by Sam Sisavath
“The ugly curtains, the bare wall… Who’s there with you? You keep glancing over at them.”
Dammit; I forgot she can see me, too.
“Jane, I need to tell you something,” he said, “but you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone where it came from.”
“Hank…”
“No ifs, ands, or buts, Jane. Promise me, or I’m hanging up right now,” he said, wondering if you could actually “hang up” on someone through a tablet. How did phone calls even work on this thing anyway?
“Hank, you called me, remember?” Jane said.
“I know that, kid. I have information that might help you with the case, but if you’re not going to—”
“What kind of information?”
“Promise me, and I’ll tell you.”
Jane sighed. “Hank, you do know that I’m a detective with CID now, right? That it’s been a while since you bossed me around as a trooper? The shooting’s got us all on edge. The commissioner’s stuck on the phone with the governor’s office, and every detective and chief is fanning across the state. We’re pulling everyone from every section into this one, even the commercial enforcement guys. This is bad, Hank. Real bad. So you need to really think hard about what you’re asking me, because if you have something that can help us catch these motherfuckers…”
“Kid, I don’t know who they are,” Hank said.
He kept his voice calm and even, doing everything possible to let his sincerity come through. Diane would call it his “fatherly face,” except they’d never had kids so it was anyone’s guess if he was doing it right. But he could see it on Jane’s face and hear it in her voice that she was wired. It didn’t surprise him at all. State troopers didn’t die very often, and it was unheard of to have two killed in the same day in the same action.
“That’s the honest truth,” he continued. “But I have some information that could be useful.”
“You want to stay in the dark, is that it?”
“That’s exactly it,” he nodded.
“Okay. We’ll just call you my unnamed CI.”
“That’ll work.”
“So, let’s hear it. Why are you in a motel room this time of night, and am I going to regret asking that question?”
“Someone told me to come here, and I don’t know, maybe?”
“Who told you to go there?”
“You heard about the robbery at Ben’s Diner earlier today?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone was already going all-in on that one when the troopers got killed. That was the reason they pulled the shooters over in the first place. They had orders to stop any suspicious vehicles, and unfortunately for them two guys in a van with out-of-state plates stuck out.” She paused for a moment before leaning forward again. “Wait, are you saying the two things are connected?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus…”
She already knew about him being shot, so he told her about Allie Krycek (though he never said her name and only called her “one of the robbers,” and didn’t mention she was the one who had shot him) slipping him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. He finished by telling her about the motel and meeting with “the robber’s colleague,” who informed him about the human-trafficking operation currently moving across the state.
“Oh, fuck me,” Jane said when he was finished. “Are you sure about this?”
“Trust me, I didn’t want to believe it either, but it’s true. You need to have everyone looking for more than just the van.”
“A semitrailer hauling kids from South America?”
“Among other places.”
“But you don’t know what it looks like…”
“No. I just know it’s out there somewhere.”
“Hank, you know as well as I do that’s going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. Thousands of semis go through our state every day. Listen,” she said, turning her head slightly before looking back at him. “Did you hear that? That’s three more passing in less than three seconds. We can’t just randomly pull every one of them over. We don’t have that kind of manpower.”
“You’ve already set up roadblocks, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but we haven’t been looking for semis, just the van.”
“It’s time to expand your search, then.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yes, Hank, they’re going to ask me why should they expand the stop-and-search to every big rig going through the state, and I won’t have an answer for them.”
Shit, he thought, because she was right. The commanders weren’t going to put more men on the roadblocks to search semis without a damn good reason, and all he had was…
He glanced over at Lucy again, watching him back from across the bed. He couldn’t see the dog Apollo, but it was there somewhere lying next to her feet like a good guard dog. The animal rarely strayed from the girl, as if it had been ordered to stick close to her at all times.
He looked back at Jane. “You’ll have to convince them.”
“Hank, we’re talking about shuffling around a lot of manpower here. I can’t just tell them it’s because some unnamed CI said so. I’m not high up enough on the totem pole to have that kind of pull yet. You know how this bureaucracy works.”
“You gotta try anyway, Jane. Talk to whoever you have to—sweet talk them, bribe them, hell, blackmail them, if that’s what it takes. But you have to get it done.”
She sighed before pursing a smile at him. “Is that how you got things done in the old days, old-timer?”
He smiled back at her. “Mostly the second and third part, rarely the first.” He got serious again, adding, “Can you do it?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll try. If you’re right, and there are kids being smuggled across our state, then fuck it, I’ll make as much noise as I need to. Even if it means backing up traffic into the next ten states.”
Hank beamed with pride. He didn’t know what to say, but he could no more stop the big grin breaking out across his mug than he could push back the hands of time.
Jane saw it and laughed. “I’ll probably get demoted for this if we don’t find anything, you know that, right? If I’m lucky. Worst-case scenario, I’ll end up back in uniform, fetching coffee and checking for hookers at truck stops.”
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with working for a living, kid.”
“Yeah, but I really, really like coming to work in a suit.”
“Thank you,” Hank said, putting as much meaning as he could muster into those two very simple words.
“When this is over, let’s get together for some drinks again, huh? Maybe dinner too, this time. Your liver could use a break. Plus, Andy misses you.”
“That sounds good, kid. That sounds really good.”
“I’ll call you back when I get the chance, or if I have anything. Can I call you on this number?”
He checked with Lucy, and the girl nodded.
“Apparently, yes,” he said.
“Who is that with you?” Jane asked. “Does he have a name?”
“Later,” Hank said. “Go get ’em, kid. You can do this. I have faith in you.”
Jane sighed. “I hope you’re right, for all our sakes. I’ll see you around, old timer.”
The screen flicked to black, and it was just his big, old face staring back at him, except this time on the entire screen.
Hank handed the tablet back to Lucy. “She’ll do what she can, and if anyone can get it done, it’s Jane.”
“Do you trust her?” Lucy asked.
“With my life.”
Lucy nodded. “Who’s Andy?”
“Her daughter. Ten years old. You two could be friends.”
The girl made a face. “I’m sixteen. Do you really see me hanging out with a ten-year-old?”
“You could do worse.” He picked up the now-warm can of Coke from the nightstand and took a sip. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. “I guess we wait
for Allie to contact us.”
“Can you get in touch with her?”
Lucy shook her head. “We decided it would be too dangerous to keep an open channel between us. Allie’s trained me a lot over the last year, but I’ll never be as ready for any of this the way she was her first time.”
“Can you at least tell me what kind of training Allie had?”
“Let’s just say she can take care of herself.”
“You do realize that I know more people at the state police than just Jane? That I could ask any one of them to look into you and your friend?”
Lucy grinned at him.
“What?” Hank said, slightly annoyed.
“Nothing,” Lucy said. The girl stood up from the bed, said, “Come on, boy,” and walked to the door, with Apollo trotting anxiously alongside her.
“Where are you guys going?” Hank asked after them.
“Outside. Apollo’s been cooped up in here all day. I need to get him some exercise.”
“It’s dark out there, kid.”
“I’m not afraid of the dark, lieutenant.”
“Maybe you should be.”
The girl opened the door, then looked back and gave him another one of those grins that told him she knew something he didn’t before she turned around and slipped outside, the dog already a rocket of white fur under the parking lot lights.
“Weird kid,” Hank said to the empty room.
Nine
“Babysitting never used to be this hard,” Dwight said. “You know how many hiccups we’ve had since we started this gig?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Allie asked.
“One. A big ol’ once-o. You wanna guess when that was?”
She didn’t bother replying this time and instead unzipped her jacket halfway down to let the cool air in. It felt good to be outside again, maybe because she had spent too much of the day locked inside a car with two men she wanted to kill so badly.
“Tonight,” Dwight said, and smiled at her, though there was little charm in it. “I told him we should have gone with someone else—maybe even skip the mother hen this time—but he insisted Juliet’s recommendation could be trusted. It’s a weakness of his; Reese can sometimes be too loyal for his own good.”
“And here I thought loyalty was a good thing.”
“Not in this business, Alice in Wonderland. In this business, loyalty gets you screwed in the front and back.”
“Sounds painful.”
“It is, believe me.”
“Are we talking from personal experience here?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“What exactly have I done that makes you think I shouldn’t be trusted, Dwight?”
“Besides the fact I’ve never seen or heard of you until you slipped into our car?”
“Besides that.”
He shrugged. “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”
“Are you worried I’m going to try to take Reese from you?”
“I don’t fuck the guy, I just work with him.”
“Hey, what the two of you do between the sheets is your business.”
He grunted but otherwise didn’t take her bait.
She kept her eyes fixed forward, even though it was difficult to ignore his presence leaning against the side of the car next to her. There were just the two of them at the moment, and she ran the odds through her head for the fifth time in as many minutes: If she went for the holstered gun behind her back right now, could he react in time? At this range, it would take a miracle to miss Dwight’s big head.
Bright headlights washed over her as another semitrailer pulled into the truck stop and went in search of an empty spot among the well-lit gas pumps. They were far enough from the bright lights at the center of the wide-open parking lot that they could have passed for Peeping Toms watching the rest of the world go about their business.
It wasn’t hard to pick out Reese as he emerged from the main store next to the pumps. He was the only tall man in a black suit and black tie, and he stood out among the truckers in jeans and weary travelers stopping for some gas and food. He dodged the fleet of parked vehicles and jogged his way back to them, slipping in and out of the bright pools of light. New cars were entering the lot, while others left, every other minute.
The black and red semi, with Sara and the others inside, was parked thirty yards to her right, nestled among truckers who had decided to shut down for the night. The vehicle and its contents were so close and yet so far away.
You should have saved them back at the drive-in movie. You blew your best chance.
Maybe she had, and maybe she didn’t. She was only sure of one thing at the moment: She was still alive, and so were Sara and the other girls, and her chances of locating Faith remained in play. It was still a long shot—when had it been anything but?—but a long shot was better than no shot at all.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
Reese finally reached them, swinging a plastic bag in one hand. He was breathing noticeably hard from the long jog across the parking lot.
“Listen to you, all out of breath,” Dwight said.
“We should have parked closer,” Reese said.
“No, you just need to work out more.”
“That too.”
Reese dug out a wrapped sandwich and bottle of water and handed them to Allie. He took out another sandwich and bottle for himself before surrendering the rest of the bag to Dwight, who put it on the hood and fished out a large can of Red Bull.
She took one bite from her sandwich, decided she liked the chicken salad, and took another one. She was swallowing when a station wagon entered the lot, and as it drove past her, Allie saw a bored teenage girl in the back staring out at her, and suddenly the sandwich didn’t taste nearly as good anymore. She forced the piece she’d already bitten off down anyway, but she might as well be swallowing rocks.
“Not good?” Reese asked.
He had leaned against the car next to her, taking Dwight’s place after the other man had wandered off to sit on the hood, facing away from them.
“It wouldn’t have been my first choice,” she said.
“Should have come inside with me and picked for yourself.”
“What else is on the menu?”
“Too many to list. It’s not a bad setup, actually. The diner next door is packed.”
It’s not the food, it’s the company, she thought, but said, “Chicken salad’s fine,” and took a third bite and forced it down, too.
Reese unwrapped his Sloppy Joe and took a big chomp, then smiled blissfully. “Good stuff. I don’t think I’ve found it anywhere outside the States. Could be wrong on that front, of course. It’s not like I’ve been everywhere.”
“I don’t know how you can eat that slop,” Dwight said. He was sniffing the air, not bothering to turn around.
“What’s more American than Sloppy Joes?” Reese said as a chunk of ground beef and strips of onion fell from the buns—not that he seemed to notice. Instead, he took another huge bite.
“What about the girls?” she asked. “You wanted me to check on them earlier.”
“Not here,” Reese said. He wiped at his mouth with a napkin. “Too many people. Too many cameras. You can check on them when we’re swapping vehicles later.”
“Which is when, exactly?”
“We’re in uncharted territory, which unfortunately means things will happen when they happen.” He took out his cell phone and placed it on the hood between them. “Until then, we’ll push on ahead to the alternate location. If we’re fortunate, the new Vanguard will beat us there with new vehicles.”
“But they’re late.”
“They’re late,” he nodded. “They shouldn’t be, but they are.”
“This night just keeps getting better and better,” Dwight said from the front of the car.
“We’ve dealt with problems before.”
“Not shoot-two-troopers-dead problems.”
“Ye
s, well, what’s that you like to say? If it were easy, then anyone could do it.”
Dwight harrumphed but didn’t say anything.
Reese went back to finishing his Sloppy Joe and wiping his fingers on the napkin while she did her best to ignore the aroma of beef and onions coming from him. Dwight seemed content to drink his Red Bull and stare off at nothing in particular on the other side of the car. Allie was grateful for the silence, with the only noises coming from the vehicles entering and leaving the truck stop around them—
A buzzing sound coming from the vibrating phone on the hood of the car next to her ruined all of that.
Reese picked up the phone and answered it without bothering to look at the number. “Yes.” He listened for a moment, then said, “That’s unfortunate.”
Dwight hopped off the hood and looked expectantly over, but didn’t interrupt.
“All right. Keep me updated,” Reese said, and put the phone back into his jacket pocket.
“Let me guess: More hiccups?” Dwight asked.
“It would appear so,” Reese said. He opened his bottle of water and took a slow, measured drink. She couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose while he searched for the right words to explain the call or if the man really was just that unflappable despite what had just been, apparently, more bad news.
“Well, what the fuck did they say?” Dwight said impatiently. “Are they coming or not?”
“They are…eventually,” Reese said. “The state police started putting up road blocks along the interstate. They’re searching for Vanguard’s van and, apparently, also focusing on semitrailers now. It looks like they’re going to be delayed for an unspecified amount of time.”
Lucy.
It had to be. Somehow, Lucy had convinced someone in the state police to add hauling trucks to their searches. The only way she would be able to achieve that was…
Hank Pritchard.
What other explanation was there? Who else could get law enforcement to expand their search? Someone had to have informed them, and there were only two people who knew—she and Lucy. Allie didn’t think the teenager had a chance in hell of convincing the authorities, especially over the phone. But someone like Pritchard, who had a history with them…