Invisible Threads--Chapter 23

Writer's Note: Please read the previous chapters and prologue of Invisible Threads before reading this.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Harriman... was trying... very hard... to keep... his shit... together.

What had he been thinking?!

It was really hard to keep it together when you just hit someone with a board. And it was a girl. He hit a girl in the face. It shouldn't matter because hitting anyone was bad. It just seemed bad that it was a girl. It could have been worse. It could have been an old person... or a baby. It would be terrible to hit a baby.

His brain was definitely not working well.

But he was out of the building and under the sun, making good his escape. And doing it successfully. The temperature was comfortable compared to other parts of the country in early March and the streets were full. No one was staring at him and wondering if he had just accosted a complete stranger for no apparent reason.

It felt like self-defense. In his racing mind it seemed that he was under attack from something huge and terrifying and deadly. But it wasn't. It was just a smallish woman holding one of the ever-present tablets. She had probably been sent down to get something dusty from one of the dusty shelves.

Physically, she was not a threat. Career-wise, she was absolutely a threat. But there was probably some non-violent way that he could have talked his way out of the situation. She might have accepted a bribe. Or she could have been swept off her feet with a romantic proposition. Or maybe he could hit her in the head with a board. I'll take what's behind curtain number three, Monty.

At the time, it had felt like he would die if he didn't fight. Why had he been so afraid? It had been a mind-numbing, all-consuming terror that drained away his ability to think or reason. Stripped down to his primal self, it was fight or flight. And flight was blocked.

As he walked and thought, his breathing slowed and his pace settled to normal. He forced himself to not react when a police car quietly snaked its way down the busy thoroughfare. He looked straight ahead and kept walking. Walking was good.

He worked through the reasons that he was going to be okay. No one had seen him at the theater. He had been wearing gloves. A thought struck him. He was still wearing gloves! His first instinct was to hold his hands up in front of his face to confirm that he was, indeed, wearing rubber surgical gloves while walking down a busy street on a hot day. He repressed it and kept his hands down at his sides while the panic erupted again.

He gazed around to see if anyone was staring at his gloved hands. No one noticed or cared. He stuck his hands into his pockets and slowly worked the gloves off, successfully leaving each in the pocket. He would toss them in a garbage can when far enough from the hotel.

His emotions churned up another problem. Cameras. He had done his best to scan for cameras in the theater without being too obvious. But he might have missed some. There might even have been a camera pointed at the stairs showing him going down under the stage and then the girl - his victim - coming down and then him coming out. It would be open and shut.

His logic responded. How many cameras could there really have been? He had not seen any, but there probably was a camera on the stage entrance to the building. But on the seldom-used stairway down to the trap room? That was unlikely. One more time, he stemmed the flow of adrenaline into his veins.

His going into the building just before the attack and his coming out just after would be pretty heavy circumstantial evidence - especially with him not supposed to be there. But it would be explainable. There were lies that would cover that. Not perfect, but plausible.

Maybe he should turn himself it. He was alone in the spooky trap room and she startled him. It was an accident.

Why was he in the room? Why was he in the building? There were no good answers for that.

He needed an alibi. There was that girl at check-in that had been coming on to him. If he could call her and get together immediately, it might be close enough in time that he could convince her that their day had started earlier. There would have to be drinking involved. Maybe she was the type that might day-drink on a day off. The problem was that he didn't remember her name. And he had probably thrown away her phone number. She had been of no use to him until now.

His nerves were brought to a fever pitch when a second police car - this one with blaring siren - turned onto The Strip a few blocks ahead. He watched it creeping through the bumper-to-bumper traffic until it finally made its way past. The siren was loud, but no one seemed to take much notice and it continued down the street to the Superstar main hotel. The single policeman in the car was not scanning the sidewalk and appeared to take no notice of him.

He would go back to the hotel and call his mother. Time zones confused her. He would mention the time to her and subtract an hour. He would have to do it in a way that she would remember so that she could say he was on the phone with her when all of that happened. But that wouldn't work. The police would check the phone records.

That was the trouble with being guilty - alibis were hard to come by.

***

Natalie was kind of a bitch. But, in fairness, the best ones were. Al was conflicted between the fact that she felt for the Executive Producer's plight but was also the recipient of the steady torrent of increasingly unreasonable and unrealistic demands. At least the EP had the decency to not say something stupid like, 'The show must go on.'

The ambulance had come and gone, and Lacy had been awake and reasonably coherent by the time it had driven away. The EMTs were certain that she had a concussion but answered no further questions.

The EP was on a rant, "Just tell the police that they have to finish up this investigation in the next fifteen minutes."

"I really don't think it works that way."

"But you haven't even asked them."

"And I'm not going to. It's a ridiculous request."

"Well, then I'll ask them."

"Be my guest."

The EP did, indeed, beeline straight for the nearest police office and then to an older man in short sleeves and a tie. The conversation was brief but included a great deal of arm waving by the EP.

When she returned, she was calmer. "Well, that went about as well as expected."

Al refrained from saying I told you so and spoke calmly. "Did they give you any sense of how long it would take?"

"He said that it would take as long as it takes."

"He's guaranteed not to be wrong."

"I don't know why we have to shut completely down. It's a concussion. A night of observation. A couple of days in dark rooms and then you're fine. I've had three. It's not like she died."

The EP was a former college volleyball player and still a serious athlete.

Al tried to show reason. "She was attacked and most of the women on the set will feel a lot better once the attacker is caught."

"I wonder if we sent all of the women home if the police would let us get back to work."

"I think it's more about gathering evidence."

"This is killing me! Look at all of those people just sitting and doing nothing. No. Look at all of those union people sitting and doing nothing. Sitting there knowing that we don't have this in the schedule and every minute they sit is going to turn into a minute of overtime at time and a half. We are hemorrhaging cash. That's a bigger crime than your assistant getting a lump on her head."

Al kept her voice even: "A lump on the head is when you hit the edge of a table bending over. This was being suddenly attacked by a man in a dark and scary place when she was alone. The physical injury is the least of it."

"I know. I'm sorry. I just feel so helpless."

A new voice interrupted from the door, "Excuse me, ma'ams?"

They both turned to see a uniformed police officer sticking his head into the booth.

When he had their attention, he dropped the next surprise, "You'll have to leave the building. We've received a bomb threat."

The EP reached her hands into her hair, grabbed two handfuls, and pulled. "You have GOT to be kidding me!"

Al almost felt sorry for her.

***

Harriman had just either muddied the police search or added time to his prison sentence.

After going to his room for a ball cap and sunglasses, he had snuck into a business center in a different hotel from which he was staying. An internet search had yielded the locations of several pay phones in the area. He had some change but, never having used a pay phone, he had no idea how much they cost. The cap and glasses had blended in well with the tourists walking the strip on the bright, sunny day.

At the phone, he had put the receiver to his ear, dropped two quarters into the slot, and dialed 911.

A woman's voice answered, "911. What is the nature of the emergency?"

He spoke in what he hoped was an Arab accent. "There's a bomb in the theater of the Royal Hotel." He paused slightly before adding, "Allah Akbar."

He had hung up and walked quickly away. There didn't appear to be any cameras, but he kept his face down just the same.

That was all that he could do. The police were either going to come knocking at his door or they weren't. He went back to his hotel to wait it out.

***

Cherie tried to slam the hotel room door but its automatic closer thwarted her effort. So, she kicked it. "You drive me crazy!"

The day off had not gone well.

The Star Trek Enterprise exhibit had briefly held Gary's interest but not long enough to justify $40 per ticket. They had stayed 30 minutes past the point at which he was bored with Cherie pointing at every light and switch and asking him to explain it. After he had shown her the basic duty stations of the bridge crew, his answers had become "It's a light."

Cherie had insisted that Gary take his turn sitting in the Captain's chair for a photo op. He thought it was stupid. "Why would I want to do that?"

"So, you can remember the experience."

"I can get a better memory of the chair looking at it rather than sitting in it where I become the only person that can't see it."

"I'm going to post the picture on Twitter."

That made him jump out of the chair like it was electrified. "I don't want to be on Twitter!"

"Why not?"

"It's insipid, vapid, and valueless." Two redundant adjectives seemed insufficient to make his point, so he added a third for emphasis.

Cherie shrugged, "Most of the time. But it does increase international communications at the individual level." She wasn't that big of a fan, either, but at least Gary seemed engaged for a moment.

"Interactions are only communication if the parties have something meaningful to say."

"You sound elitist."

"That doesn't make me wrong."

And that was the good part of the day. Then they went shopping.

Gary specifically remembered a previous conversation where Cherie had explained to him at length how much she disliked shopping. Yet, here they were.

"I thought you hated shopping."

"I do."

"Then why are we going shopping?"

"Oh. I hate normal shopping: food, clothes, shoes, stuff. This is tourist shopping. It's different," she stated as if it were an inalienable fact of life. And maybe it was. So, he didn't challenge and followed along.

Gary had no experience being with a woman who was not his mother while shopping. And he was mentally, physically, and emotionally unprepared for the complete illogic of the process. To pass the time, he asked her questions based on his observations.

"Why are you going into that store?"

Then the follow-up, "If you have no specific need, why go in at all?"

He tried the question that had stumped men for centuries, "How can a store be cute?"

His barrage continued, "What actual purpose does a scarf serve?"

One interesting thing he found out during this deluge of questions was that the definition of the word cute is gender-specific. To a woman, the word was an extremely subjective catch-all that was generally positive. However, said with a sarcastic tone of voice, it becomes negative. Cherie demonstrated both of these uses repeatedly during the outing.

A less interesting bit of new knowledge was that a woman in the midst of a shopping spree does not appreciate a companion that is vocally hating every second of it. This brought the afternoon to a screeching halt and resulted in the attempted door slam as they returned to the room. By his definition, a five-foot-nothing woman unsuccessfully attempting to slam a door and finally kicking it was cute. But he felt that pointing it out was a bad plan.

***

Harriman paced his hotel room until he was exhausted and then lay down. After some diddling on his phone, he tried to watch television. Then he returned to pacing. All the while waiting for the cops to kick in the door. The afternoon slowly and painfully ground its way into evening, without any trouble from the law.

Harriman left a note on his bed saying he had gone out to dinner and should return by 8:00. The note contained his phone number and the name of the restaurant. He felt weird doing it but his desire for this to be behind him was overcoming reason and he didn't want to miss his own arrest simply because he was out to eat. He understood why people turned themselves in. The waiting was awful.

At the restaurant, he'd only just slid into the booth when his phone rang again. The sudden ring made his sphincter clench so tightly that it still hurt after he forced himself to relax.

"Hello?"

"Hi Jim. This is Shannon with the show."

He did not recognize the name. "Oh. Hi. What's up?"

"I don't know if you've seen the news but we've had some drama over here today and I'm afraid that Call has been moved from 9:00 to Noon. You have any problem with that?"

"No. What happened?"

"Somebody called in a bomb threat. The police came and searched and everything is fine. But we lost a lot of time."

"Do they know who did it?"

"Naw. Probably just a stupid prank."

After hanging up, he wondered if maybe her call was a ruse and he was actually talking to a police officer so that they could identify him in the restaurant? Scanning the restaurant, he saw no one who looked like a police detective. But that was their job, right? If they were competent, he wouldn't see them.

His appetite vanished. He waited five minutes in order to not appear tense and then waved down the waitress and requested his check.

She frowned down at his plate. "But you haven't touched your food."

He looked up into her eyes and turned on a charming yet sheepish smile. "I just came in here to get out of the hotel. I'm really not hungry."

She brought the check efficiently. On it she had signed her name with a smiley face. He provided a slightly high - but still normal- tip and left. He was not arrested at the door. Nor in the street. Nor in the lobby. And he waited 30 minutes in the room expecting the pounding at the door.

It didn't come.