Let's Not Meet Again

The Eagle Scout

I work at a big name retail company in the United States. I've been at my store for going on 9 years now, so as you can imagine I have a good amount of friends who work in the building. This story happened about 3 years ago, before I became a manager, but pretty far into my career in the building.

During the holiday season we hire on a lot of seasonal team members, some stay, some go. Amongst the new faces in the building was a younger guy, named Matt. For his age, Matt had an amazing work ethic, going as far as to SKI into work during a bad snow storm rather than call out. I was told he was an Eagle Scout, member of the Honors Society all through school. He was a weird kid, loner type, but he seemed to take to me pretty quickly. The department I worked in was towards the back of the store, and he was a backroom team member, so we saw a lot of each other. We chatted about things like video games and comics, mostly passing chatter. "Have you played _____ yet? It's amazing." That type of thing. Before long he was adopting my break schedules, mostly to bum cigarettes.

Matt ended up staying after the season ended, so I had a pretty consistent smoke buddy. One morning in January he asked me if I knew some one, named Jack. He went to the high school I graduated from, but both Matt and Jack were considerably younger than me. I told him I didn't know him. "Oh okay." He said, "I was just asking because a friend asked me to deal with him. I'm kind of a protector in my circle and he's been messing with her." I brushed it off, mostly just surprised by the fact that he had friends outside of his work bubble.

The next day he came to me again, talking about Jack. "I figured out where he lived, but there are so many cars in his driveway, I'm not sure which is his. I need to be sure he's home, or if I do something it's to his car." This sketched me out a bit, but being a semi-sane person, I assumed he was going to pull a childish prank. Still I lied, "be careful in that area, my dad lives there and there's been a lot of vandalism. Most home owners have surveillance cameras out front." He didn't seem phased by my statement, and switched the conversation to the (then) new Zelda game.

About a month or so had passed with no new inquiries or comments about Jack or his "mission." I was relieved. I showed up to work, as usual. Around 9:45 I took my smoke break. Matt usually worked later so my first break was a solo one. That day, he'd covered a shift. I was surprised when he followed me out and asked for a cigarette. I gave it to him and sat down to enjoy my break.

"So, I finally got that kid." The way he said it sent a chill down my spine. "Oh, okay. I beat Zelda last night. It's a good game you should get it." I tried to change the subject but I could see he was going to continue talking.

"Do you know what ricin is?" I admit, I hadn't, so I shook my head. I wish I could say I still don't. For those of you who also don't know: from what I am told ricin is a particularly deadly poison with no scent or taste that, when ingested can be lethal within 3 days.

"Not a Breaking Bad fan, I guess?" I shook my head again, but by then he was already rattling off how to make it, and what it did. "It's lethal, odorless and tasteless. No antidote either. I put it on a scratch and sniff card and walked it to his house last night. His birthday was recently so he shouldn't be surprised by it."

Right away a million thoughts rushed into my head. I come from a large, close family. If I had a card in my mailbox, hand addressed and with out a return address on it, I know for a fact that one of my siblings or parents would have opened it. As much as I wanted to believe he was just trying to sound like a bad ass, I couldn't bring myself to leave that to chance. I pretended I hadn't heard him, continued my Zelda talk, and headed back in.

Once inside I alerted my direct superior and sat in an office to call the police. Two plain clothes detectives came in shortly after and questioned me pretty extensively. They agreed that it was more than likely not true, but we're glad I reported it regardless, and were on their way.

Matt worked through the rest of his shift and left with another backroom team member. Shortly after they left, the detectives returned. The card that was in the mailbox had something in it, but they couldn't be sure what it was. It had to go to a lab for testing. They went to Matt's house and talked to him. He said that he put powder in the card to try to scare him and that was it.

The next week was a bit crazy. The lab results came back positive for a "particularly potent" batch of ricin, Matt attempted to flee his home while a hazmat team knocked on the door. He hid the remaining poison in a storm drain close by, where it was quickly found. Matt was arrested and I planned on going back to my normal life. Not the case.

News reporters and journalists were at my job, my home and both my parents homes daily. I had to wear another's girls name badge so they didn't know who I was. But, they knew. They would come back to my department, referring to me in third person and try to pet my ego. Didn't work, I had very clear directions to not discuss the incident. Besides, I wanted to be done with the whole situation, my dickhead (now ex) boyfriend kicked me out because of the reporters and police. I just wanted to go back to being normal.

I met with the family of the would-be victim. The mother and father were very nice, thanking me and crying. The mom had painted me an angel as a thank you gift, and though I'm not religious, I've held on to it. The brother was a paraplegic with a seizure disorder. He couldn't take care of himself at all. The sister, who was opening the mailbox as the police called the house, was a 2 time cancer survivor. And Jack, the eldest, was there with his girlfriend.

Turns out the reason Matt tried to kill Jack was because he was dating an ex of his. That's it. That's absolutely insane to me, but clearly this kid was not the most sane.

I met with them a few times for trial prep. All scheduled weeks in advance, all fairly redundant. Until one day. I got a call very late from a woman I'd never talked to before. She was with a victims protection agency, and she needed to meet with me at the court house the following morning. I called off work and made my way up there.

In the room was myself, the family, the original DA and detectives, as well as a new DA and new set of detectives. They passed around a photocopy of a letter handwritten from Matt to another inmate who was due to be released soon.

I can't remember exactly what was written, but there were very graphic, disturbing plans for each of us. He offered up a trust fund that may or may not exist (leaning towards 'not' since he was using a public defender to beat an attempted murder charge) if the other inmate did things like kidnap our families and burn them on our lawns while we watched from inside the house, remove our tongues and eyelids and force us to drink bleach. There was a distinct plan for each of us, but like I said I don't remember most of it.

He's since been sentenced and sent up state. His trial seemed to go on forever, finally ending a few months ago. I don't think he's been charged for the second case (the threatening letter to the other inmate) just yet, but I'm not supposed to go to those trials, so I may never know.

Any ways, Eagle Scout, if and when you're free, let's not meet (again.)