by L. T. Vargus
Driving seemed easier than walking, more automatic somehow, less concentration necessary. His hands and feet just knew what to do.
He didn’t see a single car on the back roads. Only the thicket of green running along each side of the blacktop. A tangled up mess of stalks and stems, indecipherable.
Headlights made their appearance once he merged onto the highway, though. Mostly semis at this hour. Trucks hauling crap around the country. Beer. Livestock. Machinery. Tankers of milk and oil and other chemical sludge.
In America, business never sleeps.
He took the third exit, spiraling onto the ramp. He suspected the Marathon station up here would have what he was looking for, though it was hard to be sure these days.
There was one other car in the lot — a purple PT Cruiser with a crinkled fender. The long haired guy pumping gas into the tank didn’t look his way, though, so that was good.
As he pulled up to the payphone, the notion of security cameras occurred to him, and that gave him a jolt of adrenaline. His alertness surged, revealing how much his mouth tasted like dog. He craned his neck to look around the lot, unable to spot any cameras, though that didn’t make him feel any better. They were probably there, he figured.
And then he realized that what he was doing didn’t make a lot of sense. He wanted to call the tip line — the 800 number soldered into his brain after hearing it over and over on the news. Some part of him felt that if he called the police and told them about the explosives, he might be able to get some sleep. He needed to pass the responsibility on. Let someone else figure out what to do about it so he could rest.
But it hadn’t occurred to him fully that doing so would very likely get Luke and himself caught. He didn’t care for that notion much. He didn’t want either one of them to go to prison. But he needed help in wrestling this project to the ground. He couldn’t stop Luke alone.
He eyed the black phone resting in its chrome holster. He knew he was lucky to have found one on his first try. A lot of the payphones had been ripped out of places like this now that everyone had a cell phone. He’d half expected to find an empty shell here — a bare steel post where the phone used to be, maybe some wires hanging out.
To hell with it.
He reached his arm out the driver’s side window, plucked the phone from its holder and brought it to his ear. A calm came over him as he did so.
His fingers punched the little metal squares, dialing the tip line number without thought.
The ringing gurgled that land line ring in his ear — a sound that triggered some nostalgia, reminded him of that weird series of chirps made by dial-up internet modems and fax machines.
A voice spoke on the other end of the line. Even. Mechanical. It was an answering machine.
He didn’t know what he would say until the thing beeped, and he started babbling into the mouthpiece.
“My brother has explosives now. Plastic. I didn’t know. He’s going to kill a bunch of people. A whole bunch of people. And I guess I… I mean… I promised.”
He laughed a little, a breathy chuckle to himself.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do, but I promised I would help him, you know? I promised.”
Chapter 48
Luke is dreaming.
Some distant part of him remains aware of the weight of his hands folded on his chest. Vaguely conscious that his body lies still in slumber.
But the bulk of his imagination plunges deeper into the dream.
Machine gun fire clatters in his sleep. This is the music that hangs in the air of his dream world. The endless beat of automatic weapons rattling on and on and on.
The desert sprawls before him. Sand blowing everywhere. The grit clings to his chest. Crusts his chin and cheekbones.
He is confused. Alone. It’s always this way in his dreams. He’s been separated from the other men. Lost in the endless sand. Unclear on what he’s supposed to do. This time he has no shirt. He does have his gun, though.
It feels like cigarette filters have been jammed into his ears. His fingers swipe at the congested tubes out of custom, but he knows he can’t unclog them. He never can.
The sun bleaches everything out here. Drains all color. Drains all life. Dries everything out and blows the dust around for eternity. If he stays here long enough, it will drain him, too. It will blow him away.
He follows a beaten place where the sand has packed into something cakier. A path. A one lane road, maybe.
He walks. The wind whips sheets of sand at him.
A gray object emerges on the horizon. Indistinct. Blurred by heat distortion. He squints to try to see. Eyes focusing like binoculars to look through the haze.
It’s a structure. A ramshackle home. It seems odd.
Something flits in the lone window. A flutter of shadows. His pulse quickens.
He waits. Watches. Not sure what he will do until his hands get to doing it.
He empties his machine gun into the little shack. He doesn’t know why. Some distant part of him thinks he’s supposed to. It’s not a thought so much as an urge. A quiver in the gut. A flash of heat in the head that makes his jaw clench tight.
He sprays the little building with bullets until he’s certain nothing could have survived, and then he keeps spraying. Waves the gun back and forth like a fire hose.
The fever blocks out all reason. He knows no objective but destruction. None. It is his purpose, his religion, his everything.
His breathing is slow. Too slow for this violent scene. He can hear it inside his head, inside his face. The way things sound underwater, when all hearing retracts, draws up inside, the water cupping his ears to make that ocean-in-a-shell sound happen within his skull. The air sucks in and out. Slow, slow, slow.
He doesn’t wake when Levi sneaks back into the motel room.
Chapter 49
Loshak and Darger logged and bagged evidence in the apartment deep into the night. She could hear a cricket somewhere in the closet. The steady chirp provided a sort of white noise that she only truly noticed when it stopped for a beat now and then.
“They’re going to release the names in the morning,” she said, her chest filling with a frantic dread.
“I know.”
“I hate that. If they see their faces on the news, plastered on the front page of the local newspaper… they’re gonna bolt.”
“I know that, too.”
She slammed her fist into her thigh. No matter what they accomplished, it seemed too little, too late. They were going to lose the brothers. Or maybe even push them into escalating their rampage sooner rather than later.
The scraping sound of Loshak scratching the side of his neck drew her gaze over to him. By the far-off, glazed look in his eyes, the gears were turning.
“What?”
His eyes flicked to his watch.
“Only a few hours until the first news cycle.”
Darger stared at the clock on the kitchen wall, stunned at how much time had passed. And then she realized what Loshak was hinting at.
“You think we can find something before then? Something that will lead us to them?”
Loshak shrugged.
“All we can do is try. We can search the database Rodney set up. Go back and sift through the tips with fresh eyes. We have names now, relevant places, the Jeep. Maybe we can shake something loose before the media gets those names.”
Darger nodded, and they headed for the car.
“Gonna need more coffee,” Loshak said as he buckled his seatbelt.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call Agent Dawson. See if she’d like to lend a hand.”
“Don’t you mean Karla?” Darger asked, waggling her eyebrows.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you trying to tease me?”
“Perish the thought,” she said with a smirk.
“Because you’re wasting your time. I’m unteasable.”
“Unteasable?”
&nbs
p; “Yep. Comes with old age. Once you hit about 45 or so, suddenly you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks. It’s pretty great.”
“I can’t wait,” Darger said.
A giant light-up donut glowed over the Dunkin Donuts parking lot like a halo.
Darger hopped out but leaned back in before closing the door. “So I should grab three coffees?”
“If you would.”
Chapter 50
Loshak had to squint to read the time in the bottom corner of the screen. 3:49 AM. He yawned and swiped a paw down his face. The casters on the bottom of the office chair squealed as he shoved off from the desk, propelling himself out of the cubicle.
He used his feet to scoot a half-foot at a time, feeling like some kind of crustacean on the ocean floor. Finally, he reached the next office cubby. He knocked his fist against the carpet-like surface of the wall, eliciting a dull thud. It was oddly unsatisfying.
Darger thrust the headset down around her neck and turned in her chair to face him.
“Wanna take a listen?” he asked.
“You have something?”
“That’s what I need you to tell me. I’m so tired I think I’m starting to hear voices… and I mean in addition to those recorded for the tip line.”
“What’s the call number?
“2-1-8-7.”
He watched her fingers dance over the keyboard. Damn kids and their fancy typing skills. Loshak still did the majority of his typing with his two index fingers.
Replacing the headphones on top of her head, Darger played the call. The chair back creaked as she leaned against it, listening with her eyes closed.
“My brother is…” she started to repeat the call, then stopped and shook her head. “I can’t tell what the hell he’s saying after that. He sounds like he’s talking through a mouth full of potato salad.”
Loshak was too tired to laugh. He settled for a sleepy smile instead.
“Yeah, plus the sound quality is shit, so that’s not helping anything. Sounded like traffic noise in the background. Could be a payphone.”
Darger unplugged her headphones, turned up the speakers, and played the call again. Her face scrunched up, a little tic she had when she was really trying to focus on something.
“My brother… something, something… explosives. Something classic?” she guessed.
“Huh. I hear: My brother has sex robots. How nasty,” Loshak said. “Check out the text version.”
Darger read the words on the screen out loud.
“My brother Isaac’s placid now. Placid. I didn’t know. He’s one of cabbage people. Overture people. And a guest of a mean apprentice.”
Rodney’s speech-to-text algorithm was supposed to be one of the best, but from time to time, it rendered the calls into gibberish. Especially if the audio quality was poor.
His partner replayed the call twice more before groaning in frustration.
“I think he’s forgetting to even speak into the mouthpiece half the time,” she said.
“Wouldn’t surprise me. He’s obviously drunk or high on something. And that’s probably reason enough not to waste any more time on it.”
Darger rested her elbows on the laminate desktop and cupped her chin in her palms. The blue-white light from the screen lit her face with an eerie glow.
“We’re running out of time,” she said.
He knew she was taking it personally. Not only this call, but all of them. Part of him wished she wouldn’t internalize the work so much. And at the same time, he knew it was why he’d chosen her to be his partner after so long flying solo. They were alike that way.
Loshak bent forward and put a hand on her shoulder.
“I know, kiddo,” he said. “I know.”
Chapter 51
For the first time since all of it started, Levi slept. A dead sleep — utterly uninterrupted — that lasted a few minutes less than five hours. He did not dream. He did not stir. He was out.
When he woke, the tip of his nose was icy cold and something was making an awful grinding sound, somehow throaty and metallic. He blinked a few times and looked for whatever the hell was making the noise.
Of course.
The air conditioner unit rattled like crazy — a little window unit mounted on the wall next to the door. With a wood paneled grill, it looked like it was installed circa 1986. Still, it chilled the room surprisingly well, even if it wasn’t so quiet about it.
He forced himself to get up and walk the seven steps to the bathroom so he could relieve the ache in his bladder. After that, he went right back to bed, draping himself in two blankets and a sheet.
It felt incredible to sprawl like this, relaxed, the weight of the blankets somehow comforting. He couldn’t imagine a scenario where he’d want to leave this.
He remembered his excursion last night like it was a fever dream. Flashes of it came to him, distant and blurry. The drunken stagger out to the Jeep. The jumbled message he’d blurted into the payphone. Would it even mean anything to the police? He didn’t know.
But he felt calm for having done something, and he was thankful for that relief, even if what he’d done was half-assed. It was better than nothing.
He closed his eyelids, took a few deep breaths, felt the cool of the sheets go warmer and warmer against his skin. He was drifting again when Luke gasped.
Levi opened his eyes, saw his brother seated on the foot of the opposite bed, face glued to the TV.
“Oh, shit,” he said, cigarette flopping from his lip.
“What?”
Levi’s head swiveled to follow Luke’s gaze to the TV screen, and there it was.
His own face, the same sleepy expression on it that he wore now. He recognized the shot. The photograph from his driver’s license filled the screen, and the graphic displayed his name below that in all caps: LEVI FOLEY.
Speechless, they watched as more photos came and went in a slideshow. One showed Levi smiling at a party, a silver can of Coors Light in his hand. The next showed him taking a big bite of a chicken sandwich from Chick-Fil-A. Then came a selfie, a dour expression on his lips, his eyes totally vacant, a little bloodshot.
They were pictures from his Facebook account, he realized. It seemed so strange to see them on television. Little slices of his life being broadcast around the globe, Wolf Blitzer’s voice droning over them, calling him a “domestic terrorist.”
Now Luke’s driver’s license photo occupied the screen. His face looked much bonier than Levi’s, sharp angles forming his jaw and chin and cheek bones. A slight smirk curled his lip on one side, but his eyes were dead.
And a slideshow of Luke played as well: a photo of him in the crowd at a Falcons game, plastic cup of foamy beer in his hand, everyone smiling and red-faced. The next three featured him in his army days: sunglasses, fatigues, M4 in his hands. He looked skinnier still in these. Young. Maybe a little scared.
Levi’s vision went blurry along the edges, and it felt like his chest was caving in. He knew he must be in shock, if only mildly. He glanced at his brother out of the corner of his eye.
Judging by the way his hands were shaking, Luke must be feeling something similar.
They sat there frozen even after the screen had gone back to the faces of the various pundits who would now chime in at length. Both of their mouths hung slightly agape. The smoke spiraling from the tip of Luke’s cigarette in slow motion provided the room’s only movement. That wall unit blowing cold air upon them, grinding endlessly.
Levi’s chest jerked, finally, air rushing to fill his lungs, and it occurred to him that he’d been holding his breath. He swallowed. It went down funny, saliva drizzling into his wind pipe, and that got him started coughing.
Luke did a double take, seeming to remember the tube of tobacco smoldering in his fingers. He took a final puff and ground the butt out in the ashtray.
“What do we do now?” Levi said. Even to himself, his voice sounded small and tight and far away.
“Well…” Luke
said, standing. “We should think about our options. I guess the next phase starts now.”
He moved to the bed, pulled the suitcase up off the floor and began rifling through it. There was a jerkiness to his movements, and he kept licking his lips in a way that Levi could only think of as spastic.
The younger brother found himself standing as well then, somehow unable to keep still. He ran cold water in the bathroom, splashing cupped handfuls over his face and head. Eventually he stopped and looked at himself in the mirror, droplets of water weeping down his face, collecting and dripping from his nose and chin. He was panting a little, mouth still open.
Could this have had anything to do with the message he’d left on the tip line answering machine? He didn’t think so. But he wasn’t sure what to think.
If the next phase really was starting now, it meant the plastic explosive would play its role sooner than he’d anticipated. Whatever just happened, the police had sped things up, had put people more directly in danger.
He left the bathroom and found Luke fiddling with something on the bed.
“What’s that?” Levi said.
His brother looked up at him, smiled.
“Let’s just say it’s a tribute. A little taste of what’s to come.”
Once more the TV screen cut away to a graphic - a pull quote from Levi’s last Facebook post, dated six nights ago. The big white type stood out from the blue background. Bold. A little shiny.
It read: “God forgive me.”
Chapter 52
Agent Dawson pressed a pair of binoculars to her face.
“Sniper teams are in place.”
Darger leaned forward to get a better view from the backseat of the Suburban. She could just make out a set of helmeted heads perched high on a nearby rooftop: one spotter, one counter-sniper. There were four of the two-man sniper teams at various vantage points surrounding the Forty Winks Motel. But the others weren’t in her line of sight.
Their last-ditch effort to comb the tip lines for a clue as to the whereabouts of the Foley brothers was a bust. Less than an hour ago, Chief Hogaboom released the names. The media went wild with it, and within minutes of the broadcasts, the cable news channels had a troupe of psychologists and pundits analyzing everything from a tweet Levi made about the future of the Star Wars franchise to Luke’s Reddit account name, which was Saint_Anger_666.
