Next In Line

Nico squinted through the humidity. This was the culmination of a week of horror, but he couldn’t help feeling darkly excited as he wondered who else had wandered through this conservatory at night. The flashlight he swung back and forth had a name engraved on the side.

Ambrose Compton.

Nico’s face burned as he remembered the first and only time he had spoken to Compton. He was an old-school finance man, almost a caricature. Nico worked for a local newspaper and had planned a series of articles about the Compton Organization’s alleged misconduct. The two men sat down for an interview just before Nico had published his first piece, and it had gone poorly. Nico had tried to direct the conversation toward allegations of fraud and embezzlement, but had failed as Compton simply tossed out facts about his philanthropies. Off the record, Compton had dropped the act. His team had done their research. They knew everything about Nico’s life, and Compton pressed on every bruise. He had broken down all the reasons Nico would never be a real man and left him with a parting shot.

“I know what you think, but you’re no better than me. The only difference is that I have the money to do what I want.” Compton, already ancient, had spat on the ground and walked away. 

Nico had planned on using his series about Compton’s dirty fortune to try and angle for a job at a bigger organization. Unfortunately, he had been slapped with lawsuits and the paper was forced to pull his work from the online archive. As far as he knew, only a few people who still got a physical newspaper delivered had ever had the chance to read it. The piece was replaced online by a pre-written article about the ways the Compton Organization was supporting childhood literacy. In hindsight he should have left the paper, but at the time he was too busy sneering at the billionaire for letting the article get under his skin. Nico sat smug in the knowledge that they were nothing alike.

As it turns out, they had at least one thing in common. After Compton’s death had been splashed across every news outlet, Nico had gotten a call from a lawyer. Apparently, Nicolas Maldonado and Ambrose Theodore Compton shared a shred of DNA- discovered on one of the ancestry sites that had sprung up in the last few years. It seemed out of character for a man like Compton to be rummaging around in his genes to find long-lost relatives, but Nico didn’t know what else rich old men did all day. 

In the conservatory, Nico jumped as a branch creaked. He crouched down and looked up. Nothing. When he was in college, Nico had volunteered at a farm animal sanctuary. He was so taken with the animals that, on the spot, he decided he would lead a vegan lifestyle. Now, knee-deep in synthetic jungle, he regretted telling the story so many times. 

“Mr. Compton, for whatever reason, has decided to include you in his will.” Nico remembered the unfettered contempt in the lawyer’s eyes as she walked him through the steps toward claiming his inheritance. The lawyer, as severe as anyone he’d ever met, outlined the bizarre hoops he would have to jump through.

“The Sumatran orangutan is a critically endangered animal. Mr. Compton had the pleasure of housing one of the last living ones. He has decided that, if you are able to execute this animal according to his precise instructions, you will be the sole inheritor of 60 billion dollars.” She paused to look at him.

He had stared back incredulously, and the conversation that followed did nothing to put him at ease. In order to claim the inheritance, he would have to shoot the orangutan with a gun that Compton had left behind. The lawyer told Nico that if he didn’t claim it, the opportunity would be passed along to the next relative in line.

Nico wiped sweat out of his eyes. The building he was in was extravagant. The effort that went into maintaining what was essentially a personal forest inside a giant greenhouse was unthinkable. Not only were there lights and misters installed on the inside of the glass building, there were running streams and live insects chirping just out of sight. When the lawyer told him about the orangutan habitat Compton had commissioned, Nico imagined a chained-in section of Florida swamp. Instead, he could have been wandering through a genuine rainforest and he wouldn’t have known the difference. 

He briefly wondered whether he was actually going to find the beast, or whether he was just going to walk in circles all night. The building was much larger than it had looked from the outside. Part of him hoped he wouldn’t find it; he still didn’t know if he would be able to go through with murder. After speaking to the lawyer, Nico had looked up orangutans. His head was full of facts about their calls and their lifestyles, and of images of their faces. He repeated to himself that an orangutan locked up was going to die anyway. He could donate billions of dollars to save the rest of them in the wild after this.

Thoughts of what he could do with the money marched in like ants. He would pay off his student loans. He would move to a nicer apartment. He would fully finance every fundraiser he found on social media. For every idea Nico brushed away, two filed into place. He could bankroll a candidate for president. He could buy every limited-edition Lego set. He could start his own newspaper.

When he heard the call the thoughts scattered.

He had spent hours listening to orangutan calls, and the sound was like a siren song. On the surface, he recognized that he was selling himself out. He was about to shoot an animal to earn billions of dollars, but in the moment the logic clicked.

Nico listened for the call again, and caught a glimpse of orange fur through the branches. He raised the rifle Compton had necessitated he use. He aimed. He fired.

There was a popping noise, and Nico shielded his eyes as the figure exploded. He hesitated. He had never fired a gun, but he had expected it to be louder.  As he crept between the trees, Nico saw sheets of something slowly floating down. He reached out to snag one from the air and realized it was a crumpled newspaper.

Dread choked him. 

He ran toward the lifeless body and found a clump of cheap fur. The orangutan call echoed through the forest again. Nico scrabbled through the pieces of shredded material and found newspaper among the fur. It was his article about Compton. Hundreds of copies, stuffed into a fake animal. His vision dimmed and he saw his name and Compton’s blurring together.

On the tree where the orangutan had perched there was an envelope nailed to the trunk. He opened it to find a single piece of heavy cardstock, embossed with the initials ATC. The card had one line on it, scrawled from a dying man’s hand.

You’ll never see a cent of it.