by A. C. Fuller
My heart was still somewhere back on the highway, but right then it felt like it was getting run over by a tractor, because I knew it was about a guy.
But it wasn't about a guy.
"I may have called DHS on you."
"May have?"
"I did. I did call them and, before you say anything, let me just say that I'd had some wine, I was angry and stewing on our marriage, and—
"What did you tell them?"
"That you'd been acting funny lately, that I'd seen Al Qaeda sites in your search history, that you were planning a trip to Kuwait."
It's ridiculous, I know, but all I felt was relief. "Kuwait is a U.S. ally," I said. "You should have said Iran."
"I was thinking on my feet, or trying to. It was a moment of temporary insanity. It was stupid, and I regret it."
"What else did you tell them, Greta?"
"That The Barker was a front and that you used the money to support secret terrorist cells in Oregon and Washington State."
I was almost laughing with joy. Both because the "something else" hadn't been a serious relationship and because the words coming out of her mouth were so un-Greta like. She barely followed current events and almost never "acted out" her anger. I was about to say something clever when she said, "Alex, there's something else."
And that's when I knew. If the first something else was reporting me to the Department of Homeland Security, the second something else had to be a guy. When breaking bad news to people, we tend to save the worst for last. Not for their benefit, but for our own.
"Are you serious with someone?" I asked. "It's okay if you are."
She said, "Not serious, but yes, I've been seeing people. Just coffee, mostly."
I'd stopped listening. "Okay" was the last thing it was, but of course I'd known this day might come since the day she'd kicked me out eight months ago, and I'd expected it for the last two. "Okay" was a bald-faced lie, and it damn near killed me to say it.
I hadn't rented that high-tech apartment after all. Instead, I'd rented a loft in the Northgate neighborhood and, for the first few months of our separation, we'd met for coffee every Sunday afternoon. We'd decided on a soft-separation, where we'd keep in regular contact as we wound down our marriage. Of course, that was what she wanted, not what I wanted. But I'd agreed to it because it was my only option. My plan all along had been to get her back.
But after a few months of regular meetings, in which I tried to enact the various lists I'd been reading online, she started canceling every once in a while, coming up with excuses not to meet me. Every time she canceled, I tried to find out why as casually as possible. Don't Be Pushy.
"Oh, something come up at work?" I'd ask. I knew how pathetic it was, and I knew that she knew, as well. I may as well have said, "Are you canceling so you can hit the town with someone else who's better than me in every way?"
That's when I started checking her social media. She'd never been an active user but, all of a sudden, the frequency of her posts starting picking up. "Wow!" a recent post had exclaimed, "I think I'm learning to appreciate classic cars. Can you see me in a 1965 Mustang powered by lithium ion batteries?" Greta hated cars, so if she was at the Seattle Electric Muscle Car Show, someone had convinced her to go, and I'd imagined the worst.
The next week, she posted a picture of Lake Washington on Facebook. It was the view from our apartment, which looked east across the lake into Bellevue. On clear days, Mount Rainier appeared to be rising up out of the floor of our living room. Greta posted a photo of the view at least once a month, usually with an inspirational quote, but sometimes with a little note about what she was eating or thinking. As in, "Mango-chia smoothie and this," with a photo of the morning sky and Mount Rainier in the distance. As corny as it sounds, I used to love those posts. Anyway, she'd posted a photo with the caption, "Leftover linguini for breakfast? Don't mind if I do." In the foreground of the picture, which I knew she'd taken from the little loveseat in our breakfast nook, was a recycled cardboard container. The kind you get for leftovers at a fancy restaurant that would never use Styrofoam. I assumed it was the pasta. But on the corner of the box, on the far right of the picture, I could see a tiny gold sticker with the word "Altura" printed in a cursive font.
Altura was probably the best Italian restaurant in Seattle, one I'd been asking her to try for two years. When we were still together, she'd been "trying to cut down on gluten," so we'd never gone, despite my assurances that they could do an entire tasting menu without a bite of pasta. As soon as I'd seen that sticker, that photo, I started picturing the guy lying in my bed who had convinced her to go there the night before.
"Alex, did you hear me?" I'd closed my eyes and Greta's voice brought me back to myself, back to the grocery store. Even though she'd said it wasn't serious, the thought of her dating wrecked me. I couldn't say anything, and it turned out I wouldn't have the chance because Greta said, "Alex, I'm sorry I gave those quotes, I really am. And I'm sorry about James. And we can talk about this again. There's just…too much happening right now. And I know you're going through a lot. But I have to go."
I sat there for a few seconds after she hung up, just wishing I'd thought of something better to say.
I thought of finding Quinn, but instead I did what of course I would do. What I couldn't help but do. I clicked the little email icon on the apps bar at the bottom of my screen. I hadn't even intended to do so, it was just habit. And, once the messages started pouring in, I couldn't stop myself from scanning them. Mostly, it was the usual stuff. People following up on business, spam advertising penis enlargement pills or timeshares, a few requests from Nigerian princes who needed my help.
I noticed Quinn out of the corner of my eye and I was about to close the laptop.
Then I saw the message.
It was from one of Innerva's old addresses, one I hadn't seen in a while. The message had no subject and no content other than an mp3 that automatically displayed as a player within the email. The duration of the mp3 was listed at 31:13.
Quinn must have seen the look on my face because she said, "Alex, what?"
I ignored her and hit "play." I still had the headphones on and James's voice was the first thing I heard. "Hey sweetie, can you hear me?"
Then Innerva's voice: "I can hear you."
James's voice: "Good. I wish you were here, though."
Innerva's voice: "Me, too."
James: "I'm sorry you're sick."
I was starting to wonder what the hell this was, and why Innerva had sent it to me, when I heard the voice of Benjamin Huang, the editor at The Gazette: "Can we get on with this you two love muffins? Where's the drive?"
Quinn was standing over me, pulling the headset off. "Alex, why is your email open? You said only a call. If they're looking at your email, they'll be able to tell you opened it."
I shut the laptop. "Let's get out of here, Quinn. You need to hear something."
Chapter 16
While we were inside the store, enormous dark clouds had rolled in, greying out the sky. As we huddled together in the Thunderbird, fat raindrops began hitting the roof with a heavy patter that might have been pleasant under different circumstances.
I turned the audio all the way up on my computer, but the rain made it difficult to hear, so I held the computer up to ear level and we both leaned in as I started the recording over.
Since I'd already heard the first minute or so, I watched Quinn's expression as it played. Her face was blank until Huang's voice came through the speakers. "Was that Huang?" she asked after he'd spoken. "I've never met him."
I paused the audio. "Yes."
"Then this was recorded the morning of the shooting?"
"That's what I'm assuming, but why wouldn't Innerva have explained that in the email?"
"Innerva never likes to say more than she has to."
She was right about that. "I guess it could have been recorded another time. There's no way of knowing for sure."
"You i
diot. Date and time of recording are encoded on the mp3. I can check it later on my machine."
"Huang's voice sounds a little further away, right?"
"Yes, and Innerva's voice sounds a little clearer than James's. I imagine that James called Innerva from inside Huang's office, then set the phone on the desk or something, and Innerva was recording the whole time from her end."
That made sense, actually. I'd been wondering why James would have gone to the office alone, since he and Innerva did things together most of the time. And it was clear from the first few seconds of the audio that he'd wanted her there, too. I choked up unexpectedly. I'd spent a lot of time imagining how scared James would have been in the final moments, and it comforted me slightly to know that he'd had Innerva there with him in a small way.
But my comfort disappeared as we listened to the rest of the recording.
The initial talk went pretty much how I'd imagined it after finding out about the shooting, except that I'd had no idea Innerva had been on speakerphone. James took out the drive and showed it to Huang. James did most of the talking, but Innerva made a couple comments, mostly declining to answer questions Huang asked about the drive. After a few minutes, Huang called in Deirdre Bancroft.
From there, Innerva led much of the conversation, which made sense. James was smart, but, like I said, he wasn't big on confrontation. Years ago, James had been a stutterer, but he'd worked through it with speech therapy and dietary changes. But he never became fully confident in his speech, and, back when we were partners, I'd handled most of the unpleasant conversations. I had a hard time picturing him negotiating with a guy like Huang.
After discussing some technical specs that I didn't understand, and getting off on a small tangent about old equipment, they got down to business.
Huang: "I can help you. I know a local guy who likely has what you need."
Deirdre: "Won't the data be all scrambled to hell, though? I mean, if there's even any readable data on this thing, it's not just gonna convert to Microsoft Word."
Innerva: "Let us worry about that. We just want to know what, if anything, is on there. We can unscramble whatever comes off the thing. We just don't have the hardware. Huang, what do you want for your help?"
Huang: "A story, what else?"
James: "What kind of story?"
Huang: "A big one. Something clickable. Something gossipy, and nothing about my boss."
Apparently, Deirdre had left without saying goodbye because, after a brief pause, James asked Huang a question: "Where'd you find Deirdre? She seems to know her stuff."
Huang: "Through UNLV. She just started a PhD program in computer science."
I paused the recording and said, "The news reported that Deirdre's body was found in Huang's office."
Quinn nodded and started the recording again. There were a few moments of silence, and I imagined James sitting there, fidgeting awkwardly and looking for an excuse to leave now that their business was concluded.
Huang: "What was that?"
Before James could answer, we heard what sounded like a man's voice, far away, shouting something inaudible.
Quinn asked, "Does this thing go any louder?"
It didn't, so we both leaned in, ears pressed up against the speakers on either side of my laptop.
There were a few more seconds of silence, then we heard a shot. Far away, like a tiny little pop. Two shots, actually, in rapid succession.
Huang: "Those were gunshots."
James: "What?"
Innerva: "What's going on?"
Huang: "From the back."
Innerva: "James, who's there? What's happening?"
Next came a few muffled sounds: some shuffling, a thud, a bump against the desk, maybe. Then another shot, closer this time.
James: "What's going on?"
Next came a scream that got louder over the course of a few seconds. Then Deirdre's panicked voice: "Shooting. They shot Gil."
James: "What?"
Innerva: "What's happening?"
Deirdre screamed again. Then everything was silent for a few seconds. I imagined Baxter stalking through the offices, looking for his next victim. Then it struck me. Deirdre had said "They shot Gil."
Unless I was mishearing, there had been more than one shooter.
After a few more seconds, there was a gasp, then another shot. A huge, explosive gunshot followed by a thud, possibly James hitting the floor. Another scream, which only lasted a half a second because two more shots silenced it. That must have been Deirdre.
A second later, Huang's voice: "Who the hell are—"
He was silenced by another shot, but there was shuffling near the phone. After another shot, everything went quiet.
The line crackled. I looked at Quinn, who had tears in her eyes, but I was too shocked to cry. It's a stupid analogy, but I felt like I did when Buster Douglas beat Mike Tyson, like something I knew to be a fact—that Tyson was unbeatable—had been proven false, thus shattering my view of reality. But the shattering was so sudden that my mind couldn't adjust to it in real time. Instead, the normal world took on a creeping sense of unreality. I was beyond shocked. I was treading water, barely able to comprehend what was happening. I'd been right about James being frozen with fear. I'd been right about how parts of the conversation had gone down.
But I'd been wrong about everything else.
I was about to pause the recording when I heard another voice. A woman's voice. A generic, corporate, plastic voice that meant bright red hair and a blue pantsuit: "Is that the drive?"
I stopped the recording to explain to Quinn that the voice belonged to Holly, the woman from the airport. As I did, I braced internally for the "I told you so" that was sure to come, and that I deserved. But Quinn didn't say "I told you so." She just nodded knowingly, as though the recording had proven her version of the shooting correct.
Quinn hit the play button again.
No one answered Holly's question, but then Holly spoke again: "This is it."
Then a sound, which I imagined to be the drive sliding across the desk.
Holly: "Leave everything else as is?"
There were two or three seconds of silence, then another voice. A new voice: "Yes. Back door. Let's go."
I'd been expecting the voice of Kenny, as my mind was adjusting to Quinn's version of the shooting and had placed Kenny there next to Holly. But the voice wasn't Kenny's. It was another woman. From the sound of it, she'd been further away from the door than Holly, maybe standing in the doorway or just outside it as Holly picked up the drive.
It was hard to tell, but I heard the new woman's voice as a little bit Southern. It had the same flat, robotic quality that Holly's had, but she'd swallowed the "or" in the word "door," so it sounded like, "dough." The voice also sounded a little lower than Holly's, a naturally husky voice, like she was speaking from her belly through a throat worn by cigarettes. But not much like that. Just a little, and it was only noticeable next to Holly's almost perfectly robotic, nondescript voice.
Quinn and I sat, listening to the crackle. Three minutes, then five, then seven. The next thing we heard were the sirens. One at first, slowly getting closer. Then another behind it. I knew from the news that Captain Payton had been first on the scene, and I imagined her tall, stocky body behind the wheel of her cruiser, racing down the road. About a minute after the call had first picked up the sirens, footsteps came into the room, then a quiet voice, speaking under her breath, that I believed was Captain Payton's: "Oh, no."
The next thing I heard was a beep, maybe a police radio or phone that had been left on. I thought I heard a voice after that, but I couldn't be sure. I leaned my head up to the speaker, but Quinn grabbed my chin and turned me toward her before I heard anything else.
"Alex, we need to get out of here. Now."
"Shouldn't we listen to the rest of the—"
"We will. Of course we will. But we're not safe. Alex, this is the Zapruder film. You have no idea how big this will get,
and, whoever those people in the airport were, they're still after us. Still. They could be watching us right now. They could be—"
"Quinn, wait a sec." She was talking fast and shooting glances out the windows, not quite frantically, but something close to it. The recording wasn't enough to tell us exactly what had happened, at least not without listening to it another five or ten times. But it was enough to prove beyond a doubt that Quinn had been right, at least partially.
Baxter hadn't been there. He'd had nothing to do with it. For someone like Quinn, who had lived her whole adult life with paranoid theories swirling around in her head, having one of them proved right must have been overwhelming. And my head was spinning, too. Because the recording had answered one or two questions, but raised a thousand others. "Just wait a sec," I said, thinking fast. "If they'd tracked us here, and wanted us dead, we'd be dead."
"First," Quinn said, "we need to get that email off your server." She grabbed my laptop, slid a zip drive into it, copied the file, then saved it to my hard drive and deleted it from my email.
"Why was that necessary?" I asked.
"If they're already in your email, we're dead now that they know we have this mp3. If they're not, and they get in later, I've erased any trace that you received this. Any trace that can be accessed remotely, that is. If they find us and check your laptop, well…"
I closed the laptop, took a deep breath, and looked Quinn in the eyes. At a different time, in a different situation, I would have been mesmerized by her eyes. They were full of so much vigor, intelligence, and unpredictability. To my surprise, she met my eyes and didn't say anything. We stared at each other for I don't know how long. Thirty seconds, at least. Then I noticed her eyes making slight movements. Up, right, down, left. Up, right, down, left. And when she spoke I realized she'd been walking the thinking square in her mind.
"Here's the plan," she said. "Did you leave anything at the motel?"
"No."
"We're going back to Tudayapi's. We're going to use this recording to convince her to help us. We have to get the data off this drive, if there's anything on it. I think she wanted to help us, but was afraid. This recording will make her more afraid, but she's a good guy, so it'll also make her want to help us. If we can convince her, we get the data, we leave this town, and we don't come back. We need to get somewhere safe, listen to this recording again, and figure out what to do."
