The drive uptown in her black Ford Taurus was grueling and the FDR crawled all the way to the RFK Bridge before mercifully thinning a bit. Her head had cleared but she still had no idea what had happened the night before, almost from the moment she had entered that club. There would be some follow up due on last night. She had spent the forty-minute drive going back and forth, thinking about last night and thinking about Chris. She had wanted to plan every detail of her talk with him, lay out every expectation and make clear all the limits of his participation. But instead, she went out. So now she would do what she always did, and did so well, make it up as she went along. She gave herself silent credit for that, thinking it was one of her best qualities, the ability to think on her feet.
She exited at East 135th Street, and looped her car back around to the northbound entrance ramp and pulled to the zebra-striped shoulder. She saw the body there, stretched out from the trestle and unmoving, its head was hidden from view. It was lying on its right side, facing the road as though watching it for some sign of redemption, some hope of salvation. It had to be Chris.
There was no covering on him, no blanket of newspapers or cardboard despite the cool morning air. She had a moment of panic, shallow breathing, goose bumps on her arms and the small hairs on the back of her neck tingling, thinking the motionless body was lifeless as well, something had gotten it in the night. She would walk over and see that the head behind the trestle was a mangled mess of blood and brains and broken skull bones. Or maybe the head would just be gone. Agent Watson took a deep breath and opened her door.
There was a steady flow of traffic passing by as she made her way slowly and cautiously to the body. When she reached the point where she could see the head, she let out the breath that she hadn’t even realized she was holding. The sleeping face was not peaceful, his forehead was creased, and his jaw was moving from side to side, he was grinding his teeth. She stood over him and stooped down to gently wake him just as his body convulsed and his two hands came together in one big fist. “Chris? Chris?” she said, softly but loud enough to be heard above the traffic going by overhead. “Chris, wake up,” and she gave his shoulder a push.
Chapter XLIV
He had been due to check out today, but it was now just past five in the evening and he had not surfaced. The “Do Not Disturb,” was on the door but still, was he staying another night? He couldn’t be. Max Gentry had been a fixture at The Denver Regency for six years, a model employee. He had lots of famous guests and always knew the right thing to do. In fact, he had managed to network some pretty significant tips through the years, legendary ones even. The problem was that this time, he had no idea what to do. He looked the part of the up and coming corporate executive with his clean-shaven face and his short-cropped jet-black hair. He was a fit and trim gym rat.
Technically he was in charge, although none of the hotel staff paid him any deference. Mary was on vacation the whole week and when she was gone, he was the Assistant Manager with the most seniority. If it were any room other than the Aspen Suite, he would just let it be, let it go, let the guy sleep. He did play Red Rocks last night and who knows what time he got back here but unfortunately the room was booked for tonight and the guy who booked it was a local politician who was having a fundraiser there at eight tonight. Max was running out of time to turn the room over. He had already called the room a dozen times without so much as a groggy hello from the other side.
He paced back and forth behind the front desk, thinking over all the options in his head. There was only one thing to do, go in and wake him up. There, he’d done it, made the executive decision. He reached for the radio on the counter, pressed the button and spoke. “Luisa, please go into the Aspen and wake Mr. Vale up. Knock loudly and speak loudly all the way through the process. Understand?” The quiet, heavily accented reply came immediately; “Jes, Max.” Max, she calls me, he thought, geez, not even Mr. Max. He needed to work on his image.
It was less than five minutes later when a scream came over the radio that echoed through the lobby like they were butchering live animals somewhere in the hotel: A scream that seemed to go on and on and on.
Chapter XLV
He opened his eyes and they were stabbed by the sun. He closed them quickly and then opened them again when the orange glow faded through his lids as a shadow was thrown over his face. She looked ethereal standing over him, her head eclipsing the sun, it looked to be a halo one moment, a fiery mane the next. He couldn’t see the details of her face, but he knew it was her. A day late but her, the hint of a smile welcomed her back. “I’m up,” he said, “stop shouting.”
He sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes with the open palms of his two hands. “What took you so long?” he asked.
She had a quizzical look on her face, but her smile was warm, welcoming. “What the hell happened to you?”
Forgetting for a moment how different he looked from the last time she saw him, he misconstrued her question. “What do you mean? Was I supposed to meet you somewhere else?”
“No, no, the beard, the haircut, you look great, like a different person,” she said.
Chris felt the slight blush coming, just a little reddening of his cheeks and the tops of his ears. “Thanks. I figured if I was gonna be hanging out with you I had to clean up my act a little,” he said, and that hint of a smile was now blatantly shouting. She offered her hand to help him up and he took it. The touch of her hand was cool and soft, and it fluttered his heart a moment. He looked in her eyes. She pulled strong and resolutely, and he was almost yanked to his feet. They stood there a moment close enough to feel each other’s breath, their bodies inches apart and their eyes locked. What the fuck is this? He thought.
A look of confusion and weakness ran across her face and she quickly turned her back and walked a few feet away. “I was thinking we should head out right away, will it take you long to get ready?”
Was she feeling what I was just feeling? He wondered. “Five minutes,” he said with the glee of a child who was just told they were going to Disneyworld.
“Chris,” she turned back around to face him, “this is just… you’re just a consultant, we’re clear on that right? You’re not FBI, you’re not a cop, you’re a civilian, a civilian consultant.”
“Right,” he said, eager to agree with anything she said, just to stay on the team, stay on task.
“Any heavy lifting is mine, all mine. It might be hard, but any shit comes down and you melt into the scenery. If anything happened to you, I’d not only lose my job, I’d get locked away.”
“You got it,” he said, with the same, robotic conciliation.
“Good, don’t just blow smoke up my skirt Chris, you need to mean it.”
“I swear, I’m not blowing anything up your skirt,” he said, automatically glancing down at her legs. As the words escaped his mouth he felt the red returning to his face, he smiled and quickly turned away, so she wouldn’t see.
“I’ll be in the car,” Kimberly said and walked away.
Chris went to his hole in the wall and retrieved his backpack. He stuffed three days’ worth of clothes in there along with his iPad, ID, and a few personal grooming items. All of it buried the real necessities on the bottom of the bag. He carried it loosely by his side as he walked to the car and put it on the floor next to him when he got in. Without saying a word Special Agent Kimberly Watson put the Ford in drive, signaled and pulled onto the on-ramp for the northbound FDR Drive. It was just past ten on Friday morning and Waze said they would get to the Dells at two in the morning, Saturday: Long drive but she’d done worse.
As they crossed the Georg Washington Bridge, the view of Manhattan was breathtaking. The air was clear, and the sun was strong, and the city’s vibrant colors looked like HD. The windows in the car were down and the breeze blowing in took Chris back twenty-five years to his last fateful road trip. Somewhere back in that city a boy was starting his day, one of more than 3,000 days he had started without his mother or f
ather. All of it, all of what happened to the boy traced back to that last road trip. He stared out the window, not even seeing the city now, his mind had gone somewhere else. He thought about the dreams he had, the life he and Kelly spent countless nights planning in the darkness as they lay side by side in their bed with their bodies twisted around each other.
He thought of the day that Connor was born. A light snow sprinkled the ground as he left the hospital, his wife, and child still inside. It was the happiest day of his life. All the while, through all the plans and all the love he neglected to figure It in. He foolishly thought he had some semblance of control over his family’s destiny, that somehow, he could protect them. The strength of his spirit didn’t account for the weakness of his flesh. The forces lining up against him were far greater than he had allowed himself to see. He pursued a path like a blindfolded man driving on a superhighway. He had to crash sooner or later, most likely sooner.
The realization that it was all his fault, that he should have seen what was inevitably coming once he crossed it, drove the dagger deeper into his heart and twisted it, side to side, over and over. Tears welled in his eyes and although he fought them back, they leaked out. He kept his face turned to the window, so she wouldn’t see, but his reflection showed the pain and she must have seen that. She reached a hand out and touched his shoulder. It warmed him where she touched, it felt good. She didn’t say anything, she just kept that hand there until he stopped crying, wiped his eyes, and turned his gaze out the windshield. Then she withdrew it.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” he answered.
“Music?”
“Sure.”
* * * * *
Kimberly turned the radio on and selected her favorite Sirius channel. The song playing was one she had not heard before, but liked.
“In a time I don’t remember, in a war he can’t forget” He cried, “Forgive me for what I’ve done there, cause I never meant the things I did”
Outside their cocoon, the sun brilliantly lit the tops of the rocky crags that rose like giant sentries from the depths of the Delaware river below, as they left New Jersey and penetrated Water Gap into Pennsylvania. She knew this was crazy but her gut, her instinct that she always won with told her it was good. She did crazy, she’d always done crazy, no sense stopping now.
Chapter XLVI
The body was warm, that was how he liked it best. If they hunted together with a lead, that was usually the case. If the lead was any good that is. This one was too new to tell but he thought the boy showed promise. At seventeen, he had already willingly sacrificed his girlfriend. And not for a big gain, just a little promise, he wanted to go to Yale. His father had gone to Yale and his mother’s father had gone to Yale. But his grades and his SAT scores were not leaning in that direction. So, a chance meeting with an SAT tutor had developed into the kind of relationship where an offer could be made. The Cleaner baited the hook and the boy bit, hard. A nearly perfect score on his October test would not be a problem and it would be enough, with the legacy consideration, to get him in.
The look on the girl’s face when she realized what was coming, what the boy had done, was almost enough, but the feeding had to happen, so…Of course, the boy would have other things to do, other concessions he would have to make and sooner or later he would have to turn one way or the other. It was never a sure thing, he’d been surprised a few times. The rock star, however, no surprise: He had dived into the deep water from the moment the starting gun fired. The last one, also no surprise, two feedings and he couldn’t take it anymore. He’d had a change of heart, there are no changes of heart with The One, of course. And then there was that banker guy, his role was easy, they thought, just a backup plan making feeder babies with the right DNA. But he turned back. And now, now he was coming for them, ha…ha…ha.
It always amazed him how different the types of blood were. Yes, of course, the younger ones were sweeter, and the country ones were less complex than the city ones but even within those generalities, there were startling differences. One curious fact, he thought, was that race did not play a part. There was no difference in the blood of any races apart from the differences that existed in general. But here, this lovely creature they were enjoying had been a country girl and her taste was earthy and root-like. The way his cursed mother used to cook all those years ago. But she had a complexity that was usually reserved for the city girls, how curious.
He picked his head up from her face, there was something about feeding on the face that he thought was especially violating, with dark red blood smearing his lips and cheeks and dripping down his chin, he looked for The One. The One was just finishing a leg and looking very content, young and strong and satiated. The blood mixed with its fur and its eyes were nowhere to be found, rolled back up in its head in a state of utter bliss. The Cleaner, as he thought of himself, was certain this would be their last feast, the last time they fed together. He knew what was coming and accepted his fate. He understood his place in the order and what the ultimate goal was, protect The One.
They were far from the place where the challenge would come, they had travel to do but travel with The One was unlike any other type of travel. It was mind travel that translated to physical movement. The toll was on the mind and not the body. At his advanced state, there was a possibility that he would not survive the journey, but he thought he would. The One had almost guaranteed he would be needed one more time. He hoped he was up to the challenge.
It had taken them almost no time at all and there was nothing but bone and sinew and gristle. After scraping a femur across his teeth to get the last scraps he snapped it like a piece of kindling. The marrow inside was rejuvenating, regenerating and restorative. The problem was the longer he lived, the shorter the effects lasted. Right now, he wished the challenge would come tonight but he knew there was a journey between now and then. Today, he snapped bones effortlessly but soon he would not be able to snap even the weakest piece of kindling. His time had come and gone and yet he lived, there must be a reason. He had the yearning of a boy tonight, he wondered would it last.
Chapter XLVII
It had taken them nearly six hours to drive through New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Four hundred miles of near silent passage save the music. They had briefly discussed stopping for lunch but collectively decided to push on. A dozen times Kimberly started to speak but decided her thoughts were unclear and her mouths interpretation of them would not be a good one. She wanted to know more about this man, dive deeper into the details of his life, the business side, and the personal side. He had given her the broad view the first time they met but it was time for more. She needed to know everything he knew about the dog and the woman, and how he knew it. That was the business side.
On the other side, the personal side, she needed to know what kept him going, how a man gets over the murder of his wife, what makes him decide to abandon his only child. She needed to know that this was not just revenge, that this was what she thought it was, a battle against an evil that couldn’t be defined using normal lines of reason and acknowledged theories of life on earth. This, she thought, was Harry vs. Voldemort, Superman vs. Lex Luthor, God vs. Satan. She glanced his way from time to time, pretense of checking her side view mirror. He looked so far away. She wanted to say the right words but she wasn’t any good at this, this isn’t what she did. The thinking, the planning, the mission, the conflict, the battle, those are the things she did, what she was good at. Personal relationships were not her strong suit, they weren’t her suit at all.
At just before six, they were approaching Youngstown and low on gas so she took the next exit and headed for the nearest service area. There was a Dunkin Donuts and a Subway inside, so they agreed to grab a bite and some coffee and eat on the road. Chris stayed in the car while Kimberly got out and filled the tank. When she was done, she pulled forward into a spot and they went inside. She was going for Dunkin and he was headed to Subway when she saw it out of t
he corner of her eye. It didn’t register at first and she continued walking while her brain processed what it had just seen and then a sledgehammer swung and hit her in the face. Stunned, she stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind her bumped right into her back. While he was apologizing profusely, she walked dazedly back in the direction of the shock, without hearing a word he said.
She reached for the newspaper on the top shelf of the wire rack. The headline of The Columbus Dispatch, in three-inch-high letters, said, “Rock Star Dead in Love Triangle Massacre!” Without even seeing a name, she knew who it was. Sweat began to trickle under her arms and her breathing was shallow and thin. As a child, she had asthma which she seemed to have outgrown, but boy did she wish she had an inhaler in her pocket. She sat down on the floor right where she stood and began reading the story.
August 18 – Denver, CO.
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