Chapter 90

Chapter 90—Jack examines 

Reginald’s belongings 

3:34 a.m., Friday, December 30 

Jack placed the bag in the center of his kitchen table. For a few long moments he just stood there, staring at it, as though not wishing to open it. Perhaps he was too tired. Perhaps he simply did not want to go there. But for some reason unknown to him, Jack just could not bring himself to open the bag—at least not immediately.
Finally, he turned and walked over to the refrigerator, and opened it. He was amazed to find it totally stocked. Obviously, Roger had something to do with that. “Someone knows what I can eat and drink,” Jack quipped, actually wishing that he would find a cold beer. Ever since his heart attack, his doctor had insisted he not drink.
“Of course,” Doc Rivers told him, “you must never drink again.”
That was not a major problem for Jack, because he never really liked to drink. But to be told that he must never drink again was not an easy thing for him to accept. The doctor also told him that he must not smoke, or drink more than one caffeinated drink a day. And, of course, he had also to give up salt.
There were two things that irked Jack about this new regimen—one was the issue of the salt. Okay, so he did have a heart attack. It was a minor one. So what. A lot of people have heart attacks. Jack reasoned that if he gave up beer and cigarettes, then it should be okay to have a little salt on his food, followed by a coffee chaser. It just made sense to him—something about the quality of life trumping longevity.
So, as Jack inventoried the contents of his refrigerator, he immediately realized that there were no processed foods, no beer, no soft drinks, no red meat, and no milk.
Jack continued to look around until he found four bottles of water. He took one out, and opened it.
He opened the cupboard just to the left of the refrigerator, and took out a clean drinking glass. As he poured the water into it, he looked into the cupboard just to the left of where he found his glass, and found a bag of sodium free pretzels. “I guess this will have to do for now,” he muttered, tearing the bag open.
He then returned to the bag of Reginald’s belongings, still laying in the middle of his table, held closed with gray duct tape. Jack placed his right hand on the package, as though he were placing it on his friend’s shoulder. For a time, that seemed to satisfy him.
After a moment or two, he walked over to the cupboard drawers, and opened them until he found a sharp knife. He used it to cut the tape.
He then opened the mouth of the bag, and carefully dumped its contents onto the table.
The first thing to tumble out was Reginald’s jacket. Jack immediately chuckled when he looked at it. He recalled all the times he teased Reginald about that jacket. “Who bought that for you, Reg?” Jack had said to Reginald on a recent encounter. “I’ll bet it’s from that boyfriend you never talk about.”
Reginald always humored his friend’s comments. “Jack,” Reginald had responded, “if you ever stop picking on me I’m gonna have to shoot you.”
The next article of clothing that dumped out when Jack turned the bag up and shook it, was a rolled up pair of slacks. Jack noted the large quantity of still-damp blood that soaked the pants. “Amazing,” Jack noted, “the amount of blood that pours out of a dying human being. … Over a gallon, on average. And, in Reg’s case, most of it was left on the street.”
Jack could not resist sliding his hand between the layers of the blood-soaked pants. His act was not in any sense dictated by morbidity. No, Jack had experienced death blood many times in his life. And a few of those times the blood was that of some one close to him. That was the case this time. By allowing Reginald’s blood to moisten his hands seemed to bring him closer to his friend, for one last time.
Of course, the blood was thick and cold. But it was all that was left of his friend.
After a moment, Jack pulled his hand out of the moist cloth. He turned his hand palm up, and rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, relishing the sticky sensation it created. He then raised his fingers to his nose, in order to smell the ferrous odor. While most people would be appalled at this, to Jack it seemed a fitting way to say goodbye to his friend.
Jack then slid the pants and jacket to the side, and dumped out Reginald’s shirt, underwear, socks and shoes. They all seemed to come out as a single unit.
Reginald always wore white socks. Jack had teased him about that as well.
Tonight, however, there was only one white sock. The second sock was mostly brown. So-stained by the large amount of blood that had flowed down Reginald’s right leg. “He must have bled out from his right side,” Jack surmised. “Must have caught a round through his femoral artery.”
For just a moment Jack considered examining Reginald’s pants to find the bullet hole, but then thought better.
Instead, he pulled the jacket from the bottom of the stack, and examined all the pockets. Upon finding nothing, Jack concluded that Roger’s men had removed all contents in order to return it to his wife.
Jack then looked through Reginald’s pants pockets. The first one he examined was the right front. Initially it appeared empty. But upon a more careful inspection, he detected a small, tightly folded and blood-soaked piece of paper stuck to the bottom of the pocket.
Fearful that he might destroy it in an attempt to remove it, he instead looked for a pair of scissors to cut the pocket open.
Not finding any, Jack instead took the sharp knife he had used to cut the tape, and cut the stitching on the bottom of the pocket. He then opened it up to get a better look. Sliding the knife between the damp paper and the inside of the pocket, he carefully pried it loose and removed it.
It appeared to have been folded three times.
He took the folded note and laid it on a clear spot on the table.
“I should open this up now, before the blood gets totally dry,” he reasoned.
So carefully he unfolded the paper until it lay flat on the table—face up.
“You sonofabi**h,” Jack quipped, realizing that the words on this little piece of paper were undoubtedly the last words his friend had written. And, fittingly, they could not be read as written. Reginald’s last words were encoded.
“Another cryptogram,” Jack said. “Reg, even from the other side, you still found a way to devil me. Didn’t you?”