Daddy's Gone a Hunting

59

Jack Worth did not sleep well on Tuesday night. The combination of suddenly having time on his hands, coupled with the skeptical attitude of the fire marshals when he’d tried to explain the lack of security on the plant and the presence of the wrecked van, had made him both irritable and nervous.

What am I supposed to do now? he asked himself as the first sign of the dawn became visible in the bedroom windows. Jump every time the phone rings in case it’s those marshals wanting to drop in again?

At 5:30 A.M., Wednesday morning, he threw back the covers and got up. I wonder how much that cleanup crew got done yesterday? he asked himself. If the insurance guys gave them the go-ahead, they must be satisfied they don’t have anything more to find. And that crew arriving means that the security that the cops and the firemen were providing is finished. I’m going to take a ride and see what’s going on over there before anyone shows up.

The decision made, Jack got dressed, rapidly pulling on a running suit, heavy socks, and sneakers. If I take time to shower and shave, I might run into someone getting there early, he thought. I don’t need that.

What I need, he decided, is to go down to Florida and hang out there for the winter. And I need to get back in shape. I’m a good ten pounds more than I should be.

Really more like twenty pounds. He pushed back that thought.

Lately he had been seeing the dismissive expression in the eyes of some of the women he’d started to chat up at the bars. He’d never let his barber, Dom, touch up his hair but maybe it was time. Dom had been pushing him to do it. “Jack, I know the ladies love to run their fingers through your strawberry-blond hair. You told me. Well, it’s still thick but it’s not so strawberry-blond anymore.”

Nothing is what it was anymore, Jack Worth thought.

He turned on the light over the staircase, went downstairs, and walked through the living room and kitchen, barely noticing his surroundings. For Jack Worth, the home that he had once shared with his wife was, for the most part, the place where he slept. His job at the Connelly complex had paid him well. His housekeeper came in once a week, which was enough. He was basically neat in his daily routine.

In the summer, an off-the-books landscaper did the mowing and trimming of the outside property, and the same guy shoveled the snow off the sidewalk and driveway in the winter.

Jack Worth valued his freedom. There wouldn’t be another “Mrs. Jack Worth.” And there would never be another child to put through college.

When Jack got into that kind of thinking, he always got angry. His kid didn’t even have his name anymore. And when they did that name change in court, his ex had told him that her husband, the big-shot doctor, would be happy to pay for Johnny’s college when he graduated from high school.

I told them that no one else is paying for my kid to go to college, Jack thought, as he slammed the door between the kitchen and garage and opened the driver’s door of his BMW. I knew that they just wanted me out of their lives. Stupid. And now I’ll be stuck with the tuition next year.

But who knows? Maybe knowing what is going on and that he was out of a job, Doctor Big Shot would say, “I insist…”

Insist, Jack Worth thought sarcastically, as he pressed the button that opened the garage door and backed the car out. Yeah. Maybe.

It was only a few minutes past six and the early-morning traffic was just beginning to appear on the road. Give it another hour and every block turns into a parking lot, Jack thought. Welcome to the city.

Even though the explosion had been not even a week ago, the familiar drive to the complex seemed odd and even frightening to him. Something else was going to happen. Something more than what had already happened.

If it had been an ordinary workday, he would have driven to what had been the front entrance of the complex. Jack chose not to do that. His BMW was a familiar sight to watchmen and security cameras in the nearby warehouses, and he did not want it to be noticed that he had made an early-morning visit. Instead, he decided to get in through the service delivery entrance. A temporary fence had been erected since the explosion to keep out intruders. Jack parked his car and easily hopped over it. And they talk to me about security, he fumed.

He turned to walk over to the car park where the delivery vans had been kept and where someone had been staying in the van that had been wrecked. That was when he saw the orange DANGER signs and realized that a section of the pavement had collapsed into a sinkhole. Breaking into a run, he rushed to see how deep it was.

He stepped over the strip of orange tape and looked down. It was the eastern section of the property and by now the early sun was strong and bright, penetrating the secret of what had been long concealed under the broken pavement.

“No!” Jack Worth whispered. “No!”

He was staring down at the medallion on the grimy chain around the neck of the skeleton of the young woman who had once been Tracey Sloane. The medallion that inextricably tied her to him.