Bliss by Bill Clem

days. That was the last time I ever saw my husband alive.”
    Hilda Meyer looked away and Lindsey could see tears well up in her eyes.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Meyer. I know this is hard for you.”
    She looked up at Lindsey. “Tell me, what’s your position in all of this?”
    “I can’t really say, but I think things aren’t all they’re supposed to be at Imec.”
    Hilda Meyer rose from her chair and walked to a small closet near the front door. When she came back, she held a small video recorder in her hand.
    “Maybe this will help. My husband had it with him when he died. They recovered it with his body. It’s pretty badly smashed up, but there’s still film in it. I haven’t had the nerve to try and look at it. I couldn’t bear to see him.”
    “Did the police look at the film?”
    “No, the coroner had it in a bag with his personal effects. I don’t think the police even knew about it. They called it an open and shut case. A carjacking gone bad, they said. But I always had my doubts.”
    “Do you think it’s possible someone at Imec had your husband killed, Mrs. Meyer?”
    Hilda Meyer lowered her head and rubbed her hands across her legs. “Ms. Walsh, ever since that Stephen Vetter took over at Imec, my husband was a nervous wreck. He was not the same man. They were pressuring him about something. And he wouldn’t tell me. He wanted to protect me in case they threatened him. At least they couldn’t come after me for whatever it was that was so secret. So to answer your question, yes, I think someone at Imec killed him. And I think we both know who that someone is.”
    *   *   *
    Two hundred yards away, Stephen Vetter sat in his black Mercedes sedan, his eyes pressed against a pair of high-powered field glasses. He could see Lindsey Walsh clearly as she came out of Meyer’s house. In fact he could even make out the fine scattering of freckles on her face. But what caused Vetter to come out of his seat had more to do with what she held in her hand. How can she have it?
    She carried a small video recorder, slightly battered, but he recognized it immediately. Only the last time he saw it, it was heading over the South Rim wall of the Grand Canyon--along with its owner--Frederick Meyer.

26
    Lindsey sat quietly on her bed and fumbled with the video recorder Hilda Meyer had given her. Meyer’s long fall badly crushed the metal casing, but Lindsey had managed to pry open the cassette holder and now held the small tape in her hand. She had stopped at the local Wal Mart and purchased a special VHS holder that would adapt the smaller tape to her larger VHS format machine.
    The first question that came to Lindsey’s mind had nothing to do with Meyer’s death. Why had Meyer considered resigning? And what, if anything, did it have to do with Bliss? It was highly unlikely that the two were unrelated. Lindsey had long ago learned to approach what others might consider “coincidence” as anything but. Taking everything else she knew into consideration, it was easier for her to believe some connection between the two events existed, than it was to believe Frederick Meyer’s luck was so bad, that a carjacker had killed him in the parking lot of one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world.
    Lindsey placed the cassette in the VCR and hit the play button.
    The opening shots came from several angles on the South Rim of the canyon. Mostly a straight-across view of the huge canyon walls, the kind of pictures you’d see on a postcard of Arizona. It reminded Lindsey of a well-made nature film. The next few minutes were film of Meyer walking through the woods, capturing some wildlife, a deer, a few squirrels, a bobcat off in the distance he’d managed to zoom in on. Meyer had narrated the whole thing for his wife, and Lindsey found his voice haunting, knowing it was a dead man talking. About two minutes into the film, it showed the image of a parking lot as Meyer walked from the woods. Then the film