The Subway

by Dustin Stevens

  “I don’t give a damn what I’m supposed to say. You tell the Sheriff we really do have a body out here and I’m requesting immediate backup.”

  Not bothering to add over to the end of the call, or to wait for a response, she dropped the radio to the ground, the clunky device landing heavy, bouncing across the floorboards. Returning her free hand to the base of her gun, she looked out to her left, peering into the forest for any sign of life, before rolling back to her right.

  Protocol would say she should wait for backup. She should get Peg Bannister far away, wait for Sheriff Charbonneau and anybody else he could muster to show up. Together, they would breach.

  Based on the smear of blood she saw painting the glass just a few feet away though, there was no way she was willing to risk waiting that long.

  Keeping her shoulder tight against the outer wall, Davis inched forward. Moving slow, she went until she was just a foot from the door handle before leaning forward and pushing softly against the vertical metal latch.

  On contact, it eased open a few inches, the sound of metal scraping finding her ears.

  Sweat dripped down either side of her face, droplets hanging from the underside of her jaw, as she lowered herself to a knee. Nudging herself forward again just slightly, she extended forward and shoved the door open with one hard push, using the momentum to pivot on her knee so she was facing straight into the cabin.

  Gripping the gun tight in both hands, she stayed on a knee, her opposite leg extended at an angle beside her, her body framed in the doorway as she looked inside.

  Like most structures, the door opened into the kitchen, the floor made from polished wood. To the left of it was a table with matching benches, the design a copy of the one on the deck behind her.

  Opposite it was an island with standing barstools, cabinets lining the wall behind it, everything made in a North Woods motif.

  Right down to the heavy rug on the floor.

  The one with a man lying face down atop it.

  Feeling her heart pound through her temples, Davis pushed herself to a standing position. Moving in short stutter steps, she placed one boot over the threshold.

  “This is the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department!” she called, her voice much stronger than she felt. “Is anybody inside?”

  In short order, the sound of her voice echoed through the house before fading away, no response of any kind coming back.

  Not even the creak of a floorboard, let alone a voice.

  Venturing another step forward, Davis moved her head to either side, a continuous motion taking in everything around her.

  In the air was the unmistakable scent of blood, so strong it brought bile up along the back of her throat.

  Three steps were all it took for her to cross from the doorway to the rug, her footfalls going silent as she stepped onto the thick material.

  “Hello?” she asked, alternating glances between the cabin and the man lying at her feet. “Are you okay?”

  With her feet spread wide, she inched ever closer, the man giving no response. Closing the last bit of the gap between them, she hooked the toe of her boot under the man’s shoulder and pried him up a few inches, mortis having not yet set in, his form still sagging.

  Again checking her surroundings, making sure she wasn’t standing in the middle of an elaborate trap, Davis drew her back leg up beneath her. Using it for leverage, she pushed her toes a bit further beneath the man before swinging her leg forward.

  The white hair atop the man’s head had indicated he was older, though Davis hadn’t expected his stature to be quite so slight. Flipping over easily, the body rolled up and over his far shoulder, going from his stomach to his back in one smooth motion.

  A motion Davis wished almost immediately she hadn’t bothered to perform.

  With just a single look, the bile she had tasted a moment before rushed back in, nearly gagging her. A sheen of water passed over her eyes as she stared down, a chill running the length of her back, causing her entire form to shiver.

  It wasn’t the first body she’d ever seen in the line of duty, but it was damned sure the worst.

  “Jesus,” she whispered, staring down at the man, knowing in an instant there was no need to call for an ambulance. “Who are you and what did you do to deserve this?”

  Part II

  Chapter Seven

  The stack of boxes landed with an audible clang of glass rattling against itself, the contents three cases of Oregon’s finest hard apple cider. A new product on the company ledger, the guys upstairs had a clear design for how they wanted to market and sell it to the public.

  As for the distribution aspect, that was left entirely to me, the sole delivery man for the fledgling operation.

  A position that as yet was still built more on unfulfilled promises than any amount of existing goodwill.

  “Okay,” I said, shifting the stack into position before extracting the bottom lip of the dolly. “That should do it for you today, Mr. Yamashita.”

  Tugging away the pair of canvas gloves I wore, I tucked them into my back pocket, draping a wrist over the top handle of the dolly.

  “Oh, thank you,” he replied, a short, plump man with all the hair gone from the top of his head and cheeks so large they impeded on both his mouth and his eyes when he smiled. “The customers just love this stuff, can’t get enough.”

  “That’s what we like to hear,” I said, thrusting a hand his direction. “See you again next week?”

  Clasping my hand in both of his, Yamashita almost beamed. “Yes, yes. Same day and time, hopefully by then I’ll be needing even more.”

  “Hopefully,” I replied, forcing myself to match the smile as I released the handshake and receded from the room. Keeping it on my face, I managed to hold the look all the way back to my delivery truck before letting it slide away.

  In its wake, the glower that seemed to have become my resting position returned.

  Not that it was especially hard to figure out why.

  Turning on the ignition, I let cool air pipe in around me as I reached over onto the passenger seat and picked up a clipboard, a stack of dog-eared pages all fastened into position. Jerking them free, I shifted the one for Yamashita to the bottom, pulling up the next in order.

  A no-name pizza joint in Southwest, just six blocks from where I was sitting, wanted one case of our newest apricot mead.

  Hardly even worth the time it will take me to get there and unload it, a fact that does nothing for the look on my face.

  Not that the guys in charge ever seem to give a damn, thinking that getting their product into even one more hand makes all the legwork worthwhile.

  A stance that’s easy to have when they’re not the ones doing the legwork.

  Easing away from the restaurant, I turned the radio to the only country station in Portland worth listening to, one buried deep on the a.m. dial that I had to search for months to even find. Seeming to be the sole station in the area that didn’t insist on playing the same six new releases from the frat boy country artist of the week, I adjusted the volume, hoping for something to lift my spirits.

  After the day I’ve had, Lord knows I could use it.

  Hooking a left out of the parking lot, I melded into the flow of traffic moving south, the midday crawl already starting to thicken up, which wasn’t a good sign for my commute home later on.

  Over the speakers was nothing more than an ad urging me to buy new tires, the voice actors terrible, the pitch at the end even worse.

  Which was to be expected, nothing quite lining up for me.

  Per usual, it would seem.

  Chapter Eight

  My earlier speculation about the traffic had turned out to be a severe understatement, a thin afternoon rain doing what it so often tended to and turning most of my fellow drivers into overreactive zombies. A pair of roadside fender benders made most roadways impassable, the remainder moving with the kinds of spastic starts and stops of people acting as if they’ve never been
behind the wheel of a car before.

  Already getting out later than expected from the rash of extra deliveries added to my plate, dinner was reduced to something from a sack, the smells of salt and grease fighting for top billing in the interior of my sedan. Seen more as sustenance than anything I would actually like to be putting in my body, I ignored the scents as I wound my way through the outskirts of Hillsboro, a suburb on the western end of town.

  Not a place I would have picked by any stretch of the imagination, though over time it has at least grown to the level of being comfortable.

  Which is infinitely more than I can say for the SUV sitting in my front driveway.

  “Jesus, already?” I muttered, my features crinkling into a scowl. Wanting nothing more than to drive right on past, to pretend I hadn’t seen it – or even better extend a middle finger and be on my way – I slowed and made the turn.

  There was no way to avoid it.

  Lord knew I had tried.

  Maneuvering out wide around the SUV, I pulled into the driveway and climbed out, leaving my dinner on the passenger seat beside me, in no way wanting this to appear social.

  On cue, my foot no more than touched the concrete beneath me before the driver’s side door of the SUV opened, a woman in a skirt suit with light brown hair exiting opposite me. Slamming her door shut with more force than necessary, she took a few steps before stopping, a hand on her hip as she stared across the hood of her car at me.

  “That time of the month again already?” I opened.

  “Yup,” Deputy Marshal Abby Lipski responded, “and you’re late.”

  Staring at her for several moments, long enough to let her know that I didn’t appreciate her presence or the comment about my tardiness, I slowly drifted to the side.

  “Work ran over.”

  It was clear from the uniform I was wearing, from the dirt covering my exposed forearms and half my face, where I had been and what I’d been doing. There was no need to belabor the point further.

  Especially when she already had an intimate knowledge of where I was at any given moment.

  “Should we get this over with?” she asked, turning to head for the door as well.

  A handful of retorts sprang instantly to mind.

  “We could just skip it altogether.”

  Behind the mirrored sunglasses she wore, it was difficult to read her exact response, though the faint flicker at the corner of her lips indicated she probably wasn’t amused.

  Not that I’d seen her smile once in six years.

  Saying nothing in response, she followed as I stepped up onto the short deck carved out along the drive and through the backdoor into my apartment. Walking into the kitchen, I tossed my keys across the small round table in the corner, walking to the far side of the room and leaning against the counter running the length of the wall.

  Pressing my backside against it, I balanced my hands on either side behind me, turning to stare at Lipski.

  There was no need to offer her anything to drink, even less to go on into the living room and sit down. With any luck, she would be gone within five minutes, letting me get to my dinner and the rest of the shitty life they had put in place for me.

  “So, how was work?” she asked, putting a tiny lilt in her voice. Whether she was being a sarcastic version of a doting housewife or just a smartass in general, I really didn’t care.

  “Stimulating,” I said, matching the tone as best I could. “And your day?”

  For the second time, the faint flicker of something flashed on her face before falling away. Reaching up, she repositioned the glasses from her face to the top of her head, and said, “Look, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here. Protocol mandates that once a month we do a face-to-face check-in, so here we are.”

  “A pleasure, as always.”

  “So can we just get through this and be on our way?” she asked. “Believe it or not, I have someone waiting for me that I actually want to spend my evening with.”

  If the backend of the statement was meant to arise jealousy or some other form of complicit behavior from me, I had no idea, and no interest in finding out.

  All I really wanted was for the meeting to be over.

  Spreading my arms wide to either side, I merely said, “Have at it.”

  “Good,” she muttered, taking a step to the side and leaning a hip against the counter, her arms folded.

  If I had to guess, I would put her somewhere close to forty, though that number could go up or down by a few years depending on the day and the light she was standing under. With straight hair and never a bit of makeup, she seemed to adhere strictly to the government-issue look for middle-aged women.

  The lack of humor, or warmth, or even basic human emotion, that came with it was probably her own personal touch.

  Which couldn’t help but make me wonder about the veracity of her having someone waiting at home for her.

  “Have you had any contact with-“

  “Vic Baxter or anybody in his family?” I asked, having heard the questions more times than I cared to remember. “Not since the Christmas card last year.”

  Pushing past my comment, Lipski continued, “Have you seen anybody suspicious since we last spoke?”

  “Suspicious?” I asked, my eyebrows rising slightly. “You mean besides the bums covering all of Pioneer Square? Or the homeless outside of every 7/11 in the city?”

  A look that relayed she was fast growing tired of my shtick crossed her face, though to her credit she refrained from saying anything.

  “Yes, outside of them.”

  “Then no,” I replied, opting to this time let it go at that. “I haven’t seen anybody suspicious.”

  There was a time when things weren’t so bad between us, a point where I was even a bit thankful for what she was doing, the role that the service had in my life.

  The problem was, after six years, any such feeling had fallen by the wayside.

  “And your employment?” she asked.

  “I keep showing up and they keep paying me,” I answered. “Really a pretty good little system we’ve got worked out.”

  Casting a look around the place, Lipski seemed to inventory everything, from the bare walls to the lack of anything non-essential visible anywhere.

  Just as they had mandated.

  “Place still looks pretty good,” she said before flicking her gaze back over to me. “Same for the car. You need anything else?”

  I knew the question was rhetorical, though I couldn’t seem to stem the flood of responses that come spilling to mind, the list growing exponentially each month.

  “Nope. That about covers it.”

  Chapter Nine

  The day had been a long time coming, a box on the calendar so far in the future that for years Vic Baxter had refused to even acknowledge it. Allowing himself to do so would have been nothing short of setting up a disaster, skewing decision-making in the short term on the chance of something coming to fruition in the future.

  Even as a date was considered, he had chosen to actively ignore it, waiting until a definitive timeline was put in place before giving in to the slightest notion that it could all come true.

  Once it did, things had moved quickly, a whirlwind of ideas that for so long had seemed ethereal, all beginning in earnest, working together toward an outcome he still couldn’t quite fathom.

  After six years, it could all be coming to a close.

  The reality he had insulated himself with, the role he had been forced to take on, could recede back to where it began. Back to the place it was supposed to be, a working partnership rather than an unplanned monarchy.

  Rising that morning, the thought had buoyed him in a way few things still managed to, his movements quicker, his mood bordering on gleeful as he turned out of his driveway and went not north toward work, but rather south.

  South to the building he now found himself being admitted into, a place that he had been only once before, on the strict admonishm
ent of his older brother Eric.

  “Sign in here,” the guard said, flicking a bored glance up to Baxter. Raising an eyebrow his way, a series of hash marks shaved into it, the young man’s body language suggested he would rather be anywhere else in the world.

  A sentiment Baxter was reasonably certain most every other person inside the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta shared with him.

  Bending at the waist, Baxter scribbled his name, the time and date, and the prisoner he was there to visit.

  “I see that the other member of our meeting is already here,” he said, pointing with the end of the ink pen to the name above his in order.

  Holding his glance another moment, the young guard paused before flicking his gaze to the sheet.

  “Go on back, you have thirty minutes.”

  Reaching forward, he pressed a release on the underside of his desk, a short buzzer sounding out, followed by the distinctive click of the door behind him unlatching.

  Mumbling thanks, Baxter pushed through, the visiting room lobby falling away behind him, giving way to a wide hallway. On either side of it was a series of doors, a window crosshatched with chicken wire inset on each, a single number stenciled on it in black paint.

  Drawing his breath in, Baxter walked past half a dozen such rooms, a few hosting meetings just like the one he was now about to embark on, others sitting empty.

  Keeping his body aimed down the center of the hallway, he moved past a pair of guards standing watch and entered into room number eight.

  As he did so, two heads both turned to look at him.

  On the right sat Julian Rothman, a local attorney that had matriculated south from New York, but somehow didn’t seem to have noticed. Everything about him – from the pinstriped double-breasted suit he wore to the red glow he always seemed to have on his cheeks – screamed the big city, his demeanor to match.

  Today he had opted for a blue suit with a red tie that didn’t quite sit flush against his throat, the extra weight he carried making it almost impossible.