by J. D. Oliva
The lady behind the counter slunk away from the scene, like she melted into the background. Dad's voice suddenly went quiet. He's on his own again.
"There a problem, officer?" A third voice said.
Both Chris and the state trooper turned toward the walkway that led from the Road Ranger to the restaurant.
"What's it to you?" The trooper responded.
"This is a friend of mine."
He hadn't seen him in nine months, but this is a man who, once you saw him, you could never forget. A large African-American with broad shoulders and biceps. His dreadlocked hair was tied behind his head and his eyes were shielded by sunglasses, even at night. It's him. The Man in Black. Just like last Christmas, the timing was both perfect and terrible.
Things were about to get a lot worse.
XXII
The kid's hair was longer, and he had one of those terrible looking white people beards. He's leaner, and there're bags under his eyes that a kid his age shouldn't have, but it's definitely him. Jack Shane's kid.
"I think I need to have a few words with your friend here," the state trooper said.
Jericho saw two more troopers heading toward the entrance. This isn't the time or place for things to escalate, but if pushes and shoves are gonna be weighed, so be it. He and the kid had history, and as of an hour-and-twenty-seven minutes ago, he is a client.
"Why is that, sir? He's been with me all night."
The trooper turned back to Chris, who went quiet. Shockingly, he didn't believe the scary-looking guy with locks and sunglasses.
"You're trying to tell me he didn't pull up a minute ago in that Taurus out there?"
"Nope. He works for me. His name's Dan Gable."
"And you are?"
"Name's Leo Encarta. We work for Cherry Vale Security. We just stopped for breakfast on our way to a job in Springfield. My friend went to buy some extra snacks, and the dummyhead forgot his wallet at the table. Here is his identification."
Jericho handed the trooper an unfamiliar looking ID. The middle-aged cop squinted as he pulled the card up to his face.
"Daniel Gable, 1972 Harold Nichols Drive, Calgary, Alberta, Canada?"
The picture in the ID was the kid's. The hair's shorter, and the crappy beard is new, but it's definitely him.
"That's right. That's why my friend is being kind of weird. He's a foreigner here on a student visa. I keep telling him he's got nothing to worry about, but you know how all of them ICE stories go. Innocent immigrants getting the shaft all the time. You know what I'm saying?"
The trooper didn't seem to completely buy what Jericho said, but the details were reliable. The ID looked real. The idea that a man wanted for a violent crime of passion two-and-a-half hours away could have set this up so quickly was hard to believe, even if the truth is stranger. The trooper went to hand the card back to Jericho.
"You can give that back to my friend. It is his."
"What's with the sunglasses?"
"Remember Jim McMahon, old school Bears QB? Same thing," Jericho said, pointing to the shades. As a child, the former Punky QB was stabbed in the eye with a fork, which left him slightly light sensitive. Similar, but exactly the same.
The trooper handed the ID back to Chris, who slid it into his pocket.
"C'mon, Danny. We gotta get back on the road. Old man Thunderfoot is gonna have our ass if we're late."
The fake Danny Gable lowered his head and walked over to his newly-hired independent contractor. Jericho escorted him out the door and turned back to the trooper, who still didn't quite believe his story.
"Sorry for the trouble, officer."
"What was that?" Chris whispered.
"Don't say a word until we get back in the truck."
"What about my car?"
"Say bye-bye to it."
Jericho walked them to the green 2014 F-150 with the giant metal cowcatcher mounted to the grill. The Green Beast made the trip. Jericho was experienced enough to know the troopers hadn't taken their eyes off of them. The truck doors opened, and both Jericho and the kid took their seats.
"Great timing," Chris said. “How’d you make it in time to have a half-finished breakfast?”
“I walked in maybe two minutes before you. I called ahead with the order,” Jericho said, turning over the engine.
“Oh,” Chris nodded and sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“Hey, man, you interrupted a workout.”
“Sorry.”
The truck pulled out and followed the trail till they reached the entrance to I-55 south, back toward St. Louis.
"Wait, why are we going back that way?"
"I told them we were going to Springfield. Springfield is south. Going north is suspicious."
The first squad car pulled up right behind them, following the Green Beast onto the interstate.
"Shit! What're gonna do?"
"We got about ten minutes until that cop confirms your photo with a still from the Road Security camera."
"What happens then?"
"Then we gotta get serious," Jericho said with a smile.
Not fifteen-seconds later, the cab filled with red and blue lights.
"And here we go."
XXIII
The Green Beast pulled to the side of the highway. Jericho reached for the glove compartment, but Chris' hand caught his before he could open the box.
"No," the kid said.
"What do you mean 'no'?"
"I don't know what's in there, but I know what you're thinking. These guys are just trying to do their job."
"So am I," Jericho had to remind him.
"There's gotta be another way."
"You realize these guys don't give a shit about whatever really happened back there. They just wanna lock you up."
"I know, but they're not the problem. These are guys with families. You can't."
Jericho shook his head. The kid is right to assume the worst. But that didn't change the problem at hand. One of the troopers from the Road Ranger, the African-American one, knocked on the window. Jericho smacked Chris' hand out of the way.
"I'm in charge here," the high-priced assassin said.
Jericho opened the glove box and pulled out a driver's license before unrolling the window.
"Problem, officer?"
"You were going a little fast back there," the state trooper said with a gotcha tone in his voice.
"Was I? I must not have noticed. How fast?"
"Speed limit is 70 'round here. We clocked you at 72."
The cop clearly expected Jericho to react and say something to further escalate the situation. They wanted him to blow up. Instead, Jericho shrugged.
"Rules are rules."
The trooper tapped Jericho's license against the hood of the car. Jericho wouldn't give him the reaction he wanted, but knew that he couldn't risk pushing it further. Not with body and dashboard cams watching the interaction.
"I'll be right back," he said, heading to the squad.
The long silence in the cab of the Green Beast broke when Chris said, "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"Assuming the worst, I guess."
"The dumbest thing I can do is shoot a cop in the middle of the interstate. I'm trying to hide a murder suspect. Turning myself into one don't help."
"I thought—"
"That the killer was gonna kill somebody. You ain't wrong to think it. You gotta trust me to do my job. Remember, you called me."
"I couldn't think of anyone else—"
"Wait!" Jericho saw the trooper exit the squad.
There's a lot of info he needed from Chris. The details of what kinda trouble the kid found were a little sketchy, and it's a conversation they needed to have, but not around any of the local yokels.
Cops always shine a light directly into the car when they pull someone over. It helps them see what's happening inside the car, while making it challenging for whoever they've got pulled over to look backwards. It's worse when you've
got damaged eyes. The sunglasses helped. Keeping focus did too.
"Here you go," the trooper said, handing Jericho a speeding ticket. "There's a court date at the bottom. You're gonna have to come all the way back out to McLean County. You need to be careful on these roads," the trooper smirked.
"Absolutely, officer. Am I free to go?"
The trooper nodded, and Jericho's Green Beast pulled back out on to I-55 headed south.
"Now, I'm really sorry," Chris said.
Jericho crumbled the speeding tickets and tossed it into the back seat. "Don't worry about me. I feel bad for Leo Encarta. That dude is gonna have a warrant out when he misses his court date."
"How did you get this?" Chris asked, looking at the Alberta driver's license.
"That's easy. I'm good with computers. As soon as we stop, you gotta cut that mop on your head and shave that patchy piece of shit you're trying to pass off as a beard."
"Why?"
"Cause you're a wanted man. The least we can do is try to look a little different."
Chris went quiet. He's smart enough to know Jericho is right.
Jericho looked down the road. The chances of him getting pulled over again were pretty good. When they stopped again, he needed to change the plates. Maybe something less local this time, like Montana or Washington.
"I didn't know who else to call. What I saw, no one was ever gonna believe me. Except maybe you."
"Do you still have the card?" He asked, meaning to the old black business cards with the embossed J.
"No. I threw it away a long time ago. But I memorized the number. I wasn't trying to remember it, but it was like burned in my mind. I don't know if what I saw was even real. All I know for sure is, it wasn't me."
"Tell me exactly what you saw."
The kid went on forever about his mom and training to be a fighter. Then about getting knocked out. Jericho was about to tell him to cut to the freakin' chase when he finally started to make some sense.
"And when I walked in, I saw her pinning him to ground. It was like she was gonna spit in his ear or something. But her eyes were white. Like, all white. Her mouth hung open, but there was a thing dangling from insider her. It was greenish orange and pulsating. Like it had a heartbeat. It almost looked like—"
"An egg."
"I was gonna say a ball of snot. What kind of egg is that color and slimy?"
"A worm egg."
"What?"
"Kid, you just met the Nightcrawler."
Jericho told him the story of Anne Casten and his night in the Chase Hotel.
"What?" Is all Chris could say. He couldn't blame him. It took Jericho a few years himself to process what happened in St. Louis.
"Turns out there's stranger things in this world than werewolves."
"So how the hell do we stop a worm that lives in people's brains?"
For the first time since they jumped into the truck, Jericho turned to look Chris in the eye. Jericho is a lot of things, but with a client, he's always honest.
"Kid, I got no idea."
XXIV
It was 6:30 in the morning, and Special Agent Andrew Nashida had been on the Christopher Shane investigation for five hours. Three hours ago, they got their first lead. Shane ditched his Ford Taurus at a truck stop in central Illinois. Three hours and two iced Americanos later, the Bureau's Black Chevy Traverse pulled into the Dixie Travel Plaza in McLean, Illinois.
Usually, Agent Nashida drove, but not this morning. He needed to read up on the perp. Profiling isn't his specialty, but it's something he could do on his own when necessary. Catching a runner meant trying to outthink them. He needed to know where Christopher Shane was going before the perp even thought of it. That meant letting his partner, Agent Babatunde Oroye, drive. Tunde is a good guy. His parents immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana in the mid-'80s, about six years before Tunde was born. Nashida took a liking to the kid and trusted him, but after hitting the wake up strips six different times on the drive from St. Louis, Missouri to McLean, Illinois, he started to question that decision.
The Shane kid didn't have a record. He was a good student and an accomplished athlete, but that's all he found. He didn't have any social media presence, which is odd for a kid his age. Though considering his father, maybe it is easier for him to just hide from that. The way the elder Shane and Alexakis publicly sparred in the media, maybe Shane just learned from the old man, it's better to keep a low profile.
Trying to find a cop's kid might be difficult. There's things about law enforcement they understood better than regular people. Their parents, whether they intended to or not, taught them how the system works. Typically, those kids either join the system or learn how to operate outside of it. Shane apparently made his choice.
"There it is," Tunde said, pointing to the Taurus.
Nashida picked his head from his laptop. "It's still at the pump?"
Tunde parked the Traverse, and the two agents approached the vehicle. Suspects leaving cars behind aren't uncommon. What is uncommon is leaving them immediately after gassing up.
"Look at this," Tunde said, grabbing the nozzle still attached to Taurus.
"Huh. Looks like he wasn't thinking about ditching this car. At least not yet."
"What changed?"
"I don't know," Nashida said, turning back to the Road Ranger.
Inside the gas station, Doona Lowe finished her the graveyard shift. The last forty minutes of work was always the hardest when all you want to do is go. The glass door slid open, and the two men in black suits stepped inside.
"Pardon me, ma'am. Can we talk for a minute?" Nashida asked.
"Sure," Doona answered, unsure of what was happening.
Both Nashida and Tunde drew their badges.
"I'm Special Agent Nashida. This is Special Agent Oroye. We're with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We just have a few questions."
Donna scratched her head, clearly confused as to why two FBI agents were standing in the middle of the Road Ranger gas station.
"Ma'am, what's your name?"
"Um, Donna Lowe."
"Ms. Lowe, what time did your shift start?" Tunde added.
"11:45."
"So, you've been here all night?"
She nodded. Tunde took out his phone out and pulled up a photograph of Christopher Shane taken after his fight last night. "Ms. Lowe, have you seen this man before?"
Donna took the phone and pulled it back and forth, trying to focus on the image. Her face tightened into a squint, revealing a surprisingly large set of buck teeth.
"Yeah. He was here last night," she said, handing Tunde his phone.
"Did he say anything?"
"No, but he was stopped by a couple of state troopers."
Tunde looked over to Nashida as if to say, did you know that? Nashida nodded back.
"Did you hear what the officers said to him?"
"They asked him about the Ford out there. The boy didn't really answer, but then a friend of his showed up and cleared everything up."
"What do you mean, cleared everything up?" Tunde asked.
"The man said the two of them worked together and he showed the police the boy's driver's license, and that was it. They left together."
Interesting.
"Can you describe the man he was with."
"Oh yeah! It was a black man. He was about 6'3 or 6'4. Big muscles. Oh, and he had dreadlocks and sunglasses."
"Not exactly a guy you could miss," Tunde shrugged.
"That's a remarkable description, ma'am," Nashida said.
"Oh, and he said his name was Leo Encarta."
"You remembered his name?"
"A man looks like that, with a name like that, not easy to forget."
A confused Tunde looked back to Nashida.
"I'm pretty sure that's the point."
XXV
Dana O'Brien slept in. The raven-haired, twenty-four-year-old reporter already had a busy enough summer. In the last two months, she'd traipsed off
to the Netherlands and back to help bring down a false demon-worshipping cult. That was a long couple of weeks. Her expose on Willowbrook and the Church of the Golden Sun made a big splash online. Two big stories in under a year.
She lived the dream, but for some reason, she found herself tired all of the time. Staying up late to talk with her friend, Bram Meijer, an Inspector in Amsterdam, didn't help. Maybe it's that there is no way it could ever work out between them—he isn't leaving the Netherlands, and she's not dropping her career—that made it fun. Maybe it's easier to talk to a guy who isn't actually in front of her. Sure, you can look someone in the eyes over Skype and FaceTime, but it's not like they were there with you. She preferred the distance. At least for now.
Her cat, Curtis, rubbed her chin, which is feline for Mom, wake up, I'm hungry. Dana obeyed the cat, as any good pet owner would. She poured out some dry food and a fresh bowl of water, which is pointless since the gross little monster preferred to drink out of the toilet, but at some point, he'd figure out how much easier the damn water dish is, right?
A quick shower later, Dana figured a rush of caffeine is the only way she could get this day moving. It's already 10:30 in the morning. If she wasn't so damn lazy, she could've made a fresh pot of coffee herself. But she is lazy. Besides, it's only a two-block walk down Halstead Street to Starbucks.
There's an OrangeTheory gym across the street, which is where she probably should have gone first, but she couldn't seem to find the motivation. The gym isn't going anywhere. She could grab a workout this afternoon since she already wrote this day off as a day she wasn't getting anything constructive done.
Dana walked into the Starbucks and ordered an Iced Americano and took a seat at a table, waiting for the barista to shout her name. She opened her phone and decided to waste some time on Twitter. It's not like she had anything in particular to see. More like something to help shut her brain down, not that it needed much help today.
"Dana!" the barista with pale skin shouted.
Dana lifted her finger and walked back to the counter.
"Is that Dana O'Brien?" an unfamiliar voice asked.
Dana turned and found two men in suits. One, an Asian with well-sculpted hair and a lean, athletic body. He looked kind of like a swimmer with his long torso and broad shoulders. The other, a stout African-American who's a little thick in the middle.