I sighed deeply and settled in. I knew he wouldn’t rest until he could unload the latest nugget he’d uncovered. Rudy was King of the Gossip Mill. His friendly nature and the ability to talk to anyone made people tell him their deepest, darkest secrets. And then, he told me. Under any other circumstances, I might have indulged him and pretended to be interested.
“C’mon. Guess.”
I shook my head and shrugged.
“Willow . . . Willow Sommerville. HR VP.”
I signed into my computer and pretended to read something from the monitor. “Oh.”
“Oh! Is that all you have to say?”
Rudy got his kicks from being the first to pass along a fresh, tender piece of gossip, and I could tell I had disappointed him greatly.
“What’s up?” Rudy said, inspecting me like a pair of Michelin tires on a used car. “You okay?”
“Just a little tired, I guess.”
“You sure?” He raised an eyebrow. Rudy had picked up on a scent. “I know you’re my boss, but you’re my buddy, too. You good?”
“I’m good.” I stood from my chair and grabbed my mug, like I was about to head to the breakroom, a subtle cue for him to leave my office. “Seriously, I’m fine. Just a little out of sorts. Didn’t sleep well last night.” Before I could usher Rudy out of my office, Anita, my administrative assistant, poked her chubby face inside the office door. Damn! I couldn’t catch a break.
Anita, a short stout woman with a graying poodle perm, either bought her clothes one size too small or decided she wasn’t buying new ones that fit. “Hey, did you guys see the ambulance downstairs?” she said.
Oh God. I glanced at my watch. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. Someone had discovered Michael’s body already.
Rudy’s eyes grew wide. “Ambulance?”
“Yeah. There’s an ambulance and a ton of police cars in front of the building. Jimmy, down at the security desk, said something happened up on Twenty. But he didn’t have any details. At least, that’s what he told me,” Anita said, the last sentence spiked by the skepticism in her voice.
Rudy and I dashed over to my window and stared down onto the street below. The entire block of Peachtree Street was a blur of red and blue lights. Traffic was snarled all the way up to Seventeenth Street. A few impatient drivers honked their horns in the mounting backup of cars, as if that ever does any good in Atlanta traffic. A heavy sense of dread settled in my chest. I backed away from the window.
“Are you serious?” Rudy said, asking no one in particular. “I’ll be right back.”
Anita and I watched him hustle from my office and down the hall. I knew he was off in search of his sources to shake them down for information. I already knew what his sources knew.
“What d’ya think happened up there?” Anita said, removing her coat.
I didn’t respond. The lingering headache tightened its vise across my forehead. Calm down. I had to keep my wits about me now. Soon enough, everyone in the office, lawyers and admins alike, would be scampering between their offices and cubicles, leaving breadcrumbs of gossip and guesswork along the way. That’s the way it worked around Houghton. It was protocol for big events in the department that no one wanted to discuss openly like layoffs, demotions, or, in this case, an executive officer’s suicide.
Fifteen minutes later, Rudy walked into my office with a grim face and closed the door. “Michael committed suicide.”
“Who told you that?” My skin began to buzz again. Had anyone seen me leaving the twentieth floor?
“Don’t ask. But suicide?” Rudy shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. What healthy, well-adjusted guy gets dressed for work, packs a gun in his briefcase, and says to himself, ‘Okay, I’ll eat my gun here at my desk right after I finish reading the Wall Street Journal’？”
“Please don’t talk like that.” I pushed around a couple folders on my desk to quell my nerves.
Rudy slumped into the chair in front of my desk. “I’m just sayin’ people don’t usually commit suicide at their job, unless it’s a workplace shooting, in which case they try to take a few others out with them. It’s a private act.”
I swiveled my chair and stared out at the fully blossomed winter sunrise now bathing the downtown skyline. Private acts. I thought about my own life. Decades pass and I think I’ve processed the horror, but somehow it still ebbs and flows. A few seconds later, memories from Chillicothe bubbled to the surface too—an old utility shed, a little boy’s tears, and a cavern of fear.