by Lee McIntyre
“I want to go over it again. One plan for if we have a chance to grab her right away and another for –”
“Adam, geez!” Tugg barked. “Calm down. You’re the same as you were as a kid. Always overthinking. You can’t plan everything. Opportunities will present themselves and you have to be flexible enough to take advantage of them. If you’re too locked in to a plan, you’ll miss something.”
“Yeah, but it’s what I do.”
“And I let the river come to me. It’s what I do,” Tugg said. “If I hang on too tight, it just makes me crazy.”
And it makes me crazy to take chances with my daughter’s freedom.
Tugg wasn’t a father. He just didn’t understand.
“So where did you learn that?” Adam finally asked.
“The Air Force. Life, I guess.”
Adam put his hand out the window and felt the wind flowing like water over his palm. “I guess I missed that. Life taught me a different lesson.”
Tugg hesitated, but took the bait. “Which is?”
“Always have a 230-pound biker in your corner.”
Chapter 29
The binoculars were back in the truck.
After a quick recon of the area last night, Adam and Tugg had found a motel and slept like the dead for twelve hours, before returning at 8:00 a.m., good to go.
Whatever genius city planner had put the State Prison and the Longlane Home within two blocks of one another probably wasn’t thinking about stalking. But that was criminal, considering that a good number of the residents in this particular neighborhood were ex-cons, some of whom had been locked up for sex offenses.
That wasn’t why ex-cons settled here. At first it made no sense. Then it made complete sense. Why would someone who had just gotten out of lock-up want to live within a few blocks of the prison walls? Maybe because his old lady rented an apartment nearby while he was inside, so it would be more convenient for her to visit. Then, when he got out, guess where he would be living?
The neighborhood was not-so-lovingly called “Death Row,” and it was populated by a score of thrift stores, greasy spoons, check cashing outlets, and pawn shops. White trash Fifth Avenue. You could get lost for hours. Best of all for Adam and Tugg, a medical building with offices on the third floor had a communal waiting area with a big fat window that looked out over a green space behind a high fence, which just happened to be the playground for The Longlane Home.
Adam and Tugg sat facing the window, indistinguishable from the handful of other patients who were waiting for their appointments. Tugg might have been an ex-con in for a chest x-ray. Adam could be a neurotic parole officer who had migraines. Who knew?
The playground was empty and some clouds had rolled in. It was raining lightly.
“Janice Thompson?” The stocky nurse in green scrubs seemed to feel the need to shout, despite the fact that only four people were in the room, and the elderly black man sitting on the other side of the room with both hands on his cane probably wasn’t Janice Thompson either. Janice vaulted out of her seat and disappeared with the nurse.
Adam leaned in close to Tugg.
“Don’t even say it,” Tugg said. “All day if necessary. How the hell do I know what time recess is?”
Adam turned back to the window.
At 10:00 a.m. Adam saw the door on the back of the Longlane Home open. A ton of little kids ran out, each in identical yellow hooded slickers, headed straight for the monkey bars.
“Shit,” Tugg said. “I hadn’t thought of that. Will you be able to spot her?”
Adam leaned forward against the cool glass.
A boy?
No.
Too tall?
No.
Wrong shape?
No.
Adam scanned the rest and decided that two different kids might be her, but he really couldn’t be sure. “There’s got to be a better way.”
“No, there’s not,” said Tugg. “We’ll wait for second recess in about four hours. But let’s get out of here for now.”
Second recess, it was raining hard. A teenage girl opened the back door of the school and ran out into the rain straight for the fence, but two guards came and pulled her back, as she melted in a tantrum that Adam could almost hear through the plate glass window.
“Tomorrow?” Adam said.
“Tonight, we may have something.”
“What? How come, all of a sudden?”
If Tugg’s gaze had been sunlight, the rain would have dried by now. “See that guard down there? On the left? We were stationed together at Holloman. His name’s Paul something. And he’s got a record.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” Tugg said, finally turning away. “He got kicked out. I never saw him after that. I’m sure CPS wouldn’t have hired him if they knew about his record. Even if it was military. That’s our in.”
Adam could feel hope welling up again. They were close.
“So we come back tonight then?”
“No.We watch the parking lot until Paul leaves. Then we follow him home. It’ll be easier that way. Less chance of getting caught.”
“Let’s go to the truck.”
“Good idea.”
By the time they hit the street, the rain was falling harder. One block to go and they decided to make a run for it.
“I’m driving,” Adam said. “I want you to watch out the window.”
Adam put the truck in gear and headed down the block for a parking place just across the street from The Longlane Home.
He swung in and shut off the ignition.
The rain made a metallic pop as it bounced off the roof and hood. For a minute or two it came down so hard it was almost comical.
“Shift change probably won’t happen till closer to five,” Tugg said. “But we’ve got to wait here just in case.”
“The cars are all out front. There’s only one door. This should be easy,” Adam said.
“Should be. When it gets closer to time, let’s change seats so I can drive.”
“Okay.” Adam fiddled with the keys and gave the wipers a quick spin. “Hey, Tugg—”
“Yeah?”
“Paul What’s-his-name. What was he busted for? What’d he do?”
Tugg put his boots up on the dashboard and settled back in his seat. “Got drunk and assaulted another airman. The guy gave him a chance, but Paul was too drunk to notice. When he pulled a knife, the other guy hit Paul so hard it blinded him in one eye. But they let the guy off. Self defense. Paul got tossed because he started it.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“The other guy was me.”
Chapter 30
The little brick house wasn’t technically in the “Death Row” neighborhood, but it was close. Couple of blocks off the strip mall. Close to work. Probably best not to drive too far if you only had one eye.
Tugg had been in there a long time.
If Tugg could get him to talk and Emma was there and they could come up with a plan for getting her out, then this could be the best lead they’d had since what Adam had come to think of as Emma’s kidnapping.
To hell with the state. Something was at the bottom of this and, once he had Emma back, Adam could start digging and find out what it was. Edward’s story back on the reservation was a wake-up call. CPS was out of control. They took kids whenever they wanted and didn’t much care who objected. Damn Lisa Castro. Was she part of some ring that put kids in foster care for money? Is that why they took Emma? Had Rachel maybe gotten a kickback for what she’d done?
It was all too wild to contemplate. Adam wanted his little girl back, but he also wanted to figure this whole thing out. Maybe he could go back to Edward. The tribe would protect him. Maybe they couldn’t arrest him if he stayed on the reservation.
This was getting ridiculous. Once they got Emma, it would be all he could do to run without getting caught.
The front porch light went on and a few seconds later the door opened.
Tugg walked slowly to the truck.
“Well? What did he say?”
“Drive. I’ll tell you on the road.”
“She’s not there?!” Adam said the words out loud again, as if his skepticism could somehow erase their truth. “Are you sure? Could he have been lying?”
“No, he wasn’t lying. Paul got religion. He said he told his employer all about his service record and his stint in rehab. They hired him anyway. The new Executive Director is a born-again Christian and she said Paul deserved a second chance.”
“So why did he tell you anything? And how do you know he wasn’t lying?”
“Adam, he just wasn’t. You could see it. He told me that protective custody kids never stayed there anyway. They go to private homes in secret locations. They tend to be out in the boondocks. They’re usually poor families who take in six or eight kids and live on the stipend. The only way they leave is if they’re adopted out.”
“And he didn’t know where any of them were?”
“I didn’t ask. Secret, remember? Wanda or someone who works in that office might know, but they sure aren’t going to tell a guard at a group home. That would defeat the whole purpose of protective custody.”
Adam felt like his chest was going to collapse. He wondered if he was having a heart attack right here, but the pain was prickly more than piercing. He fought to stay on the road.
“I still think Paul might be lying,” Adam said. “Maybe he doesn’t know any of the kids. Maybe they put them in there under false names. That would be the best kind of protective custody. Where no one knew anyone’s real name.”
“C’mon, Adam, the kids know who they are.”
“But maybe they don’t tell the guards. Maybe they try to keep it a secret. Did you ever think of that?”
“Couldn’t be.”
“Why not?” Adam could tell by the look on Tugg’s face that he was losing it. Adam choked up. Tugg put his hand on the steering wheel and glided them over to the curb.
“Because I asked him if he knew any Native American twin boys and he knew who they were,” Tugg said.
“He knew them? Are they there?” Adam gasped at the shred of good news, even though it wasn’t for him. “Maybe we can get them instead and bring them back to Edward.”
“No, we can’t do that. We go back to Plan Z and head to Ontario.”
Adam put it in park and shut off the engine. “I can’t drive anymore.”
They shifted seats over and under without opening the doors. Tugg sat for a minute, then fired up the engine.
Adam was silent for the first few miles, then said in a whisper, “I would like to have seen the look on Edward’s face when he told his friend we’d found his grandsons.”
“Yeah, I know. That’d be great, but it just can’t happen.”
“Because we might get caught, and then who would rescue Emma?” Adam said.
“That and another reason.”
“What?” Adam said, his eyes finally dry.
“Because someone adopted them a year ago.”
Chapter 31
The rain stopped somewhere over the Cascades, but the sky was still black. They were back in the high desert, the “other” side of Oregon that no one talked about.
“I can take a shift now,” Adam said.
“Okay.” Tugg pulled off to the side of the road and took a long piss, then climbed in to ride shotgun.
Adam suddenly felt the call and jumped out for his own relief, while the open door dinged insistently. It was too dark to see the painted hills, but he could feel them. Smell them. They were close.
Adam climbed back in and pulled onto the road. “Exit coming up ahead. You want to head back the way we came?”
“No, just follow 26 all the way to Ontario. It’s quiet. If we’d wanted to make time, we could have gone up to Portland and taken the Interstate.”
Adam flipped off the high beams as another car passed. “Too much risk near Portland — and I guess too much risk from the Reapers if we head south again.”
“That’s not a worry anymore,” Tugg said. He had his boots off and his feet up on the dashboard again. The swelling on Tugg’s face and hands was better, but the bruises looked worse.
“I appreciate what you did for me back there,” Adam said. “It couldn’t have been easy to see a guy who probably hates you so much.”
Tugg stirred for a second and repositioned himself on the seat, but his eyes stayed shut. “Paul doesn’t hate me. It was embarrassing. He said that what I did to him was the great wake-up call that put him on the road to Jesus.”
“Seriously?” Adam hesitated, then said it anyway. “Shit, Tugg. Maybe you should punch people more often.”
Tugg shook his head, but still had his eyes closed. “That was a period in my life when I had plenty of fights and believe me, I didn’t heal anyone. My philosophy was always ‘if we’re going to fight, we’re going to fight.’ I don’t go for all of that pushing and shoving, and I never took the time to curse someone out. One punch to the face as hard as I could before he even got his arm cocked. That always ended it. But I stopped after what happened to Paul. Mostly.”
The road was quiet, so Adam flipped the brights back on. Prineville was behind them and they were headed up the mountains again. The darkness at the edge of the high beams swallowed everything but the road.
“But not completely?” said Adam.
“Not until way later. Just before they put me in prison.”
Here it was. The pain was right there, as obvious as the cuts and bruises on Tugg’s face. When they’d first gotten married, Kate had said that love meant sharing everything. That there should never be any secrets between them. So there weren’t any — except, of course, that one. But men were different. If you loved someone, sometimes you let things go.
Tugg never opened his eyes, but the words started coming. Adam kept his hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead into the moonless night.
“I was assigned to temporary duty at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Our F-15s were flying down the Syrian border into Iraq so they could patrol the 33rd parallel, also known as the no-fly zone. Most of the guys were living in a tent city and had to take a bus in every day, but I got special permission to live off base and take my bike in. It was just like a regular job, you know? I rode in, worked on the planes, rode home. I always felt pretty lucky not to be in the shit. Everybody back home said the Gulf War ended in 1991, but that was just bullshit for TV. When I got there in ’97 we were still enforcing the no-fly zone and we kept on doing it all the way until the war started up again in 2003. I could see what was coming, so I thought about getting out after my enlistment was up. I’d saved some money. Then it happened.”
Adam was silent.
“One day out of the blue they assign me to transient aircraft. Just my luck, I got a radio call that a TA was coming in with an in-flight emergency. Apparently he’d just faced off with an Iraqi pilot who had a death wish. He was code three — all fucked up — and on top of that, he’d over-g’d the goddamned thing.”
“What’s over g’d?” Adam asked.
"You know ‘over g.’ Too fast. He’d pulled too many g’s. Anyway, I thought, ‘I’m going to be here all night fixing this shit.’ This kind of thing happened all the time, but it never made the news. An Iraqi pilot would take off and head straight for the no-fly zone, then stop just short of the 33rd parallel. Our guy would engage and then the fun would start.
"Anyway, after the emergency crews were cleared, I parked the jet and debriefed the pilot. He wasn’t one of mine, but I reminded him he owed me a case of beer for the over-g. In addition to all the regular maintenance, over-g’s require an additional two hours pulling panels on the aircraft to check for cracks.
“Sometimes it’s fun to get somebody else’s jet. Are they as good as you and all that. I was lucky that night. Just a couple of write-ups from the pre-flight inspection and I could start pulling panels. When you’re a Crew Chief you learn to loo
k at everything because your pilot’s life is in your hands.”
Adam thought he saw two glowing embers at the periphery of the road. He’d have to watch for deer. No one else was on the highway.
“So about this time a flight line expediter from another squadron pulls up and calls me over. He says, ‘How much longer are you gonna milk this one, Morgan? I need you for jets for tomorrow and this thing isn’t even ours.’ I noticed that the Maintenance Commander was riding with him, so I extended some military decorum instead of saying what I wanted to say. I said, ‘I just have the over-g inspection to do and it’s finished, sir.’ He says, ‘How long’s that going to take?’ I said, ‘No more than a couple hours.’ He rolls his eyes and says, ‘Bring me the aircraft forms.’ He looks ‘em over and says, ’This jet’s in fine shape. Just sign off and let’s get going.’ I tell him, ‘Sir, this guy over g’d with a lot of weight on board. I’ve got to pull those panels.’ He says, ‘That wasn’t a request, Airman Morgan.’ I correct him, ‘It’s Sergeant Morgan, sir.’ And he says, ‘I said Airman. You get my fucking point? I am ORDERING you to sign off on this plane.’ He’s standing right on top of me, screaming in my face. I could feel my fist tighten and I could see the punch shattering his cheek. Then I looked over at the Maintenance Commander. I’d never pencil-whipped anything before and I’d be damned if I’d start now. So then I just did it.”
“You hit him?” Adam said.
“No, I signed off on the plane.”
Adam had a sickening feeling that he knew the rest of the story. Tugg’s jaw was clamped and his face glistened in the ambient light.
“It went down on the return. I didn’t even know the Captain’s name. They paint it right on the side under the cockpit and the last thing I usually do before I sign off on a plane is write the name in my notes. Makes it more personal, you know? But I didn’t that time. All I had was the tail number, so I knew I was the last guy to sign off, which meant I was going before the board.”
Tugg straightened himself in his seat and peered out into the blackness.
