No Good Deed

by Victor Gischler

  “Do you think this is going to be okay?” Francis asked.

  Emma tossed her backpack through the open passenger-side window onto the truck’s bench seat. “What do you mean?”

  “How do we know he won’t say anything? You could tell by the look on his face he smells something fishy,” Francis said. “What if he’s down at the swap meet and old Rufus says, ‘Hey, did you hear about that GTO roaring around with the girl hanging out the window in her underwear shooting at everybody?’”

  “Why do you think he’s hiding it in the barn?” Emma said. “He won’t mention that car to a soul until Nebraska has completely forgotten we were ever here. Then when he’s fixed the thing up and is finally ready to show it off, he’ll make up some story about where he got it.”

  “Or he’s in there right now on his cell phone calling the sheriff.”

  “Or that.” She tossed him the keys. “You drive.”

  “You want me to drive?”

  “I think you’ve proven yourself.”

  24

  Middleton pressed the elevator call button, the giddy anticipation plain on his face. He didn’t care. Nobody was around to see his grin. Meredith was neck deep into her emails. He let her work. He wanted this for himself, this first time to step into his new command center. The little kid welled up inside him. His personal Sanctum Sanctorum, as Doctor Strange would say.

  The elevator arrived, and Middleton stepped onto it. He’d insisted on a full-sized elevator instead of one of those tiny things they usually put into residences. It was also an obscene expense to install an elevator in what was predominantly a one-story dwelling, simply to serve a relatively small area on the second level, but it wasn’t like Middleton didn’t have the money. If he started buying things like the Elephant Man’s bones, then he’d worry. And anyway, the only other way up was a very narrow spiral staircase, so a full-sized elevator was essential for hauling up all the various furnishings and equipment.

  Middleton considered piping music into the elevator, but the ride up was only thirty seconds. He supposed he could tie it in to the sound system for the rest of the house, then if he were listening to a song, it would continue uninterrupted when he got on and off the elevator.

  It struck him suddenly that the house had become his new plaything. It had gone from haven to toy. Middleton felt different. Better. Like the world offered him things to enjoy instead of worries looming ever in front of him. Obviously, the dramatic shift in his relationship with Meredith was responsible. Life was good.

  The elevator doors opened. He took one step, and that triggered the lights. They came up slowly to full brightness.

  Middleton stood a moment to admire the place.

  The huge room was a perfect circle. The walls rose and curved gradually into a dome ten feet overhead. Medium-sized circular windows like portholes ringed the entire room. Beneath the windows, a narrow shelf also ringed the room, plug-in stations for computers ten feet apart, a stool at each station. The arrangement gave the room the vibe of a futuristic coffee shop. Middleton figured he would eventually have meetings here. His intent was that this room would be the center of his empire.

  But for just a little while, he planned to keep the room to himself.

  A railing separated the outer circle from the inner circle. Three steps led down to the sunken area. An elaborate desk wrapped two-thirds around the inner circle. Simply to call it a desk would be an understatement. The focal point of the monitor display was a one-hundred-inch screen, a half-dozen thirty-two-inch screens arranged around it and various smaller monitors filling in the gaps. It was like Bryant’s setup but on steroids.

  Middleton eyed the chair. No, not yet. I’ll save that for last.

  “Computer, open the windows.”

  The internal shutters slid to one side, and fresh sunlight poured in through the portholes.

  He strolled the outer circle, pausing to look through each window. The portal over the house’s front door overlooked the road that came into the property and the vineyard beyond, the rows and rows of grapevines. The portal on the opposite side of the room offered a wide view of the lake and the undeveloped woodlands.

  Middleton had wanted seclusion, and that’s exactly what he’d gotten.

  His eyes slid back to the chair, and the grin sprang back to his face. The child within strained at the leash, and Middleton finally set him free.

  He skipped down the three steps to the sunken area. He stood in front of the chair a moment. Middleton reached out to touch the soft leather. He wouldn’t admit it, but he’d modeled the seat after Captain Picard’s chair on the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not to gloat, but this chair was even better. Middleton had been very precise with his requests, and now he was so eager to try the chair, he felt like a kid on Christmas.

  He sat.

  He wriggled his butt until he found the most comfortable position.

  Various controls had been built into the armrests. The small joystick on the left armrest could be controlled with the flick of a thumb. Middleton gave it a go, nudging the joystick to the left. The chair scooted along the track to the left, following the same semicircle of the desk.

  Middleton giggled with glee.

  He nudged the joystick back the other direction until the chair centered itself back in front of the gigantic one-hundred-inch TV screen.

  Middleton explored the buttons on the other armrest. The chair unfolded itself from sections underneath until it became a recliner, lifting his legs and tilting him back. He looked up at the big TV and thought, Wrath of Khan is going to look totally kick-ass in ultrahigh definition. Captain Picard could suck it. Middleton’s chair was a hundred times better.

  Middleton realized that his life was perfect. The philosophers claimed such a thing impossible, and yet here he was. Living proof it could be done. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but it had gotten him close.

  And Meredith Vines had brought him the rest of the way.

  “Am I disturbing you, Mr. Middleton?” As always, the computer voice seemed to come from midair. Middleton was impressed with whomever had installed the sound system. He’d not yet been able to detect where the speakers had been installed in many of the rooms.

  “What is it?”

  “You have a call from a Reggie Bryant,” said the computer. “Shall I put him through?”

  Middleton hesitated. Couldn’t it wait? Couldn’t he enjoy a day to himself?

  “Yes, put him through, please,” Middleton said.

  “Mr. Middleton?” Bryant’s voice.

  “I’m here, Reggie.”

  “I thought it best to bring you up to speed on current developments,” Bryant said. “I take it we’re on a secure line.”

  “It’s secure,” Middleton confirmed. “Go ahead.”

  “I’ve heard from Cavanaugh,” Bryant said.

  “Oh?” Middleton fended off a stab of guilt. The task Middleton had set for Cavanaugh was unpleasant—not something he relished at all, frankly—but it needed to be done. Middleton couldn’t stomach the threat of her always hanging over his head. “I hope to report that matters have been concluded.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  A leaden feeling crept into Middleton’s belly. He pushed it down. There was no reason to assume the worst. “He’s made some progress, I presume.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Bryant said. “It appears to be a one-step-forward, two-steps-back sort of situation. Cavanaugh suggests that continuing to chase her in this manner is not the best allocation of resources.”

  “Allocation of resources.” Middleton said the words out loud to see if they tasted as stupid as they sounded. “He asked for more men, and I approved the funding. We’re paying them in a way that can’t be traced back to us, right?”

  “Cash payments through the usual channels,” Bryant said. “There’s no problem there. It’s just Cavanaugh’s ability to get the job done that’s in question.”

  “How does h
e want to handle it?”

  “Cavanaugh feels he knows where she’s heading and that putting himself in a position to intercept her is the scenario most likely to produce results.”

  “She’s coming all the way back to California?”

  “That’s what Cavanaugh implied.”

  Now the anxiety rose up hard and wouldn’t be pushed back down. “That’s cutting it a little close, isn’t it? A little close to home.”

  “Agreed,” Bryant said. “It would seem to undermine the whole reason for sending Cavanaugh after her in the first place.”

  When his wife had escaped, Middleton knew what she’d wanted, knew she would resurface again. He’d wanted her handled far away from him, wanted no part of her fate attached to him. It would be reported to him in clean, clinical terms that the problem had been attended to. At least that had been the plan. A growing dread made him feel sick. There was an acrid taste in his mouth, and his tongue felt thick. He tugged at his shirt collar, felt like he wasn’t getting enough air.

  “Maybe Cavanaugh’s wrong about her coming back,” Middleton said. “Maybe she’s just running.”

  “No.”

  Bryant had been too quick with the denial.

  “You put it through the software, didn’t you?” Middleton asked.

  “It knows,” Bryant said. “It knows everything.”

  * * *

  The forensics guys gave the items the routine going-over, and when they failed to turn up anything useful, they handed the box over to Gunn. He signed for the items and took them back to his room at the Hyatt Regency.

  He dropped the box on the bed. Soon he would focus his complete attention on it, but first, it had been a long day, and Gunn had a short list of evening rituals to help him decompress.

  He undressed, hanging his suit in the closet. It could be worn one more day before going to the cleaners. He draped his tie on a separate hanger and placed his wing tips side by side on the closet floor. He stripped off his shirt and dress socks and put them into a plastic laundry bag and stuffed the bag into one of the dresser drawers. It disturbed Gunn for some reason to think housekeeping might come into the room and see his dirty clothes strewn about. He liked his dirty laundry hidden away.

  After splashing some water in his face and patting dry with a towel, he changed into a T-shirt and shorts, slipped into white ankle socks and running shoes, and rode the elevator to the workout room on the first floor. He ran exactly two miles on the treadmill at a moderate pace.

  The time on the treadmill was usually good for thinking. He put the girl out of his mind until later and concentrated on Middleton. He didn’t actually concentrate too hard. When running, he preferred to let revelations drift in of their own accord. If Gunn couldn’t make things work out with the girl, then he’d have to figure another way to approach Middleton. The NSA had planted a few people inside Middleton’s company at various levels, and so far, they’d produced a smattering of useful information, but he couldn’t remember hearing anything from them recently. He made a mental note to put Boston on it in the morning.

  When he finished running, he returned to his room and kicked off his shoes. He grabbed the ice bucket and walked down the hall in his socks, found the ice machine, and returned with fresh ice. He stuck a bottle of Cutty Sark into the ice bucket. It was substandard scotch, but all the corner convenience store could offer.

  He stripped, hid his workout clothes in a different dresser drawer, then stepped into the shower. He let the hard water spray him as hard and as hot as he could stand it. Now he tried not to think anything at all and succeeded for a few minutes. Mind blank, the shower steamed around him.

  After the shower, he dried and put on sweatpants and a CIA T-shirt that was traded to him after an interagency basketball game. He poured the Cutty into a glass, decided it still wasn’t cold enough, and dropped in a few cubes. He sipped again, winced. So, okay, better than no scotch at all. Gunn considered ordering a better bottle from room service. No. Keep it off the government tab, and anyway, this wasn’t a vacation.

  He sat cross-legged on the bed and pulled the cardboard box toward him. A white sticker on the side, WHISPERING MEADOW. MIDDLETON, EMMA, followed by a patient ID number.

  The box didn’t contain much, but Gunn went item by item, giving each its due. He’d decided the NSA had been neglectful in its approach. In a world of computer hacking and high-tech surveillance, it would be all too easy to overlook basic detective work. The NSA had satellites that could identify a suspect in an Iranian terror training camp from orbit, but that didn’t mean simply poking through a box of seemingly banal personal possessions might not uncover something telling.

  Gunn wanted to touch this girl’s stuff, to get a sense of her, find something to serve as the foundation for a hunch.

  A pair of faded jeans. Gunn went through the pockets but didn’t find anything. He looked at the labels, some off-brand. A flimsy pink T-shirt with GIRLS KICK ASS written in glitter. A small stack of books and magazines he set aside for last.

  Gunn sipped scotch, swirled the ice cubes in the glass, and dug deeper into the box.

  A handheld Nintendo 3DS with a handful of games, mostly Pokémon related. A half-empty pack of spearmint gum. A chain and a small silver locket. Gunn opened the locket and recognized the picture inside from the file. There was nothing here he didn’t already know—or could guess—about the girl that wasn’t in the official profile.

  He finished the scotch, decided against refilling the glass.

  Gunn returned to the books and magazines.

  The first magazine was an issue of Southern Bride with an elfin-looking redhead on the cover in an elegant wedding dress. The magazine surprised Gunn, didn’t fit with what he knew of the girl. Everyone had a hidden side, he supposed. The other magazine was an issue of Maximum PC, which was more in keeping with the girl’s profile. The first book was a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a bookmark tucked between the pages about halfway through.

  Gunn opened the second book and felt a surge of interest.

  It wasn’t a novel or a book at all, but rather one of those leather-bound journals with blank pages inside. The first half of the book was filled with the girl’s tight, precise scrawl. Jackpot. If anything might reveal some hidden insight about the girl, it would be her personal journal.

  But he felt disappointment as he began to read. Her first entry explained that she only wrote a journal at the insistence of her therapist to help “put her feelings into words.” It was clear she didn’t think much of journaling. Gunn turned pages, read similar entries. The food at the facility was bland. The staff “phony polite.” The tile in the common-area restrooms the same “institutional green” as a Soviet bus station’s. It was clear she didn’t want to be there—big surprise—and the entries all blended into one long complaint. Frankly, it was boring, and Gunn almost set the journal aside.

  But he kept reading, his proclivity for completion pressing him on.

  Slowly the girl opened up, revealed in fits and starts her resentment for wrongly being placed in such a facility. Musings on past events in her life. He was nearly to the final entry when something caught his attention, not further personal revelation but rather something concrete that spurred Gunn to action.

  He looked at the clock. It was late.

  No matter.

  Gunn picked up his phone and dialed. Agent Boston picked up on the third ring.

  “Boston? It’s Gunn.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  If Gunn had woken him, he couldn’t tell. Boston sounded alert and ready.

  “I want you to put together a second surveillance team,” Gunn said. “Attach a swoop-and-grab team and have them standing by.”

  “That will stretch our available resources.” No criticism in Boston’s tone. He merely related information.

  “Stretch them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Boston said. “You have a lead?”

  “Call it a hunch.”

  25


  The dead man lay against the tractor, eyes closed, flesh looking rubbery and fake in the cold light. The bald thug had been alive one moment, and then a pop of gunfire, and then he’d coughed blood and sagged as deflated as whatever made a sack of flesh a human being seeped out of him.

  And then …

  … his eyes popped open.

  The thug blinked, struggled to sit up. His mouth worked open and closed as he tried to gurgle something, blood so dark it was almost black, gushing over his bottom lip, dripping on his shirt. He reached, clawing, blood now streaming from his nostrils and eyes.

  Fear. Shock. Revulsion.

  The thug lurched forward, bloody hand grabbing for—

  Francis sat up in the darkness, shivering, sweat sticking his T-shirt to him.

  As always when he was away from home, it took him a few seconds to remember where he was. Emma lay next to him, both of them tucked into two sleeping bags zipped together. They’d driven out of Nebraska and into Colorado until Francis’s back and shoulders ached and he could no longer sit behind the steering wheel. They found a spot off the beaten path in the Arapaho National Forest to pitch a tent, a flat area overlooking a still lake. It was a warm time of year, but at this altitude still cold at night. Francis and Emma had happily huddled together for warmth. It was a pristine patch of wilderness fit for a picture postcard, but the ground was hard, and the bathroom was a tree.

  But Emma had insisted. She’d dismissed the idea of a hotel and hadn’t even wanted to check into the official Arapaho campsites, deciding instead to take a random fire road. They’d parked the truck out of sight and pitched the tent with their remaining strength and had fallen immediately asleep. Off the grid and on the down low, she’d said.

  Francis recalled all this in a flash, his heart still fluttering from the nightmare.

  “What is it?” Emma’s soft whisper in the darkness.

  “Bad dream.”