Sallow City

by Jim Heskett

  “So I’m getting better at handling real-life stuff because of sobriety?”

  Frank nodded. “Alcohol is fading as your go-to stress reliever. You’ve probably heard people in meetings talking about handling life on life’s terms. And if you keep working the steps, it’ll keep getting better.”

  “Life getting better sounds right up my alley,” Micah said.

  “Tell me what the first step says.”

  “Admitted that I’m powerless over alcohol and that my life is unmanageable.”

  “You should be learning that it’s not just alcohol,” Frank said. “Life itself is out of your control, and you’re powerless over everything.”

  Micah shook his head. “That doesn’t register. I mean, I have power over some things. How can I be powerless over everything? I refuse to believe that my fate is predestined.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  Micah adjusted his glasses. Having the extra weight on his face would take some getting used to. “Then I don’t understand.”

  “Give it time. You’ll get it.”

  “If you say so. I would like to hit an AA meeting as soon as possible. Getting a bit restless.”

  “No problem, kid. I know of one nearby.” Frank switched off the TV and looked Micah in the eye. “Let’s talk about how we’re going to handle investigating this John Doe.”

  Goosebumps dotted Micah’s forearms. “Okay.”

  “Here’s something to think about. If your theory is true, and whoever killed this poor guy did it to make the cartel think you’re dead, then maybe we should leave it that way.”

  “What are you saying, Frank?”

  “The government spread rumors you’d died, after the trial. But, as we’ve heard, not everyone in your old organization believed those rumors.”

  “Right,” Micah said. “I mean, obviously, they don’t, because there’s still a price on my head. Which is probably why that poor guy is lying in the morgue. But if you’re saying we don’t try to find out what happened… what about justice for this dead person?”

  Frank paused. “Is that what you want? Even though involving the cops and proving this man isn’t you puts you back at risk?”

  The weight of the dilemma hit Micah. A chance to walk away, make the cartel—once and for all—think he was dead. He’d still have to live somewhere under his assumed name, still have to stay off social media, but he wouldn’t be actively hunted any longer.

  A chance to be free. To a certain extent.

  But it came at the expense of letting this dead man continue to impersonate him. If this John Doe had a family, they would never know what had happened to him. He would always be another missing person, with no body ever to turn up. No closure for anyone and everyone who had ever noticed that he’d gone missing.

  “I don’t know. What if we don’t involve the cops yet and we investigate on our own?”

  Frank let loose a barrage of coughs that culminated in a wet gurgle. “That’s an option.”

  “Then I think we have to find out his identity. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Okay,” Frank said. “But no cops means no fingerprinting, no DNA.”

  “Wait a second. He was murdered, right? Wouldn’t the cops be investigating it already?”

  Frank shook his head. “I thought you might want to go down this path, so I asked Anita to put a stop to that. Local PD hadn’t done anything yet, anyway, so it was easy for her to handle.”

  “How does that work?”

  “She’ll make it a federal matter, and the paperwork will get shuffled around for a few days to keep it in limbo. This case is completely at our discretion. If we do nothing, he goes to a pauper’s grave in Genesee County.”

  Micah thought about the body rotting in the ground, no one ever knowing who he was. Unacceptable. “Can Anita use her resources to identify him?”

  Frank frowned. “Not really, now that she’s keeping it under the rug. We have three or four days, tops, in order to gather info without anyone noticing. After that, she’ll have to turn it over to someone, unless we can give her a good reason not to.”

  “And we’re on our own.”

  “It’s going to be old school,” Frank said. “You know, knocking-on-doors kind of detective work to figure this out.”

  “I’m good with that.”

  Frank switched off the TV and dropped the remote on his nightstand. “In the morning, we’ll talk to the people at the morgue.”

  ***

  The oxygen masks descended as alarms blared from every direction. Flashes of light spilled over the backs of seats from outside the airplane window. Faces tensed, eyes wide, mouths gaping.

  Micah’s limp body sunk into the chair like being strapped into a rollercoaster seat. Restrained, compressed with gravity, unable to move.

  The woman with her emerald eyes and auburn hair screamed. She clung to Micah’s arm.

  Sinking.

  Falling.

  The force of gravity pulled his stomach down, pressing against his intestines. The sheer weight made him want to crap his pants. His eyes rolled back into his head, and pressure like a migraine thumped behind his eyes.

  The airplane broke open into pieces, and the night air came rushing at him. As metal tore and splintered, sounds like the screeching of birds accompanied hunks of airplane disappearing into the darkness.

  There, and then gone. Vaporized.

  Pelting rain. Only his section of the plane remained, somehow afloat, carrying forward through the storm. Olivia had vanished, as had the hundreds of other passengers. Micah’s seat then angled, plummeting toward the earth.

  Alone, on a straight shot into the abyss.

  His eyes opened.

  He sat bolt upright in bed. A bead of sweat dribbled down the side of his face and clung to the underside of his chin. Chest constricted, difficulty breathing. The four walls around him were, at first, unfamiliar.

  Motel. Not Denver. In Michigan. Across the room, Frank snorted and turned on his side, still asleep.

  “Shit,” Micah said as the three-hundred-pound jacket of anxiety lifted from him.

  It had felt so real.

  He wondered if Olivia was having the same dreams every night. If she also realized how close they’d come to crashing into the mountains, unable to stop it. Micah knew the statistics about how flying was safer than driving, and he also knew why people still feared airplanes. In a car, you have the illusion that you’re in control, but while flying, it’s completely out of your hands. You’re at the mercy of the pilots and the weather and dumb luck.

  He allowed his breathing to return to normal before rousting Frank out of bed so they could prepare to visit the morgue. They dressed in silence, both of them groggy, and then left to get coffee. Micah said he was fine with Starbucks, but Frank took him to some local spot named Good Beans.

  They spoke little on the way, Micah still recovering from his dream and not wanting to speak about it. Frank wasn’t dumb, though. He would glean from Micah’s shaky appearance that he’d been rattled by something. But Frank didn’t pester him, and Micah didn’t offer any information.

  Soon enough, they found themselves walking into the Genesee County Medical Examiner’s office, pausing in a waiting room.

  As Frank knocked on the steel door leading into the mortuary, Micah stood next to him and shuddered. Cold rolled through the cracks in the door, and his newly shaved head wasn’t as insulating as having a full head of hair.

  “You should let me do the talking,” Frank said. “I know you’re in disguise, but don’t give these people any cause to look at you closely.”

  Micah’s thoughts drifted to the ride over here. The streets of Flint were populated with almost nothing but American cars. He’d seen the occasional Volvo or Subaru, but mostly, Ford and Chevy, and usually late-model. When you live in a town built by cars, made sense to see that machinery flaunted everywhere.

  Frank waved a hand in front of Micah’s face. “You paying
attention?”

  “Sure, sure. I’m good. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “You should know,” Frank said, “that his body is not in good shape. His face is untouched, but they cut him up bad below that. Burned him. Mutilated him. It’s like sausage from the neck down.”

  Micah swallowed. Didn’t know if he was ready to see that.

  The door opened and there stood a squat man with slick black hair and glasses thicker than the fake ones Micah was wearing. Dressed in tie-dyed scrubs. The man eyed Frank and Micah, lingering a little longer at Micah. There was no way he was going to recognize him, though. Not with a shaved head, glasses, and fake blue eyes. At least, that’s what Micah hoped.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.”

  “I’m Frank Mueller from Mueller Bail Enforcement. This is my partner Roland Templeton,” Frank said as he gestured at Micah.

  “I’m Danny,” the squat man in the scrubs said. “How can I help you?”

  Frank flipped open his wallet to show his bounty hunter license, not that it would actually legitimize them being here. Maybe Danny wouldn’t look at the license too closely.

  “You’re not the medical examiner.”

  Danny shook his head. “No sir. She’s going to be late this morning.”

  “That’s fine, I wanted to talk to you anyway. You met a woman a couple days ago. Anita Mueller, from the DOJ?”

  “Mueller. Of course, I remember. She a relation to you?”

  “Yes, she is. That’s my sister. I was hoping I could ask you some follow-up questions regarding that John Doe you came across. The one she had you pull from your storage.”

  Danny hooked a thumb, pointing at rows of stainless steel vaults behind him. “Sure, but he’s gone.”

  “He’s what?” Micah said. “The body isn’t here?”

  “Yeah,” Danny said, “he’s gone. Your sister didn’t give me any instructions to hold him, and we ran out of space.”

  Micah felt a rush of something he couldn’t quite name. Relief, maybe, that he didn’t have to look at this doppelgänger. And a bit of disappointment, because no matter how he knew it might bother him, he’d wanted to see the body. Wanted to stare into the eyes of someone who had his same face, for reasons he couldn’t explain.

  “That’s fine,” Frank said. “I’d still like to ask you a couple questions. May we come in?”

  Danny shrugged and ushered them into a little room off to the side, with two chairs. Micah let Frank sit, and he stood behind his boss.

  Frank let out a groan as his butt hit the chair. “Danny, I really only need to know one thing: has anyone else stopped by to see the body?”

  Danny paused for a second, his breath whistling in his nose. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not a small-town idiot.”

  “No one claimed you were,” Frank said.

  “This is some kind of government thing. Like the John Doe was a CIA agent, or maybe FBI?”

  Frank smiled, baring white teeth. “It’s not that exciting.”

  “Hard for me to believe. I usually work night shift, so I’m used to things being all wacky when I come in at night sometimes, but I’ve never seen the visitor log messed with before. Not until your John Doe showed up. Is that what you’re asking?”

  Frank and Micah shared a look. Whoever was visiting had erased their presence. Someone from the cartel sent to verify the corpse’s identity, most likely.

  “That’s good to know, Danny. Has anyone stopped by while you were on shift and asked to see the body?”

  “Aside from your sister?”

  “Yes, aside from my sister.”

  “Just that doctor.”

  An idea struck Micah. “What kind of doctor?”

  “That’s the thing,” Danny said. “He never actually said he was a doctor. But I’ve seen him before. I knew who he was. I’d met him once at this thing… this fundraising thing in Midtown last year.”

  “Plastic surgeon?” Micah said.

  Danny narrowed his eyes, looking at Micah for the first time. “How did you know that?”

  Micah shrugged. “Just a guess.”

  Frank took a pad of paper and a pencil from inside his jacket pocket and held it out to Danny. “Would you be able to write down his name for us? We need to ask him some follow-up questions. It’s related to a bail case we’re working.”

  Danny accepted the pad and pencil but hesitated. “I don’t know about this. I haven’t seen anything that proves you guys aren’t spooks. As far as I know, I’m going to end up on a plane to Venezuela just for talking to you.”

  “Danny,” Micah said, leaning closer. “That John Doe who came in… it’s important that we find out who he was. We’re not CIA or FBI or anything like that. Just a couple of interested parties who are trying to get justice for this dead man. You can help us with that.”

  Danny gripped the pencil, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Micah and Frank stood outside the office of Dr. Theo Spector, staring at the golden nameplate next to the glass door. Dr. Spector’s office stood as a lone brick building, a one-story structure a few blocks from downtown Flint. Small parking lot out back, street access in the front.

  Years of decay baked onto every surface.

  “How do you want to play this?” Micah said.

  “Our best advantage is that he doesn’t know we’re coming.”

  “But, he has to have assumed the cops or someone else would come talk to him. He’s going to be guarded.”

  Frank wiped a line of sweat from the back of his neck. “You have a knack for this, kid. You still thinking about law enforcement?”

  “Not even a little. I told you before that I thought about it when I was young, but I also wanted to be a race car driver and an astronaut. I’ve seen enough of the other side of law enforcement to have been poisoned off that, though.”

  “Fair enough,” Frank said. “I think you should hang back, in the waiting room for a minute or two, and let me go in first. Even with your shaved head and glasses, he’s bound to recognize you. He must have studied pictures of your face to cut up that kid to look like you.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Let me put a little pressure on him first, then you come in and we’ll back him into a corner.”

  “And how do we force him to give up the people who hired him?”

  Frank shrugged. “I’m not sure yet. Odds are, he performed the surgery for some bad people. Maybe we offer him protection, maybe we threaten to turn him over to the cops. We’ll have to play it by ear, see what he gives us. See what he’s most afraid of, and then use it on him. Some people, you go for the stick right away. Some of them, you can dangle a little carrot first, see how big their eyes get.”

  A cold chill ran up Micah’s back. As Michael McBriar, he’d used the same kinds of tactics when working inside the cartel, threatening rival dealers, forcing information out of them. Since becoming Micah Reed and living a new sober life, he never thought he’d need those tactics again. Manipulation, deceit, and then brute force when those didn’t work.

  “I can see that look on your face,” Frank said. “Maybe it feels underhanded, but that’s the way it works. You can’t just ask a bad guy to tell you what you want to know. He has to be convinced.”

  “I know it, I just don’t like it.” Micah pushed his new fake glasses up the bridge of his nose into position. “I’m ready, though.”

  Frank opened the door to a small waiting area, about the size of a living room. Collection of couches lining the walls, and a cutaway with a desk on one side. A gray-haired lady sat behind the desk, chains dangling from the rims of her glasses.

  “Can I help you, gentlemen?” she said as Micah retreated to a seat on one of the couches. No sense in letting the receptionist recognize him right off the bat and ruining their upper hand.

  “Yes,” Frank said. “Is Dr. Spector in today?”

  “Do you have an appointment?”
>
  “No ma’am. Is he busy?”

  She held up a finger and picked up the phone, then mumbled something into the receiver. She nodded, then hung up. “Okay, you can go on in.” She pointed to the only other door, an opaque glass one in the corner.

  Frank gave Micah a look and mouthed, “two minutes,” before thanking the receptionist and disappearing into the doctor’s office.

  Micah avoided eye contact with the receptionist as he thumbed through magazines on a coffee table in front of him. Mostly about golf, one of those sports Micah didn’t consider a sport. If you could drink beer and smoke cigarettes while playing, you couldn’t convince him it was an actual sport.

  He checked the time on a wall clock, and sixty seconds had passed since Frank had walked through that door. No voices came through the walls. Sixty seconds of silence and the unknown.

  What if the doctor had jammed a syringe into Frank’s neck? Frank could be dying on this man’s office floor, right at this second.

  Five more seconds passed.

  Five more.

  Micah closed his eyes, pulling deep breaths in through his nose and letting them eke out his mouth. Pulse thumped against his neck, but he didn’t know why. He had no reason to think Frank couldn’t handle himself.

  “Looks like rain out there today, eh?” the receptionist said.

  Something in the doctor’s office crashed. Muffled sounds of an argument came through the walls.

  Micah shot to his feet and leaped over the coffee table, knocking the golf magazines to the floor. He dashed across the room. His shoulder slammed into the door, and he barely managed to close his hand around the knob.

  After he’d flung open the door, Micah stumbled in to see Frank bent back over the desk, his shoulders pinned. A man in a white lab coat stood over Frank, meaty hands wrapped around his throat. The attacker was furious, babbling, his eyes bulging out of their sockets. Spittle flew from his lips onto Frank’s face.

  Frank was swinging an arm against the doctor’s burly frame, but his punches seemed to have no effect. Each blow sunk into a mountain of clothed flesh.