Each month, my reward – if that was even the correct word – for being a good witness and complying with the rules of the program was a half-hour conversation. To heighten security measures, it had to be the same person each month, and they too had to agree to the terms of the contract.
Something I knew without question he would do.
Just as he always had.
Leaving work for the afternoon, I had failed to realize what day it was. Being stuck in the doldrums of 9-to-5 life, it can be amazingly sad how much one day resembles another, time becoming an unending loop.
Not until I saw Lipski parked outside did it resonate with me what my otherwise monotonous evening held in store.
In the wake of her finally leaving, I had retrieved my dinner and ate it standing over the sink. From there, I had retreated to the shower, scrubbing away the assorted mess of the day, emerging a half hour later refreshed, ready for the night ahead.
Like a young man preparing for a date, I was almost giddy with joy as I bounced around the house, counting minutes until it was time to make the call.
A joy that was completely ripped away by the recording on the other end, the voice a far cry from the one I was expecting, the message delivered something I would never have thought possible.
Part III
Chapter Thirteen
There aren’t that many ways to get anywhere in America – or the world – these days without leaving a trail. Flights have manifests and require government-issue documents, things that leave behind a clear and concise record for people to follow.
Same for rental cars, most of which require valid credit cards and driver’s licenses to even consider parting with one of their beloved Pintos.
Adding to the problem are the omnipresent cameras that hang from every corner, every traffic cam, every everything in today’s society.
Why the people at Exxon or McDonald’s need to have a full visual of me every time I want a cup of coffee is anybody’s guess.
After getting off the phone, my first instinct was to dial back. To punch in the numbers slowly and methodically, making sure I’d done things correctly.
Sometimes I did have a tendency to get a little excited, especially when already worked up from the unexpected visit from Lipski.
Just as fast, such a notion was shoved aside, replaced by the realization that it was the correct answering machine.
It just wasn’t the right voice coming through it.
For more than an hour I stood in the kitchen, dressed only in my boxer shorts and a necklace. Long enough for any residual warmth from the shower to have dissipated, I stood until my shoulder yoke burned, my hands pressed hard into the edge of the counter on either side of the sink.
I stood until the sun faded from the window before me, bringing with it a ten-degree temperature drop, the cold tile of the floor seeping up through my feet, permeating my bones.
The entire time my mind raced, connecting dots, firing questions I had no way of answering.
Damned sure not while standing in the kitchen of a shitty apartment I had never wanted in the first place, on the tail end of a day in a life I would have never constructed for myself.
Like a scene from a bad movie, I stood there, evening slipping into night, letting the tangled mess in my head work itself into some form of a reasonable framework.
A far cry from an actual plan for sure, but enough that at least I had marching orders.
After all, once everything else was gone, all the other bullshit stripped away, that’s what I was. A soldier that for my entire adult life had merely been following some set of orders.
The problem was, they were always somebody else’s.
That stopped now.
With that realization came an awakening, a raising of my head to stare out at the world, the frosted glaze of my life peeling back. For the first time in quite a while, I had a clear image of what I needed to do, of what it all meant.
Less than thirty seconds in total, the intent of the recorded message was clear, as was the target. Nobody else would be calling that number. Even less would they recognize the words chosen for what they really meant.
Sorry to say, but Tim isn’t home right now.
But he will return very soon.
The man I was calling – a friend I called an uncle that became more like a father – was referred to as many things in his life.
Not one of them was Tim.
That was my name.
There were very few things in this world that I still felt any level of loyalty toward. Hell, if I really wanted to get down to it, there was little in general I felt anything beyond a low-level form of apathy or disdain for.
Of those, there were a handful of guys from the service I wouldn’t mind speaking to again, the Tennessee Volunteers, and my uncle.
If somebody – and it wasn’t hard to figure out who that might be – was trying to get my attention, they had done so, leaving only two questions behind.
Why had they waited until now, and how far they had taken things.
Knowing that the answer to neither could be found standing near naked in an apartment in Oregon, I pushed into action with an efficiency I didn’t know I still possessed. Realizing that the conversation had been recorded, that some flunky over at WITSEC with glasses and enormous headphones had heard every word, I was acutely aware of the clock ticking above my head, of the things I needed to accomplish in short order.
Get my ass out of Oregon.
Get across the country.
Track down my uncle.
Deal with whatever I found along the way.
All of that I needed to do without being monitored, staying off the grid entirely, making sure not to trip any of the existing flags that were put into the system in case I tried to do this very thing.
Starting in the bedroom, I threw a handful of clothes and assorted toiletry items into a bag. What actually made it in I didn’t much notice, knowing that in this country a damn Wal-Mart was on every corner for whatever else I might need to pick up along the way.
From there, I peeled back the loose floorboard in the bottom of my closet, extracting the small vinyl backpack that I had tucked away when first arriving six years before. Giving it only a single check, making sure that everything was still stowed as before, I dressed in basic attire.
Throwing both bags over my shoulder, I exited the apartment just ten minutes after pushing myself away from the sink, not knowing if I would ever return to the space that had been my home for more than half a decade.
Not particularly caring either way.
Never the nostalgic type to begin with, not a single thought was given to the past years, to my time in Hillsboro or the life I might be abandoning for good.
Instead, I was focused only on the future, on what I needed to do to get myself across the country, to honor the one existing commitment I still had in the world.
Chapter Fourteen
“Good morning, sir, welcome to Chicago.”
The girl behind the counter delivered the greeting with a smile that must have been fake, her teeth and gums showing up in equal amounts, taking over the entire bottom half of her face. Armed with at least three cups of coffee, she looked to be carrying far more steam than anybody had the right to be at such an ungodly hour.
Especially in a place like Chicago.
My first instinct upon leaving the house the night before was to drive. To point the front grill toward the sunrise and take off. Let mile after mile fade beneath my tires, coffee and an overactive imagination fueling me in my journey, pushing me onward.
If Google Maps was to be believed, that was a trip that would take forty hours to make driving straight through, to say nothing of the needs to sleep, or piss, or stop frequently for food and gas. Just using cash wouldn’t be enough to throw somebody intent enough to look for me, especially once they had a starting position.
Instead, I decided to cut the journey down by more than three-quarters, driving straigh
t to Portland International. Leaving my car in the long-term lot, I walked to the Delta counter and bought a ticket for the next flight out, my destination anywhere in the Midwest.
Close enough to severely chip away at my time on the road, far enough out that I could still perform some of the evasive maneuverings I needed to make sure my tail was clear after I landed.
A hell of a long way from ideal – especially knowing the flight would send up all kinds of red flags over with the marshals – but given the circumstances, it was all I had.
My father was born an only child. The plan had been for him to be the first of many, the proud namesake and second-in-command for a long line of children to follow.
As has a way of often happening, though, life had other plans.
Namely, the crumbling of the mine shaft his father worked in, to this day his remains trapped beneath three metric tons of carbonized rock.
With no siblings – or family at all to speak of – my father had filled the void with the only person that lived within five miles of the farm spread.
His name was Jessup Lynch, though I’m not sure anybody outside of his mother ever actually used that name. To most of the world, he was Jep.
To me, Uncle Jep.
A fixture in my life from the day I was born, a man that was there when I hit my first home run and scored my first touchdown.
One of the few that was there the day we buried Mama.
The even fewer when we said farewell to Pa.
“Will you be needing insurance on this rental?” the girl asked, drawing me back into the moment.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. Digging into my wallet, I pulled out my driver’s license and credit card – my real license and credit card – the first time I had used either in years, two items so old I wasn’t entirely sure they would even work.
Things I was supposed to have turned over to Lipski when entering the program, but couldn’t quite bring myself to part with.
Just in case.
Turns out paranoia can be a good thing.
Accepting the two items without question, the girl took to running them, my core clenching tight as I waited. Bracing my palms against the counter, I kept my gaze on my shoes, flicking glances to the stray person or two that had drifted in at the far end of the concourse.
Did my best to keep my face obscured from the pair of cameras mounted high in every corner.
Raising only my eyes, I watched as the girl went through her paces, the light of the computer screen reflecting off her face.
For an instant, it appeared that a frown was tugging at her mouth, adrenaline seeping into my system, preparing me for the run I would need to make for a quick exit.
I didn’t know exactly what the rules were for what I was doing, only that I had been warned a thousand times over not to even try. Lord knew that at least as many times I had contemplated doing what I was now doing anyway, tired of living with the constant strictures that were hanging over my head.
Just as fast, the look passed from her face, the megawatt smile returning. Lifting both items from the counter, she extended them back to me.
“Thank you for renting with us today, Mr. Scarberry. I hope you enjoy your stay here in Chicago.”
Chapter Fifteen
Twenty-eight hours had passed since Radney Creel had sat down the road from the cabin on Lake Edstrom and watched the Sheriff’s Department arrive. The first dozen of those had passed by easily enough, featuring a nap, a call to check in, and hour after hour of trying to ignore Pyle’s more annoying habits.
Like smoking multiple cigars at once.
Or cleaning his weapon so many times Creel was certain there couldn’t be so much as paint left on the outside of it.
Or making inane comments about the weather, and the food, and the house, and every other thing he could think of.
By the time full darkness had descended back over Tennessee, Creel was starting to get jumpy. The need to be outside, to be doing something, had begun to set in.
Once first light arrived, he had been out the door, leaving before Pyle could offer a word in protest, leaving the man still bleary-eyed with sleep, not yet started on his morning ritual.
Which was to say, his daily ritual, the man’s habits so rote Creel was bored with them already. How Pyle managed to survive it, he could not bear to imagine.
Exiting the farmhouse, Creel had taken the battered pickup they’d acquired for the job, bouncing over potholes to the lake. Arriving just minutes after dawn, he parked in the most visible lot, grabbing up a fishing pole that as far as he knew didn’t even cast and a rusted tackle box from the back.
In jeans and the same t-shirt he’d soaked the day before, he walked through the tall grass toward the water’s edge, dew spotting the tops of his shoes. Eighty yards later, he’d found his way to the rocky shoreline, beginning the half-mile trek around so that the cabin – and the driveway leading up to it – was within plain sight.
By the time he arrived, fresh perspiration covered his face and left the cotton shirt clinging to his skin, the smell from the previous day intensifying under the heat.
Spotting a lone cottonwood tree along the bank, he peeled the shirt up over his head and snapped a length of wood from a low-hanging branch. Using his knife, he split the end of it, forking it into a Y, and jammed the stick into the ground.
Using it to prop up his pole, he managed to throw out a bare hook, his cover now intact for the remainder of the morning.
The job was at the same time more of the same, and one of the most unusual, that Vic Baxter had ever sent his way.
Eliminating people was something the two had done on more than one occasion. Creel was a man with, as the movie’s liked to say these days, a particular set of skills. Baxter was someone in an unconventional line of work that occasionally relied on them.
In a place as small as Atlanta, it didn’t take long for word to spread and the two sides to come together.
That initial interaction had occurred two years prior, long before the incident that had precipitated what he was now working on. Like some sort of side project, it had hung in the background of everything they had done, had been mentioned in nearly every conversation they’d ever had.
After their first job, Baxter had even gone as far as to put down a retainer for this very thing, a move that spoke directly to the only true devotion he had in the world.
Settling himself in against the base of the tree, Creel wiggled his backside in either direction, letting his tailbone work the tall grass beneath him into a mat he could be comfortable on. Odds were, his wait would be a long one, likely the first of several in the ensuing days.
If he really wanted to be honest, there was no way he expected much of anything to come from the effort. All he really knew was that the thought of sitting in the house with Pyle any longer was something he could ill abide.
Why his employer had felt the need to call in a second player on this, Creel hadn’t feigned to understand, right up to the point where he saw Pyle go to work on their target.
In that moment, everything became clear.
Just as he himself did, Pyle also possessed a very particular set of skills.
And a complete aversion to things such as a gag reflex or even a fully functional conscious.
As good a guy to have on one’s side as could be asked for, all things considered.
Running his gaze over the lake, he saw the morning sun just starting to burn off any hint of mist that may lay above the water, another blast of summer heat on tap for all. In the distance, he could see a crane land, it’s elongated body cutting a stripe through the water’s surface, rippling the reflection of pine trees pressed tight in all directions.
In one long sweep, he surveyed everything, his gaze eventually landing on the cabin he’d slipped away from the day before.
When his target would arrive, he didn’t know for sure, only that he eventually show.
That was the thing about fishing. If the bai
t was good enough, nothing could resist forever.
Chapter Sixteen
For the second time in as many days, Talula Davis found her day starting in the presence of Peg Bannister and her enormous pet.
And just as with their previous encounter, Davis could think of no less than a dozen places she would rather be, beginning at home in bed and ranging up to being in the basement, pounding away at her punching bag, envisioning Charbonneau, or Tanner, or even a host of other people as she worked out her frustrations.
Instead, she was seated on the back deck of Bannister’s home, the morning sun already starting to blaze, threatening to break the seal on a sweat Davis knew would paint her skin for the rest of the day.
Why the old woman insisted on sitting outside when she had a home with air conditioning just three feet away, Davis didn’t pretend to understand.
By her feet, the dog that Bannister had introduced as Freddy seemed to be in agreement, his oversized mouth already sagging open, his tongue wagging as he panted, saliva dripping from the end of it.
“I hope you don’t mind us speaking out here,” Bannister opened, repositioning a saucer under the cup of tea on the wrought iron table beside her. “This is about the only time of day I can enjoy being outside right now.”
Not quite agreeing that what they were doing could be deemed enjoyable, Davis only nodded.
“I just appreciate you making the time to meet with me. And I apologize for disappearing yesterday, it’s just...”
Unsure how to finish the sentence, she let her voice trail off, hoping the message would get across.
To her relief it did, or seemed to at least.
“Not at all,” Bannister said, waving a hand before her, “I understand completely. That was such a tragic thing, your attention should have been focused on it.”
Leaning forward, she offered a wink and said, “I tell you what, I wouldn’t even have accepted a ride home if not for that handsome associate of yours that offered to drive us.”
The Subway Page 5
