She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be

by J. D. Barker

  I leveled the gun on him. “Don’t.”

  He smiled at me. “The safety is on.”

  “Glocks don’t have safeties. Set the shotgun down, and take a step back.”

  The man had cut himself when he fell. Blood rolled down from his forehead into his eye. He ignored it, his grin widening. The shotgun continued to rise.

  I fired twice. Both rounds hit him in the gut. I tried to fire a third time, but the gun came up empty. I tossed it aside. The man looked down at the growing red spot on his white coat, then fell to his knees, the shotgun dropping beside him. I grabbed it.

  The bottle of whiskey sailed out the door of my room, past my head, and over the balcony, a flame trailing from the makeshift wick. It exploded on the roof of the Cadillac Escalade in the center of the parking lot, flames spreading over the SUV despite the rain. The man who had been on the phone jumped aside and disappeared from sight somewhere below.

  Stella ran past me toward the stairs, my backpack over her shoulder. “Come on!”

  I followed her down the steps, the shotgun leading.

  A third man in white was waiting at the base of the stairs, the barrel of a shotgun pointing out from under his white trench coat directly at me.

  Stella walked straight toward him, her pace quickening with each step. She tugged the glove off her right hand and reached for him. The man’s face went pale, and he swung the gun from me to her.

  A blast rang out.

  The shotgun bucked in my hand with the recoil, and the man flew back against the wall, then dropped to the ground.

  We ran toward the Jeep and jumped inside. As I threw the shotgun behind my seat and started the engine, Stella’s head swiveled, looking for others. One of the white cars, a Chevrolet Cavalier, was parked behind us, blocking our path. Instead of backing up out of the space, I put the Jeep into first and drove right over the concrete parking block, over the edge of the blacktop, and into the muddy field separating the Chestnut Motor Lodge from I-118. Behind us, the man we had first seen standing next to the Cadillac ran out from behind the safety of a Ford F-150 into the center of the lot, the phone still pressed to his ear, shouting over the rain.

  6

  In the early hours of August 9, Preacher sat on a bench in LA Union Station with a copy of the Los Angeles Times in his hand. He kept one eye on the newspaper and the other on the large man in the brown suit and funny little hat.

  He didn’t get the hat.

  He knew it was called a boater and made of straw, but what he didn’t get is why this man wore one. Aside from the occasional costume party, boaters hadn’t been in fashion since the late nineteenth century. You don’t steal two million dollars from the mob, then hang out in LA Union Station wearing a funny little hat. You disappear.

  The large man in the brown suit and the funny little hat would disappear, Preacher would see to that, but his destination would be radically different from whatever was printed on the ticket he clenched in his hand.

  Preacher didn’t much care for the people who hired him. None of them were up to his standards, but the Letto family always paid well, always paid on time, and provided him with referral business. Good word of mouth was everything in Preacher’s vocation. He was fond of Los Angeles and took most jobs that brought him here unless they fell into autumn or early spring—he wasn’t a fan of the Santa Anas. They played hell with his allergies.

  The large man in the brown suit and funny little hat was known as Lonny Caley, having changed his name from Elton Engelmann when he dodged the draft in 1972 and sidestepped the skirmish in southeast Asia for a lucrative career in money laundering—first for a series of corporations, then later for the Lettos. He did well for himself, until he decided to steal from them last week. That wasn’t one of his better decisions.

  Lonny Caley lumbered across the main concourse with his ticket in one hand and an overstuffed suitcase in the other and started toward the east concourse.

  Preacher followed, the Times folded and tucked under his arm. As he passed a bank of pay phones near baggage check, one began to ring. He ignored it and followed Caley into the east concourse hall, past a Subway and Starbucks.

  Caley leaned up against a wall, set down his bag, and scratched his chin.

  Another phone rang, inches from Preacher’s ear.

  He snatched up the receiver. “What?”

  “We found her.”

  “I don’t care,” Preacher said before hanging up the phone.

  The line rang again. So did the phone next to that one and the one after that.

  He answered the nearest phone again. The others went silent too. “I got the girl out of that house. We’re square. I’m done.”

  “You lost her. You let her go.”

  “The agreement was ‘get her out.’ You didn’t say anything about babysitting. I told you, I was done babysitting after the shit with the boy.”

  “You knew. You set us back.”

  “I’m not part of your agenda.”

  “You became part when you took the shot. When you ran.”

  Across the concourse, Caley picked up his bag and carried it into the men’s room.

  “Can’t talk now. I’m working.” He hung up the line and started for the bathroom.

  All the phones in LA Union Station began to ring at once, dozens, maybe a hundred, in a uniform shrill, metallic cry echoing over the marble.

  All around him, travelers began looking up from their newspapers, their books, their meals and coffee. They stared at nothing in particular; some cocked their heads, others smiled, while others frowned and glanced around nervously at the crowd, at the phones lining the walls and tucked into random corners. Preacher ignored the sound and pushed through the swinging door of the men’s room.

  Twelve stalls lined the wall on the right. The left housed a row of urinals with sinks at the back of the room. The floors were polished concrete, the walls covered in white subway tile. Three men stood at the urinals. Three of the stalls were closed. Beyond the bathroom’s only door, the telephones continued to ring.

  At the urinals, one of the men glanced at Preacher. “Is that the fire alarm?”

  Preacher nodded. “Someone set off a bomb on one of the east tracks.”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” the man said, finishing his business. He rushed out of the room. Preacher noted he didn’t wash his hands. The other two men finished at the urinals and did go to the sinks—one washed his hands hastily, the other took his time. Seasoned Angelenos weren’t rattled by much. The man dried his hands on the way to the door and used the paper towel to push it open before wading it up and dropping it in a trash can.

  Preacher stood at the front of the room until both men left. Then he withdrew his Walther PPK from his shoulder rig. He rarely engaged the safety because this particular weapon had a long trigger pull, which made misfires a near impossibility, particularly in practiced hands.

  He removed the glove from his left hand and pressed his palm against the first stall door.

  Caley wasn’t in there.

  He moved on to the next door and did the same.

  He found this one harder to read but quickly concluded that Caley wasn’t in there, either.

  Of course, Lonny Caley would use the last stall. Men hiding from something tended to go to the back of whatever room they happened to be in.

  The toilet in the first stall flushed. A moment later a man in his late sixties emerged. He started for the sinks, saw the gun in Preacher’s hand, then left instead. Preacher let him go. He’d be gone long before someone could summon help. As the bathroom door swung open, the shrill of the still ringing telephones filled the room, then muted as the door fell shut. When the second toilet flushed, Preacher hid his gun from the teenager who stepped out. The kid didn’t wash his hands, either—nasty, considering he didn’t have the excuse of an armed man standing between him and the sink.

  When the bathroom door swung shut on the boy and they were alone, Preacher again took out his gun and used th
e barrel to knock on the stall door.

  Caley’s nervous voice came from the other side. “How’d you find me?”

  Preacher didn’t answer.

  “I know who you are. In a strange way, I feel like I know you. Whenever you performed your services for the Lettos, I’m the guy who paid you. They work with three guys like you, but only one they’d trust to come after me. You’re the one they call Preacher, right?”

  Preacher didn’t reply.

  “They say you know things, like you’re psychic or some shit. When it comes to tracking someone, there’s nobody better. Why do they call you Preacher? I don’t get that. I can’t imagine you’re a religious man.”

  Preacher took two steps toward the sink.

  Six shots rang out, fired in quick succession from inside the toilet stall. The black pressboard splintered and rained out onto the concrete floor as bullet holes appeared in the front of the stall door.

  Caley’s gun clicked empty. “I missed you, didn’t I?”

  Preacher stepped to the door and kicked it in. Caley let out a squeal as it slammed into into him, then bounced back out. He was sitting on the toilet, his pants still around his ankles and the suitcase on the floor beside him. Caley had a hand to his nose, and blood oozed out between his fingers. His other hand held the empty revolver. He dropped it when he saw Preacher’s PPK.

  Caley nodded down at the suitcase. “It’s all there, an extra two hundred eighty thousand, too—money I saved up over the years. Take it. Keep it for yourself, take it back to them, I don’t care.” His voice sounded nasally. “Just…just, make it quick, okay?”

  Preacher holstered his gun, and the man’s eyes lit up.

  Preacher then placed his hands, one still gloved, the other not, on either side of Caley’s head, and with one swift twist, snapped the man’s neck. The man slumped forward, his flabby arms dropped to his sides. His eyes glossed over, and his tongue protruded slightly from the corner of his mouth.

  Preacher leaned him back against the wall, and when he was certain the large man wasn’t going to tumble over anytime soon, he backed out of the stall and pulled the broken door shut as best he could.

  With Lonny Caley’s suitcase in hand, he returned to the east concourse. The phones were still ringing. Crowds of onlookers stood around them, occasionally picking up one of the handsets, then hanging it back up again.

  He grabbed the nearest phone with his free hand. “I get the girl back and we’re done, got me?”

  There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “It’s not that simple anymore, Dalton.”

  “Why not?”

  “We think David found Cammie.”

  Preacher’s heart thumped. “Oh, hell.”

  All the phones stopped ringing then.

  7

  “You’ve got a phone call.”

  Fogel opened her eyes, then closed them again. The harsh fluorescent lights in the small cell the kind officers of the Fallon Police Department placed her in did nothing to help the relentless beating taking place behind her eyes. The pillow they provided wasn’t helping much either. The pillow felt like someone draped a rag over a bag of Legos and declared it head support. Twice during the night, she cast it aside in favor of the less lumpy mattress and metal frame of her borrowed bed.

  They hadn’t locked the cell door, she was thankful for that. She wasn’t under the illusion that she could pick up and leave, either. They made that very clear when they brought her in.

  Professional courtesy, she had been told. You’re intoxicated and in possession of a firearm. You broke the law. No reason to charge you and ruin your career, though. Cops carry. An honest mistake. Sleep it off, and we’ll take a SITREP in the morning.

  Fogel remembered staring at the officer as he said this, a kid of no more than nineteen who probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. The only thing holding up his uniform pants was his gun belt, and she suspected a pair of suspenders might be at work under his shirt but couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  Officer Mitchell Jun, his name tag said. Alone at the desk on the nightshift. A shit gig, she thought. Other than being too small to frighten anyone, what did you do to deserve such a shit gig?

  SITREP?

  She managed to repeat the word when he said it, but it came out slurred. Close enough for him to understand, though.

  Situation report, ma’am.

  Oh.

  We just call them “Situation Reports” back home in the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania, pencil boy.

  He ushered her to the cell at that point, to the thin mattress and the LEGO pillow where she closed her eyes and hoped to God the room would stop spinning before her dinner came back up.

  “Ma’am? The telephone?”

  Fogel turned her head toward the open bars, where Officer Mitchell Jun stood holding a corded phone, and she wondered if he could slip through those bars.

  Forcing her legs off the bed, she turned, sat up, and waited for her head to catch up. As she stood and crossed the six feet to the door, she realized she was barefoot, spotted her shoes next to the bed, nearly went back for them, then changed her mind. All of these thoughts sloshed through her head in a vat of half-set Jell-O, her brain making the connections but operating at 40 percent capacity.

  Fogel took the receiver and held it about a half inch from her ear. She was present enough to think about the other ears that probably touched that phone and knew she didn’t want to share biology with any of them. “Hello?”

  “How’s the head, Fogel?”

  “Stack? How did you know I was here?”

  “You called me last night. You don’t remember that?”

  Nope.

  “Oh yeah, right,” she said.

  “You said the little shit tricked you. Although you sounded more like, ‘thal ittal shizricked mah.’ I’ve been there, though. Lucky for you, I speak the lingo. When you get back home, maybe I’ll teach you to drink so your talk can match your walk.”

  Fogel heard him chuckle at his own joke. “Now what?” she said.

  “Wait for him to pull out more cash, I suppose. We got nothing else.”

  “Any bodies?” Fogel had lowered her voice as she asked the question, but Officer Jun heard her anyway. His eyes perked up.

  “Nothing here. But we didn’t suspect one, did we?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Get a room somewhere close. Sit tight for a day or two. If we lose him, come home. I think that’s the plan,” Stack said.

  Fogel agreed with him, said good-bye, and handed the phone back to Officer Jun.

  He set the phone down on a desk to the right of the station’s four cells. “I need to run a camera out to the Chestnut. I can give you a ride back to your car, if you don’t mind making a quick stop.”

  “The Chestnut?”

  “It’s a motor lodge off 118. It’s on the way out to Mike’s.”

  Fogel nodded and wished she hadn’t.

  Officer Jun produced a bottle of Advil from his pocket and handed it to her with a weak smile.

  The Chestnut Motor Lodge was a real dump. If not for the naval base, they were lucky if tourists stopped here for gas. The owners of the Chestnut tried to sell, couldn’t, and eventually decided to let the motel die a slow death.

  “That’s all just fine by us,” Officer Jun said. “The prostitutes need somewhere to bring their Johns. At least this place keeps the riffraff outside the city limits.”

  By the looks of things, the riffraff had been busy last night.

  Officer Jun’s coworkers had the entire parking lot taped off along with the west end of the building. The remains of a large SUV smoldered at the center of the lot and several cars were taped off, too.

  “What happened here?”

  “Someone vandalized every white car in the parking lot, even set that one on fire. We had reports of shots fired. They found some blood in the stairwell, but no victim.” He reached across the car, popped open the glove box, and rummaged around inside. He
found a couple boxes of 35mm film, checked the label, then closed the glove box. With his free hand, he scooped up the camera at his feet. “We think whoever did this started up at Mike’s last night—we got nine more damaged cars up there—sliced up the tires, only the white ones, though. Got a thing for that color. Some special kind of crazy, I suppose. Wait here—”

  Officer Jun shot out the door toward a group of officers near the far west stairs.

  How many white cars did you see in the parking lot?

  Thatch had been obsessed. Why would he disable them? Would he seriously set one on fire?

  Fogel opened the door and stood beside the car. Jun’s back was to her, lost in some animated conversation. On the opposite end of the building, near the motel office, a detective in plainclothes was questioning a woman with a name tag pinned to her lapel, maybe the manager or some kind of employee. Several times, she pointed up at an open door on the second floor, then turned back to the detective.

  Officer Jun glanced back at her.

  Fogel waved.

  When he turned back to the other officers, she bolted across the parking lot to the center staircase and took them two at a time. On the second floor, she followed the sidewalk around to the open door. There was a bloodstain on the concrete just outside the door. The earlier rain had partially washed it away—no evidence tag, no crime-scene tape. They hadn’t gotten up here yet.

  An angry voice shouted up at her from the ground floor. She couldn’t make out the words.

  She didn’t have much time.

  Fogel carefully stepped over the stain into the room.

  Typical rundown motel room. She’d seen hundreds over the course of her career. A ratty bed, heavy drapes, shag carpet. Something had happened here, though. The room felt off. She spotted a bottle cap on the floor, otherwise, nothing appeared out of place. She quickly crossed to the bathroom—a towel on the floor, otherwise normal. Nothing on the counter around the sink.

  A matchbook on the floor near the bed.

  A Bible in one of the drawers.