The Crashers

by Cubed, Magen

  “I’ve tried, but I make too much money, and my ex’s child support every month is too high to make us eligible. I can’t even ask for a raise because we’re under these district budget cuts until the end of next year. Then, between gas and insurance, I can barely afford to keep my car. I’ll probably just have to sell it.”

  “Christ. I’m so sorry, honey. Oh, wait just a second.” Debbie riffled through her apron for her server book, pulled it open and produced a tired business card. “We’re hiring down at the diner. I know, it’s not exactly glamorous, but there’s a couple of teachers that work there for extra cash on the weekends. It’s got to be better than what you’re doing, right?”

  Norah looked it over, reading the general manager’s name and number. “Really? Do you guys make good money?”

  “On the weekends, yeah, usually. I just pick up four shifts a week to make some extra cash for groceries, but everybody else seems to do okay. A couple of girls pull double shifts throughout the week and clear $700 or $800 most of the time.”

  “Oh, wow.” Norah sniffled and wiped her eyes again. “I used to wait tables in college, but that was just for beer money and books. It would help out so much if I could pull in this kind of cash. What I make a month now barely keeps the lights on, even before I get to our debts.”

  Debbie shrugged. “Well, I mean, you could go full time. You’d have to go off the school’s insurance, but you’d have a more flexible schedule. And with less claimable income, you could file for state aid, maybe get some help that way.”

  “I don’t know. I can’t leave the school. I just... This is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

  “Yeah, well. It’s not like slinging breakfast plates and early bird specials is going to make my dreams come true, either, but you’ll be able to feed your kid, at least.”

  After a moment, Norah nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  With a squeeze of Norah’s shoulder, Debbie left to take her sons home. Norah put the card in her purse to look at after picking up Hannah, doing dinner and dishes, and helping Hannah with homework. With the card on the dresser, she cried herself to sleep, but in the morning, she was ready to call Margie’s office number and ask if they were still hiring.

  “Ah, right, right,” Margie said, shuffling through papers on the other end of the line. “Debbie mentioned you might be calling. She’s said a lot of good things about you.”

  Norah tried not to sound like making the call was killing her. On the phone, Margie’s voice was warm like honey. It made Norah feel just that much less desperate, and that was a comfort, no matter how hollow.

  V.

  The scan came back to show a cancerous mass on Bridger’s left lung. Behind the veiny, white outlines of bones and tissues, it was black and amorphous, hitting him like a kick in the gut. He was sitting in Dr. Kumar’s office overlooking Estero Park when he received the diagnosis. Caitlin sat beside him like the rock she had to be—that she always was—gripping his hand between hers. It wasn’t until Bridger got home that night that he realized he hadn’t heard anything Dr. Kumar had to say as he solemnly laid out treatment options, viability projections, life expectancy and statistics. His senses failed him. A roar of static engulfed his hearing. Caitlin just squeezed his fingers where they interlocked between hers and reminded him that he wasn’t dead yet.

  That night, they didn’t speak of it. There was nothing to talk about yet, still tests to run, results to wait for, and experts to consult. Bridger had nothing to say as he collapsed onto their bed. He didn’t possess the vocabulary necessary to explain the blackness that had settled in his chest and made it hard to breathe. Caitlin demanded nothing from him. She held him until he finally fell into a hard and dreamless sleep. In the morning, they made a pact over breakfast not to let this change anything between them or to compromise any of the plans they had already made. They would tell no one until they had a second opinion from Dr. Kumar’s list of recommended oncologists, and they would adjust their lives accordingly once they had all the facts. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, they felt false, but he couldn’t say that. Caitlin didn’t deserve it.

  Work. Keep working, Dr. Kumar told him. Maintain normalcy. Try to keep yourself sane. In his office on the thirty-second floor, Bridger returned to Baxter & Sans and pretended nothing had changed. He smiled at his secretary, Andrea, and made conversation with clients at business lunches. He told jokes and made everybody feel comfortable. He was good at that, just like he was good at the numbers game. People were easy to read and keep placated if he played his cards right and said the right things at the right time. He had spent his entire life being the right guy at the right time. It was necessary to craft his airtight persona to shield himself from the realities of his working-class roots, his silent father, and his fickle, runaway of a mother. Even then, sitting in a five-star restaurant and a thousand-dollar suit, making everyone at the table laugh, none of them could have guessed that the black mass in his lung was slowly choking him before their eyes. It was his best trick yet.

  It wasn’t until the investor’s luncheon that all of this caught up with Bridger. He was perched at the bar in the shining, glass guts of the Grand Plaza Hotel and nursing his second glass of bourbon after the success of his presentation. It was a cleverly crafted song and dance routine to impress the cabal of poker-faced, Japanese businessmen of Yamamoto Industries International. Any one of the hungry underlings in his department could have given the presentation, but Mr. Baxter personally asked Bridger to close the deal. He was an apex predator; that was what had made him the best.

  Above him somewhere, the meeting was going on without him. He wasn’t needed anymore, so he made his escape while the suits glad-handed and the lawyers got the papers finalized. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, and Bridger was whiskey-warm and feeling no pain. Across the empty bar, a lovely slip of a boy sat at a table by himself and sipped on a gin martini. Bridger couldn’t help but watch him. Twenty-five, maybe thirty... some fresh, young professional in a black suit that matched the fan of his feathery lashes. The sight of him went right to Bridger’s dick in a shameful jolt. It was a mental betrayal that led to thoughts of slender fingers, full pink lips, and kissing, sucking, fucking in the men’s room. The thrill of something young and pretty couldn’t drown out the bone-deep shame of wanting it.

  e had always been attracted to men. The nature of his sexual attraction to both men and women made itself known one Saturday afternoon when his fifteen-year-old self gave Mike Abramowitz from math class the first of many hand jobs. The consequences this would have in his father’s silent house on Chelsea Street were astronomical. Back then, there was only straight and gay. In college, he learned the term bisexual was more than just a joke in Playboy articles. Other, nicer terms came into fashion later on. These labels didn’t do Bridger much good because he met Caitlin when he was nineteen and knew he would marry her. There was only one person for him—one Caitlin Connor—and he didn’t need to explain it to anyone else. Caitlin knew and Caitlin loved him, and Caitlin didn’t care. That was what mattered.

  Then there was cancer. There was this boy in a bar and the empty joke his life had turned into: making money at the expense of anyone and anything else in his way. Suddenly, he felt sick. A wave of revulsion washed over him until his stomach lurched. Off the barstool and on his feet, he went to the men’s room to lock himself in the last stall. Panic made its way through him in a surge, tingling in his fingers and running hot under his clothes. Had it all been pointless? Had he made the wrong decisions? Would he have been better served to stay on his block like his father had, or to run away from the city and start over as his mother did when she abandoned them for New Mexico? Was there some other version of him, in some other time and place, where he had done something useful with his life? Could he still have had Caitlin? Would he still have died of cancer, or of the aneurysm as he had always planned?

  Vomiting his bourbon into the bowl, he felt even emptier. He sank to the ground with a p
itiful noise and closed a hand over his eyes until the terror passed over him. It was only then—with a clear and unrelenting certainty—that he knew he had lied to Caitlin in more ways than one.

  VI.

  Hannah was the one who noticed first. She excused herself from the table while the adults continued eating, talking, and refilling glasses with whiskey or wine. Gathering up her plate and silverware, she brought her things to the sink to rinse them off. On the counter, the radio spat and sputtered between news reports and bulletins: eighty-seven dead, fifty-three wounded. Turning in an about-face, she moved as quickly as her braces could carry her to the kitchen doorway.

  “Mom. Mom, Mom, Mom.”

  Norah looked up. When she saw the look on her daughter’s face, she immediately stood.

  “There’s been another bomb.”

  Clara was out of her chair first, forgetting to use her speed as she jogged to the television in the next room. The others followed after Clara to find the news station as she stepped back to watch with her hands clasped over her mouth. Norah held Hannah by the shoulders. Adam sank to the sofa. Bridger paced. Kyle simply waited as the screen filled with the grisly aftermath of raw footage from smartphones and security cameras. There was blood on the streets of Camden as first responders pulled bodies out of the IGC building in gurneys and black bags. Images flashed of police barricades, screaming faces, and women holding bloodied children hit by glass or ball bearings.

  “I didn’t see this coming,” Bridger muttered. “I didn’t see this. Why didn’t I see this?”

  Adam said nothing. Clara shook her head. Norah picked up and held Hannah. Kyle set down the remote and disappeared up the stairs to his attic.

  “Where are you going?” Norah asked after him. “What’re we going to do now?”

  “We find him,” he said. “And we make him pay.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I.

  The latest explosion was still in the air when Sonya White appeared at the 41st precinct with eyes wet from crying. New death tolls fuzzed in and out between radio stations on the ride over and 24-hour coverage was on every television set in the city. The anti-terrorism unit on the tenth floor buzzed around her in a rush as she stepped off the elevator on unsure feet. A cold tide raced down her arms and legs and left her numb. She wiped her eyes and searched the series of office desks and partitioned cubicles. Finally, she found Amanda, trapped behind three stacks of tip hotline forms and a ringing phone. Amanda looked up at Sonya’s unfamiliar face and ignored the next call.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I don’t know.” Sonya shook her head. “I—I think I need to report a crime, or make a statement, I guess. I’ve never done this before.”

  “That’s okay. Let me see what I can do. What is this regarding?”

  “I think my husband is the bomber you’re looking for.”

  Amanda gestured to the seat opposite of hers and grabbed a pen. “Why do you suspect your husband?”

  “I’ve suspected it for weeks now if I’m honest with myself. I tried to talk to a man on the tip hotline but he didn’t believe me. It didn’t match their suspect descriptions, but I thought... I saw you at the press conferences, and I thought you might listen.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because a woman knows what her husband’s capable of, and another woman would understand that.”

  Amanda uncapped her pen with a nod. “Okay, let’s start over, then. Tell me your name, and tell me why you think your husband is involved.”

  Taking a deep breath, Sonya dried her eyes. “My name is Sonya White. My husband’s name is Damon. He disappeared four, almost five months ago. I’ve been looking for him, but he just vanished. Cancelled his credit cards and moved, leaving fake numbers and addresses everywhere I was able to find them. He’s just become so angry and withdrawn, so... consumed.”

  “Why?”

  “He was laid off from his job a year ago from Pharmasuite. He was a project manager, overseeing one of their research and development divisions. We lost his insurance and benefits, and after his pension dried up, we used all of our savings to keep afloat. It’s been hard for us, and I knew he was angry. He felt cheated, but I thought we could get through it, you know? I thought we could try. But then we lost our daughter, and he just spiraled out of control.”

  Amanda quickly scrawled notes across a spare sheet of paper. “So, you think he’s doing this for a reason? Personal motivations?”

  “I don’t know. I think so? He thinks he’s doing the right thing, but he’s sick—he’s delusional. I was afraid it might be him after the subway crash, but when I saw the news about the hospital and the insurance company, I knew. I knew it was him.”

  “Why?”

  “Our daughter fell down the stairs at the Fairway Station in Camden. She was taken to St. Bart’s, but they took her off life support because we lost his insurance coverage from IGC after the layoff.”

  That hit Amanda like a punch. She nodded again as her ringing phone went unanswered. “This is more than enough, Sonya. Thank you. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll look into this, all right?”

  “Just promise me you’ll check.” Sonya reached across the desk to grip Amanda’s hands in a clammy vice. “Please. I love my husband, I do. But if he hurts anyone else, I don’t think I can live with myself anymore.”

  Amanda squeezed Sonya’s shaking fingers. “I promise, Mrs. White. I’ll do everything I can.”

  II.

  The maps of East Brighton City told Bridger about life. They spoke in whispers of streets and alleys, sighing about the conduits of travel and energy where people lived and worked. If he closed his eyes, he could see footprints and sweat—the physical impressions of a man left by his waning ghost. He tapped two fingers intermittently on his chin and stared into the city maps scattered across the floor beside Adam’s angled laptop. His bare toes wriggled amid newspaper articles tossed around like buckshot, words underlined in black ink, and notes scribbled into the corners with circles and stars.

  “Where are you hiding?” he asked the air. “Where did you go, you motherfucker?”

  The explosion at the IGC building had left him angry. They had all gotten too comfortable in the house on Chelsea Street. Thinking of themselves as powerful made them relaxed and lazy. They needed to be angry. They needed to be ready for whatever happened next. Adam had left Bridger to his maps and articles when he went to work that morning. He didn’t ask questions; he just left a fresh pot of coffee on in the kitchen with a newly filled mug. Bridger was grateful for the thoughtfulness of it.

  This was his process of divination; it was like reading tea leaves or breathing in the fires of Delphi. He had to live with this behind his eyes and soak it into his skin until it crawled down his spine. If he waited—if he was patient—it would come to him. He would find the name and the face to put to all of these horrors, as he lay down at night and hoped for an answer. Despite his soothsaying, he dreamt and saw nothing—not even the black skies and bloodied gutters from his initial, fitful visions. Instead, déjà vu filtered in through radio static and news reports as a dull hum of weather warnings and traffic updates for two, four, even six weeks out. A bus would stall on the northbound I-90 sometime in September, and there would be an apartment fire in Coalfield. Nothing of use to him now, as he scribbled down notes whenever he awoke in the middle of the night.

  In the days after the IGC bombing, Bridger held his breath and waited for a vision, but nothing came.

  III.

  Hannah was asleep by the time Kyle opened the trap door and told Norah to bring everyone to the attic. There was no point in involving Hannah; she had already seen and heard enough as she snuck away to watch the news and eavesdrop on conversations. One by one, the others followed Norah up the stairs to find Kyle waiting by his evidence board. His arms were crossed, his back straight, and he eyed each of them with something close to trust.

  Dropping down on the foot of the bed, Norah spoke first.
“Okay, so tell them what you told me.”

  “I’ll be honest: I have no concrete evidence,” Kyle prefaced carefully. “What I do know is that this guy is homegrown. He’s white, average height and weight, likely with a background in engineering or chemistry. He has a formal education and could be former military or even law enforcement. All I know for sure is that this isn’t political. It’s personal, and he’s using these terrorist tapes as a red herring.”

  “So, what do we do?” Clara asked. “How do we find him?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know. I’ve run the name Bridger gave me in every database I could get access to and nothing came up. I have an asset on the case, but her hands are tied by the watchdogs at the FBI and Homeland Security. And there’s something else I haven’t brought up yet.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’ve been followed since the crash,” Kyle answered.

  “By who?” asked Norah. “FBI? Cops?”

  “Neither. Not their speed. These guys are slick and they’re civilians.”

  “Are they tailing all of us? Are we even worth being tailed?”

  “Don’t know. They broke into my place and followed me to the bank when I was scoping the scene. If they know about us, or they’re trying to leverage it against us, they haven’t made any attempts to contact me.”

  “This sounds personal,” said Bridger, pacing around by the trap door. “This have something to do with your days on the force? Maybe somebody you pissed off in prison?”

  Kyle shook his head. “Don’t think so. This started right after the subway was attacked.”

  “So, you think they’re looking for this guy, too?” Norah asked. “Maybe they’re just following you to see if it takes them to the source.”

  “Makes about as much sense as anything else so far.”

  “But what do we do about all of this?” asked Clara, crossing her arms. “Is there anything we can do here?”

  After a moment, Kyle shrugged. “Right now, I don’t have a plan.”