by Jude Hardin
“The buses are gone already, Mom. I need you to come and get me.”
“The buses are gone already?”
“We got out at twelve. Everyone’s gone. Even the teachers.”
Kasey tried to think of someone she could call to go pick up her daughter, but everyone she knew was either at work or out of town.
Or dead.
Kasey’s ex—Natalie’s dad—had been found dead in his car a few weeks ago. Murdered. Shot to death outside an abandoned filling station twenty miles west of town. That was when Kasey had started drinking heavily. That was when her life had started spiraling out of control. It was when the bills had started piling up, bills that she would never be able to pay, not on what she brought home from the diner, even if she worked triple shifts seven days a week. She hated that she’d become dependent on the money her ex had been contributing toward Natalie’s upbringing, but she had, and now that it was gone she didn’t know what she was going to do.
She walked to the kitchen and dumped the vodka into the sink.
“I have to take a shower,” she said. “But I’ll be there, honey. Soon as I can. Okay?”
“I’m sitting on the bench outside the gym,” Natalie said.
“Okay. I’ll see you in a little bit.”
Kasey disconnected. Her phone trilled again. She picked up, thinking it was probably Natalie again, but it wasn’t.
“If you value your life, and your daughter’s life, you’ll stay away from him,” a male voice said.
Kasey’s heart started beating faster. The adrenaline rush was like a slap in the face. It was the first time in weeks she’d actually felt sober. It was the first time in weeks she’d felt much of anything.
The emotions pulsed in like an electrical power surge. Fury. Outrage. Fear. Nobody was going to get away with threatening her daughter.
Nobody.
“Stay away from who?” she asked. Fiercely. Aggressively. A tigress ready to fight to the death to protect her young.
But the caller had already hung up.
4
Wahlman slammed on the brakes.
At the same time, he pressed the KMO button, causing the truck bed to tilt back further, causing the rear edge of the flat steel platform to scrape against the pavement. It was an abrupt and desperate maneuver, instinctive, spur of the moment, with absolutely no forethought, which was a good thing, as it turned out, because it took the man with the leather trench coat totally by surprise. He didn’t react quickly enough. He didn’t hit the brakes in time, and the little gray sports car rolled up onto the bed and shot over the top of the truck like a little gray rocket. Wahlman saw the undercarriage as it flew past his windshield. He saw the tires and the oil pan and the dual exhausts. The car was airborne for three or four seconds. It landed about fifty feet in front of where Joe’s truck had skidded to a stop. It landed with exactly the kind of explosively harsh crunching thump you would expect to hear when a ton or so of metal and rubber and glass slams into a nice fresh stretch of asphalt. It landed and went spinning counterclockwise toward the shoulder, toward the guy in the orange vest holding the portable stop sign, all four tires screaming, greasy hot smoke spreading and mingling with the misty Seattle haze, smoke so thick you could taste it, the man with the leather trench coat desperately trying to regain control of the vehicle and failing fabulously.
The guy in the orange vest let go of the sign and darted out of the way, narrowly avoiding being flattened and crushed as the car careened nose-first into the roadside drainage ditch.
Wahlman was still about fifty feet from where the road construction started. Fifty feet from where the guy in the orange vest had been standing. The guy shouted something that Wahlman couldn’t make out and started running toward the little gray sports car. A few seconds later more guys in orange vests started running that way. Wahlman grabbed his jacket from the seat and climbed out of the truck and crossed the ditch and ran into the woods and hiked on up to the interstate and hitched a ride to Portland. It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when he got there. He bought a bus ticket, and fifteen hours later he was in downtown Bakersfield. He called Kasey on the same payphone he’d used to call her the day he’d left Barstow. A robot voice told him that the number was no longer in service. He called the operator to get the number for The Quick Street Inn. The operator told him to deposit some money into the payphone and then she made the connection for him. The phone at The Quick Street Inn rang four times. A man picked up. Wahlman recognized the voice. It was Greg, the owner.
“Quick Street,” Greg said. “May I help you?”
“May I speak to Kasey, please?”
“May I ask who’s calling?”
Wahlman didn’t want to identify himself, not even by the fake name he’d used in Barstow previously.
“She reported a problem with the cable TV at her house,” he said. “She listed this number as an alternate. I tried to call her cell, but—”
“Hold on,” Greg said.
Wahlman held on.
“Hello?” Kasey said.
“It’s me,” Wahlman said. “I’m in Bakersfield.”
“Unreal,” Kasey said.
“Please don’t hang up. I need to—”
“No, I mean it’s unreal that you caught me here. I just came by to hand in my time card and my uniforms.”
“You’re quitting your job?”
“What kind of trouble are you in, Tom? Or whatever your real name is. I need to know. I need to know right now, because—”
“Meet me somewhere,” Wahlman said. “I’ll tell you everything.”
Silence for a few beats. Wahlman thought she was going to hang up on him again, but she didn’t.
“There’s a shopping center in Bakersfield called the Uptown Center,” she said. “Meet me at the bookstore in three hours.”
“I’ll be there,” Wahlman said.
“I have a new cell phone. It’s one of those cheap things you can buy at a discount store and add minutes to with a credit card.”
She told him the number, and then she disconnected.
5
Mr. Tyler’s ass was bruised because his rental car had gone airborne and then bottomed out on the highway, and his ego was bruised because the target he’d been commissioned to eliminate had somehow managed to get away. Of course it could have been a lot worse. He could have been unconscious when the four road construction guys ran over to the car to check on him. They would have called an ambulance and the police would have come and it would have been hard to explain the 9mm semi-automatic pistol in his hand and the box of shells in the glove compartment and the holes in the windows of the truck he’d been chasing. But he hadn’t been unconscious, and the construction guys hadn’t called anyone, and he’d made certain that none of them would ever call anyone ever again.
He didn’t like that it had gone down that way, and he didn’t like that he’d been forced to shoot the woman whose car he’d hijacked, but the only alternative was getting caught and spending the rest of his life behind bars, and that just wasn’t going to happen.
Now, almost twenty-four hours later, he was standing naked in front of a full-length mirror in a hotel room in downtown Seattle, assessing the damage and waiting for Colonel Dorland to return his call. There were the bruises on his buttocks, all shades of purple and yellow and gray, and there were the tiny cuts on his arms from the tiny chunks of safety glass that had showered him when his car had slammed into the ditch, and there was the abrasion on his right elbow, an injury that he couldn’t explain but that was bothersome nonetheless. More bothersome than all the others combined, really, because the elbow was extremely sore and stiff now, and the soreness and stiffness would affect his ability to aim and shoot from that side. He was just as good from the left—a little better, actually—but the limitation made him uncomfortable, in the same way that the owner of a delivery service would be uncomfortable if half his vans broke down. You get used to operating a certain way, and anything less
than what you’re used to becomes substandard and unacceptable. Maybe the elbow would loosen up in a day or so. Mr. Tyler hoped that it would.
His cell phone was on the dresser, between the television and the ice bucket. It started vibrating and he walked over there and lifted it off its charging mat and answered the call.
“I trust you have some good news for me,” Colonel Dorland said, cheerfully.
“Unfortunately, I do not,” Mr. Tyler said.
“What? I thought you had his location pinned down. I thought you were on him. Like stink on shit. That’s what you told me when we talked yesterday morning. Like stink on shit. Those were your exact—”
“He got away,” Mr. Tyler said.
“Got away? How is that even possible?”
Dorland didn’t sound very cheerful anymore.
“He was in a restaurant,” Mr. Tyler said. “I couldn’t just walk in there and blow his brains out, right there in front of the lunch crowd. I had to wait for the right opportunity. I had to wait until he left the place or went to the restroom or something.”
“So what happened?”
“He must have sensed that something was going down.”
Mr. Tyler explained what had happened at Jimmy’s Ringside, and the high-speed pursuit that had followed.
“I thought you were supposed to be the best,” Colonel Dorland said. “That’s why I’m paying you so much money. I don’t have time for mistakes. Do you understand that? I don’t have time to be worrying about—”
“Listen, I’ve been busting my ass on this job,” Mr. Tyler said. “Literally. I told you I would get it done, and I will. What I won’t do is take any shit from you, or from anyone else. Do you understand that? I hope so, Colonel. I really hope so.”
Mr. Tyler clicked off. He put the phone back on its charging mat and eased himself down onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. He put a pillow under his sore and stiff right arm, and then he switched on the television and fell asleep watching a very old movie about a very large shark.
6
There were two entrances to the bookstore in the Uptown Center. Or two exits, depending on your perspective. Depending on whether you were coming or going. One of them was on the mall side of the store, and the other was on the street side. There was a small coffee shop wedged into the corner by the one on the mall side. Wahlman walked over there and sat on a stool and ordered a large black coffee and a bagel with cream cheese. The barista asked him if he wanted the bagel toasted. He said yes. The barista cut the bagel and slid it into a shiny chrome toaster oven. She brought the coffee. There was steam rising from the cup. It smelled delicious.
Wahlman was early. Kasey wouldn’t be there for another hour. If she even showed up. He hoped she would, but he wasn’t counting on it. He’d learned not to count on anyone but himself. He wasn’t happy about that, but he wasn’t sad about it either. It was just the way it was.
He drank the coffee and ate the bagel, and then he decided to walk around the mall for a while. He’d hitchhiked to Portland, and he’d been on a bus for fifteen hours after that. He needed to wash up, and he needed a fresh set of clothes.
The backpack he’d been carrying around for the past few months was still in Seattle, in the hotel room where he’d been staying. Actually, it probably wasn’t in the room anymore. He’d been paying for one night at a time, so another hotel customer was probably in the room now, and the backpack, which contained all of his pants and shirts and socks and underwear and his shaving kit and his navy watch cap and half a bag of pistachios and some other odds and ends, had probably been picked up by someone on the housekeeping staff and carried to wherever things that got left behind were carried to. The lost-and-found, or whatever they called it. At any rate, it was doubtful that he would ever return to Seattle, which meant that it was doubtful that he would ever see that backpack or its contents again. Which was okay. It was time to get some new things anyway.
He walked out into the mall and found a store that he was familiar with. It was a store that sold durable and reasonably priced clothes for outdoorsy types and for a certain set of young adults who wanted to sport that sort of look at the clubs they frequented. He bought a new backpack and two pairs of khaki work pants and two black pullover knit shirts and a package of socks and some boxer briefs and a pair of leather work boots that were approximately the same color as the pants. He paid at the register, and then he walked back out into the mall and found a discount pharmacy and bought some soap and shampoo and deodorant and a razor and some shaving cream and a pair of scissors to trim his beard with and some toothpaste and a toothbrush. He thought about buying one of those nifty folding toothbrushes, but the regular ones were cheaper and there was plenty of room in the backpack, so he picked out a nice blue one that came with a free spool of floss and dropped it into the basket with his other things and stood in line at the only register that was open.
While he was standing in line, he looked past the exit and noticed the gym on the other side of the walkway. There was a sign on a post that said FREE ONE-DAY MEMBERSHIP! TODAY ONLY! Wahlman paid for the things at the pharmacy and walked over there to see about signing up.
The young lady at the desk might have been old enough to order a drink at a bar, but if so only barely. She had blonde hair pulled back and pinned up and a blue spandex outfit and an expensive smile. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and she didn’t need any. Her nametag said Ashley.
“What’s the deal on the free one-day membership?” Wahlman asked.
“All you have to do is fill out one of our index cards,” Ashley said. “Then you’re free to use the facility for the rest of the day.”
“What’s the catch?”
“No catch. Of course we’re hoping you like our state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line equipment enough to sign up for one of our premium packages. Which are on special right now, by the way. Where do you usually work out?”
“I don’t,” Wahlman said.
She looked him over. Head to toe. Then she actually reached over the counter and felt his biceps, which were approximately the size of soccer balls.
“But seriously,” she said. “Where do you go?”
“I work outside a lot,” Wahlman said. “Keeps me in shape.”
“If you say so. Anyway, want to fill out one of our cards?”
“Sure.”
He filled out one of the cards, using a fake name and phone number and email address. Ashley took the card when he was finished and slid it into a plastic file box and told him to give her a holler if he needed help with any of the machines. He said thanks and walked back to the men’s locker room and took all his clothes off and wadded them up and stuffed them into a trashcan. He tied a towel around his waist and stood at one of the sinks and dabbed on some shaving cream and used the razor to shape his beard and then used the scissors to trim it. He climbed into one of the shower stalls and turned the water on and got it nice and steamy in there and soaped himself up and worked some shampoo into his hair. He rinsed and then he turned the hot water off and stood under the bracing cold spray for about thirty seconds and stepped out and used three more of the gym’s towels to dry himself. He put on a pair of the boxer briefs he’d bought and a pair of the khaki pants and one of the black knit shirts and a pair of socks and the boots and zipped everything else into the backpack and exited the locker room.
“Leaving already?” Ashley said as he walked past the front desk.
“I’m meeting someone,” Wahlman said. “Maybe I’ll come back after a while.”
“We’re open until ten.”
“Thanks.”
He walked back to the bookstore and navigated past the display tables in front and sat on the same stool he’d been sitting on earlier and ordered a cup of coffee. The barista did a double-take when she saw him. She must have been wondering how he’d gotten all shiny and new. She brought the coffee. There was steam rising from the cup again. It smelled delicious again. Wahlman paid her and they both said thank
you and then the barista walked over to the other end of the counter to take care of an attractive middle-aged woman sitting next to a very large shopping bag.
Wahlman took a sip of the coffee.
Then he felt something hard and circular being pressed against his back, just below his right rib cage, something that felt very much like the barrel of a handgun.
7
Wahlman didn’t move.
“What do you want?” he said.
“You’re coming with me,” a male voice said.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I have the gun. That’s the way it works. I’m going to tell you what to do, and you’re going to do it.”
“Or what? You’re going to shoot me right here in the bookstore? With all these people around?”
“You need to come with me,” the man said.
“Am I under arrest?” Wahlman asked.
“Not exactly. Not right now. But you’re going to be.”
“Are you a private investigator?”
“You’re smarter than you look.”
“Working for a homicide detective in New Orleans named Collins?”
“You’re way smarter than you look,” the man said. “Let’s go.”
“Private investigators can’t arrest people,” Wahlman said. “You don’t have the authority. You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. That being the case, I would suggest that you put the weapon away and turn around and walk out of here. Otherwise, I’m going to put the weapon away for you, and you’re not going to like where I put it.”
“I already called the state police,” the man said. “They should be here any minute. They’ll book you and get the extradition process started. I was hoping we could wait outside in my car, thereby avoiding a big scene in this very public place.”
“It’s good to know that you have my best interests in mind,” Wahlman said.
“Collins told me you could be a smartass,” the man said. “If you want to sit right there until the cops come, that’s fine with me. As far as I’m concerned, we can wait here all day.”
