Trust Issues

Trust Issues was previously published in Suspense Magazine under the pseudonym Patrick J. McKnight in August 2015

 It all started with a broken toe.

Actually, two broken toes if you want to be technical about it. Which I don’t. Because, the first one was really broke. Bone separated from bone. That sucker will be deformed forever.

The second one? A hairline fracture. No big deal. Wouldn’t notice it on an x-ray, if you didn’t look closely. A healing so complete you’d never see the scar. If it were to heal. But it’s not going to.

            But the first? Oh, yeah. People would see that, squirm and ask, “What the hell happened there?” Then I’d tell them. Maybe.

            Which leads me to Ivan. He’s my therapist and, unsurprisingly, Ivan’s not his real name. It’s just that he talks with an asinine Russian accent. Which is bullshit because he was born in some Podunk town in Indiana not Siberia or Kamchatka.

Even though he’s a Hoosier not a Roosky, I still picture him as Boris Badenov. You see, Boris Badenov was this cartoon character and— Oh, Christ, if you don’t know who Boris Badenov is than I cannot fucking help you.

            Ivan says I have trust issues. Me. No joking. He said it with a straight face. “Charlie, you have trust issues.” Of course, he said this after I’d already hacked into his office’s computer system. Email, banking, patient information. You name it, I saw it all.

            Get this. His receptionist’s password was, you guessed it, PASSWORD1. How’s that for trust? She’s literally the gate keeper of his office and she uses a stupid password like that? Give me a break. At the least the nurse used her maiden name and anniversary date as hers. Though truth be told, she’s no better.

            Me? I could have robbed him blind. Could have taken every red cent that he had before he knew what hit him. Imagine Jenny and I sailing around the Cayman Islands or Fiji or some other place I couldn’t find on a map, sipping Mai Tai’s and getting naked every hour on the hour. But we didn’t. Because I’m not that kind of person.

            But his nurse sure as hell is. Shit, she was skimming anywhere from $5 to $15K a month off the guy. She was clever about it, too. Only someone who knew their way around computers and secret bank accounts and hiding places would notice. Ivan? Remember, this is the same guy who hired a woman who decided that PASSWORD1 was a good password.

            I was going to tell Ivan about Nurse Ratched’s ongoing thefts next Wednesday. That’s our next appointment. That had been my plan for well over ten minutes. Until I checked his email. By the way, Nurse Ratched is a character from some movie. To be honest, I don’t remember which one. Someone referred to her on NCIS once. The good one. Not that thing they’ve got going in Los Angeles or the new one in New Orleans. With a name like Ratched it was easy to picture the woman – and a spoiler alert, the guy who made the Nurse Ratched reference was the bad guy. I’m surprised Abby Sciuto didn’t pick up on that. Probably would have if she weren’t so damned trusting.  

            As for Ivan, not only was he dumb enough to hire a woman who used PASSWORD1 as her password, he didn’t have the brains God gave him to delete his old email or his sent email. Especially the ones that left no confusion about the fact that he was banging my girlfriend, Jenny, and the ones he sent her about my progress, as he called it.

            And I’m the one with trust issues?

            Backing up, I should probably be honest with you. I lied earlier. It didn’t really start with a broken toe – or two broken toes, if you’re so inclined – but rather it ended with a broken toe or two. Or, more specifically, that was the beginning of the end.

            The reason I bring up the toe – or toes – is that they’re metaphors. You see, my relationship with Ivan is like the real broken toe. Toe number two – aka the piggy who stayed home. That thing’s shot. I see a bone chip floating in the cartilage apart from the toe knuckle as plain as day. That one ain’t never gonna heal.

            The next time I’m in Ivan’s office, it’ll be like that. Broken. His receptionist will cringe, because she’ll know something’s wrong. Not that I’ll tell her, of course. She may have shit-for-brains when it comes to passwords but she strikes me as someone who’s pretty perceptive when it comes to interpersonal relations, dealing with whack jobs day in and day out and all.

            Jenny and I are like the other toe – the piggy who had roast beef. That’s just a hairline crack. When those heal, no one is the wiser. No one’s gonna know and you can bet your ass I ain’t gonna be the one to tell them. Especially with all this leverage on Ivan.

            Like I said, if I’m being honest with you, it didn’t really start with a broken toe. It really started during my hourly surveillance on webcams NE 4.20 and NE 8.20 nineteen hours and…eleven minutes ago. By the way, NE stands for northeast. E stands for east. SE stands for southeast. You get the picture and yes, I have cameras in all eight directions.

The 4 and 8 represent height in feet, as in 4 feet from the ground and 8 feet from the ground. You never know. Some people are clever. Some people are short, like, say Ivan. A sawed-off little man from Podunk, Indiana. But bad things can happen above eye-level, too. That’s why I’ve got cameras at 4, 8, 12, and 16. 12 is approximately the same height as Jenny’s bedroom window. The 16’s are mostly for government drones. Not that I expect to see any hovering over the skies of our tiny little town any time soon (Christmas at the earliest, according to my sources).

            Okay, I’ve given you direction and height. But don’t forget distance.  20 represents the distance from the epicenter, which in this case is Jenny’s bedroom door. 5, 10, 15, 20. Again, you get the picture.  If you’re too lazy to do the math, I’ll do it for you. That’s 160 webcams surrounding Jenny’s and her roommate’s house. A ratty, two-story rental that could have used a few coats of paint during the Clinton administration.

You’d think that all those cameras would be overboard and of course, you’d be wrong. Because Jenny’s roommate was visiting her family in Loveland, Colorado for the holiday. That left Jenny alone to host Thanksgiving two nights ago for the two of us and six other people I thought looked shifty. She called them work colleagues. I called them kleptos, although, nothing had gone missing that day, as far as I could tell.

            I did enjoy the feast around the big dining room table, though. A big turkey. Stuffing. Potatoes. All the fixin’s. Jenny did the cooking for all those people. That was new to me. My mom was never much into holidays when I was a kid, God rest her soul.

            So the surveillance cameras. If I ran, I could make it to Jenny’s house in six minutes, ten seconds flat – provided I don’t cut through any yards. Frankly, that’s only a bit faster than if I were to drive. The best time I’d made it driving is seven minutes, eight seconds. Even then the car was already running and I didn’t need to grab a baseball bat. Like I did yesterday.

            After transferring monitor control to my new Samsung Galaxy, I grabbed the 34 inch Louisville Slugger and I tore out of my house so fast that I forgot to put my shoes on. Which was a big mistake, because I cut through yard after yard. It maximized my time but tore the shit out of my feet.

            I made it in four minutes and five seconds. Nine seconds off my cut-through record because I spent too much time monitoring cameras NE 4.10, NE 4.5 and eventually, four of the eight cameras at 12.5. That’s ten feet then fifteen feet closer and all the way up—seriously, do I really have to do the math for you?  They all point at the hallway outside of Jenny’s bedroom door. That’s all you need to know. The other half point to the inside her door – from inside her bedroom. The point is, all that checking slowed me down but the lack of proper footwear didn’t help either.

            I’d installed my surveillance scheme nine days ago, at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Truth told, I’d planned it for weeks, months even. Long before reports of a serial rapist/murderer terrorizing this little hamlet between Albany and Buffalo and its lone, low bridge – you know the song, right? Low bridge, everybody down. You don’t know it? Oh, that’s right. You’re from Texas. You only studied Texas History. News Flash. History happened in other parts of the country, too.

Anyhow, the fact that the news of this blot on our village actually broke two days after JennyCam went live is something I’ll just keep to myself. Given how much Jenny freaked out over the cameras as it was, it’s doubtful that I’ll share this little timing discrepancy with anyone. Ever.

So I scaled the lattice work outside of Jenny’s bedroom window without slipping this time, careful not to drop the bat. Prickers jabbed into my feet, which hurt like hell, but likely kept me from falling. Any other day, I wouldn’t mind the fall rather than endure this pain. But not that day.

So I leaned against the outside wall, careful to avoid any prickers from poking me in the temple and checked the Galaxy one last. Camera S 12.5. The one that stared straight at the guy’s bare ass.

If Jenny’s door had been open, N 12.5 would be staring at his junk. Thank God her door was closed, for many reasons but not seeing his junk at the moment was one of them near the top. Speaking of sawed-off. Well, never mind. It also meant that I didn’t see his face. But given his stature and stocky build…let’s just say, it wasn’t a little sawed off man from Podunk, Indiana.  

Thankfully, SE 12.5 was slightly askew or else I might not have noticed the machete in his hand. Buck naked with a machete. The news reports never mentioned the kind of knife they guy used. None of the local reporters even made mention of it in their notes, the ones they entered into their smartphones. Nor did the police. I guess you could say at that moment, I had a scoop.   

In hindsight, I couldn’t help but wonder what took the guy so long. He’d been in that hallway for several minutes. Maybe he couldn’t get his clothes of quickly. Maybe it was nerves. Maybe he jacked off a little beforehand. Who knows with these weirdos?

I ripped the window screen off this time and tossed it. Usually, I just unhooked it from the snaps and let it drop gently to the ground. But there was no time for finesse. With one slight push, Jenny’s bedroom window went up without a sound. How many times have I told her to lock that goddamn thing? And I’m the one with trust issues?

Nickleback blared from her iHome speakers. God that music sucks. She loves it, though. I don’t say nothin’. “Sure, honey. We can listen to that while we make love.” If I ever experience a performance issue, you can be damn sure I’m going to blame Nickleback.

I bet Ivan loves those guys.

Not wanting to subject myself to that shitty music is the only reason that I didn’t install microphones along with the cameras. We all make mistakes. I’m human. 

Meanwhile Jenny was sound asleep in her bed, oblivious to the world around her. I shit you not. Even with the news reports she slept like a log.

I didn’t want to wake her. But when I saw her doorknob twist – though did not hear it because of the Nickleback – I was pretty sure she was going to wake up very soon.

I pocketed the Galaxy and gripped the Louisville Slugger with both hands. I usually bat left handed but the doorknob was on the left hand side of the door, so I got into the right handed batter’s box and waited. The door pushed open, slowly at first and then quicker than I expected. I imagined the pitch about knee height – my knee, not his – right down the middle of the plate.

“Surprise!” I yelled as I swung as hard as I could.

  Left-handed, I would have knocked his balls right through his asshole – and out of the park. Walk-off homer for Charlie. “The crowd goes wild!” Right-handed? Foul tip. 

            But a foul tip was enough to make him drop his machete. Then Buck Naked tried to make a break for it.

            I didn’t need SE 4.12 tell me when the bastard’s left foot slammed into the leaf from Jenny’s dining room table. A low, popping sound followed by a blood curdling scream did that.

I’d promised Jenny that I’d put the leaf in the attic two days ago. I’d brought it all the way upstairs – all twenty of them – and should get points for that. But rather than climbing up into the dusty hell above my head, I simply leaned it up against the hallway wall near the top of the staircase. My mistake. I did, however, need the recording from SE 4.12 to see the blood dripping from the piggy who should have stayed home and onto Jenny’s wooden floor. Because I’d missed that in the heat of the moment.

I’ve broken toes in my day and I can tell you that it’s hard to run on them. It’s even harder to go down a steep flight of non-standard stairs in a hurry with blood pouring out of one toe. But neither are those are as bad as what happens when those stairs come to an abrupt end against a concrete-block reinforced wall. Pow!

I’d heard that pop, too. Above Jenny’s screaming and that shitty Nickleback music.

That all happened last night. Tonight, Jenny and I assessed the damage.

“What is that?” she asked, her anger over my aggressive surveillance techniques ebbed slightly for now.

            “You don’t know what a foot x-ray looks like?”

            “Yeah. But whose foot…?” But she stopped. “Damn it, Charlie. You hacked into the hospital’s system from my computer?”

            “I’m being thorough.”

            “You’re being a psycho.” She paused. Probably considered apologizing. But didn’t. Instead she said, “You gotta stop doing this.” The tone of her voice, however, said the opposite.

            She cleared her throat. “He really broke the shit out that toe.”

            “And this one, too,” I said gesturing at roast beef.

            “I don’t see it.”

            So I pointed at the thin crack. She nodded, probably pretending that she saw it. She didn’t realize that she was looking at us. We’re roast beef now.

            She bit her lip. “What about…?”

            “His neck?” I chuckled. “Shit, yeah. That’s broke. That’s what killed him. Wanna see it?”

            “No,” she said a little too quickly. She stepped back a bit and crossed her arms.

            “I think we should go to the Caymans,” I said. “Relax. Blow off some steam.”

            “That’d be nice,” she said without much conviction. I didn’t tell her that I was planning on having Ivan’s Nurse Ratched pick up the tab, lest I blow her in for stealing.

            Ivan.

I couldn’t help but glance back at the mangled piggy that should have stayed home. Then I turned off the monitor. That sawed off little shit, Ivan. Even though I’m pretty sure his and Jenny’s relationship is over, I’m still going to make his life a living hell.  

            An uncomfortable silence passed between Jenny and me, as if she read my thoughts. Until a dog barked outside her house and I nodded toward the bedroom door. “Did you lock the doors downstairs?”

            She looked guilty. Said nothing.

            “Seriously?” I said as I stood.

            And I’m the one with trust issues?