by Laurel Dewey
Once inside their room, Jane quickly closed the grimy curtains on the only window in the place. Turning on the lights, they surveyed their temporary digs. It looked like a slightly remodeled storage unit, thanks to the cement walls and bunker-like quality. The twin beds were supported on a permanent concrete frame and separated by a night table that was bolted to the floor. A brown and red shag carpet covered the floor, complete with various holes where it looked like someone had dropped a hot iron skillet and singed the nylon fibers. A bureau that looked like it came out of Goodwill stood at the foot of the beds with an analog television that featured a DVR recorder. There wasn’t even a coffee maker or mini-fridge in the room but the ancient TV had a DVR remote control.
“Don’t drop anything on the carpet, Harlan. We’ll never find it.”
“If these walls could talk, they’d scream,” Harlan offered with a straight face.
“If these beds could talk, they’d beg to be vaccinated,” Jane added, removing her blond wig and sauntering into the cement-blocked bathroom. The shower looked like something you might find in a remote village while on a Peace Corps mission. The towels appeared as if they just came out of a trauma unit. It was the type of motel where you lay your head on the pillow and wake up an hour later with a non-specific sore throat. The kind of place where bed bugs remain bloated on their immovable feast. Where simply brushing against the sticky remote control produces a crimson rash and pinprick pustules. But with everything going against it, it was still better than another cramped night in the Mustang and safer than breaking into a remote mountain cabin.
As much as Jane wanted to dig into her computer, she realized that she could use a hot shower and some soap. The small showerhead put out a powerful blast of water pressure that soothed her aching muscles and slowly renewed her spirit. She washed her hair and was just about to get out when a thought crossed her mind. Standing under the intense jet, she quickly turned the hot water off and allowed the icy cold stream to pelt her skin. At first, the shock didn’t register. There was a moment when the heat and ice felt fine. For those few seconds, everything seemed like it would be all right. But then the shock of the frigid water hit her hard and she wanted to jump out. But she let out a hard breath and allowed the arctic gush to cascade down her spine and then across her face and hair. After several minutes, she’d adapted to the frigid water and even began to disregard the chilly temperature. By the time she toweled off, a wave of heat engulfed her skin as well as a renewed sense of energy and purpose. She dressed in a long-sleeved t-shirt and comfortable sweatpants and joined Harlan back in the room. While he showered, Jane turned on the television to wait for the local 5 p.m. news broadcast. She muted the sound and turned on her computer.
But the sound of loud voices and occasional pounding coming from the room directly above them distracted Jane. Given the fact that the motel was built like a bunker, it was incredible to Jane that she could hear anything. But the murmuring voices and erratic pounding continued until she finally had enough. Grabbing the room key, Jane walked outside and climbed the outside stairs to the second level. The voices coming from the room were even louder. She approached the room and checked the number. “Room seventeen—that figures,” she said to herself. Inside, a man and woman were engaged in a heated argument. Jane edged closer to the front window and was able to clandestinely observe the two. It was clear that the woman, who towered above the man by at least eight inches, was in charge. Jane couldn’t determine whether they were married or not, but the way the woman belittled the guy and occasionally slapped him on his arm or the top of his head gave Jane the impression that she wasn’t in any danger. The guy, however, probably wasn’t as lucky. Jane turned to go back downstairs when the decibel level coming out of the room doubled in intensity. She wasn’t about to endure another crappy night of sleep and so Jane trod back to the room and pounded on the door. To her surprise, the yelling didn’t stop, even when the woman unlocked the door and swung it open.
“Yeah?” the strident female bellowed.
“Hey! You’re kinda loud,” Jane stated. “Can you keep it down?”
“Who in the fuck are you?” the woman asked with a strange snarl.
“I’m the one in the room downstairs who can hear you through cement walls.”
“Fuck off!” the woman yelled, starting to swing the door shut.
Jane caught the door. “Hey! It’s called fucking common courtesy!”
The diminutive man walked forward in a menacing manner. “You looking for trouble, bitch?”
Jane had to hold back her instinctive, knee-jerk response. But then she couldn’t help but see the bulge poking against the idiot’s crotch.
“You come up here and bother us again,” he said, suddenly acting as though he was tall, “and I’ll call the fuckin’ cops!”
“Never mind,” Jane said with a shake of her head. “Have at it!”
Jane stormed back to her room and plopped on the bed with her computer. Harlan was still in the bathroom and the whacked out couple upstairs was still making enough noise to wake the dead. Doing her best to block out the distracting sounds, Jane logged onto her account with CBI and ran background checks on Gabriel Cristsóne, using variations of his name and spellings. But it was evident that his digital footprint didn’t exist. She had no access to the FBI site and her contacts there weren’t top shelf. For that matter, she couldn’t call them anyway, considering her situation. Jane ran a general search on Gabriel, adding the word “Colorado” to the search field, in hopes of locating family members, but she came up empty again.
She thought about Werner Haas, the name Gabe used at least once. But all she found was the well-known pianist that Stella Riche alluded to. Somehow Jane knew that name had portentous meaning. It was far too obscure and the fact that Gabe continued to carry that fake ID several years after disappearing from his job made it even more compelling. Jane tried variable searches, even plugging in the word “Romulus” and “IEB” next to Haas and found nothing. Her thoughts turned to The Q magazine. Recalling Gabe’s tenure in Scotland four and one half years prior, she took a leap of faith and went online to The Q’s avant-garde website. Draped in an ominous black and purple design, the website featured subscription information as well as several articles from recent issues. Jane had to keep reminding herself that this was supposed to be a high end, men’s sports and outdoor magazine, but it was so heavy with ads and so light on content that she wondered why anyone would bother subscribing to it. There was a link to archived issues and the site gave the viewer a one-time pass code to view an old issue. Jane counted back four and half years and then, allowing for one or two months, chose an issue. With all the artwork to download, it took a few minutes before she could view page seventeen. But the minute it began to load on her screen, her heart began to race.
At the top was a pastoral scene that looked like the Scottish Highlands. Tiny dots that looked like either goats or sheep grazed in the verdant rolling hills. An old timepiece hung in the lower half of the full-page ad, with its hands pointed to 10:10. And in the center was a single sentence: There Comes A Time When All Good Things Haas To End.
Jane sat back on the bed, still slightly shaking. Page seventeen really was a subversive kill directive. And from what Jane could tell, the entire magazine seemed to exist solely as a primer for traveling silent assassins who somehow found their own triggers embedded within the ads and acted upon them as required. She looked at the cover again and wondered why, “Q”? Did it stand for a certain word? Was it a play on words and mean “The Cue” as in The Cue to Kill? And then she realized what it stood for. “Q” was the seventeenth letter of the alphabet.
Jane reviewed the ad again. And after checking out a few other ads in the magazine that actually did appear to relate to a product, she observed how bizarre and unconventional they all were. In fact, the quirkier the ad, the better. It was simple, Jane deduced, to bury an assassin’s nex
t hit amidst the idiosyncratic pages of this disconcerting glossy publication. If everything else made no sense, why would page seventeen stand out? Based on Nanette’s timeline and the old watch featured in the ad, Jane made the assumption that someone by the name of Haas met his maker on October 10th of that year. But now there were even more questions left unanswered. If Haas was the target, why in the hell would Gabe go to the trouble of creating a fake ID with Haas’ name on it? Why in God’s name would he want to advertise the name of the man he was sent to kill?
Jane located the greeting card and Gabe’s photo. She stared into his eyes as they peered back at her. When that shot was taken, Gabe Cristsóne had possibly killed dozens of people. By Nanette’s account, he only killed those who “needed to die.” And while Jane agreed that there were people taking up oxygen on this planet who were more useful fertilizing daisies, the question of who or what group makes that final assessment was clearly significant. The sweeping up of souls who no longer had alleged value to the cause and who might have always had an early expiration date next to their name seemed like a sickening solution. But it was obviously one that the clandestine group known as Romulus or Odin had no difficulty issuing.
She returned her attention to Gabe’s photo. There was purpose in his orbs. A reckoning. A desire to even the odds. But there was also a need for absolution, a purposeful mission into the wilderness to wash away his sins and uncover the answers to his questions. She drew the photo closer to her, wishing his voice would seep from the paper. “Talk to me, Gabriel,” Jane whispered. She’d stared at hundreds of photographs of dead victims over the years, boring into their eyes in search of resolution. And sometimes, if she stared at them long enough, she could hear them speak. But that was only after months of working a case that struggled to be unraveled. She’d only been involved in this nightmarish case for three days and time was not on her side. If Jane was going to figure out any of this and remove the stigma that followed Harlan, she was going to have to get answers quickly and she was going to have to sharpen her intuitive eye.
She gazed at the photo one more time. Gabriel Cristsóne had done what many people in this world fantasize about. He’d removed himself from the world but stayed within it, ducking in and out of different characters and names, hanging around just long enough to finish a job and find some entertainment before moving on. From what she could figure out so far, Gabe continued this pattern after leaving his employer, walking into the world with nobody and no system to answer to.
It was a romantic notion and one that Jane had considered more than once. But instead, she disappeared into the amber liquid and nearly drowned. Now, starkly sober, the probing urge to disappear surfaced. To walk blindly into the void and live a life that blended self-satisfaction with self-sufficiency sounded like a plan. Sure, she wouldn’t be able to indulge in personal relationships that held any future but somehow, Jane was willing at that point to give that up in order to retreat into what she perceived as freedom. The more she imagined what Gabe’s life was like, the more she envied him. He may have agreed to do the devil’s bidding but he also appeared to have an understanding of what the broader picture entailed. And he wasn’t afraid of or cowed by the evil cabal who paid his salary. If anything, he stayed one step ahead of them, escaping their clutches for over three years. She pictured him hopping from one obscure island to another during his lost years, interrupted by sojourns atop mountain peaks and one-night stands in the local villages. He had only what he could carry on his back and no timetable in which to accomplish his objectives. It was life in the purest, rawest form, with consistent, trusted intimacy the only thing absent. The more Jane mused on Gabe’s rogue lifestyle, the more she wanted to belong to it. It was easy to run and she knew how to do it better than most people. All she needed was the trigger—the situation that would allow her to flee without regret.
Of course, it would help to have enough cash to sufficiently support this escape. How would that work, she contemplated. Maybe Gabe created fake bank accounts all over the globe that he could dive into? He could have depended on an underground group of people to aid his progress but somehow Jane didn’t feel that was entirely accurate. No, Gabe wouldn’t take off like he did and then lean on others, while possibly putting them in danger. Even though Jane never met the man, she knew him. She felt his power and his independence. He wasn’t afraid to die but he fought to live. He did what was needed to survive but he never harmed those who were innocent. Somehow Jane sensed that he plugged back into his pacifist upbringing and used it to stay alive. But somewhere down the road, he must have decided to re-emerge back into society and it was then that he was taken out. The question was why? What propelled him out of his sanctuary of solitude and back into the matrix of chaos?
Harlan was still ensconced in the bathroom, humming to himself off-key. Jane started to turn back to her computer when she sensed something odd outside. Sliding off the mattress, she crept to the curtained front window and carefully peeked out. The sun had set across the flat eastern plains of Colorado, leaving an Armageddon haze of orange and gray striations hanging in the upper atmosphere. The world out there felt dangerous. There was a heartbeat of anguish and torture that Jane could not rectify. But it stayed close to her, as if it was trying to get her attention. She pulled back the dirty curtain a little more and peered outside, gaining a broader view of the empty parking lot. Had they been detected? she wondered. Were the inscrutable “they” hiding in the bushes and behind the cement barriers, waiting for Jane and Harlan to emerge so they could gun them down and then hide their bodies forever? Although she had checked and doubled-checked her routes, while continually monitoring her surroundings, she questioned whether they just knew where she was. Jane needed to check herself again. She was starting to sound like Lilith on the Anubus, rambling about, “Even when I can’t see him, he’s in my head.” It sounded insane when the poor girl said it but now it was beginning to make a lot of sense.
Jane scanned the quickly darkening parking lot one more time before securing the curtain against the window. Returning to her computer, she did a quick search for the meaning of the name “Gabriel.” She questioned why she was wasting her time but then she found a curious website that had several pages of spiritual and mystical references to the fateful name. “Strength of God” and “The Divine is my strength” were two meanings attributed to the Archangel Gabriel. “Those who call on the Angel Gabriel,” one text wrote, “will find themselves pushed into action that leads to beneficial results.” Jane arched an eyebrow when she read the next passage. “Gabriel can bring messages to you through visions which will help to guide you on your course.” She re-read it again, shocked at the statement. “If your third eye is closed and your spiritual vision is blocked,” the passage continued, “Gabriel can open these portals, allowing one to receive prophecies of the changes on the horizon.”
She stared at her computer screen. A comforting warmth crept around her, stretching its arms around her body and enveloping her. For a few minutes, she rested inside it, aware of its light and rectitude. There was profound power within it but there was also a sense of time running out—an urgent intensity that demanded to be heard. After it passed, Jane looked up at the television. The sound was still muted but a commercial played showing a woman who Jane figured was younger than she, pointing to her face to show the spots where age was encroaching. Jane turned on the sound and listened to this young woman gush about a new face cream that helped turn back the clock after six weeks of daily use. Jane would normally ignore such an ad but she was drawn to it. The only thing age offered was the possibility of wisdom through suffering and experience and the acceptance of what could and could not be changed. But other than that, Jane saw no other benefits to burning down one more candle each year. The ache in her back grew each month, the bags under her eyes matured and there were those strands of hair that were lighter than the rest of her brown locks. Her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be just a cou
ple years ago and she found herself starting too many sentences with, “These kids today…” When did she let herself get so fucking old?
The early, local news program began with a “Breaking Story.” Dora Weller was still hospitalized after the shooting incident but expected to make a full recovery. However, her political team was making a major announcement. The camera cut to a microphone where a group of five men and women were lined up in the background. A man who looked to be in his early thirties approached the microphone. He wore a sharp black suit that made his shock of red hair stand out even more. His demeanor was quite serious as he spoke without the use of notes.
“I want to thank everyone for coming here today on such a short lead time. It’s been a tough couple of days for Congresswoman Weller but rest assured, we have been told by her incredible medical team that she will make a full recovery. However, after discussing the situation with her team and her family, Ms. Weller has made the decision to step down from her Congressional seat.”
Jane heard the water shut off in the bathroom. She hit the Pause button on the DVR remote control and looked closer at the TV screen. Something felt completely off. “What the fuck?” She turned back to her computer and pulled up her history. Finding the right link, she clicked on it. She opened the video interview she watched of the motorcyclist who allegedly witnessed Jane’s car being stolen outside of the Quik-Mart. She waited until the camera focused on him before pausing the video. Carrying her laptop to the television, she held it up to the TV screen to make a visual comparison. Even though the motorcyclist had his helmet wedged tightly down across his forehead, it didn’t matter. Comparing the two faces, it was obvious to Jane that it was the same man. What in the hell was going on? She hit the Play button on the DVR TV remote and continued listening to the announcement.
