Page 102 of Cruel Games

This had to be some sort of Photoshop. Some sick, twisted play at revenge for someone else who was jealous of what my father had.

But the mole on his ass was undeniably his. I’d seen it once, in passing, as he showed it to my mother and explained to her it was benign. There was no way someone knew about it if they didn’t see him naked.

“Doctor thought it was cancer, but he biopsied it. Nothing. So it’s just a regular mole. Might have it removed next year, I dunno. Not like anyone but you will see it.”

“No,” I whispered to the empty room, my chest tight, eyes watering at the corners like I was watching him die all over again.

I opened the folder back up and turned the page.

This time, there was a noted absence of photos. Just notes someone had made in the margins around what looked like a ripped-out page of?—

The black notebook from his desk. The one I took that made no sense when I’d tried to read it.

I read through the lines, still seeing nothing but gibberish, but this time, with the aid of the handwritten notes, I was able to piece together some things.

Some very damningthings.

Zinnia.120904. D. H. House 3. $200/hr, high yield. needs replaced.

In the margins, I read the notes and shivered.

Name. DOB. Status. Drug of Choice. Price. Value. Personal notes.

I wanted to scream. Surely this wasn’t right. My father was talking about flowers in these notes. Peony. Rose. Zinnia. All flower names. I wasn’t sure how they’d deciphered the rest of the notes so wrong, but I knew my father. He was building a botanical garden across town. Maybe the numbers were just him trying to figure out how much those particular exhibits would bring in per hour.

I was so deep in denial even the truth right in front of me couldn’t sway me.

I shoved that thought aside and flipped to another page.The last one was manufactured. Forged.I wouldn’t believe it was his handwriting, his notebook, until I went back to my hiding spot and checked the notebook for myself.

The last page of the file was filled with notes about his daily habits. NowthisI knew couldn’t be right. I knew his schedule in and out. I skimmed the dates, times, and notes for each event on his calendar.

Monday, meeting with B.

That was his weekly board meeting. They discussed the company and its ventures at the beginning of each work week. Even Momma knew this. She’d bitched about it enough while I was growing up.

Wednesday, visit to houses 2 and 4. Disposal call made to remove bodies.

No. Wednesdays, he played golf with his partner, Bill. They teed off at 8am sharp, and he was always home for lunch by noon. Then, when my mother left to get her hair done, he went back to the office and clocked in to review finances. The company records showed him there every Wednesday. I’d evenvisited him once or twice when I wasn’t in school, hanging in his office while he flitted around the floor, making phone calls to business associates?—

Friday, visit to wharf. Shipment checked, approved or denied. Payment exchanges hands the following day under the Dread River Bridge, in unmarked plateless black sedan.

That wasn’t right. Fridays he traveled to Nocturna Beach for work, checking his various ventures there and meeting withtheirboard. And Saturdays, he spent at home, all day, from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed.

They had it all wrong. They were so, so wrong. The images were forged. This was all an intricate lie built to tear down a man who had something someone else wanted.

It had to be.

And then, I flipped the last page over and spotted a hastily scrawled note on the back of a menu from his favorite restaurant downtown.

Benni—

Leave no witnesses. Clean house. #5 not safe. Exterminate and dispose, report back to me.

—Cullough

I couldn’t denythat was my father’s handwriting. I’d seen it scrawled on several of his ledgers, in his notebooks, even on his contracts. Benni was the assistant in the picture of the drug house from the second page of the file. I flipped back to scan the image again, and there in the margin, in small print:

House 5. Caught mid-extermination. Benni Trello, interrogation 1.

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