Louder Than Words

by Brett Baker

  “No chance Oswalt is CIA. He’s not professional enough. CIA wouldn’t have run away like he did at that campsite the other night. He wanted no part of anything that happened there. Plus, his cover is too deep to be CIA. His father started a logging company decades ago, and he runs it now. No history of military service, no ties to a foreign entity, no international intellectual background. There’s just no indication that he’d have anything to bring to the table for CIA. And there’s no way CIA would keep him around with his son.”

  “What’s wrong with his son?” Justin asked. “The file mentions him, but doesn’t go into detail. Cooper?”

  “Yeah. That’s him. Spoiled rich kid. Hates daddy, but doesn’t mind living off of his success. Well-known local troublemaker. Mostly criminal mischief type stuff. I don’t think he means ill will toward anyone. Although he did crash a plane.”

  “He crashed a plane?” Justin asked, with predictable incredulity.

  “I guess ‘crashed’ is a strong word. He drove it off of a runway. Tried to take off, but then realized he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Anyway, Oswalt’s not CIA. I don’t even think he could work for them. He’s too sloppy. I think he’d love to do it. He has that outsized ego that would make him a prime candidate because he’d love to think he was doing important work. But I’m sure CIA would also realize that his personality makes him less likely to keep quiet about it. He’d end up telling someone.”

  “It happens,” Justin said. “With all of their efforts to ensure that they only have top notch people working for them, they end up with disasters sometimes. This could be one of them. I think it’s worth looking into.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said, with no commitment. “The other part of this is Ospina. They all thought he was dead. If Oswalt was working with him as CIA, then they’d have no reason to believe he was dead.”

  “Come on, Mia. There’s a number of problems with that. First, you’re assuming too much coordination between CIA and law enforcement. Things became easier post-9/11 but there are still protections to prevent sharing of information between CIA and law enforcement, and vice versa. But even if we assume CIA knows everything that law enforcement knows, we can’t assume that CIA isn’t intentionally keeping Ospina’s fate away from law enforcement for their own purposes. Law enforcement thought Ospina was dead. That doesn’t mean CIA did. And it doesn’t mean that CIA would tell law enforcement they were wrong about Ospina. If all entities of government worked as well as you’re implying they worked, there’d be no reason for The Summit to exist.”

  “Maybe so,” Mia said. “But I still don’t think Oswalt is CIA. And if Curtis is CIA, then he wasn’t in my room on official business.”

  “What now?” Justin asked.

  “Well, Oswalt thinks I’m dead, so I have to remain dead, and hope that he doesn’t realize that Curtis is dead. He should feel free now that I’m not bothering him. It’s still not clear how much losing his business partners the other night crippled his operations, but I suspect he’ll recover. So now I have to figure out a way to uncover what’s going on without surfacing.”

  “Sounds like a tall order,” Justin said. “Maybe it’s better to be alive and just wait. Might take longer, but seems like it might present fewer complications.”

  “No, I like being dead. And I have a plan.”

  Chapter 33

  Finding out that Curtis was CIA added a new wrinkle to the situation. I’d dealt with rogue CIA agents before, and they usually possessed an oversized ego and sense of their own importance that hindered their effectiveness. They were often their own worst enemy. I wondered if Curtis patted himself on the back too much inside my room at the El Hombre, which hindered his ability to evaluate whether he’d actually eliminated his target. A more careful agent would have done a better job of confirming a victim’s identity. Not that realizing he’d killed a doll would have meant that he would have left that room alive, but at least he would have had more of an advantage because it would have been more difficult for me to get out from beneath the bed if he weren’t carrying the doll.

  Curtis’s carelessness meant that I no longer had to worry about him, but I still had to figure out why he was in my room in the first place. The only explanation that made sense was that Dirk Oswalt sent him. The whole point of faking my death was to help ease Oswalt’s mind. And as Curtis showed in my room at the El Hombre, for some people, a mind at ease is often a mind prone to careless mistakes. I had to be ready to pounce when Oswalt made a mistake.

  I exited the Roost and made sure to take as much care with my departure as I had with my arrival. Anyone who saw me leave a garage in the middle of the night might have assumed I was up to no good, and I was in no mood to deal with one of Gainesville’s finest pulling me over as I drove a car that belonged to a dead CIA agent, so I had to make sure that I escaped undetected.

  I’d just left the garage, and walked down the sidewalk beyond the apartment building, when I saw the shadow to my right. Despite my heightened attention, its sudden appearance in my peripheral vision startled me. I gasped, turned toward the shadow, and instinctively took a defensive position.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” A guy carrying a small red cooler, and dressed every bit like a member of a road construction crew nodded, and said, “Have a good day.” He passed by me on the sidewalk, and went on his way toward cars parked in spaces next to the building. I kept an eye on him as I walked away, thankful I’d resisted the urge to level him at first sight. In my years working for The Summit I’d come to realize that it’s easy to forget that the overwhelming majority of people in the world live their life without worry of being attacked, and don’t have to always be on edge in anticipation of having to defend their lives. Most people that I encountered meant me no harm, yet I still viewed them as my worst enemy for at least a split second until they proved that I had no reason to harm them.

  With adrenaline flooding my body, and my heart beating out of my chest, I got behind the wheel of Curtis’s car and drove off.

  On the other side of town from the Roost, the Gainesville regional airport fulfilled the expectation of the word airport in a way that the Cross City airport did not. Although a fraction of the size of a major airport like O’Hare, the Gainesville airport contained signs associated with the function of an airport like arrivals, departures, car rental, and the sign I was looking for, long term parking.

  I followed the signs to the long term parking lot, which just appeared to be a different section of the short term lot, both of which were situated across an access road from the airport terminals. I took a ticket, found a spot away from trees, or any other identifying marker, and parked Curtis’s car. The airport showed signs of coming to life, but remained mostly deserted at such an early hour. Its small size limited the number of flights, and the lack of early morning hustle and bustle that I’d come to expect at larger airports surprised me.

  I used my phone to order a car through a ride share app, and waited a few minutes until I got a notice that the car was waiting for me. I hustled across the parking lot, and found the car, a white Toyota, waiting for me adjacent to the arrivals door.

  I opened the back door of the car, “What’s your name?”

  “I’m Steve. Are you Mia?”

  “That’s me,” I said, settling in to the backseat. I scanned Steve’s car as best I could, and he didn’t have a sign that said, “I’m going to kill you,” so I had no choice but to deem him safe to drive with. Everyone I’d ever encountered through a ride share app was just a hard-working person trying to make a buck, and I had no reason to think Steve was any different.

  “We’re going to Cross City?” Steve asked.

  “We are,” I said. “Sorry for the haul, but I’ve got no other way to get there.”

  “I don’t mind. It’s an easy drive, especially this time of day. And it saves me from having to find a bunch of smaller fare
s.”

  I grabbed forty dollars from my pocket, leaned forward, and handed it to Steve. “I know it wasn’t on the itinerary, but if we could make a quick stop at a grocery store on the way I’d really appreciate it. I just need to run in and get a few things. I won’t be long.”

  Steve took the two twenties, and looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Sure. That’s no problem,” he said, as if he couldn’t believe his luck.

  “Thanks. There’s nothing to eat at home.”

  “Have you been gone long?” he asked.

  “A week. I went to visit my mom in Salt Lake City. That’s always a mistake.”

  “You don’t get along?”

  “It’s fine. I’m always reminded why I moved though. Six or seven days of her is about all I can take.”

  “I understand that. I came down here for school and I never left. I’m from Chicago. The weather’s much nicer down here, and it’s far away from my parents, so there’s no reason to leave.”

  “How long have you been down here?”

  “Well, I’m thirty-two now, and I came down when I started college, so I guess that’s fourteen years. I’m not sure I learned much in college, but at least I know how to do simple math.”

  “Better than nothing,” I said.

  “I didn’t realize they had arrivals so early in the morning. Or late at night. Whatever it is. I guess we’re in that in between time.”

  “We weren’t supposed to be in so late. We should have landed at ten-fifteen last night. But we were just about ready to board and the mechanics discovered a problem with the landing gear, so they delayed the flight. They told us it’d be about an hour before they could get another plane, and it turned out to be about four hours. Then we sat at the gate for about ninety minutes while they checked out some other problem. We waited so long I think they realized that we were past the point of no return, so they just kept on us the plane until we got the all clear.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Steve said. “A long night.”

  “Very long. And I don’t sleep on planes, so I’m ready to get home and get to bed. But I know I’ll be angry if I wake up and find no food in the house.”

  Quite often in my work for The Summit I found myself in situations where I had to create a history on the spot. Sometimes my life depended on it, which forced me to become quite creative. But I enjoyed situations with little on the line that permitted me to create a backstory from my imagination. I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth until I started speaking, and if I managed to spin a yarn without Steve realizing that everything I was telling him was untrue, then I considered myself a success.

  Steve found a twenty-four-hour grocery store and let me out near the door. I ran inside and grabbed some fruit, energy bars, a vinyl tablecloth, kitchen twine, and plastic cups, checked out, and hustled back to the car with two reusable grocery bags full of supplies.

  “Did you get everything you needed?” Steve asked.

  “Good enough,” I said.

  “On to Cross City?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I ate a banana, and shared one with Steve, and we continued to talk as we drove. He’d been married for a few years, but had divorced two years before. He had no kids, tons of friends, and seemed like a genuinely good guy. I thought about telling him to get in touch with Cooper Oswalt to teach him how to treat others with respect, but I suspect Cooper wouldn’t have accepted the help. Besides, I was supposed to be dead.

  We passed a sign telling us we had six miles until Cross City, and the sky behind us had just begun to lighten with the rising sun. Few other cars drove along highway 19, and it felt strange to drive that stretch of road without wondering whether I was being followed, or should keep an eye out for someone intent on doing harm to me.

  In the waning minutes before dawn, the entire area looked different than I’d expected. Part of it had to do with my vantage point in the backseat, and part of it was the absence of bright Florida sunshine. Yet I recognized a couple of landmarks that let me know we were approaching 342.

  I reached in my pocket and grabbed two more twenty-dollar bills and handed them to Steve.

  “I’m going to get out a little before Cross City,” I said. “Slow down so I can let you know when to stop.”

  “What road do you want me to turn on?” he asked.

  “No road. I’m just going to get out.”

  “You’re going to get out on the side of the highway?”

  “That’s the plan,” I said. “I have this weird thing about people knowing where I live. You’re a nice enough guy, and it’s no reflection on you, but I try not to let anyone know where I live. I know it doesn’t make sense. I think that I listen to too many true crime podcasts.”

  “Okay,” Steve said, with a thick layer of skepticism. “I mean, I guess that makes sense. But I’m not sure getting out of a car along a busy highway is any safer than letting me know where you live.”

  “Maybe not, but like I said, I know it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “Just let me know when you want me to stop.”

  A couple of minutes later I saw the turnoff for 342 on the opposite side of the street. I waited until we passed it, and then said, “Okay, you can let me out right here.”

  “But there’s no other road nearby,” he said, already slowing down.

  “If I have you let me out near another road then it’ll be mighty easy to guess where I live. That sort of defeats the purpose, don’t you think. Trust me, I’m not leaving myself too far to walk.”

  He came to a stop along the shoulder, put the car in park, and turned around.

  “Are you sure about this? It’s still pretty dark, you’ve been up all night, and this road’s about to get busier. I’m not going to come back and kill you. I promise.”

  “That’s something every serial killer would say,” I said. “I appreciate the ride. I’ll be fine.”

  “Fair enough.”

  I got out of the car, and started walking along the side of the road in the same direction we’d been driving. Steve pulled up alongside me, rolled his window down, and yelled, “Last chance!”

  “No thanks,” I yelled back.

  He shook his head, rolled his window back up, and sped away. I waited until he was out of sight, and then hustled into the woods next to the road. From the thick cover of the woods, I waited until I saw him pass the other way on his way back to Gainesville after turning around. When I saw no cars in either direction I emerged from the woods, ran across highway 19, and disappeared into the woods on the other side. 342 was about half-a-mile back, so I started making my way there through the dark, thick woods, carrying both bags of supplies.

  Just a dead woman, hiking back to a road that lead to nowhere.

  I trudged through the woods until I reached 342. Despite the lack of swamp, and being dozens of miles from the location of the campsite from the other night, I thought about alligators for the duration of my walk. I needed the supplies that I carried, so if I encountered any of the prehistoric beasts, not only would I have to defend my life, I’d have to defend my groceries.

  I seemed to be out of alligator range though, and when I emerged from the woods and started marching down asphalt, I breathed a sigh of relief. With so many miles of straightaway, I knew that I’d have plenty of time to seek shelter if I saw headlights in the distance behind me. However, with the road leading to nowhere, I didn’t expect to encounter any traffic.

  After an hour of walking, I saw the cutout in the trees that led to the warehouse. I crossed 342 and began walking through the woods, alligator encounters still on my mind. As I approached the final turn in the road before I reached the warehouse, I left the asphalt and walked along the edge of the woods. I suspected the warehouse would be desolate, but wanted to maintain easy access to the cover the woods provided just in case. When the way opened in front of me and revealed the warehouse, I stood at the edge, behind a large tree and watched. No light seeped be
neath the doors of the warehouse, and with no vehicles in sight, I had to be the only person in the area.

  I walked through the woods, around the back of the warehouse, and pressed my ear against the large steel pedestrian door. Nothing.

  The sun had risen over the horizon, so when I retreated into the woods along the road leading to the warehouse, I had no problem seeing what I was doing. I chose a spot behind a dense stand of trees that provided a barrier between me and the road in front of me, but a clear line of sight to the large garage door at the front of the warehouse. Fifteen feet farther into the woods I tied the vinyl tablecloth to the trees with kitchen twine to create a tented surface to collect water.

  Next, I removed the brush from an area on the ground beyond the tablecloth to provide a flat surface on which to sleep. I hung my grocery bags from a limb next to my sleeping area, and then walked back to the access road, and then the warehouse to make sure nothing was visible from either vantage point. The thick woods did their job and camouflaged my setup.

  Now all I had to do was wait.

  After staying up most of the night, I needed to rest. I assumed the warehouse didn’t see much action during the day, so I didn’t worry about being interrupted. The thoughts of alligators munching on my body floated in the back of my mind, but as I rested my head on the flat, damp ground, I dozed off within seconds.

  Chapter 34

  It seemed safe to assume that Dirk Oswalt was on the other end of the line of the call that Curtis placed from my room at the El Hombre after killing the doll. Oswalt must have felt a sense of relief at my death. The pressure I’d begun to apply over the previous days, combined with what he saw me do at the campsite must have had him rather nervous. But with me out of the picture, I expected him to feel empowered, and counted on his resumption of activities to whatever extent possible given the demise of his drug-dealing partners.