Sallow City

by Jim Heskett

“I’m at the waiting area parking lot. I can be at the baggage claim in ten minutes.”

  “Okay, I’m walking that way now.”

  Jeremy paused. “Well?”

  “Yes, he was on the flight. Micah Reed is not the John Doe in the Flint morgue.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Micah stood in the parking garage below his downtown Denver condo, staring at the voicemail notification his phone was practically begging him to check. The little red 2 in the corner of the app looked terribly sad. Press me press me press me.

  At one point during his camping trip in Yosemite, as he stood on a hiking trail that faced the vast Half Dome rock, he paused to sip from his Nalgene and catch his breath. At that moment, awed by the sheer scope of nature, he decided to give up technology. Then, he remembered television and video games and having all the content of the world at the touch of a button. Hard to give that up.

  So Micah tapped the phone app to check his voicemail and begin his return to the real world. The message started playing, and his mouth immediately dropped open. He was listening to a scattered and urgent voicemail from Frank, his boss and AA sponsor.

  “Micah, if you get this, I don’t know what to do,” Frank said. His tone was harsh, near crying. “I’m in a morgue in Flint, staring at a John Doe, who looks just like you. But it can’t be you because you’re in California, right? I was trying to remember if you had a birthmark or scar or something, but I don’t know any of that crap. Please call me as soon as you get this.”

  A body in a morgue?

  Micah let the phone drift from his ear. Felt a little chill run up his spine. Going from the rollercoaster of almost dying in a near-plane crash, to getting Olivia’s phone number, to this, he didn’t know what to think. He sat on the floor of the parking garage, next to his car.

  Then he dialed Frank.

  “Oh, Lord,” Frank said as soon as the call connected. “I knew you were still alive.”

  “I just got back to my place and listened to your message. I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

  “My sister works for the DOJ, in Missing and Unidentified Persons. You remember Anita, right?”

  “Sure. Last Christmas. She bought me socks.”

  Frank paused to cough. “She was doing random screenings and came across a body in Michigan tagged as John Doe. This person looks just like you, Micah. It’s eerie. Same hair and eyes and nose and everything.”

  The shock began to dissipate as Micah put some of the pieces together. Halfway across the country, a body had turned up in the morgue that looked exactly like him. A dead person. A John Doe. Someone had killed this nameless person, and it seemed unlikely that it could be a coincidence that this person looked exactly like Micah.

  What did it mean?

  The parking garage door opened and in strode a family of four. Two women holding hands, two small children tottering along behind them. The kids struggled to keep up with the grownups, who were practically jogging to a car. Micah didn’t recognize them. It was a big building with probably hundreds of residents Micah had never seen before.

  And there were hundreds of buildings in Denver just like this one. Thousands of cities across the world, and billions of people. But no two people were the same.

  An itch of an idea occurred to him. “Are you at the morgue right now?”

  “No. I’m at a motel nearby.”

  “Do you remember well enough how the body looked to tell if it’s possible he’s had plastic surgery?”

  “I know where you’re going with this. Now that I know it’s not you, that’s the only possibility that makes any sense. Unless you have a twin brother that I don’t know about.”

  “I have a brother, but he’s not my twin.”

  Micah watched the family hop into the car and peel out of their parking spot. “I want to see the body. I can be on a flight to Detroit in a couple hours. Tomorrow morning, at the latest. If they did this, Frank, I need to know about it.”

  “I know who you’re talking about when you say ‘they,’ and I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Frank said.

  “Why?”

  “Alright, kid, I’ll spell it out for you. Because, if someone killed a lookalike of you for something related to Velasquez’s Sinaloa cartel—to collect a price on your head or something like that—what do you think they’ll do if you show up in person and start digging around? You think the cartel or whoever did this would be happy to see you?”

  Micah chewed on his lower lip, ran through some possible rebuttals, but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t sound whiny. Frank was right.

  “It’s best if you stay in Denver. Sit this one out. Besides, someone should be at the office in case any work comes in.”

  “I get it, Frank.”

  “I’ll run over to the morgue and give you a call after. Check out marks for plastic surgery.”

  “Text me a picture.”

  Frank hesitated. “I’m not sure what good that will do. It’s like staring at a mirror image of you, but he’s all mangled and destroyed. It’s disturbing. One of the worst I’ve ever seen. Are you positive you want to see that?”

  “No, I guess not,” Micah said. They gave their goodbyes and Micah hung up. Stared at the empty spot where the family’s car had been. A little puddle of oil on the concrete.

  Then he checked his phone to find the next flight to Michigan.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Olivia and Jeremy sat in the rental car on 15th, gazing up at Micah’s condo building. Denver’s Cherry Creek rushed next to the street, with the massive REI building in the old train station across from that. This part of downtown seemed half brand new skyscraper condos comprised of glass and steel, and half aging buildings preserved in time.

  Olivia’s neck still pulsed from the tension of the flight fiasco. There wasn’t enough Ibuprofen in the world to return it to normal, and every tilt of her head reminded her of the pain. She still hadn’t made time to see a masseuse.

  “He’s probably not home,” Jeremy said.

  She traced a finger along her right eyebrow, smoothing it. “Doesn’t matter one way or the other. If he is inside, don’t let your guard down for a second. Micah Reed is a cold-blooded killer, and he’ll be on his home turf.”

  Jeremy sucked on his teeth. “Should we wait to be sure?”

  “No. If he’s gone, we poke around and see what we can find. If he’s here, then we’ll deal with him. It’s going to happen at some point.”

  He smiled at her from the passenger seat, then reached across and laid a palm on the back of her hand. She stared down at his hairy hand flesh.

  “Do you want to talk about the flight? I’m sure it was scary.”

  She slipped her hand out from underneath his. So relentless with these questions about the stupid flight. “No. I don’t want to talk about it. It happened, so whatever. We didn’t die. The plane landed. I’m sure I can find a way to join a class action to sue the crap out of the airline, so I can, at least, find a silver lining there. If I wanted to.”

  “I just thought…”

  “Not now, Jeremy.”

  He ducked his head like a shamed dog. She hated when he did that. He would pout, and make her feel guilty, and then she’d find herself apologizing by taking her clothes off in his hotel room later. And that was a habit she needed to break. She was supposed to be his boss, after all.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and then she pointed up at the condo building. “Can we just deal with this first, and then we’ll talk about that later?”

  “Sure, sure. You want me to bring the laptop?”

  “Might come in handy.”

  He popped open the briefcase on the floor and removed a 9mm, then screwed a noise suppressor onto the barrel. He slipped a laptop into a messenger bag and slung it over his shoulder. “I’m ready if you are.”

  Olivia checked the clip in her pistol and shoved it into a pocket inside her jacket. If she had to kill Micah, she wondered if she might feel a momen
t of hesitation since she’d experienced a genuine connection yesterday. She’d never had to eliminate anyone for whom she’d felt anything above contempt.

  A moment of hesitation might be all he needed.

  She nodded at Jeremy, and they left the car to cross the street. The condo had a lobby and what looked like a desk for a doorman or receptionist, but no one stood behind it now. She tilted her head at the elevators and Jeremy followed. The lobby smelled of fresh flowers, but she didn’t see any around. In a nice building like this, they probably pumped it straight through the air vents.

  “Should we access the garage and find out if he’s home first, so we can be sure?” Jeremy said.

  Olivia considered it. “No, because if we check it out, go upstairs and have to take him out, all we’ve done is increase our chances that we might leave a witness.”

  “Good point. I didn’t think of that.”

  They stepped into the elevator and hit a snag when they found a keycard access swipe to activate the floor buttons.

  He sighed. “Shit. We should have anticipated this.”

  “Stairs will probably have one too.”

  “We could wait for someone to come along, but that puts us in the same position as going into the parking garage.”

  Olivia opened the panel next to the buttons and squinted at the bank of electronics and wires inside. Since there wasn’t an obvious disconnect card swipe button, she puzzled over how to proceed. But she did have one idea.

  “I got this,” she said. She took out her pistol and flipped it, so she was gripping the barrel in one hand.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I already told you, I got this,” Olivia said as she smacked the panel with the butt of the pistol. Whack whack whack.

  It cried and bent, but didn’t engage, so she whacked it again.

  Beep.

  Lights came on from behind the panel, which was now dented enough to see inside. She pressed the elevator button, and it started moving. A desire to laugh bubbled up inside her, because who the hell would think something like that could actually work? “Just like my mom fixing the TV when I was a little kid.”

  Jeremy shook his head as the elevator soared through space toward Micah’s floor. “That kind of stuff is going to get us caught. Small footprint, remember?”

  She shrugged, even though he was right. “Getting into Micah Reed’s apartment is all I care about right now. No one saw us, so anything else is secondary.”

  The elevator door opened, and they stepped out onto lush white carpet. She could feel her flats sink into it on the first step.

  “This is fancy,” Jeremy said, dragging a toe across the carpet like running a hand through tall grass. Original canvas art hung from the walls, ornate brass sconces at intervals. Didn’t seem like the kind of place Micah would live. Given what she knew of him, at least. Money couldn’t buy class, no matter how hard it tried.

  “El Lobo paid well,” Olivia said. “Even for snitches like Michael McBriar, or Micah Reed, or whoever he thinks he is.”

  They stopped outside the door and readied their weapons.

  Jeremy took out a couple of small lockpick tools and bent to examine the lock. “He’ll hear this if I can’t get it unlocked quick enough.”

  She hunkered down a bit, gun at a slight angle. “That’s fine. I’m good to go.”

  Jeremy picked the lock to get them into the condo. A dark room greeted them, no traps or bullets flying through the air.

  The decor inside matched the carpet outside. Vaulted ceilings, stainless steel appliances, clean paint on the walls. Not much in the way of personal touches, few paintings and pictures on the walls. Stark, like a first college apartment, except for a lack of marijuana leaf posters.

  But no Micah. No attack dog or mewling cat, either.

  Jeremy padded through the living room, his gun pointed at the floor. He ducked into one room, then another, then into the bathroom. He turned back to her and shook his head. “It’s clear.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So, he’s not here. Now that we’re in, let’s learn what we can and get out quick. I’d rather not have him surprise us while we’re here.”

  Olivia and Jeremy split up, and she first checked the kitchen, looking in standard hiding spots, such as under the drawers, behind the oven, inside containers in the freezer.

  Nothing.

  “Got anything back there?” she called to him.

  “There’s some wear on the carpet back here in the bedroom. Scratches on the baseboards. It’s worth a look.”

  She passed a spare bedroom filled with guitars, and then joined Jeremy in the master bedroom. He was picking at a section of the carpet against the back wall that looked as if it had been repeatedly lifted.

  She knelt and pulled up the carpet, then jiggled the floorboards underneath to reveal a hiding space. Shoebox sitting in the dark below.

  “Jackpot,” she said.

  Jeremy lifted the shoebox and opened it. Inside, they found some letters, all of them old. High school, looked like. Plus some pictures, and then two flash drives. She lifted one picture of Micah, taken at least a few years ago, standing with the man referred to in Michael McBriar’s files as his best friend, now deceased. This young man’s arm was draped over Micah’s shoulder, both of them wearing wide grins. Looking either drunk or blissfully happy.

  She thought of the flight, how easily she’d clung to Micah’s arm, practically folded into him when she was so deep in her panic. And even though she’d known what Micah Reed was capable of, she hadn’t thought twice about it at the time.

  “What’s that?” Jeremy said.

  “Pug.”

  He cocked his head. “Huh?”

  “Real name Philip Gillespie, but he went by Pug. He was also a member of the Sinaloa, and Micah’s running buddy. He died sometime after the feds initially contacted Micah, but before the trial.”

  She dropped the picture back into the pile to keep searching. Below the pictures, she found a business card with a raised image of a wolf’s head. Olivia already knew what that card meant. The Sinaloa cartel gave out very few of these cards, so how had Micah gotten one?

  She had an urge to stash it in her pocket.

  “WitSec wouldn’t have allowed him to keep all this,” Jeremy said. “It’s too damaging.”

  “Exactly. He had to smuggle this, somehow.” She pointed at the flash drives. “Copy those.”

  He opened his messenger bag and jammed in the first flash drive, then started copying over the data. “Are we taking the shoebox?”

  She shook her head. “If we can get in and out before he comes home, I’d rather him not know we were ever here.”

  Jeremy finished copying the first flash drive and plugged in the second.

  “Anything useful?” she said.

  He flicked along the laptop trackpad. “Music, looks like, on the first thumb drive. Couple hundred files here. This second one has some spreadsheets, but they don’t make any sense. There are no labels.”

  He spun the laptop around and pointed it at her. All she could see were cells filled with numbers, but no guide to explain what they meant.

  “It may mean nothing, but it’s probably worthwhile to have it anyway.”

  Jeremy angled his head around, taking in Micah’s sparse bedroom. “Think he’s on his way to Michigan?”

  “Probably.”

  “So that’s where we’re going next?”

  After he finished copying the second flash drive and handed it back to Olivia, she returned everything to the shoebox and replaced it under the floorboards.

  “We’re not going to Michigan yet. There’s another acquaintance of Micah’s here in Denver we need to see.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Micah stood in the security line at Denver International, slowly inching toward the TSA checkpoint. Despite the enormity of the terminal, he felt claustrophobic. He watched the faces of all the other sullen people weaving through the snake-like line, getting ready to
slip off their shoes and scramble through bags to remove laptops.

  The slip of paper with Olivia’s phone number weighted down his pocket. He hadn’t found a good time to call her, and he might not find one for a few days, not with everything that might be coming on this trip.

  Another trip on an airplane.

  An airplane to Michigan to visit a dead body with his face.

  His same face.

  While Micah didn’t know who had done this, he had a strong suspicion of why they had done this. And it brought up all manner of disturbing side effects. Repercussions that could extend not only to Micah but to his family and any friends he might still have out there.

  Not that he knew if he had any friends left from his old life, since he hadn’t spoken to any of them in years.

  He slogged through the line, and his thoughts kept flashing back to last night, to a dream he’d had. It was only a twinkling of memory now. Something about being in a chair, not able to stand up, even though he desperately wanted to escape the chair and rise to his feet. Like a burning compulsion. In the dream, he’d had trouble opening his eyes, and he wondered if his waking self had been trying to open his eyes to flee the dream.

  He’d woken in a puddle of sweat, with a feeling that something in his bedroom was different. Or something in the condo. Wearing only his underwear, he walked from room to room, checking for anything out of the ordinary. He even took the shoebox out of the hiding spot under the baseboards but found nothing out of place. His pictures, letters, flash drives. The only picture of him and his best friend, at the Bricktown Canal in Oklahoma City.

  Nothing had been disturbed.

  Eventually, he’d chalked it up to after-effects of the nightmare, which had already started to fade.

  Now, with each step toward that TSA checkpoint, he came closer to boarding another airplane. Another chance to put his life in the hands of someone else. His mouth was as dry as his armpits were wet. Wished he’d brought a bottle of water with him. His heart had turned into a rattling snare drum at the mere thought of strapping himself into that seatbelt.