Argent Glass

Chapter 5 - Break - Carrel

"This is crazy. Implausible."

Carrel weaved before his computer. He blinked to force his eyes to focus. He had been poring over the stolen documents he had copied to the memory card, flinching every time he heard a car door shut in his neighborhood.

Mrs. Owen, the elderly neighbor who split the duplex with him, nearly gave him a heart attack when she rang his doorbell early in the morning. He shouldn't have snapped at her like he did when all she wanted to do was make sure he wasn't sick. She explained that she had been worried when she didn't see his car leave for work on time like it did every morning.

Morning faded into the lunch hour without his notice as he digested the contents of the documents. Much of them were useless, but the items he suspected were linked to Leslie's death were collected into a new folder.

By late afternoon, his stomach was churning angrily and he took a break to grab a box of crackers from the pantry and a block of sliced cheese from the refrigerator. The bottle of Pinot he grabbed off the counter as an after-thought had not been a good idea.

He picked up the bottle of wine and swirled the last swallow before tipping it up, downing it and banging it back onto the desk.

"All my research!" he shouted into the quiet. "All my goddamn research! This is not what it was meant for!"

He pulled at his hair, getting angrier. He suddenly swiped the papers off his desk onto the floor. They separated in the air and flew like birds scattered by gunshot. With a yank, he pulled the keyboard free of the hard drive and hurled it at the wall. The chair was next. It careened off the wall with a loud crash and skidded back at him as a picture hurtled to the floor and erupted in an explosion of glass. He kicked the chair away with a furious shout.

Spinning back to his desk, he jerked the bottom drawer from his desk and flung it away. Binder after binder was pulled from the shelves and thrown to the ground amid shouts full of anger and pain. Slipping on the debris under his feet, he turned to the five-drawer filing cabinet and hauled on a drawer. Frustrated when the drawer stuck, he thrust his shoulder into it to knock it over. It budged but it didn't tip, so he put his shoulder into it again. Garnering no response, he turned once more to his desk and wrenched out the center drawer.

As it flew open, a small black Smith and Wesson slid to the front, and he stopped. He glowered at it in anger. When he snatched it up to his temple, his finger found the trigger without thought. The barrel felt cool against his head where sweat had beaded up on his scalp. He switched it to his mouth and thumbed the trigger.

A picture knocked backward onto the desk caught his eye. He took the gun out of his mouth and slid to the ground cradling it with the photo. Tears coursed down his cheeks.

"I'm so sorry, Leslie. So sorry." The words came out choked and stuck in the back of his throat. He turned the picture over to look at her face. "I miss you so much."

The photo had been taken on their wedding day. Leslie glowed. The photographer had caught her just as she snuck under his arm to ask him when they would leave. She had been smiling devilishly and looking up into his face when the flash went off.

He was reviewing candidates for the research project Maverick BioScience had assigned to him. The research involved monitoring the health of the subjects under a rigorously controlled diet. Maverick provided packaged meals that each subject would pick up once a week and consume. Subjects charted how much they ate and, then rated flavor, consistency, and visual appeal. He took those charts and asked questions as needed to fill in the missing gaps of information that subjects invariably forgot or didn't understand. He also made sure the subjects did their blood draws when they were supposed to. The lab reports painted a clear picture of what was going on inside their bodies and confirmed they were sticking to the strict diet.