My Wife Is Missing(108)

He let go a breath as he collapsed onto the floor, but this time the ground didn’t meet his body. He kept on falling, falling into the black, into a great nothingness, where the pain vanished—and so did he.





CHAPTER 44





NATALIE


Natalie gazed in disbelief at the sea of tubes and wires strewn about Michael’s cramped room in the ICU. A ventilator pushed air into his lungs while an attached apparatus did the breathing for him. Tina was with her, holding Natalie’s hand, consoling her as only her dear friend could. The doctors had come and gone, providing brief updates on his critical condition. The penetrating abdominal wound he’d suffered—at her hand no less—had perforated the intra-abdominal vasculature as well as the small and large bowel.

His surgery had lasted almost eight hours. According to the surgeon, it had been a hell of a ride.

“He’s as stable as we can make him right now,” she said. “We’re worried about the liver, but we need to give him some time to rest before we do another MRI.”

Natalie lamented to Tina how there was no guarantee the tubes would ever come out, no timetable given for Michael’s recovery.

“None of us are given any guarantees,” Tina said darkly in response. “You just have to be there for him,” she added. “And hope for the best.”

Natalie sighed deeply as she thought over the implications.

“The best,” she said, almost capping that with a derisive laugh. “If he recovers, he’ll face murder charges. Meanwhile, Addie is refusing to go back to school. She’s too afraid of what the other kids might say now that the story is all over the news. And Bryce—thank goodness he’s too young to fully understand, but he knows something is very wrong.”

Natalie’s own feelings were mixed. While she didn’t wish any further harm to come to Michael, she was certain her love for him was gone, buried forever under the sediment of his lies and sickening crimes. How could she have loved someone so wholeheartedly without ever truly knowing him? This question, she imagined, would haunt the rest of her days.

“What are you going to do about … that stuff?” Tina asked, keeping her voice low even though nobody could hear them.

From the conversation they’d had on the drive to the hospital, Natalie knew the “stuff” to which she referred was the bag with the shirt and gym locker key in it.

“I’ll go clean out Michael’s locker myself, hand over anything incriminating to Kennett,” Natalie said.

“What if you find the murder weapon in there?” Tina asked. “God forbid John from accounting is doing curls and watches it fall onto the gym floor.”

“Good point,” Natalie admitted. “Maybe Michael got a replacement key after all. We have no idea what he did with the murder weapon. I doubt we’ll find it in there, but I have a feeling we’ll learn something, maybe about his affair. Can you go with me? I could just turn the key over to the police, but after all I’ve been through, I feel I need to face this myself first. We could go after hours. Don’t company directors have twenty-four-hour access?”

“That we do,” said Tina. “When would you want to go?”

Natalie didn’t need long to think especially because the kids were still with her parents, taking them out of the equation.

“Can you go tonight?” she asked.



* * *



Access to the Oakmont Athletic Club was through a set of double glass doors secured with a simple lock. Tina had the key as well as the code needed to turn off the alarm, which she did by pressing a series of numbers from memory.

While the club had closed at ten o’clock that evening, they’d waited until eleven thirty to show up, thinking there might be some stragglers still about. Natalie was relieved to have the place all to themselves, though wary about what she’d find in Michael’s locker.

A heavy smell of chlorine from the first-floor pool perfumed the air. Tina informed her that the pool was locked after hours, but the rest of the facility was available for use.

“I used to work out here a lot late at night, and it was always a ghost town at this hour,” she said. “Of course, we have to sign all these waivers so we can’t sue the company if we drop a dumbbell on our head, but better that than sweaty bodies, grunting lifters, and long waits for the machines.”

Natalie followed Tina wordlessly across an expansive tiled foyer toward a set of wide concrete steps that led to the fitness studios, weight machines, cardio equipment, free weights, and lockers that were available for a monthly fee. Tina sourced two flashlights from her shoulder bag, which they used to guide their way through the dark.

“God, I haven’t been here in ages,” Tina lamented a bit breathlessly as she and Natalie ascended to the second floor. “I really need to get back at it.”

At the top of the stairs, Tina went to turn on the main lights, while Natalie used the flashlight to navigate her way through the weight room and over to a wall holding the bank of rental lockers. The lights came on with a blinding bright blaze. A hum of electricity soon filled the air.

Across from the lockers, on the other side of a cushy running track that circled the entire second floor, stood a white wall with a series of rectangular windows, all overlooking the twenty-five-meter pool a story below. Another nearby wall held a rack of dumbbells.