by Osborne, Jon
Something definitely had to be wrong.
Blankenship slipped his phone back into the left-hand pocket of his baggy red-and-blue gym shorts and made his way quickly over to the elevator located at the east end of the lobby. Stepping into the open car, he punched the illuminated button for the fourth floor and waited for the doors to close again, letting out a slow breath as they did. Uninvited or not, maybe a more personal overture would turn the trick. Dana could rip off his head if she really wanted to but he wanted to make sure she was OK. Needed to make sure she was OK, actually. They might have known each other for only a short while now, but he had no doubt in his mind that she’d do the exact same thing for him had their situations been reversed. That was just the sort of person Dana was. Always had been ever since he’d first met her a few months earlier. One of the few kindhearted souls left in an inexplicably heartless world hopelessly overrun with horrendously rotten apples.
Some of who actually got pleasure from killing four-year-old kids.
Blankenship shuddered a full-body shudder that practically rattled the teeth in the back of his mouth as he rode the car up. Jack Yuntz was one highly disturbed individual, no two ways about it. Worse, the murdering little punk was still out there in the weeds somewhere, probably plotting out his next foul act right now.
The unsettling idea was enough to send a skin-stitching series of chill bumps racing across his arms.
When the elevator came to a stop with a high-pitched ding! a few moments later, Blankenship exited the car and strode down the hall to Apartment 417 before lifting a hand and knocking on Dana’s door.
No response.
He waited twenty seconds before knocking again. Another twenty seconds passed with no response.
Blankenship knitted his eyebrows in frustration and felt a second, more profound stab of fear slice hard through his gut. He knocked a third time, more forcefully this time. Maybe Dana was in the shower, couldn’t hear him with the water running. Hell, maybe she’d fallen and couldn’t get up, as that old infomercial on television had been so terribly fond of saying.
Met by the same lack of response after four more loud raps that hurt his knuckles, he stretched his muscular neck and ran through all the possibilities in his mind again. Dana might have been out for the night, but he didn’t think so. He’d seen her silver Mazda Protégé sitting in its assigned spot downstairs. And she didn’t have any boyfriend that he knew of, had been single ever since the terrible day more than a year earlier when Jeremy Brown had died his unbelievably grisly death at the hands of Jack Yuntz in the Presidential Suite of the Fontainebleau Hotel in downtown Manhattan.
So where the fuck was she?
When a fourth series of knocks still failed to elicit any response from inside Dana’s place, Blankenship returned to the elevator and made his way back downstairs before exiting the car on ground floor and striding purposefully through the lobby. On the south side of the building, he pulled open a fire-containment door and walked down the hall before knocking at the landlady’s place. He’d reached the point of no return now, needed to get to the bottom of this mystery come hell or high water – even if it meant annoying his partner into an atypical emotional outburst as his unjust reward for his efforts. Fair enough on that count, too, though. Blankenship was a big boy. He could handle it. Obviously, though – barring the forceful kicking down of Dana’s front door – he required a little help in accomplishing his goal.
Straining his ears, he heard stirring coming from inside the apartment. A moment later, the door opened a crack in a prolonged rattling of security chains. Moist blue eyes peered up at him through the slight opening.
“Yes?” Maggie Carter asked, further crinkling up her already impressively wrinkled face. “How may I help you?”
Blankenship put on his warmest smile and tried his best to appear as unthreatening as humanly possible. Didn’t want to give the old woman a heart attack, after all. Wasn’t an easy feat to accomplish at his six-foot-four height, though. And his sweat-stained workout clothes probably weren’t helping matters any, either. “Good evening, ma’am,” he said, clearing his throat and holding up his Bureau ID. “‘I was wondering if I might borrow your master key for a minute to check on a friend of mine.”
Maggie Carter narrowed her striking blue eyes into suspicious slits. ‘Who’s your friend?’
“Dana Whitestone, ma’am. Apartment 417.”
The landlady closed the door right in his face, causing Blankenship to lift up his eyebrows on his forehead in mild surprise. Not exactly the reception he’d been expecting or hoping for.
Thankfully, though, after a brief pause, more metal chains rattled, followed by the reopening of the door, all the way this time. Clearly, security marked a primary concern for the cautious landlady, and who could blame her? Judging from the news reports littering the airwaves nearly every single night of the week lately, even the suburbs weren’t what they’d once been these days. Crackpots, drug dealers, child molesters, serial killers – just about every conceivable manner of lowlife that you could possibly lay your brain on – had all long ago moved their disgusting acts into the previously safe neighborhoods all around the country and all around the world. The message seemed clear enough to anyone who bothered to listen: you couldn’t trust anybody anymore. “What’s this about?” Maggie Carter demanded. An unmistakable look of concern colored in her weather-beaten face, and Blankenship wasn’t at all surprised to see it. He knew that Dana and her landlady were close, with his partner often leaving her cat in the elderly woman’s care when she needed to be out of town on FBI business. “What’s wrong with Dana?”
Blankenship immediately kicked himself in the ass for his ham-handed approach. He should have known better than to go crashing in like a bull in a porcelain factory like this. After all, he’d always considered himself a people-person.
Then again, so had Charles Manson.
He widened his smile in a belated effort to put the old woman at ease, realizing that he’d missed his mark by a mile with his initial overture. Just because he felt freaked out right now didn’t mean that he needed to pass along that distinctly unpleasant feeling to others. Wasn’t the best way to make friends, to put it mildly.
He gathered himself and tried again. “I just need to wake her up, ma’am,” he said, manufacturing the story on the spot and feeling pretty damned good about his ability to think on his feet. “I’m afraid that she’s overslept for the stakeout we’re conducting tonight and she hasn’t been answering her phone all day.” No need to cause any more worry than he absolutely needed to if it turned out there’d been no cause for concern in the first place, right? Besides, saying something like “I’m afraid she might have killed herself” didn’t exactly have the most pleasant ring to it.
Unfortunately, though, Maggie Carter didn’t seem the least little bit convinced by his lie. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. Perceptive old lass.
Drawing herself up to her full five-foot height, she challenged him more directly. “What’s your name, young man?”
Blankenship immediately felt his cheeks suffuse with a warm rush of blood at the odd-sounding description of his person, wondering just where, exactly, all the time had gone. He’d passed thirty-five a few years prior so it was a bit unsettling to realize that there were still people around in this world who retained the seniority to call you “young man” without the faintest trace of irony in their voices. Like it or not, though, he knew that it wouldn’t be too long before he found himself doing the exact same thing to the ever-growing population of folks that made up the segment of society younger than him. Through the years, indeed. As always, time proved the great equaliser in this life. No one could escape it, no matter how desperately they tried or how many new and better brands of expensive moisturizing lotions they rubbed into their aging skin each night before slipping into their beds and losing yet another day of their lives in the process.
Suddenly, Blankenship felt supremely stupid for hav
ing lied to Dana’s landlady. And why the hell shouldn’t he feel that way? What had been the point? He should have just been upfront with the woman and told her the truth in the first place. That he was worried about a friend. That he wanted to check on her.
That he wanted to ensure she was still breathing fresh air.
Too late for that now, though. Clearly and then some. He’d already begun to weave his hopelessly tangled web and now he found his tiny little spider legs inextricably stuck in the strands of his own deceit. Sadly, rewinding time – even for the few seconds he needed right now – didn’t mark a realistic option. As far as he knew, time travel hadn’t been invented yet. He’d need to get online and check out Google when he got home to make sure that particular law of physics still held true. Sure as hell would’ve proved useful right about now. “Bruce Blankenship, ma’am,” he said. “I’m with the FBI.”
“Let me see your badge again,” the old woman said. Setting both her feet and lips into tight lines, she extended a frail arm and held out a tiny pale white hand that was crisscrossed by dark blue veins even in the palm. Plainly, much more a demand than any sort of request.
Blankenship passed over his identification as instructed, feeling like a naughty schoolboy who’d been called onto the carpet by a fed-up principal sick to death of dealing with her incorrigible charges. After a moment or two of intense study, the old woman’s face finally softened. “Oh, you’re the fellow she told me about.”
She tilted his ID back and forth in order to get a better angle at the watermark under the light before finally looking back up at him again. “You’re her new partner, right?”
Blankenship let out a slight sigh of relief that he hoped the old woman wouldn’t notice; infinitely thankful his ID seemed to have passed inspection. He knew it was valid, but for a second there Maggie Carter had even him thinking it might have been counterfeit somehow. If nothing else, the old woman would’ve made a kick-ass interrogator. They could probably put her skills to very good use in the Bureau questioning the never-ending wave of terror suspects that had been flooding through their doors ever since the tragic and world-altering events of 9/11. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “That’s right. About a month now.”
She handed his ID back. “From Nebraska, aren’t you?”
Blankenship widened his eyes; taken aback by just how much Carter seemed to know about him. One thing was for certain: the old gal had a wonderful gift for putting people on their heels – even relatively grizzled ten-year veterans of the FBI like himself. All things considered, he wouldn’t have liked al-Zawahiri’s chances one little bit given ten minutes alone with her in a locked room.
“I can see you’re well informed,” Blankenship said. “Just moved here to Ohio a couple months ago. I used to-”
Maggie Carter cut him off with a quick wave of her skeletal right hand. “Yes, yes, I know all about you, young man. Dana told me everything I need to know.” She stepped aside and motioned for him to come inside. “Still, I’m sure you won’t mind if I talk to your boss to check out your story. I mean, you look official enough and all, but you never know these days. Can’t be too safe about these things. Way too many weirdoes out there.”
Blankenship stepped into the old woman’s apartment and drew his phone from his pocket again. Flipping it open to dial Bill Krugman down in Washington, DC, he felt his heart sink in his chest. Bothering the Director on a Friday night probably didn’t mark the wisest course of action for the furthering of his overall career prospects but he really didn’t have much other choice now. He needed backup against this pit bull wearing a flimsy green housecoat.
Quick.
Krugman answered his phone after three short rings. “Agent Blankenship,” he said, cutting straight to the point. “What’s up?”
Blankenship inhaled deeply. As quickly as he could, he brought his boss up to speed on what was going on in Ohio while Maggie Carter listened in intently from no more than three feet away.
Blankenship used a codeword to let Krugman know that he couldn’t relate the full story at the moment. “I’m really sorry to bother you like this on a Friday night, sir, but could you please verify my identity to Agent Whitestone’s landlady so that I can go on up and get her for our stakeout tonight?”
Krugman grunted into the receiver on his end of the connection to acknowledge that he’d received the message. “Put her on,” he said. “And call me back just as soon as you find out what the hell’s going on with Dana.”
“Yes, sir. Will do.”
Blankenship passed over the phone to Maggie Carter, who gave him a pointed look before placing his outdated Motorola Razr to her left ear – his backup phone today since he’d fumbled his brand-new iPhone 5 into the toilet just that very morning while trying to kill two birds with one stone by checking his email at the same time he’d been urinating. Pretty expensive mistake, to say the least.
Pretty stupid one, too.
Maggie Carter listened closely to what Krugman had to say for several moments before switching off and handing the phone back. “Well, OK, then,” she said, apparently assuaged by Krugman’s hasty assurances that Blankenship was indeed who he’d said he was and not some recently escaped axe murderer on the loose from the local mental hospital who got his perverted kicks from targeting defenseless little old ladies on Friday nights. “Everything seems to check out just fine. Wait right here a minute, young man. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
With that, the old woman left Blankenship standing alone in the living room, turning quickly on her heel and disappearing down a narrow hallway just off the kitchen with the back of her green housedress trailing behind her in her wake like a superhero’s flowing cape. Now you see her, now you don’t.
Blankenship glanced around the place while he waited. Plastic-covered furniture was arranged in a neat semi-circle around the living room. An old, cabinet-style television decked out with elaborately framed black-and-white photographs sitting on top served as the centerpiece. Tabloid magazines were stacked up two feet high on the oversized coffee table directly in front of the largest couch, the top cover featuring a blurry, bare-chested photo of Kate Middleton that had been taken from long range. The beloved paparazzi doing their level best again to pretend that the subjects at the other ends of their expensive lenses weren’t living, breathing human beings worthy of basic privacy.
Thirty seconds later, the landlady was back with the master key in hand, and Blankenship immediately felt his cheeks flood with blood again despite the fact that he must have easily outweighed the woman by at least a hundred and thirty-five pounds – probably could’ve taken her out in two seconds flat if he’d really needed to. Probably even quicker than that, too. Somehow, though, just being in the little old lady’s presence made him feel like a little kid again. And clearly her particular superpower lay in her uncanny ability to make him feel like he was nine years old and back at summer camp at Lake Chippewa in Massachusetts, head hung low while he answered to the lead counselor for his role in orchestrating the surprise panty raid on the girls’ cabin that had left at least one little lass without so much as a single pair of clean underwear left until her parents could drive up from Boston and deliver a fresh load of laundry to her.
“Here you go,” Maggie Carter said, stretching her thin neck and removing the key from a large metal ring. Handing it over, she widened her glistening blue eyes and held his stare. “Just make sure you bring it right back to me as soon as you’re done. If you’re not back in twenty minutes, I’m calling the cops.”
Blankenship took the key and promised to return in the allotted timeframe. He meant it, too. No way in hell he’d test the old lady on her threat. Not after what he’d already seen from her up to this point. From the look of things, the old woman would probably have the parking lot swarming with cruisers from the local PD should he dare to break their newly struck agreement and, failing that, he had very little doubt that she’d try to arrest him herself if she felt it represented her only recourse to
ensure the safety of her tenants against the unwashed riff-raff of the world such as himself.
Returning to Dana’s floor via the elevator, Blankenship breathed out another sigh of relief, thankful beyond words to finally escape the feisty octogenarian’s spirited interrogations. Not to mention that oppressively stuffy living space of hers. The old woman’s apartment had smelled suspiciously like a nose-jarring combination of over-the-counter muscle creams, week-old tapioca pudding and at least several mountains worth of moldy mothballs.
Forty-five seconds later, he slipped the key into Dana’s lock and turned the handle.
Stepping tentatively inside his partner’s apartment, Blankenship immediately wrinkled up his nose against the new offending odor that invaded his nostrils. The garbage bags piled up high next to the front door indicated to him that Dana hadn’t taken out her refuse in the three weeks since she’d left work. Not that he blamed her all that much for her apparent laissez faire attitude toward keeping a tidy home recently. After all, she had far more important things to worry about than just a little routine housecleaning that could certainly wait until she’d cleared out some of the cobwebs of grief littering her mind. Psychology 101: deal with your emotions first; deal with the physical objects in your world later on.
Stepping past the bulging bags of garbage and farther into the badly disorganized space, he cut his stare hard to the right and felt his breath catch in his throat. Ten feet away and sitting on top of an end-table next to the living-room couch, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s had been flanked by two extremely disturbing items:
Dana’s Bureau-issued Glock and a full bottle of prescription sleeping pills.
Blankenship gave an abrupt start when something suddenly brushed against his exposed calves, nearly causing him to jump a foot in the air. A cold, hard burst of adrenalin rocketed through his veins, prompting all the hairs lining the back of his neck to come to attention like a line of tiny soldiers, as though he’d just jammed his moistened finger directly into a live electrical outlet featuring an exposed wiring problem.
