Wrongful Termination: Chapter 3

Any similarity to persons living or dead, locations or incidents is purely coincidental.

As he walked the hall towards Dean’s office, he passed framed copies of ads Cressman/Krate had produced. Sheridan was amazed that this brain clutter could be displayed with such misplaced pride.

There was an ad for a gas station convenience store showing two just regular blue-collar guys enjoying a beer. “I love it when they make it easier for people to drink behind the wheel,” Sheridan thought. There was an ad for a tennis shoe manufacturer he’d never heard of, a Nike wannabe, showing an extremely buxom girl spilling out of her ridiculously short tennis outfit. The headline read “Love All.” The last one before he turned the corner was a public service ad for a needle exchange program. It showed a drugged out heroin user balancing awkwardly on his knees in front of what looked like a Greyhound station men’s room toilet, throwing his guts up. Even Sheridan had to admit it was a powerful visual. The headline read “Without clean needles, you never know what position you’ll find yourself in.” It was a good message. Didn’t change his opinion about ad people, but still, a good message.

Sheridan walked into the corner office that had belonged to Dean Montaine. The first thing he noticed was the spectacular view overlooking the Santa Monica mountains to the north, and a glimpse of the Pacific ocean to the west. For the last thing Montaine ever saw, he could’ve done worse.

He stooped down next to the body that the coroner had cut down from the light fixture, and was now lying on the industrial carpeted floor covered with a sheet from the knees up.

Montaine’s boots were sticking out the bottom.

Sheridan pulled back the sheet. What he saw was pretty routine as far as hangings went. The head was sitting on the neck at a fifty degree angle, as if he’d been straining to get a better look at a girl in a short skirt walking away from him, or on the phone too long with the receiver between his chin and shoulder. Clearly some additional force besides gravity had been used. If, and it was a preliminary if, it had been murder, then judging by the ransacked looks of the office it appeared as though Montaine had fought the good fight against being placed in a noose and hung from the light. Putting up that kind of resistance, the murderer would have had to use force, yanking him down and snapping his neck. On the other hand, if it did turn out to be suicide, it meant Montaine literally would have to have taken a flying leap off his oak-grain desk with considerable force to do damage like this. His eyes, bloodshot and blank, had popped out of his head far enough for the corneas to touch the lenses of his Coke bottle, tri-focal glasses. His swollen purple, black tongue was sticking out and down to the left side of his mouth, with a thin thread of spittle running down it. Hanging was never a very dignified way to go.

Sheridan also made some personal observations. Montaine was in his late fifties, about six feet tall, hundred seventy pounds. He had a beer gut, and broken blood vessels all along his nose and cheeks. Hard drinker. His hair was straight, long and greasy. His glasses were Jean Paul Gaultier, very expensive, very fashionable. Round in a way that reminded Sheridan of John Lennon. Montaine was wearing stonewashed blue jeans, which had a large wet spot on the front where he’d pissed himself, though it was hard to say if he’d done it before or after. His fingers were stained yellow. His teeth were yellow, brown and decayed from years of alcohol and cigarettes. And probably other things as well. All in all, Sheridan thought, not an attractive man.

Looking at the desk, he noticed Montaine had a small plaque framed in shellacked driftwood branches. It read “Old hippies never die.”

“Guess he was wrong about that.” Sheridan said.