by Laurel Dewey
“Hey, I got something for you,” Jane said, reaching into her glove compartment and bringing out a bottle opener.
“You keep a bottle opener in your glove box?”
“Yeah, so what?” Jane handed the bottle opener to him. “It used to live on the turn indicator,” she replied with a wry smile, as she opened the case of Scottish beer and handed Harlan the cold one. “Go on. Try it.”
“Jane, I told you already. Beer and me don’t get along no more.”
“Just take a fucking sip, would you?”
Harlan reluctantly popped the cap on the bottle and took a small sip. It was as if a memory washed across his face and another piece of his chaotic puzzle fell into place. “Aw, hell, Jane. That’s like comin’ home.”
She smiled. “It’s brewed with pine needles instead of hops.”
“Pine? Humph.” He took another sip. “How many of these babies did you steal?”
“I didn’t steal them. She gave them to me. And there are only twelve of them so pace yourself.”
He took another hearty sip. “Oh, my God. I think I died and went to heaven. Hey, you think this is what the pine nuts and the pinecone meant? Makes sense, right?”
Jane thought about it. “No, I don’t feel like it is. I feel it’s just another nudge. Another pine sync.”
“I have no idea what you mean but I trust that you understand it.” He took a healthy gulp. “And I thank you for this adult beverage.” He grinned.
With all the excitement, Jane almost forgot about that little piece of important paper that was tucked into her jeans’ pocket. “Hey…we were right. His name is Gabriel. Well, Gabe…that’s what she called him. And I got a last name.”
“You kiddin’ me?”
Jane pulled out the piece of paper and unfolded it. She stared at the name for a moment before showing it to Harlan. “Cristsóne.” Harlan’s ICU nurse was right. The last name ended in “o-n-e” and there was the accent.
“Wow. Gabriel Cristsóne.” He slightly shook.
“You okay?”
Harlan kept staring at the paper. “Yeah. I kinda feel like I’m finding myself.”
“It’s a part of yourself. Gabe may be your engine but you’re still the driver.”
Harlan sat back, clearly bowled over. “Cristsóne. It’s official. I got the heart of a Dago.”
“You also have the heart of a ladies’ man.” She enlightened Harlan about Nanette’s relationship with Gabe. For a second, his expression was difficult to read, appearing as if he was shocked and disgusted simultaneously. But then a huge smile broke out across his chubby face. “Wow! Damn! You know how every guy thinks he’s got a stud inside him? Well, I really do!” He leaned forward on the front seat. “I never had a lot of confidence with the ladies. I’ve always been on the chunky side. Never got the pretty girl. But this guy inside me? He’s been laid, relaid and parlayed!”
Jane smiled. “That’s one way of looking at it.”
“I wonder what his line was.”
“Line?”
“Every successful man has a line he uses to reel in the females.”
“Is that so?” Jane said, grabbing a few fries. “What was your line?”
“’My name is Harlan Kipple. Ever been kippled’?”
Jane nearly spit out her fries. “That was your line?”
“That was my line!”
“God help you,” Jane mumbled. With a pickup line like that, it was amazing he wasn’t a forty-two-year-old virgin.
“You know, you told me that you had a dream about making love to a woman who had long black hair and big boobs.”
“Hell, yeah.
“I’m pretty sure that was Nanette. But you also said there were two other women and one of their names started with an ‘M’? You sure it wasn’t an ‘N’?”
He considered the question. “Nope. They are two different people.” He thought about it a little more. “The one with the name that starts with the ‘M’…that’s real.”
“Real? What do you mean?”
“It’s deeper than deep. It’s like a love I’ve personally never felt for any woman. I can’t explain it, Jane. Just mentioning it makes my chest feel light and…”
“And what?”
He thought about it. “Indestructible. Like part of me won’t never die.”
Jane took a bite of her burger. “What about that other woman? You mentioned a third one to me? Maybe that’s the mysterious ‘Agna’ or ‘Agnes’ you jotted down in your notebook?”
Harlan became quiet. “Nah. That ain’t her name.” He shuddered. “Pardon my language, Jane, but that bitch scares the shit of me. No joke. I can’t look at her. That stench around her…it’s like death.”
“You gotta grow some courage, Harlan. I mean it. You gotta be willing to open your eyes and face whatever is shown to you. How are you ever going to figure out any of this if you refuse to look at it?”
“I thought you said you was gonna be my eyes, Jane.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I know I did. But two sets of eyes are better than one. Stop being afraid, Harlan,” she said with an edge. “They’re counting on you to be terrified.”
“They?”
“Yeah. The ubiquitous ‘they.’ The more scared you get, the more paralyzed you become, the more you don’t want to see what’s being shown to you…the more they can control you out of pure fear. And personally, I say, ‘fuck ‘em.’ I don’t have a clue why these people are framing you or why they’re chasing you. But if you keep your head in the sand or continue thinking you’re too stupid to give me some personal impressions of what you’re feeling or seeing, then you’re just another victim who doesn’t give a shit about their life or their self-worth.”
He was silent for a few minutes. “You’re right, Jane. Nobody has ever expected nothin’ from me. And I figured that was okay because those were the same people who kept tellin’ me I was stupid. So, I just figured they knew best.”
“Well, Harlan, I’m not one of those people. I don’t give a shit if you murder the English language. And I don’t care what your IQ is. But I do care if you keep wringing your hands and telling me that you’re helpless. For God’s sake, Harlan, you have the heart of a lion inside you! You hearing me? You have the heart of a warrior beating in your chest. Somehow, Harlan Kipple drew the long straw so I suggest you stop telling me you’re an idiot and start acting like a guy who’s got a fighter planted inside of him.” She leaned closer to him. “Start showing some goddamned initiative!”
He swallowed hard. “Nobody’s ever talked to me like that.”
“Well, they should have. All of us are only as smart as our dumbest move. Raise your own bar, Harlan. You’re smarter than your typical ape and they can teach those fuckers incredible tricks.” Jane finished her burger and balled up the wrapper, tossing it on the floor of the passenger seat. “I have something else to show you if you think your heart can take it. I have a photo of Gabe.”
Harlan’s mouth hung open. “Damn! What kind of trance do you put people under to get names and photos?”
She brought out the envelope. “I think it’s got more to do with my genteel and tactful approach,” she replied sarcastically. Jane handed Harlan the greeting card. “Check out the face and body that went with your heart.”
Harlan slightly hesitated.
“Go on, Harlan. Be brave. Don’t you want to look into his eyes?”
Harlan took the card and slowly opened it. Removing the photo, he stared at it.
“So? What do you think?” Jane asked him.
“I can’t hardly explain it, Jane. Between the beer and this, I don’t know what to say….except thank you. You done real good.” He read the words Gabe wrote on the inside of the card. “What does that mean?”
“That’s the last part of your prayer. You don’t remember it? You say
it whenever you get nervous or feel cornered.”
Harlan shook his head. “If you say so.” He read the lines again. “What do you reckon he means when he says, ‘I will face the darkness’?”
Jane pondered how she should frame her answer. “I think it relates to who he worked for.” She laid out everything that Nanette shared with her about Gabe’s employers. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but Gabe really was a professional killer.”
The light seemed to drain from Harlan’s face. “Okay.” He allowed that realization to gel for a few minutes. “Who’d he work for?”
“I don’t know yet. But Nanette said that Gabe called them invisible.”
“She used that word, eh?” Harlan’s interest quickly grew.
“Yeah.”
He nodded. “Yep. I know that to be true. The crazy thing is, Jane, that I can feel invisible too sometimes. Like when I left the hospital to get away from Mr. Ramos? Nobody looked at me. Nobody stopped me. It was like they couldn’t even see me.” He handed Jane the photo.
“Hiding in plain sight,” Jane murmured. “I get it.” She took another look at the photograph. “Maybe Gabe knew how to become invisible.”
Harlan launched into his second burger. “For real?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he knew how to disappear off the map?” Jane reflected on a few key points Nanette shared with her. The card with the photo was not mailed to Nanette, indicating that Gabe personally left it in her mailbox. It was the kind of thing you do when you’re leaving town quickly and you want to make sure you make final contact with the people you care about. Nanette commented that the last time she saw Gabe was just over four and a half years ago. If he was thirty in the photo, it would make him thirty-three when he was killed. Taking into account what Nanette told her, Jane knew Gabe was in Scotland right before returning to the States. Her comment that “maybe he got out” and that perhaps he was going to “find himself” felt eerily accurate. It was a leap on Jane’s part but sometimes it was those leaps that often led her toward the truth.
Perhaps, she considered, something horrific occurred in Scotland—something that shook Gabe to his core. If her gut was leading her in the right direction, whatever happened had to be so viscerally haunting that he turned his back on the clandestine group he worked for and disappeared. Jane focused on the disconcerting scene that unfolded in her mind’s eye the previous night. She replayed the entire disturbing vision moment by moment, realizing now she was strangely witnessing Gabe on one of his sinister missions. Walking behind him down the shadowy hallway and then following him into the room where he shot the old man behind the desk, Jane recalled the unrushed manner in which Gabe inspected the files and separated them into piles. Then there was the white binder with the curious “IEB” on the front and the chilling question she mentally sent to him, “What do you want from me?” and his unsettling reply, “Only what’s necessary.”
Jane wondered if whatever was in those files and in that binder brought the gauntlet down on Gabe’s career. Why else would she have been shown such a disturbing set of events if it meant nothing to the case? The fact that Jane was even seriously postulating about what she saw in that scene made her take a mental step back. Her entire career was built on formal investigation and facts. And yet, there was always that free-floating vapor of intuition that operated just outside her perception of reality. When all else failed, she could dip into that strange mist of infinite knowledge and somehow always grasp the truth. But to simply hold someone’s hand and be privy to their dreams, nightmares and insights was pushing her usual abilities to a different level. If she was still a drinker, she’d blame it on the booze. If she hadn’t experienced all the unexplainable events that had taken place over the last few years, she would chalk it up to stress, low blood sugar or any other suitable explanation that swept it neatly under the rug. The thought crossed her mind that all those odd encounters from the past years occurred so that she could easily wrap her mind around this bizarre case. It was like priming a pump so that once it was primed the water flowed freely. And through that, she could plausibly accept what someone else could not begin to concede.
Allowing that understanding to percolate, Jane hypothesized that Gabriel might have easily disappeared for up to three years before being killed. What occurred during those missing years could have a lot to do with why he was taken out. If he did know something that wasn’t supposed to be revealed, he would be a defined target. She recollected the tried and true statement she’d mentioned to Harlan—people are only after you if you know something, stole something or saw something. If her indeterminate vision was accurate, Jane had to assume that Gabriel qualified for all three of those possibilities. Proving that conjecture was going to be a lot more difficult.
The story of the pine needle beer intrigued Jane. It wasn’t just the sync with the pine nuts and pinecone that Harlan collected in his mysterious bag. It was the tale about how Gabe refused to drink any beer that he felt was created to control or destabilize a man’s innate power. Jane felt that statement was not just relating to a man’s sexual power; somehow it referenced power and control that subverts a person’s will. Jane sensed that as much as Gabe may have cared for Nanette, he wasn’t about to discuss his work with her in any depth. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t talk around the subject. His comment to her that “everything we cling to is really an illusion that’s manufactured by people who want to control us,” hit Jane hard. After her last case in Midas, she was patently aware of how control of another person’s life and thoughts was critical if the goal was to usurp their power.
Since he was alone so much, Jane reasoned, Gabe had the need to unchain himself when he reconnected with Nanette. From her own experience, if you didn’t have someone to unload on—even if full disclosure wasn’t on the table—the chance of a person falling into a mental hellhole was more likely. You can repress your experiences with booze, cigarettes, drugs and sex but if you don’t set them free just a little bit, the ulcers appear, the heart attacks happen, the depression sets in and your mind becomes a trap that destroys your soul. It was the reason why the average criminal talked to someone about what they did. It wasn’t so much bragging rights, it was to relieve themselves of the burden that the event held over their psyche. Once spoken and released, they could live again and go about their day without the shadow of the darkened memory encroaching.
The more she contemplated the idea, the more she felt that this was exactly what took place between Gabe and Nanette. Somehow Gabe knew he could trust her. After all, when Nanette snooped in his duffel bag and found the ten passports with ten different names, he didn’t attack her or stop seeing her. He just knew she would keep her mouth shut without him having to ask her. Jane sensed that Gabriel Cristsóne had the uncanny ability to know what people thought and how they would react, given various circumstances. That made him a valuable soldier and probably an invaluable asset and assassin for his employers. With his innate gift of perceiving people and their motives in a way that others were incapable of, Gabe was miles ahead of everyone else who still relied on fallible data and second hand information.
While Harlan continued to chow down on the drive-in food, Jane brought out the greeting card and looked at the front again. There was the gold Egyptian Pharaoh’s statue with the brilliant gem blazing in the center of his elongated forehead. What was with all the Egyptian references? From the doomed Anubus to the popular Egyptian-centered tattoos at Alex’s shop and then onward to the Eye of Horus etched into the piece of lapis, it was clear that Gabe’s essence was screaming something at Jane but her ears weren’t yet tuned to the frequency.
She read the quote again from Matthew 6:22: “If your eye be single, your whole body should be full of light.” Jane peered at the golden Pharaoh and the solitary gem illuminated in its head. “If your eye be single…” she whispered to herself. She flashed on the Eye of Horus. That was a single eye, she figured. Sh
e recalled all the items Harlan collected in his bag—the pine nuts, solo pinecone, the Yogi book, the Patsy Cline cassette tape, a bottle of sandalwood oil, the Eye of Horus on the lapis, the key, the Eco-Goddesses brochure, the comical illustration depicting a Blue Heron walking tipsily across the road, The Q magazine and the Easter card featuring the Angel Gabriel. She grabbed her computer, hoping that somehow she could hijack a Wi-Fi signal out there in the middle of BFE but she came up short.
“We have to find a motel,” Jane stated.
“But I thought we had to lay low—”
“I can’t keep working out of this car, or break into mountain cabins or pray that we’ll stumble upon another classic car show.” She could feel the pressure building inside her. “If we’re going to punch this investigation forward, I need to find us a shitty, low-rent motel that has Internet access.”
About ninety minutes east of their location, Jane found exactly what she was looking for. It was called “The Shangri-La,” but they should have called it “The Shangri-Low” because you’d have a hard time finding a motel that was much worse. The two-story structure looked like it was built in the 1950s and hadn’t been renovated since the 70s. But it was in the middle of nowhere and just enough off the beaten path to accommodate their needs for the night. There were also only two other cars in the parking lot that surrounded the motel on all sides and one of those cars was leaving. After checking in under “Anne LeRóy” and getting a room with two single beds, Jane drove the Mustang to their first floor room, #9. At least it wasn’t number seventeen, Jane mused. But it was on the corner of the two-story building, and well out of view from the main office. Jane parked the Mustang in a space three doors down and unpacked the car before telling Harlan to carefully remove himself from the backseat and follow her into the room.
