The Subway

by Dustin Stevens

  Having never thought much on the matter, Davis would have assumed that when it did, one of two things happened. Either the Sheriff handled it personally, or they called in a detective team from one of the neighboring cities.

  Unsure if Charbonneau even attempted the latter, she was certain he had never considered the former, tossing it her direction within minutes of arriving.

  If it could even be argued that that was what had happened, her boss seeming to have a much different memory of things than she did.

  Stepping up to the fridge, she jerked the door open, letting the cool air rush over her body. Raising her face to the ceiling, she tugged her uniform shirt out of the waistband of her pants, not bothering to unbutton it before pulling the canvas material up over her head.

  In the wake of the sweaty shirt, the air was mercifully cool, Davis staying in place as she reached out, fumbling for a bottle of water.

  With eyes closed, she twisted the top off, letting a third of the bottle slide back her throat, feeling it pass down into her chest.

  One of the few moments of relief she’d had all day.

  It was short-lived, the buzz of her phone pulling her back to the fore.

  Still standing with her face angled up, a low groan rolled from Davis, the feeling of dread she’d first had when Tanner called a day earlier having grown exponentially.

  Whether or not the case getting turfed to her was some sort of rookie punishment or something much more sadistic, she didn’t have a clue.

  What she did know was that Charbonneau always had reasons for his actions, this one likely being that he needed a scapegoat should things go sideways.

  Heaven forbid anything ever be his fault.

  “Davis,” she responded, leaving the fridge door open, her eyes still closed as she stood, the cool air abating slightly.

  “Hi, this is Joe Bridger returning, well, a whole ton of phone calls to this number.”

  Snapping her eyes open, Davis reached out and flung the door shut, hearing bottles of condiments rattling around inside. Without even looking, she knew what they were, the shelves on the door and the water she was drinking comprising eighty percent of the food she had in the house at any given moment.

  “Yes,” she said, turning and resting her bottom against the counter, “thanks for getting back to me. My name is Deputy Talula Davis with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department.”

  In her assorted attempts earlier to make contact, she had opted not to leave a message, wanting to deliver the news personally, if for no other reason than to gauge any response that might accompany it.

  Call her crazy, but those sorts of things mattered.

  In response to her identifying herself, Bridger let out a long sigh, his voice taking on a resigned tone. “Was it those damn kids again?”

  Her mouth already open to respond, Davis paused, her eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh,” Bridge replied, another sigh plainly audible, “You know how it is when you have a property that sits empty a fair bit of the time. Word gets around with the local kids, they start using it as a hangout.”

  “Huh,” Davis said, having not given a great deal of thought to the arrangement, “so you’ve had trouble there before?”

  “I wouldn’t say trouble,” Bridge replied. “It’s been a couple of years now, but for a while there, we had a group that liked to think of the place as their own personal playground.”

  The timeframe fit with why Davis had never heard anything, could even coincide with why Tanner had decided to kick it her way the day before. He recognized the addressed and assumed it was her turn to deal with it for a while.

  Though that would be giving the man more benefit of the doubt than he probably deserved.

  “I see,” Davis said. “And what sorts of things would go on there?”

  “The usual,” Bridge replied. “Drinking, fornicating, the occasional broken window or appliance. Nothing too bad, more of a nuisance than anything, having people that paid good money to rent your place call and say a party was going on there.”

  Nodding, Davis fought to process what she was hearing.

  None of it sounded like anything beyond some kids taking advantage of an opportunity to be a little rebellious. Certainly nowhere near the level of what happened here.

  “So, how bad was it?” Bridger asked.

  Pulling herself back to the conversation, seizing on his question, on the commentary he had given her prior, Davis paused, sorting out the best place to begin.

  “Mr. Bridger, you say you’re not from around here, but I see this is a local area code.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, seeming a bit puzzled by the statement. “We’re from there, were living there when I got the phone years and years ago. A while back my wife took ill, so we relocated down to Atlanta.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you,” Bridger replied. “It passed, God willing, but we decided to stick around here, be closer to services should we need them again. Decided to make the home into a rental.”

  Nodding in silence, Davis used her lower back to lever herself up from the counter. With the phone pressed to her ear, she walked across her kitchen to the sliding glass door, staring out at the patch of dead grass that was her backyard.

  “Mr. Bridger, does the name Jessup Lynch mean anything to you?”

  Chapter Thirty

  Regardless of the amount of adrenaline that had been keeping my body afloat for a solid day, if I didn’t take care of myself there was going to be a point when I simply flatlined. When that would be or what the circumstances might look like, I couldn’t be certain, knowing only that it would be ugly.

  Given the trip I’d made, the heat I was enduring, I needed to replenish. I needed to sleep.

  And I needed information.

  Things were still coming at me too fast, my mind fighting to process it all. I needed to press pause on the world for a moment, to get things in order, make sure I wasn’t running around half-cocked, walking into an ambush or setting the stage for something even worse later on.

  As Uncle Jep always used to tell me, a plan was useless, but planning was essential. A fan of the old warhorses, I think he might have mentioned Eisenhower having said it, though if that’s accurate I can’t quite be certain.

  I’ve had to endure a lot of generals sprouting crap like that over the years.

  The name of the motel was the Lakeside Inn and Suites, though on the walk up to my room I damned sure didn’t notice anything resembling a suite. Two stories tall, it was a long structure with doors on one side, windows facing toward the water on the opposite.

  Painted mud brown, it was meant to blend into the forest surroundings, a scheme that would have worked infinitely better had they not felled every tree on the lot in the process.

  That’s Tennessee for you.

  Armed with my two bags, I brought along just a couple of the souvenirs I had picked up in the bunker. The rest I managed to stow in the rear well where the spare tire was supposed to be, the wheel now the newest addition to the hole carved out in the woods.

  A bitch to get down there for sure, but worth it in the end.

  Not knowing exactly what the days ahead might hold, I was fairly certain I would be ready for it.

  Come what may.

  The only additional things to come with me were a sack of groceries from a Wal-Mart Supercenter out on the highway - bottled water and electrolyte powders and various prepackaged foods – and a new laptop I bought from the same place.

  Cheap as hell, the box basically confessed that it did little more than write emails and send them, but fortunately for me, that was about on par with what I needed.

  Simple internet searches, and lots of them.

  Requesting the top corner room, I climbed the stairs with my various items in tow, barricading myself in the room just before seven. Starting with the laptop, I tore open the packaging and set it to charging before stripping away
the soggy rags I wore.

  Putting the air conditioner on the lowest setting it had, I let the persistent rattle of the machine provide a soundtrack as I padded to the bathroom and climbed in the shower, scrubbing away the combination of airplane funk, sweat, and dirt. For more than ten minutes I watched as various shades of color swirled down the drain at my feet, allowing the water to lower my body temperature by several degrees before stepping out.

  With each passing moment, I could feel my grasp on consciousness starting to flag, my energy stores dipping, the effects of adrenaline seeping from my system.

  Using a threadbare towel, I wiped myself dry and remained in the nude, returning to the bed and bringing the laptop to life. After moving through a series of unnecessary steps to get the device up and operational, I signed into the motel’s wireless internet, working my way through the sack of supplies as I went.

  Beginning with the electrolytes, I buffeted them with protein bars and peanuts, letting my body feast on the needed salt and saturated fat.

  If my time in the service had taught me anything, it was that it was better to give your body more than it required now, never knowing what it might call for in the future.

  A small pile of wrappers formed on the nightstand as I worked, the sunlight fading, sparkling across the top of the lake outside my window, a thousand shimmering crystals throwing an orange glow on my exposed skin.

  Giving it no more mind than to pinch my eyes up tight to block it out, I kept my focus on the computer, very much aware of the truncated timetable I had before my energy petered out.

  Of the things that I had left behind in Portland, one of the only ones that I could say I would actually miss was my computer. A desktop model with enough processing power to run a small aircraft, it had been tailored well beyond my needs, operating my life in a virtual environment that was both quick and painless, the device now stowed in the trunk of my car parked at Portland International, should any marshals come looking in my apartment.

  The new one could best be described as slow and painful.

  Beginning with basic Google searches, it took me three times longer than necessary to determine that, as yet, no mention of Jessup Lynch disappearing, much less being dead, had turned up anywhere in Tennessee, Carolina, or even Georgia.

  Aside from that, only a single unidentified man in the region had been found recently, a twenty-something African American in Charlotte that police were suspecting was a result of gang activity.

  Definitely not what I was looking for.

  Getting through the various searches, I leaned back, letting out a long exhalation, my bare skin pressed against the headboard behind me.

  Every part of me wanted to believe that the lack of information could mean that he was okay. That he had just forgotten about our call, taken a long hunting or fishing trip, and would be back soon.

  The realistic part of me knew that was nothing but false hope. In six years, he hadn’t missed a single call. There was no way he wouldn’t figure out a way to route it to wherever he was.

  Hell, the number we used was from an area code in Maine, set up by bouncing it through a half-dozen countries so even the marshals listening in wouldn’t know who he was or where he was located.

  As far as they knew, it was the family of a buddy that passed in the service, friends I had made a promise to keep in touch with.

  Corny as hell, but damn if they didn’t jump at the chance to believe that one.

  For all that, at the end of the day, there was the chess piece, as sure a sign as any that he was gone.

  Leaning back, shifting my gaze toward the water, I considered the second possibility for why nothing was coming up in my searches, one that I had had an inkling of since leaving Portland but hoped to be able to sidestep.

  Thus far nothing had shown up because the powers that be hadn’t wanted it to.

  Which meant they were trying to keep something under wraps, something hidden that they knew might put the public in a state of panic.

  Something that had started exactly six years before.

  Reaching out, I closed the lid of the laptop. Without looking over, I slid it onto the nightstand, sending a shower of wrappers to the floor to make room. Pushing my bare backside down the rough sheets, I settled my head on the pillow, staring up at the textured ceiling above, allowing a single thought to play through my mind as I drifted off to sleep.

  I knew exactly who had killed Uncle Jep.

  And I also knew that I was the reason why.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The clock in the corner of Deputy Marshal Abby Lipski’s computer said it was fast approaching nine p.m., though there was no chance of her returning home anytime soon.

  A timeframe that couldn’t be measured in terms of hours, but rather days.

  An unknown stretch of time without seeing her husband, being there to help with her children, sleep in her bed, or even wear the clothes she wanted to. Instead, she was stuck with the go-bag in the corner of her office, the items put there nine months earlier with barely a passing thought to what was making it inside.

  All for an ungrateful ass named Tim Scarberry.

  The thought made her stomach turn, adding to the tension already knotted tight at the thought of the meeting she was about to have, just ninety seconds away from starting.

  With her desk chair turned sideways to her computer monitor, she sat with her fingers laced over her stomach, her chin pulled toward her neck. Eyes glazed over, she replayed the meeting with Scarberry back time after time, trying to pick out anything that might have tipped her off that he had one foot out the door.

  As best she could tell there was nothing, the man just as insolent as their prior meetings.

  The call, the message, had to have meant something.

  Down to the second, the screen beside her sprang to life, a video monitor appearing before her. A harsh sound echoed out through the speakers, the private marshal network conference system alerting her that a caller was on the other end of the line.

  As much as she really didn’t want to answer, to have the conversation she knew was about to take place, she knew that deflecting it, or even worse ignoring it, would only lead to something bad.

  Using the toe of her shoe, she turned to face the monitor square. Reaching out, she used her mouse to click on the button to accept the call.

  On cue, an image of West Coast Director Cyrus Knoth came up on screen, his camera zoomed in close enough so his face took up nearly the entire frame. With his arched eyebrows pulled in tight and his thin mustache, he looked almost like a caricature of an angry person.

  A visage that Lipski and colleagues had laughed about many times before.

  Just so long as it was always aimed at somebody else.

  “Good evening, Director Knoth.”

  “No, it is not!” the man spat, his voice much deeper than would be expected from someone with his countenance. “Not by a long damn shot. You know what would be a good evening?”

  Figuring the question was rhetorical, Lipski didn’t bother to reply, letting the Director have the floor.

  Second only to not answering at all, interrupting him would be a move she could ill afford at this point.

  “Me, home with my wife, eating dinner,” he finished. “Instead, I’m here trying to figure out how the hell one of my senior marshals messed up this badly!”

  It being only the third time Lipski had ever spoken to Knoth directly, she wasn’t sure exactly how he could deem her one of his marshals, but that too was a point she knew better than to get into.

  Peering back at her, Knoth fell silent. For a moment, there was nothing further from either side, the older man’s eyebrows eventually rising a quarter inch up his forehead. “Well?!”

  Prickly heat ran the length of Lipski’s spine, matching the clutching sensation in her stomach. Forcing in a bit of air, she nodded, launching straight into the story she had rehearsed in her head a dozen times throughout the evening.

 
In this telling, she chose to leave out the parts about her personal feelings on Scarberry, even her lack of sympathy for Knoth missing one dinner with his wife when she was about to be flying across the country from her family. Regurgitating only the most pertinent of details, she rallied through the call and disappearance, summarizing everything in less than two minutes.

  Thirty seconds better than her previous run through.

  Which meant her side commentary must have comprised a larger chunk of it than she realized.

  As she spoke, she saw the look on Knoth’s face only intensify, color rising into his cheeks, a shiny veneer coming to his skin, like the polished surface of an apple under bright light.

  Glancing to the side, he twisted his head slightly, showing his scalp through his thinning hair.

  “Remind me again how he was able to board a damn plane without anybody knowing it?”

  “Two years ago, his status was downgraded, sir. There was no reason to be tracking his movements.”

  “And you didn’t think the events of the call last night warranted tracking?” Knoth shot back, a snarl forming along with the last word.

  “There was no time,” Lipski replied. “I was made aware of the conversation first thing this morning, at which point we began looking into his whereabouts.”

  Pushing himself back from the camera, Lipski got a full shot of the suit and terrible tie he was wearing before he reappeared before her.

  “Jesus Christ, Marshal, what kind of operation are you running down there?”

  Feeling her own ire starting to rise, not appreciating what he was asking or the underlying insinuation it carried, Lipski peered back at the camera. Everything had been done by the book. WITSEC was not the Secret Service, and they both knew it.

  If a malcontent like Scarberry wanted to go offline, they only had to ask.

  The protection was for their benefit, it wasn’t a sentence.

  “You are aware that this agency has never lost a single person under their protection?” Knoth said, reciting the maxim that every marshall had heard more times than they cared to remember.