“Alan Perkins,” Donald said.
“Him and a couple others,” Jay said. “Alma Smith and Dennis Harrington.”
Donald nodded. “Michelle didn’t mention them to me, but she did say there were some other people from Corporate Financial at Building Products.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I found out where they were staying, what rooms they were in, and I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I knew I didn’t trust Harrington and Smith for shit. I didn’t like them the minute they started this bullshit project with Building Products. They’re the biggest corporate zombies I’ve ever seen.” Another drag of the cigarette. “Anyway,” Jay continued, his voice lowered. “I found out where Dennis was staying. The maids were doing some house cleaning, and one of their carts was in the middle of the hallway. I saw a passkey lying on top of a pile of laundry and snagged it. I went to Dennis’s room and slipped the passkey in the slot and opened the door slowly and stepped inside.” He took another drag of his cigarette and Donald could see that Jay’s features looked troubled. “And… this is no shit man. I swear to God I saw this… I stepped into the room and the smell was the first thing that hit me. It smelled like something dead. You dig?”
Donald nodded. “Yeah.” Donald had smelled plenty of decomposing bodies in medical school when he’d worked in dissection.
“I’m thinking Dennis is a sloppy fuck who doesn’t throw his food away, you know what I mean? So I step inside and there’s a body on the bed. I was a little startled at first, but then I recognized the face in the darkened room. It was Dennis, and he looked like he was asleep at first, but the closer I got into the room, the stronger that dead smell was. I leaned over him, not even knowing or caring what kind of excuse I was going to have if he woke up and saw me. And…” Jay took another drag of the cigarette. “I leaned over him and that dead smell was coming from him. I’m not shitting you, man. Fucker smelled like a decaying body.”
“That’s impossible,” Donald murmured quietly. “Maybe there was a dead animal or something in the room.”
Jay shook his head. “No, man. It was him! I touched him and he was stiff. I almost freaked out then. I thought maybe he’d died during the night, so I slapped his face and there was nothing. And then… then I felt this… I don’t know how else to describe it, but it was this… presence… as if there was something else in the room that was aware of me and that… it was trying to wake Dennis up.”
Jay took a drag on his cigarette. His fingers shook slightly. “So I got the hell out of there. I didn’t even close the door, I just ran out of the hotel and went home. When I got home I logged into Building Product’s corporate portal on my Macintosh and spent the rest of the afternoon poking around the secured network we’d made for Corporate Financial. At one point I called the office and Mark answered. I told him I was feeling a little better and was doing a little bit of work and asked to speak to Michelle. He told me Michelle was in a meeting with Accounting and the rest of the Corporate Financial people, and I asked him if Dennis was there too and he said yes.” Jay dragged on the butt of his cigarette and dropped it on the ground, stubbing it out with his booted foot. “That’s when I knew shit wasn’t right.”
Donald was trying to make sense of what Jay was telling him. While he didn’t doubt Jay’s insistence that he smelled decaying flesh in Dennis Harrington’s room, he believed Jay’s imagination had formulated the rest of it. Dennis Harrington had been in a deep sleep; that was all. Jay had freaked out, thought the guy was dead and come back from the grave. As for what he’d smelled… well, maybe Dennis was bad at maintaining his personal hygiene. He wouldn’t be the first. Donald didn’t voice any of this—he wanted to hear the rest of Jay’s story before he had all the evidence—so he let Jay finish.
“I came across a folder in the Corporate Financial tree that wouldn’t let me in,” Jay continued. “This freaked me out. I’m the System Admin of the entire network and I have complete access. I checked the security settings on the server and everything looked fine, but I couldn’t get into that one folder. So I moved to my Mac at home and transferred a code-breaker program to the Building Products Server. I ran it and it spit back the password. I modified the settings, got in, and spent the better part of an hour transferring all the files over the network to my PC at home. When I was done, I reset the NT settings and got out and read the files on my laptop.” He extracted another cigarette from his pack and lit it. “That’s when I knew I was in deep shit.”
“It’s some kind of corporate scandal, isn’t it?” Donald said softly. “Corporate Financial is helping the executives at Building Products cook the books or something and Michelle doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s being led to commit crimes she isn’t aware of, isn’t she?”
“No, it isn’t that,” Jay said. He took a drag on the cigarette. “Let me finish. When I saw this shit on our network I was freaked out. I didn’t understand all of it, but I knew it wasn’t right. I made backup copies on CD ROM and packed up my shit. When Julie and Danny came home I already had their shit packed, and I told them they were going to Wyoming where Julie’s parents live. Julie was freaked out, she was wondering what the hell was going on and I couldn’t tell her everything. I still didn’t know how much I was being watched, even though I’d destroyed as many of the bugs in the house as possible. I just told her that I thought Corporate Financial and Building Products were conspiring to commit some serious white-collar crimes and that I’d just found out about it and wanted to get them somewhere safe. She understood what I was talking about, and I helped her pack up the car and followed her to the airport. I had all my shit in my car, including the laptop and all my files, and I grabbed my nine and as much ammo and clips as I could carry. I saw them off at the airport and then took off myself. For awhile I didn’t know where I was going to go, but then I remembered Michelle told me she lived out here and I felt I could trust her.” He took another drag of his cigarette. “So here I am.”
“How did you find out where I lived?”
“You can find out all kinds of shit on the internet,” Jay said, taking another casual drag on his cigarette. “Especially if you’re a computer hacker like me.”
“Why do you feel you could trust Michelle?” Donald asked.
“Because she’s new,” Jay said. “I could tell. She had this… I don’t want to say deer-caught-in-the-headlights trip, but there was just something about her that was genuine and real. No sense of falsehood about her. Not like the other Financial Consultant people. Or like a lot of the people at Building Products.”
“And it took you three days to drive out here?” Donald asked.
Jay took a drag on his cigarette. “I drove to St. Louis and I was halfway there, near Oklahoma City, when I could tell I was being tailed. I did some maneuvering, got off some exits and got back on the Interstate again just to prove to myself I wasn’t being tailed, but I could tell somebody was following me. I was casual about getting off, though; I always stopped for gas or food or something. The tail hung back and I pretended not to notice. When I got back on the Interstate again, I watched him in my rearview. He stayed a good ten cars behind me. Finally I got off at a rest stop that was deserted. It was three in the morning and I was somewhere in Oklahoma. I pulled the car around the back and entered the men’s room and waited.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “A minute later I heard a car pull up. The bathroom had a window that was frosted and hard to see out of, but a chunk had been broken out of it, so I could tell that it was the car following me. I waited until the guy came in the bathroom and I plugged him.”