Her boyfriend before Jordan had been a rowdy art student. Tattooed, racing motorcycles… just thinking about him made her heart flutter. She wondered where he was now and whether he thought about her at all.
“I gotta piss,” Jordan said eloquently.
“You don’t need to say it. Just pull over somewhere and go do it.”
They took the next exit, nothing but barren desert in every direction she looked, with a few tumbleweeds and desert shrubs. She preferred her cities. Nashville had its drawbacks, especially in the last ten years since it’d become a major U.S. city, but at least there were always people around.
The gas station was set far back at the base of a hill, nothing else around. It didn’t even have an attached restaurant. It looked like something from the forties, way before the modern gas station became a mini-grocery store, restaurant and car wash. This one didn’t have any of those conveniences.
They pulled into the station. One other car was at the pumps, but no one was inside.
“Be right back,” Jordan said.
Wendy sighed and went back to her nails. She turned on the stereo. A CD was in, something by Lady Antebellum, and she hummed along as she waited.
She’d wanted to be a singer, a long time ago. Different life, it seemed like. Her mother had put her in voice lessons and beauty pageants since she was four years old. For a long time, she was convinced that that was her path to fame. But the harsh reality hit her around fifteen when she showed up to register at a beauty pageant and saw at least thirty girls just as pretty and talented as she was. The effort to keep going knowing how much competition there was overwhelmed her and she gave it up. Maybe if she’d stuck to it, things would have turned out different.
She looked up and saw Jordan enter the gas station. Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes.
Wendy didn’t know how long she had sat in the car, but it was long enough that, without the air conditioner, her back was starting to sweat. Folding her arms, she stared out the window.
Where the hell are you, jackass?
Wendy finally groaned, grabbed the keys, and opened the door. She glanced both ways. No one was around. The other car at the pump was a Volvo and she peeked inside as she walked by. The car was immaculately clean except for the backseat, which had several items of clothing on it.
As she approached the door to the station, she tried to see the clerk behind the counter, but no one was there. She opened the door and stepped inside.
Oldies rock was playing on the speakers but was turned down to where she could barely hear it. She looked over the counter, thinking maybe someone was ducking underneath doing something, but no one was there.
“Hello?” she said toward an office in the back. She crossed to the office and looked inside. The lights were on and some papers were out on the desk, but no one was in there, either. She walked to the center of the store, exhaled, and began browsing the aisles. She picked up a bag of low-fat chips and went to the cooler for a diet soda. As she walked back to the counter she yelled out, “Hello? Customer wants to buy something.”
She waited a beat and then moved slowly over to the bathroom, listening for any sound of Jordan. What if the clerk had been female, and she and Jordan had hit it off and… No. No way. He wasn’t that kind of guy.
“Jordan?” she said, opening the bathroom door a crack. “Baby, is the cashier in there?”
No response.
Wendy opened the door a little more and poked her head inside. The bathroom wasn’t clean, but wasn’t really dirty either. The garbage was overflowing with those brown paper towels she hated the feel of, and the floors were kind of wet with bootprints over them.
“Jordan, this isn’t funny. Are you in here?”
Now it dawned on her—this was exactly something Jordan would do. He would convince the cashier to hide and that it would be so funny to watch his wife search the gas station. What an idiot. And he seemed to have found another idiot that would waste as much time as he did for a stupid prank.
“Jordan, I got the keys, you jerk. I’m gonna drive off an’ leave you here.”
She waited a beat and then stepped inside the bathroom. Bending at the knees, she looked under the stalls. She could see his shoes below the first stall door.
Wendy quietly walked over and debated whether she should throw something at his head to teach him a lesson. But she decided she would rather get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. She pushed the stall door open.
Jordan was slumped against the toilet’s tank. His eyes were rolled up as though he were staring at the ceiling, and blood was coming out of his neck, rolling over his skin like syrup from a tree.
She screamed, and as she did so, she saw the movement of the bathroom door as it was flung open.
A man stood there. He was so tall his head nearly touched the ceiling. She began to shake and screamed again. She couldn’t see his face—it was tilted downward as though he weren’t even paying attention to her.
The man took a step toward her as she grew hysterical, screaming for anyone to help.
But no one did.
11
The Las Vegas Strip had changed so much since Mickey had been there last that he didn’t even recognize it. The glitz was overwhelming. Every casino and restaurant was fighting for the attention of the crowds and they were doing it in the boldest ways they knew how.
He stopped at the Bellagio and watched the water show. The fountain was spraying in time with a Frank Sinatra song. Mickey leaned against the decorative cement barrier and watched the entire thing. It put a grin on his face.
When the show was through, he strolled another half a block or so. Each building was unique and more grandiose than the last. The Venetian hadn’t been around last time he was there, and he crossed the street and went inside.
The attention to detail was amazing, down to the hats the gondoliers wore as they steered guests down the ample waterways. Mickey wandered through an exhibition of various drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, taking his time at every single piece. He’d always had a fascination with Leonardo da Vinci. His friend and psychologist Jon Stanton had once told him that Leonardo was the only human being to know everything there was to know at the time he lived. It would be the equivalent of someone knowing what was on every page of Wikipedia.
By the time Mickey finished, it was afternoon. He was walking out of the Venetian with an eye toward getting something to eat when his phone rang from a number he didn’t recognize.
“This is Parsons.”
“Mickey, it’s Angela.”
“Hey. I was just gonna grab something to eat and then come see you.”
“Don’t worry about that. I need you to do something else for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Tamora. He killed three people at a gas station a couple miles out of Vegas. Buddy of mine at the Metro PD just called and told me. He’s heading into the city, Mick.”
“I’ll get another guard for you at the hospital right now, and then I’m coming down.”
“What, are you going to be with me the rest of my life? Mickey, the only way I’m going to be safe is if they catch Tamora… If you catch him.”
That was an unfair assumption, but one Mickey didn’t dispute. They had no idea why Tamora was coming to Las Vegas. The likelihood of it being to finish Angela off was remote. But the possibility was still there. Tamora, from what Mickey remembered about his arrest nearly twenty years ago, was completely detached from reality. He might somehow think it was his mission to kill Angela for no other reason than that she had survived.
“Where’s the gas station?”
Mickey came to a stop outside of Phil’s Gas ’N’ Things. Several officers from the Las Vegas Metro Police Department were already there. Mickey watched them from the car. The van from the Coroner’s Office was already there, too. Several of the assistants were standing around, smoking cigarettes and drinking sodas out of cans.
Mickey got out of the car and
approached the gas station. He walked to the front entrance and a uniform glared at him.
Mickey took out his badge. “Mickey Parsons, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“Oh, right.” He looked behind him. “Sergeant, the feds are here.”
A portly man in uniform stepped forward. He eyed Mickey up and down and said, “That was quick.”
“I wasn’t far.”
“Well, you may as well have a look.”
Mickey followed the sergeant through the gas station. Several forensic techs were brushing and measuring and swabbing. The entire store would be analyzed. Mickey looked up behind the cash register and saw a camera.
“What’d the video catch?” Mickey asked.
“Him,” the sergeant said, glancing over his shoulder.
They came to the men’s bathroom and the sergeant stopped. He turned to Mickey and said, “All yours. This is one I’m happy to hand over.”
Mickey stepped past him. On the paper towel dispenser were booties and latex gloves. He put them on, keeping an eye on the bathroom.
Blood was everywhere. Nestled neatly in the sink was the head of a female with blond hair that flowed over the porcelain. Her body was near the stalls. A forensic tech was videoing the scene and another was taking blood samples and photographs of the spatters against the walls and floors.
Mickey could see that most of the blood had pooled around the body, near the stalls, and that a trail of blood led to the sink. He’d cut her head off there, and then taken it over to the sink.
Another body was on the toilet. Mickey could see the feet underneath the stall and a tech was photographing it and making comments under his breath like, “Freaking weird.”
Mickey cautiously stepped around the trails of blood and stopped in front of the stall. A man was drooping off the toilet, his eyes rolled back into his head. An incision ran across his throat, nearly from one ear to the other. His blood had congealed and turned black.
“Who called it in?” Mickey said.
“Next customer in,” a tech said. “Poor woman with two kids. Her nine-year-old boy came in here to use the bathroom.”
Mickey nodded. “I was told there were three bodies.”
“Yeah, the clerk. He’s out back.”
Mickey left the bathroom, slipped off his booties and gloves, and tossed them in the garbage. He went down a hallway between the soda cooler and a separate walk-in cooler for beer. The door leading outside was open. A few uniformed officers were out there with another tech.
On the ground was what looked like a pile of red spaghetti with coffee poured over it. The clerk’s head had clearly been pulverized beyond recognition.
“What’d he use?” Mickey asked.
“Got bootprints embedded in the flesh,” a tech said. “Looks like he just stomped on his head until it burst open.”
Mickey turned away. He sauntered through the store as though in a museum. When he got outside, the sergeant was talking to the Coroner’s Office people. He turned to Mickey.
“Well, what’dya think?” the sergeant said.
“I think I’m going to be staying in Las Vegas longer than I wanted to.”
12
Mickey stepped inside Angela’s hospital room just as a nurse was removing one of her IVs. She’d regained some color overnight and her lips weren’t quite as cracked. He could see an empty juice bottle on the side table next to the bed.
“Did you go down there?” she said.
“I did.”
“And?”
“It’s as bad as you’d think.”
“Shit. He’s coming here. I know it, Mickey. We can nab him if we set something up here in the hospital. I think we should announce on the news which hospital I’m at.”
“No, we’re not doing that.”
“We just need to get rid of the law enforcement up here and stick ’em all on the ground floor. Let him in and bust his ass as soon as he sets foot in the hospital.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Angela. From what I saw, he’s entirely unpredictable. I don’t think we know what he wants or why he’s here.”
“What else could it be?” she said. “He was out. He was, like, twenty miles from California and then he could’ve hiked down to Mexico. He was home free. Instead, he comes down here. It’s gotta be after me.”
“Maybe. But there might be things we don’t know about him.”
“Well, as soon as I’m able to get the fuck outta here I’ll find out.”
He hesitated. “You won’t have to. I’m going to stay a little longer than planned.”
She smiled. “I knew you couldn’t just leave. I fucking knew it.”
“Just feel better. I’ll let you know as soon as I know something.”
As he turned to leave, she said, “Mick?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you find out how David died?”
“Yeah. I called your ASAC. He was shot with his own gun. Died instantly.”
She nodded and exhaled. “I’m gonna miss the stupid bastard. I’m goin’ to the funeral. Doctor’s permission or not.”
Mickey looked her over. “Just focus on getting better for now.”
“Thanks. For staying.”
He nodded, and left the room.
The first place Mickey could think to go was the J. Keller Glenn Correctional Institute. He put the address into his GPS and got onto the interstate. He played a Johnny Cash station on Pandora and kept the windows down as he drove. He’d found the dry desert air helped clear his sinuses, something he’d always had a problem with, and made his throat and nasal passages feel better. He thought maybe when he retired, he’d go someplace like Las Vegas, or St. George, Utah.
The prison sat on nearly five acres of property, though the buildings only took up about two of those acres.
The gates were well secured with two electrified fences a few feet apart, each topped with razor wire. Someone trying to escape would have to climb one electrified fence, deal with the razor wire, drop about eighteen feet in between the two fences, and then do the same thing for another fence. On top of that, Mickey could see at least five guard towers with armed guards. He wondered how Tamora got out. The only thing he could think of was that he’d had help from the inside.
Mickey rolled to a stop in front of the entrance. An intercom buzzed, and a male voice said, “What you need?”
“Mickey Parsons with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have an appointment with Warden Gills.”
“One sec… Identification please.”
Mickey held his FBI photo ID out the car window. The gate beeped and slid open a moment later. As Mickey drove in, he glanced up at the guard tower on the right. The guard was staring down at him with his finger hovering over the trigger guard.
Mickey followed the road up to the main building to the visitor parking. He parked in the nearest stall he could find and walked to the building. There was another gate before the entrance, and on the other side, a prison guard stood waiting for him.
“ID?” the guard said.
Mickey held it up.
The gate opened and the guard said, “How ya doin’?”
“Good.”
“Good. Warden’s waitin’ for ya.”
He followed the guard up a walkway and then into the first building. The guard had to swipe his identification badge just to open the door. Once they were inside, there were two more doors before they came to a corridor leading into the heart of the building.
“This place seems like Fort Knox,” Mickey said.
“Nope, we’re more secure.”
“Then how’d Zain Tamora escape?”
The guard glanced at him. “So that’s what you here for, huh? Yeah, first escape ever. They said it was impossible.”
“They said the Titanic couldn’t sink, too.”
“They say a lotta things.”
Mickey was led up the corridor. He could hear the shouting and laughter of the inmates. This was just the adminis
tration building, but the noise grew to fever pitch as they traversed a bridge overlooking the cells below.
Mickey looked into the cells. Inmates were curled up in bed or watching television. A few were hollering through the bars at each other. None of them were out of their cells as was customary in the general population at a state prison.
“You don’t let them out at all?”
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “No, man. We can’t do that here. I worked up there at the Utah State Prison for a while and they’d be out all day with no incident, ya know? But these inmates here, they ain’t like no inmates you ever seen. They’ll kill each other right in front of us. They just don’t care no more.”
As Mickey watched the cells, he saw one inmate carving into his belly with a sharpened instrument. He mentioned it to the guard, who casually spoke into a walkie-talkie and said someone would take care of it.
He wondered how many of these men were severely mentally ill and should have been in a psychiatric ward. But the modern trend was to lock them away in a cell rather than get them treatment—mostly because prison was one-fifth the cost of a psychiatric unit per inmate.
Once over the bridge, the guard led Mickey up a flight of stairs to another long corridor with a handful of doors. The guard went to one near the center and knocked. A male voice from inside said, “Come in.”
The guard opened the door and motioned for Mickey to go in.
Warden Gills sat at his desk reading a book on the 2012 election. Mickey sat down across from him before the warden had a chance to offer his hand. Since contracting HIV, shaking hands had become a custom that Mickey had come to despise. The Japanese tradition of bowing was much cleaner for everyone involved and he wished that it would become accepted in the States.
Gills put a bookmark in the book and set it aside. He sat straight in his seat, as though a board were tucked underneath his suit coat in the back, and folded his hands on the desk.
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