The Strategist

by John Hardy Bell

  After she arrived home, she strongly considered checking into a hotel until she could meet with Camille and figure out her next move. But she didn’t know any of her neighbors well enough to take the dogs, and their overly-rambunctious nature made the doggy-daycare folks a little too nervous. That meant leaving them alone for the night. And no matter how uneasy being in the house made her feel, she couldn’t leave them alone.

  So she closed the blinds, armed the security system, and told George and Gracie to stay extra-vigilant. Judging from their reaction to the music, they were doing just that.

  Aside from the sound of clawed feet scurrying against the wood floor downstairs, the night had fallen back into silence. Julia put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. She saw the Audi in her mind, and wondered if it had been outside of Camille’s house while she was there. It couldn’t have been, she concluded. If it was, she would have noticed it sooner.

  But what if it had been there? And if it had been, how many other times could she have missed it? For all she knew, he could have been following her for weeks. Something was making her nervous enough to look outside before she left the house every morning. Yet she was always quick to dismiss her fear when she saw nothing to support it. But she now knew the fear was legitimate, and its source had apparently been in her rearview mirror all along.

  When she called Camille earlier in the evening, she had done so reluctantly. She wanted to tell her about the Audi and all the reasons she believed it may have been following her, but she was afraid to hear what the words would sound like as they came out of her mouth. It is one thing to think someone may be stalking you. It is another thing to give an audible voice to it. Julia was almost relieved when Camille didn’t answer and gave no thought to leaving a voicemail. She couldn’t even fathom how such a message would begin.

  But she knew that the time for avoidance was over. Julia had wanted to tell her so much more about what was happening: work, the affair, the flash disk, and how the three were so intricately intertwined. But like the child who promises to bring her failing report card home to show her parents, she chickened out.

  It was true that Camille was dealing with a lot, and Julia adding her own problems to the mix would probably be more than her already full plate could handle. But Camille was also the kind of person who could easily cast her own problems aside to come to the aide of someone else, especially when that someone else was her best friend. The fear of being a burden wasn’t the reason why Julia couldn’t bring herself to tell the story. It was the fear of being judged by the one person in the world who still thought the absolute best of her; the one person who would never believe her to be capable of doing the things that she had done; the one person who still saw enough good in her to be disappointed by the bad. Some things in the world were worth preserving, even if you had to lie through your teeth to preserve them. Even though Julia knew she couldn’t get away with outright lying, she had been determined to withhold the full truth for as long as she could.

  She had gotten away with telling a great many half-truths, down to the urgent work message that was actually a service alert from her cell phone provider. But that now had to change. Julia had promised a full accounting. And she had every intention of making good on that promise.

  It no longer mattered if Camille judged her or looked differently upon her. Despite the image she may have displayed to the world, the truth of who she actually was lay in the files of that disk. Camille had to know that truth, not merely for the sake of having a more accurate picture of Julia’s life, but also in the interests of saving it.

  Her law enforcement background would offer a much-needed perspective. If Camille told her that she should reconsider doing anything with the disk, that it was too dangerous or too destructive to ever see the light of day, it would remain safely hidden. If Camille thought it needed to be released, and promised to be there to help her through the nuclear fallout, Julia would be in the phone with her attorney within five minutes.

  Even though it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which option she would advise taking, Julia was prepared for the consequences of both. She would not have been able to say that twenty-four hours ago. But twenty-four hours ago, her best friend was still in Washington D.C. Now that she was home, everything was going to be different. The thought made her smile.

  When she glanced at her alarm clock it read 1:28. It had been nearly an hour since she was awakened by the music. Now nothing moved around her. Even George and Gracie had settled down. Julia looked toward the foot of her bed to see if Gracie had come back up undetected and taken her usual resting spot, but she hadn’t. George, ever the charmer, must have convinced her to stay downstairs.

  Julia felt a deep sense of calm as she rested her head on the pillow, and within moments she was fast asleep.

  She heard echoes of the dogs barking in her dreams. The barks were weak, pleading, and distant. In her dream, she and Gracie were running through Congress Park, the same as they did every morning, when a man wearing a black hooded sweatshirt suddenly came up behind them and kicked Gracie in the ribs, sending her hurling to the ground. As she fell, she made the most horrendous sound that Julia had ever heard come out of a living being.

  The man stood over Julia as she cradled Gracie’s limp body in her arms.

  “Look at me,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound human.

  When Julia refused to divert her eyes away from her injured dog, the man kicked Gracie again. “I said look at me!”

  Julia screamed as she leapt to her feet and turned to face him. But he wasn’t there. She was instead looking directly into a narrow beam of light so bright that it instantly blinded her. Julia shut her eyes in an effort to fight off the glare, but she couldn’t escape it.

  There was a hard yank on her shoulder and for an instant she thought it was Gracie trying to pull her to safety. But Gracie was lying motionless at her feet.

  The sight of her dead dog instantly pulled her out of the dream.

  The light that she woke up to wasn’t nearly as bright as the one had been in her dream. But it blinded her just the same. She felt a throbbing in her shoulder and realized that something had indeed yanked at it. She instinctively called out to Gracie, then to George.

  But when the circular beam of light that had been shining in her face suddenly shut off to reveal a massive silhouette standing directly above her, she realized that neither one of them were coming.

  CHAPTER 10

  If Dale Rooney had his way, he would live in a two room cabin cloistered deep in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of southern Colorado; so far removed from anything resembling civilization that even the world’s most sophisticated GPS wouldn’t be able to find him. He imagined a simple life of living off the land, surrounded by trout-filled lakes, lush evergreen trees, and limitless space for his German Sheppard Ike.

  But in sixty-seven years of life, Dale rarely got his way. He knew there would be no frontier living with Ike the German Sheppard. Dale didn’t even have a German Sheppard. What he did have was a house in the city that he wished he had sold fifteen years ago, a wife who somehow convinced him not to sell it, and a little runt of a Pomeranian that she seemed to love a hell of a lot more than she loved him.

  Fifteen years ago, when he had considered selling, the neighborhood was much different than it is now. There were no uppity neighbors who were young enough to be his children yet treated him with the reverence of a garden tool; no inflated property taxes because misguided parents insisted that their children’s schools have state-of-the-art everything; and no cars driving up and down his street all times of the night blaring that jungle thump that passed for music.

  What Dale wouldn’t have done for the opportunity to go back, to act when he still had the chance. He would certainly have had that cabin by now – with his wife and Pomeranian or without them.

  But now he was stuck here. And as much as he may have fantasized about it, there would be no escaping the uppity neighbo
rs, the high taxes, or the jungle music.

  Of everything that was wrong with his neighborhood, the music bothered him the most. It was especially bad last night. He had dealt with the obnoxiously loud bass before, but what he heard outside his window a few hours ago bordered on criminal.

  He had just fallen asleep on the couch, which he seemed to do a lot more of these days, when he was startled awake by what he thought was a sonic boom. He rushed to the window. When he looked outside he immediately saw the source of the noise. A light colored Chevy Impala that he instantly knew should not have been there idled in the middle of the street, its engine running and its stereo on full volume. Dale pressed closer to the window. The car’s windows were tinted, but he had no trouble imagining the kind of person who sat behind the wheel. Thankfully, he mostly only saw those kinds of people on television.

  After thirty seconds or so, the car pulled up to the curb a couple of houses down. The engine continued to run, but the music abruptly stopped. A thousand alarm bells instantly went off in Dale’s head and he had the immediate thought of calling the police. But before he did, he decided to get a closer look. If he wound up needing to give the police a description, he wanted to give the most accurate one possible.

  From his front porch he could see the car clearly. It was light gray or silver with four doors. Looking closer, he could see that the passenger’s side window was rolled down, though his vantage point did not allow him to see inside. His angle did not allow for a look at the car’s license plate either, which he knew he would need to write down. He had to get closer but didn’t want to leave the cover of his front porch, so he decided to go back inside to retrieve a pair of binoculars that he kept in the foyer closet. He liked to have them on standby specifically for occasions like this.

  But as soon as he turned to walk inside the house, he heard the music start up again. By the time he turned back around, the Impala had pulled away from the curb.

  Dale stepped off the porch and on to his front lawn, scouring the street like a surveillance camera. He kept watch until he was completely satisfied that neither the Impala nor its God-awful music was coming back.

  When he finally made it up to his bedroom it was 12:56. He shook his head when he looked in the bed to see his wife Maggie spread eagle in the middle of it while Trinket the prized Pomeranian slept soundly on Dale’s pillow.

  “Dale Rooney bites the dust again,” he said in a voice that he hoped was loud enough to wake up Maggie or the dog. Neither of them flinched.

  Back on the couch, Dale fantasized about the cabin he never had, and the solitude he would probably never experience. He wasn’t sure if he had fallen asleep or if the fantasy was so real that it felt like he was asleep, but the next time he looked at the clock it was 4:17 a.m.

  Dale never needed more than a few hours of sleep a night to function properly, so he got up, brewed himself a pot of coffee, and basked in the silence of the early morning. There was very little in Dale’s life that he would describe as ideal, but these early mornings came close. When the world was this quiet, it was almost like it didn’t exist. He was free to be alone with his thoughts; to dream of the life that could still one day be his.

  This morning, he reflected on the strange car and the loud music and wondered if he should have called the police. He supposed it was possible that the car had a legitimate reason for being on his street – a late night pizza delivery, a boyfriend of one of the rebellious teenage girls across the street – but the car was just as likely filled with a bunch of gang-bangers casing the neighborhood.

  As was usually the case with Dale, he waited too long to act. Calling the police would be pointless now. The car was long gone. If it was filled with gang-bangers casing the block, all he could do was pray that his wasn’t the house they targeted.

  Dale finished his second cup of coffee, then as was customary, especially on mild mornings when the rain or snow was kind enough not to interfere, he slipped on a pair of sweatpants, grabbed his wooden walking stick, and set out for a quiet stroll around the neighborhood. It was the absolute perfect time to go. Most of his neighbors were still asleep, so he didn’t have to put on the tired act of being interested in them.

  He whistled Bob Seger’s Turn the Page as he walked to the front door. But before he could make it outside he heard an unfortunate noise from upstairs that stopped him cold in his tracks.

  Trinket started barking.

  Dale rolled his eyes. Once that dog started, she didn’t stop. He knew what was coming next. Unfortunately, he didn’t have to wait long to hear it.

  “Dale? Sweetie, are you awake?”

  Maggie knew damn well he was awake, but he refused to answer her. The dog started barking even louder and now he could hear her paws scratching against the hardwood floor.

  “Dale honey? Are you here?”

  Dale grunted and walked to the base of the staircase. “Yes I’m here! What is it?”

  “Would you do me a favor and take Trinket out? She’s really agitated and I think she needs to relief herself!”

  “Come on, Maggie! You know that dog always gives me grief when I take it out!” Dale used the same argument every morning. It had yet to work.

  “Please? It’ll only take a minute!”

  Dale grunted again. It would have been easy for him to just walk out the door without saying anything, but he didn’t. A willing accomplice to my own misery, he thought as he braced himself for what he was about to say next. “Bring her down!”

  Dale stood on the front porch holding a flashlight while the dog did her business in the bushes. He had learned to bring a flashlight along because Trinket had the most annoying habit of running away whenever she grew tired of sniffing the rose bushes or digging up his grass; and finding a black Pomeranian in the pitch dark of early morning is next to impossible without the assistance of a heavy duty Mag-lite.

  Less than thirty seconds into her bathroom break, Trinket held true to form. Before Dale could take a step to try and stop her, she had bolted off the lawn and down the sidewalk.

  Dale gave chase as fast as his artificial knees would take him.

  “Trinket what are you doing? Get back here!”

  The dog briefly stopped to look at Dale, then ran up the steep, grassy hill of the house two doors down.

  “If you think I’m climbing these stairs to get you, you’re out of your mind,” Dale snapped in between labored breaths.

  When he reached the house he saw Trinket standing on the front porch. She was making that incessant ‘yip’ sound that was her version of barking. And it was about three octaves louder than usual.

  “Trinket! Shut up and get back down here!”

  The dog briefly stopped look in his direction then redirected her attention to the house. The yipping continued.

  Dale mumbled a string of curse words as he slowly made his way up the stairs leading to the porch. “I don’t know what you’re barking at, but if you don’t stop right this minute…”

  When he reached the top of the stairs he saw exactly what Trinket was barking at.

  The entire house was cast in a deep shadow of black. There was no porch light, no lights on in the house, even the street lamp in front of the house was out.

  Yet, the front door was wide open.

  Dale felt his blood run cold. He called out to the dog. “Trinket, get away from there.” But this time his voice lacked anything resembling authority.

  He vaguely knew the woman who lived here. From what he had gathered, she wasn’t particularly social, not with him at least. She was just another one of the young, upwardly mobile types who were taking over the neighborhood; a neighborhood that they saw as nothing more than a place to lay their heads when they weren’t working.

  When Dale made it to the porch, he could see inside the house. It felt cool and empty, like no one had lived there for a long time. The alarm bells went off in his head again, twice as loud as before. And this time he knew he was going to act.

  As T
rinket stood next to him, still yipping, her eyes seemed to be focused on something inside. Dale stepped into the doorway, hesitated briefly, then stuck his head inside the foyer. For a moment, he could see nothing in the darkness. Then the natural light from outside began to filter its way in and he could make out objects: pictures on the foyer wall, an armchair, and end table with a lamp on top of it. Then he saw something else about ten feet away from the door. His eyes did a double-take, then a triple-take, yet he still couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. As he took another step inside, he finally turned on the flashlight. Suddenly the horror was very real.

  The Dalmatian was lying on its side directly in front of the staircase, completely motionless. Were it not for the pool of blood, Dale would have assumed it was asleep.

  He stumbled backward as he put his hand over his mouth to stifle a scream. All he wanted to do was run, but he knew he couldn’t.

  With the flashlight turned on, Dale could now see a lot more of what had apparently happened inside the house. There was broken glass all over the floor. A potted plant had been smashed near the dog. The couch was turned over as was the dining room table and china cabinet. It was like a tornado tore through the living room and left nothing standing in its wake, not even the Dalmatian that he had seen so many times before.

  He knew there were two dogs, but he couldn’t see the other one. “Where is it?” he silently mouthed to himself. The same place as its owner, he suspected.

  Dale ran back onto the porch to dry heave, then scooped up Trinket and hobbled home to call the police. As he ran, he thought about the strange car, and his failure to act when he should have, and how his wife always talked him into walking her stupid dog – just like she always talked him into so many things. Mostly, he thought about that two room cabin in southern Colorado.

  Right now it never felt so far away.

  CHAPTER 11