The Subway ; The Debt ; Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  “Thank you.”

  Pushing away from the desk, Davis ducked into a side stairwell. Taking the steps two at a time, she came out on the second floor a moment later, pausing to collect herself, determining which direction to go.

  Seeing the numbers ascend toward her right, she moved that direction, arriving outside of room 218 to find a man a few years younger than her already there and waiting. With sandy brown hair shorn tight, his skin was pale and pasty despite the sun outside, dark circles hanging under each eye.

  A walking billboard for sleep deprivation in the medical sector if there ever was one.

  “Good afternoon, Doctor,” Davis opened. “Thanks for meeting with me.”

  Extending his hand, the young man said, “Dr. Pierce, call me Tony.”

  “Talula Davis,” she replied, returning the handshake. “I understand you were the physician that tended to the gunshot victim earlier?”

  “I was,” Pierce replied. “Came in about forty-five minutes ago. Drop off, someone delivering him outside in the parking lot and speeding away.”

  Already knowing who it would have been and what they were driving, Davis only nodded.

  The information seemed to fit with the sort of people that would try and ram a law enforcement vehicle idling along the side of the road.

  “How bad was it?” Davis asked.

  “It was a gunshot wound,” Pierce replied, “which is never simple, but as they go, this one wasn’t too bad. The bullet struck him in the upper right portion of the chest, just missing his collarbone.

  “We were able to get the slug out and get the bleeding stopped, but it’s going to take a series of surgeries to get his scapula put back together and all the soft tissue damage cleaned up.”

  Pressing his lips tight for a moment, he shrugged, both hands still plunged into the front pockets of his white coat.

  “This is a trauma center. We’re here to stabilize them until they can get to Knoxville for that kind of thing.”

  Davis nodded in response. It reminded her a lot of what she was now doing, the way things generally worked being for her to control a situation, then call in for reinforcements from the city.

  “Why weren’t we alerted when he first came in?” Davis asked.

  “Honestly?” Pierce replied. “Because we didn’t come out of surgery until you called. Up until then, we didn’t know if he was a gunshot victim or the deceased.”

  Adding things up in her head, Davis pieced together what she was being told. Shifting her attention to the row of windows lining the second floor, sunshine fell across her face, a stark contrast to the chilled air surrounding them.

  In the parking lot below, she could see an elderly couple making their way inside, openly pointing and staring at her vehicle as they passed.

  “I take it that means he’s...” she began.

  “Unconscious? Yes,” Pierce replied, inferring where she was going with it. “Given the amount of blood loss he suffered and the damage from the bullet, he is highly sedated right now, will likely be that way for quite some time.”

  “So there’s no way...?” she asked, again letting her voice trail off, already knowing the answer to her question.

  “I’m afraid not,” the doctor replied. “I can have somebody call you the moment he wakes.”

  Contemplating that for just a moment, Davis cast the idea aside with a shake of her head.

  It was already known who the young man worked for and why he was there. The only real value he had in the short term was any information he might have been able to lend about where to find his employer.

  Now, all she could do was hope Tim had been more successful in his hunt.

  “That’s okay,” Davis replied, “but give a call up to Knoxville PD. Have them send down somebody immediately to take him into custody the second he wakes.”

  Chapter Sixty

  The second to last thing in the world I’d wanted to do was answer the phone. Seeing the number pop up on my caller ID, my core had noticeably clinched.

  For Lou to be calling so quickly meant she had likely struck out. The trip to the hospital had been a dead end, and she was circling back with me to see what I had.

  Would soon want to be getting us together, a third meeting being one I probably couldn’t escape from again.

  If I answered the phone, there would be no running solo any longer.

  Not answering meant I would have a sworn officer of the law knowing that I was in the area, that I had at least one weapon on me, that I had already used it once on the day.

  She also knew the reason I was in town, having to have figured out by now that it wasn’t exactly for sightseeing or a trip down memory lane.

  Of course she wanted to be riding shotgun, or more aptly for me to be riding shotgun, but she wasn’t wrong in wanting that.

  By all rights, that’s how things should be arranged.

  At the same time, that made my goal of finding the bastards that had harmed Uncle Jep and making them pay infinitely more difficult.

  With my thumb hovering over the pair of options on my phone, I let it ring a full half-dozen times before realizing the very last thing in the world I wanted to do and accepting the call.

  Right now, I knew Baxter had at least two young guys in a pickup that were armed and gunning for me. People like them were usually nothing more than window dressing, meaning there were others nearby as well, these being the sort that would have thought to plant a camera behind the cabin.

  Showing up to that place alone would be a mistake of tragic consequences.

  “Hi, Lou,” I said. Reclined in the front seat of my car, I stared at the laptop screen before me, a map on it, a blinking emblem showing me the exact endpoint of where the transmission was going.

  “Hi,” she said, her tone curt, her voice raised enough to be heard over the sound of the wind rushing into the car behind her. “Where are you?”

  Sensing what had happened already, I asked, “That bad, huh?”

  “Completely unconscious,” she replied. “Where are you?”

  Sighing, I looked down at the screen again, seeing that the signal was stationary, had not moved once in the twenty minutes I’d been monitoring it.

  “Motel parking lot,” I said, not bothering to mention that I was back there because it was the sole place in the area that I knew had wifi strong enough to reach the car. “You?”

  “Three minutes out,” she replied. “Stay right there. I’ll see you in a second.”

  Without saying another word, I thumbed the phone off and deposited it into the middle console. The driver’s side door cracked open and one foot on the ground, I kept my body reclined behind the wheel, an open bottle of coconut water in hand.

  My attention I left on the screen before me, not even bothering to look up as the passenger door wrenched open and Lou slid inside, the vehicle rocking beneath her weight.

  “What’s that?” she asked, motioning with her chin toward the screen.

  “Coconut water,” I replied. “Low in sugar, high in electrolytes. There’s another bottle in the back if you want some.”

  Letting out a low snort, Lou said, “Cute. The screen, genius.”

  Glancing up at her, I let her see a flicker of a smile before my features fell even again.

  “This is the location of where that camera behind the cabin is being broadcast to,” I said.

  Staring at it for a moment, Lou raised herself a few inches off the seat. Twisting toward the back, she pressed tight against my shoulder, straining to grab the second bottle of coconut water, before returning to her original position.

  “No shit?” she asked, twisting the top off the bottle and taking a drink.

  “No shit,” I replied. “I could walk you through the backstory of access points and reverse tracing and all that, but this is the punchline right here.”

  Continuing to work on the beverage, Lou stared on in silence. “What’s there?”

  “Don’t know,” I confessed. “I
’m assuming a crash pad for at least two, as many as four or five people.”

  “At least two, as many as four or five,” Lou repeated, staring at the screen before moving her focus outside, her eyes glazing as she took in the muted tones of the motel before us.

  In that position she stayed for almost a full minute, processing, saying nothing.

  “Where you at?” I eventually asked.

  “Right here,” she replied, her voice a touch detached.

  Wanting to hurry things along a bit, I asked, “So the hospital was a bust?”

  “Total,” she replied, nodding stiffly. “You didn’t kill him, but you did some damage.”

  Internally, I tried to weigh whether or not I was glad to hear that, ultimately deciding I didn’t care either way.

  The young man was trying to kill us, had been at least tangentially involved in killing Uncle Jep.

  Whatever came his way, he had signed up for.

  “You know,” Lou said, her gaze still pointed straight ahead, “when you grow up on a reservation, things are different.”

  Not sure how to respond, even if I should respond, I merely sat and stared out, both of us locked in parallel gazes, focusing on nothing.

  “It’s like a world within a world,” she said. “You’ve got all the usual trappings as everybody else – growing up, figuring yourself out, what you want to do, who you want to be with – but there’s this other layer that exists as well.

  “Our own laws, our own system of governance, of identity. It can be hard. Damn hard. Dealing with all that, putting up with the racism, the societal expectations.

  “As if growing up wasn’t enough already.”

  To my side, I could see her glance my way. Not sure where any of this was going, why she was choosing now to share it, I matched her look, saying nothing.

  I had lost my parents young, had served in the military. I was probably the closest she would find to someone that hadn’t walked the very same path she had that understood what she was getting across.

  But now was not the time to say as much.

  “That’s why I went into sports,” she said. “Poured everything I had into it, took it as far as I could, years past where most people do. Long beyond what most ever even thought I could.”

  All of this was news to me. I remembered her being a good athlete – that’s why we had met in the first place – but where it took her afterward, I hadn’t a clue.

  At some point, I would have to look into it.

  For now, I just nodded.

  “Once that was over, the next logical step was this,” she said. “I wanted to help, both my communities, on the reservation and off of it. I didn’t want to spend a decade in school, so this seemed like the next step, especially given the lineage I had, the debt I felt like I owed...”

  She paused. Uncertain if it was to look for some form of confirmation, sign that I was still following her, I nodded again.

  Even if I had no idea what exactly she’d been alluding to in those last few lines.

  “But then...”

  Once more she went quiet, this one much more poignant, more pronounced, than the previous times. Recognizing it as such, I didn’t bother to give any visual cues, didn’t even let on as if I was there, merely staring straight ahead.

  Where this was coming from or going, I hadn’t the slightest.

  What I did know was there was an edge in her voice, a steely resolve that matched what I’d been feeling since the moment the initial shock of my call to Uncle Jep first vanished.

  “Shit sure doesn’t end up the way you think it will, does it?”

  It took a moment for the words to resonate, to get inside, to register in the way it was clear she wanted them to.

  Once they did, there was no mistaking their meaning.

  Turning to face her, I asked, “Is that you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”

  Matching my look, she slowly shifted her eyes to look at the screen still open on my lap.

  “Let’s go pay these assholes a visit.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  The door to Vic Baxter’s office closed with barely a sound, nothing more than the metal frame tapping into place. Low enough that he barely heard it, there was no way anybody on the floor below could have, the flow of work continuing at the same pattern as always.

  In one corner, a pair of men unloaded fresh frames off a press, the metal cutouts looking like stick figures from afar, just barely referencing the assault rifles they would soon become.

  Opposite them, welding torches were in the process of doing that very thing, a shower of glowing sparks hurtling in every direction, miniature fireworks spraying across the concrete floor of the warehouse.

  In between, a host of other things, everything from munition testing to product packaging, a tidy operation tucked away deep in the woods.

  At a glance, it could have been an auto body shop. Or a textile factory. Or someplace that made something as basic as license plates.

  Nothing but a blue-collar organization providing skilled labor employment to a location in dire need of it.

  At least, that was how Baxter liked to spin it, more or less the very summation he wrote on his business applications and tax returns every year.

  Long ago, his brother Eric had discovered that was the key. Don’t try to hide things. Don’t pretend the place doesn’t exist, that anybody making a wrong turn down a back Georgia road couldn’t plainly see the place.

  Certainly don’t go as far as to avoid getting the proper permits or paying taxes. Hell, that was what had brought down the greatest gun runner in the last century, evasion being what finally got Al Capone a cozy room in Alcatraz.

  The secret was all in the framing, Eric had said. In putting everything out in the open, but not just hoping that the light hit it in a way so as to obscure the details.

  To make sure they were always the ones controlling the light, making it hit exactly as they wanted.

  Standing just inside the door, Vic could hear the words of his brother echoing through his mind. Could see yet again the wisdom they contained, the foresight he’d had.

  Could also feel the urgency in getting him out of prison, the time they had remaining before his hearing ticking down.

  Pulling his gaze from the floor below, he returned to his desk, the interior of the office subdued with the door shut. In the air, he could still smell the remnants of his lunch in the waste receptacle, his appetite having vanished.

  In its place was a large knot, a direct consequence of the call he’d gotten an hour earlier, the frantic young man on the other end.

  Sending the boys was a mistake. He saw it now, could understand the agitation in Radney Creel’s voice when they spoke.

  He thought he was sending reinforcements, someone that Creel could use as bait, drawing Scarberry out into the open.

  In reality, he had sent down three young men with inflated biceps and matching egos, three guys that had taken all of a half hour to make a mess of things.

  Settling himself down into his chair, he leaned forward, his elbows resting on the edge of the desk. Pressing his middle and index finger into the soft skin of his temples, he pushed them in tiny circles.

  Things were spiraling. In his urgency to get to Scarberry, to make sure Eric was best situated, he had gotten hasty. He had failed to make a full calculation, threatening to derail their entire operation.

  He couldn’t allow that.

  Getting Eric out at the expense of everything else was a cost too great, something neither of them would ever condone.

  Pulling his right hand away from his temple, Baxter took up his cell phone. Scrolling down a few spots in his call history, he pressed send, putting the phone to his face.

  A moment later, the same voice he’d spoken to earlier came over the line, this time with even more disdain than before.

  “Yeah?” Creel answered, distraction plain.

  “I take it they’ve arrived,” Baxter replied, v
ery much a statement and not a question.

  For a moment there was no response, just the sound of heavy footsteps, presumably as he relocated within the house. Much as Baxter had shut the door before phoning, they both knew this was a call neither wanted to have overheard.

  “Two of the three did,” Creel said, his voice dripping with vitriol.

  His eyes sliding shut, Baxter rotated his left hand from his temple to his forehead, pushing a sigh out through his nose.

  “How ugly?”

  “A mess,” Creel replied. “The third one was shot trying to run Scarberry off the road. They left him on the front door of the damn hospital, still breathing.”

  Pressing his lips tight together, Baxter managed to mute a string of profanity.

  “I thought I told you to handle them?”

  Ignoring the statement, Creel said, “And did I mention he was shot by Scarberry, as he was riding in a deputy cruiser?”

  This time Baxter’s lips peeled back, revealing his teeth locked into a snarl. Pushing himself upright from the desk, he began to pace, his heels landing heavy on the polished wooden floor.

  “Again, I thought I told you-“

  “What?” Creel snapped. “You think I told them to do that? To go out and open fire on law enforcement in broad daylight and then come back here?”

  It was the first time in their years together that Creel had ever said a cross word back to Baxter, a transgression he would deal with soon enough.

  In the meantime, they had more pressing matters to concern themselves with, things that affected a lot more than a simple phone call.

  “They’re there now?” Baxter asked. When they had called earlier, they had certainly fudged a few of the details, had made it seem that there were some complications and they were circling back with Creel for further instruction.

  Never would he have given out the location of the safehouse if he’d known what they’d done.

  On the shooting, or the disposal of their cohort at the hospital.

  Stopping in front of the picture window overlooking the floor below, Baxter raised a hand to his scalp, rubbing it over the top. The three young men had been selected because of who they were and what they represented, a trio of hard workers and capable individuals, given a special assignment in reward for their service.