by Erik Carter
The Hall of Justice was almost entirely evacuated by the time Dale and Jane exited a fire door on the side of the building. Outside, it was dark. The early evening air was cool—and filled with the sounds of pandemonium.
Swarms of people moved in all directions. Alarms sounded. There was a fire truck parked on Bryant, and the horn of another blared from about a block away as it approached. People everywhere. Cops. Lawyers. Civilians. Gawkers. And there was a sense of absolute confusion and panic. It was a real-life lesson in sociology—the breakdown of society when order and leadership have been severed.
Dale looked toward the front corner and spotted some of the media.
“Shit,” he said. “Come on.”
He led Jane away to an alley that ran between two of the buildings in the Hall’s complex. There was a trash can to the left. Dale went toward it, and as he did, he brought both hands to his beard.
And he yanked the damn thing off.
He’d been wanting to do that so badly.
He tossed the beard into the trash can then scratched his face like a madman. The relief was absolutely divine. He rubbed and massaged and twisted his cheeks, stretched his lips.
Jane was staring at him.
He stopped.
“Sorry, the media recognize me as having the beard. And we need a couple minutes alone to figure this out.”
She looked to the trash can and back to him, puzzled.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
“You’re even cuter without it,” she said.
A compliment from a pretty girl. No matter how many Dale got, it always gave him a thrill—and a boost to his more-than-ample ego.
“If we’re gonna figure out where Kimble took your brother and Lawton, we need to be methodical,” Dale said. “First of all, where would...”
He trailed off. He’d noticed something in Jane’s face.
She was shellshocked.
The initial need to tend to Dale’s injury followed by their rush to exit the building had kept her mind focused. But now she was drifting away. Rapidly. Dale knew that he would need to be patient with her. She’d just been in a gunfight. Without a gun. And lost her brother for a second time, after only briefly being reunited.
“Jane, I know this has been traumatic, but I need you to focus with me. For just a minute. So we can find Jonathan. Your brother said that Kimble and Felix had discussed a safe house, somewhere far from the city that they would use if things went south. And I have an idea where it might be.”
Jane perked up. She stepped closer.
Dale continued. “It was the picture you showed Felix that brought Jonathan back out. The memory of you—a personal anachronism. And I’m thinking it was something anachronistic like this that pulled Jonathan out for a moment and let him hear Kimble’s conversation about the safe house. Jonathan said that when he woke up for that moment, Felix and Kimble were talking about something that couldn’t be felled. Something that couldn’t be brought down by nature or Man. There’s a historically significant tree—one that couldn’t be felled—not terribly far from here, in the redwoods. Somewhere off the Avenue of the Giants. But I can’t recall the name. Something like—”
“It’s called the Immortal Tree,” Jane said. She held a shaky hand to her mouth. “My family owns a cabin near Redcrest, off the Avenue of the Giants. We went there on vacations away from the city. John and I used to hike to the Immortal Tree.”
Dale ran his thumb over his chin as the pieces fell together in his mind. “And the Immortal Tree is famous for not being brought down. Not by nature—flooding in the ’60s, a direct lightning strike—or by loggers who tried to bring it down in 1908. That’s two years after Felix’s reality of 1906. Felix somehow resurfaced one of Jonathan’s memories, and the anachronism brought Jonathan forward for a moment. Lawton told Fair they’d go there if they needed to escape. Their safe house is your family’s cabin.”
Dale watched a group of cops sprint by on the sidewalk beyond. Everyone was preoccupied with the attack on the heart of the city’s law enforcement and legal system. Law and order was in disarray. There was no time to coordinate any assistance. Dale and Jane were going to have to do this on their own.
He turned back to her. “We need to take a road trip.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“Stop!” Paulie shouted to the driver.
The Rolls-Royce came to an abrupt halt.
“What is it, Pop?” Danny said from the seat beside him.
Paulie waived his hand, quieting him, keeping his attention on what he’d seen in a gap between the buildings.
Janey.
He hadn’t seen her in person since she was eighteen, and, until today, he hadn’t even seen a photo of her since she graduated college. As he looked at her now, she was ... a woman. An actual, adult woman. And beautiful. She looked like her mother.
She and a man dashed toward an orange De Tomaso Pantera, which sat farther away, double-parked behind the main building. The man was in civilian clothes—jeans, a brown shirt, motorcycle boots—but he was most likely a cop. The two of them got into the Pantera, the engine roared to life, and the car bolted off.
“Follow the Pantera,” he said to the driver.
The Rolls-Royce moved again.
Paulie turned around and looked through the rear window. His other cars were following after him.
And so were the Alfonsis.
Chapter Forty-Four
Arancia howled as Dale and Jane rocketed north up 101, siren blaring, flashing light pulsing into the night. They were well beyond the city now, trees on either side of the highway. The moon was bright, giving everything a majestic glow.
“You’re sure you’ll remember how to get to the cabin?” Dale said.
“You kidding?” Jane said. “Seared into my memory. I could get there blindfolded.”
She leaned over again from the passenger seat, gave the speedometer another inspection. She sure was fretful. It was understandable if her nerves were shot after everything that had just happened back in San Francisco, but Dale got the sense that she was always the anxious type, which made sense given the protective, mother-like position she’d adopted toward her brother.
She cautiously settled back into her seat.
Dale checked the speed. 90 miles per hour. Fast but not insane—because even though they were in a hurry, they had to get to Redcrest in one piece.
He gave her a smile and said, “Don’t worry. I got this.”
“But you look so relaxed.”
He supposed she was right. Aside from having two hands on the wheel, he probably appeared completely at ease to Jane. Which, really, he was. He’d covered a lot of miles in Arancia while driving at breakneck speeds. He almost found it a bit soothing.
He glanced over at her. From the photos he’d seen, he knew that her hair was naturally a reddish-brown color like her brother’s, but the darker color she’d dyed it looked amazing on her. She was classically beautiful, and even though she clearly wasn’t at the pinnacle of health—having lived a ramshackle existence for the better part of a year—there was something about the resilience in her eyes that made her even more attractive. But there were other aspects of her visage that had clearly developed long before these last several months—from years of protecting her brother, living on the run, hiding from her father. Her crow’s-feet were a bit more pronounced than your average twenty-nine-year-old, and there were slight rings beneath her eyes. Pain etched into her face—way, way beyond her years.
Dale pulled Arancia to the left, zoomed around a pair of cars that had pulled over for the flashing lights. More trees zipped by on either side, glowing ghostly blue in the moonlight, and Dale was disappointed to see that they, too, were normal-sized. Redcrest was about 250 miles from where they’d started back at the Hall, and they’d been driving for a while now—but Dale had yet to see one of the famous mammoth trees.
Then, as he pulled around a curve, something massive showed itself in the glim
mering light, for just a moment, before it zipped by.
A gigantic tree trunk.
Dale felt a big, childlike grin form on his face.
Jane looked over and gave him a smile. “First time seeing one of the giants?”
“Sure is,” Dale said. “I’ve always wanted to. There’s a quote from John Steinbeck. ‘The redwoods, once seen—”
Jane cut in, finished for him. “‘The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always.’ One of my favorite quotes.” She looked out the window. “I haven’t seen them myself in years.”
“Must be tough to have spent so long away from your homeland. How have you done all this—kept you and your brother hidden from your father for so long?”
Jane hesitated. “I’ve never really told anyone about it.”
“It’s okay, ma’am,” Dale said in a cheeseball voice. “I’m a cop.”
Jane laughed. But then hesitated again.
Dale glanced at her. “Look, I was just curious. You don’t have to—”
“John and I were never going to be what my father wanted,” she said. “We were both curious and creative and service-minded. And we had issues. For me it was sleep problems along with depression, anxiety. Serotonin-related things. But John was worse. There was … an incident. One of my father’s men showed himself to John. When he was ten. Didn’t touch him, thank God, but John never recovered. His personality split.”
“How do you mean?” Dale said.
“That’s what happens with multiple personality disorder. The person’s mind splits into alternate personalities—alters—creating other people with traits that the original person might not have. They can be stronger, less fearful, more innocent.”
“Did Jonathan use these personalities to retaliate against his attacker?”
“He didn’t have to. My father quickly had the man killed. Well, he responded quickly. From what I understand, the man’s death was certainly not a quick one. Nor painless. And John’s alters didn’t come out in full force until a few years later, at puberty. He went to my father, told him what was happening, asked to go to a doctor. But my father told him that since John recognized the fact that he had a problem, he therefore didn’t have a problem.” She scoffed. “Can you even imagine that?”
Dale shook his head. “No, I can’t. I truly can’t. With all due respect to your father, that’s one of the most ignorant things I’ve ever heard.”
Dale hated hearing stories like this, the misunderstanding of and lack of proper response to mental health issues, particularly in children. He wondered how many adults lived their lives in pain only because issues with their mental health hadn’t been properly addressed as children. It was a damn shame. A travesty. A simple head cold would keep a child out of school, but a debilitating neurological disorder would go ignored or, worse, dismissed.
“You can’t possibly offend me by bad-mouthing my father,” Jane said. “I despise him.”
Her voice had been icy cold as she said it. Deadly serious. It was rather alarming.
“John could have been something amazing,” she said. “He wanted so badly to be a journalist or a historian. And he could have, if that worthless sack of shit I call a father had given him the medical treatment he begged for as a child.”
She was quivering with anger now. Dale didn’t respond.
She continued. “Instead, he hid me and John away, kept his two problem children out of the limelight. Daddy’s embarrassments. So when we went to college, I started publicly speaking out against his criminal activities. It was the perfect time—1960s San Francisco. This was right around the time of the Human Be-In and the Summer of Love. Everything was happening. It gave me one hell of a platform.”
“The Summer of Love, huh?” Dale said with a grin as he pulled Arancia past another car that had yielded to the lights and siren. “You don’t look much like a hippie to me.”
She chuckled. “I’m not. And I wasn’t then either. When I graduated, he tried to pull us back into the family. It was then I knew we’d never be free of him unless I did something drastic. So I moved us out of state, legally changed our names.”
“To Jane and John Logan,” Dale said. “Why ‘Logan,’ if I may ask?”
“There was a guy back in college. I wouldn’t have gotten free without him. Logan Winters. Best guy I ever knew. He and I ... we could have been something. But I knew it could never be, not with me protecting John.”
“It could still work out some day,” Dale said in an optimistic tone.
She sighed. “It’s been seven years.” She was quiet for a moment. “I gave that up for John. I’ve sacrificed everything for John. I’ve never had a boyfriend. And I’m still a virgin.”
She immediately buried her face in her hands.
“Oh my god! I can’t believe I just told you that.”
“Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“But I’m twenty-nine!”
“It’s not a big deal. Really.”
She uncovered her face. When she didn’t immediately say anything, Dale broke the awkward silence.
“Why Kansas?” he said.
She didn’t reply.
He glanced over.
She was ... asleep.
He’d been talking to her only moments earlier, and now her head was hanging to the side, resting on her shoulder, her eyes closed.
She jolted awake. Gasped. Looked around the car, startled, confused.
“Oh no,” she said. “I fell asleep, didn’t I? God, so embarrassing.”
“Hey, when you gotta sleep, you gotta sleep.”
Jane groaned and hid her face again. “You asked me a question, didn’t you?”
“I’m wondering why you moved to Kansas.”
“To be as random as possible.”
Dale chuckled. “Yes, that’s about as random as you can get.”
“You’d think so,” Jane said. “But I often wondered if my choice wasn’t random enough. See, I have a mild obsession with The Wizard of Oz. I did a reverse-Dorothy. Instead of fleeing from Kansas, I fled to Kansas. I’d always dreamed about going there. People have these checklists of places they feel they need to go, but my list has small towns and state parks you’ve never heard of and random cities like Albuquerque or Providence. Does that sound silly to you?”
“Not at all,” Dale said.
While Dale had enjoyed getting to know San Francisco and was currently thrilling to the world-famous redwoods, he could understand where Jane was coming from with her desire to see a place like Kansas. There were so many places in the world that could color a person’s experience but would never be labeled as “must sees.” While Dale did see the value in visiting the Eiffel Tower and Mount Rushmore and driving the Autobahn, he also knew that there were thousands of little places with millions of little stories to tell. So he knew exactly where Jane was coming from.
“I got my master’s in counseling at the University of Kansas,” Jane said. “That put us a couple years in Lawrence, where we met Dr. Goldstein. He helped John more than anyone has. Things just kept getting better and better after their appointments. When I graduated and took a job in Topeka, we were then over half an hour away from Goldstein, so the sessions were scheduled less and less. John started to get worse again. The alters appeared more often. Which is another reason why it’s my fault John developed the Felix personality.”
Dale felt a bit sad for her. He’d seen this before. Someone who worked tirelessly for other people yet still felt guilt, still felt like they hadn’t done enough. There were so many people in the world who didn’t give two shits about anyone but themselves, but then there were other people, like Jane Logan, who sacrificed everything for others and still felt like they weren’t doing enough.
“And Felix was so much more intense than the other alters. Not just because he was a stronger personality, but because he dwelled in John’s other issue, his schizophrenic tendencies, seeing the world as 1906.” She let out a lon
g sigh. “God, I’m sorry. I shared too much. I haven’t had many opportunities to talk about all that.”
“Well, since you’ve been so personal with me, I feel I should be upfront about something. But, first, let me ask—can you keep a secret?”
She just gave him a look.
“Yeah. Right. Silly question,” Dale said with a smile. “My name’s not really Tim Melbourne. That’s a cover for this assignment.”
“Really?” Jane said with a heaping dose of sarcasm. “I would have never guessed that after you tore an entire beard off your face.”
Dale laughed. “My name’s Dale Conley.”
“Nice to meet you, Dale.”
“And I don’t work for the FBI. I work for another federal agency, which I shouldn’t mention. They’re the ones who gave me my name.”
“So what’s your real name?”
“Dale Conley is my real name. But I assume you’re asking what my original name is—and I’m afraid I can’t tell you that either.”
He wouldn’t have told her if he could. Dale chose to forget who he was before he joined the BEI. Now he was Dale Conley. That was his reality, one he liked much better than the reality under the old name. Dale Conley was who he was. And always would be.
Jane was quiet for a moment. Dale thought she might have fallen asleep again. Then she said, “I miss Kansas. I miss the life John and I had there. And I want this nightmare to be over.”
To this point, there hadn’t been many consoling things Dale could say to Jane, but now he was able to reassure her.
“One way or another, the nightmare ends tonight.”
Chapter Forty-Five
John’s eyes blinked, slowly opening, and as his consciousness regrouped, he thought for a moment that he was back in the surreal no man’s land of his mind.
But as his surroundings came into focus, he remembered where he was. He was at his family’s cabin in the redwoods outside Redcrest. And he remembered how he’d gotten there. By gunpoint. Along with another hostage—San Francisco’s district attorney, Beau Lawton.