Bad Intent

by Jordan Cole

  “Look at this,” he said. Agatha examined it.

  “Expensive mic,” she said. “He could have been using it when he was doing interviews for a story.”

  “For five hundred bucks? I don’t think so. Look around you. Does this guy seem like an extravagant spender? You could record an interview on your phone for free. Or with a tape recorder.”

  “Then why’d he buy it?”

  “For that much money, he must have had some important reason. I’ve seen those mics before. That’s espionage-level equipment. It’s powerful as hell. You can listen in on a conversation from a hundred yards away. I think he was recording something, and whoever they were, he didn’t want them to know about it.”

  “You think Peter was a spy?”

  “For the Russians? No. But spying on someone, very possibly. And probably not his upstairs neighbors.”

  Something on the other side of the flimsy receipt caught his eye. Riley flipped it over and saw faint pencil writing against the blank white. It read:

  caliban

  2:30 jefferson memorial

  That was all. He passed it over to Agatha.

  “Does that mean anything to you?”

  “It’s Shakespeare,” she said. “The Tempest, I think? Caliban was some sort of monster who lived on an island. At least that’s what I remember from English class. Other than that, I have no clue what it’s about.”

  “Looks to me like he was meeting somebody. Either to spy on them, or to coordinate something at a later date.”

  Agatha searched through a few more of Peter’s effects, but came away empty. She looked over at the broken rear door.

  “I think we should go,” she said. “Doesn’t seem like we’re going to find anything else here.”

  Riley nodded. He wadded the receipt into his pocket. A strange kind of pall hung over the sad little apartment. If Riley had to bet, he’d wager that Peter had been killed recently, and not in a good way. But he kept those feelings to himself. Agatha led the way out through the cracked door frame and back around to the car. Did a quick scan of the surrounding area, and saw nothing dangerous in particular. Both aggrieved parties had backed off, it seemed. A ceasefire, for the time being.

  In the Hyundai, outside in the fading sunlight and away from the cramped basement, the mood lightened. Agatha looked pleased, like they were making some progress.

  “We need more to go on,” Agatha said, navigating through the rush hour gridlock, heading back toward the freeway. Cars bunched up side by side. “If we had his Pete’s computer, that might be a place to start.”

  “Having his emails would be nice,” Riley agreed. “My buddy Dallas might be able to help with that. Depending on how particular Peter was about security. But we’d need more before it got to that point. Solid evidence that Peter is missing, and that he’s involved in all this. We’d be breaking all sorts of laws and statutes.”

  “If he’s missing, the police should be doing the same.”

  “Hard to say. Especially with a guy like that who’s away all the time. No sense opening up a big investigation just to have him stroll back into town a few days later.”

  Agatha shook her head.

  “I trust Farber. If she says something is amiss, then I believe her.”

  Riley nodded. They drove in silence for a while, Agatha with the driver’s seat pulled forward, hunched over the steering wheel, searching for breaks in traffic.

  “I’m still not sure how I feel about all this,” Agatha said, after a little while.

  “About what?”

  “Killing people. Those bodies you left in my apartment.”

  “It was you or them. I’m not still sitting here angry that you pulled a gun on me when we first crossed paths.”

  “I was scared. I didn’t know who you were or what was happening.”

  “Exactly. And I don’t blame you. You didn’t ask for this. But you can’t fret about it. We try and do it the proper way, the cops bumble in and screw things up, and you could get killed. That’s not what I want.”

  “Why not?” she asked. Night had fallen completely now, a wedge of half-moon visible against the dark, melding with the city lights.

  “Because I’ve made mistakes,” Riley said. “I’m trying to atone for them, karmically. Balance my chi, however you want to call it. For a while I worked for the big guy, and now I’m working for the little guy.”

  “You believe in all that stuff?”

  “Karma? Maybe not in the strict Buddhist sense of the word. But I think that what goes around comes around.”

  Agatha turned the wheel, making to depart onto the freeway at the next exit.

  “Not yet,” Riley said. “Swing by your apartment first. We’ll see if there’s any commotion outside.”

  They took a short detour back around to the Berkshires. The parking lot beside it nearly full, commuters home from work and relaxing. No army of cruisers with sirens flashing out front. No yards of police tape cordoning off the entrance. Nothing but the normal ebb and flow of residents coming and going.

  “They weren’t found,” Agatha said, sucking in a breath that could have been relief or tension. “Not sure whether that’s good or bad.”

  “We should check,” Riley said. “If the bodies aren’t there, that tells us a lot.”

  “I do need to get a change of clothes. But I’m not sure I want to go up there.”

  “We won’t stay long.”

  They once again made the trip up to Agatha’s apartment. A different doorman buzzed them through, barely glancing up. Riley didn’t get the sense that any cops or detectives had been around, asking questions. There was an air of business as usual. They rode up to the room, Agatha steeling herself as she opened the door, but it turned out Riley had been right.

  The bodies were gone.

  The apartment was still a scattered mess, but no corpses. The cleanup crew had mopped up most of the blood, but not all of it.

  “Look,” Riley said. He pointed to a smudge of crimson on the bedsheets, where Spann had bled after cutting himself on the fish tank. The shower curtain had been dumped unceremoniously back into the tub. “They did a quick scrub. Nothing major. Got the bodies out somehow.”

  “Great.” Agatha rummaged through her closet, found some expensive-looking luggage, and piled clothes into it. She worked quickly. It was for the best they didn’t linger. They went downstairs and quickly out the backdoor, looping around to the car.

  “I’ll drive,” Riley said, as Agatha tossed her luggage onto the back seat.

  “Where are we going?”

  “My house,” he said, and then, seeing the look on her face, “Don’t worry. I’ve got plenty of extra bedrooms.”

  “It’s not that,” she said, steepling her fingers. “These people know who you are, right? How do we know they won’t be staking out your place?”

  “I hope they do,” Riley said. “Then we’ll be able to get some answers.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Half. Don’t worry. My cabin is secure. Trust me. You’ll see when we get there.”

  He gunned it onto the freeway, leaving the glowing lights of the city trailing in his wake.

  12.

  The mountain road was dark, illuminated only by the Hyundai’s headlights, casting tall shadows on the trees around them. Agatha rested in the passenger’s seat, looking tired. No chance anyone was following them on this deserted stretch--another pair of headlights would have stuck out like a Roman candle. Just blackness, all around. Riley navigated the crisscrossing dirt roads with a practiced confidence. The lack of a tail didn’t mean that there was nobody lying in wait at the cabin, but he doubted it. The enemy was on their heels, focused on cleaning the mess at the Berkshires and planning their next move. And Riley had spent a lot of time in these mountains, lots of long nights trekking through the woods. He had a keen sense of what would be out of place. So far, there was nothing wrong.

  He still wasn’t sure how they had identified him.
Riley had given his name at the police station, and it was possible they had someone on the inside there. A likelier chance they ran the properties in the area near where Agatha had first been accosted and his name came up. Houses on this part of the mountain were sparse, and Riley’s history would have given him away quickly. His past life as a government contractor was no secret.

  He pulled the car up a long incline, around a sharp bend in the road, and out to a dirt clearing. The darkness was near total, only a slice of moon granting the faintest of visibility. Riley’s cabin would have been difficult for a stranger to find in the daytime, much less now. The cabin stood before them, quiet. Home. It felt good to be back, after two long days of chaos.

  “You know your way around the mountains,” Agatha said, squinting at the faint outline of the cabin through the darkness. “I can barely see two feet in front of me.”

  “Been here a few years,” Riley said, killing the engine and listening to the minute vibrations in the air, for anything out of the ordinary. Nothing. Crickets and roosting birds. A placid midsummer evening. “Had time to get to know my way around.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  Riley opened the rear door. Took out Agatha’s luggage and slung it over his shoulder. Doing the gentlemanly thing. Toted it along as she followed to the front steps.

  “Once we’re inside, I’ll show you my setup. People in my line of work tend to take home security very seriously. If I wasn’t confident, I wouldn’t have brought you here.”

  He felt a strange kind of protectiveness toward her, like she was his daughter about to go out on a date with the star football player. He’d had that problem in the past, with women. Always trying to be the authority figure, knowing what was best. It would never work with someone like Agatha. With headstrong women like her, it never did. They saw through his act real quick.

  They went inside. Entered the den, plush carpet on the floor, walled off by a brick fireplace, a few lounging chairs, a long mahogany bar set into the wall that was stocked with nearly every kind of liquor known to man. The cabin had the feel of a ranch or bungalow with a second story jammed atop it--one streamlined room leading to another, until you reached a winding spiral staircase leading up. Riley liked it here. He liked the solitude, the quiet feel of the place. There were paintings on the wall of ships and harbors, European cities at sunset. Places he had been to, once upon a time.

  “It’s nice,” Agatha said, as Riley set her bag down near the staircase. “A lot cleaner than I would have expected.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  Agatha stretched out, her hands nearly scraping the low ceiling as she flexed. She drew a glass from the bar and poured herself some bourbon, as if reading his thoughts.

  “You mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Want one?”

  He was about to decline. He wanted to have his wits about him while she was here, but something about the way she held the two glasses with one hand and her cockeyed half-smile made him change his mind. He nodded and she poured for two, neat, which was how he liked it. They clinked together.

  “Cheers.”

  Smooth and good. In Afghanistan, they used to do shots of Wild Turkey after a particularly dangerous day. This was better booze, but the idea was the same. The winners got drunk; the losers didn’t do anything at all.

  “So what’s this setup you spoke of?” she asked, her eyes darting to all points of ingress, the doors and windows and A/C vents. “That’s supposed to keep us safe?”

  “It’s in here.” He went back through the kitchen down a flight of steps into a room that he considered a study, but others might call a ‘command center’ or panic room.’ The door was a slab of reinforced concrete, with a pressurized lever that locked on the interior. Two large computer monitors side by side, next to a keypad on the wall. Wires snaked up and down, out through the floor and ceiling. Agatha searched for a place to set down her glass amidst the technology.

  “That’s all right,” Riley said. “This equipment can stand up to a little condensation.”

  He brought the monitors to life and typed in a password. The screen displayed security camera footage, segmented into little squares. The front and rear of the cabin. Dark images of trees and leaves shaking in the breeze, the dirt road, insects fluttering around.

  “Cameras,” Agatha said, staring at the screens. “Nice.”

  “I can do one better.”

  Riley input a code into the pad on the wall. The system beeped in acknowledgment.

  “What’s that?”

  “Motion detectors. They’re scattered all around the property, for hundreds of yards. Anything bigger than a raccoon comes traipsing through the woods, and we’ll know about it. The place will light up like Christmas morning.”

  “Jesus.” She walked to the door, pressing a hand against the smooth concrete. “And I guess you can lock in here if something is going down?”

  “That’s right. It was actually my ex-wife’s idea. After I got back from overseas, she was convinced people were out to get me. Wouldn’t feel safe until I took all these security precautions. Nothing ended up happening. Just a waste of money, until now.”

  “I’ll say. This must have cost you a fortune.”

  “I had a few employee discounts. But it wasn’t cheap, that’s for sure.”

  She laughed.

  “Your wife must have been a paranoid gal, Riley.”

  “She had reason to be. What happened in Iraq with my CO, a lot of guys were upset. I was accused of being a sympathizer. A lot of heat on me, for a while.”

  “But it never amounted to anything, right? Until you met me.”

  He smiled.

  “Wrong place, wrong time.”

  “You think I’m going about this the right way?”

  “I’d say you’re handling it remarkably well, all things considered. High stress situation like this, some people just shut down. Not you.”

  “The prospect of imminent death is motivation to keep my head together. What can I say?”

  “We’ll keep digging tomorrow. But it might soon be time to go higher. Get the FBI involved. If this is as serious as it seems, I won’t be able to protect you for the long term. Even here.”

  “What about the bodies?”

  “What bodies?” He grinned, but she didn’t find it amusing. “I’ll take the heat for that, should it come to it. I’ve wriggled out of tighter spots before.”

  She nodded, her lips pursed. Somehow still perfectly fashionable, every red curl in place. Put together, for sure. He felt shabby by comparison, in his cheap department store clothes and paranoid war room. But he was doing what had to be done. Back in the thick of it. And it felt strangely fitting. Like it was meant to be.

  “You got a computer?” she asked. “Something more casual than this behemoth? I want to update my blog like you suggested.”

  “Sure. Let’s get out of here.” They went back up to the kitchen, where he found his laptop resting on the sofa. He pulled up a web browser. “Take your time, do what you gotta do. I’ll get some blankets together in the guest bedroom. You hungry? I was going to scramble some eggs.”

  “Okay. Sounds good.”

  He fired up the stove while she got to work. Made the eggs and they ate them together, while she updated her blog. Vague details, he reminded her. Just enough information to get people looking in her direction, should something happen. After dinner they were both tired, and he showed her to the guest room. He went to his own bed, feeling strangely lonely in the plushness. He killed the lights and lay down and stared at the dark ceiling. Thinking about the bottle of bourbon, and a how good a few more glasses would taste. But he pushed away the urge, for now. Closed his eyes and instructed himself to be aware of the motion alarm and eventually drifted off into sleep.

  ***

  “Morning,” Agatha said, as Riley walked into his kitchen. The smell of brewing coffee had roused him, and seeing her standing over the steaming pot, alr
eady dressed and showered and ready to go, gave him a strange sense of unreality. It had been a long time since he’d had visitors, much less a woman who had spent the night. Even if it wasn’t quite in the way he would have preferred. “I thought you didn’t drink coffee? I found some in your closet.”

  “I don’t,” Riley said. Morning sun refracting through the windows, the cabin cast in a Celestine glow. “Samantha used to drink it.”

  “Your ex-wife? And you still keep coffee grounds around, in case she shows up?”

  “I guess it’s left over. Hadn’t really thought about it.” The truth was, he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. Seemed silly now, but there it was.

  “I should be at work,” Agatha said, resting against one of the stools beside the counter-top. “Can’t remember the last time I missed a day.” She was wearing a white blazer that somehow still looked crisp atop beige slacks. Ready for business, even here. Sipping her coffee with a latent intensity, like being idle drove her crazy.

  “Don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Riley said. “Your boss seemed like a rational woman. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

  “I already called to tell her I’d be out. No answer. Probably not even in yet. Left a voicemail.”

  “You can always get another job. Your safety is more important.”

  “Right. I got that. You mind if I use your computer again? I want to feel like I’m getting something accomplished.”

  “Sure. Just keep the blog posts cryptic. Don’t want to give anything away to these people.”

  She rolled her eyes, like he was dumb for even having to spell it out. But he didn’t take offense. Better to be too careful, than the other way around.

  “What about you?”

  “Going to chase down a few leads. Maybe visit my buddy Dallas. Try and figure out who’s after you, and why.”

  “And I’m just supposed to stay here, surfing the internet?”

  “You’re free to do what you like. But I think it’s too dangerous for you to be gallivanting around with me.”

  She cocked her head, letting out a little sigh.