Murder at the Art Gallery Page 10

  No matter what your pet of choice is, there is a love you get from an animal that you're not going to get from any human being on this earth. In many ways, animals are more advanced than we are. For all our intellect, we systematically hurt each other on purpose. Animals would never do that. They might hunt for food, or fight to protect themselves, but not for fun or to harm others. Those “hating for fun” activities are qualities that are uniquely human. While I was thinking all this heady stuff, Roger brought his toy over to me so that I could play with him. It's kitty play time.

  Chapter Ten

  After dinner I decided to explore the teddy bear I had taken from David's apartment. I was certain that it was a nanny cam, but hopefully one of the self contained ones, not the ones that transmit the video to a remote server. I was in luck, this one had a camera and a SD card to dump the video to. This is exactly what I was hoping for. I was sure that David would from time to time, take out the SD card, copy the files to his computer and watch. Well, to each their own, I guess.

  For David, love must have been better the second time around. I asked myself, how much stuff was in here, had it been turned on when he took his life and what else was I going to find here? Well, if there was any footage of what happened the day David died, it might be here. I copied all the files to my computer, and started to look at the videos.

  They had weird number codes and for some reason the dates were all the same. The manufacturers probably didn’t put high quality cameras in these devices. David most likely hadn’t cared about the exact date. He would just take it out as he finished having his jollies and copy the video to his computer. David was much kinkier than I’d ever imagined he would be.

  I soon discovered the logic of the number system that the camera used, so I was able to figure out which was the latest without having to watch every one. Even though there were only five, I didn't want to watch any more than I had to. It was bad enough I had to watch this at all.

  I looked at the fourth one and there was David with someone that looked kind of familiar, but his back was turned to me. It could have been Harold, but I wasn't sure. The quality on the camera wasn’t great so some of the shots were good while others were terrible. On this particular video, nothing much happened. If David was trying to get some action that day, I’m sure he was disappointed because the guy left and then David walked towards the cam and turned it off. I was hesitant to look at the last video. What if I saw something that was ghastly, like David actually committing suicide. Well, I guess it would finally give me closure and I didn't have to investigate anymore.

  Let's face it, every time I found out something else about David, it was like David was a very complicated person and did a lot of things I certainly wasn't doing. At some point, I knew enough, I didn't want to know anymore. There is such as thing as too much information and right now I probably knew more about David's private life than anyone else, except those that were participating in private with him.

  So I finally pulled the trigger. The first shot was David walking away from the camera naked, seemingly alone. He went to his bed. Then when I saw the next person come in naked I almost fell off my chair. I couldn't believe it. All this time he had been trying to be so helpful to me and trying to do things for David and all along he knew what happened. I couldn't believe it. I tried to calm myself down and said, it's ok Mandy, maybe this is nothing, maybe this was going on and he never recorded the day he died. Maybe this happened on a different day. But still I was flabbergasted, because I was obviously lied to.

  I continued to watch and then, what seemed like an innocent gesture, turned into something I will never forget. He gave David a glass of water. David drank it, sitting on the bed. While David drank, he just stood there. After about two minutes David started to choke and held his throat like he couldn't breathe. The other person stood and watched doing nothing.. David was in a panic because he couldn't breathe. David reached out to him for help. He did nothing. He just stood there. It seemed like David was definitely changing colors.

  At one point David collapsed on the bed, with one arm hanging off the side. The man watched for five minutes while David laid there. At one point, he lifted David's arm and let it drop to see how far gone David was. David's arm dropped like a stone again over the bed.

  Then the man went off-screen. into the next room. When he came back, he was fully dressed. He took one of the sheets, and wiped the glass down. Then holding the glass with the sheet on the rim, he took David's hand and wrapped it around the glass. He put the glass with the remaining fluid by the bedside,. He looked over David one more time. And then he left. The tape continued to play for another couple of hours. The footage of David lying dead in his own bed went on and on. It probably continued to record until the batteries on the nanny-cam died.

  I had broken out in a cold sweat; my hands were freezing. I was white as a sheet. I wanted to throw up, I was so sickened by what I just saw. I saw a trusted human being murder another. Somebody that I had believed in had cold bloodedly murdered another person. Meanwhile, they were together and having relations. All this time, he was trying to be cooperative and helpful to me. All along, he was the one that had killed David. I had the proof. I said to myself, I should go and bring this to the police. I should call Fred right now and tell him that David had been murdered.

  But then what happened if the police didn't accept this as proof? You read all the time of people who are caught on a camera red handed doing something but because they were recorded without their knowledge, they couldn't use that evidence. Seriously. Somebody murders somebody else and it's clear as day on a video and you can't convict them because their rights were violated?? I just didn't know. But if I brought the police in now, they might just bring him in for questioning and let him go cause of whatever. Some technicality.

  This was a soundless video. But you could clearly see it was him. A smart lawyer could turn this around and say that David was sleeping that there's no proof that this was a murder. The dates were screwed up so you couldn't tell when it was recorded. And they would say I had tampered with the evidence and that was another way to throw this out of court. Basically, with the right lawyer, you can get away with murder. It happens every day. And here it was happening in front of me, with people I knew. People I trusted. I was truly losing my faith in humanity.

  Still I had to find a way to expose this guy in public where there would be an outcry. There would just be too many people seeing the same thing I saw, that could act as witnesses, that could clearly see that this all added up to the same thing. No, I had to expose him at David's memorial. I know he was going to be there, he would show up. That way I could expose him publicly and when found out publicly, he may react differently and further hang himself. It was a chance I had to take.

  And yes, I may get in trouble doing this. Fred would be furious with me. But you know what, I had to avenge David's death. I mean, over the last couple of days I discovered a David I never knew, but a person that had obviously lost his way in life. Nothing he did deserved death, and with some guidance, he could have straightened out his life. But nobody deserved to be murdered for this. I don't know what the motive was, but it could have been something really stupid. Usually, it is.

  The show was the day after tomorrow. I had to figure out a way to replace my current Powerpoint presentation with this footage and then expose the killer while he's standing there in public. I think the shock would be enough to push him over the edge. I didn't trust anybody to be a conspirator. Well, maybe Jill. But I really needed Katie to change the video without asking questions. I didn't want to tip off anybody that I was going to expose David's murderer. It would not go over so well at an art show. Not the done thing.

  Luckily this was a low resolution video so it didn't take as much memory as a high resolution video. I could easily put it into a PowerPoint. The next question is, how to change the file I already gave Katie? I could ask Katie not to look at the file, that this was highly important. But
she would look at it anyway and she might blow the whole thing. I needed help with this plan.

  Jill I could trust. I knew I could tell her this and she would keep her mouth shut. She would disagree with me on what I'm doing but she would keep her mouth shut. While I still had the courage, I inserted the video into a PowerPoint, named it the same as the file I had originally given. Now, I just had to figure out how to get this past Katie, so that she would just think it was the same file as before. It was going to be a bigger file, I was just hoping that she wouldn't notice it was bigger.

  The next day I was walking around in a fog. People would talk to me and I had a delayed reaction. People asked me if I was ok, I said yeah, just not feeling well. I was truly not feeling well, but mostly mentally. I was still in shock as to what I had seen. I kept looking at Katie to see when she would leave her desk, but each time, it wasn't for long. Certainly not long enough for me to put a flash drive in and copy a file. This was going to be harder than I thought. And there was no guarantee that she wasn't going to look at it, even if I did manage to copy it to the machine if she was gone to the bathroom.

  At one point I walking to the copier and somebody rounded the corner sharply and I screamed, I had been so freaked out that somebody came out of nowhere. I tried to laugh it off that I wasn't expecting them, and they accepted it, but the truth was, I was completely nervous and afraid. I was no good at this sort of thing. I was never a good liar and this would be the most underhanded thing I ever did in my life, go to someone's computer and replace the file I had given them earlier, with one that showed somebody being murdered.

  The day grew later and later and soon everybody would go home and I would have missed my chance. I kept debating whether I should trust Katie, but she was younger and I don't know how she was going to react, if she was going to show her friends, if she was going to be so freaked out she was going to mess it all up tomorrow. As the end of the day drew near, I was completely on edge. I wanted to get to Katie's computer, but was too scared. I didn't know what to do. Eventually the day ended and we went home. I felt like such a failure that I had wasted an opportunity to get this video so that it could be seen the next day. I had blown it.

  I went home. I was angry with myself, angry with everyone. Roger must have sensed that something was wrong and he rubbed himself against my legs. That brought me back to earth and reminded me that there were other things. I still had time, I still had the video. I would find a way to do this. I would have to call Jill and get her to help with this. She was much better at planning devious things and I obviously could not do this alone. I needed support, I needed a trustworthy accomplice. Obviously, today had been a washout. But once I ran this by Jill, I'm certain that she would come up with something. Maybe with her around even I would come up with something. Two heads are better than one they say. We'll see.

  With trembling fingers, I dialed Jill’s number. She picked up right away, probably thinking I was asking her out for coffee or something.

  “Hi Jill, I know that this is going to sound completely off the wall, but I have found definitive proof that David was murdered. I need your help to expose the killer.”

  “What? Mandy, are you sure about this?”

  “Yes, completely, absolutely sure. Can you come over and help me figure this out.”

  “Are you kidding? I'll be right there”

  Jill arrived at my place within 10 minutes.

  “Ok, what happened? Have you been drinking? Cause you have got to be one hundred percent sure about this, or I'm going to think you've lost your marbles.”

  “Listen, while helping Margot the other day, I found this video. I'm going to let you watch and let you be the judge.”

  Jill watched the video, her eyes got wider and wider.

  “I can't believe that guy, he has been so helpful and made us feel so trusting. All the while he killed David. I just can't believe it. And it was so calculated. He just poisoned him and walked away.”

  “I know, I know, every time I see it, I get sick to my stomach. Jill, how am I going to show this at tomorrow's show?”

  “Wait, you're not going to show Fred this?”

  “Jill there are all these technicalities about videos being used as evidence and with the right lawyer, this guy could walk. There would be no justice. I have to expose him in public. He's going to be there tomorrow and it's the only chance I'm going to get to avenge David's death. I sensed from the start that this wasn't a suicide. And this proves it. If I show it to Fred, they're going to go through the due process of the law and for all we know this guy could skip town and become a fugitive. I gotta expose him in public, in front of all those witnesses and all those people that know him as well. There's no way he's going to get away with it.”

  I could see that I was getting to Jill and that she was seeing why this wasn't an easy thing to do.

  “Did you talk to Katie?”

  “I didn't know if I could trust her. I mean, maybe she would cooperate, but you gotta admit, this is a terrible situation. Some people don't want to be involved with stuff like this and I don't blame her. She's just a young woman. This could give her trauma. I wanted to do it behind her back, but how? She's going to be working the laptop tomorrow at the show and it's already 9PM. How am I going to get this in her computer without her knowing?”

  I could see that the wheels inside Jill's head were turning.

  “Don't you open the store 3 days a week??”

  “Yes.”

  “Well?” She looked at me with her head cocked.

  “Well what?”

  “We could go in tonight, while nobody is there and you could load the file on her computer.”

  A smile crept up on me. I was so engulfed in so many complicated scenarios that I had forgotten I had a key to the gallery. Jill was right.

  “Hey, that would work!”

  I was the girl Friday of the office. I did everything. I kept everyone's passwords, because everyone kept losing them. I could easily get into Katie’s computer.

  “Ok, but if were' going to do it it's gotta be now, cause otherwise I'm going to lose my nerve. And you gotta come with me, for support or I'll chicken out.”

  Jill said, “Bring Roger.”

  “What?, Bring Roger? That would be something else to make this more difficult.”

  “Look, this is the plan. We're going to go into your office when it should be closed right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, if anybody catches us in there, you're going to say that you forgot something you bought for the cat. You have the cat with you, and I'm with you, so it's just going to look like Mandy and her cat and Jill at the mall. Two women and a cat are going to be perfectly respectable. Nobody is going to suspect we're up to no good. You just went there to get something you forgot.”

  “Of course, that would definitely work!”

  I would have never come up with something like that. I would have been too nervous and afraid that I would be caught.

  “Ok, let's go!”

  Chapter Eleven

  We got to the office at about 9:30PM and some nearby businesses were still open. The office was on the second floor, where all the businesses were closed. I got my keys out and made sure to shut off the alarm. I didn't want any alarms going off bringing the cops sooner. Even though we still had an alibi, I wouldn't get a chance to upload the video. The door opened up easily and I didn't put on the lights on purpose because I wanted to do this as quickly as possible, get in and get out. There were lights on in the hallway. Jill stood inside the store by the door holding Roger by his collar.

  I turned on Katie's computer and went to my desk to get the password for her machine. By the time I got back, the machine had booted up and I typed in her name, then the password and I was in. I pulled out the thumb drive where I had the file I was going to swap. I did a search for my name and found the directory where my file was, I then copied the new file over to the same directory. Since there was already a file there by
the same name, the computer asked me “the file that you're trying to copy already exists, would you like to overwrite it?”. I said yes, and it started to copy the file. My nerves made the process feel longer.

  Then my heart jumped into my throat.

  I heard a voice that said, “Hello, what are you doing here?” It was Charles, the security guy. He had caught us. Meanwhile the file was still copying. I heard Jill start talking to him, “Oh hi Charles, long time no see.”

  Charles liked Jill and he was always trying to get the courage to ask her out. In my head I kept saying go on Jill, keep talking. I was also talking to the computer in my head saying, hurry up, hurry up! I kept asking myself, why is this file transfer so slow? This is crazy, this doesn't happen during the day. Finally the file copied and I shut off the computer the moment it was finished.

  Jill said to Charles, “Fancy meeting you here.”

  He said “I might say the same about you, it's after hours you know.”

  I walked out of the back and said, “Oh hi Charles” with a smile. I hoped it wasn’t obvious how nervous I was.

  Jill asked him, “Charles did you get an earring?” Charles was always self conscious around Jill.

  “Well yes, I got it last week, do you like it?”

  “I think it looks great. Did you get it here in the mall?”

  “Yeah, I just got it on a whim”

  “Well, you should got it a long time before. It gives you what the French call Diablerie”

  “Really?”

  “Yeap”

  I could see that Charles was getting uncomfortable. So, after a couple of seconds, he changed the subject.