Indigo Man

by M. J. Carlson

  He hated palm trees, sand, and salt water.

  ***

  Zach sat in the passenger seat of the rented, late-model Ford subcompact. Sara, her crisp, sharp demeanor restored by her freshly laundered white blouse and black pants, turned east, onto the beach causeway toward the mainland.

  “Here,” she said, and handed him a pair of mirrored aviator shades and a baseball cap.

  He turned them over in his hand. “What’re these for?”

  “Facial-recognition software. The average person is photographed seventeen times a day after they leave their house. The mirrors screw up the biometrics and if you tuck your ears under the hat, they can’t ID you by your ears.”

  He put the glasses on, checked his reflection in the vanity mirror, and grinned. “Ears? Really?”

  “Yes. Really,” she said. “Fingerprints, facial structure, and ears are unique, and the FR software can pick you up using any of the three.”

  He pulled the cap on.

  As they drove away from the beach and her family’s home, he watched Sara check the rear-view mirror several times. After a few seconds, she engaged the Auto-drive. “What?”

  “I’ve been thinking about something.”

  “Scary way to start a conversation, but okay, I’ll bite. What?”

  “Why do you call your father by his first name?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t.” She thought about it. “Not always.” She hesitated again. “’Cause it irritates him, I guess.”

  “No it doesn’t. Well, maybe on some level it does, but he tolerates it.” They moved off the causeway bridge onto the mainland and into Clearwater’s center.

  “Well, it’s not like I don’t respect him,” she said. A hint of confusion crept around the edges of her words. The car stopped for a red light at Ft. Harrison. On the street, men and women in dark suits, brief cases in one hand and go-cups of coffee in their other, scurried toward the courthouse. Uniformed police seemed to occupy every corner, and Zach was suddenly glad for the shades and ball cap.

  “Of course, you do. You respect your mother, and you never call her Miranda,” Zach said, as the light changed and they continued through town. The car’s Auto-nav function timed their movement to the lights, allowing them to roll through the steadily growing, morning congestion with a minimum of stops.

  “No, I don’t think I could, but it’s different with my dad.”

  “He knows that, too, but I think I understand why he puts up with it.”

  She smirked at him. “Okay, Dr. Marshall, amateur shrink, why do I?”

  “You call him Jack to show him you’re worthy of his respect, because his opinion means so much to you. He lets you because he does respect you.”

  She considered his comments for a long moment. “What about my mother?”

  “She has love and respect from both of you, and she stands in as the referee to remind you two where the limits are. It’s really cool to watch.”

  Her brow knit. “How was it for you?”

  “My brother and I mostly fended for ourselves. With both our parents working long hours, our little nuclear family succumbed to the fission age. We grew further apart until…” He swallowed. “My father’s death. By then, we were two strangers who sat at a funeral and mourned the loss of two parents we hardly knew.”

  “Two?”

  He nodded. “My mother couldn’t make the festivities. She was a guest of the state at the time. We essentially became orphans. Didn’t you… I mean, I thought you read my file. This must be in it.”

  “Your file has the basic facts, but not any of the repercussions—not what it did to your family—to you.”

  He shook the memory off like the old baggage it was. “We stayed with an aunt and uncle until Dave left for college and I left for Chicago a year later. They tried. They were good people, but it wasn’t the same.” He’d promised himself that one day wouldn’t define his life, but he was finally realizing it had, in so many unpredictable ways. “I think I finally understand what Kathy meant when she left.”

  “That Bailey bitch?” Sara sneered as the words spilled out.

  He laughed. “The same.”

  “What did she say that was so profound?”

  “Ask your mother when you see her.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  He told her about his conversation with Miranda about sacrifice and love while she and Jack were out. When he finished, she sat quietly contemplating for long minutes.

  “It’s a lot, sometimes,” she said at last.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. He stared out the window as they moved through the Clearwater traffic, remembered being a child, standing outside other kids’ houses at dinner time, watching the life he might’ve had, always shining, always out of reach. At dinner the previous night he’d felt the longing again for the first time in years. “Bet it’s tough.”

  “It is, sometimes,” she said. “I mean, remembering stuff is easy, you just set up your email to send you reminders.” She went on, in a thoughtful tone now. “It’s thinking about them, being distracted by it. Always measuring yourself against what you think they’ll approve of.”

  The car stopped for a red light. He pulled himself from his thoughts and said, “Like joining the Secret Service?”

  She chuckled once. “That was me trying to prove something, and I did, but I have questions about why I’m doing it now.”

  “Like the whole thing with me?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but there’s more. What I’m about to tell you could put both of us in federal prison.” She moved closer, adopting a conspiratorial tone. “The Justice Department is investigating Stiles. They recruited me to help gather information on him. I’ve been passing them intelligence and audio recordings for weeks. They have almost enough to indict.”

  He stared at her, having trouble believing what he’d just heard. “You’re a mole for the Justice Department, gathering intel on the illegal activities of a presidential candidate? That’s just over the flippin’ top.”

  “You should’ve heard Jack’s reaction when I told him,” she said with a scowl.

  “I think I can guess your father’s reaction,” he said, considering the risk she was taking by telling anyone something as explosive as this.

  “The politicians we guard just expect us to take a bullet for them, and we aren’t even people to most of them. A few think they’re above the law, and it’s starting to piss me off.”

  “Like Stiles.”

  She nodded. “Exactly. He and Murphy are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.”

  “Birds of a feather.” He grinned at her. “They just need a little tar to make the combo complete.”

  The car started across the causeway. Both sides were lined with people fishing from the rocks or moving watercraft into the surf, oblivious to the sinister plots of their politicians. “In a way, I’m glad of this. It gave me a chance to talk to my parents. They think very highly of you, you know,” she said, changing the subject.

  He laughed. “Your parents? They’re nice people, but they don’t know the real me at all.”

  “Don’t underestimate my dad’s instincts about people. He was a detective for a lot of years, and my mom’s no slouch either.”

  Zach smirked and made a quick, dismissive noise as the car started up the incline of the bridge portion of the causeway.

  “Hey,” Sara pulled the folded-up, hand-written list he’d given her the previous night from her jacket pocket. “You think you know yourself?” She held out the piece of paper, stained and torn, faded and rewritten, showing the years it’d spent in Zach’s wallet. “You structured your whole life around your fear of becoming the person on a bullshit list some guy made up fifty years ago,” she said and hit the button for the window. Cool morning wind poured in on salt-tinged air. “I have news for you, Zachary Marshall,” Sara said over the road noise. “You could never be anything on this list.” Her hand moved to the open window.
The wind clawed at the paper.

  “No!”

  She released her grip.

  A sudden intake of breath caught in his throat. He spun in his seat as patterns and behaviors he had spent his life avoiding flipped once in the wind. The list that had been his constant companion for over a decade disappeared in the distance behind them.

  He blinked. “That was—”

  “Fear. That’s all it ever was. You don’t need it anymore.”

  He slowly turned back around in his seat and closed his eyes, willing his hands not to shake. His heart pounded in his ears and his skin tingled, like stepping into fresh air and sunlight after being trapped underground. His breath gradually returned to normal.

  “But don’t believe me,” she continued in a softer tone when she raised the window. “Be who you are, not a facade you constructed based on a list. Stay alive and find out for yourself what they think.”

  He cleared his throat, and when he could talk, he said, “That’s a challenge I’d like very much to win. I’d like to have those kinds of distractions someday—people who mean something looking up to me, being proud of me. Maybe I’ll even hear myself referred to as Uncle Zach by my niece, someday.” He forced himself back on track. “Your contact at the Justice department. Did you get in touch with him or her while we were at your parents’ house?”

  She scowled. “I tried this morning. He was in a meeting. I’m hoping the media hype surrounding this mess hasn’t spooked him.”

  “Wouldn’t he want to push forward? Stiles is…” He stopped. “The terrorist threat, namely me, would take precedence over the other investigation.”

  “Bingo,” she said, her scowl deepening.

  “Great,” Zach said. “You’re up to your ass in alligators, and your contact person’s the one who gets scared. Great government we have.”

  She shrugged. “Washington can be a dangerous place, politically.”

  “Yeah.” Zach stared out at the bay beyond his window again and envied the scores or people lining the water with nothing more pressing to do than fishing. They settled into the quiet as the car moved through the steadily increasing rush hour traffic on the Hillsborough side.

  “Tampa Veterans Memorial Parkway, two kilometers,” the car’s navigation computer informed them, breaking the silence hanging over them. Zach stared out over the bay, where the morning clouds had dissipated. The now cloudless sky lent a cobalt hue to the color of the water as they passed the big hotels near the water on the Tampa side.

  Zach asked, “Ready?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “It’ll take DHS a few minutes to commandeer a police drone even if they’re involved. Let’s get closer to downtown.”

  Three minutes later, Sara pulled the car off the Interstate and into the usual Tampa morning snarl. Zach pulled his iLink from his pocket and turned it on. “I hope this works, or I’m history.”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “My dad seems to think this guy is an ethical reporter, if such a thing exists.”

  As soon as she was able to hang a U-turn back toward the Interstate, Zach dialed the number Sara’s father had given them.

  A young woman’s voice answered, “Hello. Tribune dot net.”

  “This is Dr. Zachary Marshall. Terrell DeWitt, please.”

  “Yes, sir can you hold?”

  He checked his PCOD. The stopwatch numbers climbed to fifteen. “Only for about another forty-five seconds.”

  A middle-aged male voice answered. “Terrell DeWitt here, to whom am I speaking, please?”

  Zach mentally crossed his fingers. “My name is Zachary Marshall and you probably have some questions for me.”

  “If this is Dr. Zachary Marshall, you want the police. They’re the ones who have questions for you, sir.”

  “That may be true, Mr. DeWitt. However, if I let them ask me anything, Congressman Stiles’s hit men will make sure I don’t live any longer than they let my business partner live. If you’re not interested, we can hang up now.”

  “Wait.” The voice hesitated. “Are you saying that Congressman Martin Stiles is trying to have you killed? Do you have proof?”

  “Yes, sir. I have proof, I have the reason, and I have a witness.”

  “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but—”

  “Excuse me. You know who I am. What you don’t know yet, is what I found in my genetic testing lab two days ago and made me a moving target. If you want to go to the feeds with something that will blow your competitors away,” he said, reading the business name on the note Goode had given him. “Meet me at the Curry Shack downtown in one hour. If you’re not interested, perhaps your counterpart at the Sentinel will be more receptive.”

  “Wait.”

  “One hour, Mr. DeWitt. Someone I trust told me you’re one of the few honest reporters left on the street.”

  DeWitt hesitated, the twos adding up for him. “I am. Honest, I mean.”

  “Approach from across the street and wear something red. Come alone or you can read the story on your competitor’s website.” Zach disconnected, and turned the wrist component of his iLink off again, flipped it over, and popped the battery and SIM card out. He replaced the battery. “Okay, let’s go.”

  She gaped at him. “Why put the battery back in?”

  He said, “If I pull the SIM card, I can still use it as a watch, and it’ll connect to hot spots and get on the Net anonymously. It still acts as a Personal Communications and Organization Device, but the ’Link portion doesn’t work and it can’t be traced.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him and nodded.

  “I looked the manual up on line last night.”

  “Okay, then,” she said.

  ***

  Sara led Zach across the glassed-in tunnel from the parking garage to the fourth floor of the Camson Hotel. A few people moved through the halls, some carrying luggage. “We need to find a vantage point where we can see the street in front of the hotel and still not be seen.”

  He nodded in agreement. “Let’s go upstairs and check things out.” They turned the corner at the intersection of two hallways and headed for the elevators.

  A few moments later, they stepped off the elevators and approached the window at the front of the hotel. They stood at one of the sixth floor bay windows next door to and above the Curry Shack.

  “Think he’ll show?” he asked Sara. She stood next to him at the window. Traffic moved on the street below. He held the crystal drive and several pieces of paper in his hand. He tapped the papers lightly against his leg.

  “Yes, I do,” she answered in a hushed tone. “It’s too good to pass up. Our concern is watching for any unusual activity on the street before he gets here.”

  “Police?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how much technology Murphy has access to at this point. Just pretend to be a couple, and keep an eye open for anything out of the ordinary. Every ten minutes, we’ll move to another floor. I’ll go first, and you follow me in two minutes. That way, we won’t stand anyplace long enough to be noticed, and one of us will be at the window at all times,” she said, in a quiet tone. As she stared out the window, one of her fingers hooked his. “We’ll do six, four, five, three, and two, then the lobby. And go fifteen minutes late. Just stay back a few feet or to one side, so you aren’t seen through the window.”

  He nodded, and set the timer function of his PCOD.

  ***

  Zach approached Sara at the third floor window after their third move. Her jacket hung over her arm and the light through the window cast her in silhouette. He strolled up next to her at the window and took her hand in his. Despite its conspicuous design, from four feet away, the curled white wire was nearly invisible in her hair.

  While he scanned the street, Sara rolled the tension out of her neck, and laid her head on his shoulder. “See anything?”

  “Just the maid on the fifth floor. Do they usually carry Uzis in this hotel?” He let a smile touch the corners of his mouth as he spoke.

&
nbsp; “Oh, yeah,” she whispered, her head still on his shoulder. “They’re very security conscious here. Didn’t you know?”

  “Um, not to be nosey, but where’s your weapon, Special Agent Goode? Your father would not be pleased.”

  “Right here, Jack Junior.” She shifted her suit jacket draped over her arm. “My shoulder holster is folded underneath. I was getting warm in the jacket. And that’s former Special Agent, if you please.”

  “Former Special Agent. Sorry,” he said. A phone company truck stopped across the street. “We should come here for a few days after this is all over. You see that?” He indicated where the truck driver was setting up bright orange cones on the street.

  “Yeah, I do,” she said, glancing again along the rooftops across the street.

  “There’s DeWitt,” he said. A middle-aged man walked briskly along the opposite side of the street, stepped off the curb, and headed to the restaurant. “Wow, you think that sweater’s red enough?” The man had a sweater the color of a fire truck on a sunny day draped over his shoulders with the arms tied around his neck.

  “Wow,” Sara said. “Can’t miss him in that. Bright enough?”

  “Yeah, I kind of expected a flower or something.” The hair on his neck prickled. “You getting a funny feeling?”

  With a sharp intake of breath, Sara stepped away from the window. “Roofline. Silhouette,” she whispered, already starting to walk away, still holding Zach’s hand.

  He caught sight of the black form, just visible at the corner of the building. “Crap.”

  “Come on.” She tugged him through the hallway toward the stairs.

  “Why are we running?” He gripped his side as he ran.

  “Because,” she said, over her shoulder, “I don’t know if they saw us at the window, or at the other windows. We have to get off this floor.” They burst into the stairwell, and Sara started down the steps two at a time, Zach close at her heels.

  CHAPTER 19