by Ted Galdi
“Are you a cop?” the attendant asks.
A pause. “Not a cop.”
“FBI?”
“No.”
“What law-enforcement authority are you with then?”
“I’m…I’m not with any authority.”
“Well sir. In that case, despite the rather stirring speech you delivered, I am afraid to say my opinion of who you are has reverted back to a former version. The one after busboy. A ranting vagrant who wandered in off the street. And if you don’t wander out back to the street, I am going to call the real police on you.”
Tommy huffs, marches outside. To get to Cora, he’ll have to go around the attendant. And can’t think of any strategy that’s both prompt and legal. He bites his forearm and screams. A tan, well-dressed man stares, then looks away.
Tommy already axed his way into Cora’s father’s home and locked him in a closet. The cops are surely looking for someone with his description by now. Instead of breaking the law again, maybe he should get away from the justice already storming toward him. And leave Glen Brent’s justice to the FBI.
If he fled California now, he could avert charges from Stewart Hall. Maybe Tommy’s West Coast trip has come to its logical end. Maybe he should ask Josh to loan him some money, drive to the airport, and buy a ticket back to New York. Just leave the state like so many people have wanted him to do since he entered it.
Tommy gets in his car. And turns on the engine.
Fifty-Six
Cora sits in her room at the Grand Bay Resort. About a dozen crumpled tissues litter the rug around her chair. Her mother, who has a fading version of her good looks, sits hunched on the end of a bed biting her nails, watching TV news coverage of Glen.
The reporter says, “According to sources close to law enforcement, Brent and Archer could be responsible for at least eight unresolved missing-persons cases in San Diego…”
“What do you think of Allison Vandane?” Cora asks.
“What?”
“The fake name I checked us in with. I’ll obviously need a new permanent one. After this. Should I just stick with Allison Vandane?”
“I don’t know, darling. Let me watch this.”
“We’ve watched enough of this.” Cora turns off the television. Then opens the bottle of valerian-root pills on the table.
“How many of those have you had?”
“I’m not counting.”
“You’re pregnant. You need to—”
“You don’t think I thought about that? What I really want to do is dump a jug of Xanax down my throat. But I’m not. For the baby. This is an all-natural anxiety reducer.”
“That makes it better for the baby?”
Cora tosses two pills in her mouth. Swallows them without water. “I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”
“You’ll feel better when the lawyer shows up. He’ll give you pointers on how to handle an ordeal like this.”
“Oh. So he specializes in pregnant ladies whose husbands go on killing sprees?”
“Honey.”
“What?”
“You’re a strong woman. You’ll get through this.”
“Maybe I am a strong woman, maybe I’m not. But I am a woman. You know who isn’t yet? Far from it.” She places her palms on her stomach. “She’ll meet the world as the daughter of a notorious murderer.”
“Change your last name like you said. Jade’s too. People won’t know.”
“With the internet, they can always find out.”
“Then why did you want to change your name?”
Cora gazes out the window, clouds blocking the late-afternoon sun over the bay. “I don’t know.”
Silence for a while.
“He’s not a violent man,” Cora’s mom says. “How could he do this?”
“It was right in front of me all day. I couldn’t bring myself to believe it until I saw it on TV.”
“You knew about this?”
“Just…since this morning. But I wasn’t certain.”
“He told you?”
“No. But he was acting weird the last couple days.”
“Being aggressive?”
“No. Nothing like that. Very calm actually, very…loving. I thought he was cheating on me. I was so scared that was true. Looking back, I’d give anything if it was that instead of…this.”
“How could you confuse an affair with…this?”
“He came home from work with an odd wound on his shoulder. Said it was from a car accident. Then he tried to get me to leave town with him. When I refused, he taped cardboard to our windows.”
“And that means he was cheating on you?”
“In the version of reality I created in my paranoid head, he wasn’t in an accident. He was at another woman’s place, a crazy one, breaking their affair off. She got mad and stabbed him in the shoulder with scissors, or some other sharp thing lying around. He had his army buddy, Bo Archer, the other one on TV, stash his Mercedes on his property.”
“You just…invented all this?”
“I didn’t believe his story. And I needed some explanation. In my mind, he feared this lunatic stabber woman might come to our house, so suggested we get out of town. When I said no, he covered all the windows so I wouldn’t be able to see her if she was stalking him in the bushes. In my head it all fit.”
“And none of it was true?”
“It was so farfetched, I needed proof to be sure. He bought a baby monitor for Jade. Last night I slipped the transmitter behind a book on the shelf in his study. Bo came over. They talked. Everything the speaker picked up recorded to the cloud. I assumed they were in there discussing his affair and his Mercedes. I was wrong.” She nods at the TV. “They were talking about all that.”
“About killing people?”
“Right on tape. It was so ridiculous, I assumed it was fake. Some inside joke from their army days or something.”
“Did you confront him?”
“I was too shook up. Even though I didn’t believe it, it was still disturbing. The words they were using. The way they said them. How callous they were. I had to get out of the house.” She points at a scab on her knee. “I was so distracted I tripped on a planter on my way to the car.”
“You didn’t seem yourself when you came over this morning. I had a feeling it wasn’t one of your regular visits. Why didn’t you tell me all this then?”
“I still couldn’t make sense of it. I still don’t know where his Mercedes is, still don’t know why he put cardboard on the windows. And the killing stuff I still thought was just some dark joke. Then the story broke on the news. Now I know it was far from a joke.”
Quiet for a bit.
“They say he may’ve been trying to help soldiers,” Cora’s mom says. “From the internet. Something like that. You think that’s why he did it?”
“If so, I guess he decided the lives of random people from the internet were more important than those of his wife and daughter.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“No idea. I just hope he isn’t going to do this again.”
“Kill more people?”
“That’s what they were talking about in the conversation I recorded.”
“A lot has changed since last night. Every cop in California is on the lookout for them. This won’t happen again.”
“I considered that. But…shouldn’t I still tell someone what I heard, to be sure?”
“Like who?”
“The FBI.”
“Dad told you to come here strictly to hide from them. Now you want to go to them? No, no. A good lawyer will prevent you from winding up in a cell like your husband. God forbid. We should both just sit tight. And not contact anyone. Especially the FBI.”
Cora sighs, sits back in the chair. “When I was in like fifth grade, remember the drawing I did for school, about how I saw myself in the future?”
“You did a lot of drawings for school.”
“Yeah. I, at least, always remembered t
his one. I knew from back then I wanted to work in fashion. Drew myself this wild outfit. And I knew I wanted to marry a doctor. When I made my husband, I put that doctor headband-light thing on the Crayon stick figure.”
“Fifth grade? You didn’t even start dating until you were in what, eighth?”
“It’s strange, right? That young. But I knew. I think it was from watching ER with dad. I always thought of doctors as like…respectable.”
“Maybe.”
“There was a nice house in my drawing. With a pool. And two little kids. Over the last twenty years, I was on my way to living up to that picture. First baby on the way. We planned to have a second someday. It was…everything it was supposed to be. It was perfect. And now…this. Now this.”
“It’s not your fault, honey.”
“Does it matter whose fault it is?”
Fifty-Seven
Nurse Peggy’s eyes never closed post-death, staring up at Glen from the floor of the Prius. He shuts her eyelids, then looks out the passenger window at desert hills beneath a purplish-orange sky.
His burner phone rings, Hawks.
Glen says into it, “What’s up?”
“How’d it go at the hospital?”
“A success. But we now have a third passenger. One we’ll need to drop off somewhere like we did our last third passenger.”
“I see.” A pause. “My friend from Nevada got back to me. Pulled some info for you on that guy Thomas Dapino. Turns out he’s an ex-con. Just got out of Attica.”
“Huh. And now he’s teamed up with the FBI.”
“No official record of any relationship with the FBI.”
“Whatever the case, since Bo and I have been doing…what we’ve been doing…nobody got close to us. We were never questioned by a cop. An agent. Anyone. Until today. Until Dapino showed up at my house. And he’s still out there.”
“Is he going to be a problem tonight?”
“I’m assuming he’ll try to be.”
“Now that you and I have a business relationship going…I’d be open to extending that relationship. As Archer can attest, I’m quite good at seeing to individuals who present…problems. For the right fee, I’d be happy to see to this problem.”
“I appreciate that. But Dapino could be anywhere right now. Plus, if he’s working with the FBI, feds will be around him. He’ll be a hard target for a hit. Maybe too hard.”
“Then what’re you going to do about him?”
“I don’t know. Got to think about it.”
“Big-brained surgeon like you. Sure you’ll come up with something.”
“Yeah. We’ll see.”
“A thousand bucks.”
“What?”
“In bitcoin. For my friend, the data pull.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’ll do it when we get back to your house. Got to go.”
“Bye doc.”
Glen hangs up.
Bo, driving, asks, “Did you just deny his request to take out Dapino?”
“I’ll deal with Dapino.”
“Hawks is a professional mercenary. Not to mention, the cops ain’t looking for his face. He has a lot more range than us. We’re lucky to have him on our side. Let’s take advantage of this asset any—”
“I don’t like the guy. Okay?”
“’Cause of that shit in the garage? Who—”
“I’m over that. He just…gives me the creeps.”
“He’s a loose cannon. I told you he was. How many dudes like that did you know in Desert Storm? A ton.”
“Something about him is different.”
“He’s a little rougher around the edges than average. Fine. But he’s a soldier at the core. Same core as the rest. I think you got different. No offense, brother. That’s where the gap is.”
“You’re accusing me of what, not being a soldier at my core? How dare—”
“I never said that. On the outside. What you’re around. Your lifestyle. It’s…just been a long time since you were in combat.”
“You too.”
“I did paramilitary jobs till I was almost forty. Shoulder to shoulder with soldiers.”
“I literally have my hands inside soldiers. Operating on them at the VA. To this day. Every day. Who’re you around on a daily basis, housewives who can’t lift their big-screen TVs into their Range Rovers?”
“That’s a real dick thing to say, man. If I was as smart as you, maybe I’d have a…high-paying career too. I’m no genius. And I know it. But that’s all right. I do what I can to make ends meet.”
A few seconds of silence.
“Sorry,” Glen says.
“All good.” Bo turns on the radio. They drive east for a while.
“There’s a county park not far from here, right?” Glen asks.
“About ten miles. Why?”
“Dapino. He’s a felon. Cops wouldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“The benefit of the doubt for what?”
Glen smirks. “Head to the park. It should have emergency phones. Those tall pedestal ones along hiking trails, in case you get hurt or whatever and don’t have cell reception. I need to make a call from one.”
“To Dapino?”
“Not to him. About him.”
“About what?”
“I’m going to shut him down tonight. And hopefully ruin the rest of the son of a bitch’s life.”
Fifty-Eight
Tommy pulls back onto the property of the Grand Bay Resort. Though flying back to the safety of New York was tempting, he decided to stay in California to see this through. He just committed a crime, shoplifted items from CVS he couldn’t pay for without a wallet. And now is about to commit another one.
He reaches to the stolen merchandise on the passenger seat. Opens a pack of ping-pong balls, grabs a pair of scissors, and pokes a hole in a ball with the scissors. He places it in the cup holder, takes a second from the pack, and cuts it in half. Then slices each of those halves in half and does so again and again, left with sixteen shards. He stuffs them in the hole in the first ball and wraps a piece of tinfoil around it.
The foil-encased ball goes in his pocket. As does a Bic lighter. The final stolen item, a big bottle of cold water, he chugs. Then steps out of the car. He leaves the axe behind. The protrusion under his shirt could be suspicious. He strides to the back of the hotel.
Kneeling behind bushes, he peers through an aluminum fence at the pool. The afternoon turned to early evening, not many guests out here, just a young couple sharing a lounge chair and an older guy in the hot tub reading a newspaper.
Once the couple kisses, he hops the fence, careful not to bump it hard enough to make a noticeable noise. He darts to the rear of a cabana and peeks around the corner at the couple. As soon as they kiss again, he sprints into the hotel. He’s in a hallway off the main lobby, a handful of people walking by. Too many eyeballs down here. He’ll have to go up to a guest-room floor, less foot traffic.
He waits by the elevator pretending to look at something on his phone. When a guest presses the up button, Tommy follows him inside. The man scans his keycard on a sensor and hits “2” on the panel.
Tommy fakes reaching for the panel. “Ah, I’m on two also. Thanks.”
They ride to the second floor and get out. The man disappears around a corner. Tommy listens to the sound of his room door opening and closing. Now alone, he removes the Bic lighter from one pocket and from the other the tinfoil-wrapped ping-pong ball. He meets the ball with the flame. The material heats up. Smoke shoots out of the half-inch tinfoil spout.
He drops the homemade smoke bomb in front of the elevator, yanks the fire alarm on the wall, and races down the hall banging on every door he passes. “Fire in the elevator shaft,” he screams. “We all have to get downstairs. Fire in the elevator shaft.”
The alarm blares. Concerned heads pop out of doorways. A guy shouts, “Holy shit, smoke.”
Tommy isn’t proud of the panic he incited. But had to do it. He descends the stairs to
the first floor. Pushes open the emergency exit and dashes onto the lawn. He peers at the bodies flowing out of the doorway.
Five minutes or so pass. In the distance he hears the horn of a fire truck. A couple more minutes. A police siren.
A female about his age appears, the crowd concealing most of her. He weaves toward her. A couple feet away, he says, “Cora?”
She turns around. A pregnant stomach. The face from Facebook. “Yeah?”
“My name is Tommy. And I want to keep you safe from your husband.”
Her mother is at her side, along with a man in his fifties in a shiny suit. He says, “Take a hike, chief. That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking. My sister was one of his victims. Her name was Danielle Dapino. Google her. She’s been in the news. We had the same nose. You can tell we’re related.”
The man inserts himself between Tommy and Cora, says, “I am Mrs. Brent’s attorney. My client is not speaking to you or anyone else about her husband at this moment. Even if you are related to whomever you say you are.”
Tommy juts his head around the lawyer, makes eye contact with her, and says, “I know you weren’t involved in any of this. I’m not here to get you in any kind of trouble. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t have the authority. I’m not an FBI agent. But I am working with them. Though you didn’t start this, you have the power to end it. All you need—”
“Am I going to have to tell you again?” the lawyer asks.
“Am I going to have to make you look for your front teeth in the grass?” Tommy says, clenching his fists.
A nervous smile on the attorney.
“Let him talk,” Cora says.
Tommy asks, “Did your husband contact you today?”
“He tried. Kept trying until I turned my phone off.”
“Was it from a number you didn’t recognize? A burner?”
“A what? No, his regular cellphone.”
“Which he definitely turned off at this point. Can you get in touch with him some other way? Email him?”
“To tell him what?”
“To meet you somewhere.”
“But I don’t want to meet him.”