by Mark Lukens
“Maybe the beer helped a little,” Alicia said. “Or maybe our session last night interrupted what had been planted in your mind. It’s hard to say. I’m trying to plant new triggers. Maybe they’re beginning to work.”
“I need to call Stan,” I said. I rushed over to the cell phone he had given me, checking it for any calls or text messages. There were none. I checked the contacts and found only a few names listed: Stan, his mother’s house, work.
The nightmare was still making my skin crawl. I’d never believed in premonitions or telepathy before, but of course I never would have believed a person could be hypnotized and programmed to do terrible things.
I dialed Stan’s cell number, listening to it ring.
I closed my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t help feeling that something bad had happened to Stan. I remembered how scared he’d been in my pickup truck, how he had warned me that he would cooperate if they came to question him. They already know everything, he had said.
The ringing led to voicemail. I left Stan a message to call me back.
It was almost seven o’clock. There was a chance Stan was still at the office loading up his truck. Instead of calling the office, I dialed Steve’s cell number, a number I knew by heart.
“Carlton’s Lawn and Pest Control Service,” Steve answered in his professional voice. “Steve Michaels speaking.” He probably didn’t recognize the number and maybe thought it was a customer calling to complain.
“Steve, it’s Zach.”
“Zach. You get a new phone?”
“Uh, no. I’m borrowing someone’s phone.”
“Look, Zach, I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass, but when are you coming back to work? I’ve got Dean on my ass, and I need some help around here.”
“I don’t know, Steve. Michelle still hasn’t been found.”
Steve sighed heavily into the phone. “Shit. Sorry. I should’ve asked.”
“Is Stan there? I need to talk to him. Did he already head out on his route?”
“Stan? He didn’t show up. Hasn’t been here for the last few days. He’s going to need a doctor’s note now. We’re getting really backed up here. I’m going to have to ask the Daytona office to send a few guys down here to help.”
“Stan’s not there?” I asked, ignoring all of the other bitching Steve was doing.
“No,” he snapped. “I just said that. He didn’t call in or show up.”
“I gotta go, Steve.”
“Zach, I need to know when you’re coming back.”
“I don’t know. Probably in a few days,” I lied to get him off my back, and then I hung up.
Alicia watched me, obviously listening to my conversation.
I called Stan’s cell number again. Still no answer. I dialed his mom’s number, where he lived. I hated calling her house this early, but I needed to know why Stan hadn’t gone to work. Stan’s mom didn’t answer the phone, so I left a message that I was looking for Stan and needed to talk to him as soon as possible.
“He’s not there,” Alicia said. It wasn’t a question.
“No.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know.” A picture of Alicia digging Stan’s body up from the beach flashed through my mind. “Maybe he ran.”
“Ran?”
“He told me last night in my truck that I should run.”
“Run where?”
“He didn’t say. He said I should go back to Adam and Joel’s RV, the two guys we talked to yesterday. He said they would be able to help me get a new identity, new paperwork.”
“Zach,” she said, her tone of voice suggesting I wasn’t being very reasonable. “We should try the lawyers first.”
“Stan said they’re not going to listen to us.”
“We’ve got evidence.”
“He said the video evidence could be faked. He said it could look like the whole thing was faked.”
“Faked? Who would fake something like that? And why?”
“I don’t know. To make the government look bad. To get on the news. Get famous. Write a book. Maybe a paranoid individual. A mentally ill person.”
I didn’t wait for Alicia’s answer. I grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt out of my duffel bag and went to the bathroom to change. I brushed my teeth and shaved, wet my hair and combed it down. I put on deodorant and cologne. I hardly recognized myself anymore in the mirror. I felt like I was looking at a character from a book or a movie.
“I still think we need to get some help,” Alicia said. “If not lawyers, then maybe someone in the government. A representative or a senator.”
“I’m not asking you to go with me,” I told her as I put my sneakers on. “You’ve got a life. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s me they want.”
She just stared at me like I had just slapped her. “If they know everything about this, which it seems like they might, then they know I know everything.”
I thought about how Stan had said the same thing in my pickup last night—he’d also said that he would cooperate if he had to. Was that where he was right now? Had he panicked and turned himself in? Or had he spilled the beans to his mother and she had demanded that he turn himself in?
“I’m going with you,” Alicia said, already putting her shoes on and getting her own bag together.
I just looked at her.
“I’m already in pretty deep,” she said as if arguing with me before I said anything.
Sighing, I looked away. I didn’t want her to go with me, but at the same time I was glad she was coming along.
“I’ll look up some lawyers’ numbers on your phone while you drive.” She threw me her keys. “We’ll take my car.”
CHAPTER FORTY
The first place I wanted to stop was the bank. If we had to run, we would need some cash.
I got to the parking lot a little before eight o’clock. I parked and waited.
“I’m going to get some money out of Michelle’s account,” I said, even though it was probably fairly obvious why we were at the bank.
“You think the account’s still active?”
“I guess. They still want me to do whatever I’m programmed to do, so they want a trail of evidence, and I’m sure the money in this bank is part of that trail.”
“How much are you taking out?”
“As much as they’ll let me.”
“So you’re thinking about running?”
“I think we should go talk to Adam and Joel.” I remembered how the two men had suddenly clammed up and told us to leave their RV. They seemed reluctant to help yesterday, so I wasn’t sure why I thought they might change their minds and help me today. But I had nowhere else to turn. I had promised Alicia on the drive to the bank that I would talk to any lawyers she wanted to after we talked to Adam and Joel.
If they would answer the door, that was. Assuming they were still there.
She already had several attorneys’ phone numbers written down on the notepad Stan bought last night at a dollar store. She also had the phone numbers of two state representatives and two senators written down.
When it was time, I went into the bank alone, leaving the car keys with Alicia. I told her to drive away calmly if anything happened. There was the chance Alicia might take off anyway, and if she did, I couldn’t blame her. I know she wanted to help, but if things got too scary, then she had every right to bolt.
There wasn’t a line inside the bank this early in the morning, and I walked right up to a smiling teller who greeted me and asked how she could help. It wasn’t the same teller I had talked to a few days ago, and I was glad about that. I had my account number and driver’s license ready.
“I’d like to withdraw some money from my account,” I told the teller.
“Just fill out a withdrawal slip,” she said, sliding a piece of paper toward me.
I filled out my name and account number on the slip. I had about a thousand dollars left from the money I’d taken out a few days ago, and I
wasn’t sure how much more I would need. I’d heard somewhere before that a bank couldn’t give someone more than ten thousand dollars in cash without the IRS or other government bodies becoming involved, so I settled on the amount of $9,650.00, writing it down on the slip and sliding it back to her.
The teller frowned. “I could write you a cashier’s check,” she said.
“I’d like it in cash please.” I could feel my armpits beginning to sweat, my face flushing with heat, the panic-attack pressure pushing down on my chest.
“That’s a lot of money for cash,” the teller said in a low voice, her smile slipping.
“It’s my money,” I said. “You’re telling me I can’t take cash out of my own bank account?” I was trying to act offended, turning my fear into anger. I’d dealt with plenty of pissed off customers so I tried to draw on that experience. “Maybe I should just close my account and transfer my funds to a different bank.”
“Oh no, sir. I just need to talk to my manager. They have to okay any cash amounts over three thousand dollars.”
“Okay,” I breathed out, trying to pretend that this was a huge inconvenience for me, but afraid I wasn’t pulling off the act too well.
“If you would just have a seat over there in that office,” the teller said, pointing me toward a corner office with mostly glass walls and a glass door. There was a desk in there with two plush chairs in front of it. But no one was in there.
I nodded at the teller and walked across the carpeted lobby to the office. I sat down in one of the chairs as nervous energy coursed through my body.
It seemed like an hour had dragged by, but I knew it had probably only been a few minutes. Finally, an older woman dressed in a gray business suit and skirt combo entered the office.
“Hello, Mr. Hughes,” she sang out as she offered a hand in greeting.
I gave her hand a quick shake, afraid my palm was sweaty.
“I understand you want to take out some cash,” the manager said as she seated herself behind her desk.
“Yes.”
She glanced down at a paper she’d brought in with her, and then she clicked her keyboard, bringing her computer screen to life. To me, it seemed like she was fidgeting, doing small things to draw out the time. But maybe I was just being paranoid.
“The teller said I’m taking out too much cash,” I said, pretending I’d never heard about the ten-thousand-dollar rule. I wasn’t even sure if it was true; I’d probably heard it from Stan.
“Well, there can be a limit to how much cash we have on hand. Sometimes it can take a few days to get the funds together. Usually, when dealing with large amounts of cash, the customer puts in a request ahead of time so we can have it ready for them.”
“You’re telling me you don’t have nine thousand dollars at your bank?” I figured even a lot of fast-food restaurants probably had that much cash on hand in their safes. I pictured armored trucks driving around with bags of cash in the back—just like in the heist movies. The cash in those trucks had to be going and coming from somewhere, like banks.
“I just need to check,” she said as she studied her computer.
I sat back, folding my arms, hoping I was signaling to her that I was willing to wait for her.
“You’ll have to fill out a form,” she said after finally looking away from the computer. She didn’t say they didn’t have the money on hand, but I had to assume that they did. She slid a paper across the desk to me.
I picked up the paper, looking at it. There was the usual stuff to be filled out at the top: my name, my address, my account number, my social security number, my driver’s license number. But below those was a question to be answered. I looked at the manager. “My reason for taking out the money?” I asked her.
“For a large amount of cash,” she corrected with a sickly sweet smile.
“So I have to tell you why I’m taking out my own money?”
“Mr. Hughes, I don’t make the rules. Our government does.”
I just frowned at her.
“These rules are for all of our safety, to fight against drugs and illegal activity, where cash is often used.”
I thought about all the times Stan had said that crypto was the currency of choice these days for cartels and major drug traffickers, but I decided not to challenge her on it.
“I can’t believe this,” I said, trying to think of an excuse why I would need nine thousand dollars in cash. “I wanted to buy a classic car and the guy only wants cash.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t deal with that particular person,” the manager said with the smile still plastered on her face.
“And other things,” I said. “I wanted to buy some other things.”
She just waited for me to fill out the paper.
I filled the paper out, listing several reasons why I might need the cash. I slid the paper back to her. “I’m thinking of transferring my money to another bank. I don’t know if I want to do business with a bank that has trouble scraping nine thousand dollars together.”
She sighed and didn’t look affected by my threat. “Let me check our funds for you.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Twenty minutes later the manager came back with a thick envelope filled with bills. “We had to use mostly one-hundred-dollar bills. I hope you understand.”
“Of course.” I felt that sense of paranoia rising in me again. The manager was taking a long time to count out the money for me.
“Thank you,” I said when she was done. I grabbed the envelope and stood up.
“Is there anything else we can do for you today, Mr. Hughes?”
“No, thanks.”
“Please don’t forget to take our survey online.”
I was pretty sure she wouldn’t want me taking their survey at that moment.
Alicia was still waiting in the passenger seat of her car when I walked across the parking lot—she hadn’t left me. I got in the driver’s seat, started the car, and we drove away. I felt some of the tension draining out of me as I drove.
I called Stan two more times on the way to the RV park and got no answer. I left another message for him to call me.
Alicia was ready to call one of the lawyers on her list, and one of the representatives, but I asked her to wait until after we tried Stan’s friends at the RV park. I wondered what I was going to do if neither one of them answered the door. Leave them a note? What if they were gone? It seemed like they’d gotten pretty spooked last night when they found out about the storage unit.
As we got closer to the RV park, I saw smoke drifting up into the sky from deep into the park. My stomach clenched—I knew this wasn’t going to be good.
“That’s their RV, isn’t it?” Alicia said.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
I didn’t answer Alicia because I knew it was true, I knew the smoke was coming from Adam and Joel’s RV.
I pulled into the park and drove down the main road. As I got deeper into the park, there was more traffic, including a lot of the residents on foot and on bicycles. I parked behind another car, but gave myself enough room to turn around if I needed to. I shut the car off and got out. “I need to know,” I told her.
“I’m going with you,” Alicia said.
We walked about a block down to where the side street began, where a large group of people had collected. Little by little, we made our way through the crowd. And then I saw the fire trucks and police cars down the street, blue and red lights flashing. Black smoke drifting up from the destroyed RV.
“I hope everyone’s okay,” I said to an elderly man next to me. He wore a U.S. Army ball cap with several hat pins attached to it.
“Heard there’s two bodies inside,” the man said.
“God,” Alicia breathed out.
“That’s terrible,” I added. I didn’t have to fake being devastated because I was.
The old man looked at me closely for the first time like he was wondering who the hell I was and what I was doing there. I guessed that mos
t of these people in the park knew each other.
We drifted back through the crowd and then walked back to Alicia’s car. We got in and drove away.
“And you’re sure that was their RV?” Alicia said.
“Yeah. Two bodies inside, that guy said.”
“They killed them,” she said. It didn’t seem to be a question.
I drove out of the entrance to the park and onto the road. A minute later I turned on the radio, scanning the stations, listening for news about the fire. I didn’t know where I was driving to, just away from the fire, away from the violence and murder that had happened there.
The cell phone rang a moment later. I grabbed it, not even looking at the number, figuring it was Stan finally calling me back.
“Zach,” a woman’s voice said.
I knew the voice, but for a second I couldn’t put a name to it.
“It’s Carol. Stan’s mother.”
“Oh. Carol. I’m sorry I called so early this morning. I was looking for—”
“Stan’s in the hospital.”
My world seemed to stop. “What happened?”
“Stan was attacked. Beaten up pretty bad.” She seemed to be on the verge of tears, but she was trying to hold it together.
“Oh God,” I whispered. I could feel Alicia staring at me. “What happened?”
“We don’t know a lot at this moment,” Carol said.
“When did this happen?”
“We’re not sure. Sometime between last night and early this morning. Police found him on the side of the road. His truck was gone. They think it might have been a robbery. Someone who lived nearby called the police when they saw him lying on the side of the road.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
Carol finally broke down crying. “I don’t know. He’s hurt pretty bad.” She sniffled and seemed to stop crying for a moment. “I came back home to get a few things for him. I saw that you’d called, so I called you back.”
“Thank you. What hospital is he in?”
She told me the hospital and the room number.
“I’d like to come by and see him,” I told her. “Would that be okay?”