Expiration Date

by Eric Wilson

  Naturally, Clay would still have freedom to choose his course and stand firm against their schemes, but how long could he rack up guilt before collapsing beneath its weight? No doubt, the deaths of Summer Svenson and the Coates couple had been persuasive. A young boy, though. That would push Ryker to the limits.

  At thirteen years of age, Kenny Preston was on the small side. Easy prey. They’d shadow his activities, applying pressure and fear, then draw him into a final trap.

  Over Wednesday and Thursday, Kenny sensed he was being watched. He saw movement from the corner of his eye, heard scuffles on the sidewalk behind his bike and down alleyways. Was he making these things up? Creating some summer excitement?

  This morning on his route Kenny heard a car growling at him through the fog.

  Okay, that was just silly. Blame it on his overactive imagination; as the only child of a single mother, he relied on it for adventure. Of course, he hadn’t forgotten about his latest treasure hidden in the drainpipe, but his mother had been keeping him on a short leash. As if she knew there were something bad out there, something waiting for him.

  I’m not afraid. Spymaster Kenny’s no stranger to danger.

  Kenny had been spending most of his time with Gussy. The puppy grew bigger by the day, nibbling on everything. Dribbling too. Mom said Gussy could sleep on Kenny’s bed once she was housebroken. Until then, it was best if she slept outside, which meant the little girl needed a doghouse.

  Kenny gathered scrap plywood from the garage. He had a saw, a hammer, a Maxwell House can full of nails. And forty-five dollars saved up.

  So he’d lost his jacket. It being summertime and all, he wouldn’t need a new one till school started. Maybe Clay Ryker still had the old one. He hadn’t seen or heard from Clay since Sunday’s call. The dude was probably harmless. Still, better safe than sorry—that’s what Kenny’s mom always said.

  “Mom, I need to grab some stuff from the hardware store.”

  “You know I don’t like you going out at midday. The traffic.”

  “I’ll be careful. I’ll use the crosswalks.”

  “Can’t it wait?” She was slicing onions and carrots, then stirring them into a pot of simmering chicken broth. “I could drive you down later.”

  “I’m a teenager, Mom. All my friends get to ride around by themselves.”

  “I can’t control what other mothers let their kids do.”

  Kenny eased alongside her. He knew she’d clamp down if he let his attitude slide. Better to work together. Do a little sweet-talkin’.

  “Promise to play Scrabble with you after dinner.”

  “Kenneth, are you trying to bribe me?”

  “I just need a few things for Gussy’s doghouse. Won’t take long.”

  “Scrabble? You promise?”

  He crossed his heart, wore his most sincere expression.

  “You’ll go there and straight back?”

  “Is that a yes?”

  She swatted his backside with a hand towel. “Go before I change my mind.”

  Clay couldn’t believe his luck. Or was it divine intervention?

  There was Kenny Preston, up on the pedals, riding through the crosswalk.

  Calls to the newspaper, Internet searches, visits to Nickel’s Arcade, talks with Oaklea school officials—every effort to track down Kenny had come up empty. He’d called Kenny’s number twice more, but he was sure the Prestons had caller ID and refused to answer unknown callers.

  Stuck at a red light at Sixth and Ivy, Clay stared through the windshield.

  I’ll spook him if he sees me. Maybe I’ll catch him as he gets off the bike.

  Turning right, Clay moved to the curb on Sixth. He idled the car, watched the bike cross over train tracks, pass the U.S. Bank and small gift shops. He edged back into traffic in second gear, following until Kenny parked the bike outside Ace Hardware.

  Please, not here again. I don’t even want to think about old Mitchell Coates.

  Kenny changed his mind. This was a perfect chance to check on his treasure. He threw a leg back over the mountain bike and sped from the hardware store over another set of tracks. Swishing down through dry grass, he startled a snake. He ditched the bike, looked around, crawled into the drainage pipe.

  Pebbles bit into his knees. Flies buzzed around a dead salamander.

  He reached his fingers into the hiding spot, the hollow bubble in the metal, and felt the wooden tube roll away. He tried again and gripped the smooth surface.

  He had it.

  Spymaster Kenny squatted near the iron grate. Fearless, he ignored the wind that rustled through the grass outside and eyed the cork plugging the tube’s end.

  Once and for all, he would reveal the awful secret.

  The Nazis’ cause would crumble, their horrors would be revealed, and his girlfriend in the Resistance would come running into his arms.

  The cork resisted his fingernails. He turned to his pocketknife for help. After a small squeak, the cork popped free and released a dank odor. The upturned tube spilled a stone figurine into the spymaster’s hand, unlike any he’d ever seen. He wiped it with his finger, noticed it was a king from a chessboard.

  Regal, slender, and black. Topped by an ornate cross.

  “Kenny.”

  He jolted. His eyes panned down the drainpipe and saw a shadow blocking his only way out. He pressed back against the grate.

  “Kenny, I’m not trying to scare you.” Clay Ryker’s voice reverberated along the pipe’s expanse. “Can we just talk?”

  “What do you want? Why’re you tracking me?”

  “You were riding across the street. Am I supposed to ignore you?”

  Kenny clutched the king in his hand. “I’ve heard that car following me in the mornings, heard it with my own ears. Sounds like a growl.”

  “I drive a tan Duster, and it barely even purrs.”

  Kenny smiled, despite his distrust. “Then whose car is it?”

  “That’s why we need to talk. I think you might be in danger. Do you know any reason someone would come after you? Any reason at all?”

  Kenny’s pulse pounded in his neck, and the stone chess piece felt like ice in his hand. He pried his fingers apart, stared down at the black figurine. Was someone after this? Had they seen him take it from the train? That mysterious old lady had tried to warn him away, as though she knew something he didn’t.

  “I found it fair and square.”

  “Found what?” Clay asked.

  Kenny looked up. Why had he blurted that out?

  “Is that a king you’ve got there? It’s beautiful.”

  Kenny thought of throwing the object as far as possible or of shoving it back into the hiding spot. Instead, as he looked down the length of the drainpipe, he met Clay’s eyes and found nothing but genuine concern. Only a few other men had given him such a look, and only his uncle who lived up the McKenzie River had done so more than once.

  “Listen, I’ll leave you alone,” Clay said. “I’m going back out, but I’ll wait for a minute in case you wanna talk. If nothing else, you can have your coat back. It’s in my car.”

  “The one that purrs?”

  Clay grinned. “That’s the one. I’ll be outside.”

  Alone for a moment, Kenny slipped the king back into the oak tube, plugged it with the cork, slipped it into his pants. He longed for the attention of a father. Sure, his mom went out of the way for him, but what would it be like to have a man around?

  Kenny felt his Adam’s apple jump, the first time he’d ever experienced such a thing. His Mom was right; he was getting older, maturing into a man—like Joshua in the Bible. And a man would deal with this situation head-on.

  Time to be strong and courageous.

  “Anyway, Mom’s gonna freak if I don’t get back soon,” he whispered to himself. “May as well listen to what this dude’s got to say.”

  On his way home, Kenny replayed Clay’s morbid warnings. The man had tried to sound calm but couldn’t hide the intensity
in his voice. He meant every word. He wanted Kenny to stay home and do nothing unusual or risky, particularly on Sunday. He even asked permission to swing by on that day to check if everything was okay.

  And for some reason, Kenny agreed. He bought into Clay’s every word.

  Why not? It was basic eighth-grade math. All Kenny had to do was add up the note he’d delivered to Clay, plus the thing he’d discovered on the train, then multiply that by this suspicion that he was being spied on.

  As Kenny came in through the garage, little Gussy yapped at his ankles, and his mother chided him for being late. He said he was sorry. Tried to act normal. Played Scrabble with her that evening and even used his tiles on a triple-word score to spell phantom. Mom still won, but it was his highest score ever.

  He ruined everything, though, when he overreacted to her suggestion.

  “Kenny,” she said, “you’re a growing boy with lots of energy. I have an idea for this Sunday. Of course I’d expect you to be careful, but I already talked to Uncle Terry. What if we drove out to his place after church and went inner-tubing?”

  “On the McKenzie?”

  “It’s only a stone’s throw from his back door. You’d have a ball.”

  Under normal conditions, Kenny would’ve whooped and hollered, but with Clay’s warnings stamped into his mind, his suspicions had come alive.

  “Are you sure, Mom? Isn’t it kinda dangerous out there?”

  “Don’t remind me. I know it’s hard for you not having a man around, and I’m trying to be better about not always fretting over you.”

  “Maybe we should skip it. Maybe some other time.”

  “Kenny?” Tears shimmered in his mother’s eyes. “I thought you’d be excited about this.” She stared at him with a dumbfounded expression, then rose to the kitchen sink and started on a stack of dishes. Her back was turned to him, but Kenny thought he heard sniffling.

  In a rush of guilt and sadness and anger, he hurried down to his room.

  17

  In the Wreckage

  Clay obsessed about the paperboy’s well-being to the point of losing sleep. Recently the old nightmares had been creeping back in, hosted by blank-eyed cadavers and watery ghosts.

  He confiscated a bottle of Baileys Irish Cream from his mother’s cabinet over the hooded range, slipped into the darkness on the back porch, and filled a shot glass.

  Took a gratifying sip.

  The liqueur coated his throat with creamy warmth, heightened his introspective tendencies. He turned the shot glass in his hand; he had picked it up as a souvenir while on a basketball road trip with the University of Wyoming.

  His junior year. Back when he was shooting well, still had the touch.

  They were in Nashville playing Vanderbilt’s vaunted team. Vandy was pulling away. Early in the fourth quarter, Wyoming made a comeback. They battled to within seven points. Their center scored again, then blocked a shot on the other end and launched the ball downcourt for a fast break. Clay Ryker streaked to meet it, took it for an easy lay-up, and got fouled.

  At the free throw line, he had a chance to cap off this remarkable turnaround. To pull them within two. A one-possession ball game. The ref blew the whistle, handed him the ball. The crowd jeered, but he had learned long ago to feed off this collegiate bedlam, to convert the negative energy into focused determination.

  “C’mon, don’t be afraid.” The Vandy point guard was leaned down, hands on knees, taunting in low tones. “You can’t think about it. Just do it.”

  Like an incantation, these words conjured memories of the bridge. Clay blinked. In the stands, the faces morphed into wide-eyed blobs. Voices mocked and accused. His knees weakened. To corral his nerves, he spun the ball and lined up his fingers on the rough leather surface. Looked down.

  He was cradling the lifeless head of Bill Scott.

  He dropped the ball and, after the ref handed it to him again with a reproachful look, his opportunity to convert the three-point play turned into a new sort of nightmare. The shot fell short, scarcely nicking the rim; the team’s comeback failed; the ride home was the longest of his athletic career.

  Rolling the souvenir shot glass between his palms, Clay wondered if there were connections between his high school guilt, his college disappointment, and his present conflicts.

  So far, three sets of numbers, three dates. Three dead bodies.

  He ran his finger along the glass, sucked the sweet droplets from his skin, then made a decision to drink no more tonight. He walked down the steps, poured the remaining liquid into the weeds along the foundation. In an act that felt symbolic, he stepped beneath a pair of white oaks and flung the glass into the blackness on the other side of his parents’ fence.

  God, if there’s any hope of saving this Kenny kid, I’m gonna need some help.

  The prayer imbued him with a giddy sense of purpose. The numbers did have significance. They were a gift, which he would use. He would reach out to save a life—and perhaps his own in the process.

  As instructed, Dmitri Derevenko had been waiting at Portland’s Val-U-Inn. His pulse quickened when the phone on his hotel nightstand rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Brat Dmitri … Brother Dmitri, is that you?”

  Dmitri recognized Oleg’s choirboy voice, and he was amused by the salutation. In their language, brat meant brother, yet in English it meant pest. Perhaps this was a coincidence, but it highlighted the differences between two cultures. One could view a relationship as a bond, while another could view it as a nuisance.

  “Da. I’ve been here many days already. I think I’ll rot in this place.”

  “Don’t lose patience. We’re on the right path, moving forward.”

  “Is it wise, Oleg, to speak of this on the telephone?”

  Oleg’s wry laugh bubbled through the receiver. “In this country they think only of their own glories today. They take no time to appreciate the sacrifices of the past. Our goals are nothing but foolish talk here. The dreams of fools.”

  Dmitri grunted at this sentiment.

  “We’re making progress,” Oleg continued. “But the trail’s old, very faint.”

  “And the information I got from the former Nazi? Is it helpful?” Dmitri hoped the details given by the old Fort Lauderdale man were accurate. Both he and the victim had been grateful when the torturous questioning ceased.

  “Without it,” Oleg said, “we’d be at a dead end. Instead, we have hope.”

  “But you still haven’t found whom we seek?”

  “Nyet.”

  “I can’t wait any longer. Please … pozhaluista. I need a task, something to do.”

  “Of course, Dmitri. This is why I’ve called you. You’ll go to Engine 418 and recover the hidden object. It may be nothing important, a waste of time. On the other hand, it could be a vital link for tracing the imperial treasure and their bloodline.”

  Dmitri envisioned himself in Ekaterinburg, at the recently consecrated Cathedral-of-the-Blood. Built upon the ruins of the Ipatiev house where the massacre of the Tsars had occurred, the grand cathedral stood to honor the end of the Romanov dynasty.

  He contemplated what would happen if, weeks from now, the Brotherhood addressed the media from those same marble steps. Ekaterinburg had been named after Peter the Great’s wife, making it a place of destiny in Russian minds. What if Dmitri proved the bloodline still pulsed in human veins? Would Mother Russia open her arms to her long-lost son, embracing again civic, artistic, and religious expression?

  “A Tsar might yet live,” he stated.

  “Da. Our rightful ruler.”

  Mylisha closed out her register, locked the night deposit in the safe, and headed back to her apartment. She parked on the back end so that she had to cut across the grass to reach her stairway. Although this route was longer, it circumvented the still visible stains on Maple Street. Nevertheless, her eyes wandered in that direction.

  Inside, she programmed her CD changer to alternate disks after each son
g. With a bowl of Lochmead ice cream in hand, she kicked off her work shoes, plopped into her beanbag, and savored the first spoonful of chocolate and cookie dough bits.

  “Mmm.” She sighed.

  Music swooned from the speakers with romantic tenderness, then took the hand of a deeper groove and began a saucy jaunt around the room.

  She took another bite. “Mmmmm.”

  But no matter how hard she focused on tastes and sounds, she could not erase the desire to pick up her cell phone and dial Clay Ryker’s number. She wanted to believe it was something more significant, maybe more spiritual, than a simple desire to find closure with an old flame.

  Licking ice cream from the upturned spoon, she stared at her purple phone with its luminescent numbers. She tapped at the keys. Played a game on the screen.

  She didn’t hear so much as feel the heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

  She had been nursing a suspicion that Summer Svenson’s death had been more than a horrible accident, more than an act of violent irresponsibility. Someone had been aiming for Summer, Mylisha was sure of it.

  This same fear now played tricks with her mind.

  In a flash she was out of the beanbag, dropping her phone onto the floor, and tossed the spoon into the sink and the ice cream container into the freezer. She snatched a knife from the block on the kitchen bar. She peeked through the hole in the door, saw a white guy in his thirties, in dark canvas pants and a striped red and white polo shirt. The distorted image made him look like a cartoon character stuffed into a crystal ball.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Sergeant Vince Turney. Investigative consultant.”

  “What do you want?” She saw the man fumble to produce an official-looking badge. “How do I know that’s real? You can get ones just like it at the dollar store.”

  “Got a few questions for you, nothin’ more. Won’t take much of your time. Has to do with the vehicular homicide that happened right outside your building. I don’t think it was an accident, and I’m hopin’ you might be able to help me.”

  His confirmation of her suspicions prompted her to open the door.