The Iron Ring

by Matty Dalrymple

  Lizzy was gazing out the window, feeling drowsy and enjoying being a passenger, when Daisy asked, “Are you really only going twenty miles? Because I’m guessing we’re coming up on twenty miles now.”

  “No,” said Lizzy sheepishly. “I just said that in case you turned out to be a weirdo.”

  Daisy smiled. “I figured. I’d do it, too. So, how far are you going?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” said Lizzy, still wanting to have an out just in case. “But pretty far.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Lizzy said, “If you’re going to LA, wouldn’t you get there faster if you were on the main highways?”

  “Sure, but you’re more likely to get arrested hitchhiking on the highways.” She glanced over at Lizzy. “Wouldn’t you get wherever you’re going faster if you were on the main highways?”

  “Did you see the big scrape on the side of the van? I’m not very good at entrance ramps.”

  Daisy laughed. “Yeah, I did. Well, that shouldn’t be a problem for me. Want to get where you’re going faster?”

  “Absolutely,” said Lizzy.

  “Okay,” said Daisy. “Just direct me to the nearest interstate.”

  34

  Lizzy woke, her head resting on the unsatisfactory pillow of the passenger side window. She gazed around, a bit disoriented, as she tried to rub the crick out of her neck. It was dark and the van was parked at a rest area, cars and trucks whizzing by on the interstate a hundred yards away. She thought for a semi-panicked moment that Daisy had abandoned her, and that she was trapped at the rest area by the impossibility of a successful merge into that traffic, but then she saw Daisy’s backpack and bedroll in the back of the van.

  As she was deciding what to do, she saw Daisy emerge from the service plaza with a white paper bag and a beverage holder with two cups. Lizzy jumped out to open the door for her.

  “Dinner!” called Daisy as she neared the van.

  Lizzy rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”

  “Around seven.”

  “Jeez, I was asleep for a long time.”

  “Yeah, you must have really been worn out. Where do you want to eat?”

  “We can sit in back—there’s a little couch back there.”

  They climbed into the back of the van, and Daisy laid out the meal—cheeseburgers, fries, and a small Coke for each of them.

  Lizzy realized how hungry she was, and wolfed down the burger, then leaned back against the wall of the van. “What are you going to LA for?” she asked, popping a fry in her mouth.

  “Don’t laugh—I’m going to be an actress. But,” Daisy added hurriedly, “I’m not counting on making it big right away. I have a friend who does a lot of small roles—you know, the person in the background in a restaurant scene, the cashier at a grocery store the main character goes to, things like that—and she makes pretty good money. I figure I can do that while I get the lay of the land, then start working toward bigger roles over time.”

  “That sounds like a good plan. Are you going to stay with your friend when you get there?”

  Daisy poked her straw into her drink. “Probably not. She’s not that good a friend.”

  “I’ll have to watch for you in movies,” said Lizzy. “Are you going to use your real name?”

  “No way.”

  “Daisy’s a nice name.”

  “It’s a hillbilly name. Plus, you’ll never guess what my last name is.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t laugh. Flowers.”

  “Your name is Daisy Flowers?” said Lizzy, delighted.

  Daisy rolled her eyes. “My mom thought it was so cute. My sister’s name is Rose.”

  Lizzy laughed. “That’s great!”

  Daisy held up an admonishing finger. “You said you wouldn’t laugh,” she said with a rueful smile.

  Lizzy shook her head, still laughing. “You asked, but I never promised.”

  “In LA, Daisy Flowers is going to sound like a hillbilly porn star. What’s your last name?”

  “Ballard,” said Lizzy without thinking.

  “Tracy Ballard. That’s a good name.”

  They discussed Daisy’s plans—and possible stage names—until Lizzy’s phone chimed with a text.

  Dr McN doing well, wants a pizza

  Lizzy sent back a smiley face, then typed Everything fine here. She added Getting a lot of hiking done, then deleted it and typed Miss you guys, but I’m keeping busy.

  She muted the phone and slipped it back into her pocket.

  “Who was that?” asked Daisy.

  “Someone from home. I promised them I’d check in with them every day to let them know I’m okay.”

  When they had finished their meal, Daisy said, “I don’t think we can stay here overnight. The cops keep an eye out for people trying to sleep at the rest areas. We can go to the next exit and see what the options are.”

  They got back in the front seats and Daisy started up the engine. She glanced at the dashboard gauges. “We need gas.”

  “Okay. We might as well fill up here.”

  Daisy drove over to the gas pumps, a pool of light in the increasing darkness. “I don’t have much money,” she said. “And I am doing all the driving.”

  “I can pay for the gas,” said Lizzy. She grabbed her knapsack, got out her wallet, and opened it. There was only a twenty-dollar bill in it—barely enough to move the needle on the van’s fuel gauge.

  She had plenty of cash, but it was stowed in the hiding place. She should have replenished the supply in her wallet before she picked up Daisy.

  “You know, I wouldn’t mind having another order of fries,” said Lizzy.

  Daisy raised her eyebrows. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Would you mind picking up more fries while I pump the gas?” Lizzy handed her the twenty.

  “Sure,” said Daisy, taking the money. She jumped out of the van and crossed the parking lot to the service plaza building.

  By the time Daisy returned, the tank was full, there was another hundred dollars in Lizzy’s wallet, and the remaining money was safely back in its hiding place.

  35

  It was the day after Philip and Rey had arrived in Flagstaff, and Viklund was still putting a few final arrangements in place for the installation of Philip Begay as a janitor at the Williams Correctional Facility.

  When they had left the Flagstaff airport, Rey drove north toward Flagstaff proper, Humphreys Peak looming over the town to the north, then turned east across the high plateau. Juniper, spruce, and pine quickly gave way to stunted trees near Winona, and finally to a panorama of scrub and sagebrush stretching from the highway to a horizon broken here and there by distant peaks.

  Philip shifted uncomfortably. Anywhere north of Oak Creek reminded him of Williams, and of his four years behind bars, and the plateau’s tabletop flatness and oppressively huge sky brought on an unpleasant claustrophobia that he had never felt in the canyons and arroyos of Sedona.

  The resort to which Rey drove them looked like an incongruous mirage in the emptiness of the surrounding plain. He was relieved when Rey got keys to two rooms, to the mild amusement of the front desk staff. If Viklund had assumed that all he had to do to win Philip over was to throw beautiful women in his path—first Elsa and now Rey—Philip would have been disappointed in him. If that was in fact all it took, Philip would have been disappointed in himself—especially having fallen for that trick once back in Sedona.

  The adjoining rooms Rey had booked for them at the resort had a communicating door, and Philip was surprised that Rey didn’t insist that it be kept open so she could keep an eye on him. However, the reason became clear when Rey attached a device to the sliding glass door that led onto a balcony off Philip’s room.

  “If you open the door, or mess with the device, it will trigger an alarm on my phone,” she said.

  “Clever.”

  She attached a similar device to the door to the hallway.

  “Hope you don’t draw
down on the housekeeper,” he said.

  “I requested no housekeeping, so you’ll need to make your own bed. Don’t lock the communicating door on your side.”

  “Okay.”

  She unplugged the phone from his bedside table.

  “What if I want to call for room service?”

  She rolled her eyes and retreated to her room with the hotel phone. She closed the communicating door, and he heard the click of the lock on her side.

  That evening, he experimentally opened the glass slider, and sure enough, Rey came through the communicating door within a few seconds, her gun drawn.

  Philip raised his hands. “I surrender.”

  She gestured him away from the door with the gun, slammed the slider shut, reset the alarm, and stalked back to her room.

  Philip suspected that Viklund had chosen the resort not only because of concern for his guests’ comfort, but also because there were few places where Philip could try to overpower Rey without there being a dozen, or a hundred, witnesses. He supposed he could have run—all those witnesses would have been a deterrent to Rey shooting him in the back—but once he was off the resort grounds, he wouldn’t have any good options for where to go next. The desolate desert scrub was as effective a deterrent as a chain link fence.

  The resort did provide plenty of diversions while they waited for Viklund’s plan to go into effect. Philip wasn’t a gambler, but at least it passed the time to walk through the casino, always accompanied by Rey. It was peopled mostly with men and women whose looks of strained hopefulness suggested that they could ill afford to lose the money they fed into the slot machines or bet at the tables.

  At one point, out of curiosity, he told Rey he wanted to go swimming. A short time later, they were headed to the indoor pool, he dressed in swimming trunks, a T-shirt emblazoned with the casino’s logo, and flip-flops that had been delivered to Rey’s room, she in a light gray version of the pantsuit she had had on the previous day. After watching her sit by the side of the pool for half an hour, obviously too warm but unable to take her jacket off due to the gun holstered under her arm, he felt sorry for her, and they headed back to their rooms. He briefly thought of asking to go to the resort’s gym but didn’t want to force Rey to sit by in her suit while he exercised.

  In the end, they spent most of the time sitting in the resort’s cavernous lobby, Rey bouncing her foot and looking out the window at the surrounding desert, Philip paging through a paperback western from the gift shop.

  But his mind wasn’t focused on the book.

  36

  Mitchell sat at the bar in a restaurant a few blocks from the Capitol, the other barstools occupied by well-preserved older men chatting and laughing with well-turned-out younger women. The noise level was lively, and the ambiance screamed inside power circle.

  The man on the barstool next to Mitchell’s was not old enough to be considered well-preserved, but he was well-turned-out, and was attracting looks from the women, young and old. Erik, like Mitchell, was dressed in a conservative suit and tie. Unlike Mitchell, he had the same Scandinavian coloring as all of Theo Viklund’s employees. His blue eyes periodically flicked over Mitchell’s shoulder toward the restaurant’s entrance.

  Theo had introduced Mitchell to several of his employees, including Erik, and asked him to read their minds. Two had been easy to read—each had reported with a crestfallen demeanor that Mitchell’s report regarding their thoughts was accurate—but Erik’s mind was impenetrable. Mitchell had feared that he had fallen short in a test set him by Theo. Then Theo had sent Erik to accompany Mitchell on his assignment in DC, and Mitchell realized that the test had been for Erik, not for himself. The fact that Theo wanted Mitchell to be accompanied by someone whose thoughts were inaccessible to him did nothing to quiet his nerves.

  Mitchell took a sip of the beer that Erik had ordered for him. It tasted heavy and bitter. He should have ordered a glass of wine or a cocktail. He should, in fact, have ordered something to eat—he had been too jittery to eat lunch, and it was now nearly dinnertime. He had finished barely half of his beer and he already felt a little unsteady.

  Mitchell could tell the target had entered the restaurant by the stiffening in Erik’s posture.

  “He’s here,” said Erik in his light Swedish accent. “Don’t turn around. We’ll be able to watch him in the mirror.”

  Mitchell glanced up at the mirror behind the bar. The target was a lean man in his early fifties, whose March suntan no doubt reflected a trip to visit constituents in his southwestern state. He was talking animatedly with his dining partner, an older, heavier man whose back was to Mitchell. A server arrived at their table and said something to the target. Mitchell heard his laugh over the noisy buzz of the room. The target consulted with his table mate, then said something to the server, who smiled and hurried away.

  Mitchell took another gulp of beer. “Why him?”

  Erik shrugged. “He’s been an annoyance to a friend of Herr Viklund’s.”

  “What kind of annoyance?”

  “Putting his nose in where it shouldn’t be.”

  “Poking,” said Mitchell.

  “Pardon?”

  “It’s ‘poking his nose in.’”

  Erik gave him a look. “Sure. Poking.” Erik glanced at his watch. “He doesn’t stay long, forty-five minutes at the most.”

  Mitchell nodded.

  “We need to get you within ten or fifteen feet of him, right?” Erik asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll need less than a minute?”

  “I think so.”

  Erik surveyed the room in the mirror, then said, “There’s a table of two women right next to him. I could pretend that I think I recognize one of them.”

  Mitchell looked up at the mirror again. Two women in their mid-fifties were seated at the table next to the target, several shopping bags on the booth seats next to them.

  “How long can you talk with them?” asked Mitchell.

  Erik laughed. “I can figure out something to say to them for at least a minute.”

  Mitchell didn’t doubt it. The women would no doubt be thrilled that someone who looked like Erik was picking them out for attention—even if misplaced—and Erik seemed like the kind of guy who could make the faux case of mistaken identity seem charming rather than awkward. Mitchell looked down at his beer, then took a hefty swallow. He misjudged how much was in the glass, and a bit of beer escaped and dribbled down his chin onto the lapel of his jacket.

  Erik grabbed a cocktail napkin from a nearby stack and handed it to Mitchell. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  Erik finished his beer and set two twenties down on the bar, anchoring them with his empty glass. “Why don’t you make your stop in the men’s room, then come back here. We’ll act like we’re heading out, and then go over to their table and I’ll chat with the women while you take care of the congressman.”

  Mitchell slid off the barstool and wended his way to the restrooms in the back of the restaurant, taking a circuitous route that would keep him as far from the target as possible.

  He was relieved that no one else was in the men’s room. He stepped into a stall, then shrugged out of his jacket. He loosened his tie and pulled it over his head—he didn’t want to have to try to tie a decent knot after taking the drug. He took off his shirt and rolled up the sleeve of his T-shirt. Then, his heart hammering, he retrieved from his jacket pocket a packet that held a syringe and a glass vial. He filled the syringe and raised it to his arm.

  He thought back to the trip into Philadelphia the day of Russell Brashear’s press conference—the press conference where the Attorney General announced the investigation into the Vivantem fertility clinic and Louise Mortensen. Louise had injected Mitchell with the steroid drug in the hotel room where they had waited for the press conference to begin, and on the walk from the hotel to the courthouse, he had never felt better—that sense of invincibility that the drug
provided had not yet been superseded by the painful toll that it exacted. Louise’s wrist was looped under his arm, and although he suspected that the reason was to better monitor his condition in case he had an unexpected reaction to the drug, he convinced himself that there might be another reason—after all, they were partners. He could tell by the looks a few pedestrians threw them that they made a handsome couple. Looking back, he had to admit that, with the age difference, the looks might also have been triggered by speculation about the nature of their relationship. He was sure that Louise would have been less perturbed by the assumption that Mitchell was her son than he would have been.

  He winced as he depressed the plunger. It hurt more than he expected it to—certainly more than when Louise did it. A dot of blood appeared, and he wished he had a Band-Aid to keep from staining his shirt.

  He returned the vial and syringe to the packet and slipped it back into the jacket pocket, then redressed. He pulled his tie back over his head, his fingers fumbling as he settled the knot.

  He put his hand on the stall door latch, but hesitated. He wanted to spend as little time in the restaurant under the effect of the drug as possible. Should he wait in the men’s room until he felt the drug start to take effect? Would he even know when that happened? His heart was pounding, and he didn’t know if it was from the drug or nerves. He put his fingers to his wrist, feeling for his pulse, but what would that tell him that he didn’t already know? He raised his hands and scrubbed them up and down his face, then flipped the latch on the stall door and stepped out, right into a man headed for the urinals.

  “Hey, watch it!” The man was in his early thirties, sporting a Caesar haircut and a slightly more flashy suit than most of the conservatively dressed men in the restaurant.

  “Sorry,” mumbled Mitchell. He tried to step around the man, but they both sidestepped in the same direction, and he ended up bumping into him again.

  “Jesus,” muttered the man. “Already drunk, and it’s not even seven.”