by Mark Gimenez
The owner was pointing at the ceiling with the index finger of his right hand.
Ben and John stepped outside. They were canvassing the town, showing the photos to every business owner on Main Street. The general store was their fourth stop.
Ben said, “He didn’t buy tampons for a dead girl.”
“Tampons,” John said. “I didn’t think she was there yet.”
“She’s not. She just wanted him in town.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew I’d … we’d come for her. She’s a smart girl, John.” Ben faced north; the glow of the sunset was dimming now. “And she’s out there somewhere.”
5:01 P.M.
Gracie hadn’t heard noises from the other room for hours now, since Junior had knocked on her bedroom door and begged her to come out so he could explain why they had to kill the president. She had refused, so he had said he was going into town to get her “girl stuff.” She had heard the truck roar off. Junior was gone. Now was her chance to escape. If she could escape, Ben wouldn’t have to drink more of his whiskey to forget killing Junior and Jacko.
She moved everything from in front of the door to her bedroom. She cracked the door and peeked out. The big room was empty. She came out slowly.
“Hi, sweetie.”
Gracie jumped at the voice behind her. She whirled around. A big fat ugly man was now standing between her and the door to her bedroom: the man that killed Bambi. His breath smelled of alcohol; his body odor could stop traffic.
“You ever touch one of these?” the fat man asked.
Gracie looked down to his hands cupped by his crotch. He was holding his penis. It wasn’t all wrinkly and limp like Dad’s that day in his bathroom; it was purple and swollen up like it was going to pop. It was plenty big enough to hurt a girl her age. She recalled Ms. Boyd saying something about erections, that a boy’s penis becomes hard in order to penetrate a girl’s—
“You touch this bod and Junior’s gonna kill you!”
“Well, Junior ain’t here right now, is he?”
She now recalled Ms. Boyd’s advice from sex ed class. She pointed a finger at the man and said, “No! And no means no!”
He just laughed. “Not to me it don’t.”
She made a mental note to tell Ms. Boyd that “no means no” doesn’t work so well with big fat ugly men on a mountain in Idaho. Finally, she recalled her mother’s advice: If a boy doesn’t take no for an answer, kick him in the balls. Gracie assumed that advice applied to big fat ugly men. So she kicked him in his balls, her best Tae Kwon Do kick with the hiking boots—but the fat man only yelped and waved his hand around. From the look he gave her, she had only succeeded in making him really mad. There was only one thing to do now.
Run.
The cold air shocked her as she hit the cabin door. The fat man would never have caught her if she hadn’t slipped on the ice. His hot breath hit her neck like a blow dryer. His hands grabbed at her clothes. Her feet were dangling.
“Come on back inside, girlie. Bubba ain’t had no virgin since—”
She heard a dull thud and the fat man groan. He released her, and she fell to the ground. She looked up to see Junior swinging a shovel and hitting the fat man in the head again.
“Bubba, you son of a bitch!”
Bubba went down to his knees; his eyes were glazed over and his head was bleeding. Junior’s face was wild; he was swinging again when Jacko grabbed the shovel from behind.
“Now don’t go and kill our only munitions expert, Junior,” Jacko said. “He’s just drunk.”
“He’s out!” Junior yelled. He kicked the fat man named Bubba in the stomach. “Get the fuck off my mountain!”
Junior threw a set of keys at Bubba. He grabbed the keys, crawled away to a safe distance, and then got to his feet and stumbled over to an old pickup truck. He got in and drove fast down the mountain.
5:11 P.M.
“Oh, Junior, you saved me!”
Patty hugged him real tight. Tears were in her pretty blue eyes. Ever since Junior had seen her picture in that magazine, he knew they had to be together. And now they were.
“I was so scared! I was like, oh my God, he’s gonna rape me, where’s Junior? And there you were—you were totally awesome!” She wiped her eyes on his shirt. “Ooh, I love your shirt. Plaid’s my favorite.”
She looked up at Junior like that Mary Ann girl looking at the professor on that Gilligan show he had seen at the motel. Then she said three words that brought tears to Junior’s eyes.
“You’re my hero.”
She hugged him again, burying her face in his chest. Junior’s heart was about to bust, he was so damned happy. Her hugging him, that made it worth losing Bubba and his explosives skills. Patty pulled back and squeezed his biceps.
“Wow, you’re buff, Junior. Totally studly. Hey, look, I’m real sorry about this morning, getting so upset and all. I mean, it’s not like we’re Republicans, for crying out loud. I’m sure you have a very good reason to kill the president.”
“He ordered the major assassinated.”
“The major your daddy?”
“Yep.”
“Well, there you go. That’s a totally good reason. I mean, who could blame you for being a little PO’d?”
“Now we’re gonna return the favor.”
“Nanna always says, What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I’m not real sure what that means.”
He took her hands. “Patty, are you ready for your big surprise?”
He glanced over at the bedroom door by the kitchen; her eyes followed his and then turned back real fast.
“Well, yeah, sure, but, um, why don’t you show me later, after dinner maybe. Show me around your mountain first. I mean, our mountain. Before it gets dark.”
“Well, okay, I guess it can wait.”
“Sure it can.”
He smiled; she said our mountain. “Sure, okay.”
Patty got a funny look on her face. “Uh-oh. Did you get my tampons?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Junior went to the kitchen table and returned with the box of girl stuff. “Here.”
Patty took the box and said, “I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared into her room. Her talking about that girl stuff so straight out—period, tampons, bleeding—made Junior real uncomfortable. He never figured that would be a regular topic of discussion; he hoped it wouldn’t. A few minutes later she came back out.
“All better now. And, hey, sorry about calling you a numb-nut, during the road trip.”
“Aw, heck, honey, I been called a lot worse.”
Junior leaned down and cupped her pretty face. Then he kissed her forehead.
“Patty, I dreamed of this day—”
“Yeah, Mrs. Boyd told us about those kind of dreams in health class.”
Damn, there she goes again.
“Huh? Oh, no, I didn’t mean that.”
“Whatever. Let’s go see our mountain.”
She smiled real big at him, and he forgot about the tampon talk by the time they got outside.
“Lemme think here,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and turning in all directions as he thought of the best place to start the tour of their mountain. What would most impress Patty?
“Oh, I know, I’ll show you the creek first. It’s my favorite place in the whole world. Hey, you ever seen real bear tracks?”
He turned back, and she was gone.
See ya! What a loser! Does he really think I’m going to marry him? The bridal suite—that’s his big surprise? As if.
Gracie was running down the mountain like she was running down a soccer field on a breakaway and holding the tampons like relay batons. She was making good time on the dirt road, even though there were muddy patches she couldn’t see until she slipped. But she managed to stay on her feet each time. The sun was down; the road was getting darker and harder to see as it wound through the trees and down the mountain. She caught a glimps
e of the main highway below; she was getting close. She saw a car drive by.
“Help me!”
The sound of her breathing was now joined by another sound—a truck. Junior was coming. She had to get down to the highway … The truck noise was gaining on her … She turned on the speed, tricky going downhill … What’s that in the road? … Some kind of metal plate, like they use when they repair the streets back home … The noise behind her was closer now … on top of her … She took a quick check behind her and her foot caught the edge of something and—
She went tumbling and the tampons went flying; she hit the ground hard and rolled over and over until her head hit something. Then the world was black.
When Gracie opened her eyes, her head ached, she was cold, and she was in a new place. A tight place. A box. She could see trees above. A face appeared over her. Junior. And she realized what he was doing to her.
“Please, Junior, I’m really sorry! I won’t run again, I promise! Don’t do this to me, please!”
Junior’s face was hard.
“I’m sorry, too, Patty, ’cause you ruined my big surprise. Now I gotta teach you a lesson. Night or two down there, you won’t run again. The major, he used to put me down there when I needed to get my head on straight, and it didn’t do nothing bad to me.”
“Oh, no, nothing bad at all—you’re just some kind of freaking psycho!”
Then it was dark.
8:36 P.M.
Downtown Dallas after five was a ghost town, especially on a Friday night. The lawyers and bankers had retreated to the suburbs for the weekend, gone home to mama and the kids. FBI Special Agent Jan Jorgenson had only an empty apartment waiting for her, so she was running the deserted streets of downtown, not an advisable venue for most joggers. But then, most joggers don’t carry a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic in their waist pack—well, this was Texas; maybe they did.
She had missed her lunch-hour runs every day this week. She needed exercise. Running cleared her mind and allowed her to think. So far she had thought her way into a dead end.
The revenge theory just didn’t hold water. Yes, Colonel Brice had a Viper tattoo. Yes, the man at the park had a Viper tattoo. Yes, Brice had served on Viper team under the command of Major Walker. Yes, Brice had testified against Walker and the other Viper team soldiers. But that was almost forty years ago. And Major Walker was dead. She had to face facts: there was simply no connection between Major Charles Woodrow Walker and Colonel Ben Brice and Gracie Ann Brice’s abduction. There were only coincidences—coincidences the size of a goddamned whale, but coincidences nonetheless.
Four miles and her body felt good again. She had exited the federal building on the western edge of downtown, run east on Main Street, slowing to check out the Neiman Marcus window displays in the day’s last light—she always liked shopping with her mom at the Mall of America when she was a kid—and then to the freeway. She turned north to Ross Avenue, then west past the I.M. Pei-designed symphony center and the Museum, then south a few blocks, then west on Elm Street, past a skyscraper shaped like a rocket ship and one with a hole in the middle of the damn thing—what’s the story with that?—and now into Dealey Plaza, past the School Book Depository and to the grassy knoll, unchanged in forty years, to the exact spot where an American president was assassinated—
She stopped short.
She turned back and looked up at the sixth floor window of the School Book Depository. Crouched in that window—a much greater distance than she had realized—Lee Harvey Oswald had aimed a bolt-action rifle at a moving target and fired three shots in six seconds, putting two bullets within a nine-inch diameter, the first shot in Kennedy’s neck, the third shot in his head. Standing here now, seeing the shot required—three shots, no less—she shook her head. No way. The Feds took the easy way out. They never looked past the obvious connection—
And it hit her: she had committed the same sin.
Jan was back in the federal building in under five minutes, running past the security desk with a quick nod to Red, the night guard—she felt his eyes on her backside—then up the elevator to the third floor and down the corridor of the silent FBI offices, her pounding feet and heart the only noises. She opened her office door, turned on the light, went over to her desk, opened the Walker file, flipped the pages fast … her eyes raced down each page for names … names of AUSAs … Assistant United States Attorneys … prosecutors on the Walker case ten years ago …
“Oh my God.”
She found a name: Raul Garcia. And another: James Kelly. And a third: Elizabeth Austin.
11:21 P.M.
Elizabeth was sitting in the nearly dark den of her mansion and drinking hard liquor. She now understood Ben Brice.
Kate had said he drank to escape the past. To forget so he could sleep. How much would she have to drink to escape her past? To sleep. To not think of the past that had brought her to this present. To this day. To this life. A life without Grace.
Ten years ago, she had arrived in Dallas armed only with impressive letters of recommendation from the United States Attorney General and the FBI Director attesting to Elizabeth Austin’s legal brilliance, incredible determination, and remarkable courage under extreme personal duress. She was thirty years old, just married, two months’ pregnant, and running from her past as fast and as far as possible. Dallas, Texas, had seemed far enough.
Five years before that she had just graduated from Harvard Law School; she had turned down the Wall Street firms for a job with the Justice Department. She wanted to be one of the good guys. She wanted to put the bad guys in jail. She wanted to use the rule of law to make people safe, so no other ten-year-old girl would ever suffer her father’s murder.
But she hadn’t been safe.
Her daughter hadn’t been safe.
No one was safe.
Evil does not obey the rule of law. Evil makes its own rules.
DAY NINE
6:15 A.M.
“Nằm yên! Nằm yên!”
He’s yelling in Vietnamese—Stay down! Stay down!—so the rotating blades don’t take their heads off. They’re crowded onto the Embassy roof where the Huey is perched and panicked because they hear the NVA tanks at the outskirts of the city and gunfire from the battle between the Communists and the last of the South Vietnamese forces at Tan Son Nhut airport. An NVA rocket whistles overhead and explodes on Thong Nhat Boulevard just outside the Embassy walls and their panic escalates tenfold. Six stories below, thousands more South Vietnamese civilians are massed on the Embassy grounds; hundreds more scramble over the high concrete wall surrounding the Embassy only to be entangled in the barbed wire, joined in their desperation to flee their imploding country and their innocent faith that the Americans will save them. The end is near, and they know it. They do not know that this Huey will be the last U.S. helicopter out of Vietnam. Ever.
Wednesday, 30 April 1975: the fall of Saigon.
Since midnight he has stood on the roof of the American Embassy in downtown Saigon and loaded thousands of refugees onto a steady stream of Navy helicopters for their evacuation to the Seventh Fleet ships waiting offshore in the South China Sea—Operation Frequent Wind, his final mission in Vietnam. It’s now morning and time has run out. This chopper flew in from the USS Midway to retrieve the few remaining American soldiers and the American flag flying over the Embassy—“No civilians! Those are my orders!” the pilot said; but he pulled rank and his sidearm on the pilot. So the troop compartment now holds a huddled mass of refugees from Communism leaving everything they possess behind because possessions mean nothing without freedom; the engine is powering up, kids are crying, women are wailing, sirens are screaming, and outside the Embassy a river of refugees are exiting Saigon on trucks, buses, motor scooters, and bicycles; the looting is already beginning. Another rocket explodes even closer and the Navy pilot is yelling to the last American soldier in Vietnam to get his butt in the aircraft, sir!
Instead, he gives the last place inside the cho
pper to a teenage girl traveling alone, no doubt orphaned by the war; he will stand on the skid for the flight out to the Midway. He hoists her up, her bare feet joining four others hanging out the open hatch, and he recalls kids riding on the tailgates of pickup trucks back in West Texas and wonders if they still do.
He turns and yells, “Thôi! Dủ rồi!”—No more! That’s all!—to those next in line, a young woman and her baby girl, from her features an Amerasian child abandoned by her American father. The woman is the type of Viet the American soldiers favored, slim and smooth-skinned with soft brown eyes and full lips, now a fallen angel; a silver crucifix hangs around her neck. Their eyes meet, and the woman sees the truth in his: the Americans will not return to save her family. Their freedom ends today. As the Huey’s engines rev louder and the blades rotate faster and the machine strains mightily to hoist its human cargo, the woman kisses her baby and holds the child out to him.
He hesitates then takes the child. With his free hand, he rips off the nametag stitched onto his fatigues and the silver eagle insignia of a full colonel in the United States Army and presses both into the woman’s delicate hand so she can find her child if she survives or die knowing that her child will live free in America. He steps onto the skid and reaches into the cabin with his free hand for a hold; the baby is curled up in his other arm, her tiny fingers clutching his uniform, her brown eyes wide and gazing up at him, her head pressed against his chest.
As the chopper rises from the roof, his eyes never leave the woman; tears run down her face, one face among thousands left behind on the Embassy grounds, their arms outstretched to the Americans, to God Himself, praying to be saved, knowing what their fate will be at the hands of the Communists, their fate for trusting the Americans, for being Catholic, for believing in God. As he knows. Looking down at these desperate people that America and God now abandon, tears fill his eyes. Ben Brice came to their country to free the oppressed. He failed. He closes his eyes, ashamed—of himself, his country, and his God.
