Black Fall

by Andrew Mayne

  That’s an interesting possibility. He may have led a double life. He was of an older generation that tended to keep their sexuality very private. If nothing else comes up, I’ll ask Ailes if he’s heard any rumors. If Devon was gay, a potential line of inquiry might be finding other closeted academics he may have known.

  In the meantime, I have his empty house in which to ask embarrassing questions. I walk the floors again, hoping something sticks out at me. Nothing does. I even count my steps to see if there are any hidden passages. Sadly, this isn’t a Scooby-Doo cartoon.

  Before I give up, I close my eyes and try to think of the life cycle of a house.

  First your realtor shows it to you. Then all your moving boxes arrive. Then you leave and have all your stuff packed up. The end.

  But is it?

  When I moved into my last apartment, the previous owner had left a fern on the balcony and a can of bug spray in a hall closet. They didn’t take everything.

  What would Devon have left? Or rather, what might the estate company have left behind?

  The fern and the spray “belonged” with the apartment. What might belong to this house? Whatever it is, I would likely find it in the less-frequented places. The house doesn’t have a basement, but there is an attic.

  I find the entrance at the end of the main hallway upstairs. The narrow wooden steps unfold from the trapdoor, and disappear into a dark hole in the ceiling. The steps creak as I climb up. Predictably, the attic smells of insulation and wood when I poke my head inside. My flashlight illuminates bare plywood flooring that stretches to either end of the house. Other than rat droppings, there’s nothing else here.

  The quiet is discomfiting. The shadows of the beams eerily move along with my light, like they’re trying to hide from me in the dark.

  Hopes of a secret chamber dashed, I begin my climb back down the steps.

  That’s when my light catches it.

  Sitting on the insulation, almost flush with the floor, the box is easy to miss despite being literally under my nose. Eight inches across, the faded cardboard is almost the same color as the wooden beam next to it.

  Inside the box is an assortment of light bulbs and fuses. The bulbs are the old incandescent kind they don’t sell anymore. But they’re not what interests me. It’s the name on the box: VideoPro.

  Dad used to order supplies from them to record our shows. They sold videotape in bulk.

  My mind races. Devon had to have used a lot of videotape to make his predictions. It’d make sense he was buying it in large quantities.

  I flip over a lid panel and check the address label.

  This is where it gets really interesting.

  The box isn’t addressed to Devon.

  Chapter Twenty

  Misdirection

  I’m being followed.

  I didn’t notice him at first. As soon as I put the key to Devon’s house back in the real estate agent lockbox and started down the sidewalk, I had my face buried in my phone, giving me poor night vision on an already darkened street. I don’t know at what point the man started shadowing me, but it is his footsteps that gave him away. Walking down the block toward the commuter station, I noticed a distant echo almost matching the pace of my stride—almost.

  It’s easy to get paranoid, especially when you’ve been through what I have. I remind myself that lots of people take the train. It’s not unusual that someone else would be heading the same way as me. But as a test, I go one block west then north, adding distance to the trip.

  He does the same.

  There are a thousand innocent explanations. He could simply be on the same path. All the same, I unbutton my maroon peacoat, so my hand can quickly reach the pistol on my hip.

  His pace is measured. He keeps his distance, never getting close enough for me to casually turn around and look at him.

  Psychologically, there’s a game we’re playing. If I turn back to look, he knows he has me unnerved. But if I keep walking straight ahead to the station, he has to wonder if I know he’s behind me. If he assumes I don’t, I have a small advantage. If he assumes I do, the fact I haven’t nervously glanced in his direction should let him know I’m not afraid.

  Or he’s just some guy going to get pizza. I’ve played this mental exercise more times than I care to remember.

  When I finally get to the station, I find that it’s deserted after I step through the turnstile. Just a row of benches and public service posters. I take a strategic position against a metal pillar, putting it between myself and the entrance, which allows me to keep my eye on the platform.

  The train squeals in the distance as it approaches. Behind me, I hear the gate turning as the man enters.

  I stare down at my phone, let my eyes flicker up to acknowledge that someone else has stepped onto the platform, then go back to acting indifferent.

  He’s staring right at me. Intense eyes, unflinching. His face, unshaven. He’s wearing a thick black coat, probably in his late twenties, and I’ve never seen him before in my life. But the way he looks at me tells me he knows exactly who I am.

  The train pulls into the station and I step into the car in front of me as soon as the doors open.

  The seats all face forward and there’s no place to stand. I sit down a few rows away from the entrance so I can have my back to the window and watch the whole car.

  The man enters from the front. He looks around, makes eye contact with me, and starts walking in my direction. Then he calls across the car: “Aren’t you Jessica Blackwood?”

  I feign a quick glance behind me, pretending I think he’s talking to someone else. I’ve got a knit hat on and my hair is tucked underneath it. Nobody ever recognizes me like this. Still, it’s a possibility.

  I shake my head. He keeps walking toward me.

  Exaggerating the movement as much as I can, I reach my right hand into my jacket and put it on my still-hidden gun.

  He freezes.

  If he were just some doofus who recognized me and decided to follow me, he probably wouldn’t have realized I was one second from drawing on him. The fact he stopped tells me he knows what’s going on. Unfortunately, I still don’t.

  He regains his composure and drops down onto a seat three rows ahead of me, facing forward but watching me in the reflection of the window.

  A chime announces that the doors are about to close. A Hispanic man, also wearing a thick black overcoat, dashes onto the train and takes a seat at the back, boxing me in.

  I could be trapped, or in my already anxious state I could be jumping to conclusions. As a cop, you only get one chance to get things right. You don’t get a redo. You don’t get to second-guess something you saw on an out-of-context YouTube clip. If you draw, you have to be ready to pull the trigger. If you pull the trigger, you have to be ready to kill.

  The Hispanic man gets up and starts to walk down the aisle toward me. I push my back against the window and turn to him.

  “Something wrong with your seat?”

  It’s overly aggressive. Fine. If I’m wrong, he can think I’m a bitch for all I care.

  He gives me a cold grin and sits down two seats back. The other man watches me—only me.

  I keep my hand on my pistol and my eyes on the two of them. They know I’m ready to draw. I have to come up with a plan, soon. I have a feeling they’re not going to let this last until the next station.

  The man in front looks behind me as the doors between the cars open. I glimpse an older woman as she enters.

  Perfect. Just what I need, an innocent bystander.

  I’ve been calculating how to take down both these guys the moment one of them shows a weapon. My math doesn’t involve a little old lady in a frayed winter coat.

  She walks down the aisle, oblivious to the tension, and stops at my row.

  Not here. Please not here!

  She starts to sit down.

  I try to stop her. “Ma’am, someone spilled coffee on the seat.”

  She doesn’t seem
to care, or even understand. She nods warmly, then slides in right next to me, her body momentarily blocking the elbow of my gun arm.

  The man in the front is the first to bolt from his seat.

  Before I can draw, I catch a flash of reflected light to the side of me as the woman pulls a knife from her pocket.

  I recognize the type of blade immediately.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Assailants

  In academy training, you practice various forms of self-defense. From hand-to-hand combat all the way to the proper technique to crash your car into a bad guy’s vehicle. We almost always practice on people physically bigger and more threatening than ourselves. What you never fully prepare for is how to deal with a violent suspect who is much less imposing. We’re only minimally trained to deal with violent children and women, or handicapped aggressors. This is a thorny area, and it’s all theoretical anyway until the old woman pulls a knife and tries to shove it between your ribs.

  I let instinct take over. Second-guessing right now will get me killed. My elbow comes down hard on her wrist. I feel the slightest stab into my side, but ignore it. My hand snaps up, the back of my fist hitting the woman square in the nose. There’s a crack and she howls, then falls between the seats.

  I grab my pistol and yank it free, just in time to hit the Hispanic man on the side of his head with the barrel.

  “Fuck!” he yells, spinning away.

  Two hands on the butt of the pistol, I wheel around and aim it right in the face of the other man, who is now inches away and pulling a knife from his jacket.

  “Drop it!” I scream.

  He wavers, trying to figure out what to do next. I push the gun closer as I step over the woman and into the aisle. She’s clutching her bleeding nose.

  In the reflection, I see the Hispanic man regain his balance and come at me, knife in hand with the blade facing down, special forces–style. He raises it for a strike.

  I try a side kick to his knee and miss, striking his shin instead. It’s enough to send him backward, but the blade narrowly misses my thigh. I use my momentum to twist around toward the first man, the one who followed me. I shove the gun ahead of me like a spear. He tries to grab my wrist, but I kick him in the groin and bring the butt of the pistol down on his head—hard.

  “Goddamn bitch!” he snarls as he stumbles backward.

  I spin around him, putting them all in my line of sight. Then I step toward the front door. The man from the back looks like he’s weighing whether or not to rush me, but he’s leaning heavily on the leg I didn’t kick. His partner has one hand in the air as he uses the other to get the old woman to her feet. He’s either helping her or using her as a shield.

  The train jostles as we come to a stop.

  I follow his footsteps like a boxer would. They tell me where his center of gravity is and what he plans on doing next. He’s thinking about making another run at me.

  The doors open and people start to file onto the train.

  “Stay out of the train!” I shout, but I’m ignored by a rush of college kids.

  My assailants push past, using the students to retreat.

  “Get out of my way!”

  People suddenly realize I have a gun and freeze in stunned panic. They part as I scramble through them, but not fast enough. My three attackers have already exited and are vanishing into the mob.

  I race to the platform. But the crowd is a tide I can’t fight against.

  I can’t keep up.

  My vision begins to narrow.

  My legs give out and a man catches me.

  “Lady, are you alright?”

  By the time I get to my feet, they’re gone.

  I run to the nearest ticket counter and flash my badge, demanding in halted breaths that they call the police.

  Minutes later, I give my descriptions to the transit police captain. He calls them in and makes me sit down.

  “Are you sure they were trying to harm you?” he asks for the third time.

  I glare at him.

  “Sometimes these things can be misconstrued,” he says defensively.

  I shake my head. “I’m positive.”

  “But you didn’t fire your gun?”

  “No. I said that.” I’m angry at myself. Angry at him. And angry at the people who came after me.

  I stand up and look down the platform at the other cops who’ve gathered to stand around. None of them have a sense of urgency. They’re looking at me like I’m a hysterical woman who almost had her purse snatched by a joking teenager.

  The captain senses my frustration. “We have units looking. We’re on this. We just need to be clear it was an actual attack and not a misunderstanding. I don’t want a bunch of SWAT guys pouncing on folks who just wanted an autograph.”

  “A misunderstanding?” I ask him incredulously. “They weren’t after an autograph.” I pull my coat around my body. It’s so damn cold out here.

  “I know. I know. They may have been muggers.”

  I shake my head again. “No. This was planned.” They’d been waiting for me at Devon’s house. It was the the Red Chain. Maybe not the men from the farmhouse, but others sent to find me. How many are there?

  “We’ll get this sorted,” says the captain. “Can I get you coffee?”

  I’m so cold right now. Coffee sounds good. “Yes. Thank you, yes.”

  “We can go to a shop across the street.”

  I take two steps then stumble.

  I hear my name being called.

  “Agent Blackwood?” The captain is standing over me. Fluorescent lights make a square halo around his head.

  So cold.

  I touch my side. It’s wet. My fingers come away covered in blood.

  The old woman’s knife got closer than I realized.

  “Get a fucking ambulance here!” screams the captain. “And find those assholes!”

  I try to stay conscious.

  It’s hard as all the warmth leaves my body.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Orderly Conduct

  I remember the ambulance and a light being flashed in my eyes. Someone told me to stay with them. My side felt cold, like an icy finger was pushing into my flesh. Now it’s all a dull roar as I slowly wake up.

  “Jessica . . .” Someone calls my name.

  It’s a familiar voice that used to cause me so much anxiety, but I’ve made my peace with it.

  When my eyes open I see the outline of a man illuminated by moonlight coming in through the window. He wears a blue nurse’s uniform and he’s checking a machine by my head. But he’s no nurse. Through the shadows I can make out the shape of his jaw and the mouth I know so well. His gray eyes dart toward me and catch me observing him.

  “There’s my girl,” he says with a casualness that drives me nuts, but that I secretly miss when I don’t hear it for stretches of time.

  “Damian . . .”

  My own voice is so weak I don’t recognize it. I sound like a child.

  “Sorry, doll face. I came as soon as I could.”

  How do I describe Damian Knight? Stalker? Sometimes lover? A friend in college invented the term “serial personality disorder” to explain his proclivity for popping up in my life with different identities. He likes to reinvent himself, not just through a different hair color or style of dress, but by changing his voice and his expressions like a skilled actor. Why he does this is a mystery to me. His only explanation is that he wants to “avoid boredom.”

  Our friendship is hard to explain. We dated when I was a college student, and then I discovered that the Damian I’d known was just one of his many personas. Ever since, he’s been a shadow looming in the background. For a long time I feared him, and with good reason. I suspect he killed a man who injured me back when I was a cop in South Florida.

  Brilliant, mischievous, and dangerous, I don’t trust him, but I trust he’ll usually be there when I need him—eventually. I always push Damian away, only to open my door when I realize yet
again that sometimes only a misfit can understand me.

  What that says about me, I don’t even want to get into.

  I slowly regain my senses and realize this isn’t a dream, although my brain still isn’t fully alert. “Did they find them?”

  “No.” His warm fingers grasp my wrist and he gently pulls an IV from my forearm.

  “What are you doing?” I try to sit up but only succeed in lifting my head an inch off the pillow.

  “Getting you out of here.” His casual, almost flippant tone of voice is gone. There’s a sense of urgency. “They missed your vital organs. But you lost a lot of blood. Good news is they got you almost topped off.” He sets the IV needle to the side and makes an adjustment to the heart monitor attached to my chest. The machine keeps blipping, but he unhooks the connection.

  He clearly knows what he’s doing, but his actions have me baffled. However, I can only maintain one train of thought at a time. “Why are you here?”

  He sits down on the edge of the bed and puts his hand on my cheek. “Call it a lack of faith in the local authorities. That’s two times these people have tried to kill you. You know what they say about the third.”

  “Thank goodness you were here in the nick of time,” I mutter sarcastically.

  His eyes drift to my side and the exposed bandage. “Uh, yeah. Well, we talked about boundaries.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Four hours. Hold steady. I’m going to sit you up.” He reaches around my shoulders and supports my back, carefully helping me upright. “That’s my girl.”

  The wound hurts, but I know it’s only a fraction of the pain I’d be feeling without medication. My head feels like a seashell half-filled with sloshing water. “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you someplace safe.” He sets a duffel bag on the end of the bed and starts pulling out clothing. I know better than to ask where he got them from.

  “Safe? We’re in a hospital,” I reply.

  “I got in.” He arches an eyebrow.

  “But you’re you.”

  Damian is a force of nature. God help us all if he ever shifts his focus to anything more sinister than alleviating his boredom.