Never Back Down

by William Casey Moreton

  Coburn didn’t flinch. “Where did you find his body?”

  “We don’t have a body.”

  Coburn waited for more.

  “Brian Ripley did not die today, and he did not die yesterday. In fact, he’s been dead for fifteen years,” O’Shannon said.

  Coburn again did not flinch, but he could feel the blood draining from his face. He maintained his composure as best he could, but the shock of the detective’s statement was undeniable.

  “Impossible.”

  “Impossible or not, Brian Ripley is dead, and has been for quite some time.”

  “I saw him alive last night.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I know what I saw.”

  “Whatever you think you saw, that individual was not Brian Ripley.”

  The sounds of the sports bar faded far into the background. Coburn was stunned.

  “How much did you have to drink last night, Mr. Coburn?”

  “Not a drop. What are you suggesting?”

  “I’m doing my job, Dr. Coburn. Someone was murdered late last night, and the man you’ve accused of possibly being involved with the crime has been dead for a decade and a half. So you can see how I might have a few additional questions for you.”

  “Brian Ripley was alive as of 11 p.m. last night.”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “What happened to him? How did he die?”

  “A skiing accident. He was killed in an avalanche.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Can you account for your whereabouts from midnight to six a.m. this morning?”

  “I was asleep in a room at a hotel. Why do I suddenly feel like a suspect?”

  “You walked through my door uninvited this morning, Dr. Coburn. You stood at my desk and gave a clear, concise, and accurate physical description of the murder victim. Please stop me if I’m confusing you.”

  “This no longer has anything to do with me,” Coburn said flatly. “If Brian Ripley is dead, as you say, my involvement with you is over.”

  “That’s an interesting perspective.”

  Coburn’s eyes drifted. His mind had gone momentarily fuzzy. He flashed on a mental image of Brian Ripley buried beneath the wall of snow. Coburn had done his fair share of rescue work on ski patrols and was well aware of how deadly even a minor avalanche could be. The stampede of snow and ice would have hit him with the force of a locomotive. He would have been instantly buried and crushed.

  Coburn’s eyes panned the room, focusing on nothing. The man with the white hair was still at the bar, and Coburn absently noticed him again glance in their direction.

  “Where are you staying tonight?” O’Shannon asked.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  O’Shannon nodded, then he stood. The effort left him short of breath. He dropped a twenty on the table.

  “The water is my treat,” he said.

  Coburn didn’t respond.

  “Don’t leave the city, Doctor.”

  Again Coburn didn’t respond.

  O’Shannon left without another word.

  16

  Jones waited at the bar. He watched the detective leave. Coburn left a minute later. The second Coburn was out the door, Jones spun away from his place at the end of the bar, abandoning his untouched drink.

  Jones pushed open the door and caught sight of Coburn. He dialed Smith on his cell.

  “Coburn had lunch with the cop. I don’t know what was said, but Coburn looks like he’s seen a ghost.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Smith.

  17

  Coburn was still dazed. His conversation with O’Shannon had left him with more questions than answers. Now those questions hardly seemed worth answering because the official word was that Brian Ripley was dead.

  Coburn stepped inside a corner pharmacy. He paid for a small bottle of Excedrin, placed three caplets on his tongue, and choked them down without water. The damage to his nose felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through the center of his face. He frowned when he noticed his reflection in the glass door as he went back outside.

  Without realizing it, he had returned to the city block where he had first heard the voice of the man he’d mistaken for Brian Ripley. He was, in fact, standing in the exact spot where he had climbed into the taxi. He retraced his steps to the bar, and from there he headed toward Washington Square Park, trying to follow the route the Brian Ripley look-alike might have taken. He wondered if Heather had felt threatened. She had seemed to go along willingly enough. There had been nothing to indicate that she feared for her life.

  West Fourth shot him straight from the subway tunnel, past the bar, to Washington Square Park. Most of the surrounding buildings were occupied by NYU. The park made up the better part of ten acres. Coburn walked the length of the south side, then headed north toward Fifth Avenue. At Fifth, Coburn stood directly beneath the huge marble arch. The cops were gone and the crime-scene tape had been removed. He buried his hands in his pockets and walked toward the fountain. A mother with a bandana in her hair was reading to her small child. Coburn walked past them and the child smiled up at him, pointing with her tiny finger at his nose.

  “That man has an ouchie,” she said.

  “He certainly does,” the mother agreed, quickly returning to the words on the page.

  There were students standing near the bushes where the crime scene techs had been working. A scrawny kid with a patchy beard stood with his thumbs hooked under the straps of his book pack. The kid was dressed in cargo pants and sandals. He was surrounded by a matching pair of girls who looked like they survived on nothing but granola. Neither girl had any real figure at all, just gaunt faces and flat chests. All three of them looked in desperate need of a shower and a decent meal.

  He moved off the concrete path onto grass, strolled casually through trees and landscaping, drifting through shade, then dappled sunlight, then shade again. Then he stopped and turned. He pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees, his eyes sweeping the surrounding ground. There was no physical trace left behind to indicate that a murder had been committed. He crouched down, his forearms resting across his thighs. He was hoping for signs of struggle or traces of blood. The scene looked natural, undisturbed.

  He thought again about Heather. It seemed reasonable to assume that she had gone along willingly from the bar to the park. She could have drawn a crowd easily if she had put up a fight or called out for help, but Coburn had a hunch that the attack had come suddenly and without warning.

  What was she doing with him? Why had she gone there to meet him?

  Coburn was staring due north, his mind momentarily lost in thought. He blinked once, shifting his gaze a fraction of an inch, and he saw the man with white hair again.

  Coburn stood.

  The man was loitering near the fountain a hundred feet away and had been casually gazing in Coburn’s direction. Suddenly Coburn recognized him as one of the men with the Ripley look-alike from the night before. He had been one of the men escorting Heather to the door.

  Coburn bolted off the grass, breaking into a full sprint.

  Jones saw him. He hesitated a beat, then realized he’d been spotted. He backpedaled two full strides, then turned and ran.

  Coburn saw the man make his move and he charged past the fountain, giving chase, legs pumping. The man had a good lead, but Coburn felt he was making up the distance between them. Obviously the man had followed him from the sports bar in Midtown, but why? He saw the man dash across lanes of traffic, car horns honking. Just as he thought he was making progress, the man disappeared. He had dodged between a series of parked cars along the street and then, like a flash, he seemed to simply vanish.

  Coburn slowed to a jog. He was breathing hard. He walked to the spot where he’d last seen the man and stood with his hand pressed flat against the hood of a car. He turned a full three-sixty. The front of his shirt was damp with perspiration.

  He dropped into the push-up position and lowered his bod
y to the pavement, checking beneath the cars parked on the street. There was no sign of anyone hiding under any of them.

  “Damn it.”

  Coburn backtracked a few dozen feet, peeking through windows of a handful of businesses. He ducked into a dry cleaners and the woman behind the counter looked up from whatever she was doing. Coburn didn’t say a word. She didn’t look like someone had just darted inside to hide. Everything had the appearance of business as usual.

  He stepped back outside.

  Why was he being followed?

  • • •

  “He spotted me,” Jones said into his cell.

  “We are ready for him,” Smith replied.

  Jones stepped back out onto the sidewalk.

  • • •

  Coburn saw a flash of movement up ahead and saw the man with white hair materialize out of nowhere. He stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk and stared directly at Coburn.

  “Hey!” Coburn yelled.

  The man stood frozen for another moment.

  Coburn took a step toward him.

  The man didn’t move.

  Coburn hesitated, only briefly, then took several more steps.

  “Who are you?”

  The man did not answer. He did not flinch or say a word.

  “You were with Brian Ripley last night. I remember you.”

  But even before the words were out of his mouth, the man again turned and ran. He slipped between parked cars and sprinted through a narrow break in oncoming traffic. A Mini Cooper had to swerve to miss him.

  “Stop!” Coburn yelled.

  He saw him turn a corner. As Coburn reached the corner, he saw the man duck into a department store. Coburn ran after him, dodging racks of clothes and trying not to slip and fall on the newly waxed floor. The man headed toward the back of the store. The store was a maze of intersecting merchandise displays. A member of the sales staff called out for them to stop running. Both men ignored her.

  Coburn saw a flash of sunlight as the emergency exit door burst open. The man with the white hair was back out on the street. Coburn was right behind him, quickly making up ground.

  The multiple shifts in direction had left Coburn disoriented. He had no idea where he was. He spotted a street sign but it meant nothing to him.

  The man slowed and turned into an alley and Coburn turned in after him in time to see him reach the top of a short flight of concrete steps and heave open a sliding door on a loading dock. Coburn went up the steps two at time. He reached the sliding door and ran inside and immediately realized he’d made a huge mistake.

  Arms came from out of the shadows and grabbed him. He was pulled aside as someone pulled the sliding door shut. Then someone turned on a bank of fluorescent lights to reveal the vast empty space of an abandoned warehouse. Coburn had been seized by men he did not recognize.

  Then the man with white hair stepped into view. Standing next to him was Brian Ripley. Coburn stared in disbelief.

  “Hello, John,” Smith said. “It’s been a long time.”

  18

  Coburn struggled but the effort was brief and wasted. The man behind Coburn held him with a thick arm clamped around his throat. The man’s beefy forearm was cutting into his windpipe.

  “What are you doing in New York?” Smith asked.

  Coburn grunted. He tried to twist away by pushing one shoulder forward, but the grip on him was too practiced and powerful.

  “Let him talk,” Smith said.

  Coburn felt the pressure against his windpipe ease slightly.

  “You are alive,” Coburn said.

  Smith’s face didn’t change. His eyes remained cold and gray.

  “I knew that was you last night.”

  “My experience has taught me that no one knows anything,” Smith replied.

  “That was you with the girl.”

  Smith’s jaw tightened. Coburn noticed a twist around the flesh of Smith’s left eye, like a tick. Smith’s eyes bore into him.

  “Why did you kill her?” Coburn asked.

  Suddenly a fist blasted him in the side of the head. Coburn saw sparks of light. His head whipped to one side, then settled back between his shoulders. He opened his eyes but his vision had blurred, sound buzzing in the ear that had been struck.

  Smith stepped up nose to nose.

  “I’m not here. You are not here. None of this is real.”

  Then Smith gestured to someone standing outside Coburn’s peripheral vision. He heard footsteps. A man approached with a syringe. He depressed the plunger slightly to force air bubbles from the tube, a clear substance spurting from the needle.

  Coburn strained against the arms holding him, but the grip around his throat seized up tight. He felt the prick of the needle as it bit into the flesh just beneath his shoulder. Within seconds the room began to spin and his knees grew weak.

  Smith stared at him with no expression at all. Coburn maintained eye contact with him until the entire world faded to black.

  19

  The neighborhood was part of a subdivision in Virginia about an hour’s commute to Washington D.C. It was a residential development that had grown and sprawled over the last few decades, a reflection of the growth and sprawl of the government bureaucracy that employed many of the community’s residents. It was a desirable area due its proximity to the capital.

  Eva DuPont lived in an average home on an average street in the picturesque Virginia neighborhood. The house was two stories of brick and siding built on a half-acre lot with a deep backyard covered in lush green Bermuda grass. The DuPonts were five years into a thirty-year mortgage. It was the second home they’d owned in ten years of marriage. They seemed happy enough with it and had no plans to move or upgrade anytime soon.

  At eight in the evening, Eva was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher after a late dinner. Bob was upstairs bathing the kids. She could hear them up there laughing and jabbering, her husband struggling to keep them wrangled and in the tub. It was his night to bathe the kids and put them to bed, and Eva was happy to have time to herself.

  With the dishwasher filled to capacity, she added soap and closed the door. She touched a button on the door panel and the wash cycle began with a muted whir.

  Eva poured a glass of merlot and stared out the kitchen window. She was listening to Vivaldi as she watched the sun set beyond the patio. Bob would want sex after the kids were down, and she certainly had no issue with giving it to him. Bob was only a mediocre lover, but he was familiar enough with the mechanics of anatomy to know how to get the job done.

  Tonight she wouldn’t have time to finish her drink. Her BlackBerry rang twice before she heard it over the rising orchestration on the Vivaldi CD. She glanced at the display. The call was work related. Eva stepped out from the kitchen and glanced at the stairs to make certain that Bob wasn’t within earshot.

  She put the BlackBerry to her ear.

  “DuPont,” she said.

  “Area 9 has officially activated you,” a man’s voice said.

  “I understand.”

  “Are you available immediately?”

  Eva again glanced at the stairs leading up to the children’s bedrooms, then she turned back to the kitchen sink. The dishwasher was humming contentedly.

  “Affirmative,” she said.

  “Report to Mockingbird at twenty-one-thirty hours.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Affirmative.”

  The call ended and Eva placed the BlackBerry back in her purse. She didn’t have time to stop and think. Her employer was expecting her to arrive back at the office in ninety minutes. The skirt and silk blouse would have to go. She stripped down to her bra and panties in the master bedroom and pulled on a pair of black denim jeans and a tight black T-shirt, laced up her Reeboks and rushed upstairs to spring the bad news on Bob. No sex tonight.

  She lied to him, as she had for years.

  “There’s an emergency at the accounting office,” she said. “The mainframe in payroll cras
hed again. IBM is on-site. They’ve called me in to help troubleshoot. I’ll likely be gone all night.”

  Bob was on his knees beside the tub, with both kids up to their navels in sudsy bath water. She saw the immediate disappointment register in his eyes.

  “Sorry, sweets,” she said, and kissed his forehead. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Tell them you’re sick,” he pleaded.

  “Won’t work.”

  “Tell them it’s the West Nile virus.”

  “Nice try. Pay period ends Friday,” she said, turning toward the open bathroom door. “People will want to get paid next week, and that won’t happen if the mainframe is down.”

  Bob raised a hand in gesture to offer an additional protest, but Eva moved too quickly. She was out the door and down the stairs before he could assemble an adequate comeback. Then he heard the garage door open and close, and knew he’d be sleeping alone.

  • • •

  The lights of D.C. loomed on the horizon. It was a city of a billion secrets. Eva DuPont followed the freeway signs and exited at the Pentagon. She clipped her ID badge to her shirt and passed through security and hurried through a maze of long, wide corridors.

  A young woman escorted her to a secure room where four men were seated around a conference table. The only individual Eva recognized was Mockingbird. He was a tall, powerful-looking man of at least sixty, dressed in uniform, with four stars on each shoulder. He glared at her through rimless glasses. Eva took a seat without addressing any others positioned around the table. Mockingbird made no effort at introductions.

  “It’s late, but we won’t keep you,” he said in a clipped tone. “This assignment has the highest priority and is extremely time sensitive. You are to give it your full attention.”

  Eva nodded. “I understand.”

  A laptop computer connected to a digital projector was lined up at one end of the table. Mockingbird touched a button on the computer and an image appeared on the wall. The photo was of a man in uniform, unsmiling, hair shorn. The young man could not have been more than twenty-five years old.