Authors: Ron Childress
Skittles begins to growl quietly. Quickly, its vibration intensifies into that ominous type of growl that announces the devolution of a domesticated creature into a beast.
The shorter man's face breaks into a grin as false as the sentiment it tries to express, which is that all is well between Jessica and him. “Federal Bureau of Investigation, miss.” The man opens his wallet and tries to show her a badge. But Jessica doesn't shift her eyes from her reflection in his sunglasses. And then the man takes the lenses off. His eyes are brown and, even asquint, surprisingly warmâdangerously warm enough to make Jessica want to trust him. “I'm Agent Daugherty and this is Agent Pyle,” the man says. From the corner of her eye Jessica sees the taller man touch a hand to his hip just inside his coat.
At the gesture Skittles bursts out barking and Jessica tugs hard at the dog's collar until Skittles' paws are clawing the air. She lets Skittles pull and froth until the verbal man signals his partner to back off. Then Jessica makes an offer. “I can get a message to Jessica,” she says.
Daugherty's eyes flicker. “That would be helpful. And you are?”
“A friend,” Jessica says. “A close one.”
Daugherty nods. “Then you wouldn't mind chaining up your dog and inviting us in for a friendly talk. Miss, excuse me, I didn't get your name.”
“I said I could take your message to Jessica.”
Daugherty is not flustered. He points his soft chin at the house. “Is Miss Aldridge inside?” When Jessica doesn't answer he takes out a business card that he pinches into a fence link. The card, with its insignias, resembles a small stiff flag. “Tell Miss Aldridge that her old friends in the Air Force are worried about her. Tell her there are people at the VA waiting to help. Tell her that it would be best for everyone if she came in on her own for an evaluation. All she needs to do is to check in and get checked out. Simple.” Daugherty's smile is that of a used-car salesman.
TONIGHT JESSICA DRAWS
the curtains early and, fully dressed, settles atop the couchâthis after packing a backpack and dragging Skittles' pallet beside her. Skittles' regular sleeping spot is beneath Newt's dining room chair and so this night is proving restive for both of them. Every few minutes Jessica checks the flickering numerals of a clock to see if morning's come yet.
At midnight she gives in to her insomnia. Peering from a curtain, she sees nothing outside but the night's usual shadows. Yet she doesn't believe the agents have given up. They might be staked out up the street. She goes to the front door, then jerks her fingers back from the knob. Maybe her watchers are even nearer, right outside, just behind the flowering bridal broom.
“Let's get some rest,” Jessica's voice tells her fuzzy thoughts.
But for the next hours, her eyes do not stay closed. She watches the slow red counting of the clock face. At zero four hundred, she pulls herself to attention.
“Skittles,” she whispers and hears the jingle of the dog's collar, feels the bristle of fur under her reaching hand. With the other she takes the backpack and then they are moving through the dark back porch to its door. Skittles gambols into the yard, stops, looks back. As there's nothing out there that's made her bark, Jessica slips out into the starlight. “Come on, girl,” she whispers, and when Skittles comes she takes the dog's collar and they skulk past Newt's grow shack. Then Jessica is struggling to lift the shepherd's sixty pounds over the rear fence. The dog tumbles over upside down but intelligently gives no yelp. With a heave Jessica joins her and they stalk low through the weeds.
It is a hike to the warehouse, down in Redlands, out of which Kane runs his mechanic's shop. Dawn is stretching their shadows before they arrive and Jessica finds a spigot to water Skittles. Then she bathes her face and neck and sips water from her cupped palm. Sitting on the tarmac with her back against Kane's garage door, she suddenly cannot keep her eyelids apart. Sleep, or something close, brings her visions of being able to throw herself high in the air, though with ever diminishing leaps that finally leave her earthbound. Her dreaming shifts to a dream that she knows is a dreamâshe is on the road with Newt, her ears filled with the familiar tick of his truck's valve train. Where Newt is taking her she does not care. She is just simply glad to see him alive again, even in a dream that she knows is a dream.
Then the dream crumbles. Groggy in the afterglow of Newt's memory, Jessica squints at a fan blade spinning through a truck grill. It's Newt's pickup. And through its windshield Kane stares down at her.
“Morning, Kane,” Jessica says cheerily. Brushing the dust off her backside, she goes around to the driver's door and opens it. Inside, Kane is collecting items from the passenger's seat.
“Just picked up your carb kit, Jess,” he says. “Gonna take an hour or so to install. Wanda told me you're leaving.” Arms loaded, Kane eases out of the vehicle.
Jessica snaps her fingers at Skittles and like a sterling recruit the dog squirts past Kane and leaps into the cab. Her blue eyes gaze at Jessica with anticipation.
“Sorry. Gotta hit the road,” she tells Kane casually. The less he knows the better. Jessica reaches for the coffee container he's holding. “Smells good,” she says. “Fresh?”
Kane releases the cup and steps sideways so Jessica can slide into the truck. “Where you headed?”
“It's a distance,” she says. “Call you when I get there.”
Kane shuts her door. “Drive easy,” he says.
As she engages reverse, the popping engine warns her as well. But she has to go. Already the men in black, Daugherty and Pyle, are knocking at Newt and Shelly's front door. Of course Jessica is only imagining thisâseeing the men in her mind's eye as if she is aiming a drone camera at them. Yet she knows they will be
here
soon, for this is how they will operate, not like kidnappers under the cover of night but as bureaucrats in the full light of day. They will gather her up for a psych, which she is predoomed to fail. Then, officially, her government will own her again, own her because she is the ex-airman who knows too muchâknows about the flaws in their drones' ballistic sighting that can cause collateral damage, knows about the cover-ups of mistakenly targeted schoolyards and hospitals and wedding parties, knows about CIA-directed assassinations in neutral countries, knows all the details of the al-Yarisi miss. She just knows too many damn things. She's a risk to the security of the security state, to the state of things as they are, to the status quo of war.
And so her country will take care of her as efficiently as it did the catatonic, nickel-slot-playing airman at Pancho's. But as Jessica is a civilian now, she cannot simply be deported to some remote Kyrgyzstan airbase. Rather, she will be deposited “for her own safety” in some quiet, walled place for rest and medication. She will be allowed to play checkers with the other inmates until she is as dazed and defeated as any lost soul. All this will happen as surely as the next sunsetâunless she goes and goes and keeps going.
She grinds the gearshift into first and offers Kane an apologetic glance. He raises his hand in farewell, and then his Jessie is gone.
CHAPTER 32
New York City
From: [email protected]
Subject: An i
n
vitation
Hey, Zoe,
I promised myself that if you didn't answer my last email I would respect your silence. And for four days I have. Tonight there's a send-off dinner for Alex at Red Cat, 8 p.m., so I'm trying you again.
Where is Alex going all of a sudden? The Black Sea. To paint a mural. It's for Sergei, the guy who wants to hire me. Alex, being anti-self-celebrity, says he's happy to skip town while his show is up at Medusa. The trip, like my job offer, is Juliette's doing. With Alex away she can be sure he won't sabotage his new reputation, which is all you need to know about Juliette. Well, you saw her at the openingâfawning over a Hollywood actor while ignoring us two, the nobodies. Or maybe I'm just jealous. Ethaniago, that's me.
But Juliette is good at what she does, which is to make opportunities. So about my trip to Sagaponack. It's a nice village. I could live there. The base of operations is a short walk to the beach. In theory the job looks great. But I don't know.
See you tonight at Red Cat. I hope.
E
From: [email protected]
Subject: Red Cat update
The dinner has been pushed back to 8:30. See you there. No problem though if you can't make it.
From: [email protected]
Subject: We're here
In case you're out there looking for us, we're dining in the private room. Just tell the hostess you're with the Giroux party. And don't worry about arriving lateâthe festivities should be going on here for quite a while. I'd be texting you this if your old number worked. See you soon.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Fuckin RSVP please
Zo,
So where you? farewell party over. Everybod gone but me. Wish you'd been here. Had a merry time after splling a Campari down Juliette's blouse. Told Alex to fuckoff after three scotches at the bar. I'm up to numero six and bartender says go home. Fine. Need a clear head tmorrow to drive Alex to JFK. Juliette, strangle her, booked him on a Aeroflot to Kiev. Since dying always a good career move for n artist and with Aeroflots crashing one a week laetly, I raised a toast to Julie's manager skills. That's when I got bar exiled. No wait. It was after I called Sergei an oilagarch. Thought that was good since he's a petrochemical squillionaire. Hung around here hoping you would show eventulaly so I could test it on you. Least you coulda told me yu wern't come. What? NYU sundenly cut off your studnet email? Or u fall out a widow or somethig?
Love,
Enth
your X
remember me??
From: [email protected]
Subject: Last night's email
Zoe,
I apologize for being a jerk. Obviously I need a Breathalyzer app that stops me from drunkmailing. Not that I get wasted often. If it's any consolation my head feels the size of a pumpkin. What's funnier though is that after I emailed you Sergei joined me at the bar to tell me I was all right. My new job is on.
Anyway, right now I'm pulled over on a JFK access road. I just dropped off Alex and am watching his plane take off. I don't know why I'm doing this. What is this fear? Have I gone delusional? Tell me. Tell me anything because I'm worried as much about you as I am about Alex.
Zoe, if we ever meant anything to each other stop torturing me with your silence. I know you have your own problems and don't need mine on top. But you know how I fixate on things. So just let me know you're okay. With Alex gone, I've got nothing else to do but go over and over the reasons for your silence. If only I could shove my obsessions in a sack and drown them and be out of my misery. But I can't. Damn it, Zoe, help me out a little here. Answer me.
E
From: [email protected]
Subject: Tonight
8 p.m. 169 E. Broadway.
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Tonight
I'll be there.
PURSUIT
September 2013
CHAPTER 33
New York City
After rereading Flytiger's emails, Sarah Chen puts away the victim's cell phone so she doesn't twist an ankle clomping along East Broadway on her three-inch pumps. And there's Eddie now, outside the 169 Bar where she'd set up the meet. Ridiculously, Banco opens the door for her.
“Nice shoes. Louboutins?” he says and grins like they're on a date.
“Zappos,” Chen answers.
Tall and slim, Eddie Banco is a handsome young guy pretending to be a metrosexual. But he's gay and fooling no one at work. As Sarah passes through the door she gives him a soft punch and the side of her fist bounces off Eddie's lean trampoline gut.
“The thanks I get,” he says, falling back on his habit of talking rougher than he looks. They both overcompensate.
At a two-top near the bar Chen orders a cranberry seltzer. Banco asks the waitress for a pickle martini, which is advertised colorfully on a chalkboard. After she leaves he says to Chen's stare, “What? I'm off-duty doing you a favor here.”
“We're early, Banco. Just don't get wrecked on me.”
“Chen the Merciless,” he saysâher office nickname. Despite its racism it's somewhat empowering so she leverages it.
“Detective Chen to you,” Chen replies, instantly regretting pulling rank on Eddie. “Or just Chen. Or just Merciless. Or how about
Sarah
. Take your pick.”
At the precinct house Sarah and Eddieâbecause they don't fit the stocky, balding mold of detective and plainclothes officerâhave to grin through every challenge to stay in the club. The jokes, the sexism, the nonironic racism. But complain once, Sarah knows, and you'll never have backup when you need it.
After their drinks arrive, Eddie raises a toast, “To expense reports.”
With the departmental budget cutsâwhich have thinned their ranks so that Sarah can't even keep a regular partnerâshe wasn't supposed to take the Leston investigation this far. “Wrap it up,” the captain had said. But after the computer forensics lab cracked the victim's cell passwordâand this took daysâsome loose ends turned up.
The bar hasn't drawn a crowd yetâjust a seeding of hipsters and grad students ignoring a few Wall Street types who are trolling for coeds.
“You think this guy'll show?” Eddie asks. “I wouldn't pick him from a lineup of anyone here.”
“He's coming because he's desperate.”
“So, if he's desperate, he's guilty then?”
“Maybe. I'll get it out of him.”
“Is that why the clothes?”
Instead of her usual oxford walkers and pantsuit, Sarah is wearing those painful pumps, a skirt and eye makeup. It's almost like the days when she baited the johns exiting the Cross-Bronx Expressway in their minivans. But Eddie's looking at her funny. “Do I still read as a cop or something?” Sarah asks.
Eddie leans toward her and straightens her collar, rests his fingertips on her shoulder. “You look fine,” he says.
A man enters through the street door. Sarah checks her watch. It's seven forty.
Eddie's eyes follow Sarah's. “Is that him?” he asks.
The man is lanky and would stand six-two or more if he didn't stoop. His clothes are a mismatch of cheap and threadbare expensiveâthere's the designer cardigan shiny at the elbows, the five-hundred-dollar shoes that need resoling. In contrast, the baggy jeans are bargain binâthe man's ass sits in them as flat as the bottom of an iron. The pale back of his shaved neck betrays a twenty-dollar haircut. The man must be thirty to thirty-five, Sarah decidesâthough his eyes are those of a lost eight-year-old searching for his mom in a department store. He's not her killer. He's a sheep.
IT'S EIGHT THIRTY
and Sarah has just abandoned her fourth former suspect at the barâa man wearing a herringbone fedora and a shadow beard who as she walked away recommended she “chill.”
“It's fine,” Sarah tells Eddie, fanning her diminishing hopes. “The captain will let me trace Flytiger's email address now that I have evidence of guilt.”
“Just because he didn't show tonight doesn't mean he's guilty.”
“Wrong.” This is not a subject on which she's going to agree to let Eddie disagree. “I've got Flytiger on the run now. He played the email alibi card in a panic. I called his bluff and he folded. I've got him now, or soon will.”
Eddie shakes his head. He's starting his third pickle martini. “Truth or dare me,” he says.
“Truth,” Sarah says.
“You're desperate for a real case here, Detective. This one's a sow's ear.”
“Sow's ear? You turning into a farm boy, Banco?” Sarah waves at the waitress and aims her gun hand at Eddie's martini glass. “One of those,” Sarah mouths so the server can read her lips over the backbeat of reggae. She gets a nod back.
“Look,” Eddie says. “You have the girl's phone. Send Flytiger another email as Leston. Ask him why he's not here?”
Sarah takes Zoe Leston's phone out of her clutch and examines the dark screen. Then she shrugs at Eddie. “I sent the first email unauthorized. Another one will cinch a wiretap violation.”
“Shit,” Banco says.
“Yeah. I could end up like Rupert Murdoch.”
“If you do, buy me a yacht.”
“I'M FINISHED HERE,”
Sarah says. Two pickle martinis have done their job. The world of this red-tinted bar is glowing with a pleasant, womblike crimson. “Where's the crapper?” she asks Eddie.
He points his chin. “That way, Detective.”
The bathroom locks with a hook latch and Sarah hikes her skirt and balances over the splashed toilet, then she wipes the seat dry. After all, it is her job to clean up after the citizens. Or maybe she does it out of respect for immigrants like her grandmother, who spent her first years in America on Madison Avenue, mopping out women's lavatories in a corporate tower. She washes her hands, wipes the lipstick from her teeth, and unlatches the door.
“'Scuse,” she says shouldering into the man waiting outside. She'll never get used to unisex bathrooms.
“Sorry,” he says.
Sarah recognizes him from earlier, the guy with the saggy shoulders and scuffed loafers. He looks miserable and as if he's gone one drink over his limit, like her.
Seen close upâwith his make-do clothing, nostril hair, and faintly pocked complexionâhe is in no sense a lady killer. He's lost out completely on the trifecta of looks, attitude, and money, with his once nice shoes suggesting a former job that paid well. Sarah's nonjudgmental term for such types is
survivor
, and she fully dismisses him as a person of interest. He
can't
be Flytiger, her only suspect. For a second she considers bringing him in for questioning but then realizes Eddie is right: she
is
desperate. Desperate to make the Leston case a
murder
case.
“Hey,” she says to the man as he steps around her. Half in the toilet, the man turns about and the closing door knocks into him. The man is drunker than Sarah thoughtâunstably drunk. This will make her work easier. “Looks like someone stood you up tonight. Maybe I know her. Maybe she sent me to tell you she couldn't make it.”
Sarah's
survivor
looks down at her and his eyes almost focus. His face, soaked with little-lost-boy desperation, starts to brighten. “She sent you?” he asks. “Zoe?”
Sarah deflates: Flytiger.
“MR. WINTER. OVER
here please,” Sarah says, directing him to the chair beside her desk in the bullpenâwhich is empty but for two other detectives distantly pecking out reports. “I'll need your statement before I can answer your questions.” So far, Sarah has told him nothing about Zoe Leston.
Back at the tavern, hoping the night air would clear her head, she had shown Winter her badge and asked him to take a walk. He'd agreed and all along the way, as if to bolster his alibi, drunkenly pestered her for information about the victimâ“Where's Zoe? She in the hospital? Was she assaulted?” And at the precinct house, Winter began to chew a cuticle. Now, seated in Sarah's guest chair/witness chair/perp chair, Winter is as jumpy as a squirrel in an alley. He straightens his pants, crosses and uncrosses his legs, shifts onto one haunch and then the other as though the metal seat is a hot plate. In other words, he's overplaying the upset friend role and acting more and more as though he's guilty of something. Maybe Eddie is wrong, maybe the Leston case is a silk purse and she's not been torturing a friend of the victim by keeping the truth from him. This guy's the perp.
“Please, can't you just tell me if Zoe is all right?” Winter asks.
Sarah's conviction wavers.
She ignores the question and brings up the standard witness form on her computer, filling in the name and address fields from Winter's driver's license. Then she proceeds with her interrogation.
“The last time you saw Zoe Leston was six nights ago Thursday, correct?” she asks, going over what he'd told her back at the tavern.
“Isn't that what I said?” Winter snaps.
Sarah gives him a look and moves on. “Where did you last see Ms. Leston?”
Winter can barely contain his impatience. “At a mutual friend's opening. Medusa Gallery. Chelsea. Afterward we went to a diner. Moonstruck. Like I said, I paid with a credit card if you want to check. Then I walked Zoe to the Twenty-Third Street subway and went home. Except for her email this morning, I haven't heard from her since. So what's going on? Is she in trouble?”
“You didn't get on the subway with her that night?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Because you live downtown. In fact, you live almost exactly across town from where Ms. Leston was staying on Henry Street.”
Winter appears bewildered. Then his eyes focus. “Oh, sorry. The license is wrong. I'm not on River Terrace anymore. I'm up at 75 Lexington now, across from the old armory.”
“Uh-huh,” Sarah says and clicks her cursor back into the address box of the witness screen. “I know the neighborhood,” she adds to jab at his pride. When interrogating solo you're forced to play both good cop and bad cop. “You must be in the Popeye's building. I can smell the fried chicken on your clothes. You should file a complaint about their ventilator. Apartment number?” she asks.
“3B,” Winter says, beaten down. And then his eyes narrow. “Wait a minute, you don't think I had something to do with . . .” Winter's question trails off.
“To do with what?”
“I don't know,” he snaps. “You won't tell me. All I know, and it's all from you, is that Zoe is in some kind of trouble. She's missing, isn't she? I mean, how did you even know we were meeting tonight?”
Not wishing to mention tapping into the victim's email, Sarah refocuses her suspect. “Was Ms. Leston distraught when you left her at the subway?”
“Distraught? No. She recently quit her job in DC. I think she broke up with someone there. But I don't think she was unstable, if that's what you mean. She wasn't crying. She might have been upset, but she wasn't distraught.”
Winter's fine distinctions bode badly for her theory that he might know more than he's saying. He is trying too hard not to imagine the worst.
“You say
she
broke up with someone?” Sarah asks. “Did you ever meet the person she was seeing?”
“No. Did he do something to her?”
Sarah is earning her Chen the Merciless nickname. But rule one: keep your witness in the dark for as long as possible. Memory is evidence best left uncontaminated.
“Have you ever known Ms. Leston to do drugs?”
“Drugs?” echoes Winter. “You mean medication?”
“I mean, say, recreational.”
“No. So she's under arrest? Look, if it's a matter of bailâ”
“And what about yourself? Are you on any medication?”
“What? I don't understand.”
“If Ms. Leston was upset, you might have offered her some of your meds last Thursday. You know, to help her through.”
Winter looks hard at her. “Jesus! What is this?” Coming to his feet he knocks over his chair and the crash echoes through the big room.
This
is no act.
“Yo! Everything good down there?” calls Lieutenant Ellison, the larger of the two officers typing reports tonight.
“We're good,” Sarah tells him.
She returns to her witness, her
ex
-suspect. He is an open wound. “Please sit down, Mr. Winter,” Sarah says gently. “May I get you a cup of coffee?”
“DROWNED?” WINTER SAYS,
absorbing the information.
“The autopsy report isn't finalized, but that is likely the primary cause. I'm sorry.” Sarah touches Winter's arm though she resists any deep sympathy. In her job she can't afford such emotions. The man is slouching now more than ever, crumpling over to stare between his shoes. “Let me refer you to a grief counselor.” Sarah digs through her desk for a business card and places it in front of Winter. “Goodnight, sir. Thank you for your time.”
Over the past hour Sarah has extracted all she is going to get out of her witnessâwhich was basically next to nothingâso she is done with him. What she knows about Zoe Leston she knows mostly from her cell phone and a manila folder of family documents and news clippings found near the body. She knows that Zoe was a graduate of NYU and that her family history is as tortured as the Kennedy's. Zoe's grandparents became her adopted parents, both are deceased in a murder/suicide/euthanasia event. Her mother killed in an auto wreck more than two decades ago. Sarah could find no living next of kin âexcept for a maternal aunt with dementia in an East Setauket nursing homeâuntil she contacted one Detective Ray Murak, mentioned in a clipping. Retired and now a volunteer who answers phones for the Monroe Police, Murak gave her the name of the victim's biological father, Donald Alan Aldridge, whom Sarah located in a South Florida prison. Three days ago, Sarah had arranged a phone interview with the inmate, who had not seen his daughter since she was an infant.