by R. J. Jagger
“I’m sorry we had to do this.”
River shrugged.
“It was her fault,” he said. “She was the one who got all fancy with the binoculars. She’s the one who fought back when she shouldn’t have. Screw her. She got what she deserved.”
January picked up a rock and threw it in the shaft.
“What’d you do here as a kid?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you used to come and play here as a kid. What did you do?”
“We jumped over the shafts.”
January smiled.
“No way.”
“Yeah, I’m serious,” River said.
“Show me.”
“Show you?”
“Yes.”
He tilted his head.
“And what’s my reward, if I do?”
“Whatever you want.”
“Be careful because there won’t be any take-backs.”
“Stop stalling and show me.”
River looked around. There were a good dozen shafts in sight, all smaller than the one in front of him, which was somewhere in the neighborhood of three good-sized steps, ten or eleven feet.
“This one will do,” he said.
“Go for it.”
He walked back, judged the distance until it burned into his brain, then sprinted for it with everything he had. At the very last inch of ground, he planted a foot and then catapulted his body high and twisting, not in a way to land on his feet, only in a way to clear the mark.
He landed on the other side with a thud and rolled.
He got up, brushed the dirt off his pants and walked towards January with a grin.
“I never did that one before,” he said. “It always scared me too much as a kid.”
“Looks like you’re growing up.”
“Anything I want,” he said. “That was the bet.”
“That’s right.”
“Get in the back seat of that car.”
“Yes sir.”
124
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
The clouds thickened and dropped lower. Ordinarily they had the same effect on Wilde as sunshine did, except in the opposite direction. Right now he could care less about them. Things were good between him and Emmanuelle. They were on solid ground again. They had a future.
London was waiting for him in Blondie.
“You look like you just got laid,” she said.
Wilde lit a cigarette.
“No one can tell that just by looking at another person’s face.”
“I wasn’t looking at your face.”
She cast her eyes down.
He followed them.
His fly was open.
He zipped up, cranked over the engine and squeezed into traffic. They went to the office to see if Alabama had taken a taxi over from her post at River’s.
She hadn’t.
The place was empty.
Nor had she been there, everything was the same.
Wilde scratched his head.
“Okay, here’s the deal. You stay here. Keep the door locked. There’s a gun in the top drawer of the desk. If anyone forces their way in, shoot first and ask questions later.”
He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To see Alabama first,” he said. “If the guy showed up at River’s, we’ll try to track him. If he hasn’t shown up, I’ll have to decide whether to go to River and give him the message that the map’s a fake.”
“We still don’t have the real one.”
“We’ll get it by tonight.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “One thing at a time.”
“Crockett has it.”
“I know.”
“I’ll get it from him while you’re gone,” London said.
“No, just stay here. I already have enough to worry about.”
“I just can’t sit here,” she said. “I won’t.”
Wilde recognized the look in her eyes. He got the gun from the drawer and handed it to her.
“Where do I carry it?”
Good question.
Her purse was gone.
Wilde grabbed a paper bag out of the cupboard.
The gun went inside.
Twenty minutes later he was on the roof of the abandoned warehouse with a white paper bag in his left hand. Inside that bag was a grilled cheese sandwich, a pack of peanut butter crackers and a chocolate bar. In his other hand was a bottle of RC.
Alabama wasn’t there.
“Alabama.”
No answer.
He checked behind the vent just to be sure she hadn’t fallen asleep back there.
She hadn’t.
She wasn’t there.
He headed back into the building to see if she was taking a leak somewhere.
“’Bama!”
No answer.
She must have headed over to the BNSF office.
Wilde headed back to the roof to have a quick peek at River’s place. As he got closer to the parapet, he spotted the binoculars sitting on the ledge.
That was strange.
Then he saw something even stranger.
Alabama’s purse was over by the heating unit.
He opened it up and rummaged through. It was hers all right. She must be around somewhere.
“Alabama!”
Silence.
He leaned over the parapet and checked the ground to see if she’d fallen off.
She wasn’t down there.
He checked everywhere.
She wasn’t there, not on the roof, not inside the building, not even in the area around it.
Wilde went back to the roof and pulled in River’s place with the binoculars.
It was empty.
The doors were shut.
His car was gone.
125
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
Bristol’s little blond squeeze Jaden didn’t show up for the four o’clock meeting in the alley. Waverly paced and checked her watch every five seconds. Where was the woman? Was she just late or not coming at all? Ten after the hour came and went. At a quarter after, Waverly left.
On her way out, she encountered Jaden coming from the opposite direction.
They headed to the back of the building.
“Sorry I’m late,” Jaden said. “I zigzagged around. I wanted to be absolutely sure no one was following me.”
Her words were laced with stress.
“What’s wrong?”
“Bristol’s the killer,” she said. “There’s no question in my mind.”
“Did he confess it?”
“No,” Jaden said. “But when I started to bring up Cleveland, he said he’d never been there. It wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it. The more I talked about it, the more agitated he got.”
“So he was hiding it.”
“More than hiding it, trying to deflect it,” Jaden said. “I might have pressed it too far. By the time I was done, I had the feeling that he knew that I knew something. He knew that I was probing him. When he looked at me it was like an alligator looking at a frog.”
“It’s time to run.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Jaden said. “I’m doing it right now, as we speak. I’m never going back.”
Waverly exhaled.
“Good.”
“I’m going to take a cab to the airport and just fly somewhere.”
“Where?”
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. Not San Francisco, that’s for sure.”
“That’s a good plan.”
They walked out of the alley, hugged goodbye at 16th Street and headed in opposite directions.
This was good.
If nothing else positive came of everything that had taken place, at least Jaden wouldn’t be the next statistic.
Suddenly someone
tapped Waverly on the shoulder.
It was Jaden.
“You’re still going after him, aren’t you?”
Waverly nodded.
“Yes.”
“I should help.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
“Yes, I should. Don’t get me wrong, I’m scared, but I owe you something for saving my life.”
Waverly retreated in thought.
“I need a way to trap him,” she said. “Do you have any bright ideas?”
126
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
Wilde wouldn’t be easy to kill. River knew that and knew it well. What he needed was a plan where Wilde would never see it coming, never have a chance to react, and in fact wouldn’t even know it happened. He’d be alive one second and dead the next.
Something that fast meant a bullet to the brain.
It also meant River couldn’t miss.
He’d have to be close.
As he drove back to Denver with January at his side, the mountain topography was every bit as spectacular as he remembered. He really needed to get up here more.
January put her hand on his knee.
“You’re thinking about something,” she said.
He was.
He was indeed.
“I have to do something tonight,” he said.
“What?”
“Something that you’re not going to be involved in.”
“What if I want to be?”
He shook his head.
“Sorry, not this time.”
“That’s not fair.”
He tossed his hair and looked at her sideways, then gave her a peck on the lips. “Tomorrow, we’re leaving Denver.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I have some money stashed away. It’s more than enough to give us time to think.”
“Think about what?”
“About getting normal,” he said.
She laughed.
“Normal is boring.”
“I’m not talking about totally normal,” he said. “Just enough that we don’t have to keep looking over our shoulder all the time.”
The Rocky Mountain scenery rolled by, seriously riveting. When they got to the outskirts of Denver, River didn’t go home. Instead he turned south on Santa Fe.
“Where we going?”
“A graveyard.”
“Are you serious?”
Yes.
He was.
“Why, who’s there?”
“No one, yet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means it won’t officially be a graveyard until tonight,” he said.
She ran her fingers through his hair.
“You couldn’t get normal if your life depended on it.”
He smiled.
“You’re probably right.”
“There ain’t no probably about it.”
127
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
From the warehouse, Wilde checked the BNSF office to see if Alabama had shown up there, which she hadn’t. When he got back to the office, she wasn’t there either. He paced next to the windows with a cigarette for all of one minute before the door opened.
London stepped in.
Her face was beautiful but serious.
She put a piece of paper on his desk.
“That’s the original map,” she said.
Wilde picked it up.
Compared to the two he’d seen previously this one really did look authentic. It had dirt smudges on it, reddish in color, not indigenous to Colorado.
“How’d you get it away from Bluetone?”
The woman lowered her eyes.
“I’m going to tell you something and you’re going to hate me,” she said. “I had it all along.”
The words slowly sunk in.
“Are you telling me you had this last night when we were busy giving the guy a fake?”
Her eyes met his briefly then darted away.
“Yes.”
Wilde pounded his fist on the desk.
“That little trick may have cost Alexa Blank her life.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why it’s here now.”
Wilde looked at her in disbelief.
“Is this really the original?”
“Yes,” she said. “No more tricks.”
Wilde studied it again.
“It’s time for you to leave,” he said.
“Wilde—”
“I’ll handle it from here.”
“But—”
“Go! Do it now before I say something I’d rather not.”
She gave him a short look, then walked out the door and closed it gently behind her. Wilde set a pack of matches on fire and lit a cigarette from the flames. From the window he watched London disappear down the street.
128
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
Jaden couldn’t think of a way to trap Bristol but did come up with an alternate thought. “What if he admits the murder?”
“You mean to you?”
“Yeah, say that, for starters.”
“That’s no good,” Waverly said. “That’s not evidence. Even if you told the police about it, they’d just assume there was some kind of lovers’ quarrel at work. And even if they did believe it enough to sniff around a little bit, they wouldn’t find enough corroborating evidence in the end. Meanwhile, while they were looking, Bristol would know about it. He’d disappear or lay a bribe or something.”
Jaden didn’t disagree.
“You said if we couldn’t trap him, you’d kill him if you could be certain he was the killer,” Jaden said. “Did you mean that?”
Waverly hesitated.
Good question.
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay, then think about this,” Jaden said. “The sky’s filling up with clouds. It’s going to rain tonight.”
Waverly looked up.
That was true.
“I don’t get where you’re going.”
“Here’s where I’m going,” Jaden said. “I’ll rent a car. I’ll drive Bristol to some remote place tonight after dark. When we get there, I’ll tell him that I’m onto him but I don’t care. I’ll tell him I want to stay with him no matter what he did in his past. I’ll tell him that I want him to share it with me though.”
Waverly shook her head.
“Even if he does, like I said, it’s not evidence.”
“Wait, let me finish,” Jaden said. “What Bristol won’t know is that you’ll be there listening.”
“How?”
“You and me will agree on the place beforehand,” Jaden said. “I don’t know Denver hardly at all so I’ll let you choose the place. You get there before we do and hide in the dark. After we get there, I’ll roll a window halfway down, ostensibly to get some fresh air. Then I’ll get Bristol talking. You creep up silently and listen in. Bring a gun. If Bristol confesses, you’ll have your proof. You can shoot him.”
Waverly receded in thought.
Then she looked at Jaden.
“Do you really think you can get him there, to a secluded place?”
Jaden nodded.
“He’ll go for two reasons,” she said. “One, he loves to make love in the car, especially in the rain. We’ve done it twenty times. Two, and more importantly, I’ll tell him I want to talk to him someplace private. He’ll go out of curiosity as to whether I know about his past or not. He’ll see it as a chance to probe me. He’ll also see it as a chance to kill me if he figures I know too much.”
Waverly frowned.
“It’s risky.”
“So is crossing the street,” Jaden said.
“They’re not exactly the same.”
She smiled, nervously.
“Maybe not but what other option is there?” Sile
nce, then she said, “Do you have a gun?”
“No.”
“Then we need to buy one. We’re going to need some cleaning products too, in case you end up shooting him while he’s still in the car. I’m going to have to return it at some point. I think we should have a shovel, too. There’s less likely to be a problem down the road if there’s no body.”
“You’re serious about all this.”
“I am,” Jaden said. “All I ask is that you try not to let me die.”
“I’ll give it my best shot.”
They shook hands.
129
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Afternoon
Wilde went back to the warehouse and found no Alabama, not on the roof or anywhere else. He pulled River’s place in with the binoculars to find it equally lifeless. He was pretty sure what happened. If he was right, River would die a million deaths and not one of them would be pretty.
An hour came and went.
The sky got meaner.
The clouds turned into storm clouds, not spitting yet but building up a hellacious arsenal.
Wilde didn’t move.
The map was in his shirt pocket. He didn’t take it out, he didn’t look at it, he didn’t care about it.
Suddenly something happened.
A figure moved quickly towards the boxcars.
It wasn’t River.
It was a man with a scar on his face and a tattoo on his forearm. Wilde’s chest pounded. This had to be the man from last night. Wilde raced through the guts of the building down to ground level and headed directly across the tracks and weeds and gravel towards his target. He made no effort to conceal himself.
The man saw him.
Wilde expected him to take cover and pull a gun.
That’s not what happened.
The man stood there in the open and waited.
Wilde stopped two steps away.
“You’re a bad shot,” he said.
The man smiled.
“It happens.”
Wilde hardened his face.
“I want the woman.”
“Alexa?”
“Yes, Alexa. Where is she?”
“She’s dead,” the man said. “Don’t look surprised. It’s your fault. You broke the rules.”
“The map you got is a fake,” he said. “I have the original.”
“Bullshit.”
Wilde pulled it out of his pocket and tossed it on the ground.
