Steeled for Murder (5 page)

“I’m not taking you anywhere,” he said, exasperation filling his voice. “My orders are to process you for release.”

I could make no sense of that. Was I being set up so I could be charged with escape?

At the front desk, I was handed my belt and boots. I had to sign for the manila envelope that held my wallet and key ring. I tried to convince myself that no one would have had me sign any official paperwork unless I was really being released. Although, I supposed they could just tear it up.

I shoved the wallet and key into my pocket, passed the belt through the loops on my jeans, and sat down to put on the boots. I was careful not to jar the home detention monitor; the blasted thing would cost me cost several hundred dollars if it was damaged, and it had already been manhandled.

Under the bored gaze of the desk officer, I stood up and walked out the front door into the dark December day.

Prison issue jackets have the institution name stenciled across the back just below the shoulders; popular rumor is that it’s a target for the tower guards to aim at if someone makes an escape attempt. I wasn’t wearing any jacket, but my back itched between the shoulder blades just the same.

No shots. No one shouted for me to stop. No sirens sounded.

I realized that, despite the chill December wind and the spitting sleet, I was sweating.

Only after I had forced myself to walk several blocks and turned a corner did I allow myself to look around. No one following. Several cars passed. On the other side of the street, an elderly lady in a fur coat leaned into the wind. No one paid any attention to me. I tried to relax.

Did I still have a job? I wouldn’t if the supervisors at the plant thought I had killed Mitch. Someone must have killed him.

Unless it had been determined to be an accident. I brightened. That wouldn’t explain Belkins’ animosity toward me, but it would explain my sudden release. Must be it.

I couldn’t take too long to get back to my place so the phone could pick up the signals from my ankle monitor. The police would have records of the time I had spent in custody there. Assuming that even now, someone wasn’t busy erasing all trace of it. That was a chilling thought.

Too many people had seen me hauled in, though, for that to work. John and Hank might not have any reason to go out of their way to help me anymore. Not if they thought I had killed Mitch. But they were honest men. If asked what had happened to me, they wouldn’t lie.

The plant was only a block out of my way. I could stop in and pick up my jacket. Now that I wasn’t sweating so badly, I was getting really cold. And definitely wet.

While I was there, I could check to see if I should report to work tonight.

I went up to the side factory gate that we used at night, but it was shut and locked. I thought about walking around to the truck yard in the rear and going through the shipping department, but I didn’t want to be accused of trespassing. So I went to the front entrance by the offices. Well lit and welcoming, not dark and grated shut like it was when I usually showed up just before midnight.

Shivering, I went up to the receptionist. I hoped I wasn’t dripping too badly on the nice carpet in front of her desk.

The receptionist raised her finely drawn eyebrows and looked me up and down. Her bow-shaped lips drew together in disdain. She sat up a little straighter, her right hand straying to finger the jeweled watch on her other wrist.

“May I help you?” she said, her voice nasal and disapproving.

I felt like saying, “Hey, you should have seen me going out of here last night in shackles. Now that was something to look down your nose at.” But no good could come of such a stupid comment.

“I was just wondering about work tonight…” I started to say.

“Oh, you want personnel,” she said, relaxing a little. “Through that door—” she pointed with her silver pen “—the window on your right.”

When I was hired, the company had sent someone out to the pre-release center at the prison to take applications and do interviews, so I had actually never been in the personnel office.

Through the doorway, the floor turned from the plush carpet of reception and the executive suite to worn linoleum. In the shop, the floor was concrete.

The woman at this window was considerably less classy than the receptionist, but no more friendly. “We’re not hiring right now.” She eyed my wet clothes. Her gaze settled on the side of my face. A bruise was probably forming there. Was my lip still bleeding? I wiped it with my sleeve.

“You can fill out an application, and we’ll keep it on file,” she continued. “Let you know if anything opens up. But we expect to be closed Christmas week. We definitely won’t hire until after that.”

“I was already hired,” I said, annoyed with myself that I hadn’t planned out what I was going to say. “I left my jacket last night. I’d like to get it. And I was wondering if I should report tonight…”

“Are you still in your probationary period?” she interrupted.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Were you told not to report tonight?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Did you work the whole shift last night?” She started to shuffle through paperwork on her desk.

“No, ma’am. Until maybe around six or so.”

“Four to midnight?” she asked, turning to her computer and typing something on the keyboard. I couldn’t see how she could do that with the long, pearl pink fingernails, but she managed.

“Midnight to eight,” I said.

“Who sent you home?”

“I wasn’t really sent home,” I said, shifting from one foot to the other. “The police took me out.”

Her eyes widened behind her oversized glasses. “Just a minute,” she said. “I have to check with my supervisor.”

She picked up the phone. “What did you say your name was?”

I hadn’t. “Jesse Damon.”

She turned away, spoke into the phone, and then waited a while, drawing circles with a pencil on a piece of paper on her desk. Finally, she said, “Okay,” hung up the phone, and turned to me.

“Mr. Radman, the plant manager, will be the one to make that decision. You’ll have to go up to his office and find out. Through the door beside you, down the corridor, and onto the shop floor, and then through the door right next to you and up the stairs. Look for his name on the door.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

“Let me buzz you in.”

The door made a sound like an irritated wasp. I opened it, went down a short corridor, and opened another door onto the noise and controlled chaos of the shop floor. I was in the corner next to the time clock.

Thankfully, I saw the black and red checks of my jacket still hanging from a hook. I grabbed it, careful not to knock anyone else’s to the floor. I’d worry about my lunch box later. If I still had a job. If I didn’t, I probably wouldn’t need it.

I climbed the stairs to the offices.

I was in an internal hallway, separated from the pounding machinery on the shop floor by the offices themselves. The office where Belkins had arrested me was at the opposite end, with the stairway down to the plating floor.

Most of the office doors were shut. Through glass windows on both sides of them, I could see people at work. I read the name plates. The old plank flooring creaked under my damp work boots.

The office of Sterling Radman, Plant Manager, was almost at the end. His door was open. I stopped at the threshold.

Mr. Radman was standing ramrod straight at the windows on the other side of his office, overlooking the production floor, his back to me, his hand pressed to the side of his head. He wore dark pants and a light yellow dress shirt. A suit jacket was hung over the back of his desk chair.

At first, I thought he was watching something going on below, but then I noticed the wire from his desk to his ear. He was on the phone. I waited.

He must have been listening to someone talk. He shook his head, running long, slender fingers through his mane of thick, silver hair.

“No, no, no,” he said into the phone. “You can’t return that shipment. You just can’t.”

He listened for a few seconds.

“I don’t care what you do with the damn root baskets. Sell them to a plant nursery. Or an orchard. Give them to somebody. Dig up some trees yourself and go into the tree business. I don’t care. Just don’t return them.”

He listened again.

“Well, consider it part of the price of the deal. Let them rust, for all I care. You’re not going to return them, and that’s final.” He turned toward his desk and slammed the phone down.

He caught sight of me. “What do you want?”

“The lady down in personnel, she told me to come talk to you…” He hadn’t invited me in, so I stood in the doorway.

“About what?”

“About my job. Whether I should come in tonight.” Why hadn’t I learned my lesson and figured out what to say? I should sound sure of myself, like I knew I was keeping the job. But that wasn’t happening.

“Why did they think should you be asking me?” he said. “I don’t handle personnel decisions.”

“Well, I guess because of last night. I had to leave early. The police…”

His narrowed eyes looked me over. He leaned on his desk, his short, buffed nails splayed in front of him.

“You’re the one the police took out of here last night?” he said. “After they found the body…”

“Yes, sir.”

“And they’ve released you already?”

“Yes, sir.”

He drew himself up to his full height. “Unbelievable. A convicted murderer,” he turned away, muttering to himself. But I could hear him.

Without turning to face me, he asked, “Did somebody bail you out?”

“No, sir. I wasn’t charged.”

“So they don’t think you did it?” he asked, tapping his handsome, well-maintained teeth with a silver pen.

“They didn’t say, sir. They just told me to leave.”

“And did they tell you to stay in the area?”

“No need to, sir. I’m on parole. I can’t leave the area without permission anyhow.”

“That’s right.” He shook his head.

I needed a more positive aspect to this conversation. “So I’ll report for work at midnight, shall I, sir?”

Mr. Radman stepped back. “I don’t think so.” he said. “This company is dedicated to giving convicted felons a second chance…”

Also dedicated to the incentive tax breaks the state gives for that. But I didn’t point that out.

He was shaking his head. “…but second chances are it. One of our long-term employees was killed—murdered in the warehouse. I think we’re past giving any more chances.”

“You can ask Hank. I didn’t…” I started to say.

But he had picked up the phone. “Send security up here right away.”

That’s that, I figured. “You don’t need to call security. I’ll leave.” My lunchbox would just have to be a casualty of this. I turned and headed back down the hallway.

I’d just about reached the stairs when I heard a voice behind me. “Wait.”

I turned around.

Mr. Radman was standing at the door of his office, beckoning to me. “Come back.”

Uncomfortably, I returned, careful to remain just outside the office in the hallway and to keep my hands in an unthreatening position at my sides.

Mr. Radman had retreated to his office and had the desk between us. He looked pale.

I made no attempt to go any closer.

“Yes, sir?” I said.

“I may have been hasty.” He cleared his throat. His words were falling all over one another. “And we are shorthanded. I will have to check with the foreman on that shift. But if he says he wants you back, you can still have a job.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll just report at the usual time? John will tell me whether I’m working or not.”

“Yes, yes. You do that. Report to John tonight.” He passed a hand over his unwrinkled brow.

I thought businessmen were supposed to be decision makers who stood by their decisions. It’s losers like me who are never quite sure what to do. But people in Sterling Radman’s position are paid to assess a situation, make an analysis, and act on it. Why was this stressing him out so much?

He looked like he was afraid I was going to enter the office and attack him or something.

“Anything else now, sir?” I asked, taking a step backwards.

“No. Go. Come back later and talk to John.”

“Thank you, sir.” I left before he could change his mind again. I heard the office door slam shut as I went down the hallway.

At the head of the stairs, two security guards rushed past me toward Sterling Radman’s office. I stood aside and let them go.

John had said I was a good worker; I could only hope he would want me back.

Chapter 4

Home was a one-room, furnished, basement apartment. A kitchenette with a mini refrigerator and stove beneath a five-foot counter that housed two burners and a sink. A tiny bathroom in the corner. One little window looking out onto the dead-end alley that ran next to the building, a gathering place for cheap hookers and desperate junkies. The phone—an essential, since it read the home detention monitor on my ankle—hung on the wall by the bathroom door. Not exactly luxurious surroundings. But I had the key to the door in my pocket. Sure beat a prison cell.