Airbag Scars

by Jim Heskett

  He would never let his own living quarters become so filthy. How did she come home to this every evening and not feel like a disgusting slob?

  Donovan checked the drawers in her desk, and found nothing but receipts, letters, and crappy love poems scribbled on barroom napkins. Same with the contents of her coffee table drawers, boxes stacked in the corner, and file cabinet. With so much mess, he wasted too much time separating relevant material from garbage.

  He drifted into her kitchen, and knew he had no reason to be there, but he was curious. Inside the freezer, he found exactly what he’d expected to find: stacks of frozen dinners. He checked a few of them, and they were mostly vegetarian, organic, healthy options. Still, he couldn’t help but see it as a sign of loneliness. Time to get out of the kitchen and get his prize.

  He checked the time on his phone as he entered her bedroom. One nightstand contained nothing of interest. In the other nightstand, he found a smooth pink vibrator, and he amused himself by running through the preset vibration patterns for a couple minutes. He held it against his crotch, wagging it like a dick.

  His wife Caitlin used to hide a little bullet-shaped vibrator in her purse. Donovan once caught her playing with it in the bathroom, and when he got angry, she spit out some excuse that it wasn’t a replacement for him. He told her she could ride him any time she wanted, but she kept tossing more reasons at him, and in the end, he made her throw it away. She accused him of being unwilling to understand. She was the one who refused to understand.

  Micah’s condo might have been a more valuable target, but the security in that building was a world away from this one. Doorman in the lobby, fresh flowers, the whole luxury building package. He’d only gotten that note about the boxing gym inside by paying off some random resident who was willing to take his money.

  A knock came at the front door, and he froze.

  “Hayden?” a woman’s voice called through the closed door. “It’s Sherry. I’ve been sending emails and texts and haven’t heard anything back. I know you’re still pissed off at me, but can we please talk?”

  Donovan wrung his hands together, but stayed completely still. He didn’t need this crap right now.

  “I heard you moving around in there, so don’t pretend like you’re not home. Please come to the door and let me explain. I can’t stand the way we left things in the parking lot, the last time we talked.”

  Donovan counted his breaths, waiting for Sherry to say something else. After a hundred breaths with no more conversation, he figured she’d gone back to her own apartment down the hall.

  He put the vibrator back and opened Hayden’s dresser. As the top drawer slid open, he gawked at the array of socks and panties contained within. Every color of the rainbow. This came as a shock since she usually wore the vampire palette of red, black, and gray out in public, but apparently, she liked something a little more vivid underneath. Girl with a sexy secret; he liked that.

  He picked up a stretchy purple thong. Soft, with a little bit of lace around the edges of the front side. He shoved it in his pocket. The impulse had crossed his mind to toss the apartment and leave it a wreck, but that wouldn’t gain him anything.

  He walked through the living room and threw open the front door, and there stood a slim woman with long brown hair. Sherry. She was leaning against the opposite wall, probably waiting for Hayden to come out into the hallway.

  Her mouth dropped open, and her face morphed into guarded confusion. They’d seen each other in the hallway, but had never talked. “What the… what are you doing in there?”

  Donovan panicked. Muscle memory took over as he lunged forward and grabbed Sherry by the neck. He lifted her a few inches off the ground as she feebly smacked at his hands, but he didn’t let go. He squeezed, feeling her windpipe begin to crinkle under his fingers.

  Not in the hallway. Too exposed.

  He dragged her along the carpet toward his apartment, and she wriggled like a fish caught in his grasp. Freeing up a hand to open his door almost meant he had to drop her, and now she was kicking him in the shins, even as her face was turning blue. He kept the pressure on, burying his fingers in her flesh.

  She gasped and gurgled as he lowered her to the floor while pressing his thumbs deep into her windpipe. Out of the corner of his eye, Donovan watched Patton in the kitchen, staring at this scene.

  The fight went out of her as her eyes glazed over. She tensed and then relaxed, her hands falling away. Donovan felt her windpipe collapse as her final gasp eked out of her lips. In that last moment before she died, their eyes met and he could see pure fear there. He’d never killed anyone with his bare hands before, and the rush was orgasmic.

  But it had also been a stupid, stupid thing to do.

  He let go and she crumpled into a heap of jeans and t-shirt as her head lolled to the side. When he realized that he hadn’t breathed in a while, he became dizzy as he wheezed in deep breaths.

  Dead woman on the floor. Dead neighbor on the floor.

  He wiped his hands on his pants. “Shit.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  MICAH AND Hayden walked along the Cherry Creek pathway as a light snow began to trickle around them. That odd Colorado weather pattern where the sun can still be shining but snow falls from an invisible cloud in the sky.

  He hadn’t liked the weather here at first, but he had to admit it was growing on him. Maybe next year he’d even get a pass to one of those resorts and start skiing regularly.

  “You’re getting to be a pretty good shot,” she said. “I can’t seem to get the sights to cooperate, but you appear to have no trouble with any gun you pick up.”

  He wondered if she had any inkling that, in his old life, he’d pointed guns at people in anger before. That shooting was not a new hobby confined to the range, as her hobby probably was. “Thanks. You’re getting better too, but maybe you don’t see it. Breathing is half of it. Breathing and focus.”

  “Tell me about you,” she said. “You know all about the drama with my best friend sleeping with my ex, but I don’t know any of your dirty secrets. Give me something juicy.”

  This line of questioning always sent a surge of panic up into Micah’s heart. The WitSec people had made him memorize a version of the story, but the little details became hard to grasp sometimes, especially when he had to improvise like this. If he told someone the wrong thing, how many lies would he have to spew to cover it up? Better to keep his mouth shut as often as possible, and stick with something close to the truth when pressed.

  “Not much to tell, really. Grew up in Oklahoma, bummed around and didn’t do much with myself. Couldn’t find anything to be passionate about, I guess. Wanted to be a cop when I was a kid. Either that or forensic psychology. Maybe doing profiles for the FBI.”

  Hayden paused to watch a homeless man with a shopping cart rifle through a collection of ratty blankets. The homeless man seemed oblivious to the world. “I definitely cannot see you wearing a cop uniform.”

  “Yeah, maybe not. I moved out here about a year ago, got a job working for a bail enforcement agent as a skip tracer.”

  “I have no idea what half the words in that last sentence mean,” she said. “Skip tracer?”

  “Sounds like a cool job title for some secret agent business, but it’s mostly internet searching. Looking at social media and news reports to try to find people who don’t want to be found. Bail jumpers, most of the time. Every once in a while, we get a contract for a deadbeat dad or some random fugitive. There’s nothing glamorous about it.”

  They separated as two women on bikes whizzed past, barely missing the both of them. “What about your parents?”

  That pang of discomfort spread throughout his upper body. So many lies. “They died in a plane crash about three years ago. Dad was a structural engineer, Mom a nurse.”

  She frowned. “Oh, wow. I’m so sorry.”

  The look of sympathy on her face made it worse. His parents were alive and well, although he couldn’t ever
contact them again without putting both himself and them in danger. And with the way he’d left things, he didn’t think they would want him to reach out.

  “It’s okay. That was a long time ago and I’ve done my time in therapy to learn how to grieve. I’ve been on my own for a while now.”

  “Brothers or sisters?” she said.

  Micah bit his lip. Why did she keep asking all these questions he’d have to dodge? Why couldn’t she live in the present?

  He shook his head, another lie. “What about you?”

  “Only child. Got a mom and a dad somewhere. Last I heard, they were in Thailand, but that was at least five years ago. They don’t want anything to do with me.”

  “That's a shame.”

  She paused, then closed the distance between them with a smile on her face. “No, it’s okay. They were shitty people.” She gazed up into his eyes, and Micah knew this look. He was supposed to lean down and kiss her, but he wasn't sure he could. First off, this girl was only a few weeks out of a relationship. Second, how could Micah ever connect with anyone if at some point in the relationship, he’d have to reveal he’d been lying about his name the whole time?

  The pointlessness of this outing along Cherry Creek vibrated through him. “Are you ready to turn back?”

  “No, we can keep going,” she said. “Unless there’s somewhere else you’d rather be right now.”

  He’d rather be helping Frank slap a set of handcuffs on Roland Templeton or locating the shoe owner, but those possibilities were shrinking every day. He’d rather be at an AA meeting, feeling the connectivity of anonymous healing. Barring that, he’d rather be at the gun range, fighting a big pistol as it bucked against his hand with every squeeze of the trigger.

  Then he felt sour inside because he couldn’t be present with Hayden. This woman was clearly interested in him, and he didn’t know what to do about that.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe we should go.”

  Donovan checked the address on the slip of paper Tyson’s man had written out for him against the address his GPS was taking him to. He didn’t know Denver suburbs for shit, but this sure didn’t seem like an area of town he’d find a motel. Nothing but neighborhoods and convenience stores. Hotels and motels were usually near some location that made sense, like a convention center or something like that. A landmark to give people a reason to go there.

  Tyson’s bodyguard had warned him about keeping a low profile when going to this Motel 6 where some guy named Roland was using it as a safe house. Donovan was supposed to take this VIP over to an abandoned thing behind a lawnmower repair store. There were more details, but Donovan didn’t much care, because it was easy money and he had time to kill while Micah and Hayden’s budding relationship developed into something serious.

  Donovan had a pair of her panties in his collection box at home, so he already had a leg up on Micah there. But in the process, he’d also had to kill that nosy bitch looking for Hayden. He needed to dispose of her body soon, before it started to stink. Maybe tonight.

  He turned a corner and sure enough, there was a Motel 6. He slid into the parking lot and checked the other side of the paper for the room number. Up the stairs to the second floor, holding onto the rusted railing for support. Yesterday had been leg day, and his hamstrings were screaming at him to cut them some slack.

  He knocked on the door marked 214, and the curtain covering the room’s window slid back a hair, then a pair of eyes appeared by the curtain. Donovan threw up his hands and glared at the face in the window. They were supposed to be expecting him, weren’t they?

  The door cracked open, still with the security chain keeping it closed. He wanted to break down the door, but he had to remember to play nice.

  “Who are you?” said the face in the door crack.

  “Fucking Donovan. Open up. I’m here to take him to the other place.”

  The door shut and Donovan waited an endless five seconds before it opened up again. Inside were three people, one of them nervously pacing near the bathroom in the back of the room. Donovan would’ve bet ten thousand bucks that this was his guy.

  “You Roland?” he said to the nervous guy with the slicked-back black hair. For the moment, the guy ignored him.

  “Shut the damn door behind you,” said a man with a shaved head.

  Donovan closed the door and leered at the thug. Baldy played confident, but Donovan knew he could snap his neck with one little twist, and that beat false confidence any day.

  “You’re the new guy,” Baldy said.

  “Yeah, what of it?” Donovan said.

  “I’ve been in Mr. Darby’s crew for five years. Never seen him bring someone in that none of us had ever heard of before.”

  Donovan kept his eyes on the guy pacing at the back of the room. “You got a problem with me working with you? Because if you got a problem, we can talk about that.”

  Baldy shrugged. “Just seems weird, is all. In this line of work, it’s important to trust the people around you.”

  “Maybe I have important friends,” Donovan said. “Or maybe it’s none of your goddamn business why Tyson wants me in his crew. If I had to guess, I wouldn’t say that he pays you for your advice or your suspicions.”

  Baldy stood up, flexed his hands, and Donovan felt that thrill of the fight coursing through his veins. But he knew what a stupid thing that would be to do.

  The guy with the greasy hair walked over to Donovan and extended a hand, breaking the tension. “I’m Roland. You’re a big son of a bitch, aren’t you?”

  Donovan nodded and opted not to shake Roland’s hand. He had no interest in getting personal today. “If all three of you are going, I’m going to have to move some crap from the back seat.”

  “No, it’s just me,” Roland said, rapidly drumming his fingertips against the legs of his slacks.

  Donovan looked at Baldy for confirmation.

  He nodded. “We’re expecting someone else, so we’re going to hang out here for a bit. You two should go now, though, before they show up.”

  Donovan checked out the shoddy motel room. It smelled like stale food and bug spray, and it didn’t even have a TV. “Hanging around a dump like this doesn’t sound like much of a good time to me.”

  “We’re setting a trap for someone, not that it’s any of your concern. Now, please, get on out of here.”

  His anger flared for a second, but then Donovan reminded himself he might not get paid if he beat two of Tyson’s guys into a bloody pulp. “Okay then. Let’s go, Roland. My car’s out front.”

  He escorted Roland down into the parking lot, and this twitchy bastard kept checking behind him, as if the feds were going to come busting out over the bushes any second. No unmarked helicopters hovered overhead and there were no nearby rooftops where snipers might be perched.

  Donovan knew that keeping a guy in a safe house was not cheap, so he wondered why they were going to this trouble.

  Once they were in the car, Roland settled down and stopped his continuous fidgeting. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  Donovan nodded. “Yes, I do mind. We’ll be there in a few minutes, so you can chill out with that.”

  Roland bit his lip and slid his pack of cigarettes back into his pocket. As they left the parking lot, Roland said, “I’ve never seen you before.”

  Roland apparently hadn’t been paying attention to the conversation with Baldy back in the room. “I’m new. Part-time, I guess. We’ll see how it works out. Where am I taking you?”

  “Don’t you have the address?”

  “I do,” Donovan said, “but I want to make sure you know where we’re going.”

  “Tyson owns a lawnmower repair store in Broomfield. There’s an abandoned silo-thing and a shack behind it, you know, because of the construction.”

  “Why are you hiding out in an abandoned shack?”

  Roland clucked his teeth together. “I got caught up on some bullshit charges. I’m getting out of the country in a few days, so I need to
lay low until then.”

  The realization smacked Donovan upside his head like a blow from a lead pipe. So much made sense now. Why Micah had been hanging around the Pink Door, why he’d climbed up on that fire escape to get into those apartments. He’d been looking for Roland. Micah worked for some kind of combination bail bondsman and bounty hunter, and they must have been out on the prowl to bring Roland back in.

  The enlightenment made him feel so good, a little chuckle escaped his lips.

  “What’s so funny?” Roland said.

  “Nothing, really. I know some people who would love to meet you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  MICAH HAD been in Frank’s office alone, conducting research on some guy from the southern Colorado city of Pueblo who was late on child support payments when Frank came storming into the office, his chest heaving and urgency in his eyes.

  “Grab your coat,” he said. “I got a line on Roland Templeton.”

  Micah blanked for a second, then Frank snapped his fingers, so Micah closed the lid of his laptop and dashed out the door to Frank’s car. Soon, they were peeling out of the parking lot and racing toward the highway. He’d forgotten the coat.

  “What happened?” Micah said.

  “I’ve got informants at a ring of motels in that part of town. Front desk clerks, maintenance staff, housekeeping. I got a hit on one this morning, says someone matching Roland’s description has been there the last couple days. Said he’s alone right now, watching TV in the room.”

  They exited the highway and pulled into a neighborhood. “It’s around here somewhere,” Frank said. Then he cast an eye at Micah. “You okay? You seem off.”

  This wasn’t the time to unburden himself, but Frank had asked, so Micah proceeded with his question. “I’ve been thinking about what you said a couple weeks ago. How rigorous honesty is more about yourself and your motives?”