by Scott Blade
Claire said, “It’s…it’s…”
“Go ahead, Claire. You can trust me.”
“My daughter-in-law, Lucy, has cancer. You see?”
Widow nodded.
“It’s terminal. Right now, as we speak, she’s in a hospital. In El Paso.”
She paused a long beat, and then she said, “She’s not going to make it. She can hardly feed herself some days.”
Widow stood up and moved to the chair next to Claire. He put his free hand on top of hers and held the photo in his other like it was a sacred thing. He said, “Go ahead, Claire.”
She said, “Lucy doesn’t know I’m here. She doesn’t know what happened. She doesn’t know anything. Yesterday, in the morning, I think, James got out of prison.”
“What did he do to Jemma?”
“James was never a bad man. But he’s confused. And he’s been mixed up with the wrong people.” She turned to Widow and looked up in his face and said, “Bad people.”
Widow asked, “How bad?”
“Bad.”
“Where’s Jemma?”
Claire’s eyes again turned watery, and she said, “Jemma didn’t come home from school yesterday. The same day James got out.
“He took her! He took my little Jemma!”
CHAPTER 5
JEMMA LEFT her lunch pail back in the car. And now she was a little upset about it because the guy who looked like Daddy had ditched the car they had. He left it parked behind a busy gas station, and she’d left her pail inside it.
He had woken her up while she was still half asleep, so she had forgotten about it. But she didn’t make a big fuss about it.
Her daddy took her to a car rental place.
For the first time in hours, he spoke. They walked into the lot, and he asked, “Pip, which car do you like?”
She covered her face in a shy kind of way, and she smiled because she confirmed to herself it was her daddy. He had the same voice, and he called her Pip, which was short for Pipsqueak. That had been what he always called her before the police came and took him away one day.
She remembered that was when her mommy first got sick.
The policemen came to her house and put her daddy in handcuffs, just like she’d seen on TV.
He said, “Pip? Which car?”
She lunged at him and hugged him tight.
He put his hand on her back and pulled her close.
“I missed you too. But Pip, we gotta go. Which car?”
She pulled back and looked around. She still didn’t speak, but she pointed at a silver Dodge truck.
He smiled and said, “That one?”
She nodded, and he said, “Okay. Let’s get it.”
They went inside to the rental place, and Hood rented the truck. Her daddy had to do all kinds of paperwork, and he told the guy behind the desk that his name was Jason instead of his real name, which she knew was James. He also gave a completely different last name. It sounded funny to her. It was too big for her to spell. It was Nikopovich. She thought it was strange that he didn’t use his real name.
When they were finally done, she spoke. She said, “Daddy, I’m hungry.”
“Of course, Pip. Let’s get some food. You want to go to Burger King?”
She shook her head and said, “Grandma says that it’s bad for me.”
“Burger King used to be your favorite.”
“But I’m not supposed to.”
“Okay, Pip. Where you wanna go?”
She looked out of the truck’s big window and watched for something she wanted to try. After ten minutes of driving through the town, toward the interstate, she pointed at a restaurant.
She said, “Let’s go there.”
He looked at an Applebee’s and said, “Okay, Pip. Let’s do it.”
He headed toward the restaurant.
JACK WIDOW said, “Tell me about it.”
Claire Hood said, “My little granddaughter went to the bus stop yesterday, and I thought that she’d gone to school, but she never came home.”
“What did the cops say?”
“They said they’re looking into it.”
“That’s it? No Amber Alert?”
“No.”
“That seems unusual.”
Claire paused a long beat, and she said, “I didn’t call them.”
Widow said, “What? Why not?”
“I can’t call them. They can’t know.”
“Why the hell not?”
Claire Hood looked around at the other people waiting. A bus came and pulled up to one of the other terminals in the distance. The voice of the guy from behind the ticket booth came over the intercom system, which was nearing the need to be replaced, and said, “The bus for Fort Worth is headed out in ten minutes.”
Several people far from Widow and Claire started to rise and line up and wait for the bus driver to begin loading.
Claire said, “I can’t call them because Jemma is Mexican. Like her mother, she’s an illegal. The police won’t look for her, and even if they find her, she’ll be deported. And her mother is undocumented. Where will she go for care? They’ll send her back to Mexico. She’ll be off of her treatments, and I’ll lose them both.”
Widow nodded. He understood. Claire was afraid that if she told the police, they might start asking questions about her citizenship.
Widow asked, “Claire, if her father is an American, even if he is an ex-con, then isn’t Jemma automatically a citizen?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“I thought it did.”
“No. See…”
She paused and let out a huff, which Widow wasn’t sure was because she needed to pause or because of the heat, like she needed to take a breath.
She said, “Jemma isn’t his real daughter. She’s unofficially adopted.”
Widow nodded, and then he thought for a second and asked, “Why didn’t James just adopt her officially? Wouldn’t that make her a legal citizen and protected?”
“Yes. It would, and he was thinking about it. But then he got arrested and sent to prison for ten years.”
“Wait, if he was sent for ten years, why is he out now? Jemma’s only six. The math doesn’t add up. Did he get out for good behavior or something?”
“He’s not supposed to be out. I don’t know why he is. He only went in two years ago.”
“Is it possible he escaped?”
“No way. Not likely. James isn’t a criminal mastermind. No way he could have escaped.”
Widow nodded.
“If he had escaped, they’d be coming to me first. No, he was released.”
“I wonder why?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that he took Jemma.”
“Claire, how good is your relationship with him?”
“It’s okay. But not great.”
“Would he have told you he was getting out?”
She paused another long beat and fanned her face with her palm open. “No. I haven’t spoken to him in over a year.”
“I see.”
“I just thought since he was in prison for ten years that maybe it was best not to expose Jemma to him, you know? I messed up with my son, but I wasn’t about to let Jemma turn out like that. And then Lucy got worse, and I ended up with a full plate.” She shook her head and then said, “I guess it was also for me too. I didn’t want to see James in that place anymore.”
“What did he do?”
“Like I told ya, he hung out with the wrong crowd. He was doing low-level jobs for this drug dealer from Mexico.”
Widow stayed quiet.
“I could really use your help.”
Widow said, “Claire, I think you should tell the police. They can do a lot more than I can. They’ll be interested in finding James and recovering your granddaughter. I really think they won’t even check far enough into her background to figure out she’s not documented.”
“I can’t. But you can help me?”
“Where are they goi
ng? You must know since you’re here.”
“Romanth.”
Widow asked, “Romanth?”
“It’s a small nothing town on the border with Mexico.”
“Is James trying to cross over with her?”
“I don’t think so. I think Romanth is his destination.”
“What makes you think that?”
“He talked about it once. He said it’s a great forgotten town. The last time I spoke to him, he mentioned it. He talked about it like it was a mythical place.”
“I see.”
She repeated, “Will you help me?”
Widow looked into her eyes. A desperate grandmother who loves her granddaughter. Nothing wrong with that. He thought for a moment even though he already knew his answer.
Then, right then at that moment, Claire stood up from her seat. She wobbled a bit. Widow shot up and grabbed her arm gently to steady her. He said, “Are you okay?”
“I feel…I feel…”
Claire Hood never finished her sentence. Instead, she clutched her forehead with one hand and then gasped and tumbled into Widow’s arms.
He shouted, “Help! Help!”
A security guard in her mid-thirties came running over. She asked, “What’s wrong?”
“She collapsed.”
“Oh dear!”
Widow laid her down on the hot concrete and lifted her wrist. He tried to feel for a pulse. There was none.
He said, “Call 911! Now!”
“Okay!”
The security guard ran off, back toward the station hutch. That must’ve been her training by the bus company’s corporate office because surely she had a cell phone in her pocket. Widow was practically the only guy in America who didn’t. But instead of pulling it out and dialing for emergency assistance, she ran back to the station, and probably back to a corporate telephone. One that the company pays for and tracks. That way they can say they did their part to try and help someone in need. No disputing who called 911.
Widow leaned down and put his head near Claire’s heart. He listened hard. He could hear a heartbeat.
He shouted back at the bystanders, “Call 911! Now!”
He hoped that maybe one of them would be faster with their cell phone.
He listened again. Claire’s heartbeat was slow and faint. It sounded like the last drizzle of water squeezing out from a faucet before it ran empty.
He listened. He grabbed her hand and held it tight.
He said, “Don’t you die! Jemma needs you!”
Widow felt a surge go through her body, and her hand squeezed his back, but it was weak. And then it went completely limp.
His military training had kicked in and he attempted CPR. He checked her airway. It was clear and he preceded to breathe into her mouth. He rotated between pumping her chest, to get her heart beating and breathing air into her lungs. He repeated the cycle over and over.
More people were walking over and staring. He tried CPR for a long time, waiting for EMTs, with no luck.
He put his ear to her chest, one final time and listened for her heartbeat, but there was nothing. Her eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the sky beyond.
Claire Hood was dead.
THE WOMAN from Kill Team B watched from the car, which was parked across the street, near a playground for kids from the nearby neighborhood. She looked at her partner and said, “It looks like she passed out…or may be dead.”
He said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I think she’s dead. She was talking to that big guy, and she just dropped dead.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Take a look.”
The guy from her team leaned forward in his seat and craned his head and looked past her. He watched for a moment as the stranger stood over the old bird and stared down at her.
“He’s not that big,” said the guy.
“He’s pretty big. Bigger than you.”
“Pfft. No way! I can take him!”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t. I just said he was bigger.”
“Taller maybe.”
She asked, “So now what the hell do we do?”
“Call the boss, I guess.”
She nodded and pulled her phone out. She unlocked it and dialed the number. Their boss wasn’t really a boss. He was the Principal.
She hit the last-dialed number and then put the phone to her ear and listened as the phone rang and rang. After several rings, a voice finally answered.
The voice said, “Yes?”
“We have some news.”
“Wait. I’m not in a secure location.”
She waited and eyeballed back at what was happening with the stranger and Claire Hood. The stranger was trying to listen to her heartbeat. Other passengers were gathering around to help or to watch, and now the view was being obstructed.
The guy from Kill Team B said, “What’s he saying?”
“Nothing. Yet.”
Then the voice came back on and said, “Go ahead.”
She said, “We’ve gotta problem.”
“What happened?”
“It looks like she passed out.”
“Passed out?”
“Yeah. We followed her to a bus station back in El Paso, and we followed her bus. Now we’re in Rough Creek.”
“Rough Creek?”
“Yeah. I never heard of it, either. It looks like she’s on her way to the target.”
“And she passed out?”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean maybe? Did she pass out or not?”
“It looks like it may be worse than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think she might be dead. There’s sirens now. Ambulance is headed this way.”
The voice said, “Damn it! We’ve got to know where she was going.”
The woman said, “We were going to follow her bus.”
“Now what will you do?”
The woman said, “She was talking with this guy.”
“What guy?”
“I don’t know…some guy. Like a total stranger.”
“What did she tell him?”
The woman said, “I don’t know. But they talked for a long time.”
“Is he a cop?”
She said, “I don’t think so. But he’s a big guy. He’s got a look about him.”
The voice asked, “What kind of look?”
“Like a do-gooder.”
“I see. Wait for the ambulance and see what happens. Call me back.”
And the voice hung up the phone. The woman slipped the phone back into her pocket and looked at her partner. She shrugged and said, “We wait.”
A LOCAL COP showed up at the scene after the paramedics. He was a young guy on patrol by himself. He looked ex-military. Widow wasn’t sure which branch, but he’d guess it was US Army. The guy was too muscular to be Air Force and had a look like he’d seen battle. And Marines usually hang on to that jarhead look. Although he could’ve been wrong on that account. Having a jarhead would signify Marine Corps, but not having one didn’t mean anything.
He took over the CPR from Widow and had the same result. After a few more minutes he reluctantly stopped and shook his head. Claire Hood was definitely dead.
The officer was nice but thorough. He seemed to take the entire episode very seriously. He asked the right questions. He took witness statements. And he determined there was no foul play here and that Claire Hood had died from natural causes.
He told Widow to give his phone number in case his department needed to ask further questions. Widow didn’t want to get into it, so he told another lie. He gave him the phone number for NCIS in Quantico, Virginia, which was a real place and the home of NCIS training.
The other lies Widow had told the officer weren't things he was proud of, and he wasn’t even sure lying was the right thing to do. He told the cop that all they did was talk small talk. She talked about her grandchildren, like grandparents do, a
nd he told her about his life in the military. They just shot the breeze and nothing else.
He wasn’t sure he should be telling lies to a police officer. What he should’ve done was told him the story she’d told and been on his way. But Widow wasn’t the kind of guy to let wrongs go.
After the officer was done with him and the paramedics had taken Claire’s body away, Widow was left alone on the same bench. He sat in the seat next to the one she’d been sitting in. He leaned forward with his eyes planted on the concrete.
“He took my Jemma,” she had said.
“I can’t tell the cops,” she had said.
Jemma’s mother was dying in a hospital back in El Paso. Cancer. Now who would get Jemma back? It was none of Widow’s business, not really.
In the background, he heard the guy in the ticket booth’s voice again, announcing another bus departing.
He said, “Final call for Shreveport, Louisiana.”
Which was Widow’s bus. He listened to the announcement one last time. Other than lying to a police officer, which he had done, he had also committed another crime. He’d obstructed justice, because just then he opened his hand and stared at Claire Hood’s bus ticket. She had been headed to Laredo and then to Romanth a bit northwest on the border with Mexico.
Widow watched as the last passenger for his Shreveport bus boarded and the driver closed the doors. The tired bus coughed as it reversed out of the terminal and then drove forward. He watched it drive off, past the service drive and down to the highway.
About fifteen minutes later, he was boarding a bus to Laredo. His pass had the name Claire Hood written on it, but the bus driver didn’t look too closely at the name on the stub. He just tore it and handed Widow the long end.
Widow stepped onto the bus and sat far in the back. He closed his eyes and tried to get some sleep.
THE WOMAN from the kill team called the Principal and said, “The stranger got on the wrong bus.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the guy behind the counter said he bought a ticket to go to Louisiana.”
“But he didn’t get on that bus?”
The woman said, “No. He got on another one. He must’ve used the old lady’s ticket.”
“Follow him. He must know where the target is.”