Day Five - Benny Abbott
Benny Abbott
Day Five
Sarah and I sit at the kitchen table with our laptops open, uneaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches hardening beside us, dogs at our feet. Outside, the moon rises over the reporters lining my sidewalk.
“When I asked Mallory why she gave Keller the missing episode, she said it was because she didn’t know who to trust. And I’ll admit, it seemed true at the time. But what if it was all an act? What if she was purposely trying to throw Keller off the scent?”
Sarah’s head angles back. “You think she killed her own brother?”
“I wouldn’t have thought it possible until a few hours ago.
But maybe. Or maybe she’s hiding something for Quinn.
” I run my hands through my hair. One of the dogs licks my leg.
“And what was that about Emil? Quinn said after that shit with Ted and Emil went down, Xander threatened to take the money away. What does that mean? What does Emil have to do with it?”
“You said he sold Xander the MG?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with Ted?”
“No clue.” Sarah drums her fingers on the table. “Back to Mallory. Let’s narrow things down. What else does she have access to?”
“Everything—our cloud files, our website, our bookkeeping. You name it.”
“Website,” Sarah repeats. “When’s the last time you looked at your website?”
“We handed that stuff over to the detectives on…” It takes me a second. “Thursday morning.”
“But you still have access to it, right?”
I nod.
“I was just thinking … you said she tried to talk you out of posting the episode asking for help.”
I bite my lip. “Do you think she could be deleting leads?”
Sarah watches as I wake up my laptop, click through to our home page, and sign in as administrator. We read through a couple dozen tips, but it almost instantly feels futile. I have no idea what we’re looking for. There’s no way to know if any of this has been tampered with.
Defeated, I log out. Reflexively, I sign in to our submissions page, where listeners write in their stories.
I’m surprised to see nearly two hundred entries from the last five days, despite everything that’s been going on.
Scrolling through them, I scan posts about everything from haunted houses to sink holes.
Two-thirds of the way down the list, a post catches my eye.
When I open it, my lungs fill with air.
Under the title “I Survived an Abusive Spouse” is one word.
“Ayyy,” it reads, followed by two thumbs up.
SARAH AND I hug for a long time.
“Should we tell Keller?” she asks.
“Yes.” I break away and wipe my face with my sleeve. “No. Yes? What if it’s just a coincidence?”
“You know it’s not.”
She’s right. My heart is swelling with hope. I need it to be her. It has to be her. But where is she? And why is she hiding?
“Two thumbs up,” Keller says when I call her.
“The Fonz,” I say. “From Happy Days. He’s our office mascot.”
Keller makes a humming sound and says she’ll get someone to track the IP ASAP. “But don’t expect anything. In all likelihood it wasn’t her. If she’s in trouble and somehow has access to a computer, I doubt she’d be passing information through emojis.”
“But if it’s her—” Everything lifts just saying these words.
“Like I said, don’t get your hopes up.” She ends the call.
Sarah and I spend the next hour pacing, and around nine o’clock I finally get a text: IP address not found.
I respond with a flurry of questions. When I realize Keller plans to ignore them, I drop onto the sofa and hug a pillow to my chest. “Maybe it wasn’t her.”
Sarah shakes her head. “No. That doesn’t make sense.” Rubbing her thumb knuckle against her lips in a gentle side-to-side motion, she gazes up at the ceiling. “Maybe … maybe that post had something to do with the statue.”
“Of course it did.” I’m already feeling sorry for myself. “What else could it have meant?”
“No, I mean the actual statue.”
“Like, a clue?”
“It’s not like she hasn’t left you clues before.”
I consider this. “Are the reporters still here?”
She peeks through the curtain. “Not as many. What are you thinking?”
We make a plan and turn out the lights. It’s after eleven when the street clears. I reach for my keys, but Sarah stops me.
“Let’s take my rental. Just in case.”
We slip outside, hugging the shadows until we’re safely inside her car. It takes us four minutes to reach Joy’s house. All the lights are off. I lock the gate behind us and let us in through the back door. Only as I’m turning on the first lamp do I realize Mallory might still be here.
“Mallory?” I whisper.
There’s no answer, but it’s late. If she was here, she’d likely be sleeping. I call her name as Sarah and I pass through the living room, switching on lights until we reach the basement.
“Mallory?” I shout it one last time for good measure. When it’s clear we’re alone, I head directly to the workstation.
The statue is in its usual spot in the center of the table, ducktail rubbed shiny by hand oils. I pick it up and run my fingers over all twelve inches of bronze-plated metal. There are no loose parts, no etchings, no secret compartments in the granite base.
“I don’t see anything.” I hand it over to Sarah.
“Heavy,” she says.
She takes a turn with it as I check the table; I run my fingers over the glossy wood, then get down on all fours to make sure there’s nothing written or taped to the underlying metal. When I’ve examined every last edge, every last corner, every last screw, I move on to Joy’s rolling chair.
“I feel like we’re in an escape room,” Sarah says, studying the base of a table lamp.
After inspecting the docking station and mic stands, I’m ready to give up. If there’d been anything to find, the techs would’ve found it, which means it either doesn’t exist or is sitting in a pile of evidence at the police station. I sink down to the rug and lie flat on my back. “This is stupid.”
Sarah’s brow puckers. I think she’s going to chide me for losing hope, but instead she joins me on the floor and takes my hand.
“So this is where you work, huh?”
It occurs to me that Joy and I might have recorded our final episode, and we didn’t even finish it.
I’m still sick with regret over how our last encounter went down.
How self-centered I was to assume it was about me.
How shortsighted I was to not look past my humiliation and see how deeply she was hurting.
If there’s any consolation, any at all, it’s that I got to tell her I love her.
I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut until the threat of tears is gone. When I open them again, I freeze. Blinking, I sit, then stand, edging slowly toward the corner as if stalking prey.
“What?” Sarah asks.
I point to the ceiling. There’s a filter beyond the decorative bronze air grille—black, washable, new since they replaced their air-conditioning system a few months back—making it difficult to know if what I’m seeing is a shadow or something else.
Sarah’s beside me now.
“Help,” I say. Together we slide the desk toward the corner until I can stand on top and reach the air vent without having to stretch. Hastily, I fumble with the multi-tool on my key chain in search of a screwdriver. I don’t want to believe it until the grille is off.
“What is it?” Sarah asks. “What do you see?”
I’m staring straight into the eye of a surveillance camera.
It’s magnetized, and easy to remove. Holding it in my palm, I’m overtaken by a powerful surge of revulsion. “It wasn’t enough to sic Mallory on us,” I say.
“Oh my god,” Sarah whispers. “He had backup.”
Another ripple of disgust passes through me when I realize it’s the kind of spycam that connects to Wi-Fi for instant access.
Upon closer inspection, I locate a microSD card on the side.
Pressing gently, I pop it out, then click it back into place, so relieved to find this thing has local storage I nearly let out a whoop.
Only I have no way to look at the footage here.
My laptop and SD card reader are at home.
I can’t get out of the house fast enough. Sarah follows at my heel, and by the time I shove the gate open, I am a fireball of nerves.
Running through it, I smash into something solid.
My vision flashes with light, and the contents of my hands plummet to the ground.
“What—” Sarah holds on to me for balance. “What just happened?”
“Sorry, man,” another voice says into the dark. “Sorry about that. You all right? You came out of nowhere.”
“Ted?”
My neighbor hands me the surveillance camera after giving it a second look.
I’m struggling to process his presence in front of my face. “What are you doing here?”
“Just going for a walk.”
He’s in slippers and the same stupid brown robe he wears when he’s feeding squirrels. It takes me only a second to locate his banged-up Ford hatchback down the road.
“A walk, huh?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
The lie is so absurd I have to laugh. Inexplicably, he laughs too. He’s shielding something from my view. I step to the left, and he shifts on his feet, but he’s not fast enough.
“You took your DSLR along for a walk? With a zoom lens? At midnight?”
“It’s not what you think.”
It’s the same camera he used as he shouted over the crowd, Is it true you’re in love with her, Benny?
Is it true you and Joy are in love? The same camera, I’m sure of it, that captured “the hug” in my backyard.
Whatever images he took tonight will give the impression that I was sneaking into Joy’s house during a time when there is deepening suspicion around my involvement in Xander’s murder.
I glare at the surveillance camera in my palm, jaw tensing at the fact that I have to share this secret with him.
Tucking it deep into my pocket, I say through my teeth, “What do I think?”
“I mean…” He inches backward. “It’s sort of what you think. But it’s not personal, man. I saw you drive away, and I thought—hell, if you’re going to accuse me of being some sort of stalker, I figure I may as well make some money from it.”
Bubbles of anger simmer under my skin. I hold out my hand. “Show me what’s on it.”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t get anything.”
“Show me what’s on it.”
“Let’s go, Benny.” Sarah grabs my elbow, but I swat her away.
“Honest to god,” Ted says.
The creak of a hinge. The crunch of leaves. Ted shoots a look to the driveway next door.
Someone is lurking in the shadows.
“Emil?” I say, recognizing this someone by his open shirt. “What are you doing?”
“I saw you running out of Joy’s house.” He creeps into the light. “Just wanted to make sure everything was all right.”
My gaze darts back and forth between the two men, Ted with his wild eyes, Emil with his He-Man bulk.
Quinn’s words bounce around in my head, that shit with Ted and Emil, and suddenly I understand.
It can’t be a coincidence that they’re both out here so late, that Ted somehow knew where we went even though I’m sure—certain—no one followed us here.
“Have you been working together?” I ask Ted.
Ted backs farther away, the camera swinging from his shoulder. “I’ve never met this man before in my life.”
“That can’t be,” I say. Because as far as I’m concerned, it’s crystal clear.
The stalking started when Joy moved to Mount Washington.
It made sense to blame the paparazzo, but who better to monitor her comings and goings than her next-door neighbor?
She would never have suspected him—not this man whose wife was struggling with cancer, this man who brought over vegetables and sold her husband vintage cars.
Did Emil call Ted every time Joy left the house?
Is that why Ted is here now? Not because he saw me leave, but because Emil saw me arrive?
“It was both of you. You were both taking pictures of her, weren’t you? ”
“I told you, I don’t know this man,” Ted says.
“Bullshit,” I growl.
Sarah presses a hand to my back. “Benny…”
“Where were you on the night Joy and Xander went missing?” I ask Emil.
He edges forward with his hands out, palms down, as if trying to talk me off a ledge. “Now hold on, there. You’re going to want to calm down.”
But his words have the opposite effect. I’m furious.
Ballistic, raving, seeing-red mad. How did Mallory and Quinn know what Ted and Emil were doing?
Why didn’t either of them say anything? Why didn’t they go to the cops?
All those conversations we had about the stalker, all the worry they could’ve spared Joy.
Everyone’s been lying. Everyone is hiding something.
Emil is nearly upon me now. Sarah tugs at my shirt, but I hold my ground because how dare he? How dare they?
I rip Ted’s camera off his shoulder, slamming it to the asphalt with a resonant crack, and then someone wrenches me back.
Stumbling, I break my fall with my arm. Pain shoots through my wrist, and I curse at the shock of it as feet scuffle around me.
Loose gravel hits my face. The men yell at each other.
Sarah yanks my arm, “Benny, get up, get up, Benny,” and I scramble to my feet, cradling my wrist as we sprint toward her car.
The door handle slips through my fingers once, twice, and then we’re inside, frantically locking the doors.
Ted pounds on my window as Sarah shifts into drive.
“Go!” I shout. “Go go go!”