by Laurel Dewey
“Why do you remember that name?”
“Well, first off, I’m positive that wasn’t the donor’s name. He looked Italian, not German. And it’s the same name as the famous classical pianist. My husband, Marty, actually has some of Haas’ recordings from the 1950s. I have no idea why the donor would have a fake ID. Maybe he got into some mischief.”
Mischief? Jane had to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. The more she talked with Stella, the more questions she had. “Does the name ‘Romulus’ mean anything to you?”
Stella thought for a second. “Isn’t that part of the Roman mythology?”
Jane nodded. “Yeah.”
“Means nothing to me. Why?”
“You said the donor’s last name sounded Italian. Romulus? Rome?”
“That’s over my head. Look, I gotta go—” She started back toward the hospital.
Jane followed, walking next to her. “Anything else, Stella? Come on! Think!”
Stella stopped walking. “Are you trying to save Mr. Kipple or condemn him?”
Jane gave that question serious thought. “I’m trying to save him.”
“Well, good luck with that one.” She started off again.
Jane suddenly remembered what Harlan told her about the “bodyguard” in his hospital room. Jane quickly pursued. “Hey, wait a second! You had access to his room—”
“It was right across from the nurses’ station—”
“Tell me who the big, muscular guy was who was sitting by his bed.”
Stella looked at her with a quizzical expression. “Did Mr. Kipple tell you that?”
“Yes. Who was the guy?”
“There was nobody in his room. He had no visitors. Trust me, I would have seen them.”
“A big, muscular guy? Come on, how do you make that up?”
“Mr. Kipple was obviously hallucinating.” She let out a soft sigh. “Look, when you’re as sick as he was and you get a healthy heart, your life changes immediately. It’s like you wake up for the first time again. Between the surgery, the anesthesia, all the drugs, the new heart, some people have a difficult time with reality for the first few days. Hallucinations are common for anyone on that many drugs and sedatives. Mr. Kipple obviously imagined this muscular figure sitting next to him—”
“He specifically said he was ‘guarding’ him.”
“Why would he need a guard? There was nobody in his room.” Stella seemed to relax for the first time. “Look, a lot of transplant patients claim strange things happen to them after their surgery. They’ve even documented these cases.”
“Like what?”
She appeared slightly awkward. “It’s not something we talk about a lot. But when you spend enough time with heart transplant patients, as I have, you can’t ignore some of the similarities of what they tell you.”
“You mean he felt like he didn’t know where he ended and his donor began?”
Stella looked at her in shock. “So, you do know about it?”
“I haven’t researched it.”
“Well, look into it. It’s not as crazy as people seem to think it is.”
“Tell me something. When people hallucinate after surgery, do they remember what they saw in a clear, concise way months after the hallucination?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You said hallucinations can be common after surgery—”
“The drugs do it—”
“I get that,” Jane stressed. “What I’m asking you is based on all the people you’ve helped transition through transplant surgery, do you recall any of them having a clear memory of what they saw days or even weeks after it happened?”
Stella let out a tired breath. “I can’t say I have. It usually gets foggier the further they move away from the delirium.” The sun’s rays shone brightly in the center of the parking lot as Stella lifted her long sleeves to her elbows. “I really do have to go.”
Jane glanced down at Stella’s right wrist. There was a tattoo of a dove and a set of numbers. Her gut clenched again. It was exactly like the drawing in Harlan’s notebook. “Can I see your tattoo?”
Stella held her wrist up to Jane. Underneath the dove was “17:33.”
“Seventeen-thirty-three,” Jane questioned. “Tell me what that means.”
“It’s from the Bible. Luke 17:33? ‘Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.’”
“What does that mean to you?”
Stella looked off into the distance. “If you try to save your life by violating your conscience, you’ll lose your life. But if you lose it in the name of God or all that is good, you’ll live forever. The only way to preserve what we hold onto…this shell we call our body…is to always be ready to give it up. And then through the grace of Providence, you’ll be protected for eternity.”
Jane considered her words. “You follow that belief?”
“I try to.”
“But you still don’t drive or swim?”
Stella looked at her wrist. “This is there to remind me. It doesn’t mean I don’t have weaknesses or feel fear.” She walked away and then turned back to Jane. “If I were you, I’d get as far away from Mr. Kipple as you possibly can.”
“He can’t hurt me.”
“Oh, I know that. It’s not Mr. Kipple you need to worry about.” She eyed Jane with a mix of compassion and fear before turning and walking across the street.
Back at the Mustang, Harlan was still attached to the gearshift.
“Damn, I thought you were never gonna come back,” Harlan groused. “You sniff out any Italian?”
She turned to him. “Possibly.”
CHAPTER 9
“Are you shittin’ me? He’s Italian?” Harlan exclaimed to Jane after hearing about her visit with Stella.
“Apparently.” Jane drove the Mustang onto a long ribbon of road that paralleled the highway.
“What’s his last name?”
“She’s not sure. ‘Oni’ or ‘One.’ With an accent on the ‘o.’” Jane waited for Harlan’s reaction. “That mean something to you?”
“Nope. Except it might explain how come I got twenty-two cases of Ragu and angel hair pasta back at my house.” Harlan considered what Jane told him so far. “She really said he was a ‘superior specimen’?”
“She did.”
“Wow. That explains how incredibly good I felt from the get-go. See? I told you he weren’t no assassin.”
Jane scanned the area in search of a Mom and Pop gas station. “Yeah, about that…your donor was shot in the head and found on the side of the road. Miracle shot, she said.”
Harlan’s face dimmed. “What’s a miracle shot?”
“It’s when the shot makes you brain dead but leaves the heart pumping. And you have to know what you’re doing to make that happen.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Whoever shot him is most likely one of the two guys who dropped his body at the ER.” Jane waited again for Harlan to catch up. Finally, her patience ran out. “It was a hit, Harlan! The assassin—your donor—was the target. The hunter became the hunted.”
“Stop callin’ him an assassin, Jane.”
“You mentioned that you felt your heart was ‘rehabilitated.’ Maybe…” she thought carefully before she spoke, “maybe your donor had a change of heart.”
“A change of heart?” Harlan stated, clearly getting the reference.
“A come to Jesus moment? Maybe he turned his back on the wrong people and when he wasn’t looking, he was taken out?” Jane continued to concoct theories in her head. “Or maybe he was bad until the end and got taken out by a rival?”
“If a rival took him out, why would they care about dumpin’ his body at the hospital?”
“Now you’re thinking like a cop, Harlan.” She spotted a small gas station on the right side of the road that only had two pumps. Scan
ning the low-rent location, it was clear there were no security cameras outside but just to be on the safe side, she pulled the Mustang to the second pump, farthest from the prying eyes of whoever was seated in the cashier’s office.
Harlan sunk further under the blankets as Jane donned her baseball cap and observantly walked into the tiny side building. The odor in the ten by ten office was sickly sweet, thanks to an entire wall display of deodorizing, novelty “Christmas tree” air fresheners that are meant to hang from your rearview mirror. Jane never understood their appeal. If your vehicle stinks so much that you need to cover it up with a synthetic vanilla scented “tree” that induces migraines, maybe you should consider what’s causing the stench. A preoccupied, pimple-faced kid in his late teens sat behind the counter, feet propped up, and head down on his phone, texting like a pro. A small television sat on the counter, blaring a loud commercial.
“Hey!” Jane said, after waiting for the kid to do his job.
He looked up from his phone, upset he had to stop in mid-text. “Yeah?”
“You giving away the gas today?” Jane asked with a serious expression.
He looked at her, completely lost. “Huh?”
She brought out a roll of cash and laid a few bills on the counter. “Fifty bucks.”
“What pump?” he asked.
Jane looked at him and worried for our collective future. “You have two pumps. I’m in front of one of them. The other one is empty. Do the math.” She started to turn when she heard the commercial end and a daytime news show begin.
“I couldn’t believe it when I seen him.”
Jane turned to the television. A guy wearing full motorcycle attire and a helmet was on the screen talking about his “shock” when he saw Harlan Kipple race out of the gas station in the blue Mustang. The sound bite and footage of the witness supposedly was taken right after the car heist. Speaking in a dopey southern drawl, the young man who looked to be around thirty, described in detail how he witnessed Harlan jump into Jane’s vehicle and “tear out” of the area.
“Is there anything you particularly noticed about Mr. Kipple’s demeanor?” the news reporter asked the man.
“Oh, yeah. His eyes. They were wild. Like a madman.”
“How close did you get to him?” the reporter asked.
“I was at the pump right across from where the car was parked fuelin’ up. He looked like a monster. That’s the only way I can describe him. Like the devil incarnate.”
Jane’s antenna went up. She clearly recalled that there were seven islands at that gas station, but four of the pumps were covered with yellow tape, marking them out of order. And one of the out of order fuel pumps was directly across from where Jane’s car was parked. Furthermore, Jane never saw any guy dressed head to toe in motorcycle gear when she was there. Something was seriously not right here. She wished she could play the quick interview back again to get a better look at the guy but before that thought cleared her head, the news program cut to the female anchor back in the newsroom.
“We have breaking news to report,” the female anchor stated in a serious tone. “We are now learning the blue Mustang that was stolen from the Quik Mart south of Denver belonged to a Denver Homicide detective.”
Jane froze. She eyed the kid who settled back into his seat and resumed texting.
“Detective Jane Anne Perry was last seen by the Quik Mart cashier yesterday morning and apparently witnessed her 1966 ice blue Mustang as it was being stolen…”
Jane Anne Perry? Jane cringed. She never went by her full name. Great. Now she wouldn’t hear the end of it back at Headquarters. They’d be calling her “JAP” for months. The screen cut to the round-faced woman from the Quik Mart. Jane swore the chunky broad still had the greasy stains of yet another snack of pork rinds covering her shiny chin. Or as Jane surmised, “breakfast.”
“She come on in here pretty full of herself,” the woman explained to the reporter, “Said she was a cop but that didn’t make no sense ‘cause she wasn’t smart enough to lock her car.”
Jane wanted to punch the screen. The squirrely entitlement of the stupid and the clueless never ceased to amaze and infuriate her.
“She was all huffy,” the woman continued to prattle on, “and ordered me to let her see the security footage…”
Ordered? Fuck her. More like suggested strongly, Jane told herself. She stole a glance at the kid behind the counter. He was still blissfully focused only on his phone.
The woman mentioned how Jane wrote down her name and the description of her vehicle and instructed the woman to call the cops as soon as possible. “She was real bossy,” the woman said with great emphasis as she stared into the camera.
At that point, the TV screen filled with a BOLO alert. There was a photo some news hack found online of a dirty 1966 ice blue Mustang, along with Jane’s license plate.
“Have you had a chance to talk to Detective Perry?” the studio reporter asked the on-scene guy.
“No, I have not. We did speak to Sergeant Morgan Weyler at Denver Headquarters who told us that the situation is ‘fluid’ and that an ongoing investigation is occurring at this time.”
Jane’s mouth went dry. She was aware Weyler was not revealing everything he knew. Telling the press that an investigation is “fluid” means that it’s akin to a water main bursting and the euphemistic lifeboats are out in force, floating anywhere necessary to resolve the situation.
The studio anchor recapped the information about Jane’s Mustang, just as the kid behind the counter looked up at her and then looked outside.
“Nice ride you got there,” the kid stated.
“That’s an ice blue, 1966 Mustang…” the anchor stressed.
The kid turned back to her and then looked at the car again. There was a moment of tension between them.
Jane stared out the glass door toward her car. “Mine’s a ’68.”
The kid looked at her. “Sweet!”
Jane spied a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. She’d given up smoking—her last vice—but distraction was necessary. She pointed to the cigarettes. “I’ll take a pack.”
Outside, standing at the fuel pump, Jane flashed on Hank’s face. It came out of nowhere and threw her off her game momentarily. He’d seen the news story and heard her name mentioned. She was sure of it. His concern was palpable but, strangely, also his awareness that she was okay. Still, part of her wanted to call him just to make sure he knew. But it was way too dicey now. After pumping every drop of fuel she could squeeze out of the handle, Jane quickly retreated back into the driver’s seat.
“Golf Charlie…” Harlan muttered.
Jane turned around. “What?”
Harlan was sound asleep.
“What’d you say?” Jane asked.
There was a slight pause and then he spoke again. “Golf Charlie…”
“Hey, lady!”
Jane looked up and saw the kid standing about ten feet away and walking with purpose toward her car. “Fuck,” Jane whispered, as she quickly tossed whatever she could find over Harlan’s face. Plunging the key into the ignition, she started the car but the kid ran in front of it, with his hand out.
“You forgot your change!” he screamed at her, waving a few singles in the air.
“Keep it!” she yelled back, before peeling away from the pump.
She sped like a demon down the side road until she realized she better slow it down so she wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. As much as she wanted to feel the beat of a hot shower across her tired back, there was no way they could safely check into a motel at this point. Glancing at her backseat passenger, she saw he was still slumbering. They had enough food in the cooler to last them a couple days maximum. Beyond that, she had no clue what was going to happen. But the idea of sleeping another night in that cramped car made her back ache even more. Pulling the Mustang o
ver, she scanned the distant landscape. If she drove south to Highway 50 and headed west, she’d end up near the San Luis Valley. There, tucked into the mountains that shouldered the rural landscape and farmlands, were hunting cabins that more than likely were empty in April. While Harlan slept, Jane powered forward. But the farther she drove on Highway 50, the more she felt exposed. There was her blue bullet highlighted like a neon sign on that highly traveled, two-lane thoroughfare. All she needed was an eager cop and it would all be over. She factored where she might be able to locate a remote cabin and turned off the highway and onto a dirt road.
Harlan stirred and sat up slightly, checking out the topography. “Ain’t that the Sangre De Cristos?” he asked, pointing at the mountain range.
Jane nodded and then explained her plan but Harlan seemed eerily drawn into the area.
“What’s going on, Harlan?” Jane asked cautiously.
“I don’t know. I feel…kinda sad all of a sudden.”
“Hey, Harlan?” Jane could see he was in a slight fog. “Harlan?” He turned to her. “Does ‘Golf Charlie’ mean anything to you?”
“Nope. Did I say it?” His tone was nearly matter-of-fact.
“Yeah.”
“You might want to start writin’ these things down, Jane.” He settled back under the blankets.
“Thanks for the advice,” she mumbled under her breath. Glancing around the immediate area, she was surprised to see plenty of cell phone towers. Checking her phone, she had coverage. Could accessing the Internet out here be too much to ask for? The sun was setting in the far mountain range, casting a salmon colored glaze across the snowcapped peaks. With nothing but her headlights to guide her fairly soon, Jane knew she had to promptly locate a cabin for the night. The Mustang pulled the mountain road like a trooper, navigating around the rocky corners and forgiving Jane when one of its tires jogged into a pothole. She passed several vacant cabins but scratched them off her mental list because of either their exposure to the road or their obvious security system. Jane worried she’d have to tangle with the gearshift for another night of jagged sleep when she decided to travel down a gravel road. Less than one mile later and around two bends, she came up on the tiniest house she’d ever seen in her life hidden in a tidy circle of pine trees. She calculated the miniature abode at one hundred square feet but that was probably being too generous. If the seven dwarfs had a bungalow separate from Snow White, three of them would be fighting to stay in this place. After cautioning Harlan to stay put, Jane carefully got out to the car and moved around the property.
