The Eighth Day

by Joseph John

  The row of pines ended at the edge of the street. Lights from a passing vehicle pierced the twilight and sped by. He waited for it to fade into the distance before he burst from cover and raced across the empty stretch of road to the charging station where he’d parked the compact. The slap of his boot heels echoed off the asphalt like lashes from a bullwhip.

  He entered the halo of light surrounding the charging station and skidded to a stop, eyes wide and wild, thinking the scene at the hotel had been a ploy to lure him here all along, where the real trap waited. The monotone hum of the charging terminals took on a malevolent pitch, and an ominous, electric charge filled the air.

  The compact waited with indifferent patience in the shadows. He approached it with slow, cautious steps, body tensed for flight. But no one came for him. He was right. They hadn’t tracked the compact. They’d tracked him. They’d planted a tracking device in his boot or his clothes or his skin.

  He opened the door of the car, slid behind the wheel, and pulled the door shut with a vault-like thunk. No one followed as he pulled out of the charging station and sped down the road and onto the entrance ramp for I-70 East. In the rearview mirror, the lights of Effingham faded into the darkness like dying embers.

  Both the police and the FBI had tracked him to the hotel. But some bureaucratic or inter-agency snafu had left them locking horns with each other. Otherwise, he’d either be in cuffs or staring at the inside of a body bag by now.

  Yet the whole thing struck him as off. His wife, her buddies from the barn, and the men who’d driven the Tesla—they all shot first and skipped the questions. Not the modus operandi of legit law enforcement. Throw in a handful of supposed FBI agents wearing suits and armed with automatic rifles and something didn’t add up.

  Shawn removed his wedding band and held it between his thumb and forefinger. They’d picked it out together, Victoria on his arm with her head against his shoulder. They’d shuffled along and peered into the jewelry store’s glass display cases. Her hair had smelled of apple blossoms. He rolled down his window and flicked his wrist, and the wedding band disappeared into the rush of night. It was the one thing he wore every day. If they’d planted a tracking device on him, it was the prime suspect.

  Nevertheless, when he saw signs for a Madison York department store in Indianapolis several hours later, he stopped and bought new clothes—sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, even underwear and a pair of socks. He changed in the in-store dressing room, stuffed his old clothes into the wastebasket, and wiped his hands together in a gesture of absolution. If they found him now, it meant the tracking device had been inside him all along, and if he failed to get it out, he was a dead man.

  He prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

  “He got away?” The director sat upright at his desk, and his eyes blazed beneath a knitted brow. “A dozen agents on his ass, and he got away?”

  Standing across from him, Chad Dodd kept his expression impassive. “The hotel clerk called the cops.”

  “That goddamn video.”

  “They pulled in siren blaring and drew on our agents outside the hotel. By the time they sorted things out, Echo-7 was long gone.”

  “How’d they handle the police?” the director asked.

  “Convinced them they were Feds and unassed themselves from the situation before the cops figured out otherwise.”

  “Good. We know where Echo-7’s headed?”

  Chad shrugged. “East. Moore City, Ohio State, New York—it’s still a coin toss. But even if he’s going back to New York, both Moore City and Ohio State are on the way. He could stop at either.”

  “He remembered New York.” The director shook his head. “Un-fucking-believable. What about Tyler?”

  “She’s functional. No issues.”

  The director leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin. The weight of his gaze was like a heavy hand. At last, he said, “Get teams on the ground in both Moore City and Columbus. Then I want you both on the first thing smoking out of here.”

  Chad raised an eyebrow. “Sir?”

  “I want you on-site to handle this personally.” The director rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, wipe that goddamn smirk off your face. I know you’ve been itching to get back in the field, so don’t fuck this up. It needs to end here.”

  “It will,” Chad said. “I promise you.”

  The director waved him away with a limp hand, and Chad turned on his heels and marched out of the room. A plan began to take shape in his mind like a shadowed figure approaching in a midnight fog, and a raptorial grin spread across Chad’s face that was all teeth and anything but good intentions.

  The cabin of the twin turbine jet was off-white with dark mahogany cabinets and siding that stretched the lower half of its length. The beige carpet matched the leather seats, of which there were eight. Emma Tyler sat facing Chad Dodd in the third row. The other seats in the cabin were empty. They were the plane’s only passengers.

  Emma shifted in her seat. The leather was damp and tacky. Through the rectangular window next to her, tiny pinpoints punctured the blanket of night below and marked the roads and cities like drops of dew glistening on a spider’s web. A glow on the eastern horizon foreshadowed the coming of dawn.

  “He’s still traveling east on I-70,” Dodd said, glancing up from his tablet, which displayed the location of Echo-7’s GPS tracker on a moving map. “We’ll land at Darke County Airport and wait and see. If he comes north, he’s headed for Moore City. I have a driver on standby so we get there first. Otherwise, if he stays on I-70, it’s either Ohio State or New York. We’ll go wheels-up to Columbus and wait for him there.”

  “You think he’ll stop in Moore City?” Emma asked.

  Dodd shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. No clue what’s going through that dude’s head.”

  His gaze returned to his tablet, but first it drifted south and lingered over her breasts. Probably thought he was being subtle. What an asshole.

  She crossed her arms and glowered out the window, imagined pulling her stun gun out and jamming it into his wandering eyes, pictured them bulging in their sockets as his muscles constricted and convulsed. She smiled and leaned back and closed her own eyes.

  The jet lurched and shuddered as it passed through a stretch of turbulence, and they began their descent into Darke County Airport. The world slid by below, an elaborate quilt stitched in shades of green, brown, and gray that resolved into fields, fences, parking lots, and roads. The tires barked as they touched down. They taxied off the runway and rolled to a stop adjacent the general aviation hangars. As the engines spooled down, the door to the cockpit opened and the pilot swaggered out, a well-built man with rough-hewn features, like a Renaissance sculpture in a flight suit with fashionably tousled hair. He saw Emma, and his eyes lit up—as predictable as Pavlov’s dog.

  “Hope the flight wasn’t too rough,” he said and flashed a crooked grin.

  “Get the door, please?” Emma said.

  She followed Dodd down the short flight of narrow stairs to the tarmac. Their driver waited as promised. A black sedan idled alongside the jet, and he stood before it with his arms folded over his massive chest. He had broad shoulders and hands the size of tennis rackets.

  Dodd nodded at him, and the driver lumbered toward them.

  “Name’s Chad Dodd. This is Emma Tyler.”

  “Jensen,” the driver said.

  They shook, and when he swallowed Emma’s hand in his meaty palm his grip was a dead fish. Normally, anything less than a firm handshake would have pissed her off. When it came from a man, most likely he presumed she was too delicate to handle a real grip and grin. And when it came from a woman, it just propagated the stereotype. But Jensen probably could’ve broken every one of her phalanges and metacarpals without even trying, so she didn’t hold it against him.

  Once they completed introductions, Dodd paced away and peered at his tablet. Jensen refolded his arms and stared off into the distance with the stolidity of s
tone. A crisp breeze stirred Emma’s hair.

  “He’s headed north,” Dodd said and turned and strode toward the car. “Moore City it is. Let’s roll.”

  He got in the passenger side, and she sat in the back. Jensen ducked his head and folded himself into the driver’s seat. The sedan sagged beneath his weight, and its suspension groaned like a wounded animal.

  They left Darke County Airport and turned onto a two-lane county road, bouncing along over an uneven blacktop that was all but deserted. Maybe the locals had dreamed of factories, strip malls, and suburbs, but civilization had moved on and left them behind. Amarillo had been pathetic, but it was damn near the epitome of sophistication compared to this miserable expanse of backcountry.

  The miles rolled by, and the silence stretched on like a Sunday sermon.

  Eventually, a sun-bleached sign on the side of the road came into view and welcomed them to Moore City, the “Biggest Little Town in Ohio.” Its anemic supports looked ready to collapse at any moment.

  An abrupt spattering of houses gave way to downtown, where a dark and inoperative traffic light hung above them from a frayed wire like a corpse telling the tragic tale of small-town America. Several blocks later, the business district ended with the same precipitous demarcation with which it had begun, replaced by an encroachment of trees and manicured lawns. It reminded Emma of an elaborate movie set rather than a living, breathing city.

  “Turn here,” Dodd said and pointed, and Jensen angled the sedan down a residential side street. “That’s it ahead on the right.”

  It was a small two-story green structure with dark-brown trim and a covered wooden porch stretching the length of the house. A narrow driveway ended in an attached single-car garage with a dark-brown door. A massive oak tree with branches plush with foliage cast its shadow over the front lawn.

  “Be right back.” Dodd got out and jogged up the driveway and the porch steps and knocked on the front door. It opened, and he disappeared into the darkness beyond.

  Jensen sat with his hands on the wheel at the ten and two o’clock positions and kept his gaze locked ahead. Emma studied the folds in the back of his neck. His misshapen ears reminded her of cauliflower. Left alone in a car with a stranger, most people ran off at the mouth as if possessed by a compulsive need to fill the silence. If she’d been left alone with Dodd, he’d probably take a swing at getting her in the sack. But Jensen said nothing and seemed content to leave the silence empty. She found herself liking him a great deal.

  When Dodd returned, he dropped into the passenger seat. “House is secure,” he said. “They relocated the tenants until the op is complete. Let’s park a couple streets over.”

  Jensen started the car and pulled away from the curb.

  “And then what?” Emma asked.

  “Then,” Dodd said, “we wait.”

  Shawn Jaffe took I-75 North at Dayton. The sun broke free of the horizon and lit the sky in shades of orange and gold, like treasures from the mines of King Solomon. The miles blurred together. He yawned and opened the windows. The rushing air filled his ears and pummeled him with its invisible, paper-tiger blows.

  But when the compact’s navigation system told him to take the next exit and began guiding him through the torturous twists and turns of state highways and county roads leading to Moore City, anticipation shoved exhaustion out the door with a stiff arm and calloused hand. Fields of corn and soybeans crowded either side of the crumbling road, endless uniform rows stretching in every direction, an undulating ocean of green. Farmland gave way to suburbia by degrees. Graceful acreages became expansive lawns became cramped yards bumping shoulders with one another, and without pomp and circumstance, he rolled into the small town where he’d been born and raised.

  The businesses at the center of town were the old-fashioned brick and mortar type found in black-and-white movies—strong, sturdy, and confident. Yet beneath the veneer of small-town amiability, an impression of atrophy and decay flittered at the edges. The cracked sidewalks with the weeds poking through like the hands of corpses, the layers of dust, the flecking paint and rust—Moore City’s era had ended long ago.

  Something else bothered him as well. The dimensions, angles, and spacing were off. Subtle deviations from his memory of the town, like the distorted reflections of a funhouse mirror—a fire hydrant on the wrong side of the street, an alley between the grocery store and thrift shop that he didn’t remember, as if the stores had stretched apart like putty to accommodate it, an underlying flaw in the town’s hues and shades of colors.

  Disorientation brought on waves of dizziness and nausea. He pulled the compact to the curb, closed his eyes, and concentrated on deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth. Traffic was light, most of the vehicles just passing through, although several lined Main Street, parked at an angle curbside. A big man in blue-jean overalls recharged a dusty red pickup at the corner shop. A rickety old woman with white hair pulled back in a bun wobbled down the sidewalk wearing high heels and a gray bathrobe, cradling a canvas bag filled with groceries.

  At last, the spinning sensation stopped, and Shawn pulled away from the curb, the compact’s electric engine as silent as a funeral wake. Birds twittered in the trees. The whooping of children at play carried from an unseen yard. He turned off Main Street. Here, timeworn houses huddled on either side of the road, a hodgepodge of homes trying too hard to be something other than a homogeneous neighborhood. It was all so familiar, and yet at the same time, a sense of wrongness nagged at the back of his mind.

  Three blocks down on the right, his childhood home came into view, and he jammed his foot on the brake, eyes wide and jaw agape. His heart stopped, stuttered, like a man who’s fallen into ice water, and then it restarted with a wild and frantic beat. He stared through the windshield, cold and numb.

  The house he grew up in had been tall, three stories with a peaked roof and a half-circle window peeking out from beneath the eaves. Its front door had welcomed him home from atop a concrete porch and stairs bordered by a black wrought-iron railing. An unattached two-car garage had stood at the end of the driveway.

  But it was as if someone had excised this truth like a tumor, lifted it out and stitched a lie in its place, a Frankensteinian reconstruction of the neighborhood.

  The house number was spray-painted on the curb, 521, black numbers stenciled on a white background. It was his address. But it wasn’t his house.

  Had the new owners torn down his home and rebuilt? No, it looked weathered and dated compared to modern designs. No way it was a new construction.

  So what had happened to his home?

  Shawn got out of the compact and slogged with leaden feet along the driveway toward the house. The world acquired a blurred and dreamlike quality. The sounds and smells of summer seemed muted, as if veiled by a thick curtain or echoing down a long tunnel. Wooden planks groaned beneath his weight as he mounted the steps and crossed the porch. The front door loomed before him. He raised a hand, hesitated, and knocked, the rap of his knuckles solid and blunted.

  The door opened at once, and in the entryway stood a man in jeans and a crimson T-shirt. He was muscled and had a plain face and neat, trimmed auburn hair.

  “Ryan Marshall!” His face broke into a broad smile. “How the hell you been?”

  Shawn stared at him. He didn’t recognize this man.

  “Where are my manners? Come in, come in.” The man stepped aside and beckoned him forward with the sweep of an arm.

  Shawn crossed the threshold into the house. Memories of yesteryear sewed discord with his senses. He found himself in a small entryway. Before him, a carpeted staircase ascended into darkness. The entryway opened on the living room, its dark-brown carpet and beige walls resplendent beneath the soft glow of the illuminated ceiling. A rolled-up holo-screen hung from the ceiling opposite a wraparound sectional sofa. Nothing about it was familiar, the inside of the house just as foreign to him as its exterior.

  Behind him, the door swung shu
t with a sturdy thud. The man said, “Come on. Let’s get something to drink and reminisce about the good old days.”

  Shawn followed him across the living room and through an archway into the kitchen. On the opposite side of the room, a bow window and glass-paned door revealed a small backyard surrounded by shrubbery.

  “I, uh, forgot your name,” Shawn said.

  “Have a seat. Lemme see what we got in the fridge.”

  The kitchen table had a digital display. On it, a single app was open, a news app turned to the classified ads, inviting him like a sinful apple. His mouth went dry. He didn’t so much walk as drift toward it. Everything else went hazy around the periphery, but the newspaper app remained clear and focused and throbbed like a heartbeat.

  “Go ahead and read it.”

  Shawn blinked and shook his head like he’d stumbled into a cobweb. A terrible urge to sit and pore over the pages gripped him, as if he were an alcoholic staring down a six-pack or a junkie about to score his next fix.

  He remembered.

  He’d been reading the classified ads in the New York Times when the stranger had appeared. “They’re watching you,” he’d said. “Your name isn’t Shawn Jaffe. You aren’t from Ohio, and you’re not an investment broker. Come with me, and I’ll explain everything.” But they’d killed him before he could.

  When the detective—Sam Harrington, his name had been Sam Harrington—asked what he’d been looking for in the classifieds, Shawn had denied reading them. He’d felt guilty, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember what he’d been looking for in the first place.