The Kiribati Test Read online

  The Kiribati Test

  By Stacey Cochran

  I

  Earl Redgraves worked for the same carpet cleaning company I’d been with for four years. The Sterling Steamer crew worked primarily in office buildings in downtown Phoenix, but a quarter of the operation went out to residential customers, most of them calling us up in last-ditch situations you don’t even want to know about.

  Sterling Steamer brought in new employees at the residential level because the office buildings were plush jobs compared to the things you’d find in people’s homes. I’d been at the Global-Com building in downtown Phoenix for two years, working my way up, literally, each and every week. There were sixty-seven floors at Global-Com, and I worked through ten-fifteen per night, between the hours of seven P.M. and four A.M., and I loved it.

  There was something altogether therapeutic about pushing a Hoover Pro 2000 over 25,000-square-feet of industry-standard Dupont Stainmaster through the midnight shift in an empty office building. Air temperature was atomically calibrated to 72.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and some smart guy at Cal Tech discovered a decade ago that an oxygen-rich work environment increased productivity, so Global-Com got the contract and became the first real-world test environment in 2053. Oxygen content inside the building was bumped up 4% from what was breathed outside, and so stepping into the Global-Com building was literally a breath of fresh air.

  The building was sixty-seven stories of shiny, mirrored, cobalt blue solar-glass that actually absorbed sunlight, and company CEOs boasted that three-quarters of the electricity to run the high rise came from the good old-fashioned Arizona sun.

  It was a Thursday night about 12:45 A.M., when I heard someone shouting my name. I was on the fifty-fourth floor. At first, I thought it was just my imagination, but when I killed the switch on the Hoover Pro, I heard footsteps running up the hallway toward me. I turned and saw Earl Redgraves with a grin on his face and a gleam in his eyes.

  “Karl, you gotta see this, man.”

  “What is it?” I said. I pulled the Hoover Pro 2000 over to the right side of the hallway.

  “Things are getting crazy up on the sixty-seventh,” Earl said.

  “What’re you talking about?” Then I realized and said, “You’ve been drinking again.”

  I leaned a little closer and only smelled bad onions on Earl’s breath, no alcohol. Earl shook his head “no,” took me by the shirtsleeve, and started leading me up the hallway toward the stairwell.

  “Earl, I ain’t climbing up thirteen flights of stairs when we got the elevator right here.” I turned and pointed at the elevator twenty feet in front of the Hoover Pro, but Earl wasn’t listening. He still had hold of my shirtsleeve.

  “Can’t take the elevator,” he said. “It’ll make too much noise.”

  “Too much noise?” I said. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Come on,” he said.

  And he hit the doorway to the stairwell at the end of the hall. We climbed thirteen flights of stairs, and I was out of breath and sweating when we got to the doorway to the sixty-seventh floor. Earl stopped, raised an index finger to his lips, and said, “Shhhhh. You gotta be so quiet you don’t make a sound.”

  “What the hell?” I said.

  Earl opened the door very carefully, and we stepped out into the hallway. He held the door as it closed, and he eased the latch so that it didn’t make a sound.

  I could hear music coming from up the hallway. I looked at Earl, intrigued.

  I whispered, “What is it?”

  Earl leaned in close.

  “Perks,” he said, “of being a company CEO.”

  I’m sure I looked perplexed. Earl led the way up the hall, and the music grew louder. The views from inside the offices on the sixty-seventh were literally breathtaking. Standing near the windows actually made me uneasy. From up here, people far below looked like small dots, and hover-cars looked like children’s toys. You could see all the way across a sea of city lights, and on the south end of the building you could see Tucson, seventy miles away on the edge of the horizon.

  That men and women actually called these offices theirs was both hard to comprehend and a source of envy to me. The governor of Arizona had worked on this floor until she went into politics six years back. And it was no secret that Global-Com money helped finance her candidacy, not that it was shady or anything. She owned 24% of the company; it was her money.

  But this music, well, it sounded like someone was having a little party on up the hallway.

  Most of the doors were closed, but a few were open. Huge oak desks, furniture worth more than Sara’s and my entire apartment filled each room. Most CEOs kept their offices tidy, but a few were covered with folders and papers all over the floor.

  I couldn’t help but dream about having an office like this one day, but a dream was, I realized, all it would ever be.

  I heard women’s laughter as we approached the door from which the music came. Giggly, sensual, sexual laughter, and then the squeal of a woman running around inside a room, three doors up.

  “Shit,” I said, and I ducked inside a janitor’s closet. I closed the door to within an inch.

  Earl hit an office on the opposite side of the hall, and we both watched from opposing shadows as a fully naked woman ran up the hallway, her blonde hair flying out behind her. She looked like she was about twenty-three. I heard a man’s growl, and then a good-looking guy of about forty-five in silk boxers and a T-shirt ran by, chasing after the young woman.

  My eyes widened in the shadows of the janitor’s closet, and I tried not to breathe in too much of the ammonia and cleaning fluid scent. I knew the guy because he had gotten tied up in a murder investigation two years back that had made national news.

  Two more young women ran by: a redhead and a brunette. The redhead looked like she was about twenty-five, and she wore a white corset with garters attached to white hose. The brunette looked younger -- maybe nineteen -- and she ran by wearing somewhat transparent sky-blue panties and bra. They chased after the man.

  A minute later, the trio of young women ran back by the closet, the man chasing them, while all four giggled. They’d clearly had a couple glasses of champagne, and I saw party streamers on the hallway floor.

  They ran into the original office room, and someone slammed the door shut. The laughter and music became muffled through the door. I slowly opened the janitor’s closet, and on the other side of the hall, Earl opened his door. He had a stupid grin on his face.

  I just didn’t want to get caught.

  “Come on, man,” Earl said. He stepped into the hallway and started walking toward the office door. I just stood there looking at him. My pulse beat hard in my chest. My palms were sweaty, but Earl acted like it was fun and exciting.

  He crept up to the door. I stayed inside the janitor’s closet doorway.

  “Earl,” I whispered. “Man, get out of there.”

  The last thing I needed at this point was to get busted by this CEO who wouldn’t think twice about letting a snooping carpet cleaner go. I needed my job, needed it something fierce.

  “Earl, man,” I said. “Get out of there.”

  I think he half expected them to accidentally find him and invite him on inside to join in the fun and games. Earl turned his orange baseball cap around backwards, and his hand rose up to the doorknob. He started to turn it slowly. The office door cracked open just an inch, and I caught a glimpse of what was going on inside. The guy was standing up against his desk, and all three women were on their knees in front of him.

  I glanced to the left up the hallway, and I saw I had about fifty meters up to the stairwell.

  “Earl,” I said one more time, but he was leaning there, the door open less than an
inch, peering through with a stupid smile on his face.

  I knew I could make it to the stairwell, and I didn’t give a damn what Earl thought about that decision, so I headed on up the hallway very quietly. Earl turned around and saw me.

  I stood at the doorway to the stairwell, and I waved for him to come on one last time, to get away from that office door. He gave me a wry smile and then flipped me the bird.

  Dumb ass, I thought.

  I turned, opened the door very quietly, and went into the stairwell. And I didn’t see Earl again until 4:15 A.M., later that morning.

  II

  By the time I came off my evening shift at 4:05, I was feeling numb. I’d made it up to the sixty-first floor, and it was odd that I hadn’t seen Earl. I figured he’d come back down and try and get a giggle out of telling me about what he saw. It wasn’t unfathomable that I wouldn’t have seen him again, though. Earl might have finished up the bathrooms on the sixty-seventh, and then rode all the way down to the first floor and started up there.

  Needless to say, I wasn’t really thinking about Earl when I packed the Hoover Pro in the janitor’s closet on the sixty-first, marked my checklist, and began the elevator ride down to the first floor.

  The elevator dinged, and the door opened, and I immediately saw the spinning blue lights of police hover-cars right in front of the building. There was a single security desk clerk that worked the midnight shift, and he was standing over by the window at the front of the building.

  “What is it?” I called out to him. His name was Toby.

  “Guy’s dead,” he said. He turned and looked at me, and I knew he wasn’t kidding. “What’s his name? Earl?”

  “What?!” I said. I looked into his eyes and saw he was sincere.

  I ran for the front door.

  The air was cold outside. I rushed up to a group of police cruisers parked next to two ambulances. The area in front of the building was cordoned off with bright yellow police tape.

  One of the EMTs zipped up a navy-blue bag atop the stretcher. There was a chalk-line on the sidewalk and side of the street, right over the curb.

  “What the hell happened?” I said.

  A Phoenix PD officer turned and looked at me.

  “You work here?” he asked.

  “What the hell happened?” I repeated.

  I stood there, and four Phoenix police officers gathered around me.

  “You work on the cleaning crew?” another officer asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do the carpets. I just came off my shift.”

  The officers exchanged glances.

  They were loading the body up into the back of an ambulance.

  “Hold up with that stretcher,” the second officer said. He turned and looked at me. “Can you identify this guy for us?”

  I think I shook my head. The officer led me over to the stretcher.

  He said, “Go ahead.”

  The EMT unzipped the top of the body bag.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  I looked up into the officer’s eyes, speechless. I just nodded my head. The officer realized I did know the guy, which made his job easier. I saw the look in his eyes.

  “His name’s Earl Redgraves,” I said. “We both work for Sterling Steamer.”

  III

  Some drunk guy was yelling that he knew his rights when we entered the police station. The drunk’s hands were cuffed behind him, and he sat in a white chair. Two officers stood behind him, restraining him, while a third sat at the desk coding the citation.

  “Over here, Mr. Connors,” Officer Jim Staringer said.

  At the back of the room, there was a shiny steel door that would have taken a barrage of bullets without a scratch, and when the three officers finished with the drunk, they carried him through that doorway. I could see holding cells beyond the door.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Staringer asked me.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  Staringer directed me to sit in a chair opposite his desk. I took the seat, and Staringer directed me to place my right hand on a glowing white block about half the size of a shoebox that was imbedded into his desk. He could pivot the glowing box back and forth a little. I reached my hand forward, and the scanner processed me. Next, Staringer had me lean forward to look into a visor for a retinal scan.

  Staringer looked at the holo-screen over on the right side of his desk.

  “You still live at 2120 Westwood Village?” he said.

  “Apartment 27-B,” I said.

  He was reading the holo-screen. “Wife named Sara Kennedy Connors,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “She’s still at Phoenix Community College?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  He repositioned a few holo-files and glanced calmly at the three officers now coming back through the shiny silver doorway. He gave them an amused smile, and one of the guys just shook his head.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d had a long night, it looked like.

  “No children?” Staringer said.

  “My wife still has her birth control chip.”

  “And you’ve been with Sterling Steamer Carpet Cleaning Service for four years?”

  “And two months,” I said.

  “Got a clean record, Mr. Connors,” he said. He looked up and gave me a half smile.

  I said nothing.

  Staringer seemed uncomfortable a moment, and then just went on into it. “How long have you known Earl Redgraves?” he asked.

  “Ohhh,” I sighed. “Three years maybe, give or take a couple months. He started residential, I don’t know, back in ’55.”

  “Residential?”

  “Sterling Steamer brings in all new employees at the residential service level.”

  “I see,” Staringer said. He coded a few notes into the holo-screen, cleared his throat, and glanced at the three officers who’d been working with the drunk. “Live one, eh, Frank?”

  Frank gave him a look that said don’t-get-me-started, and Staringer smiled, amused. His eyes went back to the holo-screen.

  “How well did you know him?” Staringer said.

  I said, “How well does anybody really know anybody?”

  This brought up a look on Staringer’s face.

  “Were you friends?”

  “We were co-workers,” I said.

  “Sure you don’t want a cup of coffee?”

  “I might take water if you’ve got some.”

  “Lenny,” Staringer said. “Get me a bottle of water, if you would?”

  One of the three officers remained seated, but leaned back in his chair and opened a mini-fridge on the floor behind him. He grabbed a bottle of water and tossed it across the room to Staringer. Staringer caught it and handed it over his desk to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Earl?” I said.

  Staringer nodded his head.

  “Oh, maybe around midnight,” I said.

  “Tonight?” Staringer said.

  I nodded my head and said, “Yeah.”

  He sounded surprised and said, “Did anything seem out of the ordinary?”

  I took a sip of the water and maintained eye contact.

  “Well?” he said.

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t say he seemed out of the ordinary.”

  Staringer gave me a hard look. I think he realized something was not right.

  “Look,” I said. “Earl wasn’t exactly the sharpest razor in the box. I mean, he drank. Lot of times he’d show up to do the bathrooms -- he did tile for Sterling Steamer -- and you could tell he’d had a couple of cold ones. It never got in the way, though.”

  “Was he drunk tonight?”

  “He might have been,” I said. “I really didn’t see him all that long.”

  Staringer took a deep breath and looked into my eyes a long time. I just stared at him.

  He said, “How often would you say he showed up to work drunk?”
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  “Hell, I don’t know; maybe three days out of the week.”

  “But he didn’t seem drunk tonight?”

  “That’s not what I said. I didn’t say that.”

  “You want me to play back what you said?”

  “I said I saw him around midnight. I didn’t see him very long, and it was at a distance. I just gave him a wave. He might have been drunk. I don’t know.”

  “You weren’t close enough to tell?”

  I shook my head “no.”

  Staringer occupied himself with the holo-screen for about two minutes. I sat there getting more and more uneasy. One of the three officers, Lenny, came over and looked over Staringer’s shoulder.

  “What you got, Jim?” Lenny said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “A man jumped off of a building, it looks like.”

  Lenny glanced from the holo-screen to me. He managed a tight little smile that was more awkward than friendly.

  Staringer looked up at me and said, “Would he have had keys to the roof?”

  I felt my heart drop down into my stomach. I was the only one on the crew that had keys up to the roof. We didn’t need them really, but I was the head Sterling Steamer man at Global-Com, so I kept the keys. And I did have a key up onto the roof.

  “Probably,” I said. “We had keys for most of the rooms in the building. I’m sure we have one somewhere for the roof.”

  Lenny said to Staringer, “Was it on his person?”

  Staringer shook his head, staring at the holo-screen. “No,” he said. “No keys.”

  Lenny’s eyebrows rolled up like he was embarrassed to be standing there. He rocked back on his heels and scratched his nose.

  “Did they carry him down to County?” Lenny said.

  Staringer didn’t answer him. He looked from the screen to me.

  “Did he seem suicidal to you?” he asked me.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I mean there was this one incident a couple years back when his wife was fixing to leave him. He drank a lot, ended up in the hospital. Sleeping pills. I think it was just an accident.”

  Immediately, Staringer went to the holo-screen. “What year was that,” he said, “do you know?”