and groans emerging from somewhere behind machine number eight, a tortured soul with a frighteningly familiar voice.

Elena raced across the factory, pushed her way through the small gathering of workers around the accident, and then gasped at the sight. “Beatriz!”

She and her best friend Beatriz had joined Castro’s Eastern Bloc work program together, with plans to defect at the first opportunity. Each had pledged never to leave without the other.

Elena went to her, but Beatriz lay motionless on her side, a thick pool of blood encircling her head. She checked the pulse and found none. She tried to roll Beatriz onto her back, then froze. The left side of her face was gone. A sharp hunk of metal protruded from her shattered eye socket.

“My God, Beatriz!”

The ensuing moments were a blur, her own cries of anguish merging with the memory of Beatriz’s painful screams. Tears flowed, and words came in incoherent spurts. Beatriz never moved. Kneeling at her side, Elena lowered her head and sobbed, only to be ripped away by a team of men with a stretcher.

“It’s too late for that,” she heard someone say. But the men rolled the body onto the stretcher anyway, then hurried for the exit.

Elena followed right behind them, through a maze of machinery, passing one stunned worker after another. The doors flew open, and a blast of cold, winter air pelted her face. They put Beatriz in the back of a van, still on the stretcher. Elena tried to get in with her, but the doors slammed in her face. The tires spun on the icy pavement, then finally found traction. Elena stood ankle-deep in dirty snow as the van pulled away.

In her heart she knew that this was the last she’d see of Beatriz.

She couldn’t move. It was well below freezing, but she was oblivious to the elements. Half a block away she spotted a police car parked at the curb. It seemed like a sign, Beatriz whisked away in an ambulance right past the police. It was time for someone in a position of authority to see the deplorable conditions they worked under.

On impulse, she ran down the icy sidewalk and knocked on the passenger-side window. The officer rolled down the window and said something she didn’t understand.

“Come see,” she said, but her command of the language was still very basic. “The factory. Come see.”

He gave her a confused look. His reply was completely unintelligible, a dialect she’d never heard before. She’d learned Russian as a schoolgirl in Cuba, but there was surprisingly little crossover to Czech.

“What are you doing, girl?”

She turned and saw her foreman. He was a stocky, muscular man with extraordinarily bad teeth for someone as young as he was.

“Leave me alone. I want him to see what happened.”

He said something to the cop that made him laugh. Then he grabbed Elena by the arm and started back toward the factory.

“Let go of me!”

“Are you stupid? The police can’t help you.”

“Then I’ll talk to someone else.”

“Yes, I know you will. We’re going to see the boss man right now.” His grip tightened on her arm till it hurt. He took her down a dark alley that ran alongside the factory. The pavers were frozen over with spilled sludge and dirty run-off from the roofs, and about every third step her feet slipped out from under her. At the end of the alley were two glowing orange dots, which finally revealed themselves as the taillights of a Renault.

Her foreman opened the door, shoved Elena in the back seat, climbed in beside her, and closed the door. The motor was running, and a driver was behind the wheel in the front seat.

“This is her,” said the foreman.

“Hello, Elena,” the driver said.

It was dark inside, and from the back seat she could see only the back of his head. “Hello.”

“I heard there was an accident with your friend. I came as soon as I could.”

“What do you care?”

They made eye contact in the rearview mirror, but she could see only his eyes. “Do you think it makes me happy when someone gets hurt in my factory?”

Elena didn’t answer, though she was taken aback to realize that she was talking to the owner of the factory.

“Listen to me,” he said. “I know it’s dangerous in there.”

“Then why don’t you fix it?”

“Because that’s the way it’s always been.”

“And you can’t do anything about it?”

“I can’t. But you can.”

“Me?”

“You can make things safer, at least for yourself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It’s very simple. This is a big factory. There are many jobs. Some are dangerous. Some are very dangerous. Some are not dangerous at all.”

“Seems to me that the women are always getting the most dangerous jobs.”

“Not all women. Some get the dangerous jobs, some get the not-so-dangerous jobs. It all depends.”

“On what?”

“On which part of your body you want to sacrifice.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Machine number eight should be up and running in a day or two. You’ll be taking over Beatriz’s spot.”

“What?”

He shrugged, as if it were none of his doing. “Or I suppose I could tell your foreman to assign it somebody else. It’s up to you.”

“What choice are you giving me?”

He turned partly around, as if to look at her, but his face was blocked by the headrest. He spoke in a low serious voice that chilled her. “Everything happens for a reason. No decision is meaningless. We all determine our own fate.”

“Like Beatriz?”

“Like you. And like hundreds of other girls much smarter than your friend.”

She could have smashed his face in, but an Eastern Bloc prison was no place for an eighteen-year-old girl from Cuba.

“Sleep on it,” he said. “But we need your answer.”

The foreman opened the door and pulled her out into the alley. A cold wind swept by her, stinging her cheeks. She stood in the darkness and watched as the car backed out of the alley.

She brushed away a tear that had frozen to her eyelash, but she felt only anger.

You pig, she thought as the car pulled away. How dare you hide your evil behind such twisted views of fate .

•

The lock clicked; a key was in the car door. Katrina cleared her mind of memories and sharpened her focus. The door opened, but the dome light didn’t come on. She’d taken care of that in advance to reduce the risk of detection.

Theo climbed inside and shut the door.

She was close enough to smell his cologne, even feel the heat from his body. Her pulse quickened as she rose on one knee. With a gloved hand, she guided the.22-caliber pistol toward the back of the headrest.

Theo inserted the key.

As the ignition fired she shoved the muzzle of her silencer against the base of his skull. “Don’t make a move.”

The engine hummed. His body stiffened. “Katrina?”

“Shut up. Don’t make this any worse than it already has to be.”

•

Jack went into the office as if it were a normal day. He was following the same advice he’d given countless clients living under the cloud of a grand-jury investigation: If you want to keep your sanity, keep your routine.