36: A Novel Read online

  Sirens could still be heard on the night air, but they were all behind us. At the moment, it didn’t sound like any of them were coming our way. I turned my head and blocked the view of Julie’s face when a plain, black Crown Victoria raced past. It was heading towards the apartments and was either a detective or maybe even the FBI. If it had a dash cam, I didn’t want our faces showing up in case someone decided to review the footage.

  “What about there?” Julie asked, pointing down and across the street.

  I looked, seeing a gaudy green and red neon sign advertising the Downey Motor Inn. I nodded and picked up the pace, reaching an intersection and impatiently waiting for the light to change so we could cross. It finally did, and we ran in the crosswalk, then a short distance to the motel’s parking lot.

  Slowing to a fast walk, I led her inside the small office that fronted the street. It was in dire need of a cleaning and airing out. Behind a chipped laminate counter, an immensely fat man sat watching a small, black and white TV. A cigarette was smoldering in an overflowing ashtray and there was a bluish haze hanging in the air. My eyes immediately began watering when we walked in.

  He looked up when a small bell jingled as the door opened, but didn’t shift his bulk. Releasing Julie’s hand, I stepped to the counter, glancing around and happy to not see any surveillance cameras.

  “Got a room?” I asked.

  “Got three,” he wheezed. “Eighty-nine a night. Plus tax.”

  I nodded and brought out my wallet. He grunted as he moved, placing a form on the counter in front of me.

  “Fill that out and I need ID and a credit card.”

  Opening my wallet, I pinched five, hundred dollar bills off the wad of cash and fanned them out on top of the form. His eyes immediately locked onto the money and lingered there for several moments.

  “Look,” I said, leaning close and lowering my voice. “I’m just looking for a place to have some fun for a while. Don’t want to leave a trail that my wife could find. Five hundred for twenty-four hours. Just between us guys.”

  I smiled a lascivious grin and tilted my head towards Julie as I spoke. He looked at her, then looked her up and down, pausing for a longer inspection of her legs. Looking at me, he leaned back and picked up the cigarette, placing it between his lips.

  “Thousand,” he said, eyes narrowed, watching me.

  “No,” I said, scooping up the cash and starting to turn away.

  I could imagine a married man shelling out a few hundred bucks for an unregistered room so he could get it on with a woman that wasn’t his wife. But a grand? No way. Not from someone that was willing to come to a place like this.

  That was too much, and would eventually make the clerk start thinking about who was really in one of his rooms and why they were willing to pay so much. I didn’t want his mind going there, especially since the events at the apartment complex were probably about to be splashed all over the news.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Julie, taking my time turning away, giving the man an opportunity to think about the cash that was about to walk out the door.

  “OK,” he said after I’d taken a couple of steps. “But I want you out by noon tomorrow. Can’t hide the room any longer than that.”

  I turned back and looked at him, like I was thinking it over. Julie must have realized what I was doing because she stepped forward and pressed herself against me, like a woman trying to convince her lover to do something.

  “Fine,” I said, putting the cash back on the counter.

  It disappeared, a large, brass key appearing where it had been.

  “108,” he said. “Around back. A little more private.”

  I nodded, picking up the key and starting to walk away. Julie brushed past me and stepped up to the counter, pointing at his pack of cigarettes.

  “That much money should also buy that,” she said.

  “Hundred bucks,” he leered at her.

  “Don’t be like that,” she said, pouting.

  He looked at her, then sighed and tossed the pack onto the counter. She snatched them up, reached across and grabbed a pack of matches from next to the ashtray and gave him a thousand-watt smile. He smiled back, and I doubted there was a heterosexual male that wouldn’t have responded to the smile she flashed.

  We pushed out into the fresh air and followed a cracked sidewalk around the end of the building. The back of the property was well lit, a small parking lot running the length of the structure. Half way down I found the room, unlocking the door and hustling Julie inside after I flipped on the lights.

  The room was about what I expected. A thin, queen sized mattress on an equally cheap set of box springs. It was covered with a faded comforter, several lumps beneath it at the head of the bed from well used pillows. A pair of battered tables framed the headboard, a digital clock resting on one, a beige phone on the other.

  A single, upholstered chair was next to the heavy curtains that covered the front window and a tall table on the wall opposite the bed supported a small television. No closet, and the bath was so tiny I’d have to turn sideways to shut the door.

  Julie went to the sink, unwrapped a flimsy paper cup and ran some water into it. Carrying it back into the room, she put it on one of the nightstands and sat down on the edge of the bed. With slightly shaking hands, she fished a cigarette out of the pack and lit it.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I asked in a quiet voice, not wanting to be heard through what I was almost certain would be paper thin walls.

  “Having a smoke,” she said after taking a deep drag. “It’s been an exciting evening and I’m a little on edge.”

  “That’s not what I meant. What are you doing here? With me? You just made yourself an accomplice. What the hell were you thinking?”

  She sat there and smoked the cigarette, looking at me through the haze that was quickly filling the small room. I wanted to open a window to vent the air, but didn’t like the thought of someone outside being able to hear our conversation.

  “You were about to get caught,” she finally said. “I didn’t start out to get involved. After you left my apartment, I came outside to see what was going on. Didn’t see anything at first, so I went out to the parking lot. The next thing I know, this naked guy was climbing down a ladder, then here you came. Ran him down and killed him.

  “Saw you dumping all your weapons and gear when you heard the sirens. Could tell you didn’t want to get caught, so I just reacted. Figured you’d draw a lot of scrutiny if you were by yourself. But a couple out for a stroll? They weren’t going to look too closely at us. At least not at first.”

  She finished the cigarette and dropped it into the water filled cup. Her hands were still trembling, and a moment later she lit another.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “You don’t know me. Why are you helping?

  “A little gratitude would be nice,” she said, sounding hurt.

  “I am grateful. But I’m also worried. If they haven’t already, those cops are going to figure out who you are. Then what? You want to go to jail?”

  I was angry with her. Didn’t understand why she’d go out on a limb like she had, and wasn’t happy that I was responsible for someone ruining their life.

  “OK, look,” she said, exhaling a plume of smoke. “I talked to that FBI agent. I get what you are and that you don’t want to get caught by the cops. My husband was a Green Beret. Most everything he did was classified and the last thing the chain of command would have wanted was for him to be caught by civilian authorities. I get it. I also get that you’d probably have been detained on the spot if I hadn’t been there.”

  “Then you understand that there’s people higher up the food chain that would have gotten me out. Cleaned up any record of my arrest,” I said.

  She nodded, slowly smoking the cigarette. Reaching up she pushed several strands of long, blonde hair behind her right ear.

  “You know, I heard that from Justin over and over. And you know what e
lse I heard?”

  I shook my head.

  “I heard about how much trouble guys that did get caught, or exposed, were in. You make that kind of mistake and you’re out. Reassigned to a desk or training brigade if your lucky. Forced retirement if you’re not. That would have ruined him, and, well… I just reacted without thinking.”

  Time stretched out. Her smoking and me standing there looking at her. Finishing the cigarette, she dropped it in the cup and reached for another.

  “Please,” I said, staying her hand. “I already can’t breathe. Can you wait a little bit?”

  She nodded and put the pack and matches back on the nightstand.

  “Thank you,” I said and she looked at me and nodded.

  “Sorry. I smoke when I’m scared.”

  “I didn’t mean for that. I meant for what you did. But I wish you hadn’t.”

  “You’d just better be what I think you are,” she said, watching my face as she spoke.

  “You guessed mostly right,” I said after a pause. “It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if I’d been caught, but it’s better that I wasn’t. Don’t yet know what’s going to happen to you.”

  “Whatever happens, it can’t be worse than what I’ve already been through,” she said in a sad voice.

  28

  I finally calmed enough to sit, lowering myself into the chair by the windows. The room was so small I could have reached out and touched Julie without stretching, but it felt like a better option than sitting on the same bed as her.

  “So what’s the plan?” She asked after several minutes of silence.

  “I don’t have one,” I said. “I’m being… extracted… in a few hours. Needed a place to lay low until then. Wasn’t expecting to have company.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said, a slight edge to her voice that sounded like her feelings were hurt.

  “Not what I was saying,” I said. “I’ll figure something out. I’m not going to leave you to take your chances with the cops.”

  She looked at me for a bit, then lit another cigarette. I almost protested, but settled for moving the chair as far away from the smoke as I could. It didn’t help.

  “Your husband,” I said, after getting settled on the far side of the room.

  “What about him?”

  “The way you talked about him. What happened?”

  She took a big drag and looked away, staring into space.

  “We met at Fort Campbell,” she said in a far off voice. “I was transiting through, on my way to Iraq. I’d just finished medic training and was scared and excited at the same time. Went into the NCO club for a drink and he knocked me off my feet. Literally. He was walking out, talking to someone behind him and just ran me over.

  “He felt so bad. Picked me up off the floor and when he realized I’d twisted my ankle as I fell, carried me to a booth. Bought me dinner and wrapped my ankle while we waited for the food. He was this great big, strapping Green Beret, and here he was tending to my little booboo.

  “We wound up talking half the night. Eight months later, I’m in Iraq and get this email from out of nowhere. He’s going on leave for a week, in Germany, and asked if I’d meet him there. At first I thought the idea was crazy. I didn’t know this guy. Why the hell would I go to Germany with him?

  “But for some reason I did. Flew into Ramstein a couple of weeks later and he was standing there waiting for me when I got off the plane. We went on a tour of beer halls for a week and had the time of our lives. Then it was back to the war and I didn’t see or hear from him for six months. I was upset, but understood he didn’t exactly have the kind of job that let him call or email at the end of the day.

  “When I did hear from him again, he was rotating home. My tour was up and we made plans to get together when we were both stateside. He was at Fort Campbell and I was at Benning in Georgia. We got together for a long weekend when I first got home, then pretty soon one of us was driving to see the other whenever there was a break.

  “Two months later, we got married. Three weeks after that, he headed back to Iraq for his next tour. I was a month behind him. We saw each other once in the next year, two weeks in Thailand. He told me all about what the Army had him doing. Probably much more than he should have.

  “We’d been back for ten days when my CO called me into his office. The chaplain was there with him. They told me I was a widow. Justin had been killed by a suicide bomber. A fucking Iraqi that had been vetted and cleared to work inside the wire where Justin was. The tango just walked into the mess tent and blew himself up, along with forty-eight soldiers.

  “So you ask why I got involved? Because of something you said back at my apartment. These fucking people aren’t going to stop until they kill all of us, or we kill all of them. And after losing Justin, I promised myself that if I ever had the opportunity to help a few of them meet Allah a little early, I’d take it. I guess this is my way of helping.”

  She looked over at me, tears glistening in her eyes. My heart went out to her. I’d lost a lot of buddies over there too, and knew exactly what she was feeling. Well, maybe not exactly. She’d lost a husband. But I knew the sense of loss. Could understand how it motivated someone to do something. To make a choice that maybe wasn’t in your best interest.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Three years ago,” she said with a sardonic laugh. “And you know what the worst part is?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m having trouble remembering his face. I’ve never told that to anyone.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never been the kind of person that’s good at comforting someone in pain. Wish I was, but I knew that if I tried to say something helpful it would probably come out awkward and clumsy. So I settled for telling her I was sorry for her loss. Again.

  Wiping her eyes, she lit another cigarette. Between the smoky haze and the maudlin mood, I needed fresh air. Badly. Standing, I moved to the window and carefully parted the curtains. Peering out at the parking lot, I didn’t see anyone moving.

  “Need some air,” I said, flipping the light switch off before opening the door.

  I stepped out, taking a deep breath for the first time since we’d walked into the room. A moment later, Julie joined me. I left the door open and didn’t move very far away. If I saw or heard anything, I was prepared to dash back inside.

  “Come up with any bright ideas?” She asked.

  “I’m going to call the FBI agent you talked to,” I nodded. “Tell him what’s going on and ask him to help you.”

  “He’s got that much juice?”

  “Yes,” I said. “At least I think so. Honestly, this is my first mission. I’ve been working with him for several months, but this is the first time I’ve been in the field and don’t really know how he’s going to react. Probably going to chew me a new one.”

  “Then maybe it’s not a good idea to call him,” she said.

  “Not much choice,” I said. “Besides. I’ll have to include you in my debrief. I’d rather take my lumps now and make sure you’re taken care of.”

  We stood there while she finished her smoke. The evening was waning. There was still the roar of traffic from the road on the other side of the building, but it felt like people were settling in for the night.

  Back in the room, I opened my pack and pulled out the iPad and the secure phone. Activating the tablet, the timer window popped up. Return to real time was in fifteen hours and eleven minutes.

  “What’s that?” She asked, looking over my shoulder.

  “Time to extraction,” I said.

  I may have already told her more than I should have, but I wasn’t about to start talking about time travel. Besides divulging secrets that would probably land me in more hot water than I could handle, she’d immediately decide I was deranged.

  Closing the iPad, I lifted the phone and powered it on. Time to call Johnson. I wasn’t looking forward to this conversation. While I waited for it to fin
ish booting and find a signal, Julie found the remote and turned on the TV. As soon as it came on, a news report was playing. Holding the handset, I stepped back and looked at the television screen.

  An off camera reporter was talking as the image slowly panned across the parking lot of the apartment complex. There were more cop cars than I’d ever seen in one place. Yellow police tape completely surrounded the entire area and it looked like all of the residents had been rousted and herded outside the perimeter of the crime scene. There was also a large contingent of men wearing suits and when one of them moved I spied the dull, gold badge on his belt that identified him as FBI.

  “…the FBI is on scene and a source who wants to remain anonymous has told me that this appears to be related to terrorism. I don’t have details to substantiate that statement, but based on the significant response and presence of federal authorities, the information seems accurate.

  “Recapping, a shootout between unknown subjects at this apartment building in Downey has left nine dead. The number of victims has been confirmed by the Downey Police Department. What we do know is that there are eight dead inside an apartment on the second floor,” the camera zoomed to a shot of the balcony, the emergency escape ladder still hanging from the railing. “And one additional dead just behind me in the parking lot.”

  The camera changed perspective, zooming in on a large group of evidence collection technicians huddled around the spot where I’d killed the terrorist leader. Several of the techs were wearing blue windbreakers with FBI emblazoned across the back in large, yellow letters.

  “A large quantity of military style assault weapons has been recovered from the parking lot, apparently adjacent to the body that was found. At this time, no other information has been provided by any of the agencies involved, but we’re very early in the investigation.”

  The reporter, a young, blonde woman with a perfect smile, continued to rattle on as the camera cut to a shot of her standing next to a police cruiser with roof lights flashing. She continued to repeat what she’d just said, putting it in a slightly different order without providing any new information. Her job was to keep talking, filling the time until something new was released by the authorities.