The Bubble Gum Thief

by Jeff Miller

  “It would only get worse if you’re made director.”

  “Maybe. Long days, sure, but at least I’d stay in town more.” He pulled the picture out of his wallet and studied it again. “Been divorced a year, almost. I could blame the job, I guess. But the problem isn’t the job—it’s me. I guess I’m just an asshole.”

  Dagny glanced over briefly at Fabee’s hand and saw that he was still wearing his wedding ring. He noticed.

  “Yeah, I’m an asshole, but I still love her. Just can’t bear to take the ring off.”

  She wanted to look at Fabee—to read his face, his eyes, his expression—but she kept her gaze on the monitors instead. “Why do you want to be director so badly? You love the field, so why shoot for a desk job? You’re supposed to work at a desk now, and you can’t stay parked.”

  “I don’t know.” Fabee shrugged. “You went to Harvard Law, right? So you were one of those kids that always had to get the best grades, take the hardest courses. An AP geek?”

  “Yep.”

  “I bet you didn’t stop and ask yourself why you kept pushing yourself to do better. It’s just ingrained in who you are. If you got an A minus, you wanted an A. And when you got an A, you wanted an A plus.”

  “That’s right.”

  “When I was a special agent, I wanted to make ASAC, and once I got that, I wanted to be SAC, and so on. Maybe it’s...I don’t know. Low self-esteem? But I like what I do.” Fabee got up from the table, walked over to the coffeepot, and poured himself a cup. “Want one?”

  “No.”

  “The caffeine will help.”

  “I’ve been doing fine on adrenaline.”

  Fabee carried his mug back to the kitchen table and sat down, then leaned back in his chair. “When this is all over, what do you want to do, Dagny? Continue as an SA? Work with the Professor on his next academic paper?”

  “I guess I sort of assumed that my career would be over. I’ve burned a lot of bridges.”

  “No,” Fabee said. “You’ve done a stellar job.”

  “I’m sure I’ve made things difficult for others.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Fabee laughed. “But you’re tenacious and resourceful. And a hero, according to the papers. I think you’re pretty safe at the Bureau, if that’s what you want to do. I can understand if you want to keep working with the Professor. But then again, the Professor’s an old man, you know.”

  “I know.” She hadn’t thought about the future in a long time, not since Mike was alive. “Right now, I have only one goal in mind.”

  “I hear you, Dagny. I do. But what if it doesn’t do what you think it will for you?”

  Fabee made a spicy chicken pasta with an olive-oil-and-garlic sauce for dinner. While they ate, they took turns staring at the surveillance feed while the other read the day’s news aloud off the Internet. They agreed not to read anything about Draker. It was a relief to know that the Nationals were only three games back, that Congress was fighting over the minimum wage, and that two discount airlines were planning to merge, because this meant that the world continued to turn, and that maybe there would be something to head back to when the case was done.

  Dagny read Fabee a restaurant review for the latest Asian-fusion restaurant in Dupont Circle—a combination Vietnamese noodle shop/English pub called Pho Britannica—then handed the laptop back to Fabee. He clicked around a bit and then started chuckling.

  “What is it?”

  “Nah, it’s about the case. Can’t read it.”

  “Read it.”

  “It’s the gossip page.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “‘Which skinny actress is so desperate to be cast in the planned Dagny Gray movie that she dressed as a secret agent and infiltrated Harvey Lettleman’s office with fake FBI credentials, proceeding to handcuff the hefty mogul? Sources say that Lettleman liked the performance so much that he had her bring the handcuffs to his home later that night. We aren’t saying who she is, but don’t be surprised if Jana Bloom gets the part.’”

  “Are you joking?”

  “Swear to God, I’m not.”

  Dagny sighed. “I was hoping for Kate Beckinsale.”

  At ten o’clock, Dagny retreated to the guest bedroom for a short nap, leaving Fabee to watch the monitors. She set the alarm for two a.m. and crawled under the covers. Although she was never much for intuition, she fell asleep certain that tomorrow would be the day Draker would die.

  CHAPTER 50

  May 3—Tracy, California

  In the black-and-white glow of the monitors, everything was still except the gentle shimmy of grass in the late-afternoon breeze. When the wind died, Dagny worried that the feed had frozen, but it hadn’t. A photograph is just a movie of nothing happening, Dagny thought.

  Fabee spent most of the day in the garage, yammering on his cell phone, coordinating the efforts of the Fabulous. The house walls muted all but the occasional expletive, so Dagny couldn’t hear what they were planning. He was keeping his team at bay, he said, because more agents meant it was more likely they’d tip off Draker by accident. Dagny didn’t buy this for a minute. Fabee was keeping the Fabulous away because Fabee and his ego wanted to be the one to capture Draker. She didn’t care about Fabee’s ego or the Fabulous; she just cared about the four monitors in front of her. Still, she wouldn’t have minded if Fabee were sitting next to her, keeping her company, discussing the news or baseball scores or his daughter. In the past twenty-four hours, she’d grown to like the guy.

  And then the picture from camera four shook.

  It was the one attached to the fence. Dagny yelled for Fabee, who got there just in time to see the back of a man descending from the top of the frame.

  Draker had just hopped the fence.

  Fabee grabbed his gun and tossed Dagny hers. They stood at the monitor, watching Draker take a few steps toward the back patio, then drop to his knees in the grass. Was he looking for footprints? Draker ran his fingertips through the grass and then stood and walked to the far edge of the yard, shielding his eyes from the late-afternoon sun, studying his neighbor’s house. After ten seconds, he turned and walked back to the middle of his yard, staring at the Fernandez house with a fixed and steady gaze. Dagny felt as though Draker was staring through the walls, looking at her. Although she couldn’t see his face, she was sure that Draker was smiling.

  Suddenly, Draker spun around and sprinted back toward the fence. He’d grown a thick, scraggly beard and looked haggard and worn. He was wearing an oversize T-shirt and loose blue jeans. His eyes fixed on the camera as he approached the fence. His sneakers hit the lens as he hopped the fence, knocking the camera to the ground.

  Dagny and Fabee ran out the back door, darted through Draker’s backyard, and jumped over the fence. They landed in an array of discarded soda cans and sandwich wrappers that littered an overgrown, grassy ditch alongside a busy four-lane highway. Draker was nowhere to be seen.

  “Look,” Fabee said, pointing at a footprint in a small spot of mud along the side of the road. The mud trailed onto the blacktop. “He crossed there.”

  A steady stream of semis blocked the view across the highway. She tried to catch the gaps between them with her eyes, looking for a bearded man in sneakers.

  “He’s in the woods,” Dagny said, spotting a flash of movement visible between the passing trucks.

  Traffic continued down the highway at a steady pace. “Ever play Frogger?” Fabee asked as he darted into the street, dodging oncoming cars and trucks. Dagny raced out behind him, beating a UPS truck to the first dashed white line, then waiting in the middle of traffic for another gap to take her to the double yellow line at the center of the highway. The wind from passing vehicles made it hard to stand still, and she almost teetered forward into an oncoming truck.

  “I hate Frogger,” Dagny yelled to Fabee, but he was already across the street. She waited for another truck to pass and then sprinted across the remaining two lanes. The driver of an oncoming Volvo slammed on her br
akes and blasted her horn, but Dagny didn’t notice—she was running at full speed.

  Fabee was already deep into the woods. She followed him, trusting that he had his sights on Draker. Although Fabee was adept at weaving between the trees and hurdling fallen trucks, Dagny was, too, and she was faster. As the ground sloped down toward a rushing creek, Fabee slowed to keep his footing, and Dagny charged past. The ground near the creek was muddy, but she did not fall.

  A thirty-foot-tall stone wall on the creek’s far side kept the hillside from eroding. Dagny saw Draker pull his legs over the top of it. She leaped over the creek and ran to the wall, dug her left shoe into the crevice between the stone blocks, reached up to another stone with her right hand, and pulled herself up. Reaching higher with her left hand, she pulled up herself again until her right foot found another toehold, and then repeated the process.

  Some of the stones along the way wobbled. She heard Fabee tumbling down the hill behind her, but she couldn’t hear Draker ahead of her. When her left hand reached the top of the wall, the stone under her left foot fell to the ground, along with several stones below it. Dagny grabbed onto a twisted root above her right hand as the stone under her right foot gave way, too. Grabbing onto the root with both hands, she hauled herself to the top of the cliff.

  Thick trees were surrounded by deep brush. Dagny scanned from left to right and back again. No sign of Draker. She listened for him. Nothing, except the faint crack of a branch in the distance. She ran toward it, pounding her feet in the dirt, barreling through the brush-filled gaps between the trees, and then following a path of freshly trampled undergrowth out of the woods and onto an empty soccer field. Draker was running across a two-lane road on the other side of the field. Dagny pulled her gun out of its holster and charged ahead.

  A large brick warehouse was set back about a hundred yards from the other side of the road. On the right side of the warehouse, rows of trailers were parked at garage bays. The front of the building was bare, save for a gated glass door at the top of three concrete steps. Draker ran up the steps and shook the door. It wouldn’t give; the warehouse was locked. Dagny thought about taking a shot, but she was too far to get off a good one, and it would just slow her down. So she ran instead.

  Draker darted to the right side of the warehouse, where two dozen trailers were lined up at garage bays on the right side of the building, twenty feet apart. A large white number painted in a black circle marked each bay. Draker ran behind the closest trailer at bay one.

  Draker had cover now, and Dagny didn’t. She ran toward the near end of the trailer and crouched behind the three clustered rear wheels. The sun was setting, casting long shadows on the ground, and Dagny’s stretched well past the second trailer. Draker could see her shadow. She could hear his heavy breaths.

  “Hello, Dagny,” Draker wheezed. “You seem to be doing alright.”

  “I’ll be feeling better in a few minutes,” she called back.

  The trailer was about eight feet wide, with a two-foot clearing underneath. Draker probably expected her to run around the back of the second trailer, but it was faster to roll under. When she got to the other side, Draker was gone. Looking under the next trailer, she saw Draker pushing himself up off the ground. He’d followed her lead and rolled under the second trailer just as she’d rolled under the first.

  “You find Waxton’s ball yet?” he called.

  “I’ve had more important things on my plate,” Dagny shouted. She ran to the second trailer and dove under it, banging her shoulder into the concrete, then rolling to the other side. Once again, Draker was gone. She heard the scuff of his shoes, yet another trailer over. “I can do this all day,” Draker said from behind the third trailer.

  “You’ll run out of trailers,” she yelled.

  Draker laughed. “When we get to the end, we can go back the other way.” Dagny heard him dive under the fourth trailer. She rolled under the third trailer and fired her gun toward him. “You missed,” he said, safely on the other side.

  Rolling under the trailers wasn’t working, so Dagny tried running around the end of the fourth one, but Draker was too fast—he’d already rolled under the fifth. “You’ve got to go under. It takes too much time to go around.” He coughed.

  “Neither of us is having any fun, Draker.” Her shoulder ached, and she was tired. Where was Fabee? “Why don’t you turn yourself in?”

  “That would be a pretty lousy ending to all this, don’t you think?”

  Dagny ran around the fifth trailer, but Draker rolled back the other way. “You can’t win this game, Draker.”

  “Of course I can. You might not know this, but I do have a gun.” Draker fired a shot under the fifth trailer, wide of Dagny, but close enough to make his point. Dagny hid behind the trailer wheels. She noticed that the fifth trailer had a couple of horizontal handles on the side, one three feet up, another three feet higher than that. The roof of the warehouse was only a couple of feet higher than the top of the trailer. Dagny holstered her gun, then grabbed the lower handle and stood on the top of the tire. From there, she jumped up and grabbed the second handle, then lifted herself until she could reach the top of the trailer. She pulled herself to the roof of the trailer, grabbed her gun, and peered over the other side. Draker had already rolled back under the fourth trailer and was standing a trailer away.

  Dagny jumped from the top of the trailer to the roof of the garage, and ran along the edge toward Draker. She saw him roll under the second trailer and fired her gun into the space between the trailers. Draker stayed put.

  “You ready to give up?” Dagny called.

  “Unless you can shoot through this trailer, I don’t think it’s checkmate.”

  Dagny scanned the row of trailers for Fabee, and spotted him. She fired her gun to get his attention, then pointed down at the trailer in front of her. Fabee nodded and crept slowly around to the rear of the first trailer. Draker must have heard him coming. He fired a shot toward Fabee’s feet, and Fabee jumped, then took shelter behind the wheels of the third trailer. “That’s Assistant Director Fabee, I presume?” Draker asked.

  “Yep.”

  “I can’t believe you invited that guy to your big moment.”

  The sun had slipped past the horizon. It was starting to get dark. They had to end the game soon. Dagny took a couple of steps to her right and fired a half-dozen shots into the tires on the left side of the second trailer, then switched out the magazine and shot a half-dozen more, causing the left side of the trailer to dip down. Just as she’d hoped, Draker rolled out from the right side of the trailer, raising his gun toward Dagny. Without breaking his aim or using his arms, he arched his body, threw his legs into the air, and landed on his feet.

  And then Draker spread his arms to his sides and dropped his gun to the ground.

  Dagny stood at the edge of the warehouse roof, pointing her gun at Draker, gripping the trigger with her right index finger and steadying her aim with her left hand. Fabee came around the trailer and stood ten feet behind Draker, his gun fixed on him. Fabee looked up at Dagny. “Your shot,” he said. “You’ve earned it.”

  One simple tug of her finger and Draker would be dead. Half an inch to justice. She’d been waiting for this moment since she learned of Mike’s murder. And yet, she didn’t feel close to relief or joy or closure. Instead, her mind swelled with a thousand questions. “Why the senator?”

  Draker fell to his knees but kept his hands in the air.

  “Why Candice?”

  “Just shoot the SOB,” Fabee yelled, but she had another question.

  “Why Mike?” Draker lowered his gaze to the concrete. “Why Mike?” Dagny asked again, and Draker just shook his head slowly from side to side. “Why Mike?” Draker didn’t answer. “Why Mike?” She rubbed her finger against the trigger, waiting for the will to pull it, waiting for it to feel right.

  Draker lifted his head. “Because.”

  The bullet ripped through Draker’s body, and he plunged forwa
rd, turned, and fell on his back. His dead face smiled up at her. Not just a smirk, but a big, happy smile. All she’d wanted was for him to show a little fear, a little pain—a fraction of the misery he had caused so many others. But he was smiling.

  Fabee blew the muzzle of his Glock like a gunslinger before holstering it. He walked over to the body and picked up Draker’s gun. “He had his gun pointed at you, and I came around and shot him in the back. It’s that simple.”

  “Got it,” Dagny said, releasing her finger from the trigger. Staring down at the body, she almost expected Draker to leap up and tackle Fabee, just like in the horror movies, where the first shot never kills the monster. Draker didn’t leap up. He didn’t move. He just lay there dead and happy.

  PART IV

  THE WHY

  CHAPTER 51

  May 6—Alexandria, Virginia

  Dagny used a tape measure to find the center of the wall and marked the spot with a pencil. She drilled through the mark, then closed the wings of a toggle bolt and threaded them through the hole. After tightening the screw until it was firm against the wall, she lifted the painting and slid its wire onto the hook. Stepping back, she assessed its angle, then made adjustments until it looked even.

  Mike’s mother had given Dagny the paintings from his front wall. Dagny had burned the Monet and the Picasso. Mike’s rendition of the portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his wife was now hanging in her entry hall.

  Every time she looked at the painting, she saw things she’d never noticed before. This time, she saw the fruit hanging from a tree barely visible through the open window. The prayerful handclasp of the figure carved into the bed’s headboard. The hint of a face in a small circle of stained glass.

  Though each new detail thrilled her, Dagny longed to see a familiar one. She ran upstairs and picked through the boxes in her guest closet, found a magnifying glass she’d inherited from her grandfather, and carried it back downstairs. Lifting the magnifying glass to the painting, she peered into the mirror behind the Arnolfinis. It was a relief to find Michael Brodsky still there, holding his palette. Seeing his smile brought one to Dagny’s face.