by David Rich
Shannon’s tongue lay beside her head on the pillow. She was on her back. Eyes wide open. Someone had opened them and left them that way. Her throat was slit. A lot of blood had escaped that way, spread out below her shoulders like a cape. Another long cut ran from between her breasts down to her navel. She wore nothing but blood and that open-mouthed, open-eyed expression as if she was just trying to remember what she meant to say.
“Stop right there. Police. Hands up.” The voice came from the bathroom. The light came on, and two men in coats stepped out holding guns. I was only a few feet from the door. I put my hands up. The door opened behind me and another cop stepped in. I turned to look at him. “Don’t move,” the first voice said. But the new cop held his gun forward and made things easy for me. My left hand moved inside his right and grabbed his wrist. I yanked him forward by the arm at the same time my right grabbed his throat. He fired his gun in the direction of the other cops. I swung him around so he was between them and me, acting as a shield, but they ducked back into the safety of the bathroom. I pushed him toward the bed and lunged through the door and slammed it behind me.
They came through the door when I was halfway down the steps. I jumped the rail and landed easily on the smooth pavement next to the parking lot. Staying underneath the balcony, I sprinted away from the bottom of the stairs where they would come down. They were going to blame me for that shot and act as if I were armed. I had to make the end of the building before they could line me up. I was twenty yards from the end when the black pickup that had been idling pulled across my path. The tinted window came down, revealing the driver: Blondie. Smiling. Chewing gum. “Need a ride?”
“Back up,” I said. So he would be out of their sight. He squealed back, and I raced around to get in the other side. He peeled out of the parking lot. Two shots hit near us. A few seconds later, the sirens came on. He sped east on Jefferson, then north on Fifth. The sirens were not gaining on us. Blondie said, “When I saw those cops, I thought I better hang around. Thought I might have to come up there and get you out, man. Colonel McColl don’t want you wasting time with the police.” His voice sounded as easy and friendly as if we were old pals.
Tongue extracted. Throat sliced. Body slit. If he raped her, that would be the only part of the assault that wouldn’t be coming back at him. “Thanks,” I said. All the while he was careening down streets and cutting through parking lots at full speed, one hand on the wheel, one hand by his side so he could react if I tried anything. The sirens faded. “I should get back and pick up the jeep.”
“The colonel will have it brought to you.”
“Let me out.”
He looked at me for ten seconds that seemed like two hundred. I forced myself to hold his eyes, though I was sure it meant we were going to ram into a wall. His expression was skeptical, the way the eyes of a normal person, someone who isn’t a homicidal maniac, get when a woman or man suggests sex out of the blue: Is this too good to be true?
I said, “You think I’m just like you, don’t you?”
“We’re all soldiers, right. I got nothing against you yet.”
“That’s two insults. You thought I wouldn’t mind that you cut her up.”
He turned the other way and spit out his gum, and he turned the truck into a parking lot behind the ASU hospital and stopped.
“What the fuck, man, dead is dead. You want me to put on music while she chokes on my cock? What’s it to you?”
I got out of the truck and walked slowly around the back. He got out, and as he came close to me, I kicked him hard in the gut, slamming him back into the tailgate. I pounded a thick, heavy left to his temple. Nothing. Dan chuckled somewhere nearby with one of his earliest sayings: Who hits a numbskull in the head? Blondie hit me twice in the jaw and I staggered back. I kicked him in the gut again. I spun and kicked again, but this time he caught my foot and cranked it. That hurt. I twisted with his force and landed on my face. He kicked me in the head. I kicked him in the nuts; that was the right place for this foe. He screamed and pulled his gun as I hopped up. The sirens were getting close again. We could be spotted easily.
“Get back in the truck. I’ll kill you if you want, man, but after you find the money. Any way you want, man. I’ll even cut you up like your girlfriend if that’ll make you happy.”
My anger was making me stupid, but I could not stop it. I didn’t want to. Blondie was not going to be outpunched or outwrestled. I didn’t care. “Let’s finish it now,” I said. And I kicked the gun out of his hand and jumped on him. I pushed my thumbs hard against his throat. His hands gripped my wrists and pulled, but I leveraged my weight and kept pushing. Flashing lights reflected off the building. I looked up and caught a glimpse of a man, a spectator, gaping at us. Blondie used the moment to wrench one of my hands loose. He hit me hard enough to loosen my grip. Headlights swept across us. Blondie scurried for his gun. He leapt into the pickup. “Get in.”
I ran the other way, making it to a pathway between two buildings before the cop cars lurched into the lot. I slowed down as I approached the front of the buildings, where I could see two idling ambulances. The pain in my head came from the left and started just above the ear. Later I decided it was a blackjack.
18.
Detective Aviles kept telling me I was facing Death. Lieutenant Clarkson said it could be Life, if I cooperated. Death, could be Life, I think Death, with remorse could be Life and on it went: Life or Death. I was facing one or the other. Detective Death and Lieutenant Life. Clarkson asked if I suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, “Because if you do, you could get Life.”
“You mean if I cop to a sickness, you’ll let me live, but if I’m healthy, you’ll have to kill me?”
“Pretty much.”
“I’d rather be healthy and facing Death than sick and facing Life.”
Aviles marked that down. He could have been a CPA or an IBM office manager. Fit and trim and buttoned-down, he never laughed at any joke, never smiled, never frowned, never raised his voice. He was conducting an audit. The information would be entered into the proper columns, and if the columns reconciled, he would have the truth, and Death. Clarkson was older, sloppier, heavier, wearier. He did the moaning and made the faces and a few sarcastic remarks and showed impatience. The room was clean, as bright and spartan as an operating room. A table, three chairs. A large one-way mirror for the students or supervisors to observe. I was the patient. The surgery was exploratory and they could not explore beyond the end of their noses.
“This morning you paid a visit to a Gloria Waters. Why did you go there?”
“I was looking for my mother.”
“He wants his mommy.”
“She says she is not your mother.”
“You can imagine how that feels.”
“Is that why you killed Shannon?”
I kept expecting McColl’s men or Gladden’s men to burst in and set me on my way, but the only visitor was a female cop who handed over sheets of paper. Aviles read quickly through the info, returned to the table, and put the papers facedown. Clarkson was irritated by that. Aviles made some marks in his columns, then turned the sheets over and ran through my juvenile rap sheet. One conviction for possession of a concealed weapon, a knife. I explained that it was a Swiss Army knife. Clarkson said, “Those are sharp.” But as Aviles read through the list, something happened to Clarkson. He brightened up, looked at Aviles, waiting for him to pause and couldn’t wait long enough. He interrupted, “Are you Dan Waters’s son?”
How could I have missed this? “I am.”
“How is he? He’s been lying low these past few years. Haven’t seen him forever.”
“He’s good. Saw him recently.”
Clarkson turned to Aviles. “You know his old man. Helped out with that fraud case where the victim killed the sales guy.”
Aviles did not remember Dan with the same level of affection. “Yeah” was all he said. Clarkson regarded me with new interest. Suddenly, I was actually alive.
Aviles got back on track. For the twentieth time he asked, “Why did you shoot at us?”
“I had no gun. I didn’t shoot at anybody.”
“Why did you run?”
“I didn’t want to be killed.”
“We identified ourselves as police.”
“I didn’t want those to be the last words I ever heard.”
“You’re facing death now, but you’re not running, or telling the truth.”
The truth was flimsier than their preconceptions. I did not know Shannon’s last name or Blondie’s real name. I had met her alongside a road, though I told them it was in Las Vegas because I thought the idea of Fallon would occupy them for days. I was not going to mention McColl or tell them Dan was dead. Clarkson said, “We just want to verify parts of your story. Your aunt Marion says you left the store at seven. You claim you were with a Colonel Gladden, and we’re trying to confirm that, but right now you have no alibi for your time until you walked into the hotel room and we saw you. Give us something we can verify. Where did you stay in Las Vegas?”
“With a friend.”
“You know his name? First and last.”
“Steve Shaw. He’s a Treasury agent.”
Aviles leaned forward and scowled for the first time. “Don’t think you can bullshit me by bringing in the feds. This is murder. This is not a federal offense. The feds mean nothing here.”
“What’s the matter, Detective, they turn you down for a job?”
Clarkson laughed. Aviles glared at him, then stood up and left without a word. Clarkson said, “How do you spell Shaw?”
My third cell in a week, alone this time, sink and toilet, rest and peace. Too spent for tai chi or yoga or even summoning my vision, I stretched out on the bunk and tried to put order to my tumbling thoughts. McColl didn’t have Shannon carved as punishment for a failed mission. That piece of work was a message to me that he was in control, payback for my threat on the phone. The message I got was that if I found my mother, whether she could lead me to the money or not, McColl would kill her. I decided I would rather get to know her first and then wish she were dead in my own good time. McColl was in a big rush now and I could understand that, but I still could not understand why he took so long to get there. The urge to get out of jail and find the money shot through me and opened my eyes. I was not getting out, though, and my eyes closed again and I drifted away. I had been asleep two hours when the guard woke me up.
He marched me through the short cell block, quiet and still and seemingly empty in the early morning. The air was thick and the smell reminded me of a zoo. The large office was broken into a maze of cubicles by short white partitions. Most of the cubicles were empty. In the far right corner, Detective Aviles stood with Shaw. By the way Aviles was in charge of the nodding, I guessed Shaw must have been in charge of the talking. His back was to me. Shaw patted him on the shoulder and shook his hand, and Aviles, though exhausted, looked like he was satisfied. Most likely Shaw offered him some support at the Treasury if Aviles tried to apply again. Shaw turned to me and waved and shook hands with Detective Death again. Lieutenant Life must have gone home to sleep.
Outside, into the rising sun, back among the living. No longer facing Life or Death, just like everyone else again, facing the search for money. The early-morning traffic moved smoothly and peacefully. A bus loaded across the street and a woman in her forties had to pick up her pace to make it. The bus started to pull out, but she kept moving and the bus stopped again for her.
I told Shaw most of what happened since I hit him, leaving out Kate McFarlane and the comment from Gladden about not trusting him. Shaw asked a few questions in his casual, just-wondering sort of manner, things about McColl and the woman who wasn’t my mother and what Hal added to the picture. He barely seemed interested in the answers until he asked about what I would do when I found my mother. “Do you think you’ll recognize her?”
“Maybe she’ll recognize me,” I said.
“What do you want from her? What can she provide? If she knows where the money is, she has probably taken it. If she doesn’t know, then how can she help?”
“Could be a dead end. Do you have a better idea?”
“It’s just going to be really difficult. I mean, it’s the first time you’ve met since you were a little brat, and now you’re in a big hurry for some mysterious clue she probably doesn’t know she has. Hi, Mom, it’s me, Rollie, great to meet you—and by the way, where did Dad used to hide things? Things like large amounts of money.”
“Feelings. I’ll try to remember that.”
We got into his car, another SUV, and when he turned, the sun splashed through the windshield, showing the tired lines around his eyes. He put down the visor and grabbed his sunglasses from the dashboard. “Where to?”
“McColl has me tracked. The jeep has GPS. He seems on top of my every move, in the jeep or out.”
“I can lose him.”
“I doubt it. If you come with me, there’s a good chance you’ll wake up dead.”
“Don’t you want to lose him?” he said.
“Not yet.” I let him digest that. “Why bother? I don’t know what I’m looking for, so why waste time losing him?”
“Okay.”
“What I don’t get is why you don’t want to catch him. Where’s the big team of federal agents with their windbreakers and walkie-talkies and all that gear?”
He gave me one of his crinkly “Gee, I’m impressed with how sharp you are” smiles. “There’s a lot you don’t know about this operation, Rollie.”
“Like what?”
He licked his lips as if deciding whether to put me in the picture or not. He drove for a little while then pulled to the curb across from a Starbucks. “Will you be here when I come back?”
“Depends how long you take,” I said. “I take my coffee black.”
When he returned, he handed me the coffee and a muffin and he inhaled a pastry in about three seconds. “I missed dinner last night,” he said. That seemed to be enough preparation or dramatic buildup for him. “We want more than just McColl. He’s part of a large network. We don’t know how many of these money stashes there are around the country, but we believe there are at least five. But this is about more than just recovering money, Rollie. It’s about what they plan to do with it. We have to identify everyone involved and we have to catch them with enough evidence to make a strong case. Right now, we have nothing solid on McColl and your story about the man you call Blondie, his name is Peter Stenson by the way, won’t bring a murder conviction. We need more. We need you.”
“What do they plan to do with the money?”
“Did you hear any other names when they had you? Any familiar names? Active-duty personnel? Senior officers?”
“Nothing.” But I wanted to know more about that. I asked again: “What do they plan to do with it?”
He smiled again. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s better if I follow you, too.”
Without another word, he drove to the motel where I had left the jeep. As I got out, he said, “By the way, Rollie, you shouldn’t assume I’m the only one on this case.”
19.
I led the invisible caravan across the desert: a murderous, martial version of a reality show, Dead Man’s Treasure, or Where’s My Body Bag? I was the star and the sacrifice. I couldn’t be killed until the end, and then I must be killed. Anyone else was expendable along the way. “Mom, I’ve brought along some of my new friends to meet you. I guess I’ve fallen in with a rough crowd. They’re going to want to tear apart your life before they end it. And oh, yes, I must not forget, Dan planned it this way.” But Dan never intended for anyone to be collateral damage; he would just forget that people got hurt along the path to fulfillment of his schemes. I did not have his gift for ignoring consequences.
The last caravan I was in started in Karachi, Pakistan, and traveled north to the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. Rashid drove and I rode shotgun. Progress was slow,
just over a hundred miles a day. Food, electronics, cooking utensils, bedding, and clothing fell off the trucks at every stop. The rest was fuel and arms, both guarded more closely. Our rig was loaded with MREs. We prayed in the mornings before hitting the road, stopped three times a day for more prayers and to relieve ourselves. Then one more prayer in the evenings. All that peace and calm kept us from rushing toward our destination. At stops, it was my job to guard the truck with my rifle and a sidearm, a Beretta M9 pistol. When I prayed, MREs disappeared, though that wasn’t what I was praying for.
Every junction, every turn, every curve in the road held the threat of violence. At least that was the talk and the way everyone acted. Rashid spoke only of the danger.
“The danger is good for prices,” I said. “You rent out the truck for more.”
He shrugged. Rashid grew up in Karachi. His father drove a truck for a cousin and saved enough to buy one for his son. Rashid was young and arrogant, and he let me know that he looked down on Pashtun and anyone from a small town.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said, as if he had a good idea of what might happen.
Private security men escorted us in jeeps and Humvees, fore and aft and interspersed between the trucks. I assumed they were in charge of the looting. Nawaz Mazari, the name played like a mutilated lyric in my head. The danger in saying it out loud would be that someone would understand it. The best I could do was to identify a few thugs more thuggish than the rest, strutting around with the glazed cockiness of gang members on rolling turf. Asking to join the gang would only stimulate them to act out the viciousness of what they regarded as loyalty. A storm slowed us to a crawl, potholes and security stops checked the pace. I suspected everyone, everyone suspected me, everyone suspected everyone so no one had any doubts about who to suspect and the mood was relaxed. In cliques, they joked around about their trucks and how this one drove and that one played soccer. It was a good gig as long as there were no attacks.
