Roadrunner

by Michael Lilly

  However, last fall did bring with it the death of a Mr. Ronald Sanders. He was initially coerced into being one of Keroth’s minions, but an overwhelming surge of compassion and conscience pushed him to our side. In one event, as we fled from one point to another on foot, Sanders had not been fast enough, and took a bullet that killed him in minutes. The following day, much as we wanted to grieve, circumstances called for action. But after the mess was all but cleaned up, Todd, Beth, and I collectively fell into an intense grief and visited his grave at least weekly for months. Only after a long, openhearted one of these convents did we reduce the frequency of our visits, and then, it was still around three times per month.

  During that time, I often found myself wondering about the same thing that must be going through Stan’s head. Yes, the two situations exist under strikingly contrasting circumstances, but the basis, the fundamental sentiment underlying the thought, is the same: Is it my fault?

  The difference is that Ron’s death was, in fact, my fault. At least to an extent. If I had conducted my business differently, or indeed, not at all, he would be alive. Of course, little May Brotcher might not be alive under those circumstances. Perhaps beyond her, even. I suppose, then, that my business needed to be conducted, and only by doing something differently could I have ensured the safety of both Sanders and Maylynn.

  And while I understand the essence of the saying ‘hindsight is twenty-twenty,’ it is nonetheless difficult for my internal dialogue about the matter not to be riddled with ‘should have’ and ‘could have.’

  That it takes such a toll on me even with my more logical, rational mind is my own doing, of course. By killing my father, I set off a chain reaction of events that even I could not have predicted, and ultimately, it was my recklessness that put us all in such danger.

  And now, in Perkins’ wake, the aftermath continues to follow me, one that landed two more dead. A logical person might say, “But it was that thug who pulled the trigger killing Sanders, and Perkins who plunged the knife into Firenze and Anthony!” And that logic is sound, but matters of the heart, such as this one, don’t subscribe to the standards of logic on which the world operates. No, in this particular circumstance, my heart will forever rebut that with, “But I’m the reason he came to Wometzia. I’m the reason he killed them.” No matter how many other thinking patterns exist and will come to exist over the years, that there’s even one that exists which makes it my fault is enough for it to be my fault. It’s inescapable.

  But Stanley’s mind has time yet; I’m not entirely sure as to the motives that either Perkins or Andre had for selecting these particular targets, but there’s very little, if any chance that it was a reason instigated by any of the victims or their actions. Even without supporting evidence, I’m confident in the relative innocence of all three boys. No, this was not an evil invited into their lives by their own doing, but rather one that followed me here and spread its filthy tendrils to drain the life out of innocent people. They had become further collateral damage to my own past, my own actions.

  As if to prevent me from slipping into a desperate panic, I hear a small group of people walking up the hall, talking in hushed but excited voices, like a theater full of movie-goers whispering about the film on their way out while trying not to spoil anything for the patrons on their way into the auditorium.

  Among these voices, I hear the two bickering nurses and Todd—he had been sleeping in the car, but he must have woken up—and a couple of other voices that I can’t quite hear over the ongoing commotion. The mystery is solved when the five of them—the nurses, Todd, Chief Husk, and who I assume to be Stanley’s mother—appear in the doorway, at the vehement protest of Pink. Minions, on the other hand, smiles wide and cheery. She invites me out of the room and I oblige. Minions and Mrs. Romero step in while Pink holds the less worthy (or relevant) of us out with hands up like a mime.

  Todd and Husk accompany me back to the waiting area. I resist the urge to go back to Stanley and confess: It’s not your fault your friends are dead. It’s mine.

  “Anything?” Husk asks.

  “No. He’s an emotional wreck, even if he’s trying to act like he’s not. I got a rough description that matches our suspect, but that’s it. That and a heaping dickload of survivor’s guilt.”

  “I don’t blame him,” Todd says. He wears an expression that matches how I’m feeling: exhausted, pained, and with a sense of hollow misery painted with metaphorical gray-blues and dirty whites.

  “And why are you here?” Husk looks at Todd, then to me. I’m about to speak up, but Todd, in his quick eloquence, beats me to it.

  “Once a cop, always a cop, I suppose,” he says. Husk straightens up slightly in his newfound respect for my boyfriend.

  In an effort to keep Husk from hounding us for Todd to go work at the station, I had kept quiet that Todd had been on the force with me in Riverdell. I had been wondering under what circumstances, if any, that revelation would be made. None of the scenarios my mind constructed had been quite as dire as this.

  Thunder rumbles outside and I wonder if our short-lived storm has found a second wind, so to speak. The sonic wave brushes over the building and rattles a parking cover gently. In the distance, I hear what may be the first car’s honk of the day.

  I look toward the glass-paned doors and find a sneaky pale blue indicating the sun’s imminent arrival, filtered, of course, by the angry clouds overhead. Vague shapes begin to form in the now semi-darkness, silhouettes for now and still not entirely identifiable.

  Husk seems to have conceded to the persistence of Todd’s presence and badgers him no further.

  “Well, what now?” asks Todd, sensing the concession.

  “I think you two need to get some real sleep. Go find yourselves a room in the city, and I’ll see how things go here. I’ll call if anything develops.”

  “Will there be someone available to watch over the Romeros? The non-disgusting ones, I mean?”

  “I’ll do it myself. Go. Sleep.”

  I want to resist, but my body overrides my mind, having been a victim of my neglect recently. I’m incapable of arguing and, in reality, I would prefer to handle things at night, if possible; while my vision is obviously well augmented by excessive light, my affinity for darkness, first born in Riverdell, lingers today, and besides, a source that illuminates my surroundings illuminates me, as well. If I’m to find and take Perkins, I would prefer not to be seen during my approach.

  I must confess, also, that much of my desire to wait until night has roots in my anxiety; darkness means that people are sleeping. With the sun down and humans in their homes, the sensory input of being outside is drastically reduced, thus allowing my mind the bandwidth to think more clearly and calmly, and thus to be able to appreciate things and people more fully.

  After a small shopping stop (we get food as well as clothes and toiletries; we’re both starting to smell and our things are an hour and a half away), we settle into a room in a hotel substantially more accommodating than the piece of shit we ended up in for our Phoenix adventure. It’s definitely not luxury, by any stretch of the word, but I don’t fear that the blankets will slowly eat me throughout the night, so by the weekend’s standards, its luxury is just ravishing.

  Most of our morning takes place in relative silence. We eat a couple of pre-packaged salads from the store, toss the containers, shower, draw the curtains shut, and lie down. Sleep feels like a concept bordering on foreign these days. A restful night (or morning, as the case may be) is, in my weary eyes, the height of posh living.

  Now, though, we lie in intermittent silence, broken here and there by car doors closing, cars chirping at being locked or unlocked, and the ongoing thunder, which seems insistent on accompanying the day. Todd and I face the window, despite that both of us prefer the dark. The window admits only a small amount of light with the curtains drawn, a big black square with glowing gray borders. Todd’s breathing and heartbeat are steady, pulling me out of my world of
chaotic anxiety and into his world of present-minded, clear-headed quiet.

  As I notice it, the muffled version of the world steps in, the predecessor to sleep, lulling my mind into a haze and ushering me into the ever elusive state of unconsciousness.

  Later, my eyes flutter open in a gradual, natural manner. Todd grabs my hand when he feels me stir; he’s already awake. All of the time-related questions begin pouring into my mind: how long has Todd been awake? How long have I been asleep? What time is it now?

  … What year is it?

  “Morning,” says Todd.

  “Is it?”

  “Nope.”

  “What time is it?”

  “About six.”

  Estimating that I fell asleep around six-thirty, I assess that I got nearly twelve hours of wondrous, uninterrupted sleep. I stretch and do a quick analysis of how I feel, like some kind of sentient parasite flexing the muscles of its new host. I feel stronger and quicker than I have in months. The only thing stopping me from being a full-fledged superhero is a good cup of coffee.

  To that end, I get the in-room coffee maker going on a pot while I change into the cheap clothes I bought this morning—thank god for twenty-four-hour supermarkets granting us access to such buying opportunities at five thirty in the morning. God bless America.

  “Has my phone gone off at all?” I ask. I plugged my phone into an outlet across the room this morning, and I left it on maximum volume so as to minimize the risk of missing something supremely important. I usually sleep lightly, but I also usually don’t sleep for twelve hours, so I may well have woken up in another dimension and been none the wiser.

  “Not since I’ve been awake,” says Todd.

  Defeated, I get out of bed and look at my phone, which displays no new notifications—only Todd smiling in the candid way of which he’s incapable when he tries. I took the photo on his twenty-seventh birthday, which was the day after we moved to Wometzia. Of course, our neighbors had introduced themselves, but we didn’t have any real friends around, so we stayed in by ourselves at first. I made him dinner and we watched a couple of shows together, but the most memorable bit, at least to me, was just sitting together and talking. At the time, stresses were halted at the door, banned from our haven, if only temporarily.

  At midnight, we were restless, so we went for a walk, stresses still at bay. Wometzia is quiet, but even more so on a weekday past midnight. No wind or thunder fell upon our ears nor precipitation upon our heads. There was no traffic, and the leaves in the few trees lay at rest. It felt like the town had been rented out just for us, and time frozen. On that night, Wometzia was a snow globe, sans snow but with all the charm.

  The night was warm, but cooling down over time, and our voices cut through the air like boomerangs, slicing and bouncing and reverberating, our childlike giddiness echoing off of the buildings before escaping into the star-clad sky.

  We got home sometime after one o’clock and carried the playful, carefree mood with us into the kitchen, where we spent the next while in the dark, eating random leftovers by the modest light of the refrigerator. I pulled out my phone to get an idea of what I look like with an entire pretzel roll in my mouth, but took the picture instead with the standard camera, facing Todd, who was in the middle of a fit of laughter. The photograph was too good not to use as my phone background … and my laptop background. In that photo, I argue to this day, he’s more accurately captured than in any other. Sure it’s a candid photograph, and that’s kind of their whole thing, but in that particular shot, he’s lost in the silliness, the joy, the fun. In short, he’s bathed in happiness.

  “So, then, what do we do with our evening?” asks Todd. We have the hotel for another night—in order to reserve the room and check in at a time that isn’t wildly inconvenient, we had to reserve it for the night before, and to avoid having to check out at ten o’clock, we had to reserve it for tonight, as well. Sleeping through the day is expensive.

  “What doesn’t a person do in Albuquerque on a Sunday night?” I say. Todd laughs—and flashes that impossibly cute smile—and gets out of bed himself.

  “So, pants or no pants?” he says. While I can probably think of more exciting things to do without, there’s a section of my mind certain that news will come at any moment, and such activities would render me unable to respond with the appropriate level of urgency.

  “Pants,” I say. Silently, we mourn the passing of the lost opportunity to indulge our libidos. Alas, that will have to wait for another time. Maybe even in our own bed.

  After dressing (with pants, reluctantly), Todd draws the curtains, flooding the room and our eyes with intense Albuquerque sun. Our west-facing room gets the full, unmitigated blast of it and my retinas cry in pain. Todd closes them again, most of the way, even without seeing my recoil.

  Only a few clouds skate across the sky to the west, as if they’re magnets and the horizon, similarly charged, suspends them in the air.

  Our third-floor view isn’t extravagant, but it nonetheless offers a sightline up and down one road, in its calm, quiet, Sunday attempt at rush hour. Of the handful of restaurants in sight, none seems to be open. But we go down to the street anyway to look around.

  We spot a small, flashing OPEN sign in one of the windows just two doors away, inviting patrons to the Sleepy Dragon Chinese restaurant.

  While the outside of the establishment is nothing special, the inside is decorated floor-to-ceiling (and probably violates fire codes) in abundant scrolls, paintings, fans, and shelves packed with statues and figurines and carvings. The wall itself is painted to display the Great Wall of China with surrounding scenery in traditional oriental art style. I look around, working myself into a giddy, awed grin. For all I know, the restaurant’s owner could have raided flea markets and thrift stores and yard sales and dumpsters in the quest to decorate this place. But even then, it has a majesty to it that makes me feel immersed—the ultimate goal, I’m sure. When my roaming gaze meets Todd, he’s wearing the same geeked-out look I’m sure I have.

  We get a booth and order. The elephant in the room, the abnormality of normality, remains in his corner, unacknowledged. That negative asshole can wait until after our date like the rest of my problems.

  As a creature of social perfection, Todd, without fail, strikes up conversation with our servers whenever we go out to eat. In this case, our waiter, a middle-aged man named William Ling, serves our food and drinks quickly, keeps us topped off, and has a friendly, amicable demeanor. The world needs more William Lings. We let him know as much with a generous tip.

  Neither Todd nor I hold onto superstition, but born of some small coincidence back in Riverdell, we only open our fortune cookies when it’s a full moon. As it looks tonight, the moon is just slightly fuller than half, so these cookies will need to wait a couple of weeks.

  After we arrive back at the hotel, my phone goes off at last, signaling a text message from Chief Husk.

  “Romero says he wants to talk, but only to you.”

  I reply at once: “On my way.”

  The sun is setting rapidly, opening for the Albuquerque night’s encore performance. I spent the duration of the main show chasing red herrings, and I can only hope that that’s not the case tonight. Averse to the lonely boredom of the hotel room, Todd accompanies me to the station.

  According to reports, Romero was placed in holding yesterday at twelve-thirteen in the afternoon, meaning that I have around seventeen hours before they’re forced either to charge him or release him. Hopefully, using whatever information Romero wants to give me, we can do the former; I’m not keen on the idea of letting the man walk the streets, and what little evidence we have against him is circumstantial. If we don’t dig up anything better in the next seventeen hours, he will be set free. My challenge, if he doesn’t provide anything useful, will be to hunt down, well, anything we can possibly use against him.

  When we arrive at the station, only the most resilient of twilight’s glow graces the lobby. While
not at the same level of rest as when we arrived here last night, the station is winding down nonetheless.

  “Thorn, he’s waitin’ for ya.”

  I’m aware of the many ways this might result badly. As he specifically requested me, I’m nervous as to what he might say. I’m confident that Perkins told him about my history—what reason does he have to withhold that information, aside from not having it himself? And I don’t doubt for a second that he does indeed possess that intel; the message was pretty clear: Your turn.

  I committed a murder, expediting my father’s trip to the most exotic layers of hell, and orchestrated a scenario that painted Jeremy Keroth as the killer. To be fair, there were plenty of charges on the table, any combination of which would have landed him a double-digit sentence, but I suspect that ‘to be fair’ isn’t necessarily on the collective agenda of Keroth, Perkins, and Romero. When one is fueled so wholly by primitive, perverted, and wrathful motivations, one must make room in their emotional toolkit, and the most common sacrifices are compassion, love, and empathy.

  Beyond that, there are even more ways this might go south—the one I fear on the surface, the most likely in my opinion, is that he just wants to be a colossal waste of time. Such would indicate to me that Perkins is poised to carry out another task—maybe another kill, maybe planting more evidence—I don’t know. But my gut tells me to be careful. Even more so than normal.

  That he asked for me around sundown is another sign, I think, that this is the particular trap into which I’m falling; as far as I can recall, there was not a clock in sight from the cell in which they’re holding Romero, but there are windows—high up and reinforced with rusty bars, but they’re there, and they admit light just like any other. If he were more time-oriented, he may ask a staff member for the time, but if he were off by much, he would have to ask again, which would draw suspicion. There are probably various other cues he might be able to pick up on—certain employees arriving or leaving, the change of shifts for dispatch—but they couldn’t easily have planned for that. The most reliable, undetectable way for mutual planning to work, then, is to rely on the sun—the original clock.