[Henry Parker 01.0] The Mark

by Jason Pinter

  Wendell snorted, gestured to the doorway. “Done deal. Well, where is he then if you don’t mind me asking? Maybe hiding under the bed? That’s a good hiding spot, perhaps we should check there. You and your partner had him cornered, in a house, alone and unarmed. You had weapons, he didn’t. You had the drop on him. Maybe you should have asked Parker to tie himself up, stand out on the porch wrapped in a pretty pink bow.”

  “Again, all due respect, chief,” Mauser said. “But you know full well what happened. There’s no way we could have predicted this other man to show up.”

  “Yeah, your boy Denton there put a bullet in him and you still managed to lose all three of them.”

  “Matter of time,” Mauser said. “The grass is wet outside. You have two trails of footprints. I’ll let you guess which ones belong to Parker and the girl. If you’ll notice, they both lead to the highway. You’ve got roadblocks in place?”

  “Being set up as we speak,” Wendell said. Mauser nodded.

  “Good. Now there are precious few places they could have gone. You want my advice, chief? Check rest stops, motels, fast-food joints on all interstate roads into Illinois. That’s your best bet.”

  Wendell nodded absently, as if unwilling to concede anything. Denton entered, slipping a scrap of paper into his pocket. Mauser immediately knew he’d snagged the blonde’s phone number. Always on the hunt. Denton put his hand on Joe’s shoulder, spoke in a low voice.

  “How you holding up, hoss?”

  “Don’t call me ‘hoss.’” Denton held up his hands in mock surrender. Mauser rubbed his temple. “Fucking head feels like a bear sat on it.”

  “Maybe you should go in for an MRI,” Denton said. “If you have a concussion you might need to sit out a few plays.”

  “Fuck that,” Mauser said. “Get me some aspirin and I’ll be fine. Parker has two hours on us. The longer we sit here, the greater chance he and the Davies girl have of getting picked off by that black-clad S and M freak you plugged.”

  Denton nodded. Mauser detected a slight twinge in the man’s neck. He couldn’t tell if it was remorse, or something else. “Quick shot you took back there, too,” Mauser said, his eyes softening a bit.

  “Yeah, suppose it was.”

  “Girl was in the way. You didn’t have a clean line of sight.”

  “Cleaner than most. Cleaner than the one you took yesterday up in Harlem.” Joe had to concede that, but for some reason his firing felt justified. “You saw the man’s eyes as well as I did. If we’d gotten here five minutes later Davies would be dead. Besides, I’ve made that shot a dozen times. I aimed for the suprascapular nerve in the shoulder. You hit that, he drops the gun. Worked out pretty well, all things considered.”

  “You didn’t come anywhere near to hitting his shoulder.

  You were aiming to kill, Leonard, don’t play stupid. Now Parker’s still out there. We need to bring him in or that Davies girl won’t stand a chance.”

  Denton nodded absently. Hostage or not, Amanda Davies was now part of the equation. And add to that this new, violent wild card.

  Loud voices rang in the hall outside, a commotion brewing. He heard Wendell’s edgy voice. Are you sure? Are you positive? Is that even possible?

  Mauser cocked his head, tried to eavesdrop. He caught sporadic words, then turned to Denton, who was doing the same. After a few moments, Wendell marched back into the room, hands firmly on his hips. A balding techie stood next to him, eager, jittery. Wendell looked like a parent ready—and perversely thrilled—to deliver a scolding.

  “Well, agents, you’ve officially hit the fucked-up jackpot,” Wendell said, a slight grin on his face. That grin, Mauser recognized, was pure schadenfreude. “Tony? Show ’em.”

  Tony the techie handed a few pieces of fax paper to Denton and Mauser. It was a criminal profile, faxed over from the Department of Justice. Without reading it, Mauser said, “What is this?”

  “We’ve got an ID on your mysterious assassin, the one with a fresh new bullet hole thanks to Jesse James here and his itchy trigger finger. We lifted full prints from the Davies girl’s desk. Frankly, it’s the only part of the night that’s not a complete disaster. No coincidence it’s my men who saved it from being just that.”

  Tony said, “We pulled fresh latents and ran them through IAFIS.”

  Joe nodded. IAFIS was short for the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, a searchable database that contained records on over fifty-one million subjects. Until IAFIS became operational in 1999, it could take months to check fingerprints. Nowadays two hours was considered slow.

  “They sent back a perfect match. Guy’s got a pretty impressive record. Not, you know, in a good way. No convictions, but he’s been questioned in a laundry list of crimes ranging from ‘sorry officer, won’t happen again’ to ‘I have a special spot reserved in hell.’ Our mysterious friend did time in juvenile hall for grand theft auto, but allegedly graduated to homicide by the ripe age of eighteen.”

  “Allegedly,” Denton said. Wendell snorted.

  “Yeah, right. Allegedly. Not just one, but four homicides to be exact. Every time he either had an alibi that held up, or the lead witness was found at the bottom of an elevator shaft. You get the idea.”

  Mauser looked at the first page. A mug photo. He recognized it as the man Denton had shot, only this photo looked at least ten years old. The man’s hair was a little longer then, features softer. He was smiling, a big toothy grin. Confidence up the ass, like he didn’t have a care in the world, knew he was going to get off with a pat on the ass and a lollipop in his mouth.

  The man they fought tonight had the same skin color, eye color, the same bone structure, but Joe could tell the man’s soul had been ravaged in the years since the mug shot was taken. This man was cold, unforgiving, devoid of confidence because confidence didn’t exist in his world. Someone had stuck a steel blade deep into the man’s heart and twisted it.

  Mauser read the name on the profile.

  Shelton Barnes.

  Joe heard Denton emit a small gasp, his head shaking slightly. Wendell continued. “There’s an outstanding warrant for the arrest of Shelton Barnes from the murder of a teamster in Williamsburg. Guy was shot twice in the back of the head, then his eyes and teeth were removed. Fingers chopped off, never found. Poor bastard’s wife identified him from a scar on the inside of his thigh he got from scaling a chain-link fence as a kid.”

  Mauser scanned the profile. How was Shelton Barnes connected to Henry Parker? And how did Barnes end up in St. Louis? The man was wanted for murder in an entirely different state, had evaded capture for ten years, then he suddenly turns up in the middle of their manhunt? It didn’t make sense.

  “You’re missing the best part.” Wendell handed over another page with a grainy, poorly lit photo. Mauser looked at the gruesome picture, felt his body shiver, his stomach turn over. He took a deep breath. He looked at the photo of the charred, mutilated thing that used to be a man. The body was beyond unrecognizable, the skin having sloughed off, the bones chipped and brittle. It looked less like a skeleton than a piece of meat left too long on a grill. He heard Denton swallow. Mauser looked up, his mouth dry.

  “I thought you said the guy Barnes killed in Williamsburg was shot to death,” Mauser said. “This guy looks like he got stuck in a deep fryer.”

  Wendell shook his head, and suddenly Mauser understood.

  “That’s not the man Shelton Barnes killed,” Wendell said, his voice even. “That is Shelton Barnes. According to the Department of Justice, Shelton Barnes and his pregnant wife died in a fire ten years ago. Looks like the only thing you two turned up tonight is a goddamn walking corpse.”

  24

  Paulina threw the copy down and eyed Wallace Langston. He picked it up, scanned it quickly and handed it back.

  “I’m not going to run this.”

  Paulina pursed her lips, that scowl she’d perfected over the years. The one that wordlessly said What’s the matt
er with you?

  “Wally, forgive my insolence, but that’s bullshit. Every paper in this town is having a field day with us. Henry Parker is getting more ink than Blair and Frey combined. We’re talking murder, Wally. This isn’t some stupid plagiarism case we can ignore.”

  “I know that.” Wallace looked and felt like hell. The last two days had been the longest of his professional life. He still couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to. Parker had such terrific potential. He was a reporter the Gazette could hang its hat on for decades. The talent and work ethic of a lion, the integrity of the very man he’d idolized. At least that’s what Wallace had thought. “But that editorial you wrote is pretty darn vicious. I know we need to report on the Parker search, but we don’t need to drive a stake in our own heart.”

  “Our heart?” Paulina said, anger rising. “What heart? The kid is twenty-four years old. You know how many burnouts we’ve seen over the years? If Parker had never worked here, who would have known?”

  “I would have,” Wallace said. “Jack would have.”

  “Right…Jack.” Paulina’s voice quieted. “Funny, this whole thing started because of a story on Jack’s plate.”

  “Don’t start, Paulina.”

  “I’m just saying, guy’s old. Doesn’t have it all together. Who knows what his motives were for sending Henry into the field?”

  “Right now I don’t know and I don’t care. But we’re going to handle this scandal like professionals. Period.”

  She placed the editorial on Wallace’s desk again. “Then run my column. Be professional. Don’t avoid this. You talk about integrity? My article is the truth a lot of people are feeling. You can bury it, and admit that the Gazette takes shortcuts. Or you can print it. Let everyone know this paper isn’t afraid to hit hard.”

  Wallace sighed. He read the piece again. Paulina had torn Henry Parker to pieces, and was now asking him to publicly scatter the ashes.

  “Run it,” he said. “Tighten up the first graph. But it’ll be in the morning edition.”

  Paulina smiled, thanked Wallace and left his office with an extra hop in her step.

  25

  When we’d reached the bottom of our bottomless cups of coffee and licked the last toast crumbs off the plate, Amanda and I left Ken’s offee Den and headed into the morning sunlight. David Morris’s Tundra was nowhere to be seen. After four hours of “Achy Breaky Heart,” I wasn’t too sad to see him go.

  Studying the cars in the rest stop parking lot, I noticed that most had Illinois license plates. A few Missouris, one or two from Wisconsin. Before we went anywhere, I went back into the diner and grabbed a road map from a kiosk. On the back cover was an advertisement for a walking tour of the state’s capitol, Springfield. Inside were coupons for an upcoming Cubs game. Somehow, we’d ended up in Illinois.

  I unfolded the map, trying to pinpoint our location, then gave up. Beyond the rest stop on the southbound side of the highway was a blue sign indicating we were at the Coalfield exit on Interstate 55. Another green sign beyond that read “Springfield—10 Miles.” My legs felt rubbery just thinking about it.

  Amanda appeared beside me, her shoulder brushing against my arm. The first real human contact I’d felt in hours. Her eyes were striking in the morning light. From the first moment on that street corner in New York, I knew Amanda Davies was stunning. But thinking about how much she’d done for me, how much she’d risked, she was that much more beautiful.

  She must have caught me staring, because a bashful smile crept over her lips.

  “What?” she said. I smiled, shook my head.

  “Nothing. Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For believing me. You could have hitched a ride or called the cops, done any number of things. And I’d be lost. Completely.”

  “You don’t need to thank me. I’m doing this because I want to.”

  “I know you are. But thanks anyway.”

  Again I thought about her notebooks, and it occurred to me that for the first time Amanda had been forced to see past the surface of her subjects. Before last night I was Carl Bernstein. Merely an entry, one of hundreds. But now I was three-dimensional. Flesh and blood. Someone to touch rather than just see.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked.

  “Now,” I said, “we contact our primary sources. The ‘who’ list.” I pulled the notebook from my pocket and looked over the list of names. Three in particular stood out.

  Grady Larkin.

  Luis and Christine Guzman.

  For the first time, I found myself thinking about John Fredrickson’s family. The newspaper said he left behind a wife, two children. A family had been shattered. My heart felt weak, knowing these lives were damaged forever because of me. Despite my innocence, nothing could fill that family’s void.

  Everything hit me like a punch to the gut and suddenly I felt nauseous. I bent over, hands on my knees, heaving. Amanda, ever courageous, rubbed my back.

  “Henry? Henry? You okay?”

  I shooed her away with a wave and resumed heaving. When my stomach’s spin cycle stopped, I stood up and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

  I gathered myself, still panting, hands trembling. Amanda looked me over as I clenched and unclenched my fists. She seemed to know what I was thinking.

  “Yeah, I just…” My voice trailed off. I looked into her eyes, warm and sorrowful, as if sharing my misery would help lighten the load. “It just doesn’t seem real.”

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “I mean, I have a home and a family I haven’t even spoken to since everything happened. My mother, she’d be devastated.”

  “What about your father?”

  I shook my head.

  “He won’t care. This would just confirm his assumption that I was born to fail.”

  “Well, then it’s up to you to prove him wrong.” I nodded. Years ago I’d made the choice to distance myself from my parents. Accomplishing that goal brought a sense of both pride and regret. And now I couldn’t turn to them even if I wanted to.

  “Now come on,” Amanda said. “We have work to do.”

  She took my arm and we headed toward the highway. I’d walked ten miles before, but never with a definite purpose or destination. Cold nights, breath streaming in front of me, nowhere to go but to be lost in the woods of my own thoughts. Back home, when I couldn’t take things anymore, when the rotten stench of beer and sweat literally forced me out of the house, walking was a cure from my father’s passive aggressive anger. I waited years for him to explode, to release all his hatred in a viscous torrent, but instead it wafted out like a leaky gas main, making me woozy and sick for years, poisoning me slowly.

  One of my favorite analogies is the frog and the pot of water. I used it on sources that were reluctant to speak. It helped them understand the severity of their situation.

  If you put a frog in a boiling pot of water, he’ll sense the heat and immediately jump out of the scalding liquid. But if you put a frog in a cold pot of water then slowly raise the temperature, the frog will boil alive. He becomes accustomed to the gradual temperature change, right until it kills him.

  The lesson is that people stay in terrible situations simply because they’ve gotten used to them. The water around them is so scalding and hurtful but they don’t know any better because it’s happened in such small increments. Thankfully I was able to leave my own pot before it was too late.

  We started off down the interstate, walking side by side, halfway between the surge of speeding vehicles and the protection of the tree line. I didn’t realize it until the third or fourth mile, but my leg was really starting to hurt. Not the kind of ache from a cramped muscle or even a deep bruise. No, this was beneath the skin. Nausea swept through me, but I fought it off.

  Soon buildings began to appear on the horizon, rising above the endless span of highway. The humidity dried up, the sweat once pouring from my body now drying, causing my shirt to stick to my skin. Peeling it
off caused an icky sensation, like hearing the wet sound of a bandage ripped from a fresh cut. Amanda seemed to notice this, and leered at me whenever I pried the sleeves loose from my biceps.

  “This is the first time I’ve ever said this,” I said, “but I could really go for a good shopping spree right about now.”

  Amanda laughed, but there was weariness in it. Still, I had to admire her being able to keep a sense of humor under the circumstances.

  “If we get out of this, I’ll take you to Barneys. You’ll fall in love with their suits.” She playfully tugged at the waist-band of my pants.

  “Forget suits, I’d drop twenty on a crappy Fruit of the Loom right about now.”

  “I bet Mr. Fruit of the Loom would be flattered to hear that.”

  As we walked, time seemed to go into a strange sort of wind tunnel, everyone speeding past us. We were running on fumes, the colors all blurring together, like life was a record going at 33 1/3. Amanda was beginning to walk sluggishly, dragging her heels, her shoulders slouching.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Just a little tired,” she said. “Haven’t slept in like thirty-six hours.”

  Same as me, I thought. But I had reasons to keep going.

  Amanda wasn’t fighting for her survival, she was fighting for a man she’d met a day and a half ago. We needed a place to rest, even if it was just for a little while.

  One hour and three more miles later, according to my body’s—likely faulty—pedometer, we saw a sign for gas, food and lodging, and an arrow veering off the freeway. I looked at Amanda, who shrugged, as if to leave the decision to stop entirely up to me.

  “We should rest,” I said. She slowed down, seemingly mulling over this idea.

  “If you insist.”

  We followed exit 42 until we reached an intersection. Half a dozen fast-food joints populated either side of the highway, competing for layover dollars from families on the go. A Motel 3 lay about a half mile down the road, the roof a muddy red. A large neon light proclaimed that, yes, they did have vacancies and at least the V in TV. If the laws of division were correct, a Motel 3 would be half as good as Motel 6. And right they were. It resembled a two-story slab of pancake-colored timeshares, the paint looking like it hadn’t received a second coat since before Sherwin married Williams.