The Darkness - Jason Pinter [30]
"The toaster? Are you ser..."
"Just kidding. Give me five minutes."
She closed the door and I collapsed on the couch. I
turned on the television and clicked through a hundred
and fourteen channels before deciding that there was
nothing worth watching. It was just as entertaining to sit
there and go through the events of the day, and prepare
for the next.
Hopefully Brett Kaiser could fill in much of the information that was missing. Somebody had to be paying
Kaiser's firm's share of the lease money, and with any
luck that person would have intimate knowledge of just
who my brother was working for and why he was
killed. I still didn't buy that it was totally a power play.
Stephen came to me because he was scared of something. If you work in a company and have problems
with underlings, there are ways to circumvent any
actions. Now when somebody above you wants you
gone, that's when you have a problem. If you feel that
your termination--pardon the term--is inevitable, you
begin planning an exit strategy. In the workplace,
maybe you look for another job, prepare a lawsuit,
something so that you're not thrown from an airplane
without a parachute. When Stephen came to me that
night, scared out of his mind (a mind already addled),
The Darkness
87
he was looking for his exit strategy. Granted the actions
you take are a little different when you led a life of
crime as opposed to life in a cubicle, but the principle
still stood.
What I needed to know was who set Stephen on the
path to his eventual exit. Even though he didn't make it,
he had something to say. A story to tell.
Amanda came out of the shower. She was wrapped in
a towel, and over the towel she wore a pink bathrobe.
Above this contraption she was tousling her hair with
another towel. The combination of towels and thick
bathrobe made Amanda look about twice as thick as she
normally did, and I couldn't help but laugh.
"This is my routine," she said. "You should be used to
it by now."
"I am," I said, "but that doesn't mean you don't look
a little silly."
She took a seat on the couch, wrapping the towel into a
turban where it sat perched a whole foot above her head.
I'd bought the couch at an apartment sale for about a third
of what it would cost at a department store. It was brown
leather, with big cushions that I constantly rotated to change
up the stains. Made me feel like it was a little less worn.
"How was your day?" she asked, absently flipping
through the stack of the day's newspapers I kept on the
coffee table.
"Still working on this story with Jack," I said. "It's
interesting, working with him for the first time."
"In what way?"
"Jack was in pretty bad shape my first few years at the
Gazette. I hate to admit it, but there was a moment or two
when I wondered if this was really the same guy I grew
up wanting to be. Not many kids dress up like a journal-88
Jason Pinter
ist for Halloween. It was important to me that he was who
I thought he was."
"You did not dress like a journalist," Amanda said.
"You bet your ass. Had a row of pens in my shirt
pocket, a camera and notepad and everything. Everyone
assumed I was Clark Kent."
"I would have paid to see that," Amanda said.
"There aren't a whole lot of photo albums back in
Bend. My dad wasn't exactly the sentimental type."
"How do you feel about how things are going?" she
asked. I took a seat next to her, thought for a moment.
"When I found out Stephen was dead, I felt numb. Like
someone was prodding me with a stick I could see but
couldn't feel. I was supposed to feel remorse, but it didn't
come at first. Someone can tell you that you lost a family
member, but if you didn't even know the person it's not
the same. It should be, I guess. Blood is blood, but in a
way it isn't. Now, it feels different. Like maybe I did lose
someone who could have-- should have--been closer to
me." I looked at Amanda, saw she was listening to every
word. "Without you, I'd have no one."
"Don't say that," she said, looking away. "That's not
true."
It was true,