The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  Choo-Choo shook his head.

  “I’ve got a delicious bologna and Dorito sandwich and I’m going to eat it.”

  He sighed. “How are you even holding it together?”

  She talked around a mouthful of sandwich. “You.”

  “I’m a very bad person to rely on.” He sounded as tired as she felt.

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  She shoved the last corner of the sandwich into her mouth. “I guess I don’t really, do I? If you’d asked me yesterday I would have said I did. I would have said we were good friends but I’m sitting here thinking about Fay. I’m thinking she was the best friend I had and I don’t even know where her parents live. If they’re even still alive. How is that possible? We worked together, close together, for five years and I don’t know anything about her family. I don’t know who to call to tell about what happened to her.” Some small part of her wondered why she didn’t cry at those words.

  Choo-Choo spun a chip on the table, watching it with red-rimmed eyes. “I guess you don’t take a job like ours if you’re a real people person.”

  “How did you get the job? Why do you work there?” She watched the chip with him, not having the energy to look away. “I mean, you always kind of struck me as a trust fund baby. Fay and I used to wonder why you even worked at all.”

  “See? You know me better than you think you do. I am a trust fund baby. Typical story. Been told a thousand times. My parents were in the diplomatic corps; I was raised by nannies and drunks until I was old enough to ship off to boarding school. I rebelled. Spectacularly, if I do say so myself.” He laughed at that and flopped back in the seat beside Dani. “Anyway, Grandfather didn’t find my stunts amusing and after I got kicked out of college—again—he pulled some strings and got me an interview with Rasmund.”

  “As an audio analyst?” Dani asked. “Was that your field? Spying?”

  “No, my field was—what the hell was it? Oh yeah, Renaissance art. Yawn. But my specialty was phone tapping, which sat very badly with the university president and his undergrad girlfriend.” He grinned at her. “Which was a shame because truly creative and effective dirty talk is rarer than you might imagine. The calls were quite a hit when I slipped them into the university’s radio playlist.”

  Dani laughed out loud, sinking deeper into the small couch. Choo-Choo put a warm hand on her leg. “I know my parents thought this job would be like a punishment for me, a lesson learned. So did I until I got here. And then when I started working I realized that for the first time in my life I was good at something that actually mattered. I was part of something.” He squeezed her knee. “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t abandon any of my less respectable skills. Ergo our little hideaway here, courtesy of a far more respectable senator’s wife.”

  “Ah,” Dani said. “Who is far more respectable—the senator or his wife?”

  Choo-Choo thought for a moment. “I guess that depends on what you respect.” He watched her laugh and then nudged her. “And what about you, Danielle Britton? You’re from where? Omaha?”

  “Oklahoma. Norman, Oklahoma, originally. Flat Road, Oklahoma, by default.”

  “Flat Road, Oklahoma? Is that as glamorous as it sounds?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. We weren’t in what you would call the heart of the jet set.” She saw him arch an eyebrow in anticipation and she shrugged. “Not much of a story. My dad was a long-haul trucker. My mom was crazy. The crazy finally won and I had to spend my school years being shuffled around to relatives who didn’t want me, going to schools that didn’t know I was there, and waiting for summer breaks. Then Daddy would swing by and get me and we’d spend the whole summer on long hauls. We went all over the States and into Canada. We even went to Mexico once.”

  Choo-Choo smiled. “That sounds kind of jet-setting to me. Or maybe truck-setting. It sounds like you liked it.”

  “I did. I loved summers in that truck. We’d go everywhere and everybody knew my dad. He’d let me listen in on everything, sneak me into poker games, hide me in bars. We’d pick up hitchhikers from all over the place and they’d just tell him anything. We’d even talk about Mom. Nobody ever talked about Mom. God, I used to love summer. I used to love being in that truck.”

  “Is he still driving?”

  Dani shook her head. “High winds in Missouri took his truck off the road. There was a question about faulty brakes and I wound up with enough money to go to Oklahoma State. Got enough money to get my PhD if I’d wanted it.”

  Choo-Choo rubbed her leg and let the silence stretch on before asking, “So how’d you wind up at Rasmund?”

  Dani laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “After today, I’d believe just about anything.”

  “Okay, are you ready for this?” She let her Oklahoma accent fill her words. “My plan was to become a proud member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  He howled out a laugh. “You? A Fibbie? Special Agent Dani Britton, FBI. What were you going to do? Be the special agent in charge of height crimes?”

  She jabbed him in the ribs, still laughing. “I didn’t say it was a good plan, but it was my plan, conceived as most bad plans are, in a haze of post-sex naked drunkenness.”

  “I get some of my best ideas that way.”

  “That’s because you probably look a lot better naked than I do.” She pressed her face into her hands. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this story. Okay, I was a bartender at this shit-hole bar in Flat Road. For fun—and occasionally a little profit—I used to do this trick Daddy showed me. I’d convince people that I was psychic and I’d tell them things about themselves that I couldn’t possibly know.”

  “Cold reading?”

  “Exactly. I didn’t know that’s what it was called then but you know how it works, you start hinting around about an old girlfriend and watch their body language, keep pouring the booze. Before you know it you’re telling them about the time their ninth-grade girlfriend licked their no-no hole or something.” By this point, she and Choo-Choo were huddled together on the settee, shaking with exhausted giggles. “One of my favorites was that, if I knew they were in town for a few days, I’d get them polluted, really trashed, and get them talking about their first dog. Well, you get some rigger soaked through and get him talking about his first dog and you wind up with an hour-long, tear-soaked, snot-flinging version of Old Yeller every time.”

  Choo-Choo had to choke the words out past the laugh. “That’s terrible! Why would you do that to someone?”

  “Well that wasn’t the fun part. The fun part was the next night when they’d come back in and have no recollection of the story at all and I’d say, ‘Oh my lord,’” she laid the accent on thick, drawing out the words. “I’d say, ‘I had a dream about you and you was with the most beautiful dog I ever seen.’ Buddy, they ate that shit up with a spoon. They’d do anything for me. Buy me dinner, put gas in my car. They’d have married me if I’d wanted.”

  He stared at her, his eyes wet from laughing. “So how does this translate to the FBI?”

  “The Feds raided this drug line coming up from Mexico and were camped out in some shit motel on the highway. Why, I can’t imagine, but we had a bar full of them one night. I was young and bored and prone to falling for men in bad suits—”

  “Something that hasn’t changed.”

  “Something that hasn’t changed at all. Thank you for pointing that out. I pulled the old ‘message from grandma’ game on one tense-looking fellow in hard black shoes and we wound up back in my apartment violating several of Oklahoma’s decency laws. He figured out how I’d been playing him and told me I should apply as analyst to the bureau. He said they’d appreciate my unique skills.”

  Choo-Choo pursed his lips. “I’m assuming he meant your ability to read body language, not commit acts of indecency.”

  “One can only assume. Anyway, I applied, took a bunch of tests, and failed. And my
FBI dreams were over just like that. But the woman who gave me the results told me she’d write a recommendation for me to Rasmund and it seems that whatever I lacked for Uncle Sam was just what Rasmund wanted and five years later, here I am.”

  “Here we are.”

  “Here we are.” She pared back the accent that had flooded her words. “Here we are, sitting in a hotel while some psychopath is eating my food and sleeping in my bed, planning how he’s going to kill me.” Choo-Choo said nothing. “You know what’s funny? It’s still better than Oklahoma.”

  Back in his room, Booker checked the clip on his backup SIG Sauer and tossed it into his briefcase. He’d never been much of a gun man. All this crap his clients expected when he showed up, silver cases of precision weapons nestled in custom-cut foam, he could only imagine how he disappointed them. Guns were tools. He remembered the words of Big Eddy Eddy, a sadistic meth dealer with a surprising sense of humor who had become one of Booker’s earliest mentors. “Guns don’t kill people,” he’d said. “Bullets going really really fast kill people.”

  Booker had laughed when he’d said it even though he didn’t get it. He couldn’t have been seven years old and had learned quickly to laugh when Big Eddy Eddy told a joke. All these years later, however, Booker got it. Hobbyists and enthusiasts and weekend militants could rhapsodize on and argue the merits and shortfalls of Walthers and Glocks and Berettas but the truth was the only gun worth carrying was the gun you were willing to lose.

  Duncan’s team had insisted on silencers on their high-tech weapons—big hulking canisters that made the guns look like cannons. The weapons were clunky and huge and Booker could still hear the shots from outside. He hadn’t said anything to them and they returned the favor by not openly mocking the .22 he carried in his waistband. One of them had muttered something about it being “a woman’s gun,” but Booker had ignored that. He didn’t measure his dick by his gun. He didn’t worry about things like silencers and hollow-point titanium this and that. When it came time to end another human being’s life, what mattered were speed, precision, and proximity. If the only thing protecting you from apprehension was the silencer on your gun, you wouldn’t last long in this business. That’s why Booker preferred low-tech weapons—blades and wires, shivs and lead pipes. He didn’t like counting on machines and technology. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty.

  But even he needed a laptop. The digital age demanded it. Booker slid the computer into the briefcase. He wasn’t fastidious about destroying evidence chains. If the Marcher job had gone wrong enough for the police to suspect him, a man with eleven names and five citizenships, whatever research he carried on his computer would be small potatoes. The only way the police would suspect Booker was to see him over the body with a bloody knife or bruised hands. He knew that day was coming—nobody’s luck held out forever. Booker figured if he ever went down on a job, he’d keep enough evidence on hand to take the client down too. Fair was fair.

  He grabbed the gray woolen overcoat he’d packed. He didn’t need it. Booker hadn’t felt the ambient temperature since he was a boy, but he knew he’d stand out on the D.C. streets without one. Dani had noticed. She’d been cold.

  He smiled at the memory of her rosy cheeks and messy hair peeking out from all those bags and shirts she’d been buried in. Grabbing his briefcase and letting himself out of the room, he wondered what she had in all those bags. Did she have the client’s intel? Had she stopped somewhere to shop while fleeing for her life? It would be clever of her. Some people panicked when hunted, running in circles and wasting time. Not Dani. She’d gone straight to ground, checking into a hotel in her own neighborhood. At first he’d thought that careless, until the client’s research had shown no activity on any of her credit cards. Any credit cards that were known, at least. Despite the background that showed Dani to be a loner, she wasn’t without resources. He’d have to do a little digging at her place.

  The lobby was nearly empty, two maintenance men buffing the marble floor while three businessmen huddled together in club chairs beneath a shaded lamp. New York may be the city that never sleeps, Booker thought, but in D.C. the games never ended. He paused before a flat-screen TV tucked into an alcove near the fireplace to catch the headlines of the evening news.

  On his list of tasks for the evening was making the anonymous tip regarding Dani’s involvement in the Rasmund explosion. Despite what he had messaged Dani, he’d held off on misleading the authorities. Everything about this job had been off from the start and Booker had decided to play a tight game. There was no rush to put Dani on the hot seat. He knew where she was. Once the law got involved, it probably wouldn’t take them long to find her either. They’d start canvassing her neighborhood and the inn wasn’t far outside her known whereabouts. And as cute as Booker thought Dani looked bundled up in her flannel, he doubted she blended in with the stately inn’s usual crowd. Why had she gone there? The tingle of being temporarily outwitted shivered up his spine. He loved it and hated it at the same time.

  The news anchors laughed about the sports headlines as Booker sidled up closer to the screen. Local news came next. He was surprised to see the lead story focused on a bank scandal, followed by a charity event put on by local teenagers. Maybe he’d missed the Rasmund story; maybe it had run before the sports report, although this late in the year it seemed every American news report started with football. Shrugging his overcoat on, Booker bent to pick up his briefcase and froze. The news show cut to commercial but not before running a banner with the upcoming stories, among them a gas explosion in Falls Church.

  Gas explosion?

  He scanned the lobby to see if anyone had noticed him. Another white fortysomething man with a tie and briefcase didn’t exactly stand out, but Booker liked to make a point of remaining in motion. Just standing still made him feel vulnerable but he stood there, hands down by his side, attaché forgotten. Stillness settled over his muscles, his expression neutral, as his brain kicked into an unfamiliar gear. He felt nervous. He didn’t know why he felt it but Booker had learned early in life to trust that reaction.

  The commercials finished and the news anchors returned with aerial footage of smoke billowing out over the late fall foliage of Virginia. A close-up shot of fire trucks and state trooper cars circling the scene framed a young reporter huddled in a fleece jacket trying to shout over the chaos behind her. Without realizing it, Booker leaned forward toward the screen, listening with his entire body. When he stood almost on the balls of his feet, he felt a sensation he had not felt in over a decade. He felt a rivulet of sweat trickling down his back.

  “Want to go over the materials again?”

  “Sure.” Choo-Choo packed the sandwich ingredients back into the bag. “It’s not like I’m going to sleep tonight. Or ever again.”

  Dani hauled the heavy pouch onto her lap, pulling out the papers first, then the odds and ends. Choo-Choo took the pages, sorting them by type while she lined up the rest. She made a point of placing the cupcake wrapper in front of him and he shook his head. Beside that went the drug company’s stress ball keychain, a champagne cork still in its wire cage, two valet parking stubs from two different lots, an empty box of cough drops, an expired Metro Pass, an origami swan, and a wrapper from a grape Tootsie Pop.

  “Hey look,” Dani pointed to the wrapper. “It’s got an Indian on it. That’s good luck.”

  Choo-Choo looked at the purple waxy paper and saw the silhouette of the boy in a headdress shooting an arrow. “Didn’t really seem to pay off for Marcher, did it?” He continued sorting the white papers into categories: receipts, statements, and scattered notes. Below the three piles closest to the edge of the table, he removed the folded pictures that Hickman had taken from various angles throughout Marcher’s work area. He had to move the TV remote to make room for the last two shots.

  “Is the news still on?” Dani asked.

  “It’s probably almost over. We can try.”

  She hesitated before nodding. “I k
ind of hope we missed it.”

  They hadn’t. Choo-Choo muted the set as a group of kids held up signs and posters on a busy sidewalk that looked like the Capitol Hill area. Dani turned back to the materials that looked even less meaningful now than they had when Hickman had brought them to her. Her brain couldn’t kick into an analytical frame and she rested her chin in her palms. Choo-Choo elbowed her hard enough to make her teeth clack when he lunged once again for the remote.

  He unmuted the screen, catching the reporter in midsentence. “… a natural gas explosion. Fortunately, the historic research facility is closed on Saturdays and the building was empty at the time. Authorities say that preliminary reports show there are no signs of foul play and there have been no injuries reported.” The reporter looked almost sorry to relay that last bit of information. Her face looked grave as she peered into the camera. “Had this explosion occurred just twenty-four hours earlier, Steve, authorities say the news would be a good deal grimmer. I’m Natalie Harding reporting. Back to you, Steve.”

  The shot cut back to the two anchors straightening out papers and nodding in agreement before the weatherman cut in with promises of a chilly day for the Redskins game. Dani had to press down on Choo-Choo’s thumb, where it rested forgotten on the remote, to turn off the set.

  “I don’t understand,” she said in a whisper.

  “There had to be at least a dozen bodies in there.” He whispered too.

  “How did they…” She couldn’t begin to phrase the question. When a phone beeped to announce a text message, she and Choo-Choo turned to the floor where her corduroy jacket sat in a heap, his phone chirping within. It took her more than a few seconds to put together the actions needed. When she reached down for the jacket, she only held it up, begging Choo-Choo with her eyes to reach in and pull the phone out.

  He moved in the same slow motion she did, as if any faster and the last shreds of reality and understanding would disappear. His thumb slid across the screen and Dani leaned in to see.