Did he imagine that a hush fell over the room when he entered? Was it just paranoia that told him everyone was watching him as he walked to the snack table and loaded a plate with cookies and Hershey's Kisses? Bigelow wasn't sure. But when he took a bite of a star-shaped cookie, the crunch seemed to echo through the room like thunder. The silence that followed was so profound he was almost afraid to chew.
He'd spotted Crowley and Jarry huddled together in a corner, and he was heading for that oasis of management-level camaraderie when Marcy walked to the center of the room with two large shopping bags.
"Well," she said, "now that everyone's here, we may as well let the fun and games begin. So… we're all just dying to find out who our Secret Santas are, right?"
There was a smattering of applause and one half-hearted "woo-woo," but Bigelow could barely hear it over the high-revving thump-thump of his heart.
"Great," Marcy said. "Because today's the day all is revealed. I took the liberty of collecting the last Secret Santa gifts this morning." She raised up the bags in her hand, then set them on the floor. "I'll just pick one out at random, and we'll see who it's for."
Bigelow's blood pressure shot so high he felt like his head would explode like those screaming bastards he'd just seen in the Scanners Anniversary Edition DVD.
Marcy pulled out the box he'd left on Sandberg's desk the night before.
This can't be happening, Bigelow thought. This can't be happening!
By the time he'd accepted that it was happening, right in front of him, Marcy was reading the note attached to the box out loud-"For Alex, from your Secret Santa"-and walking the present to the other side of the room, where Sandberg had been chatting with McCoy and Starr.
"Wait," Bigelow tried to say, but his mouth was still full of cookie, and all that came out was a spray of moist crumbs.
He started to move toward Sandberg, but it was too late. By the time he got there, Marcy, McCoy and Starr were all staring in horror at the open box in Sandberg's hands.
"'This is what people get when they mess with me,'" Sandberg said, reading out the note taped to the inside lid of the box. "'Erik Bigelow.'"
Other staff members crowded around, all of them quickly backing off with a loud "Ewwwww!" when they saw what Bigelow had stuffed into the package. The "Ewwww!"-ing grew even louder when the stench began to waft into the room.
Bantha was a very large dog, and the contents of the box were still reasonably fresh.
"That is sick, Bigelow," Starr said.
"What is it?" Crowley asked.
Starr told him in a single, blunt word. It hit Crowley like a slap, and his muscular neck tensed up tight.
"What is wrong with you, man?" he snapped at Bigelow.
"Wait," Bigelow said. "You don't understand. Look at this."
He ran to the shopping bags in the middle of the room and began pulling out presents, tossing the ones he didn't want over his shoulder. Some of the boxes made hard, ugly, shattering sounds when they landed, and voices were calling for Bigelow to stop, but he knew he had to act fast. He found what he was looking for at the very bottom of one of the bags.
"You think that was bad?" Bigelow grabbed the package with the HO! HO! HO! wrapping paper and held it aloft. "Well, look at this!"
He tore off the wrapping and clawed open the box underneath.
A Snickers bar fell out.
And a bag of Peanut M &Ms.
And a ten dollar Red Lobster gift card.
"What?" Bigelow screamed. "What is this crap?"
"Well, Erik…," replied a quiet, trembly female voice.
Bigelow turned to find a teary-eyed, frightened-looking Marcy huddling behind Sandberg.
"You're always forgetting your lunch," she said.
And at last Bigelow knew who his Secret Santa really was. It was the person who could monitor his comings and goings better than anyone because her cubicle was right outside his office. The person who'd watched as his insecurities had pushed him to destroy anyone he thought could be a rival. The person who sat near his door and heard him tell Crowley what a waste Sandberg was. The person who'd heard him say the same things about everyone else he'd managed to get fired. The person who knew he stole people's mail, because she was the one who brought it to his desk. The person who already had her own key to Sandberg's office. The person who knew his neuroses well enough to find a way to exploit them. The person who had walked into his office with a hatful of paper slips that all had the same name written on them.
The person who had set him up.
He saw the hint of a smile behind the mask of fear she was wearing now, and he knew everything. But it was all too much to explain, so he didn't try. Instead, he just howled like an angry monkey and lunged at Marcy.
He knew he wouldn't make it, and he didn't. Sandberg and Starr and McCoy stopped him. He flailed at them, spitting obscenities, until Crowley stepped up and ended the fight with one powerful punch from his little child-like fist.
Words and phrases floated in and out of Bigelow's consciousness as he lay there amidst the gifts he'd scattered across the floor. "911." "Police." "Weird." "Klepto." "Grudge." "Obsession." "Sandberg." "Granola bars."
There were other things he didn't hear, things no one was saying, though they bounced around inside his skull nonetheless. "Freak." "Fired." "Wal-Mart." And the sound of Marcy's voice as she looked up into Sandberg's eyes later that day, after Bigelow had been carted away.
"Merry Christmas, boss," she would say.
HUMBUG
Scrooge was dead. There was no doubt whatever about that. Compared to his battered, shattered body, a doornail would have seemed positively rambunctious.
A doornail, after all, might be run over by a team of horses pulling a wagonload of fresh-cut Christmas trees and come away none the worse for wear. Put a frail old man to the same test, however, and he not only finds himself the worse for it, he finds himself extremely, irrefutably, irreversibly dead.
Or, to be more precise, he is found thus, as the only thing such an individual would be capable of finding himself is his eternal reward-and perhaps, as in the case of Ebenezer Scrooge, his lack of same.
Scrooge had not been a very good man. But he was, as has been so firmly established, a very dead man. And that made Inspector Bucket of the Detective Police a very curious man.
A few minutes before Scrooge was juiced beneath the wagon wheels like a shriveled grape, the detective had been heading home for his Christmas Eve supper, having just dropped off a matching pair of handcuffed jewelry thieves at E Division headquarters. He was debating whether or not to surprise the wife with a pre-Christmas present-the new collection of stories by the American master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe-when he'd encountered Scrooge capering up and down the sidewalk talking to himself.
It was immediately apparent that this was no ordinary lunatic. Though out-of-doors in the chilly damp, the old man wore no topcoat, hat, gloves or scarf, appearing perfectly happy to cavort in the slush in a simple black business suit. His clothes were well-tailored and neat but years out of date, suggesting an owner with full pockets he was nevertheless reluctant to reach into to accommodate such a fickle thing as fashion. He also appeared to be a man of some renown, for people were stopping to stare in wide-eyed amazement and say, "Look at the old pinchpenny! Do you think his conscience has driven him mad at last?"
Bucket had just noticed the sign over a nearby warehouse door-"SCROOGE & MARLEY," it read-when the old man came scurrying up to him.