Seizure Read online

  Victor was going on a year's vacation after he retired. Kent planned to take him to the Tavern on the Green restaurant in appreciation for all Victor had done for him. He also planned to attend the surprise party Victor's wife and daughter planned to throw for him that night.

  Kent tucked a Hallmark greeting card into his briefcase and headed for the conference room. The card had been signed by almost everyone at Gaines and Company, including the janitor. The only holdout was Rick Bentley, who still resented Victor's promotion two years ago.

  Kent walked into the conference room with a grin on his face. As he regarded the circular table surrounded by twenty-nine consultants, the smile faded. Two chairs stood empty; Kent's and Victor's. Victor was never late.

  "Where's Vic?" Kent asked.

  The other consultants whispered among themselves, but fell silent to look up at Kent with strange expressions. Some looked angry, others confused, others guilty, others just plain numb.

  Kent grinned again. "Don't tell me he's late for his last day on the job."

  His best friend, Wayne Grant, sighed. "Kent, Vic's dead."

  Kent stared down at him as a haze seemed to cloud his mind, preventing Wayne's words from seeping in. "What?"

  "Victor's dead," Wayne repeated. "He died last night."

  Kent sank into his chair, still dazed. He could barely hear his own voice as he asked, "What happened?"

  Penelope Murasaki, a new associate consultant, spoke in a hushed voice. "The doctors aren't sure. His wife found him on the floor of his den. Apparently, he had an epileptic seizure. His lungs seized up. Couldn't breathe."

  "I didn't even know Vic was epileptic."

  Penelope shrugged and lowered her eyes.

  Kent felt the loneliness sweep over him again, just like it had the day he got the call that his wife was killed, like ripping open an old wound. Another piece of him had been torn away, and Kent didn't think there was much left.

  "I can't believe it," Kent whispered.

  Wayne rested a hand on his shoulder. "We're all hurtin', buddy."

  One of the other consultants stood up. "I know this is a grave time for all of us. We'll all miss him. He was a great man, and a fantastic consultant. Gaines and Company will never be the same without him. But we've got a job to do, and I think we'd all agree that Vic would've wanted us to go on."

  Everyone, including Kent, nodded.

  "Good. Then let's get to it. Kent, how about those sales figures?"

  Kent managed to get to his feet. He began to describe the results of his review of TeleTech's monthly management reports, but his mind lay a thousand miles away, running through the memories of his lost friend.

  * * *

  No one could really concentrate in the meeting, wandering around the same ideas over and over until Wayne suggested they adjourn for lunch. They all filed out, murmuring to each other about the same topic; Victor.

  Kent's mind still felt clouded by the thought of Victor's death. It didn't seem real. He tried to see the energetic, boisterous man he knew as Victor Morgan lying in a coffin, gone forever, but it just didn't fit. Morgan seemed like he had too much energy and vigor to die.

  Kent returned to his office and dialed a number he had thousands of times before. The phone buzzed, and clicked as someone picked up on the other end.

  "Hello?" a weary voice asked.

  "Adrian?" Kent asked. "It's Kent."

  Victor's wife sighed. Her voice sounded weaker and softer than he had ever heard. "Oh. Hi, Kent. I'm glad you called."

  "How are you holding up?"

  After a pause, Adrian said, "I'd be lying if I said I was doing well. It just won't sink in. It keeps sneaking up on me. I was making breakfast, and started to put in extra eggs for him, but then I remembered--"

  Her voice choked.

  Kent waited for a moment. "Adrian, I just don't understand how this could happen."

  "I don't understand it, either," Adrian said. "No one does. He was working on a report in the den. I went out to fix dinner, and when I came back, I found him on the floor. He...he was...shaking...so hard, and I tried to...tried to hold him, but--"

  Kent waited as Adrian dissolved into tears on the other end. When her sobs had subsided, Kent said gently, "I'm sorry. Maybe this isn't the best time to call. I don't mean to make you relive it--"

  "No," Adrian said. "It's okay. I need to talk about it with someone. It helps."

  Kent let a moment of silence pass for Adrian to recover herself further, then asked, "Was Victor taking any medicine for his condition?"

  "What condition?" Adrian asked.

  "His epilepsy."

  "Kent, Vic didn't have epilepsy. That's what surprised everyone. As far as anyone knows, this was his first seizure, what they call a grand mal seizure, and it killed him."

  "Grand mal?"

  "Yes, there are apparently two types of seizures, called petit mal and grand mal seizures, grand mal being the strongest. That's what killed Victor. But death by seizure is extremely rare, Kent, I checked." She paused. "Kent, I think he was murdered."

  Kent leaned forward. "Really? What did the police say?"

  "Well, at first, they suspected I did it. They kept me detained for hours, questioning me. But they did an autopsy and didn't find a trace of poison or anything else. They ruled it a death by natural causes. But, maybe I'm rationalizing his death, but I just don't believe it. Victor was as strong as an ox. I can't believe he would just drop dead like this."

  "Well, Adrian--"

  "And there's more," Adrian continued. "Before Victor died, he whispered something, it sounded like Sir-brus or Sayer-brush, something like that. Kent, I'm scared. I really think someone did something to Victor, poisoned him somehow. Maybe with something the police couldn't trace."

  "But who would do something like that? And why?"

  "I don't know. But I don't think the police are taking the possibility seriously. Kent, I'd like you to look into it for me."

  Kent frowned, glad Adrian couldn't see his reaction. "Me? Why me?"

  "Because you knew Victor better than anyone. You have access to areas of his life I don't. And you're good at this sort of thing. You tracked down your wife's murderer."

  That was true. Sharon had been hit and killed by a red Porsche that had sped away from the scene before its license plate could be identified. Two years after his wife's funeral, the police still hadn't found the Porsche that killed his wife. Eventually, Kent had been so desperate that he undertook his own investigation, tracking down witnesses to the accident. He questioned all of them, piecing together memories until he came up with enough evidence to identify and convict David Unger, a man previously convicted of nine counts of drunk driving.

  Kent still harbored resentment towards the police. If they were trying to solve Victor's possible murder, Kent had little confidence they would succeed. "All right. I'll see what I can do, but I make no promises."

  "That's all I ask. I don't expect you to do any big investigations, just keep your eyes open. Please."

  "Okay."

  "I appreciate it," Adrian said with relief in her voice. "You were always a true friend. The funeral is tomorrow at three at Woodland Cemetery."

  "I'll be there. Hang in there, Addie."

  "I'll try." Adrian hung up.

  Kent let his hand rest on the phone for a moment. It was too much to take in. It felt bad enough that Victor was dead, but murdered? Was it possible?

  Kent tried to shake off the thought. It sounded like nonsense, Adrian's natural but desperate attempt at finding reason in Victor's death. Victor had died. It was as simple as that.

  But a seizure didn't seem the right way for Victor to die. A heart attack or an accident, maybe, but for a serious medical condition to suddenly appear so late in his life, just in time to kill him was so strange. Murder. The thought lingered.

  Kent shook his head. He felt ridiculous, taking Adrian seriously. She just wanted to find a way to cope with Victor's death. He had to be st
ronger than that. But he had made Adrian a promise, and he would stick to it as well as he could.

  Kent attempted to shuffle papers on his desk into some sort of order when he looked up to see Wayne approaching his cubicle. Wayne was one of Kent's closest friends, one of the elite few who rode out Kent's emotional storm following Sharon's death.

  "How's it going?" Wayne asked.

  Kent opened a folder, trying to convince Wayne and himself that he was getting some work done. "Pretty good. I think I've found an answer to TeleTech's employee turnover problem. You see here, in their hiring policy, they aim for high school students--"

  "That's great. But I wasn't talking about the client. I was talking about Victor."

  Kent lowered his pen. "I know. But it just doesn't seem real."

  "Yeah," Wayne murmured. "Guys like Vic seem like they should live forever."

  "But the way he died...Victor never had a seizure in his life. Now he has one that kills him."

  Wayne frowned. "He wasn't poisoned or anything, was he? I mean, the police checked it out, right?"

  "Yeah, they wrote it off as natural causes. But Adrian's suspicious. She says Victor said something like Sayer-brus or something before he died. She asked me to look into it."

  "And you're going to?"

  Kent shrugged. "I promised. But I won't make a big deal out of it. I'll just keep my eyes open, that's all."

  Wayne leaned on the wall of his cubicle. "Kent, how long's it been since we hung out?"

  "Not sure. Maybe a week."

  "Try three months. You're overdue for a night out."

  "But I've got this research to finish--"

  Wayne waved a hand. "No excuses. You and me, tonight, eight o'clock, at the First-and-Ten. Okay?"

  Kent opened his mouth to protest, but could read the twinkle in Wayne's eye. Kent knew there was no arguing with him. And Kent couldn't deny that he needed a break.

  "Okay," Kent said. "A couple of drinks. But that's it."

  Wayne grinned as he slapped the wall. "That's all I ask. See you then."

  "Right." Kent watched Wayne walk away, exchanging jokes with the other consultants.

  Wayne never seemed to have a care in the world, although Victor's death must be as hard on him as it was on Kent. Kent envied Wayne's optimism. It was something Kent had never learned to develop, not even when Sharon was alive. Now he had so many more reasons to feel dark.

  Kent shuddered as he realized he had lost another of his only friends. Sharon and Victor were dead. His son grew more and more distant every day. Now he only had two people in his life he could depend on, Wayne and Janet Bourne.

  * * *

  Kent left work at five, which was early for him. He usually stayed until nine, but he wanted to stop by Janet's before he went on to the First-and-Ten Bar and Grill to meet Wayne.

  Janet Bourne lived in an apartment building in the depths of Brooklyn. Kent's taxi pulled up across the street, and he jogged over to a large recreational vehicle parked in front of Janet's building, one that served as her mobile office. Garish colors splashed across the sides of the van in a stylistic mural of a crazed man bashing his head into a computer monitor.

  He knocked on the side door of the RV three times.

  A high voice called out from inside. "Unless you got beer, you can't come in."

  "Come on, Janet," Kent said. "It's me."

  The door swung open on rusty hinges, propelled by a beautiful young woman. Her T-shirt tied in a knot at the waist of her jeans showed a firm belly. Her blue eyes looked huge as she peered through the lenses of a pair of goggles. She reached up to pull them over her blonde hair tied up with a scarf. Tools hanging from the belt of her jeans jingled as Janet planted a hand on one hip. Even dressed sloppy, she looked gorgeous.

  She had a smile and a twinkle in her eye. "What've I told you about coming in here without beer?"

  "I didn't have time to shop. I just wanted to talk to you. Victor Morgan died."

  Her casual manner fell away as she wiped a trickle of sweat off her cheek. "Oh, Kent, I'm sorry. I didn't know. It's hard to believe."

  Kent felt relieved. She hadn't known Victor as well as he did. As a programmer who wrote customized anti-virus software, they had only met once when Janet cleaned out a virus on Gaines' system. It was comforting to know that Victor was charismatic enough to make an impact even in Janet's mind.

  She tilted her head to one side. "You wanna talk about it?"

  He nodded.

  Janet glanced at the masses of computers she kept inside the RV, and skipped down the steps of the Winnebago. "Come on. Let’s not stand around out here. You had anything to eat yet?"

  "Not since lunch. I'm meeting a friend at a bar later."

  "Well, I've got some Doritos and Cokes in the apartment. I think. If you want 'em, they're yours." Janet locked the door of the RV before heading for the apartment building with Kent by her side.

  The warm air inside the building smelled spicy with the scent of exotic food. Janet unlocked her apartment on the first floor and hurried inside. It was only a few rooms wide, but she somehow managed to make it look even smaller by keeping it incredibly messy. It wasn't dirty, though, just disorganized. Kent pushed a crumpled ball of paper ahead of his feet as he walked in. Janet made a few futile attempts to pick up loose papers, and dumped them into a chair again.

  "Help yourself in the kitchen, okay? I just have to finish this. Sorry to be working in front of you, but I’m on a major deadline."

  Janet set herself down in a corner of the living room crammed with computers and equipment. It served as her office, where she worked on her programming. With the number of new computer viruses being developed every day, she needed to constantly adapt her software, so she kept a collection of viruses on old computers to observe how they operated without infecting her work computers.

  That was as far as Kent understood her field. He knew that viruses were programs designed to do any number of things from stealing credit card numbers to erasing hard drives without the users' consent. They were dangerous, because they copied themselves, spread from one computer to another, just like biological viruses. But that was the extent of Kent's knowledge.

  Janet pushed a USB drive into one of the desktops, which began to hum. The screen displayed the progress of a virus as it moved through the system. Janet watched intently, occasionally jotting down notes on a notepad next to her.

  Kent opened the fridge to find a half-empty bag of Doritos and a can of Coke. He returned to the living room with his meal and sat down in an empty chair.

  Janet gave Kent a sympathetic smile. "I'm really sorry to hear Vic died, Kent. I know he was a good friend of yours."

  Kent lowered his eyes. "Yeah, thanks."

  "How'd he die?" Janet asked in a softer voice.

  Kent drew a handful of Doritos out of the bag and stared down at them in his palm. "That's the weird thing. The police say he died of an epileptic seizure, that he choked to death when his lungs seized up."

  Janet nodded. "Interesting."

  "But Victor didn't have a history of epilepsy," Kent said. "Adrian says he was fine one minute, then he collapsed and died in the next. Don't you think that's a little weird?"

  Janet sat back in her chair. "Not really. Are the police investigating it?"

  "No. They did an autopsy and couldn't find any trace of poison."

  Janet's computer beeped, and she glanced over at it.

  Kent nodded. "It's okay, you can work."

  "Sorry." She studied the text flowing across the screen. "I'm sorry, let me close this. Just one second, Kent. Hey, looks like my baby come home to roost."

  "The Liberation virus?"

  "That's right." Janet filled the room with clicks as she typed at a frenzied pace. "The one I wrote which brought me two years in the slammer."

  Kent took a swig of his Coke.

  Kent hesitated before he said what he planned next. He had another reason to come to Janet besides advising her about Victor
's death. Janet had come in contact with various criminal elements in prison and in her conversations online. She also had a fascination with criminal procedures, for which she had an extensive library of true-crime books and mystery novels. If anyone could give Kent some answers about Victor's death, it was Janet.

  Kent chewed some of the Doritos before he asked, "Hey, Jan, is there a way to strangle someone to death and make it look like an epileptic seizure?"

  Janet stopped typing to look at him. "I doubt it. When you choke someone, either with your hands or a rope, you leave bruises on the neck. Kinda hard to explain how someone could die of an epileptic seizure with finger-shaped bruises on his throat, you know?"

  "That's what I thought. But he could've been poisoned, couldn't he? Is it possible he was killed with a poison that couldn't be detected during the autopsy?"

  Janet untied the scarf around her hair, and ran her fingers through it. "Well, not really. I mean, the untraceable poison bit sounds nice in mystery novels, but there aren't many out there, you know? And conventional poisons that could cause suffocation could be easily identified by any well-trained medical examiner."

  Janet began ticking off on her fingers. "Arsenic is odorless and colorless, but traces of it can be found in the hair, fingernails, and skin. Cyanide turns the blood and tissues red as a beet. So does carbon monoxide. Strychnine causes seizures, which fits the bill, but causes immediate rigor mortis after death."

  Janet shrugged. "Anyway, there are better ways than poison to make death look like a heart attack. You could give them an overdose of insulin or Valium. That would be a less obvious murder than a big-profile seizure on his floor."

  "But maybe that was the point," Kent said. "To make the murder so obviously poison that the police would rule it out."

  The smirk faded from her face as she looked more intently at him. "You're serious? You think Victor was murdered?"

  He shook his head. "No, not really. But Adrian, Victor's wife, was really scared. She told me how, just before Vic died, he said something like 'Sayer-brus' or something."