by Paul Knox
“What happened, Maisie?”
“I’ve never been more scared in my entire life, Reece. Oliver ran to the kitchen to make some popcorn. We were watching Psycho in the living room. Trying to get into the Halloween spirit coming up, you know? I was already on edge and then a real life killer comes in!”
“He shot at you, but missed?”
“I had mace in my purse, which—good thing—I had on the table next to me. I had gotten my purse earlier because I needed some Chapstick after all the salty popcorn I’d mindlessly stuffed my face with, watching that freaky movie. Well, Jaxson knew the mace was in there, and grabbed it, running to the kitchen to save us like a real-life hero. He sprayed it right in the guy’s face!”
“Did he get a good look at him?”
“No, because the guy started shooting. He tried to kill Jaxson! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. This is just too insane.”
“Not at all? What about Oliver?”
“Oliver said the guy wore a Hawaiian shirt and had, like, a big mustache. And a straw hat. Do you know who he is?”
“His name is Lucky. I’ll find him, Maisie. But for now, make sure one of the deputies watches your house. If you need to, say I called you and threatened to come back. Anything to get them to stay.”
“I would never say that, Reece. Jaxson will think of something. I better go.”
“Maisie, call me at the first sign of anything.”
◆◆◆
Lucky, admittedly, felt anxious. That last move of his didn’t go the way he’d planned. The world seemed to be tightening its grip on him. He had to get rid of Jessie before someone found her and traced it all back to him.
Forget the ransom.
Jessie’s dead body would make a splendid distraction. At least there wouldn’t be a rush to find her before she was murdered. Because she’d already be dead.
That was the best shot he had at the moment.
Kill Jessie.
Lucky raced back to 27 Cactus.
Thirty-Three
Right there in front of him.
The second house to the last, at the end of the residential street, 27 Cactus had the same lush desert landscaping as its town’s namesake, Green Valley. Uneasy, but also longing for hope, Tommy Shanahan breathed in the moment. The spread out, small town air smelled clean and alive.
It was all unreal. Shanahan could hardly believe he now methodically approached the house.
It had been a long week.
The sun hung low over the horizon, almost dipping below the rooftop, but the rays of light were still fierce on his eyes. The house looked completely normal, part of a senior community. A perfect retiree’s warm winter paradise.
Shanahan stood at the entrance door, about to kick it in, when he remembered that he didn’t know with certainty if this was the right home or not. He was there, after all, on a hunch.
Electrified and frenzied, he knocked as softly as he could, which to the normal ear sounded like a pounding. No answer. Then he really pounded the door. Still, nothing.
His lockpicking kit was back in his truck, wherever that must’ve been towed after the accident. Maybe there were tools in the Buick?
He glanced back at the cream-colored sedan, briefly, before facing the door again.
Screw it. I’ll pay for damages.
In one single, powerful fluid motion, Shanahan imagined kicking the door in. The force would snap the brass doorstopper on the top hinge. The door handle would slam against the wall to the side, putting a hole in the drywall.
If you get yourself killed by being too obvious, Jessie dies, too.
Instead, Shanahan ran back to the car. He found two paperclips inside the glove box and a pair of pliers from a small tool kit in the trunk.
Less than a minute later, he was inside the normal-looking home.
“Hello? Pima County Sheriff’s Department,” Shanahan called out, drawing his gun. “Anybody home?”
There was no answer.
Shanahan glanced around. The living room had a large TV, a couch and a loveseat. Perfectly normal. A fruit bowl sat on the island counter in the kitchen, with a couple apples and a bunch of bananas that still had some green on them.
But no blender, toaster or other countertop appliances. And all the cabinets were open, cupboards bare. Empty, except plastic wrap. It looked like someone had gathered up everything from them, without having the time to close them again.
Blood was smeared on the kitchen counter.
“Jessie!” he called out, running to the bedrooms.
He went to the master bedroom first. Beside a small bed, there was a large, electronic safe—much too heavy to move without help.
I’m definitely in the right house.
Then he went into the second room. There was a chair sideways on the ground with a small amount of blood smeared on the tile floor. There were zip ties that had been cut, and one of them also had blood on it. It looked like a struggle might have taken place.
Shanahan picked up the zip tie. The blood was fresh.
Suddenly, he felt unsteady. He dropped the zip tie. The room started spinning around him.
Without a doubt in Shanahan’s mind, he knew Jessie had been here.
But she wasn’t anymore.
In a dizzying confusion, Shanahan dialed Reece’s number. He needed someone to tell him Jessie was alive, that she had been found.
Reece answered. “Shanahan?”
“I found Lucky’s house. Jessie’s gone. There’s blood on the ground. Do you think…?” Shanahan choked. “I still had two days left, didn’t I?”
“Where are you? I’ll come to you. We’ll find him together.”
Shanahan cleared his throat. Reece hadn’t offered any consolation. How could she? Jessie was probably dead.
“No. I don’t want you involved with what I’m going to do. When I find him…I don’t want you incriminated in any way. And Reece, don’t trust anybody. Anybody.”
“I’m already incriminated, Shanahan. You can’t do this alone.”
“When I find him, I’ll beat your innocence out of him. Stay away, Reece. It’s over. For us all.”
“It’s not over! I’m part of this! Lucky just broke into Maisie’s home and shot up the walls. Jaxson maced him and he disappeared. He left pictures of Nohpalli.”
Shanahan closed his eyes. “Nohpalli? Zaki?”
“There was a picture of Zaki in the café, yes.”
“When?”
“Just a few minutes ago.”
“You can’t be a part of this. You have your life to live.” Shanahan ended the call.
His spirit was crushed.
Which house would Lucky go to, next?
Obviously, Lucky had already dealt with Jessie and moved on to Nohpalli, to Zaki.
Now that he’d been maced, would he go to the home in Tucson or come here to Green Valley?
Shanahan seemed to be borrowing time to remain alive. His body felt like a dying shell while his soul shriveled loose from its inauthentic frame. Never had the unimaginable, the nightmare, been his reality.
Lucky couldn’t go back to Nohpalli tonight. Too many deputies would be there and watching. Being that it was Friday night, Shanahan guessed he would come back to the Green Valley location.
It felt like someone else took residence in Shanahan’s body, shackling what was once his substance, his entity, to the pit of his stomach. Someone peered through Shanahan’s eyes, to his hands. He had blood on his right fingertips. Jessie’s blood.
Somehow Shanahan’s body hovered on legs, stuck to feet that pressed the ground, but he couldn’t fathom how that was so. What was real? This?
How much time had been wasted during his life, being trivial, acting aloof, never embracing the present moment?
Shanahan’s body glided silently through the night to the borrowed car. He parked it down the street in front of a random house, and observed 27 Cactus, awaiting Lucky’s arrival, detached from humanity.
Wa
s there a Heaven? Would Jessie be waiting for him? Or was he only this skin, never to feel the touch of his lover again?
His bones kept his body from caving in, but his mind found no such support.
As he counted the seconds, he heard the ticking of a clock like a black raven’s wing rapping on his soul.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
The words of Poe finally made sense to Shanahan, and he felt the dark bird’s beak stab into his heart.
All Shanahan could bleed was an abyss so empty that once a man fell down it, he would never escape the pure and utter loneliness which completely consumed.
Unblinking, Shanahan’s gaze enveloped 27 Cactus like the black raven perched above a chamber door.
The sun had finally dipped behind the mountains, leaving the sky glowing like embers from an extinguished fire.
Shanahan whispered, “Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
Thirty-Four
Reece Cannon stared into the night through the windshield of her unfamiliar pickup, longing for her simple home. She imagined Nohpalli café and her friends huddled together, keeping each other safe.
A strange phone in her pocket, and inside a strange vehicle, she remained unwelcome in her familiar surroundings. Her partner, Shanahan, had disappeared to face his fate without her. They’d failed—she failed—and Jessie might now be dead.
Alone and isolated, Reece felt insane to be laughing at the craziness of believing that just days before, she might have let someone buy her dinner.
Yeah, right.
Not her.
It was only a matter of time before Ethan and Penny, and especially Gomez, would have to cut ties with her, too. They had careers, lives…tamales.
Reece drove to a motel and took a much-needed shower. Drinking a stale coffee from a small Styrofoam cup, she sat in silence, wondering how to accomplish what she’d started. And if that was even realistic.
But Reece’s mind never stopped turning over the next clue, pondering the possibilities of what if.
She might be isolated, but she never gave up.
She might be a little fish in a big pond, but she swam like a shark.
Lucky was out there.
Not only would she find him, she’d find Shanahan, too. And bring him back from the dark side.
At that moment, she didn’t know how she’d do it all. She only knew she had to.
Detective Reece Cannon had a job to do.
◆◆◆
Shanahan had watched the Green Valley house for a never ending stretch of time before his mind started mulling and he couldn’t do it any longer.
He drove to Tucson—Lucky’s second house.
Lucky wasn’t there, either.
Shanahan went to the casino.
Not there.
He called Ethan and asked about the Russian home. Ethan was still there, watching. No Lucky. And the young Russian was home, alone.
Where is the older one?
Shanahan drove back to 27 Cactus. And then back to Tucson. He drove from house to house until the full moon shone bright and the streets were quiet as a gentle breeze.
No matter how much he drove, and how many times he arrived at each house, or the casino, he wouldn’t come to terms with the thought that Lucky was too busy murdering his wife to go home and sleep.
Only Shanahan knew Lucky’s true identity—and Lucky didn’t know he knew. There was no reason Lucky would vanish from town—at least, not yet.
Shanahan kept Lucky’s identity to himself. He wanted the first shot. And the last.
Assuming Lucky would need whatever was in that safe, Shanahan decided that Green Valley was still the most likely place he’d find him.
Arriving to 27 Cactus for the umpteenth time, a tired Shanahan found the house still vacant.
He needed to close his bloodshot eyes. But sleep wasn’t a good enough reason to do so. His anger wouldn’t be cured. But it could be amplified.
He drove a couple minutes away for something that he hadn’t had in a long, very long week.
Whiskey.
There was no reason to abstain any longer.
The 19th hole Bar and Grille would be closing soon, but Shanahan might get a couple quick drinks in. He wasn’t planning on staying long. Just long enough to get some calories in his body and wash away a few memories.
After a handful of quickly downed doubles, the place was mostly empty. Shanahan sat by his lonesome in the bar while the bartender wiped off the counters and prepared to close up.
“You have any kids?” Shanahan asked.
The bartender responded with a tired smile. “Nope. Not yet. Haven’t met the right person. You?”
“One. A boy. We’re going to get away for a while. I’m planning to take him to Disneyland and Legoland and Universal Studios and all of ‘em.”
“That sounds like quite the trip. Lucky kid.”
Shanahan gagged on his whiskey. Lucky.
“Want to hear a story?” Shanahan asked.
“Why not.”
“Let me get another, first.”
“You haven’t had enough?”
“One more. And I’ll tell you the story of your life. Fair?”
The bartender poured him another and then put the cap back on the whiskey. “This bottle’s closed for the night. But I’ll take that story.”
“I’m a lieutenant for Pima County. And the craziest thing just happened. Some guy—a, uh, detective—busted a cocaine smuggler.”
“Good for him—the detective, I mean.”
“Not really. You see, the smuggler was part of a large Columbian cartel, which also had ties to the Russian mafia. Some kind of network of criminals that converged here, in this very desert, making American money.”
“The land of dreams.”
“Dreams. Right.” Shanahan grimaced. “This detective was sleeping in his home one night, next to his wife. His baby boy was in the other bedroom. Two thugs who the smugglers hired busted in and took his wife. They smashed the detective in the face with a lamp. A house lamp, of all things. Then they hit his wife over the head with a gun and knocked her out, right in front of the detective. Dragged her off unconscious.”
The bartender stopped washing the glass he held and walked over, listening closer. “Did you guys find her and catch ‘em?”
“No. That’s the thing. The guy running it all—Lucky’s his name—demanded a ransom and a week to pay, but we don’t negotiate with terrorists or however that BS line goes.”
“What happened after the week?”
“Lucky kept her at a house, here in Green Valley this whole time. 27 Cactus. But the very same day the detective found the house, Lucky killed her. Earlier that day. Probably only hours earlier.”
“27 Cactus? No one will ever want to live there again.”
“You know the place?”
“Well, no, I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to go there after all that.”
Shanahan took a sip. “Right. You know the absolutely craziest part of it?”
“What?”
“It’s who Lucky really was.”
“He wasn’t Russian?”
“No, not at all. He was one of us, one of the good guys. I worked with him at the sheriff’s department. Would’ve never suspected it.”
The bartender leaned forward, shocked. “He double-crossed you…or, I mean, your friend?”
“Yeah. The whole thing really messed up the detective. He went crazy after that. He’ll never be the same again.” Shanahan downed the rest of the whiskey and slammed the glass on the counter.
He shut his eyes for a moment, blinking away tears, opening them as the bartender ripped his gaze away.
The bartender grabbed a clean glass that he’d already washed, and washed it again. “I’m sorry for your loss, sir. Want another drink?”
Later, Shanahan sat in the parking lot knowing he couldn’t
drive. He’d barely stumbled to the Buick.
That poor old man. Shanahan needed to get his car back to him. He probably thought he was helping an officer of the law, and Shanahan didn’t like the thought he had endlessly borrowed—stole—the sedan.
He was about to call an Uber to go back and keep watch over the Green Valley house, but first pulled up his text messages.
He sent a text to Reece.
The bartender knows everything. Just in case something happens to me.
Shanahan closed his eyes, just for a second. He’d briefly rest before resuming the hunt.
◆◆◆
Jessie had quickly looked for bandages in Lucky’s house before she’d left, but he didn’t keep much in the cabinets. She’d grabbed a banana and left as quickly as possible.
She now stumbled through the neighborhood, trying to hurry, but also staying away from the main roads. Jessie looked a mess and knew it. Her head was bloody and bruised, hadn’t showered in a week, she wore a dirty bathrobe, and didn’t even have shoes.
If anybody saw her, they’d think she was either homeless or had just escaped from a mental institution.
From the unique mountains in the distance, Jessie knew she was in Green Valley—too far a walk from Tucson, with miles of desert separating the two locations. She needed help. She needed to find Shanahan and tell him who Lucky was.
One of the worst feelings in the world, she was free yet couldn’t go anywhere. She didn’t even know Shanahan’s number. To her, Shanahan’s number had been holding the one button on her phone for a few seconds. That wouldn’t help her now.
And she couldn’t call the police or sheriff’s department.
Lucky might find her again if she did.
A few neighborhoods over, and a solid distance away from the house she’d been held prisoner, she started knocking on doors. No one answered at the first or second house. At the third house, a little old lady cautiously answered. She didn’t help.
Jessie knocked on door number four.
“Hi, sorry for bothering you.” Jessie looked down at her outfit and back to the elderly woman. “I’m not crazy or a danger to anyone. I promise. My car broke down in the desert and I’ve been walking since yesterday.”