by Scott Blade
The question was what would I wear while I waited? Simple answer, I found in the bathroom. Two expensive-looking bathrobes were folded up tight on a shelf underneath the sink.
I smiled at first because I thought of one being there for Talbern to use.
So, I stripped down and hopped in the shower.
The shower was a big glass box that took up an entire wall. The glass stretched from floor to ceiling. It was a nice shower.
There was a rainforest showerhead hung over the center of the shower. And one-time use shampoos and conditioners and a bottle of body wash that could be used a couple of times. No washcloths. There were only folded large bath towels and a couple of hand towels hung from stainless steel rings on either side of the sink.
After I showered, I wiped steam off the mirror and looked myself over. The first thing I noticed was a few patches of gray hairs along my temples and in the stubble on my face.
First signs of an aging man, I thought.
I walked out of the bathroom and felt myself getting hungry. I kept the robe on and left it open. The clothes from Florida were laid out over the bed.
The bed was a king size. The head was blocked by a plethora of stacked pillows and the bed’s coverings were tight and pressed and neat. I dumped myself down on the corner and reached over to one of the nightstands. I scooped up the iPad and started to look over the AWOL case.
There had been three dead women, plus the new one. If she was dead.
I spent about twenty minutes scanning over the material that Pawn had provided.
Four dead women. Four dead soldiers. All female. All beaten with a hammer. All shot in the head. All were dumped along the Portland coast of Maine.
That part I hadn’t known before.
I read on further. Found Marksy’s notes.
She had conducted a solid case when it came to building a profile on the AWOL killer.
I read about the first victim in the most detail.
Hers was the first file that I came to. She had been found on the shore of the Atlantic. The nearest town on a map had been called Butler, for reasons that weren’t clear to me.
She had been found by two boys in a long patch of forests.
I read over their testimonies. Brutal stuff for two young boys to see.
I read on to the next victim. Same story. Found in Maine. She was found two months later. Her head had been shaved and she was a black woman. But everything about the cause of death, the torture before death, the dog tags; all of it was there.
After her, I skipped ahead and skimmed the last one. Everything seemed the same. The only details that each woman shared, other than the last moments of their lives, was that each had been female and each had gone AWOL from her post.
I swiped through more of the details of their lives and went straight to notes of the case. These weren’t the same as Marksy’s notes.
Her notes had been typed in great detail. She mentioned everything about what she had seen all the way down to the colors of locations and times that were marked down to the minute.
The new pages of notes that I came to were different. Less detailed. More to the point. Big picture stuff.
I read that they were from an agent named Chris Lowe.
He must’ve been the agent that Pawn had mentioned. Marksy’s husband and longtime partner.
Speaking of relationships and fraternizations, I guessed that the FBI didn’t have rules about such a thing if a husband and wife could be partners. Then again I guessed that it all depended on the circumstances.
An investigative team wasn’t going to raise any eyebrows or kick up enough fuss to warrant separation of the pair. Especially if they were getting results.
Lowe’s notes ended with suspicion of a suspect. They had targeted a guy named James Dayard.
He had been an Army officer. Made it all the way to major.
Major Dayard had been linked to one of the women. Socially. And later romantically. The first victim had been a married woman. What Marksy and Lowe found out was that she had broken up with Major Dayard and then she had gone AWOL.
According to Marksy’s notes, the Army MPs thought that she was AWOL because she vanished the day that she was supposed to get on a flight to Germany for a tour.
Later, the other women started vanishing from their posts. Each turned up dead.
That’s when the FBI connected them as all being women targeted for going AWOL.
Marksy believed that the killer etched their names off their dog tags as a symbol of their treason. She believed that he felt betrayed by them.
I imagined that made much more sense after they caught Dayard, made the connection to him and the first woman.
On paper, it made sense to me. A scorned officer. An illegal affair. The woman ended it. Dayard felt betrayed and resented. So he tortured her and killed her.
I read on.
There was also an official psychological profile in the files about Dayard. A military shrink found him to be disturbed, but couldn’t make any analysis of whether or not he was guilty.
I paused for a second and then heard a knock on the door.
I got up, walked over to the door.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me. Talbern.”
I smiled, started to unlock the deadbolt, but stopped. I closed the robe first, looped the rope belt around and knotted it.
I opened the door and said, “Hey.”
She stood in the doorway, shrouded in the kind of confidence that belonged on a senior FBI agent, but was to be expected on a woman who probably never heard the word no to anything.
Her hair was no longer pulled back. It hung down, curtaining the sides of her face. Her ears were swallowed up in it and were completely covered. I could’ve compared them to something lame like a flower, but they were just as close to the thorns of a rose as they were to the beauty of one. She looked dangerous and seductive all at the same time. Like a rare firearm. For a guy like me, a rare gun is a beautiful thing, but it’s still a weapon.
Talbern was deadly. I was starting to wonder why Pawn hadn’t assigned her to me over that stiff, Gustoph. I was more likely to cooperate with Talbern around. What man wouldn’t?
She had changed her clothes. Even though her hair was down, her clothes had changed to reflect comfort over style.
She wore black jeans, tight and faded in the way that teenagers spend a fortune on.
She kept the same jacket from earlier. But underneath it was a low-cut red shirt. I could see the tops of her breasts just enough to draw my attention, but professional enough to be called causally conservative.
Then I noticed that she was armed. The shoulder rig was virtually hidden under the jacket, except for a brief second when she looked at me and folded her arms.
She said, “Well, aren’t you living it up in here.”
“What?”
“You look like a man who is enjoying a spa day.”
I looked down at the bathrobe.
“I took a shower.”
“Just now?”
“It’s been a while.”
“So then you’re just hanging out in the bathrobe?”
I shrugged.
“What are you doing?”
“I was looking over the case. The old stuff.”
“That’s good, but I mean what are you doing tonight?”
I stared at her, blankly. Then said, “Going to bed.”
She unfolded her arms and said, “Widow, it’s eight-thirty.”
“That seems like a normal time that people go to bed? Isn’t it?”
“We’re in New York City.”
I shrugged again and stayed quiet.
“It’s Friday night.”
“Is it?”
“You lose track of the days?”
“Sometimes. There’s no reason to keep track of them for me.”
“I guess not.”
Talbern reached up and touched the robe just over my left pectoral. She gentle pushed me
aside and walked into the room.
I didn’t object.
“Let’s go out.”
“Go out?” I felt my stomach rumble again, but this time I was certain it was more out of being nervous over being hungry.
“Yeah. You gotta eat. You haven’t eaten, have you?”
“No.”
Talbern looked at the bed and then back at me. She said, “Crap. You only have those clothes. Right?”
“That’s it.”
Talbern sat herself down on a chair near the window. She said, “There’s a store in the lobby.”
“Will that be open?”
“Right,” she said and then she pulled out her cellphone.
She stared at the screen, swiped it unlocked, and clicked on a couple of buttons. She wasn’t dialing, but redialing someone.
She put the phone to her ear and waited.
“Hey. You got a change of clothes?”
I couldn’t hear the voice on the other line, but I imagined it was Kelvin.
“Good. Let me borrow them.”
She listened and then smiled and laughed and said, “Not for me. For Widow.”
She was silent again, listened.
“I’m a big girl. Just let him borrow them.”
She clicked off the phone, said, “You’ll have clothes in five minutes.”
I nodded.
She slipped the phone back in her pocket and looked over at the tablet from Pawn. She got up off the chair and walked to the bed, picked it up. She started to swipe through it.
“Did you already go through the whole thing?”
“Enough.”
“You read about Lowe?”
I nodded.
“Agent Marksy doesn’t like that you’re here.”
“A stranger shows up after she has put a killer away with evidence that possible he didn’t do it. I imagine not.”
“You think he’s innocent?”
I shrugged, said, “We don’t know that. All we have is a new set of dog tags. Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Looks the same as before.”
“Maybe. But the other bodies were found with the dog tags around the victim’s neck.”
She nodded.
“Where’s the body?”
She said nothing.
“We need to find Dekker.”
A knock on the door interrupted us. I stood up and Talbern stood up. She walked to the door ahead of me. She opened it.
Kelvin stood in the doorway, still wearing his suit from earlier, but no jacket. His gun was gone or it was in his pocket.
“Come in,” she said.
He walked in and had a pair of black slacks, folded, with a white button-down slung over it. The shirt had no hanger, but was wrinkle free like he had just pulled it off a hanger or maybe he ironed it for me, or for himself, the night before he wanted to wear it.
She took the clothes and said, “Thank you.”
I nodded at Kelvin. He handed the clothes to her.
“What about shoes?” she asked.
Kelvin looked at her, said, “He doesn’t have shoes?”
“He can’t wear this with sneakers.”
Kelvin nodded and walked over to a vanity, leaned against it with one hand. He used his free hand to loosen one shoe. He kicked it off. Then he did the other one. He bent down and picked them up, held them by the heels and handed them to her.
In a playful tone, he asked, “Anything else for you, princess?”
She tilted her head and said, “No thank you.”
I didn’t have any socks to wear with his shoes, was my first thought. Then I wondered if we even had the same shoe size.
But I stayed quiet.
Talbern turned to me and handed me the clothes. She said, “Get dressed and meet me by the elevators.”
I nodded, watched the two of them walk back out the door and into the hall.
They seemed pretty close. I wondered if they ever had been involved before. Probably. I didn’t ask.
I watched the door close behind them, changed into Kelvin’s spare clothes, and slipped the shoes on. They were a little snug, but fit good enough. My feet weren’t cramped in them. I wouldn’t be playing any basketball in them, but then again they weren’t athletic shoes. They were black loafers. Dressy enough to look professional, but comfortable enough to run in.
I had never been an FBI agent, but if I remembered correctly, they were required to be able to run up several flights of stairs without being winded. A part of the job was being able to have a successful foot pursuit. Can’t let bad guys outrun them, even on stairs.
The shoes were a little extra uncomfortable without socks. And the thought occurred to me that Kelvin might not like that I wore his shoes barefoot, but what he won’t know couldn’t hurt him.
I stood in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. Tucked in the shirt. I had no belt to wear, but the shirt kept the pants up enough. The waist size on them was about right for me anyway.
The shirt’s sleeves were too small. Other than that, I looked pretty decent.
I rolled the sleeves up over my forearms. I left the bathroom, walked over to the vanity, and scooped up my bankcard, passport, and hotel room key. I slipped everything into my front pocket.
Before I left, I stopped and stared at my toothbrush. This one wasn’t foldable like the ones that I prefer to carry. I decided to leave the toothbrush. Why would I need it just to go out for dinner?
I stopped in the doorway because I felt a little naked without it. Toothbrushes have been one of the only things that I carried on a regular basis.
Realizing that I wasn’t going to have one on me made me feel a little awkward.
I stopped and turned back and scooped it up. Put it into my other pocket. It stabbed me in the thigh for a second until I adjusted it.
I walked out the door.
CHAPTER 21
WE TOOK AN UBER and not a cab, which was strange for me, to a lounge about a half-mile away. Not that far, but Talbern didn’t seem like she wanted to walk there.
The bar was some place that served Hawaiian style food, but the décor of the place was anything but Hawaiian. It was a posh modern place with ambient blue lights that reflected the walls. The ceilings were high and there was a second-floor mezzanine with high-top tables spread around it.
The floors were polished concrete. They were completely smooth and level.
People filled the place up just enough to take up most of the available seats, but it wasn’t crowded.
I was a little surprised that it wasn’t packed because the bar looked like the kind of place that New Yorkers would love.
We sat at the bar, back wall, near the kitchen.
Low jazz music played over speakers along the bottoms of the walls. There was a small stage off to the other side of the bar, but no musician was there. The music was probably playing from someone’s smartphone.
Talbern had to use the foot-bar beneath the bar to hop up onto the seat.
I dumped myself down in the seat next to her.
She ordered a martini, which didn’t surprise me. I got the sense that it wasn’t her drink of choice. Instead, she had that kind of adventurous spirit of a person who always tries new things. That kind of “when in Rome” attitude.
The martini was something off the menu. A creation of the lounge. Maybe even of the bartender that we had.
Our bartender was a woman who looked so young that she might’ve been a girl. But I suspected that to bartend in the state of New York, she had to be twenty-one, or eighteen.
Besides looking young, she was professional and personable and not talkative.
I ordered a Budweiser, at first, but Talbern gave me a look. I changed it to a Heineken, which seemed to please her enough.
Talbern sat legs uncrossed, knees together, even though she wore jeans. Her back was up straight, not touching the back of the stool. Which triggered a childhood experience that I had had. Long ago, my mother had taught me to be what s
he called a gentleman. A gentleman was more than just social behavior and manners. She always corrected me to sit up straight, elbows off the table, don’t slurp my drink, and so on.
Talbern’s perfect posture without leaning back in her chair made me wonder which of her parents had set that kind of behavior into her psyche. Maybe it was a grandmother or an aunt. Or maybe it was a mother like mine.
I smiled at her.
She took a measured sip from her martini. And made a yummy sound.
“That’s good.”
“Mine too.”
“Of course it is. Heinekens don’t change flavor.”
“Not true,” I said.
She said nothing.
“They make Heineken Light.”
She smiled, said, “Heineken Dark too.”
“Really? I never heard of that one.”
“You gotta get out more, Widow.”
“Are you kidding? I am always out.”
“I know. It’s called a joke.”
I took another pull from the beer and looked away from her at the back of the bar.
Several assorted shelves of liquors lined the back wall. There was a dust-free mirror behind it with a large etched phrase. It read: Drink till it’s good!
Beneath the shelves was a back bar with all the things one would expect to find: cutting boards, shaker tins, jiggers, and so on.
Below that was a long row of slider doors. All were glass. That’s where they kept all the beers and cold beverages.
In the mirror, I could see most of the rest of the patrons in the bar. There were high-top tables near the bar. I saw on a lower level a series of dark booths and a row of tables. Just about everything was filled up.
I saw waitresses and a manager walking around, frantically, as lounge staff often do on a Friday night.
WE ORDERED two more rounds each over the course of the next hour. We talked the whole time and snacked on bar nuts.
About a half-hour into our conversation, a couple of things happened that I noticed. First, a guy with a saxophone stepped into the lounge from out of the kitchen’s entrance. He walked by us and stopped to converse with a group of people who sat at the other end of the bar. Then he shook hands with them and grabbed a drink from the bartender.
