The Blonde

Actually that's not quite accurate. She'd clearly been home during the day. The bedroom closet was missing some of her clothes, the dresser drawers were wide-open, and two suitcases were missing from the closet.

Downstairs on the kitchen table were her wedding ring and her engagement ring, which had been my great-grandmother's. And a note, which said, "I trusted you. I loved you. And I still can't believe you would do this."

Shocked and frantic, I did what anybody would have done. I called her cell, but it was turned off. I left a message: "Tommie, I don't know what you think I did, but I didn't cheat on you. I SWEAR. Please call me so we can talk about this. I love you!"

I knew I couldn't call the police--it was far too soon, and in any case Tommie seemed to have left of her own volition. I called her office but it was after 6:00; everyone at Grand Valley had gone home for the weekend. So I called Damon at home.

"Hello?" I recognized the slight lilt of Elena's voice.

"Elena, hi, it's Jack Hitchcock, Tommie's husband."

"Oh yes Jack, how are you?"

"I, uh, fine, thank you. Could I talk to Damon for a minute please?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Jack, Damon's off on a trip. He left this afternoon; he called and said he'd be away probably for a couple of weeks."

A couple of weeks? I stared at the phone in horror. "Did he tell you where he was going? And whether Tommie was with him?"

"I know it was out to the West Coast at first, Los Angeles maybe? But I think he's going several places after that, I don't really know. He didn't mention anything about Tommie, but doesn't she usually go with him?"

"Uh, I guess so, most of the time. Listen, Elena--may I ask you please to have Damon call me as soon as you hear from him?"

"Sure, Jack--and I can give you his cell number too, if that would help."

I gratefully took down the number, said goodbye, and called Damon's cell. No answer. I left him a short message, just asking him to call me back.

And then I called Katie and Eric. They had no idea where Tommie was--neither of them had heard from her in more than a week. Katie must have heard from my voice how distraught I was--she asked what was going on and I told her: about the missing clothes, the rings, the note.

"Jack, we'll be right there," she said, and hung up the phone.

We sat in my living room and talked for an hour without making much progress.

"What's so crazy," I said, "is the way her feelings kept changing. We'd have these good talks, I'd reassure her and she seemed to feel better, to trust me--and then she'd come home from work a day or two later and everything would have turned to shit. She was cold and suspicious, and she wouldn't even talk to me!

"I have absolutely no idea what happened since last night, when she suggested that we would talk this weekend."

Thank God Katie and Eric seemed to believe me this time. Tommie had already told them the whole crazy story about my being drugged, but there wasn't any hint that they thought I was up to something. In the end we agreed that Katie would get in touch with Alice, in case she had heard from Tommie, and call me if there was any news.

As soon as they'd left I emailed David. "Call me as soon as you can--urgent, matter of life and death."

The phone rang around 12:30 in the morning, not that I was sleeping. "What's up, Jack--are you okay?"

I filled him in on the whole story: just the headlines first and then, when he asked, the back-story: all the suspicions and odd events of the past few months.

"It seems obvious now that somebody was setting me and Tommie up," I said. "And the fact that she kept feeling better, and then coming home from work and being upset, makes me pretty sure it had to be somebody at Grand Valley."

"Her boss?" he asked.

"I've thought about it, but I don't think so. He's always been very respectful of her; and he was the one who saved her when that asshole tried to drug her."

There was a silence, and I knew David was thinking.

"I don't have any good ideas right now," he said finally. "Let me think about it. I do have some, uh, resources that might be helpful in locating Tommie. It may or may not pan out. I'll give you a call if I hear anything, and you do likewise, okay?"

"Of course, David. Thanks."

"And listen, man. You've got to keep your head. Don't drive yourself crazy, don't do anything stupid. Be careful and smart, all right?"

We agreed we'd talk again in a couple of days, and got off the phone.

****************

I didn't sleep much that night, not surprisingly. I got up to check my email about five times, hoping against hope I'd hear from Tommie--or anybody.

The next afternoon, after calling Tommie's and Damon's cell phones again and leaving two more messages, I dragged myself to the supermarket--we were pretty much out of food and I knew I'd have to eat, even though I didn't have much interest in it.

I was waiting at a red light when I glanced at the driver in the car next to me--and Jesus Christ, it was Don fucking Harrington! He didn't notice me, and he probably wouldn't have recognized me anyway; we'd only met a couple of times.

Without hesitation I followed him, all the way across town, and watched as he parked in the lot of a bar named "Divine" and went inside. What do I do now, I thought--wait until he comes out and beat the shit out of him?

No, I said to myself, I can't. David's right: don't do anything crazy. If I land in jail it will only make things worse.

After half an hour of just sitting there I decided to go in and talk to him. I'd be calm but persistent.

Just inside the doorway of the bar I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim light. Finally I saw Harrington, sitting in a booth partway back with another man--a boyish-looking guy in leather pants and a muscle shirt. I gazed around the place and realized I was in what had to be a gay bar.

Okay, I said to myself--polite, be polite. And calm. I went over to Harrington's both and quietly said, "excuse me--you're Don Harrington, aren't you?"

"Yes," he said, looking up without recognition. I said, "I'm Jack Hitchcock--Tommie's husband."

His eyes widened and he kind of shrank back away from me, almost involuntarily, though he was considerably bigger than I was. His companion looked at him in alarm and said, "what is it, baby? You want me to have them throw this guy out of here?"

I quickly said, "I'm just here to talk. I don't want any trouble. Can we speak for a minute or two?"

Harrington nodded, looking unhappy, and I pulled a chair up to the booth and sat down.

"I know what you want to know," he said right away, "and I'm really sorry. REALLY sorry. But it wasn't me at all, it was Ebberson. It was all a set up.

"I'm not even--" he gestured across the booth to his companion and said, "I'm gay. And I'm with Adrian."

I nodded. "Okay. So can you tell me about it?"

"Ebberson fucks all his PAs, or at least he did the whole time I was at Grand Valley. Most of them are pretty easy, but I could see as soon as I met Tommie that she was different. But Ebberson was obsessed with her; I think he'd seen her before, maybe at her previous job, and he was determined to have her.

"He twisted my arm to put something in her drink to make her sleepy, so that he could swoop in and rescue her, make her think she could trust him. I didn't much want to do it, but he didn't give me a lot of choice."

"But--but didn't it cost you your job? Your whole career at Grand Valley? Why would you ever agree to it?"

He sighed. "I was offered a job in New York that Damon had recommended me for--a real good career move for me. I was getting ready to announce my resignation to the rest of the staff. And then he came up with this fucked-up plan; he said if I didn't go along he'd call the people in New York and make some shit up so they'd cancel the job offer.

"I've seen Damon do things like that before--I had no doubt that he'd do it. So I went along with it. Damon said he'd have to fire me publicly, and humiliate me--but he'd give me a $50,000 bonus. And I'd be moving to New York anyway, so it wouldn't really matter.

"I'm only back this weekend to see Adrian--he can't join me in NY for a few more weeks until one of his projects is finished."

The whole time Adrian is holding Don's hand across the table and nodding sympathetically--you poor baby. Like he's the one who's had to suffer.

"You know you--" I sat back. "Fuck. You realize that you played a big part in the destruction of my marriage. Tommie's vanished, and I assume she's off somewhere with Damon."

"I'm ... I'm really sorry. It was a shitty thing to do. I was afraid I'd lose my job in New York."

"And you couldn't have told her? Or me? Just quietly gotten in touch and let us know afterwards what was really going on?"

He looked at the table. "I know. You're right.

"I'm really sorry."

There was nothing more to be said. I sat there, staring at him--and then I got up and walked out.

****************

I immediately raced home and emailed David. "It was her boss, Damon Ebberson, who was behind all of this, so he could screw Tommie. The drugging by her former co-worker was a set-up, planned so Damon could rescue her and make her trust him.

"So she's probably with him now. His wife doesn't know where he went: she told me he'd be away a couple of weeks, and that he was headed to the West coast. She thought."

He emailed me back two hours later. "I'm on it. The additional information helps. Sit tight, don't freak out. I'll let you know if I find anything out."

****************

Sitting tight was easier than not freaking out. I talked to Katie and Eric every day, but they'd heard nothing from Tommie, and Alice had nothing to report. I had dinner with them on Sunday and Monday--anything was better than just roaming around my empty house, beside myself with worry and rage.

And I kept calling Damon and Tommie, though they never answered their phones, and sending email messages to Tommie.

I had a thousand fantasies about what I was going to do to Damon, most of them filled with satisfyingly violent details. But I also cried when I thought of Tommie and what she might be doing with him--and how she'd feel when she found out it was all a hoax.

When I woke up Tuesday morning I found an email from my brother, sent in the middle of the night. "She's okay--she's in Fiji with Damon. I don't know much more. I'm working on getting her out of there and back home. I'll be in touch."

This made me more frantic, but I knew that if David knew anything else he would have told me. So I just replied "thanks--please let me know when you find out anything else."

On Wednesday afternoon another email from David reached me at work. I'd been going through the motions, because it was better than sitting at home tearing my hair out, but I wasn't much use to Minestra. And I'd kept my situation secret--no one knew about it besides Katie and Eric.

"She's okay. Coming back to Indianapolis later today, staying in Grand Valley's suite at the Conrad Hotel. DO NOT go there or call her. I'll call you tonight at 10 pm your time."

Jesus fucking Christ, how could I not call her or go see her? If anybody in the entire world besides David had told me that I would have ignored it completely. But I trusted him--so I fretted and chewed a pencil and tried to work, and went home and made myself dinner; and at 10 pm the phone rang.

"Yes?"

"Jack, it's me. She's okay. She's back in Indianapolis."

"Jesus! Thank God, David--how is she? What happened?"

"I only have a minute, I've got to get on a plane. There will be a DVD in your mailbox by 6 am tomorrow morning. When you play that you'll have the whole story. Tommie will be getting a copy too. Give her maybe until noon, then you can go over there--but she's going to be really upset. REALLY upset. Maybe take her friend Katie with you, if you can."

"Oh my God, is she hurt?"

"No she's not hurt, but it appears she slept with him. Once, anyway. He got her really drunk, and filled her head with lies."

I didn't know what to say. She was safe--she was okay--she was back. But she'd been fucked--by that lying, scheming piece of shit.

"Are you all right, Jack? You've got to hang in there."

"Yes ... yeah, I'm okay. Relieved, mostly. And furious. Thanks, David--I don't begin to know how to thank you."

"Just keep yourself under control, and be patient with her, okay? I gotta run. Call me after you've seen the DVD."

****************

Could you have slept that night, if you'd been me? No fucking way. I wanted to call Katie, but I didn't know how to tell her what I knew and keep David out of it, so I decided to wait.

I watched four old movies back-to-back, and I couldn't tell you what any of them was about. At 5:30 am I checked my mailbox for the sixth time and found a DVD in an envelope, unlabeled. I took it and ran back inside the house.

I put the DVD into the player and sat back. Abruptly a room appeared: what looked like a small basement or storeroom, with gray walls and no windows. In the center of the scene, against the far wall, Damon Ebberson sat strapped to a chair, naked and unconscious. There was nothing else in the room except a small rickety table with an animal cage on it.

Unexpectedly an extremely tall man dressed all in black and wearing a Darth Vader mask appeared from one side, out of the camera's view. He walked toward Damon holding a bucket of water and poured it over his head. Damon sputtered, shook his head, and seemed to wake up. Startled, he jerked his arms and legs, quickly realizing he was unable to move.

"What the hell? What are you--" He stopped suddenly as he looked up at the man before him.

"Glad you're awake, Damon," the man in the mask said in a deep voice. It sounded electronically altered. "Now we can begin."

"What the hell is going on here?" Damon blustered. "Do you know who I am? One phone call and I can--"

The tall man reached down and slapped Damon hard across the face, almost casually. He was wearing thick work gloves that extended nearly to his elbows. "Be silent," he said. "I want you to see something."

He pulled the table closer to Damon and moved the cage so it was right in front of him. The cage contained a brown mouse. The tall man took a small vial from his pocket. Very carefully he removed the top, which contained an eyedropper, drew some of the liquid into the dropper, and dropped a single drop of clear liquid onto the skin of the mouse's back. The mouse seemed unaffected.

"Watch now," he said. "It will happen in about three minutes."

Damon looked worried, but he wouldn't give up. "Listen. I don't know what this is about, but I'm a very rich man. I'm sure we can--"

"Do you want me to hit you again?" the tall man asked. "I can keep hitting you if you like. Or you can be silent."

Damon shook his head and stopped speaking. The two men waited in silence for at least another two minutes.

Suddenly the mouse emitted a terrifying shriek, one signaling intense and unbearable pain. It fell over and its body convulsed spastically, while the mouse continued to shriek and wail in obvious agony. The terrible sounds lasted nearly a minute--then the mouse fell silent, too weak to continue, though it lay on its side panting, still twitching in violent pain. After another 30 seconds it was completely still.

Damon's eyes had widened, and he'd reflexively pushed his chair back against the wall, as far from the table as he could get. He stared at the dead mouse, then up at the tall man.

"Now we will talk," the tall man said. "You've seen what that liquid can do. For you it would probably take several drops on your skin, and it might take up to 5 minutes to have its effect, but the result would be just the same."

Damon was pale and sweaty, leaning back in the chair away from the tall man. He shuddered and said, "what do you want? I have a lot of money. I can--"

"I don't want your money!" the tall man snapped. He pulled another chair over in front of Damon and sat down. "I know all about you and Tommie Parker. How you lied to her, how you arranged to have your toady Don Harrington drug her, how you kept sending women after her husband. All of this so you could get her into your own bed, you scumbag.

"Now here are your choices. Choice 1: you smile into the camera and tell the whole story. Every bit of it, every loathsome detail. You leave out nothing, do you understand? I already know nearly all of it, so it would be quite unwise to omit anything or we might have to move to Choice 2.

"Choice 2 is what the mouse got."

Unwillingly Damon's eyes flicked to the mouse lying dead in its cage, and then back to the mask of the tall man. He was trembling, breathing fast out of his mouth.

"I'll tell you! I'll tell you all of it. Only don't ... promise you won't ...."

There was a silence, as Damon looked at the tall man beseechingly.

"Tell the story."

Damon took a deep breath. "I ... I wanted her. That's all, really. She's about the sexiest woman I've ever seen in my life--have you seen her?

"If you have, then you know what I mean. I saw her once at Minestra Business Systems, where she used to work, and I knew I absolutely had to fu--, uh, to have sex with her.

"And then about a month later I was amazed to get her resume from an employment service that works for me--she was looking for a new job. So I arranged for her to be interviewed for a job as my personal assistant. When she came for the interview I could see right away she was a straight arrow, totally faithful to her husband. So I knew it would take some planning.

"I could tell she'd been hit on a lot--how could she not be, looking like that? So I took my time and worked out different ways to earn her trust, and to undermine her relationship with her husband."

Damon was talking rapidly, fluently. He didn't even seem terrified any more, just intent on telling his story as completely as possible.

"The PA job meant Tommie would have to travel with me from time to time. She was worried about that, so I assured her it was all on the up-and-up, she could trust me, and her husband could even come on the trips and share her room if he wanted to.

"So they did that several times, and then I started scheduling some of my trips for times he couldn't come."

"How did you know her husband's schedule?" the man in the mask asked.

"I paid off somebody at Minestra, a guy named Daniel who worked for the vice president overseeing Jack's division--Jack is Tommie's husband. Daniel would let me know what Jack's work schedule was like, especially when he needed to go out of town or when he was working on a big project with a deadline.

"And I had my tech guys hack into Tommie's email account--I saw every message back and forth between her and Jack. I could plan my business trips pretty much whenever I wanted, so I arranged some of them when Jack couldn't come along."

Damon paused for a moment and sneaked a glance back at the dead mouse, perhaps reminding himself what was at stake.

"Anyway, I knew I had to get Tommie to trust me, to see me as a good guy. And she was very suspicious. So on one of the trips when one of my vice presidents was along, I arranged for him to have dinner alone with Tommie in the hotel restaurant and put roofies in her water glass. Then when she got very woozy, he started to guide her towards the elevator and I just 'happened' to come along, catch him in the act of apparently taking her upstairs to rape her, and stop him.

"She fell for the whole thing. I yelled at Don, he ran out of the hotel, and I got a taxi and took Tommie to the hospital. They admitted her, and I made sure to be at her bedside when she woke up.

"I told Tommie what had happened and she was furious at Don but ridiculously grateful to me. She told me what a great friend I was."