Witness to Death

by Dave White

  John agreed to Tony’s terms by shaking his hand.

  Callahan walked into the center of town at nearly four in the morning. The sky was still dark, though it would be a bright shade of purple soon. An hour after that, the sun would be up.

  Earlier he’d lain in the snow, feeling the cold seep into his body. First his ribs started to throb, and when he rolled on to his side it felt like when he was a kid and he fell off his bike one summer afternoon. His mother rushed from the house, dish towel still in hand telling him not to get up, not to move. She was worried he’d broken his neck, but he knew his neck was fine. She called the ambulance, which took him to the hospital and he sat around for three hours until a doctor finally took a look at him, taped him up, and told him no bike riding for six weeks.

  He didn’t have six weeks this time. He didn’t have any time at all. And he couldn’t allow his cracked ribs to slow him down. He rolled through the pain, on to the flat of his palms, like he was about to do a push-up. His left hand felt as if someone had dropped a boulder on it. He looked down to see his pinkie finger pointing left. Another wound to go with the cuts from the garrotte. He got to his feet, gritting his teeth when he put pressure on his hand. He hobbled a few steps down the rest of the incline into the yard.

  No lights had come on in the house, so maybe his fall hadn’t woken anyone in the neighborhood. Down the street a dog barked.

  Callahan wrapped his hand around his bad finger, and counted to three. With a flick of his wrist he snapped the finger back into place. A knife drew a line straight up his forearm. Sweat poured from him. He caught his breath and looked between the houses out to the street.

  A car drove slowly down the road. It stopped a few times and he saw the flickering beam of a flashlight. Callahan stepped back into the trees and moved through them down the block—away from the car. Behind him the trees rustled and he heard whispers. He clenched his teeth and broke into a jog.

  If anyone had been behind him, they never caught up.

  He trotted into the middle of the town. Some of the throbbing in his hand had stopped, but the soreness in his ribs continued. He turned a corner and found a Dunkin Donuts with a few people inside. He limped that way.

  Once inside, Callahan asked if they had a phone. The guy behind the counter looked like he’d just woken up and didn’t argue, just handed him the coffee and pointed to a phone behind the counter. Callahan went around the corner.

  There was too much going on, and his brain was over stimulated.

  John had speculated a bomb was about to go off in NYC.

  He thought about it, at this time of day, it would be nearly a two hour drive to get into the city. An hour to get to the tunnel, and by then it would be rush hour. Getting through the tunnel would be a crapshoot.

  They’d have to get moving in the next two and a half hours.

  As Callahan dialed, he realized shivers hadn’t attacked his body in some time, and it felt as if the cold was rolling off his skin. His fingertips were still numb, as were his toes, but it seemed his core was warming.

  He entered a series of codes and passwords in order to make the secure connections, and got through to Candy Balascio.

  She answered the phone with the word, “Roosevelt.”

  “Cruise,” he responded.

  “Peter, why aren’t you on your own phone?”

  “I’ve been out of a cell range for a while. I had to borrow a phone from someone with a better service.” He forced out a chuckle. “Leave it to the department to use a provider that limits service.”

  Candy didn’t laugh. He hoped she bought the lie.

  “I’ve been looking for you. Things have gone crazy down here. Where are you?”

  “Vernon. Small town in upstate New Jersey.”

  It was a guess, but it was also a place where he never got cell reception.

  “Weller’s dead.”

  He didn’t say anything. Candy would have been suspicious if he did. She’d delivered bad news to him before, and he tried not to respond to it those times either.

  “They found him in Jersey. Some town called Saddle Brook, in a hotel. Someone strangled him.”

  They killed him in New Jersey—not New York. Why had Weller crossed the river?

  “I was calling in to ask you to find out where Duffy is. I need to talk to her,” Callahan said. “About my case. About Weller—Jesus Christ.”

  “She’s at the hotel. The Saddle Brook one.”

  Callahan closed his grip around the phone a little tighter. He could feel the plastic in his fingertips.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Candy said.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “I can’t believe this. The whole office is going nuts. Be careful out there, Peter.”

  “I will,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.”

  She gave him Duffy’s number and hung up.

  Callahan dialed the phone again. It rang twice, then he got a computerized voice asking him for code words. He said them. He was asked for his pass number and then the phone rang a few times and another voice asked who he was calling for. He told the voice and the voice told him to hold.

  Doreen Duffy picked up.

  “Who is this?”

  “Peter Callahan. I work for you.”

  Duffy took a deep breath. Callahan heard it hiss through the phone.

  “You’re dead.”

  “No. I’m in Vernon, New Jersey. I think we need to talk.”

  “You think?”

  The cashier walked to the other side of the counter and started cleaning the coffee makers.

  Duffy asked Callahan what the hell he was doing there.

  He told her everything from the torture, to the bomb, to the garrotte around his neck. She listened, occasionally asking a question to get more details out of him. He didn’t know what kind of bomb. He didn’t know where in NYC. He described what he saw inside the hangar. The helicopters. How when Christine led him out the back he saw SUVs. He didn’t know the whole plan. He knew the broad scope of it. When she asked him about the bomb for a fourth time, he squeezed the phone tight in his hand.

  “Just get people up here now!”

  “I’ll do it. We’ll send a group of agents to the Lincoln Tunnel and let the NYPD know. They’ll have BOLOs out in no time. We’ll also get an army up to the top of the mountain. You’re doing good work, Callahan.”

  “How long?” His left hand accidentally bumped the counter and he had to grit his teeth from the pain.

  “Are you okay?” Duffy asked.

  “Fine. Just hurry.”

  “Good. This is in our hands now. Let us do our work. Come up here. I want to meet with you. Talk about Weller. And I don’t want you getting caught and getting me in more trouble. You’re supposed to be dead, remember. Says so in your file.”

  He put the phone down. Then he stepped out into the cold. The sun was peaking over the houses now, the morning starting. It was President’s Day, so a lot of people had the day off—there wouldn’t be as much traffic getting into the city. Whoever Sandler was sending could leave in an hour and still get to the city for eight in the morning. Probably just slow up around the tunnel.

  ASAP.

  Duffy would have to go through a ton of channels to mobilize some men to Vernon. He had no doubt she’d get them to NYC on time. But he was going to have to slow down Sandler. No matter what Duffy’s orders were. He had to see this through. He’d gotten too deeply involved to back out now.

  He looked back up the hillside toward Sandler’s hangar.

  He hoped he had time to do both.

  Callahan got out of the beaten up pick-up truck at the Saddle Brook hotel.

  He’d boosted the truck from an alleyway down the street from the Dunkin Donuts. He hoped he’d get it back before the owner woke up. Unfortunately, they’d see it was broken into, but the insurance payout would probably keep them from worrying. The drive was an easy one, taking twenty-five minutes. No one was on the road and he was able
to really push the speed limit.

  The automatic door of the hotel dinged and slid open, releasing a wave of heat. He stepped on to the plastic surface and wiped the moisture off his shoes. The agents were sensible enough to avoid hanging out in the lobby. Callahan thought they probably didn’t want to disturb the other guests, but he quickly spotted two men in suits trying to look casual in front of the elevator doors.

  A guy in a gray suit put out his hand, palm out flat, to stop Callahan at the elevators.

  “May I help you?”

  “Peter Callahan to see Doreen Duffy.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the suit said.

  “Oh please, what am I supposed to think, you’re the bellhop?”

  The suit turned around and raised his sleeve to his mouth. How he got into the Secret Service, Callahan wasn’t sure. Subtle as an explosion.

  The suit turned back and said, “Fifth floor.”

  Callahan appreciated the elevator’s heat as he watched the numbered lights flicker above the door. The elevator rose, and with each passing floor, Callahan’s mouth got a bit drier. As soon as the elevator opened, Callahan noticed the hubbub. Agents leaned against the walls writing on clipboards. A few were kneeling close to the carpet, chewing on pens.

  Callahan asked the first person who noticed him to point out Doreen Duffy. The agent pointed to room 517. There was no reason for secrecy at this point.

  Inside, Weller’s body was gone. The coroner must have removed it pretty recently, because the chalk outline was still settling into the carpet. A woman had her back to the hotel room door, looking out the window on to Route 80. Cars sped past.

  “Doreen Duffy?” Callahan asked, approaching her.

  She spun around, revealing close-cropped black hair and wire rim glasses. Her arms were crossed in front of her. She nodded to Callahan and held out her right hand. In her left was a clipboard. When Callahan shook it, he noticed a long thin scar that ran from her thumb up to the edge of her sleeve. She didn’t seem terribly excited he was there. He introduced himself. Her face didn’t change.

  “How do I know you are who you say you are?” she asked.

  “Got a match?”

  Duffy squinted and tightened her lips. If she didn’t know what he was talking about, he’d be surrounded by agents before he could blink.

  “I use a lighter,” she said.

  “Better still.”

  “Until they go wrong.”

  The same damn code that Weller used.

  “You send people to Vernon? To the Lincoln Tunnel?” Callahan asked.

  “They’re on their way.”

  “Why are you guys working on this?” Callahan asked. “Shouldn’t this be an FBI thing?”

  “Weller was one of ours,” Duffy said. “We deal with our own. You know that.”

  Callahan simply nodded. There was something more, but he let it go.

  “What happened to your face?” Duffy asked.

  “The gunfight the other night. Jersey City. That was me.”

  Duffy smiled as if he’d done good work. He wondered how much she knew about him. “I’m glad you’re here. Weller was good at keeping secrets.”

  “I know,” Callahan said. “You knew very little about me, didn’t you?”

  “How did he find you?”

  “On leave. I was back from Afghanistan for two weeks.”

  “Special forces?”

  Callahan shook his head. “CIA.”

  Duffy made a note in her clipboard.

  “What did Weller have you working on?”

  “A lot of different cases.”

  She nodded, as if she knew what that case was. “How long have you been on this one?”

  “A year or so.”

  Duffy nodded

  “And what was your last contact with Weller?”

  “He wanted me to find Omar Thabata. Said something was going down that I should look into. A lot of terrorist chatter.”

  “What happened with that?”

  Callahan pointed at his face. “The first time I found him I got beat up and shot at.”

  “And did you check in?”

  “With Candy once or twice. After Weller told me about the chatter, I’d tried to call in a few times and got no answer.”

  She nodded again, made another mark on the clipboard. “I see.”

  “What happened?”

  Duffy took a deep breath and pointed around the room. There was an open suitcase on the bed with some of the clothes flung on to the bed, a vase smashed on the floor, and the TV remote was beneath a table near the window.

  “There are no signs of the door being forced. Tough to do with those thick hotel doors anyway. Probably need a crow bar. So we think someone Weller knew knocked on the door. He answered, maybe went back to unpacking his bag. And then whoever was here came up behind him with a garrote. Strangled him. There was a hell of a struggle.”

  “No one heard anything?”

  Callahan looked into the suitcase without touching it. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just clothes and toiletries. He looked at the shattered vase again, and then saw the marks in the carpet. It looked like the impressions made with a vacuum or chair leg, and then dragged along the floor as if Weller had dug his heels in and got pulled along.

  “We’ve been questioning the other guests, but we don’t think so.” Duffy used her forefinger to push her glasses up on her face “A place like this? Everyone who stays here is either in a business meeting or commuting to the city during the day.”

  Callahan nodded. “Why was he here? I thought he was supposed to be staying in New York.”

  Duffy stepped around him and looked at the bed. She picked up a plastic bag with a little piece of yellow paper in it. Callahan realized he was the only one not wearing rubber gloves.

  “We don’t know.”

  Duffy shook her head, then leveled her stare at Callahan. “Whoever did this knew him or surprised him. There wasn’t a struggle until the wire went around his neck.”

  “If he was coming to see me, I didn’t know about it. Like I said, I called him a few times. No answer.”

  “And you didn’t check in with anyone else.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Candy Balascio.” He said it sharply.

  “I meant a superior.”

  “You weren’t supposed to know about me. No one was.”

  “Listen, you don’t know me,” she said. “But it strikes me you weren’t doing a lot of things by the book. You or Weller.”

  “When Weller hired me, he told me to stay quiet, to stay in touch. Not talk to anyone else. He gave me a contact and an assignment. He was worried it would get dirty. And it looks like it has. How long’s he been dead?”

  Duffy fixed her glasses again.

  “Gentlemen,” she said. “Can you give us a moment?”

  The agents all got up without a word and stepped out into the hallway. Once they’d disappeared, she said, “Not long, less than 24 hours.”

  Callahan ran his good hand through his hair and took a deep breath. The air smelled stale and bitter, the residue of Weller’s passing still hanging there. It smelled like a basketball had been sliced open.

  “What was this case about? What were your instructions?”

  “The guy I’m investigating, Robert Sandler, is an arms dealer. They wanted me to make sure he wasn’t selling weapons to the wrong people.”

  “And was he?”

  He took another deep breath, let the air fill his lungs and relax his muscles. Truth was, Callahan hadn’t seen any evidence of Sandler dealing with terrorists or nations that didn’t like the US of A. But he’d found evidence of Sandler’s company building some weaponry that he was keeping from the government. Not being forthright. Callahan only had bits and pieces of information. Nothing concrete, if he discounted the threats and torture Sandler had directed toward Michelle and himself.

  Nothing official to report. Yet.

  “No.
Not that, just the NYC thing.”

  Duffy’s eyes went dark. She didn’t respond.

  Callahan put his good hand in his pocket, and Duffy’s gaze shot down at it. He immediately took them out and showed her his palms. His hands were empty. Duffy stared at—but didn’t comment on—the bad one.