Gather the Sentient (17 page)

CHAPTER

30

JOSE

Tuesday, September 27

Baltimore

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” Andrea complained to Jose as they sat beside one another, their heads resting against the faux wood headboard, watching reruns of People’s Court on the motel room TV.

The weekly motel they’d checked into in the wake of Alejandro’s disappearance was straight out of a B-rated film from the 80’s.  Mauve and teal floral spreads adorned both mattresses, which sagged uncomfortably on each side, leaving noticeable lumps in the center of the beds.  The matching teal wall-to-wall carpet was heavily worn, with distinct paths leading from the door to the bathroom and the bathroom to the beds.  So far Jose hadn’t noticed any bugs, but he continued to keep a watchful eye.  Regardless of the outdated décor, the motel felt safe, and Jose knew, even collectively, they couldn’t afford any better accommodations.

“We said we were gonna give it two weeks and then reassess.  It’s only been a couple days.  We gotta give the cops a chance to do their jobs, and it may take a little time.  Until then, we just gotta sit tight and try to make the best of a bad situation.”

After assessing the state of affairs upon his arrival in Baltimore, he’d called into work and requested to take time off.  Since he had never used any of his accrued annual leave, the head nurse was more than willing to remove him from the schedule until the middle of October.  When she wished him safe travels on his ‘well deserved vacation,’ he hadn’t corrected her about the nature of his trip.  Things were less messy when he held his cards close.

Andrea picked up the remote and began surfing channels.  “I was trapped when I was with him, and I’m trapped now that we’re apart.  Outta the frying pan, into the fire.  At least before I ran off he wasn’t hunting me down, trying to kill me.”

Jose raised an eyebrow.

“Okay.  Maybe he was trying to kill me.  But it was only because I threatened to leave.  I shoulda just kept my mouth shut.”

Being holed up together, 24 hours a day, he was beginning to lose patience.  And yet, he knew he couldn’t be just another guy intent on controlling her every move.  In her short adult life, she’d been oppressed by a parade of dictators, and although it didn’t make their confinement any easier, he knew her current attitude was purely reactionary.  

“Are you even listening to yourself right now?” he said, rolling himself up off the bed.  “The next week will be much nicer for the both of us if you’d just try to focus on the positive.”

She scowled, although she was clearly trying to ignore him by focusing instead on a reunion episode of Teen Mom.  Jose took two steps and manually clicked off the television.

“I’m done,” he announced.

And Andrea burst into tears.

Adrenaline surged and his emergency room training instinctively kicked in as he approached her cautiously from the far side of the bed.

“Let’s go to a meeting.”

“I don’t want to go to a meeting,” she sniffed, barely audible from where she’d buried herself beneath her arms.

“You need to talk this through with other people.  You need to share your feelings.  I’ll call a police escort to come take us.  I’m sure that nice girl cop, Officer Rosetti wouldn’t mind helping out.”

“Carla doesn’t need a police escort to leave.”

“Carla isn’t being hunted down by a maniac.”

She came out from under her arms then, her mascara streaked around her eyes.  “Why do you care?” she asked.  Her voice was calm.  As calm as he had ever heard it.

“Why do I care what?”

“About me and if I get hunted down by some maniac.  You gave me some BS answer about everyone being special back at the hospital in Phoenix, but I still don’t buy it.”

Could he explain being drawn to her in a way he’d never been drawn to anyone else?  Would she believe, despite what others told her, that she was worthy of his love?

Would she dismiss him as just another guy looking to control her?

Did it matter even if she did?

“I love you,” he said simply.

“What if I don’t wanna be loved?”

“It’s too late.”

He watched her rolling his declaration over in her mind, deciding what to do with it.

“In our meetings we’ve been talking about the ten keys to a healthy relationship.  The last time I went we were learning about patience.”  She looked up at him then and when their eyes connected, the sarcasm and anger melted away.  “You’ve shown me what patience is all about.  You’ve never yelled at me.  Even when I probably deserved it.  You’ve held it together so I didn’t have to.  I know you have it in you to keep being patient.  At least I hope you do.”

He sat down on the bed beside her and the space between them, less than a foot, buzzed with what could only be described as a tangible current.  He wanted to touch her.  Not to heal but simply to comfort.

“You tell me what you want me to do.  And I’ll do it,” he said.

She looked away then, unable to hold his gaze.

“When monsoon storms would blow across the desert at night when I was little, my big sister Claire would let me crawl in bed beside her because I was afraid of the lightning and thunder.  I never had to ask if it was okay, and I never had to explain why I was scared.  She just opened her arms and let me nestle beside her until the last rumbles were so far in the distance you had to strain to hear them.  I remember counting together ‘one Mississippi, two Mississippi.’  Most times, if I was still awake when the storm was over, I’d crawl back into my own bed on the other side of the room.  But if I happened to fall asleep, she’d let me stay, and I’d wake up beside her in the morning.”

“Where’s Claire now?” he asked.

“She died of a drug overdose when I was twelve.”  Her voice was steady.  Almost too steady.

Andrea had lost her safe place when she was a child and had been searching for a suitable replacement ever since.  Immediately, her life story shifted into focus.

“I’ll be your Claire,” he said at last.  “And if you decide at the end of the storm that you’re ready to be on your own, you can go.  Back to your bed on the other side of the room.  And if you decide you’d rather stay…”  He trailed off, wondering how many other men had suggested the same arrangement, only to retract the offer when the time came for her to go.

She shook her head.  “I’m supposed to ‘heal on my own’ before ‘allowing someone new into my life,’” she explained, making air quotes with her hands.  “That’s what they tell us in support group anyway.”

“So heal on your own,” he told her.  “I’ll just stand here beside you to catch you if you fall.  No strings attached.”

“You’d wait for me?”

“For as long as you need.”

She exhaled then, as if she’d been holding her breath for days and relaxed into the crook of his arm.  The last time he’d felt the heat of her body was at the hospital, healing her with his gift.  At that moment she’d allowed him to touch her because she had no other choice.  It was probably no different for her now.  She was out of options, once again.

Or perhaps this time is different
, he thought hopefully. 
Perhaps this time she’s choosing me because she wants to, not because she has to.

CHAPTER

31

MIA

Tuesday, September 27

Baltimore

“You think Sisco’s gonna be back at the liquor store?” Jack asked, clipping his handheld transceiver around his shoulder onto his lapel.

“If he knows what’s good for him he will be,” Mia replied.  “And he better have something for us.  I feel bad having to tell Jose we have nothing to report every time he calls, which, I swear to you, is like six times a day.  I feel bad for the guy.  I think he’d do anything to keep Andrea safe.”

“Too bad she didn’t meet him before she met Alejandro, huh?”

She shrugged.  “I get the feeling she wouldn’t have given him the time of day outside her current situation.  Some girls are just drawn to the men who are the worst for them.”

“Like Stella,” Jack smiled.

“Oh, yeah.  Like Stella.”  She tossed him the keys to the cruiser.  “She picked a real bad boy when she picked you.  And by bad, I mean like your singing at karaoke the other night.”

The neighborhoods surrounding the station encompassed a wide range of diversity, but Highlandtown, just east of Patterson Park, accounted for one of the city’s fastest growing Hispanic populations.  Along with positive cultural experiences like LatinoFest, an annual celebration of Latino food, music, and dance, the inclusion of yet another ethnicity into an already diverse area often led to unrest.  Mia and Jack were no strangers to the area.

“There he is, right where we left him,” she said as Jack pulled the cruiser to a stop along the curb across the street.

“You got him or you want me to deal with him this time?”

She waved him off.  “Nah.  I’ve got him.  Sisco and I have history, remember?”

“Mia, you started hanging out at the station when you were in elementary school.  Who don’t you have a history with?”

She laughed and followed him to where Sisco and his crew were lurking in the alley beside the store.

“You’re looking well, Gentlemen,” she called to them as they approached.  “Glad to see you’re making the world a better place today.”

In the interest of privacy, Sisco sent the others away before responding, just as he’d done before.

“I heard something about your guy,” he admitted.

“That’s good news for you.”

He lit a cigarette and took a long drag before going on.  “Some people have seen him with a couple guys from Hyattsville over in Joseph Lee, at the billiards place.”

“We don’t care if he can play pool,” Jack said.  “We care about the reason he’s in town.”

Sisco eyed them evasively, taking another pull on his cigarette.  “He’s looking for the girl, just like you said.  Talking about having somebody else take her out when he finds her.”

“But he doesn’t know where she is now?”

He shrugged.

“You don’t know or you’re not telling?  Cuz I can always take you back to the station and you can tell us what you know there.”

“All I know is he thought he’d find her in Essex, but she wasn’t where he thought she’d be.  Now he’s got people searching the area for her.”

“I see.  And is that really all you know?”

Sisco flicked his cigarette butt to the ground and crushed it under the heel of his boot.  All the while he continued sneering at her, his lips pressed together in a tight line.  “That’s all I have to tell you.”

Mia was careful to avoid making any eye contact with Jack as they headed back to the cruiser.  She didn’t want to give Sisco any inkling as to whether they knew where Andrea was.

“You think it’s safe she’s holed up at Duke’s Motel?” Jack asked as he fastened his seatbelt.  “I know it’s in Rosedale, not Essex, but it’s only about five miles away from Carla’s apartment.”

Mia had the same thought about Sisco’s disclosure.  “Jose and Andrea suspected he’d tracked her here to Baltimore, but didn’t have any way of knowing how close a trace he got.  Based on what we know now, I think it might be smart for them to move further out.”

“Should we swing by there now?”

She looked over her shoulder through the car’s back window at where Sisco was still leaning against the side of the building.  “It’s probably better if we head back to the station, just in case he has someone following us.  There’s a good chance he’s working both sides of this game, and we can’t chance giving him even a direction to take back to Alejandro.”  She fished her phone out of her pocket.  “We should probably call Jose though.”

Jack circled around the block back in the direction of the station while Mia called Jose and Andrea to let them know what they’d discovered.  She put the phone on speaker.

“I can’t stand the thought of him being so close,” Andrea told her in response to the news.  “But do you really think we need to find somewhere else to go?”

“I do,” she replied.  “It’s for your own safety.”

Jose piped up, “What about my Aunt Carla?  She doesn’t have a car and needs to stay close to her work.  We can’t afford to split up though.”

Mia hated that finances often took precedence over everything else, but for many people, herself included, it was often the case.  “I can’t force you to find another place.  I can only share what I know, and unfortunately we now have confirmation he’s traced you to Essex.  If he and his cronies are prowling around, it’s more important than ever for you to put some distance between you and then sit tight until we find him.”

Andrea suggested, “What if I just went back home to Phoenix?”

“We don’t think that would necessarily be safe either.  You know as soon as he hears you’re back in town – and he will hear – he’ll waste no time coming after you there.”  Mia could hear Andrea’s disappointment across the line.  She knew what it was like to be trapped inside a dangerous situation, both literally and figuratively.  “We really think the best thing to do now would be for all three of you to find another place to stay in a different part of town.”

“Carla too?” Jose asked.

Jack spoke up.  “Listen guys, if he traced Andrea’s call to Essex, there’s a good chance he was able to pinpoint her location down to the apartment complex, if not the precise unit.  None of you should go back there.”

The line hummed as all four of them were silent, and Mia contemplated their next move.  Her instincts were telling her it was only a matter of time before Alejandro discovered them at the motel.  And if there was one thing she’d learned over the past year it was to trust her intuition.  “How about if Jack and I head over to Carla’s apartment to find out if anyone’s been inquiring about your whereabouts.  If someone’s been asking around, it might give us some insight into Alejandro’s next move.  Until you hear back from us, you might want to get online to start searching for another place to hide out.”

After everyone said goodbye and they disconnected, Mia turned to Jack.

“You think anyone’s been following us?”

He glanced in the rearview mirror.  “I’ve been watching and haven’t seen anything.  Wanna head over to Mansfield Woods?”

They took a circuitous route to Carla’s apartment complex in Essex, stopping by a taco truck near Middle River where they both ordered fish tacos to go.  They sat in an adjacent parking lot, balancing their tacos on the electronics console between them as they discussed their recent night out together at the karaoke bar.

“So Lanying was nice,” Jack was saying.  “Too bad she had to go back home so soon.”

Mia picked a chunk of pico off the napkin on her lap and tossed it into her mouth.  “Yeah.  She’s really sweet.”

“Funny though, how Thomas picked her up in a bar.”

She saw him smirking out of the corner of her eye and was loathe to take the bait.  But after finishing her second taco, she couldn’t hold back any longer.

“For the last time, he didn’t pick her up at a bar.  They met in the hotel lobby where he plays on Friday nights.  He called me as soon as he got off work to tell me about her and said she seemed lonely and that we should get together because we all might hit it off.  He was being kind.  There’s nothing more to it than that.”

Jack tossed his wrapper nonchalantly into the paper bag on the floor.  “It’s not my business what the two of you are into these days.”

Mia knew he didn’t actually believe there was anything inappropriate going on between the three of them, but she also knew his teasing stemmed from his desire for her to come clean about the true nature of the unusual friendship.  Of course, it was weird for Thomas to have latched onto a random stranger in town for a conference, so she could understand his curiosity.  They’d been partners long enough that he could tell when she wasn’t being completely honest, but she wasn’t ready to talk to him about the prophecy.  At least not yet.

Instead of giving him the satisfaction of a response, she took their trash bag across the parking lot to a dumpster and tossed it in.  Upon returning to the cruiser, she immediately changed the subject.

“You think we should say anything to the apartment management about Alejandro or just go straight to the neighbors?”

He put the car into gear and eased out of the parking lot onto Eastern Boulevard.  “I can’t see them walking into the office to inquire about the whereabouts of a new tenant, can you?”

“No,” she agreed.  “So let’s just knock on a few neighbors’ doors and ask if they’ve seen or heard anything.”

No one was home at the first four apartments they visited.  At the fifth, a teenage boy wearing a Cheetos stained t-shirt and gym shorts cracked the door briefly before immediately slamming it shut in their faces.

Mia knocked again, more forcefully this time.

“We’re not truancy,” she called.  “We just have a few questions about your upstairs neighbor.  You’re not in any trouble.  I promise.”

After several seconds, the door creaked open and the boy peered out.  “I had a fever this morning,” he croaked.

“I’m sure you did,” Mia replied, noting his light aura.  “Now about your upstairs neighbor, Ms. Garcia.  Have you seen her around recently?

“Is she the older lady with the long, frizzy, grey hair?” he asked, using his hands to demonstrate the fullness of her tresses.

“That’s her,” Jack said.

The boy furrowed his brow.  “I haven’t seen her in days.  Actually, I haven’t heard her either.  Usually she’s up early on Sunday mornings.  I hear her cuz her room’s right above mine.  I guess she goes to church or whatever, but this past Sunday I didn’t hear her.  Slept in ‘til noon.  It was awesome.”

“Okay.  So you haven’t seen or heard her in a while,” Mia remarked, taking rudimentary notes in a small steno.  She found people took her more seriously when she at least pretended to write down what they said.  “And what about anybody else?  Have you seen or heard anyone unusual around the building?  Someone you didn’t recognize or don’t typically see?”

“No.  Not that I can think of,” he replied.  He glanced over his shoulder at the television where she could see Call of Duty was paused on the screen.

“What about this guy?”  Jack held out a photo of Alejandro for the boy to examine.

“No.  I haven’t seen him, and I definitely would have remembered him if I had.”

“Fair enough,” Mia said, handing him her card before backing off the doorstep.  “Don’t hesitate to call me if you see or hear anything unusual, okay?”

The boy nodded and without saying goodbye, shut the door.

As they climbed the stairs, Mia said, “His aura was light.  I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth.”

“Like about that fever he had this morning?”

“He only said that because he didn’t want to get in trouble.  But he has no reason to lie to us about the other stuff.”

They knocked on the door of Carla’s next door neighbor and heard someone padding toward the door.  A moment later, a squat Greek woman wearing a housecoat appeared before them, a dishtowel in her hands.

“Yes?”

Mia introduced herself and explained the reason for their visit.

“Why don’t you two come on inside,” she said, ushering them through the doorway.  “I was just making a pot of tea and I don’t want my kettle boiling over.  My name’s Phyllis, by the way.”