Light It Up

by Nick Petrie

  “I know,” Peter said. “But if we take too long, you’re going to see my claustrophobia up close and personal.”

  “Wait,” Miranda said. “You’re claustrophobic?”

  “It’s not as bad as it used to be,” Peter said. “But I can only be inside for so long. After a while I start to sweat, then hyperventilate. It’s basically a panic attack.”

  “Sounds like my second wedding,” Steinburger said. “My third wedding, too, actually.”

  “Was that you having the panic attack?” Miranda asked. “Or your bride?”

  “Play nice, Counselor,” Steinburger said, then led them inside. The ER was nearly empty.

  After all, it was only eight o’clock.

  The night was still young.

  —

  A ponytailed nurse in blue scrubs escorted them through the fluorescent flicker of the triage area while Peter’s war reflexes looked for lines of fire and escape routes. His clothes were stiff with dried blood, he felt it flaking off with every step.

  Breathe in, he told himself. Slow and steady. Breathe out.

  With Don, his therapist, Peter had done almost six months of mental exercises. In order to get better at being inside, he’d learned to consciously calm himself, to control his breathing, to keep his mind focused on the present moment, rather than allowing himself to slip into the old mental pathways, into warrior mode. Fight or flight, with emphasis on the fight.

  He’d come to enjoy the exercises, had gotten pretty good at them. That’s part of what the yoga was about. Focus, discipline. Also strength and flexibility.

  Peter worried, sometimes, about getting too good at calming himself. He definitely wanted to be able to live a normal life, a life he could share with June. But he didn’t want to lose the ability to react like a warrior when he needed to.

  He still did the exercises.

  The idea of a life with June Cassidy was a pretty powerful incentive.

  Of course, those exercises didn’t take into account that Peter might be covered with blood. That he might have just killed four men who were trying to kill him, and lost a good friend in the process. It would be hard to practice that kind of scenario.

  Sometimes the static just filled his head, no matter what he did.

  —

  The exam room was twelve feet square, a clutter of wall cabinets, medical equipment, an exam table, and three windowless walls. The fourth wall was aluminum-framed glass with a glass door and a view of the nurses’ station.

  The nurse, whose name tag read SUSIE, began to open cabinets and remove little wrapped packets of medical supplies. She was efficient, still under thirty, maybe five years younger than Peter. Steinburger leaned against the counter with his arms folded against his chest. Miranda Howe walked in last, carrying the leather duffel, and closed the door behind her.

  “Uh, little privacy?” said Peter.

  “Sorry,” Steinburger said apologetically. “Chain of custody. Your clothes may be evidence in a trial. I need to ensure that they haven’t been tampered with. The nurse is here to check you for injuries, per protocol and the request of your attorney.”

  “Miranda?”

  “He’s correct. And your attorney should be present at times like this, when you’re in close contact with a member of law enforcement.” She set the duffel on the exam table and removed a short pile of neatly folded clothes. “Don’t worry, I’ll avert my eyes.”

  Peter wasn’t going to wait. He could feel the static foaming up his brainstem. Slow, deep breaths.

  The nurse pulled the curtain across the glass wall while Peter undid the Velcro straps of the black armored vest and slid it over his head. Flakes of dried blood fell like snow. He handed the vest to Steinburger, who slid it into a clear plastic bag taken from the side pocket of his suit. Peter’s shirt came next, a once-white super-wicking technical T-shirt that helped keep him cool under the hot vest. Into another of Steinburger’s plastic bags. The muscles in his neck were getting tight.

  He stood stripped to the waist in his ruined Carhartts while Nurse Susie took a series of alcohol-soaked pads and cleaned the skin on his face and neck and anywhere else the crimson crust had formed under his clothes. Her gloved hands were cool and firm and professional on his body, but she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

  Peter figured it was because he’d come in covered with other men’s blood like some kind of desperado, and she was a nice, normal, well-adjusted young woman.

  “Are you in any pain?” she asked. “I’m really not finding anything but scrapes and bruises.”

  “Just my head,” he said, pointing to his skull above his left ear. “Kind of a throb.”

  She took another pad and began to clean the blood from his hair. He winced as she pressed harder, trying to soak out the blood. “That’s a nice goose egg,” she said. “Did you ever lose consciousness?”

  Peter had been hit harder before. Much harder. “No,” he said. “It just kind of rung my bell, you know?”

  “You must have a hard head,” she said, glancing shyly at him now. Maybe she wasn’t so normal. Peter was very aware that he was half naked getting what amounted to a sponge bath by a pretty young nurse. And soon he’d be taking off his pants. Under the watchful eye of Miranda Howe and Detective Steinburger.

  He was starting to sweat, the static turning to sparks.

  Goddamn he was tired of this.

  Breathe in, breathe out.

  Nurse Susie looked at him a little more closely. “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just don’t do well in enclosed spaces. I can finish cleaning up later, okay?”

  She nodded. “Okay.” She smacked a soft plastic pack on the edge of the countertop and held it out. “Put this cold pack on your goose egg,” she said, “it will help with the swelling.” It was already cooling in his hand. She pressed a paper packet of ibuprofen into his palm. “Take these now.”

  She turned away and clicked a few buttons on the laptop perched on a mobile stand. “Pick up your care instructions at the nursing station on your way out. And here’s my card, if you have any further questions or concerns.”

  She gave him an innocent look, handing it over, but the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth was anything but. “I put my cell on the back, in case your headache gets worse, or you have any other sort of emergency.” He turned the card over. Her handwriting was wild but the message was clear.

  She turned and let herself out, closing the door behind her.

  Steinburger had his pad out and a small digital recorder. “While you get changed,” he said, “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

  “Not until he’s dressed,” said Miranda, who was eyeballing Peter like she wanted to eat him for dinner. “Although I’m assuming you want the pants, too.”

  He’d been in that crowded room under the flickering fluorescents for twenty minutes and the static was starting to throw lightning bolts. His chest felt like it was wrapped in steel bands, and it was getting harder to breathe.

  He said, “Both of you, get the fuck out. Detective, if you want my pants, I’ll hand them through that door. Unless you’re planning to arrest me right this minute.”

  Steinburger’s eyebrows went up in mild surprise, but his face betrayed nothing else.

  “I’ll be right outside,” he said. “And yes, I need your pants.” He glanced down. “And your boots.”

  Miranda lingered in the doorway. “I don’t know if anything will fit,” she said. “There’s more in the bag. I just grabbed some things from my closet.”

  Peter didn’t care where the clothes had come from. He put his hand on her shoulder and removed her from the room, closed the opaque glass door behind him. He bent to untie and kick off his ruined boots, then shed the stiff, blood-crusted pants onto the floor. He’d taken to wearing miracle boxers that wicked sweat, could get rinsed clean in a creek every night and would be dry by the morning, but the blood had soaked all the way through the pants and into his
goddamn underwear.

  He leaned on the exam table. He pressed his palms to his eyes and remembered again the man with the shotgun right up against him in the back of the ambulance. The rough wool of the ski mask, the way his eyes changed as his blood pumped out of him. The smell of his sweat and fear.

  “Peter?” Miranda’s voice through the door. “Are you all right?”

  No.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hang on.”

  He sorted quickly through the clothes Miranda had brought, a motley collection in a variety of sizes. There were no socks or shoes. The underwear was all weird, banana-hammock Speedo-looking shit, so he stepped directly into a pair of another man’s pre-distressed jeans made of some kind of stretch fabric. The size was his, but they felt too tight on his skin. Like the whole room. Electricity filled his head.

  Faster now, the floor cold under his bare feet, he pulled on someone else’s Oskar Blues T-shirt and Telluride sweatshirt, shoved the rest of Miranda’s oddball clothes back in the duffel, and opened the door.

  Steinburger held out another clear plastic evidence bag. Peter pushed past him, the detective solid and more nimble than he looked, pivoting to put a strong hand on Peter’s wrist, trying for a come-along hold. “Hang on.”

  Peter rotated his arm and slipped the grip without breaking stride. “Outside,” he said over his shoulder.

  In the high-altitude night, the cool mountain wind blew through him like something approaching grace.

  He looked around for Henry’s daughter, but her car with the Heavy Metal Protection door decal was gone.

  Lightning flashed in the west.

  He automatically counted the seconds before the crack and grumble of thunder.

  —

  At a picnic table on a grassy area past the parking lot, Steinburger asked Peter to tell him what had happened.

  Pacing barefoot while Miranda listened, Peter held the ice pack to his head as he told the story from start to finish, beginning with how he’d met Henry Nygaard in the Willamette National Forest, how he’d ended up working at Heavy Metal Protection, the hijacking, his counterattack, and the final drive with Henry down to the hospital. Again he neglected to mention the state trooper’s uniform, or that the car was dressed up like an unmarked cruiser.

  Steinburger listened without expression, as if the litany of carnage was nothing to him after twenty years as a cop.

  While Peter was talking, a black guy walked up with a cardboard tray holding four paper coffee cups. Eyes recording everything, from Peter’s bare feet to the clothes that didn’t fit.

  He was medium height and whip-thin in a dark sport coat and a red plaid Western-style shirt over black jeans and low-heeled cowboy boots. He leaned against the end of the table and listened without comment.

  Steinburger was fixated on the fact that Peter didn’t have a local address. He waved Peter’s driver’s license in the air. “This is your parents’ place in Wisconsin?”

  “I move around a lot,” Peter said. “I’ve only been in town for three days, remember? I’m staying at Henry’s until I find a place.” He was sleeping on Henry’s open back porch. He could fit almost everything he owned in the back of his truck. He told himself it was a lifestyle choice.

  Although maybe that could change.

  Steinburger backed up further, asked Peter about his background, the company he worked for, what he did for a living. Peter said he was a silent partner in an investment company, which had some resemblance to the truth. Lewis had put Peter’s name on the paperwork, anyway. Peter didn’t mention where the money had come from. Lewis had laundered it so completely that it might have come from the moon.

  Steinburger pointed a thumb at the black guy and said, “This is Paul Sykes, an investigator with the Colorado State Police.”

  Sykes put out his hand to shake. He was older than Peter by a few years, probably not yet forty. He had a brief smile and bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept for a month.

  “Call me Paul, please. I brought coffee. Lattes, actually,” he said a little apologetically, handing out cups. “Still a quad skinny mocha for you, Miranda?”

  Miranda gave the black investigator a high-wattage smile. Gorgeous, sexy, the kind of controlled radiation that would burn skin in ten minutes. “Thanks, but I’ve lost my taste for chocolate. How’s the wife?”

  “We have a little boy now,” he said. “And another one on the way.”

  “That’s nice.” She turned to Steinburger. “Gentlemen, my client has had a long and difficult day. It’s time I got him home. We can come to your office tomorrow, say about noon?”

  Sykes nodded agreeably. “I’m very sorry for what you’ve been through,” he said, taking a small notebook from the pocket of his sport coat. “But I have a few more questions.”

  In fact, Investigator Sykes had a lot more questions, and so did Detective Steinburger.

  Peter had been through this kind of questioning before, so he knew he was in for a long night. He was glad he’d managed to recover the money. It was probably the only thing keeping him out of jail.

  Sykes wanted to hear the whole story again. He and Steinburger walked Peter through it a half dozen more times, backward and forward. Why had he attacked the man with the shotgun? Why hadn’t he gotten the stretcher off the road to hide from the man in the wrecker? Why kill the man driving the ambulance?

  Whenever Miranda complained about the questions or the length of the conversation, Peter said it was fine and kept talking. He told the entire truth about what had happened, except for the unmarked car, its uniformed driver, and its plate number.

  With Sykes there, who was after all with the state police, Peter was even less willing to talk about the possible trooper.

  Sykes could tell Peter was holding something back. He asked a lot of questions about the missing car and driver. What was the make and model? What kind of clothes was he wearing? Peter just repeated that it was a big black American sedan, newer, maybe a Dodge, and the guy wore blue pants and a blue shirt and a wide-brimmed hat.

  Sykes wouldn’t let it go. Kept coming back to it. Finally Miranda said, “Sykes, enough. He’s answered your questions.”

  Then Sykes stepped away to take a phone call from his partner up on the mountain, who had some questions of his own.

  It seemed the hijackers’ bodies were gone.

  11

  I don’t know what to tell you,” said Peter. “They were there when I left. Maybe the guy in the sedan did it. Maybe that’s why he didn’t come after me and Henry.”

  “Any idea why?” Sykes asked.

  “To hide something, of course,” Peter said. “But I don’t know how he’d do it. Loading four dead bodies in a sedan by yourself? Those guys weren’t small. And it would have been really messy. They didn’t exactly die in their sleep.”

  “Unless he had help,” Miranda said quietly.

  They all sat on that for a minute. It added a new dimension.

  “Let me ask you something,” Peter said finally. “You know Randy Hansen went missing last week, right? With three hundred grand. That’s twice now, with the same security company. So who else are you talking to? Who else has gotten hit? How long has this been going on?”

  “I can’t comment on an ongoing investigation,” said Sykes.

  “On that thing last week,” Steinburger said, scratching his stubble. “Their GPS tracker cut out just inside the Denver city limits, so for the moment, Denver PD owns it. And I’m the lead. So I’ll tell you that we were looking hardest at Hansen and the guy he was with. What happened today probably changes that. But I’ve never heard of anything like the hijacking you described.” He looked at Sykes. “State Police has the highways, Paul. You ever see anything like this?”

  Sykes shook his head. “Look, it’s no secret the cannabis industry, an all-cash business, has created some new crime. But it’s mostly smash-and-grab. Nothing this scale. Nothing this professional.”

  “Well,” said Peter. “There’s a lot of
money involved. It would have been over a half million dollars if they’d gotten this one. Maybe someone’s decided to get serious.”

  “And it doesn’t matter that they got the bodies,” Steinburger said. “We’ve still got the ambulance.”

  “They all wore gloves and hats and masks,” Peter said.

  Steinburger shook his head. “This isn’t a movie. It doesn’t matter how careful they were. There might be fingerprints on magazines and shell casings, and plenty of DNA in the spatter. If these guys are in the system, if they’ve ever been arrested or been in prison, we’ll have prints on file. If they’re active or former military? We’ll also have their DNA.”

  Sykes shook his head. “Whoever it was, he—or they—wanted to get rid of everything. Stuck a rag in the ambulance’s gas tank, set it on fire.”

  Steinburger made a sound, a formless groan of anger and pain. “What?”

  Sykes smiled. “The fire was just getting started when the first trooper showed up. Trooper was dumb enough to try to put it out with the extinguisher in his unit. He got burned a little, but he managed to preserve a lot of evidence. He’ll probably get a commendation.”

  Steinburger said, “So he just missed them.”

  “Yeah,” said Sykes. “But here’s the weird thing. Whoever it was, he put the bodies of your friends on the side of the road, far enough from the ambulance that they wouldn’t get burned when it went up. And not all jumbled up in a pile, either, but laid out straight, arms at their sides, like at a funeral.”

  Or like casualties after a battle, thought Peter.

  He didn’t like the way this was going.

  Nobody said the thing that they all were thinking.

  What if there were more than just the five hijackers?

  —

  Finally Miranda said, “Detectives, this is fascinating, but we’ve been here five hours, and my client has had a very distressing day. Unless you’d like to charge Mr. Ash with something, we’re leaving.”