Fallen Angel

by Chuck Logan

  But since that’s not on, he dabs her tears with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Nerves,” he says softly. “Adrenaline flameout. You can drive, right?”

  “I can drive,” she says, straightening up.

  He opens the door and flips away his cigarette as she gets out and comes around to the driver’s side.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The moist sensation eases into the dreamy stupor, and when Davis opens his eyes he sees Jesse’s face striped by light filtering in through venetian blinds. The varnished yellow pine car siding that panels the walls is familiar, and through the bedroom doorway he sees a corner of fieldstone fireplace and the cathedral windows. Hayward. His eyes travel back to her face, and it’s not the fright-mask face from last night; this is a scrubbed, morning face that is more relaxed, and her hair is shampoo fresh. She’s wearing his Recon T-shirt that is also clean. Well, mostly clean. In fact everything’s clean. The sheets are clean, and he’s clean except for the blood-caked bandage on his right side.

  And he’s buck naked.

  Davis reaches down and grabs the sheet that drapes across his thighs and tugs it up to his chin.

  “You have a nice body in a mangled sort of way,” she says as she sets aside a basin of warm water and a washcloth.

  “What?” He starts to sit up, but the stiffness in his side pins him to the bed.

  “Easy there, cowboy. You were really out. I’ll bet you don’t even remember taking the wheel at Stone Lake and driving on the backroads. You unlocked the place and walked straight for the bed and slept for almost ten hours.”

  Davis sits up more slowly, gritting his teeth, using his elbows to hoist himself.

  “You must feel safe here because you didn’t wake up until the end of your sponge bath,” she says.

  “My sponge bath?”

  She heaves her shoulders. “We were both pretty nasty, so after I woke up and showered, I decided to clean you up. There’s a washer and dryer downstairs, so I washed our things. Hope you don’t mind me wearing your shirt. I’m operating off a limited wardrobe at the moment.”

  Davis sniffs. “Is that coffee?”

  As she gets up off the side of the bed, he sees the T-shirt hem swing against the fine golden hair on her bare thighs. The hair catches the sunlight, as does the rust-colored bloodstains that dapple the bottom of the shirt. “Coming right up. I can’t vouch for the quality first time out, it being a strange kitchen and all,” she says. For a moment her eyes linger on his, and in her enforced calm, he detects the obvious question: Are we clear or is more coming?

  She leaves the bedroom and returns a moment later with a cup that he takes in both hands. Briefly he inhales the invigorating steam then takes a sip. After the second sip, he shakes his head. “You’re right. I don’t remember driving in.”

  She takes the cup from his hand and sets it on the bedside table. “C’mon. I’ll help you up. You’ll feel better after you brush your teeth. I did.”

  “Ah, Jesse, all I got on under this sheet is a bandage.”

  She studies him, perplexed and faintly amused. “I saw you kill three guys last night. You really think I’m going to faint at the sight of your dick?”

  He can’t think of a fast comeback to that, so he lets her help him to his feet and out the door. The bath opens immediately to the left. A clean pair of boxer shorts is folded on the vanity counter next to a toothbrush, a tube of Crest, and a bottle of Listerine.

  “I found the brush and stuff in the drawer. This place is stocked with everything. You need help getting into the shorts?”

  “I can manage,” he mutters.

  As she leaves, she closes the door. After brushing his teeth and rinsing with the mouthwash, he does feel better. Getting into the shorts is more of a problem than he anticipated. The simple act of raising his right knee, then his left, feels like inflamed wads of adhesive tape ripping apart in his side. By the time he gets the shorts on, beads of sweat have popped on his forehead, and he knows it’s past time to get the bandage off and assess the wound for sepsis. He opens the door and leans on the jamb.

  She’s right there—patient, waiting, smiling—close enough for him to smell her minty breath. “Hell of a blind date, huh?” he says.

  “Ball’s in my court. Next time I’ll take you flying.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Davis’ eyes flare, and he staggers back against the doorjamb.

  “Your, ah, face is turning white,” she says, steadying him with a hand on each of his arms.

  “Getting old. Don’t bounce back like I used to,” he says apologetically. The hint of intimacy promptly packs up and departs her face and is replaced by a practical Little Dutch Girl expression.

  Davis grins weakly. “You don’t strike me as the domestic type, but how are you at sewing?” he asks.

  First he sends her out to the living room to bring his vest into the bedroom, where he reclines on the bed with pillows propping up his back. He takes a small, sterile surgical kit from the vest that contains a curved needle already knotted with thread, a forceps, and a small scissors. As she puts on a pair of vinyl gloves, she wonders, “I thought you have people a call away. Wouldn’t they be better at this?”

  “Sure, they’d meet us at the nearest hospital with wall-to-wall federal agents; they’d take you into protective custody. You want that?”

  “Not until I figure some things out.”

  “Okay. First we have to clean this wound and stitch it up, then we’ll talk.”

  All business now, she peels off his shorts. Then she removes the crusted, yellow-fringed bandage and places it in the wastebasket next to the bed. Next she wipes down the needle, forceps, and scissors with a piece of gauze drenched in disinfectant.

  The five-inch gash in the skin above his right hip is a long pucker of infected yellow edged by red, then purple and black bruising. It’s open in the center, creating a puss-filled crater, and looks like an inflamed state of Florida lying on its side.

  “Okay, I did this once in training, on some poor sedated pig they shot, and a couple times in the field,” he says. “But I can’t get an angle on it or see well enough. So you’re up.”

  “Great.”

  He hands her a syringe from the kit that is enclosed in plastic. “This is lidocaine, to numb the laceration. Open the sanitary wrap and inject the sides of the wound. Say, twice on each side.”

  Jesse strips away the protective covering and carefully empties the syringe in four different locations in the tear.

  “Okay, now you have to probe around with the needle to make sure no pieces of the buckle broke off in there.”

  “I think I got them all out in the hospital parking lot,” she says.

  “Take your time,” he says with a ginger smile. “I’m numbed up, so I won’t feel a thing. Theoretically . . .”

  “Cripes, this is like a high school biology class when we dissected the frog,” she mutters as she digs delicately with the needle. Satisfied that no metal is left in the gash, she sets the syringe aside on a clean towel.

  Craning his neck to see, he says, “Now scrub it clean with some gauze and the Betadine. There could be particles of the webbing tore off in there. You have to make sure it’s clean before you close it.”

  Slowly, methodically, she washes the upbraided tissue with the disinfectant. Twice she finds small threads of foreign matter that she carefully edges out with the gauze. Then he picks up the forceps and shows her how to manipulate the needle with a double loop of thread over the forceps tip and how to draw the free end through to create a knot.

  “Got it,” she says, taking the forceps in her gloved hand.

  “Now, you have to make the first suture inside the deepest part of the opening, to close the dead space. First one side, then the other.”

  Calmly, Jesse curls the curved needle into the torn muscle, draws it through and repeats the process on the other side of the wound. Then she pulls the suture snug and does the double loop, draws the free end through it, and repeats t
he looping three times to get a tight knot. After snipping off the knot with the scissors on the deeper suture, she closes the rest of the wound with ten evenly spaced stitches and ties them off.

  She lets out a deep breath and stares at the job as Davis uses a piece of gauze to blot the sweat from her forehead. “So what do you think?” she asks.

  He gives a shaky grin, reaches out, and lightly touches her cheek. “It was good for me. How was it for you?”

  An hour later, after breakfasting on scrambled eggs and toast, they sit on the deck overlooking Dummy Lake. The late-morning sky is deliciously moody, shadowed with clouds, and a breeze fans ripples across the water. Davis now has taken a careful shower and wears a fresh bandage on his numb, stitched side and, with two prescription-strength Tylenol on board, has changed into a light cotton robe Jesse found in an upstairs closet. She still wears the Recon shirt, and Davis is thinking he’s never going to get it back. Cradling his third cup of coffee, he twirls an unlit cigarette in his fingers and studies the brooding expression on her face. She has soldiered through the drama of fight and flight. Now she’s waiting for some answers.

  “So,” he says.

  “Wait, I want just one normal moment.” She turns and leans into the deck railing and tilts back her head and closes her eyes as an eddy of wind shivers through her hair. Then she turns to him and says, “Yesterday at four in the afternoon I was on the elliptical on the third floor of the Minneapolis VA, and now I’m across state lines feeling like Bonnie and Clyde.”

  Through a mild lethargy of lidocaine and Tylenol, Davis manages a fond grin. “You did sort of look like Bonnie Parker putting rounds down that hall . . .”

  She does a brief little curtsey with her eyes, and then the brooding expression is back. So Davis lights his cigarette and gives her the Cliff’s Notes version—him getting in trouble asking questions after the crash, being sacked and sent home, his Memphis trip, the talk with Noland’s ex-wife, and then the attempt to kill him in the woods off the Maryland Parkway.

  “Spooky. This Mouse guy gave you a new identity, and the FBI went along?”

  “Not the FBI, an FBI agent and a couple of his friends. Then Mouse intercepted a phone call from a Rivard County cop to your shrink about the stolen car and how you made a remark to Rivard about a chopper going down in Turmar. That got me cracking to Minneapolis. So what we want to know is how the hell you got onto Rivard?”

  “Hold that thought.” Jesse gets up and goes into the house. She returns with a small black fanny pack, which she unzips. “I guess I can trust you,” she says, holding up a dog-eared envelope and a folded piece of paper.

  Nonplussed, Davis’ cigarette drops from his lips. “You guess?”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  First Davis reads the letter. Then he points at the photocopy of Morgon Jump’s military ID above Sam’s longhand and looks Jesse straight in the eye, “No bullshit. You saw this guy at the crash site?”

  “No bullshit. He shot my crew chief, and probably my gunner.”

  Then he spends an hour rigorously questioning her about the VA psychologist’s intercession with the North Dakota cop with an emphasis on Sam Dillon, what he told her during the hospital visit, and her assessment of his mental health. “I know, ironic under the circumstances, but . . .” Then he starts chain-smoking and talking on his cell phone in cryptic one-minute snatches. Sam’s letter is pinned under an ashtray on the deck rail as Davis paces.

  He looks up. “Rivard’s gone. He had a heart attack. Shit.” He leans back to the phone, stares at the photocopy on Sam’s letter. “That still leaves this Jump guy. What if we follow on Sergeant Dillon’s advance work, pull the security-camera tape in Balad, and ID him? What? No way she thinks Dillon was a candidate for suicide. And neither does the North Dakota cop who’s investigating. So we let him lead with the questions, get with Appert? They can locate Colbert, depose him about the phonied-up report. Okay, I’ll be here.” Davis ends the call.

  “So where’re we at?” Jesse asks, refilling their cups from a fresh pot.

  “You and your shrink were on the right track. Sam’s death is the best place to start. As for the rest of it?” Davis shakes his head. “Cops and spooks is way more complicated than cops and robbers.”

  Davis sees a new color dial into her eyes: murder blue. She fairly spits the words, “You’re saying they can kill my crew, and maybe Sam, and get away with it?”

  “Slow down. There’s a lot of dots here, and we’ve only connected a few of them. Say we’re right, and this was a black op. Tactically, the way they think, you were in the way. Words like ‘regrettable’ come to mind,” Davis explains. “We’ll probably never know the reason Jump was there. Obviously something Noland, the missing contractor, was mixed up in. Jump himself might not even know. He’s a soldier, Jesse, like us. It’s all about who, when, and how. We don’t really get to ask why, do we?”

  “This time we do, goddamn it. I can identify him as being there.”

  “Okay, look. We can get Appert to bring you in, to someplace safe, take you into protective custody as a material witness, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Game it out. A prosecutor will say you’re not a reliable witness. The drugs, the diagnosis, AWOL.”

  “I don’t get it. Can’t you declassify covert missions? Or out them, you know, play dirty pool like Valerie Plame?” Worry lines form at right angles to the scar on her brow. “Why not this Jump?”

  Davis shakes his head. “Sure there’s the culture of secret systems. When I was an Agency asset I did covert. But the target selection involved analysts, intel interpretation from human sources, satellite, and drone platforms, along with the logistics of getting in and out. I got a feeling this is different. Rivard and Jump don’t come with an operational tail. It’s totally self-contained. No record whatsoever to declassify.”

  “So you’re saying he’s untouchable?”

  “When I was in the game, we used to joke about who ran those kinds of deep black missions, we called it the Office of Perfect Crimes. A name gets passed in a dead drop. Nothing is written down. The only way it comes out is if somebody on the inside goes on the record. A whistleblower. Something like this, you’re not risking your career, more like your life.”

  Jesse furrows the scars on her brow for a moment, deep in thought. Then she blinks a few times and stares at Davis. “Jump’s a good soldier, so he’ll never talk,” she says slowly. “And Rivard can’t because he’s dead. But . . . what if there’s another person?”

  “What other person?”

  “When I made my face-plant at Rivard’s place, there was this woman—a young woman with dark hair, kind of pampered, classy-looking. And she stayed close to Rivard . . .”

  “Yeah, so?” Davis narrows his eyes.

  “Well, the thing about it was the way she looked at me. She had this extreme reaction. I mean she literally had trouble keeping her balance. She turned white, Davis, like she’d seen a fucking ghost.”

  “Hmmmm.” Davis studies her face; the anger is still palpable, but now it’s focused, intelligent.

  “Can your friend at NSA find out who she is?”

  “Sure . . .” Davis draws it out and nods his head back and forth, intrigued.

  “I’d sure like to know what it was about seeing me that bothered her so much.”

  “It’s a real long shot, Jesse.”

  “You bet.”

  “What the hell.” Then he thumbs a preset on his cell. “Let me run it by Mouse. It’d mean another trip to Michigan. But, you know, everybody might still be gathered for Rivard’s funeral. We’d have to stake the place out ourselves, try to get a line on her. It’s too thin to bring in Appert for starters . . .”

  ***

  Davis is negotiating a pain-default swap, sending the agony in his side down the line to be paid for later and all the time thinking, Okay, we’re running on fumes here. Dorothy and the Tin Man off to see the Wizard.

  But I like the company
.

  Mouse texts and sends a photo confirming the identity of the dark-haired young woman as Rivard’s granddaughter, Amanda, who presides over the Rivard Foundation board of directors, runs the grant-making and management committees, and is basically a one-woman show. He allows that approaching Amanda could be a shot in the dark but, bottom line, it is worth ruling out. He says he’s discussed it with Appert, who is less sanguine but has discreetly alerted allies in the Detroit FBI office as possible backup. “But be careful,” Mouse stresses. “Don’t overplay it.”

  And Joey, try not to get anybody else shot.

  So they load up the Escape and hit the road, and Davis stops at the first Target store to augment Jesse’s wardrobe with a new pair of shorts and a top. Midway across Wisconsin they pick up spot news on the radio about “the confused shootout at the Minneapolis VA hospital yesterday afternoon that local authorities are calling an attempt to steal narcotics.” So far the casualties include an unidentified staff member as a fatality, two VA cops in serious but stable condition, six visitors and patients injured, and a number of missing patients, one of whom was listed by name, a Captain Jessica Kraig. The disinformation campaign is holding for now.

  Davis and Jesse exchange a look. So they haven’t located the bodies stuffed in the pipes yet. An hour later Mouse calls and informs them that the security tape from Balad has gone missing. So no help there. They spot a Starbucks and pull over to fuel up on caffeine and take inventory. Soon the table is covered in napkin sketches as Davis grills her about everything she can remember about the Rivard estate—the grounds, the sight lines, the road access, security.

  Jesse rubs her eyes, leans back, and then reaches over and touches the ripple of scar tissue on Davis’ cheek. “Hey you, relax,” she says as she withdraws her hand and runs her finger down the cleft denting her chin.

  Davis looks up from his diagrams, raises an eyebrow.