A Horse with No Name Pt. 02

The story was well done, and I thought it would make someone very nervous.

Chapter 18 - I Throw Out the First Pitch

Tuesday morning I got a call from Dave Stanley.

"Mike, I wanted to let you know that we took care of reinstating your employment benefits so that you can submit the bills for your medical treatment."

"Thank you. That should make my doctors and the hospital happy," I said.

"According to HR our insurance will provide you with up to 52 weeks of salary while you are recovering from your injuries," Mr. Stanley said. "From what you have said it is not likely you will be coming back to work here this year, so I wanted you to know that you will get back pay for the last seven months and continue receiving your salary until December or you start working again. Also, if we ever recover the Interapp software, you will be eligible for a bonus for all of the hard work you did to create the program.

"I saw the story on the news last night. They never mentioned the theft of Interapp. Do you have any idea why that wasn't part of the story?"

"No idea at all. The police haven't told me anything since Wednesday, but hopefully, they will get to the bottom of this soon."

"Well, let's hope so. Take care of yourself, Mike. If you ever recover your software design skills I hope you will come back to SA."

"I appreciate that and would consider coming back."

I was doing some much-needed house cleaning when I got a call from Kate.

"Remember me telling you about the FBI raid on the First Bank of Brodricksburg?" Kate said.

"Yeah, you sad that the FBI believed that the bank's president and vice president were laundering money for some drug cartel," I said.

"Well, they found both of them today."

"So they are in jail now?"

"No. The Philadelphia Police found their bodies floating in the Delaware River under the Ben Franklin Bridge. I know this doesn't mean much to you, but this is big news here."

"That would be big news almost anywhere," I said. "I hope they catch the people who killed them."

"I hope I didn't interrupt anything important to give you this news," Kate said.

"As a matter of fact, you did. I was in the middle of cleaning six months of dust off my furniture."

"I have to get back to work, but I will call you tonight," Kate said.

"Try to call me before Megan goes to bed; I would like to say hello to her."

"She'll love that. Bye for now."

After I finished cleaning, I went up to my office and opened the Word document I was working on and read what I had written so far. The chronology looked right to me, so I read it through again, trying to imbed these small slices of my previous life into my memory.

Since I had nothing new to add to the document, I started playing around with my computer. I opened up some executable files and immediately understood how they worked. In my mind, I could see the lines of code required to do certain functions. That's when I realized that while I had lost my memories of the work I did for SA, I still knew how to write computer code. I didn't remember writing the code for Interapp, so I would never be able to rewrite that code from memory, but I believed that in time I could recreate the application. All I would need were the project requirements and time to do the work. Time would be the problem. How long would I have before a product, using my original work hit the market?

I stayed busy on my computer for the rest of the afternoon. I even wrote a couple of short programs, just to prove to myself that I could. I was writing a third program that was much more complex than the first two when I got a call from George Bartlett.

"Are you going to be around for a while?" George said.

"I am in for the evening."

"Good. I will be leaving work shortly and I am coming over. There is something I need to talk to you about," George said.

"Can you give me a hint?"

"Not on the phone, too many people around here with big ears."

It appeared that whatever George wanted to talk to me about was important. My first thought was that it had something to do with Interapp. His comment the night before, that I might have pulled a few lines of code from Interapp so there could be no unauthorized use of the product had raised a red flag for me. If what he said is right, whoever has the Interapp code files can't use them, and because SA doesn't have a back up of those files, any lines of code I might have hidden somewhere would be useless to SA.

What had begun to worry me was that the only person that would know if there were any lines of code missing was the person who stole Interapp. Would that person come to see me? Could that person be my good friend George?

I sat staring out the window while I pondered the possible meaning of George's need to talk to me. I picked up the baseball from the trophy on my desk and squeezed the ball in my right hand. Somehow that relaxed me.

A few minutes later I heard my kitchen door open, so I yelled down "I'm upstairs in my office."

I was looking down at the program I had been writing on my computer when George came into the room except that when I looked up it wasn't George, it was Tony Kaplan.

"Sorry to barge in on you like this, but like I said last night I wanted to talk to you," Kaplan said.

"I thought you were going to call first."

"This could not wait."

"All right, you're here so what was so important?"

"I need to warn you about George Bartlett. He is not your friend."

"Really?"

"When you turned up back here, and I heard the story about what happened to you it all started to make sense to me," Kaplan said.

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"Just hear me out. Within a week of your disappearance, George was dating your fianceé."

I knew that was at least partly true. Sonja told me that Lisa turned to George for support while I was gone. I did believe it turned into more over time.

"You don't have anything to say about your so-called best friend fucking your fianceé?"

"Did you just come over here to tell me that George and Lisa had an affair while I was gone?"

"Come on, Mike, you're not seeing the bigger picture. Who would know more about the work you were doing on Interapp than George? He knew everything he needed to know about you to be able to take Interapp, and your girlfriend then set it up to look like you stole Interapp. His plan would have worked except for two problems. First, you didn't die like you were supposed to and second, the copy of Interapp George took doesn't work because some of the code is missing from the finished product."

Kaplan had just hit on what had been bothering me ever since George called and said he was coming over to the house.

"So what are you suggesting I do?" I said.

"I suggest that you get the missing code so that we can take it to the office for safekeeping."

I found myself in a quandary. I was already concerned about George's interest in the possibility that I had some code from Interapp hidden somewhere in my house and now I have Kaplan standing here asking me about the same thing. Who could I trust?

"I do think we have a problem here," I said. "George is going to be here in a few minutes, and then we'll get to the bottom of this."

Kaplan looked nervous. "I suggest that we just get the code and leave before George gets here."

I heard the kitchen door open again. "Too late, George is here."

I called down "George, I'm upstairs in my office.

When George walked into my office and saw Kaplan there, he said, "What's he doing here?"

Kaplan spoke up and said, "I had something I needed to discuss with Mike."

"How did you get here?" George said.

"What do you mean, how did I get here?"

"If you drove here, where is your car? It's not in the driveway, and it's not parked out on the street?"

I decided it was time for me to intervene. "Tony came over to talk to me about the lines of code missing from Interapp. Isn't that also why you are here?"

"No, that is not why I am here, and what missing code is he talking about?" George said.

"I'm talking about the code that booth of you seem to think I have," I said.

"I never said that I thought that you had any of the code, I was just hoping that you did so that whoever took Interapp would not be able to make it work," George said.

"Tony, something you said puzzles me," I said. "You said that the stolen version on Interapp doesn't work a section of code was missing from the finished product. How do you know it doesn't work?"

Kaplan's reaction to my question was unexpected. He pulled a gun on us. I don't know much about guns, but this one looked pretty big when he pointed it at me. Kaplan pushed George over toward me and said, "That's enough talking, just give me the fucking code."

"Sorry, can't help you. I don't remember anything about my time working on Interapp or if I removed and lines of code. If there is any code, I have no idea where it is."

Kaplan started to look unhinged. "I don't believe you, so if you don't want to watch me put a bullet in your friends head you get me that fucking code right now."

I looked over at George, and he said, "He's going to kill both of us anyway."

I knew George was right. It was at that moment that I realized I was still holding my baseball.

"Hurray up asshole, or I am going to splatter his brains all over your wall."

I held up the baseball and said, "I've got it right here. The there is a flash drive inside the ball."

"Toss it over here," Kaplan said.

What happened in the next two seconds is a complete blur to me. I threw the ball at Kaplan as hard as I could and just as the ball left my fingertips I heard the gunshot. I went down on my back, and the room got very quiet for a while. Then I heard George yelling at me, "Hang on, help is on the way."

"I think I'm okay," I said. "Where's Kaplan?"

"He's down?"

"He's downstairs?"

"No. He's on the floor. You hit him in the throat with the ball, and he is having difficulty breathing, and he is coughing up blood. I got the gun away from him and called 911. The police and ambulance are on the way. How badly are you hurt?" George said.

"I'm not hurt. He missed me."

"If he missed, why are you bleeding?"

The left side of my shirt was soaked with blood. I pulled my shirt up, and I could see where the bullet had cut a quarter inch deep gash about four inches long, along my rib cage. I didn't feel any pain from the wound until I stood up.

George said he was going to get me a clean towel to cover my wound and left the room. I sat down at my desk and looked over at Kaplan lying on the floor. He had his hands around his throat, and he was making rasping sounds as he tried to suck air into his lungs. He looked at me like he was pleading for me to help him.

"Looks like I beat you to the draw, asshole," I said. "I hope the doctors fix you up real good so that you can spend many years in prison."

In response to my good wishes, Kaplan coughed once, and then his eyes rolled up into his head, and he either died or passed out. Whichever it was I didn't much care. When George returned with a towel, I asked him to check on Kaplan.

"He's still with us, but just barely," George said.

"That was one lucky throw you made. It knocked Kaplan off his feet and made him drop his gun. If you had missed him, we would both be dead now."

"It wasn't a lucky throw, I hit him exactly where I was aiming," I said. "While we are waiting, why don't you tell me why you wanted to talk to me?"

"I am afraid that I haven't been the kind of friend I should have been. When you were gone I took advantage of the situation to win Lisa for myself," George said. "You had been gone four months when Lisa finally gave in to me. It ended as soon as you came back. I would never have done that if I had any idea that you would come back. I am sorry man, I really am."

"That's what you came over here to tell me? I pretty much knew that as soon as I saw the two of you at 42 Street that first time," I said. "I can't blame you. I wasn't here and you both thought I just took off. Don't worry about it."

Chapter 18 -- The Aftermath

Since Kaplan's injury was more severe than mine, the police and the first ambulance on the scene took Kaplan away. As soon as they took Kaplan away one of the police officers took George out of the room, I assumed to question him about what happened.

While I was waiting for the ambulance to take me to Rex Hospital, another police officer began questioning me. I didn't know where to begin, so I told the officer to call Detective Monroe and tell him what was going on. The officer didn't seem to like that, but he got his phone out and left the room to make the call.

Two hours later I was sitting on a bed in the emergency room while a nurse put a bandage over the stitches used to close up the wound in my side when Detective Monroe found me.

"You doing okay?"

"I've felt better, but they tell me that I might survive," I said.

"You want to tell me what happened," Detective Monroe said.

I told Detective Monroe that it was possible that I had removed some lines of code from Interapp so that no one that was not authorized to use the program would be able to get it to work. I said that Kaplan had apparently taken the program files and somehow discovered that some of the code was missing, so he came to my house to force me to give him the code. I said that when Kaplan demanded the code or he would shoot my friend George, I told him that the code was in the baseball and threw the baseball at him.

"Kaplan must have been the one that took your computer and searched your home office looking for the missing code," Detective Monroe said.The questioning didn't stop there. After the nurse finished bandaging me, Detective Monroe and I went to the cafeteria and got some coffee while he made me go over the story several more times in detail. Detective Monroe asked me at least five different times if I had the missing code or if I knew where it was. My answer was always the same. "I have no idea if there is any missing code or where it would be if I did have it."

I finally got home around eight o'clock. I was tired, and I was in some pain. I took a quick look at my cell phone that was sitting on the kitchen counter and when I saw that there were no messages I left the phone there and headed upstairs. I was still wearing the shirt I had on when Kaplan shot me, so I headed to my room to get a clean shirt and throw my bloody shirt in the trash.

I was debating whether to go to bed or go downstairs and have a drink to relax my nerves when I heard my cell phone ring. I was going to run downstairs to answer it but slowed when I heard Lisa's voice answering the phone. I wondered what Lisa was doing in my house and why she was answering my phone. When I got to the kitchen, Lisa was just setting my phone down on the counter.

I was about to ask Lisa who called when she said, "Who is Kate?"

I wasn't prepared to talk to Lisa about Kate just yet. "What did you say to her," I said.

"I told her you were busy and couldn't come to the phone," Lisa said. "I didn't think I should tell her that you had been shot. So, who is Kate?"

"Do we have to do this now?" I said. "I am tired and my ribs hurt... wait, how did you know I was shot?"

"George called me after the police finished questioning him and I came straight over, and no, this can't wait. I didn't like the way she demanded to know who I was when I answered the phone and when I asked her if she had a message for you she just said to tell you that Kate called and you don't have to call her back."

I was not happy. I had told Kate to call me and that I wanted to talk to Megan. Having Lisa answer my phone when she called was not good.

"So, are you going to tell me who the hell Kate is? Have you been messing around behind my back?"

I was pissed at Lisa for demanding that I tell her about Kate. In a way, I could understand her point of view. I was supposed to be her fiancé, so I should not have women Lisa didn't know calling me. But, from my point of view, Lisa was a stranger to me, and my life with Kate wasn't any of her business. I knew I shouldn't be angry with Lisa but I was, and I lashed out at her.

"I was going to tell you about Kate as soon as you told me about you and George," I said.

"How did you... I mean it was nothing. I thought you were never coming back and George was there for me. It just kind of happened," Kate said.

"I hope you realize that George is in love with you."

"He is not."

"He most certainly is. You didn't see his face when he first noticed that you were wearing your engagement ring when you came over here Sunday."

"I'll admit that I has strong feelings for George when I thought you were gone forever, but I didn't love him the way that I loved you before you left," Lisa said. "I just want to get back to the way we were before you were abducted. Now please tell me about Kate."

"Kate was my physical therapist and the person most responsible for me being alive today. Of course, it was the doctors who initially save me, but if it wasn't for Kate, I think I would have killed myself. You have no idea what it is like to wake up one day and find out you lost 28 years of your life. To look in the mirror and not recognize the person looking back at you makes you feel like you don't really exist. I could not remember my past, and I felt that I had no future. Kate made me want to go on living. That's all you need to know about her."

"So what, am I supposed to call her up and thank her for taking you away from me?"

"I was taken away from you, but it wasn't Kate that did it. You can thank Tony Kaplan for that. Kate is the reason that I can be here today and the reason that I can't stay here. I'll have to go back to Brodricksburg as soon as the police are finished with me."

"Where does that leave me?" Lisa said.

"I don't think it's up to me to answer that, but maybe should spend some time with George. I think you already know he's a good person. Give him a chance."

After Lisa left I called Kate, but she didn't pick up, so I poured myself two fingers of bourbon and sat in my dark living room and wondered how I was going to fix things with Kate.

In the morning, my left side hurt a lot more than it had when I left the hospital. I was checking my bandage to make sure I wasn't bleeding when my phone rang.

"Mr. Sullivan? Detective Monroe here. I just want to give you an update on the case. Last night we searched Mr. Kaplan's apartment and found your computer and some computer discs. This morning we were able to get Mr. Stanley to verify that those discs contained the Interapp code. We let Mr. Stanley copy the discs so he could find out if there were any lines of code missing."

"What about Kaplan, has he said anything yet?" I said.

"Mr. Kaplan didn't make it. He passed away late last night."

I was silent for a minute, and then Detective Monroe said, "Mr. Sullivan, are you still there."

"Yes, I am still here. I am just trying to figure out how I feel about Kaplan dying. Right now I don't seem to feel anything. So where does this all leave me?"

"You are free to go and do as you please. The DA is happy to accept self-defense in the case of Mr. Kaplan's death. We have enough evidence that Mr. Kaplan was the man behind the plot to steal Interapp and to kill you. We already have confessions from the other two individuals involved in your abduction and assault, so all we need is for you to stop by the station this afternoon to sign your statement."

"What about the FBI, are they still involved? Will I have to talk to them?"

"With the evidence we have, the confessions from Pruitt and Jefferson and the statements from Mr. Bartlett's and you, the FBI is happy. They will be taking our two friends into federal custody, and they will be doing time for your kidnapping in federal prison. Then it will be up to your friend Hobbs to decide if they want to charge them with assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder in Brodricksburg."