by Matt Lincoln
13
Charlie
I fished my phone out of my pocket as soon as I was in my truck and dialed Harry’s number. It wasn’t very late in the day yet, so I was hopeful that he’d be up to having me over for dinner despite the short notice.
He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Harry.” I smiled into the phone. “How are you?”
“I’m as healthy as a horse,” he answered confidently. He’d been taking it easy since he’d been shot a few months ago, so I was glad to hear that he was in good spirits. “What about you? Are you taking care of yourself?”
“Of course I am,” I replied. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’re free right now. I’m flying out for a mission tomorrow afternoon.”
“That soon?” Harry asked, sounding surprised. “Seems like kind of short notice. Is everything alright?”
I could hear the concern in his voice, and I internally debated whether I should tell him about what was going on.
“Not really,” I finally answered truthfully. The case was all over the news, so he was bound to hear about it eventually, anyway. “We’ve got a nasty case on our hands right now. Director Wallace wants us to head out ASAP.”
“I see,” Harry responded. “Well, that’s the nature of the job, I suppose. Come on up here, then. If you’re leaving that early, you don’t have much time to spare, right? Quit dilly-dallying. Oh, and pick up a couple of cases of beer on your way up, alright? I’m running low, and Eliza’s been on my case about leaving the house for unimportant stuff.”
“I’ll get some,” I chuckled. I could easily picture Eliza fussing over Harry and lecturing him for going out in the cold just to get some beer. He’d been shot in the lung and had been having breathing problems ever since, so it wasn’t good for him to do anything that would put a strain on his lungs.
“Good,” he replied. “I’ll see you here, then. I’ll get started whipping something up for us to eat when you get here.”
“Sounds great,” I responded before ending the call. A few months ago, the prospect of eating Harry’s cooking might have sent chills down my spine. He had gotten better, though. Eliza had stayed with him for a few weeks after he was discharged from the hospital, and Harry had spent a lot of that time picking up cooking tips from her. He wasn’t as good as Eliza was, obviously, considering she was a professional chef with years of experience, but he’d made vast improvements.
I glanced at the clock on my dash and mentally calculated the time it would take for me to get to Harry’s if I factored in a quick stop for beer. It would probably be around six by the time I got there. Maybe I would just spend the night there, especially if I planned to drink. I decided I’d think about it on the drive there and pulled out of the parking lot and onto the main street.
Half an hour later, as I left the store with the beer and snacks I’d purchased, I noticed that the streets appeared to be filling up again. It looked like even the threat of crazed, drug-fueled assailants wouldn’t be able to stop Las Vegas from coming to life at night. It was still early enough that the neon signs and glittering lights hadn’t yet come on, but I could already see drunk tourists stumbling out of twenty-four-hour casinos and wide-eyed families wandering into overpriced buffets. Part of me felt it was a little irresponsible of people to be out having fun when there was such a dangerous drug circulating around, but I understood that it was unreasonable to ask people to put their lives on hold. It just made me feel more determined to solve this case as quickly as I could.
The sun was setting by the time I made it to Harry’s. The sky was streaked in shades of pink and orange as the last rays of sunlight peeked out from over the horizon. It was amazing how the scenery around Las Vegas could change so drastically in such a short amount of time. In one direction was barren, scorching desert, and in another was the rolling, rocky mountainside.
I parked my truck in front of Harry’s house and grabbed the shopping bags before hopping out. I was surprised to find that the door was locked when I tried to open it. Harry had always had a bad habit of keeping his door open. He’d always claimed that he wanted to make sure Eliza or I would be able to come in right away if we happened to stop by. It was an unsafe habit and one that I’d gotten onto him about more than once, so I was glad that he was locking his door now. Still, it made me a little sad to think about what had caused him to change his habits.
“Harry!” I called as I knocked on the door. I could hear movement inside the house.
“Hey, Charlie,” he greeted me as he opened the door. “Sorry about that. I could have sworn I gave you a key after I had the locks changed. Eliza insisted after… after everything that happened.”
He stumbled over his words for a moment. It was apparent that thinking about what had happened to Amber a few months ago made him uncomfortable, so I did my best not to bring it up around him.
“It smells good in here,” I quickly changed the subject as I stepped into the house. “Like roasted tomatoes. What are you making?”
“It does smell good, doesn’t it?” Harry asked proudly as he rolled his wheelchair backward to give me ample room to get by. “It’s a baked pasta dish Eliza taught me how to make. Only takes about thirty minutes, including prep time, so it’s good for when you need something fast. I figured now would be a good opportunity to try it out.”
“Well, I hope it tastes as good as it smells,” I remarked.
“It’ll be ready in a few minutes,” he replied. “Have a seat in the den. The game’s already on.”
There was always a game on at Harry’s house unless Amber was over. Then there would be some sort of princess movie on. Half the time, we wouldn’t even watch the game. It would just be background noise against whatever conversation we were having. Still, it was a familiar aspect of Harry’s home that I’d grown accustomed to.
I set the beer cases down on the coffee table before settling onto the couch. Today’s game was a soccer match between two South American countries. I’d never been a huge fan of sports myself, but I’d spent enough time with Harry that I could follow and appreciate pretty much any competitive sport.
“That kicker’s a little cheat,” Harry grumbled as he wheeled himself into the den. “He went and kicked one of the players on the opposite team and then acted like he was hurt. Low-life cheat is what he is.”
“He didn’t get in trouble for it?” I asked, amused at how worked up Harry was getting over the match.
“No!” he snapped. “Referee’s blind as a bat. Or they bribed him. No such thing as good sportsmanship anymore. It’s all politics and corruption.”
“Careful, Harry,” I teased. “You’re starting to sound like a grumpy old man. Next thing you know, you’ll be screaming at kids to get off your lawn.”
“Watch your mouth,” Charlie scolded me without any bite. “I ain’t got a lawn. And I wouldn’t mind if kids played on it if I did. Nothing around here but a bunch of stuffy old snobs. Could use some kids around to brighten the place up.”
I frowned. I knew that Eliza had been much more protective of Amber ever since she’d been kidnapped a few months ago. She hadn’t been around to visit Harry as much as a result.
“I had a woman try to chase me off her lawn,” I remarked casually, hoping to change the subject again. “Just this morning, actually.”
“You don’t say.” Harry laughed out loud. “What on earth did you do to deserve that?”
“What makes you think I deserved it?” I retorted. “We needed to question her about the case we’re working on, and she mistook me for a reporter. She sprayed me down with a hose.”
“I wish I’d seen that!” Harry laughed even harder. “I had a lot of people tell me to get off their property when I was on the force. Heck, I had people shoot at me. But I never had anyone spray me with a hose.”
“I’m glad it entertains you so much,” I replied sarcastically.
“Well, I’m glad it was just a hose,” he asserted after he’d calmed dow
n. “As I said, I had more than one person shoot at me for trying to come onto their property. It could have been a lot worse.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I replied dismissively. I’d been shot at trying to speak with suspects too, but I probably shouldn’t bring that up right now when Harry finally seemed to be in a good mood again.
“So tell me about this case,” Harry said as he popped open one of the beer bottles. “Must be something major if you’re getting sprayed with hoses and shipped off on such short notice.”
“I’m assuming you haven’t been watching the news,” I replied. “We held a press conference about it earlier.”
“Nah,” Harry shook his head. “Too depressing. Eliza’s been badgering me about keeping my stress levels down, and all the news does is cause me stress, especially when I hear about things like your office getting blown up. I figure if it’s something really important, one of you will let me know about it.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” I nodded. “Anyway, there’s a new drug circulating around Las Vegas.”
I told Harry everything I could about the case and the recall issued for the cough syrup.
“Well, I’ll be,” he muttered darkly. “I think I might have some of that stuff.”
My heart beat forcefully as he left the den and went into the bathroom. He emerged a moment later, holding a bottle of red syrup.
“Where did you buy this?” I snapped as I took the bottle from him. It looked identical to the ones we’d recovered from the assailants’ homes.
“That grocery delivery service that Eliza set up for me,” he answered. “I think everything comes from the superstore twenty minutes from here.”
I relaxed at that. All the tainted bottles had been from a small convenience store on the Las Vegas strip. It was doubtful that this bottle was laced with anything if bought from a typical store an hour away from where the rest of the bottles were found.
“Throw it away, just in case,” I said. The risk was small, but I didn’t want to take any chances, even if I was just paranoid.
“Of course,” Harry nodded. “I should call Eliza and let her know, too. Amber just started kindergarten a few months ago, and those kids are always passing germs to each other. I’ll let her know to toss whatever she has, too.”
We were probably being overly cautious, but he was right. The brand that the perp had knocked off was the most popular one available. It was a household name, and probably every family in Las Vegas had a bottle of it in their medicine cabinet.
As I watched as Harry left to room to call Eliza, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other innocent, unsuspecting families out there might fall victim to the laced drug. As I thought that, my resolve to put a stop to this organization became even stronger.
14
Junior
I watched the clouds drift by beneath us through the window of the airplane. When I’d first started this job, flying had made me extremely anxious. Just the idea of tearing across the sky in a giant hunk of metal that had no business being up there filled me with fear. What if a bird flew into the engine and we crashed into the ocean? What if our pilot had a heart attack, and we crashed into the side of a mountain? What if we mysteriously disappeared over the Bermuda triangle and no one ever heard from us again?
Of course, nothing like that ever happened, and after taking flights regularly as a part of my job, the anxiety had gradually ebbed away. It had actually become a little boring. I did like looking out the window, though. It was mesmerizing to think that we were soaring high above the clouds, something that seemed so impossibly far away when you were on the ground.
“How much longer until we get there?” Charlie asked, breaking me out of my thoughts. He was sitting in the aisle seat, his arms folded across his chest and a grumpy look on his face. To be honest, I was surprised he was even awake since he usually spent the majority of flights asleep. However, we’d had to leave on such short notice that we’d ended up taking a commercial flight out. It had already been several hours since we’d left, including a three-hour layover in New York, and I guessed even Charlie couldn’t spend that much time asleep.
“About six hours,” I sighed. The flight from Las Vegas to Dublin was about twelve hours long, not including the layover, which meant we were about halfway there. However, we’d still have about two hours of driving to get to the address we’d found on the shipping box the tainted bottles had arrived in.
Usually, I would have spent the flight reading up as much as possible about the country’s local language. Fortunately for us, people in Ireland spoke English. Unfortunately, that left me with very little to do for the long flight.
“Don’t you think this is all too easy?” I asked Charlie after a few minutes of silence.
“What’s too easy?” Charlie glanced at me in confusion.
“The whole case,” I responded. “I mean, we just started investigating two days ago, and we’re already on a flight to Ireland. It took Fiona no effort to trace where the bottles came from, and we found a box full of evidence with the bad guy’s symbol and address clearly printed on it. It’s like whoever’s doing this isn’t even trying to cover their tracks.”
“You think we’re being set up?” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know,” I responded honestly. Charlie was regarding me intensely, and it reminded me of something I’d been wondering about since yesterday. “Why did you get so emotional about Aiden Gooden?”
“What?” Charlie raised an eyebrow at me.
“The kid whose mom came at you with the hose,” I responded. “You seemed really worked up about that particular case. You didn’t get that emotional at any of the other houses while explaining what happened to the families and collecting the bottles. What was it about him?”
Charlie frowned, and I wondered if I was being too nosy. He didn’t really like talking about himself, but we’d become better friends over the past year we’d spent as partners.
“His mom said something about everyone turning on him,” he sighed. “When they heard the cops had found drugs in his system, everyone acted like he was scum that didn’t deserve to live. The only one who stood by him was his mom.”
He stopped speaking. His eyes were glazed over as if he remembered something, and I waited patiently for him to continue speaking.
“When I was seventeen, my girlfriend accused me of getting her pregnant,” he revealed. “It wasn’t my kid. I don’t know whose it was, but it sure wasn’t mine. We’d never slept together, so it couldn’t have been mine. I lived in a small town, though. Everyone was always in each others’ business, and word spread fast. Before I knew it, everyone was labeling me a scumbag who got a teenager pregnant without even being married.”
“He reminded you of yourself,” I concluded.
“Yep,” Charlie nodded. “Everyone was saying I should marry her to ‘make things right.’ Her dad didn’t like me, though. He said there was no way he was letting his daughter marry some thug from the low-class side of town. My mom was the town druggie, and I already had a bad reputation just for being her son, so it was easy for the entire community to believe whatever negative rumors they heard about me. Then my own mother kicked me out of the house. She told me that if I was old enough to be a dad, I needed to get a job and take care of myself. I couldn’t get a job. By then, everyone knew me as the drug dealer’s kid who knocked up his girlfriend and then refused to even see her, even though her dad was the one stopping me from seeing her. No one would hire me.”
“That’s horrible,” I gasped, unable to contain my shock. I knew that Charlie had spent some time on the street. He’d mentioned stories about the trouble he’d gotten into as a teenager, but I had no idea he’d been through such an awful ordeal.
“I guess,” Charlie shrugged. “In hindsight, it was good that it happened. I felt betrayed at the time by my girlfriend, my mother, literally everyone in town who shunned me just based on rumors. However, if it hadn’t happened, I never would have met Harry. I
probably would never have become a cop or a federal agent, either. In the end, I’m grateful that they all pushed me away. I would have ended up stuck in that backwater town otherwise.”
“Wow,” I replied. It was crazy to think that such an awful experience had such a huge positive impact on Charlie’s future.
“Anyway,” Charlie continued, “that’s why I got so emotional, I guess. It made me happy that Aiden’s mom defended him even when everyone else had turned on him. I really wanted her to have hope that he would wake back up.”
We lapsed into silence then, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. I was glad that Charlie had trusted me enough to share such an important, if sad, moment in his life with me.
I woke with a jolt a little while later, unsure when I’d fallen asleep to begin with.
“Finally,” Charlie groused as we touched down on the runway. I glanced out the window and saw that it was pitch black outside. I glanced at my phone to check the time and discovered that it was just after nine in the evening. That made sense, considering we’d left at night and had spent nearly a full day flying, coupled with the fact that Dublin was eight hours ahead of Las Vegas.
The inside of Dublin International Airport looked like any other airport I’d been in during my missions, but the outside was a sight to behold. The structure looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Two massive, domed terminals lined either side of the road, with a sloping, convex bridge stretched between the two sides. The smooth, shiny sides of the building reflected green and purple light against the dark night sky.
We were met at security by a member of the Garda Siochana, the name of Ireland’s national police force.
“Good to meet you, fellows.” He smiled at us pleasantly. “How was your flight over?”
“Long,” Charlie replied honestly.
“I can imagine,” the man replied. “Anyway, I’m Officer Charleston. Just came to help you get everything cleared through. I trust you understand that gun laws are quite a bit stricter here than they are in the States?”
