___________________________
Rae pulled up everything the Bureau had on Westbrook and handed me the phone.
I read it with a strange sense of déjà vu prickling at the nape of my neck.
Nathan Westbrook, a decorated police detective, had disappeared under the radar fourteen months ago. No suspicious circumstances. He simply hadn’t shown up at work one day. He hadn’t called in sick. He hadn’t booked any vacation days. His lieutenant had sent a unit round to his place that afternoon – following several unanswered attempts to contact Westbrook through his landline and cell numbers – only to find him not at home. The next day, a subsequent search of the premises had shown no evidence of foul play, but signs that Westbrook had emptied his closet and drawers, and packed for a trip. Neither his police ID nor any other personal effects (such as his driver’s license and his passport) were found in his home. No mention to his next of kin (namely his widowed mother living in a home in upstate New York) that he was anywhere other than where he ought to be. His on-the-job partner had spent the next week running checks to see if Westbrook’s credit cards popped up on the system. They hadn’t.
Detective Nathan Westbrook had vanished without trace.
Until now.
“Where was he this last year?” I wondered out loud.
“By all accounts, off the grid.”
“I know, but why? Why did he just vanish without warning?”
“Maybe he had gambling debts and went into hiding. People disappear for any number of reasons, Gabe.”
I made a dissatisfied pout. “So how did he come to play a part in Cornsilk’s disfigurement? Officially, Westbrook disappeared before The Undertaker Case. Months before Cornsilk was blown up in Jackson. We know Cornsilk’s intentions are to wreak revenge on those he believes wronged him. Where does Westbrook fit into all that?”
“And you’re asking me? You know more about The Undertaker and Cornsilk than anyone, Gabe. What if Cornsilk knew Westbrook previously and was settling an old score?”
“I guess.” But it didn’t feel right. My
Uh-Oh Radar
was picking up ghosts and sounding a silent alarm.
I was about to air more doubts when the room phone rang.
Rae looked at me. I looked at Rae.
The last time I’d been in a hotel room with the phone ringing unexpectedly it had turned out to be a serial killer on the other end of the line.
I pressed the receiver to my ear.
“Hello? Agents? You guys there?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Danny, on the front desk. Listen, there’s something you guys should know. Mr. Westbrook rented out a safe deposit box. I have a key, if you’re interested.”
We returned to the lobby. I’d noticed the safe deposit boxes in the back office – a row of six gray metal compartment lockboxes, like the kind used to take mail deposits in apartment blocks – but hadn’t thought anything of it.
“I’d forgotten all about it,” the kid said as he went to open the box with a master key.
I took it from him and shooed him outside. Waited for him and his disappointment to disappear before levering open the metal door. “No saying there’s anything in here.”
But there was.
Not Westbrook’s wallet. Not his passport or his cell phone.
It looked like a clear plastic envelope with something like a postcard tucked inside.
I reached in, held it by a corner, and slowly pulled it out.
The white rectangle of card had handwritten words on it. Faded black ink. Even fainter, the printed word Kodak running in repeat rows diagonally.
“What is it?” Rae asked over my shoulder.
“Looks like an old photograph.”
Curious, I turned it over.
And that’s when the day went from disaster to devastation.
___________________________
The conscious mind is slave to the body. We think we are in control of our physicality. That our thoughts influence the nervous system. That we pull the strings. We are wrong. Dead wrong. Consciousness is a non-paying passenger. It is the unconscious mind which commands the body. For most of the time, it is content to let the consciousness believe it has the wheel. But when survival comes into play, when that fight or flight instinct overrides all logic, the conscious mind is told to buckle up and shut up.
My body reacted automatically. Muscles expanding like the pistons in a steam engine. Lungs inflating. Heart squirting richly oxygenated blood.
Nothing I could do about it.
My unconscious mind was in overdrive. I clung on as my legs backpedaled, turned and rushed me out of the office. Distantly, I was aware of Rae tagging along behind, trying to grab me by the arm. Trying to slow me down. I heard her voice asking:
what was wrong?; where was I going?; what was happening?; why wouldn’t I stop and speak to her?
Impossible to say anything.
Not because I was tongue-tied – which I was, without doubt – but because speaking it out loud would be worse than saying Candyman five times in front of a mirror.
Verbalizing it would make it real.
And making it real would be . . .
final
.
Suddenly, I needed air; I was suffocating!
My cement-filled legs carried me down the side of the hotel and into the small parking lot. I was oblivious to the cold. Shielded by superheated blood. Oblivious to the other cops staring at me like I was buck naked and foaming at the gills. From my faraway perch, I saw my hands brace themselves against the hood of a pickup. Clung on as my body folded at the waist. Winced as a geyser of sour black coffee gushed up my throat and splashed over the snowy asphalt.
Barely enough time to grab a scalding breath before another rush of acidic bile drilled through my nostrils.
___________________________
In over thirty years of adult life, I could only remember ever feeling this way once before: on discovering Hope, my beloved wife, bound with piano wire to the master bed in our Alhambra home, bleeding to death at the hands of a cold-blooded killer. The cavalcade of conflicting emotions had hit me like a cannonball and had killed my hope in more ways than one.
This was on a par.
Emotionally unfathomable.
One of those life-altering moments where the universe sucks itself into a finite dot and crushes you out of existence.
I spat out acid and came clattering back into my body with a bang. Vision pulsating. Discordant drums pounding out a death dirge in my ears. With a shaking hand, I wiped goo from my lips and forced freezing air into boil-in-the-bag lungs.
Reality was shaking at its foundations. An emotional earthquake. Vibrating from the core outward. Like the Death Star moments before it exploded.
I looked up to see Rae, standing a few feet away, a desperate look of heartfelt concern pushing back her perplexity.
“I need to go back to Akhiok,” I gasped.
She went to protest. I raised a wobbly hand, doubled over again and gagged up a mouthful of yellow goop. Abdominal muscles squeezing the life out of me. Everything straining.
“Gabe . . .”
I straightened. The world spun, then clamped down.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
She grabbed me by the arms. “Then level with me. What’s happing here? You’re scaring the living crap out of me. One moment you’re fine, the next it’s like you’ve got the plague.”
I shook her loose, “Rae, I have to do this. Don’t try and stop me.” I pushed past her, past a pair of gawking cops.
She rushed in front, blocking my way. She had demons in her eyes. “Dammit, Gabe. We’re supposed to be a partnership here. Team Tennessee, remember? You can’t just go hightailing it on a whim. Not without first telling me what’s got you shaking like a hound dog trying to shit a peach pit.”
I sidestepped her and continued toward the street.
“We’re not done talking this through just yet!” she called.
I hit the sidewalk, turned right and carried on walking. Didn’t look back. All I could think about was Akhiok.
“Gabe!”
I was numb. Rae’s pleas rebounding off my icy shell like bullets against Superman’s chest.
“At least take your coat,” she shouted. “You’ll freeze to death out there!”
Better than being burned to death.
I flagged down a passing police cruiser and fell inside.
___________________________
Absently, his blunt fingers sought out the scar on the side of his face. He studied his mutilation in the grubby restroom mirror, recollecting how he’d come by it and whose fault it was he’d come by it. The thickened skin acted as a permanent visible record of his interaction with his archenemy. You could say, revulsion etched into his face.
He’d considered cosmetic surgery.
Several esteemed surgeons had recommended this or that. A skin graft from here to cover this bit there. Stem cells to regenerate degenerated flesh. Smoke and mirrors.
He’d opted for none.
The scar was an indelible tattoo.
A reminder of a debt unpaid.
Soon to be collected.
He caressed it with his blunt fingertips.
There was no sensation of feeling on the surface, but he could feel it deep down.
And it felt like hate.
___________________________
The floatplane bumped and rocked on switchback thermals. Another death-defying flight. I was too dazed to worry about it falling out of the sky. If it did, it would be a blessing.
Through pulsing eyes, I watched mist-shrouded mountains slip by. Shadows lengthening as daylight faded rapidly in our wake.
The days were short here in wintry Alaska. Blink and they were gone. The pilot had agreed to fly me to Akhiok on the proviso he’d turn around and fly home the moment he dropped me off. Nightfall was swiftly approaching. No choice but to spend the rest of the day in Akhiok.
My cell had rung continually for the past fifteen minutes. I’d switched it to silent mode.
Leaving Rae in the dark was cruel. Leaving her to oversee the clean-up at the Kodiak Inn was irresponsible. Leaving her at all was insensitive, period. But right now none of it made one iota of difference. I wasn’t in control.
Sure, Rae didn’t deserve my abandoning her. I knew that. She certainly didn’t deserve my sealed lips and mulish attitude. Nothing I could do. My hindbrain was calling the shots. This non-paying passenger had hitched a ride on a runaway train and there was no stopping it even if I wanted to.
And, so help me God, I didn’t want to.