by Matt Betts
She used to come to sit and watch the traffic zip by on the four-lane and wonder where they all were going in such a hurry. Life in Talmadge didn’t lend itself much to rushing for anything, so it was always a novelty. Deena couldn’t remember being anxious to do anything except get away from this place. She figured everyone was on their way to San Diego or Los Angeles or some other city on the California coast. She hadn’t even made it to those places, close as they were. She and Harper begged on a regular basis to make any one of those places a vacation destination, but no luck.
Lately though, she’d been coming to the little sanctuary to stare at the black and blue blemish on her arm that had appeared, seemingly overnight. It was prominent one day when she went to wash her face before bed and it puzzled her as to whether it had been there before. It was halfway between her elbow and wrist, about as big as the head of a screw.
She licked her thumb and rubbed at it, but it didn’t come off. She’d tried it all before; scrubbed it with a washcloth and soap, rubbed it with an emery board and a pot scrubber, but no luck. It was an ugly little blemish and she was stuck with it.
“Deena? You up there?”
It was her wet-blanket sister, Harper.
“Yeah,” Deena answered and leaned over the side of her dumpster-salvaged platform, careful not to put her weight on the cracked plank that she feared might snap if she wasn’t careful.
“Dad just left for work and we have to wash the breakfast dishes and vacuum the living room before we can leave for the pool,” Harper said. “So let’s go. I’m not doing it all on my own and I want to go swimming today.”
“Ehh,” Deena said.
“Dammit Deena. Don’t screw around. Mike is going to be there at noon and I want to get there early to claim a lounge chair that he has to walk by to get to the diving board.”
“Meh.” Deena liked torturing her sister. It was becoming something of a pastime. She was an easy mark.
Harper practically growled up at Deena. “I will climb up there and drag your bratty ass down and shove the dishes down your throat if I have to.”
“Bullshit.” If Harper wanted to go so bad, she would cave in and do all of the housework herself. Deena knew that and was prepared to wait it out. She sat up and leaned her back against the tree and watched the traffic quietly. After a moment, she heard her sister stalk off, stomping her feet on the leaves and twigs as she went. The sound dissipated in the distance and Deena could feel a smirk come across her face.
She raised her arm and stared at the dot. It was just over her wrist and had swollen to the size of a penny. In the time she’d briefly interacted with her sister, it had become twice as large, and it seemed to have moved several inches. Deena was fascinated… and worried.
9
Morgan sat in the comfortable seat of Marsh’s private jet and stared at Wallace. “Marsh didn’t say anything about bringing you along. Shouldn’t you be babysitting Harper? Surely the sisters will be in contact.”
“I dropped her off with Marsh. They have a bunch of his thugs guarding her. She isn’t going anywhere.”
Morgan nodded. He’d figured Marsh would take his advice and make her the carrot that brought Deena in. He hadn’t, however, counted on being saddled with Wallace while he hunted the witch. “Well, at least that’s one of them off the street.”
“We have people at the train stations and airport already watching for Deena. If they see anything, we’ll know. We’re watching whatever public cameras we can get access to. If she shows up, we’ll have someone on it.” Wallace was drinking a can of soda through a straw. The slurping sound annoyed Morgan.
The clouds were thin outside the plane and Morgan looked out the window to watch them go by. He’d have to ditch Wallace one way or another once they got to Seattle. While he could be helpful to an extent, for the most part he’d just be a hindrance. He knew things and didn’t mind doing leg work, but Morgan worked alone. Mostly. Just him and his demons.
“Look. I’ve done tons of field stuff for Marsh. We get after Deena, catch her, drag her home, and we both come out ahead,” Wallace said. “No big deal. We do what we do, and then we go back to our jobs. I’m not here to cramp your style or get in your way. I don’t want to be stuck looking after Harper for the rest of my life. Once she and her sister are out of the way, I can move on to bigger and better things.”
“This is your captain speaking. If you look out over the left side of the plane, you’ll discover that Wallace is going to kill you.” It was Mr. Hector’s voice and it seemed to be coming from the plane’s speakers, though Wallace didn’t notice it. “Why is he here? He’s going to kill you, that’s why. First chance he gets. Why else would he be here? He shouldn’t be here.”
Morgan pursed his lips tighter, struggling not to answer the voice, and struggling to keep more from showing up.
“Beat him to death with a tray table and throw him out the cabin door.” The voice was scratchy through the speakers. “Problem solved.”
“Avi had a room at a hotel near the airport. Hopefully, he stayed put, but he hasn’t been in contact with anyone since he reported Deena didn’t get off the plane. Who knows what he’s up to? I just want to get on with it.”
“I hope he’s useful in some way.” Morgan tried not to panic at the words. He was looking for hidden meaning in everything.
“Get on with it? What do you think he means by that?” Mr. Hector whispered ominously from the speakers. “It means he wants to kill you, I bet.”
10
Special Agent Garrett Walters stood within the police-tape perimeter and took in the whole scene. It was easy to focus on the small bits and pieces and miss what the whole area was telling him. The debris field also had spread so far from the blast that it was hard not to step back just to see what exactly had happened.
One of the young officers working the crowd stepped up to him. “Sir, you wanted to see me?”
Garrett nodded. “You were first on the scene?”
“Yes, sir. My partner and I were just around the corner at the light. Another second or two and we would have seen the explosion with our own eyes.” The patrolman pointed toward his cruiser, where another officer was interviewing a witness.
“So as it is, you only heard it?” Garret asked.
“Yep. And kind of saw the flash.”
Garrett sighed. “But not the actual blast?” It would’ve been nice to have a cop’s eye view of the explosion. He lifted his arm and pointed to the crowd, following their faces down the line with his finger. “How ’bout them? How many of them saw it? And I mean saw it, not sort of saw it, not looking at the clock in the bank building and turned around when they heard it, not driving in front of the bus and looked in their rearview mirror when it happened. How many had eyes on that bus when it went up?”
The officer held up his notebook and flipped through the pages, checking a couple of notes twice. “Well, so far forty-six claim to have seen the whole thing. But we’ve got a ways to go yet.”
“How many of them have mentioned this in their statements?” He nodded to the dark green ambulance on the opposite side from the crowd where they’d found the shooting victim. Evidence techs were swarming over it like ants looking for a crumb.
The patrolman shook his head. “None that I’ve interviewed. I can check with the others,” he said.
“Do that. Thanks.” Garrett watched the patrolman walk away.
“Want some good news?” Beth Pelligrino, one of Garrett’s team, walked up from the side. “Well, potentially good news?”
Garrett admitted to himself that he needed a little cheering up. The case was only a few hours old and it was already giving him a headache; a blown up bus with nine dead passengers, three hanging on in intensive care; a man shot dead in a nearby ambulance—an ambulance whose registration didn’t exist; and doz
ens of city officials who already wanted answers. “Sure, Pel, that’d be great.”
Pel pointed upward to the roof of the bodega behind Garrett.
Garrett looked at it and shrugged. It wasn’t pointed at the bus or the ambulance. Maybe it caught someone in passing, but certainly nothing regarding the explosion. “So?”
“I got a quick look at the footage before I grabbed it. The thing was trained on that alleyway over there, right?”
“Get on with it,” Garrett said. He wasn’t in the mood to play guessing games.
“Nothing during the explosion, obviously. But some time later, this huge guy with a nice suit comes wondering out of the darkness. No big deal, I guess. A minute or two later he comes back with a woman and they disappear back the way he came.” Pel smiled.
Garrett looked at her for a moment. True, it could be something, but no reason to get as excited as Pel was. “Is there more? Or do you think my requirements for good news have dropped considerably in the last few hours?”
“Oh. Did I not mention that the woman was pulling off what appeared to be a jumpsuit as she hit the alleyway? Possibly the type of coveralls worn by paramedics?” Pel smiled as she held up a baggie with a video tape in it. “My bad.”
Garrett was tempted to take it from the woman, run back to the office and watch it, but he knew it would be a long while before he’d be able to leave the scene. It was tempting, though. “Log it into evidence, and start watching it as soon as you can. Don’t hang around here to do anything else, just go. Print out pictures of the two in the alley, start trying to match them in the database and bring me a print-out when you get a chance.”
“I could email a copy to you on your phone,” Pel smiled. “Be a lot easier than bringing a physical copy.”
Garrett shook his head emphatically. “Stupid thing is broken. Won’t turn on.”
“Did you remember to charge it today? When’s the last time you plugged it in?” Pel’s smile grew wider.
“Fuck you, I charged it.” He hadn’t. “Just go back to the office and get to work.” His hatred for electronics and handheld devices was legendary, which was probably why they teamed Garrett with the tech-savvy junior agent.
Pel started off, but paused. “Oh. On my way over, one of the officers said they think that our ambulance was the first on the scene,” she said.
“That’s something.” Garrett looked at the ambulance again and discovered Pel was staring at it as well. “Are you waiting for a fist bump or something?”
Pel shook her head and disappeared into the crowd of police and fire officials.
At least that’s something, two somethings really. Garrett thought. And those are my only somethings at this point. He turned just in time to see several men in ridiculously expensive suits cross under the yellow crime scene tape. Garrett knew two of them from the mayor’s office. The others were new, but he figured them for one of the other government agencies that would be interested in this madness. In his job with the FBI’s special teams, he’d come to know everyone else there, but the new guys could easily be CIA or DEA or any number of letter collections in the alphabet soup. He straightened his tie and started walking toward them, all the while wondering how much time his interaction would take away from the investigation.
11
“Aren’t you going to answer your phone?” Kevin asked.
Deena had been half asleep with her head propped on her hand. “Huh?” She thought maybe she was dreaming, the haze of sleep in her eyes made the young man look angelic in the light from the window. It was nearly dark and Deena had drifted off while waiting on Avi to come back and trying to come up with a better plan.
“Your phone. It’s ringing.”
The sounds of a generic bleating ringtone emanated from somewhere inside the pockets of Deena’s backpack. “Wow. Uh, thanks. I really spaced out there,” she said. She unzipped the bag and dug through the junk inside. The phone was familiar in her hands, but she couldn’t remember her number or anyone else’s for that matter. Luckily, the caller ID showed the incoming call as “SIS”, saving Deena from wondering who it was for too long. She flipped it open. “Hello, Harper? I’ve been trying to call you all day.”
She was not greeted by the voice she expected. “Not Harper.”
“Marsh.”
“You remember me. Good. I was thinking you forgot,” Marsh said on the other end of the phone. It was what he typically said when she was late checking in with him. “Seeing how our call went earlier today, I was sure that you’d forgotten how to talk to me politely.”
“Why do you have Harper’s phone?”
Marsh laughed. “Did you not think there would be consequences to walking away from me? What sort of childish notion did you get in your head that made you believe that would be all right with me?”
“Where’s Harper?” Deena believed her sister would have had time to get out before Marsh decided to do anything drastic, but Marsh was right–it was a dumb move. Since the break from her former self, everything seemed urgent. Like if she didn’t do the things she wanted to do, right away, they wouldn’t happen and she would slip back to what she was without taking advantage of her window of time.
“Your sister is right here. She’s fine. For now. Say hello.”
Harper’s voice came through the speaker. “Deena? What the hell is going on? They have my hands tied.”
“Everything will be fine. Just don’t worry,” Deena said. “I’m sorry. This will all work out.”
Harper’s voice abruptly stopped, replaced by Marsh’s. “Yes. It will be just fine. If you do what I tell you.”
“What do you want?”
“Your sister has messed up yet again. She’d made a spectacle of my business and I’m afraid it will cause me undue attention. I have no use for her,” Marsh said. “If you want her to continue living, you’ll come back here. You’ll do another job for me and I’ll let her go free to live her life. And you’ll continue working for me without incident. If you don’t agree, I’ll kill her now. And then I’ll kill you. Simple. You want your sister to continue to be in good health, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’ll see you soon.” Marsh ended the call.
As she tossed the phone into the backpack, Deena watched Avi walk into the coffee shop and calmly order something. After a minute, he returned to the table, stirring coffee in a pale ceramic mug. He didn’t look surprised as she relayed the contents of the call. “He’ll kill you both. You know that.”
Of course Deena realized that, but for whatever reason, she hadn’t considered it would come down to that. She really believed she could walk away and start anew. “But it keeps my sister alive until I get there.”
“Maybe.”
“You should go back in. Call them and say you lost me. He’ll leave you alone, then.” Deena took another long drink of the minty concoction in front of her. “I don’t want your life to get fucked up as well.”
Avi stood up and pushed his seat back in behind him. “I dropped my car at a movie theater parking lot down the street. It had a tracer in it that Marsh’s people could have used to track the car.”
“What was showing?”
Avi paused. “What? At the movies? Why do you want to know?”
Deena shrugged. “Just curious.”
“I don’t know. Some stupid shit romantic comedy. Can we get back to the plan?”
“They could have found us right away in your car?”
“They’re actually probably on their way. Marsh has local muscle he could call in to pick you up.”
“So where are they?”
“I’m hoping at the movies, watching some stupid shit romcom. But I doubt it,” Avi said. “I also ditched my phone and grabbed one in a superstore nearby,” Avi took out his phone and grabbed Deena’s. �
�I’m programming this new number into your phone.”
“Shouldn’t I ditch mine? Can’t they follow me with it?”
“Not if we leave it turned off until we need to use it.” Avi slid it across the table towards her.
She stared at it for a minute, realizing it was her only link to her sister now.
Avi grabbed her arm and tugged her to her feet. “Train station is just across town. Let’s go. Pick it up.”
12
Deena at 15 the first time around
“Pick up the controller.”
“No.”
Deena grinned. “Quitting again?”
Harper leaned back on the couch and folded her arms.
“Baby.” Deena pressed reset and the game started again. She guided her Samurai Super Warrior up the stairs and through the door, breaking everything in the little animated fighter’s path on the television. She loved the game. It was all so delicious, the swords and the knives the blood. It was all fake, but she loved it. She had strategy, when she needed it, but mostly, it was brute force, not finesse that got her through.
She was getting tired of whupping on her sister all the time, but no one else would play with her anymore. The neighbors weren’t her age and didn’t want to come around to play with the little weird neighbor girl. Her parents sucked at all the games, but they never wanted to play anyway.
“Come on, one more game. You can even use cheat codes. And you can have the good controller.” Deena held up the illuminated blue game controller.
“No.” Harper grabbed a magazine from the pile next to the couch and started leafing through it. Deena turned back to her game.
The clicking of Deena’s fingers on the controllers became a rhythm that got faster and faster. The images she saw on the screen became more and more indistinct and she began to react to shapes and colors, sounds and eventually to instincts and feelings. She didn’t think about it, much. She usually just let whatever was happening happen. All she knew was that when the game was over, she was sad. She felt an unbearable weight descend upon her chest and she wanted to play again. She wanted to run, jump, fight and slash with a sword of her own.