Upon A Pale Horse (Bio-Thriller)

by Russell Blake

  Traffic to the airport was light, most of the cars headed the opposite direction, and Jeffrey busied himself with answering his email on his phone – mainly expressions of sympathy from his colleagues, with a few instructions from clients peppering the stream. Although he kept drifting back to the image of his brother dropping from the sky, he forced himself to respond to everyone, welcoming any diversion from his nightmarish replay.

  A flock of starlings winged by overhead as the car took the airport off-ramp, the sun now out in force, glistening off their ebony feathers as they defied gravity. The driver was mercifully silent, having lost any enthusiasm for interaction, and contented himself with a dissonant tape of atonal music that most closely resembled a phalanx of car horns honking arrhythmically while a woman yowled over the din.

  A sea of brake lights greeted them as they rounded a long curve, and they stopped at a hastily erected checkpoint manned by highway patrolmen with long faces and nervous dispositions – no doubt in response to the accident that had taken Keith’s life, which struck Jeffrey as simultaneously typical and depressing. Never in the history of air travel had any terrorist event been foiled by police staring into cars and randomly pulling people over to search them, and yet that was unhesitatingly one of the useless responses any state of alert was met with. Because those chartered with protecting the population had to appear to be doing something, even if it was wholly pointless.

  Eventually they reached the terminal. Jeffrey pushed a wad of dollars through the Plexiglas receptacle and eased out of the taxi, pulling his bag with him. Inside, a pronounced armed presence announced itself as officers with bomb-sniffing dogs moved through the lines of passengers waiting to check in. A particularly exhausted-looking beagle brushed by him, and for a moment Jeffrey and the animal locked eyes, the dog’s baleful gaze resigned to a thankless shift sniffing for something it would likely never find. The sense of futility was palpable, and then the beast was past, moving to the next line, its heavily armed minder scanning the throng like he could spot trouble on looks alone.

  Jeffrey swiped his credit card at the automated ticket machine, selected a seat, and collected his boarding pass, and then moved to the counter to have his ID checked. The ticket agent was courteous but mechanical as she tapped at her terminal with the warmth of an animatronic figure at an amusement park, and Jeffrey wondered whether she despised her job or was merely heavily medicated. He had watched her process the person in front of him, the transaction as impersonal as feeding change into a parking machine, and he was struck by how many interactions he had with that same dynamic. What was it that drove people to take jobs they disliked so profoundly that their only recourse was to treat their charges like objects, a subtle but unmistakable slight that was obvious yet completely deniable?

  The woman handed back his ID and over-enunciated a gate number, pointing to where it was printed on the pass, lest remembering the number thirty-two overload his cognitive abilities and doom him to wandering the airport aimlessly in search of a flight that had left without him.

  Why so negative and judgmental? he wondered to himself, and realized that it was his brain’s way of dodging the image of his brother’s final moments, combined with a healthy dose of self-loathing for not having tried harder, not having spent more time with him or called more often.

  There’s no rewind in life. That had been one of his brother’s pet sayings, and it sprang to mind as he followed the crowd to the TSA checkpoint on the way to the gates. Indeed not. The problem with reality was that it was for keeps. As his brother knew.

  The line was moving at a snail’s pace, the passengers coagulated in a clump where a humorless security worker checked ID and boarding passes before the travelers sent their bags, jackets, and shoes through the X-ray machine and waited their turn to be irradiated by scanning systems that a child could defeat. Jeffrey watched as a rotund officer stood by observing one of the security team pulling a sixty-year-old Vietnamese woman aside for a more intrusive search, and bit his tongue rather than ask whether anyone really believed that going through her belongings like honey badgers after grubs would keep the skies safer.

  The internal dialogue was unlike him, and once he was through he stopped at the bar and paid twelve dollars for twenty cents’ worth of slightly flat draft beer, seeking the relief it would bring with a greedy, bottomless thirst. Ten minutes later he was feeling less anxious, less like he was a spectator at a bad version of the film rendition of his life, and he left a generous tip as he slid off the bar stool and went in search of his flight.

  Once on board, he watched as his fellow passengers wedged their belongings in overhead bins and then closed his eyes so he wouldn’t have to interact with his seat mate, a nervous-looking man with a bad oily-black comb-over who smelled vaguely of onions and peat.

  As the plane gathered speed and launched up into the sky, the vision of his brother’s mangled body falling into the Atlantic sprang fresh into his mind’s eye, and for the rest of the five-hour flight he gladly paid a small fortune for the slim respite promised by sparkling mini-bottles of vodka, delivered by an unsmiling stewardess who clearly wished she was anywhere on the planet but tending to him.

  FIVE

  In Memoriam

  When Jeffrey arrived at his hotel, ten minutes from the funeral home in Georgetown where the memorial service would take place the following morning, his breath smelled tainted to him, a sticky film of impending hangover coating his mouth like rancid oil. The clerk didn’t seem to notice, processing his credit card with one eye on the ball game playing on an oversized flat screen monitor in the bar at the far end of the lobby. Jeffrey declined the offer of assistance with his bags, found his room on his own, and barely got his suit hung up before collapsing on the bed, the alcohol and plastic airplane food having taken their toll.

  Two hours later he cracked an eye open and glared at the overhead lamp, and then rolled over and willed himself to his feet, his head pounding from the unaccustomed chemical bludgeoning he’d dealt it on the plane. He checked the time and saw that it was almost midnight, and reconciled himself to ordering room service at nosebleed prices.

  After a seemingly endless wait his meal turned up, an omelet that would have been an embarrassment at any fast food restaurant, and he chewed the soggy tasteless mess with sedulous resignation, the fitting end to the worst day of his life. He set the alarm clock for eight before going into the cheerless bathroom and brushing his teeth, and then spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, each dream worse than the last.

  The following morning he awoke before the buzzer went off. He took his time showering, hoping that the tepid stream would both revive him and wash his hopelessness away. Coffee in the lobby helped some, but when he caught sight of his reflection in one of the decorative mirrors by the front desk he almost didn’t recognize the haunted figure staring back at him. He looked like complete shit, the travel and bad night compounding the grief etched into his young face like war wounds.

  He decided to walk to the funeral home, figuring the exercise would do him good. When he stepped out into the crisp spring morning air, the chill pinched at his skin, and he pulled his overcoat tighter around him. He had an hour to get to the service, which would be just about right if he hurried, he thought. More importantly than taking his mind off his grim destination, it would ensure that he didn’t have scads of extra time where he’d have to greet his brother’s entourage, none of whom he knew, other than Becky.

  An occasional gust of wind blew harsh against him, chilling him to the bone, unaccustomed as he was to weather this cold. His breath steamed in front of his nose in curt pants as he pushed himself to move faster, stoking his internal furnace to stave off the creeping dread that flowered at every pause. He was one of the only idiots walking, most preferring to be insulated from the elements by their cars, cocooned in privileged comfort while morning shock jocks bayed mean laughter at their own jokes. As one block became ten, the sense of heightened surrealism he�
�d felt at the hotel increased. Was he really on his way to his brother’s funeral?

  Memorial service, a voice in his head reminded. There wasn’t so much as a fingernail to bury – a certainty now, judging by the morning TV reports on the search results, or more accurately, non-results. Any vestiges of the unlucky passengers had been consumed by the Atlantic, swallowed up as though they’d never existed. An image of a shark shaking a torso in its clenched jaws flitted through his thoughts and he pushed it aside, preferring a vision of his brother, smiling, sitting by the fireplace in his apartment, cradling Becky from behind, a decent budget-Bordeaux only half-finished in his Costco goblet. A shock of his usually unruly hair hung roguishly across Keith’s brow, giving him an air of nonconformity he studiously cultivated – his differentiator in a gray city of cookie-cutter bureaucratic wonks. It had always amazed Jeffrey that Keith had taken a government job. With his skills and brain he could have done virtually anything, gone anywhere.

  None of which ultimately mattered. Not now.

  He rounded a corner and saw the red brick façade of the funeral home, an unctuous affair with colonial pretensions that was slightly wrong in the neighborhood – the brickwork too even, the wood accents on the windows and above the doors too clean, too precisely milled, too freshly painted, an artifice of antiquity created to lend an air of solemnity to an always-unpleasant farewell. Several tinted-windowed Lincoln sedans were parked nearby. Another pulled up as he approached and disgorged a couple about Keith’s age clad in expensive black, the woman’s face haughty and pale, the man’s puffy with the tell-tale effects of frequent debauchery.

  Jeffrey waited until they entered the building and glanced at the time – he was five minutes late, which was close enough. Hopefully he could get in and out with a minimum of fuss, saying his last words and slipping away like a phantom before anyone could smother him with sorrow and pity. He’d come up with a fitting eulogy on the plane and committed it to memory. Short and sweet, and if he garbled any of it, it wasn’t like he would ever see any of the attendees again.

  An attendant, suitably solemn, greeted him at the door and guided him to the assembly room, where twenty or so people sat on folding chairs staring at a photograph projected on a screen in front of red velvet curtains. It was a recent snapshot of his brother, by the looks of it on a boat, blue water and stainless steel railing in the background. Keith was grinning at the camera, a twinkle in his eye, merriment writ large on his features as the wind tousled his hair. Jeffrey felt his throat constrict and he struggled to swallow at the sight – there Keith was, another moment Jeffrey hadn’t shared with him, participant in a life that he knew little about.

  He moved to the front, where most of the seats were empty. Becky caught sight of him and stood, then hugged him awkwardly, tears in her eyes as he reciprocated, his arms around a woman who was in truth largely a stranger. She snuffled against his jacket and then pulled away, searching his face for something he couldn’t give.

  “You made it. I’m…I’m so glad. It would have meant a lot to him,” she said in a hushed whisper as she led him by the arm to the chair next to hers.

  “Of course I did. Nothing could have kept me away.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jeff. It’s…it just doesn’t feel real. Like it’s some kind of horrible dream.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “I know the feeling, Becky. I still can’t believe it.”

  They settled into a silent funk, each lost in their own thoughts as feet shuffled against the granite floor, restlessly waiting for the service to begin. A tall, gaunt man with gray receding hair approached the podium by the side of the raised platform immediately in front of the curtains and tapped the microphone, calling for attention from an already captive audience.

  “Ahem. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for coming. We are here today to celebrate and remember the life of…” – he surreptitiously checked a slip of paper with the names of that day’s services on it – “…Keith Anthony Rutherford. You here, his friends and family, were precious to him, and it’s clear that he was equally precious to you. Without any further ado, I would like to invite you to come forward and speak a few words honoring him.” He glanced down at the paper again and read the first name in the column on the right. “Rebecca Simms?”

  Becky shivered next to Jeffrey and then exhaled as she stood, pulling her shoulders back as she stepped to the dais, now vacated by the man so that the participants could say their piece.

  The orations were predictably depressing, countless anecdotes demonstrating Keith was a prince among men and that he would be forever missed. Jeffrey listened as if from a great distance, the words morphing into one long buzz as he studied the rolling slideshow that had been assembled, presumably by Becky, projected for all to view. Keith as a child. Keith and Jeffrey. Keith and his parents. Keith as an adolescent, as a teen, in college, behind the wheel of his first new car. The dull snick as each photo changed had the finality of a firing squad chambering rounds, and Jeffrey’s vision blurred as tears flooded his eyes.

  “Jeff. Jeffrey?” Becky was nudging him after one of Keith’s co-workers had finished his heartfelt speech.

  Jeffrey snapped back into the present and wiped his eyes on his jacket sleeve, then rose and went to the podium, the disorientation still threatening to drop him.

  Five minutes later he returned to his seat, his eulogy a mental blank other than a vague recollection of saying he’d miss his brother forever. Two more people Jeffrey had never met spoke, and then the slideshow stopped on the first photograph again and the lights brightened by several shades as classical music was piped in from concealed speakers. Becky took his hand and they stood, waiting until everyone had been able to tell them how sorry they were for their loss, and then they found themselves in an empty room, the ordeal over. She turned to him and released him, looking like she’d aged five years in the last hour.

  “That’s it, I guess,” she said uncertainly, a catch in her voice.

  “Looks that way,” he agreed.

  “I’m going to miss him so much…I loved your brother, Jeffrey. I really did.”

  Jeffrey wanted to be alone, but his sense of decency and obligation kicked in and he found himself inviting her to have a cup of coffee with him at a nearby café. He half hoped she would decline, but she didn’t, and instead merely nodded mutely, waiting for him to lead the way.

  When they were seated, their order taken, Becky began talking in a low voice, sounding disjointed and unsure of herself. Time went by and they nursed their coffees as she filled Jeffrey in on their life together, their plans for the future, and then she arrived at the recent past.

  “So he’d been acting strange?” Jeffrey said, echoing her words.

  “Yes. It was like he was growing apart for no reason. He was working later and later, and didn’t want to see me at all for the last ten days or so. I didn’t even know he was going to Italy. I mean, he’d just gotten back from Europe…he had to travel for his job, but he’d tell me he was leaving town for a few days when he did. This time, nothing. I had to find out from the airline that he was on the plane to Rome.”

  Jeffrey wondered how much he didn’t know about his brother. Could he have met someone else? He didn’t voice the possibility, but it occurred to his attorney’s mind that there were two sides to every story. “Did he ever act like that before?”

  “Never. It was like he was a different person. At first I thought it had to do with the research he was doing, but then, when he just shut me out…”

  “Research? What kind of research?” Jeffrey tried not to sound agitated, but the hair on the back of his neck prickled.

  “I don’t know. Something about cows.”

  “Cows? Was it for work?” Jeffrey sounded puzzled.

  “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think so. He went on and on about it, and then just closed down. It was like he became a different person…”

  “Tell me how it happened. What was the project he was working on?”

>   Becky sighed, and then took a long sip on her coffee before signaling to the server for another one.

  “It had to do with the animal mutilations that started appearing in the late sixties and continued through the eighties. Apparently thousands of cows and horses, but mainly cows, were found with their blood drained, their organs missing, and a host of other bizarre stuff. I don’t know how Keith got onto it, but you know how he was. Once he got his teeth into something, he was like a pit bull – relentless.”

  “And you’re sure it wasn’t work-related? I mean, I only have a sort of cursory idea what the hell he did for the State Department, but maybe it was some sort of side project?”

  “No, because at first he would talk about it with me, which he never did with anything from his work. So this was all Keith.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That he’d found some inconsistencies in the data and the eyewitness accounts, and was suspicious, looking for patterns.”

  “Suspicious of what?”

  “He never said. Just that something was off.”

  “Off.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “And then he grew distant?”

  “Yes. At first I thought it was just moodiness – some kind of midlife thing. Then I decided it was his obsessive streak again. You know how he could be. He’d disappear for days at a time, sometimes a week or more, involved in a project he couldn’t talk about due to security clearances. Part of me always suspected that was a convenient cover for his nature. He would stay up all night sometimes when he was on to something. He always insisted it was for work, but I don’t know…”