Louder Than Words

by Brett Baker

“Cooper, come down here. I need to talk to you,” he yelled up the steps. He didn’t expect a response, so he had already started climbing the steps when Cooper surprised him and swung open his bedroom door, and came to the top of the steps. “Are you smoking now?” Dirk asked, his voice a mixture of inquisitive concern. He waved the cigarettes toward Cooper.

  “No, I don’t know how those got there. They were there when I took the girl back to the hotel.”

  “They’re probably hers. Did she smell like smoke? Your fucking car sure smells like smoke.”

  “I assume if they were hers that she would have taken them with her. I doubt she smokes. A smoker looks weathered by her age. She’s not weathered.”

  “Then who do these belong to?”

  “I don’t know. Probably someone who’s going to come murder us in our sleep,” Cooper said, mocking his father.

  “Keep making light of this,” Dirk said. “It must be nice to live a life devoid of any problems. But just keep in mind that you don’t have any problems because I take care of everything.”

  “You create more problems than you solve,” Cooper said. “I don’t have any problems because I avoid problematic situations. You invite them.”

  “This coming from a guy who can’t go a night without drinking, and has no idea how he got home last night. I should know better than to come to you looking for answers to anything.”

  Dirk stomped away and returned to the library. He dialed the same number as before and this time the man on the other end answered after just one ring. He sounded exasperated.

  “What?”

  “Tell me you have good news,” Dirk said. “I have enough on my mind without worrying about this situation.”

  “Well, Dirk…you see, the two men I sent out there…,” the man paused as he searched for words to explain the current situation.

  “The men you sent out there better have done the job. And if they didn’t do the job, then let me know their names, because now we have to take care of them, too. We can’t let this spread. The whole reason I came to you was to keep this contained. It’s not the sort of job we want broadcast throughout the county. So please tell me that these assholes did the job you hired them to do.”

  “It’s possible they took care of it,” the man said.

  “It’s possible? What the fuck does that mean?”

  “They’re not answering. I’m sure they probably celebrated a little too much after getting the job done, and they’re hungover somewhere. I’ll keep trying to reach them. In the meantime, if you can figure out whether the lady your son met is our target, then that’ll answer part of the equation.”

  “If I wanted to handle that kind of bullshit I would have taken care of this myself. I thought I could count on you, but I was obviously mistaken. Let me know if you hear from your guys, but don’t hold your breath. I think they turned tail. We’re unlikely to ever hear from them again.”

  Dirk slammed the receiver into the cradle, and yelled, “Fuck!” and kicked his desk. His frustration had become too much to manage, but little did he know that things were only going to get worse for him.

  Chapter 12

  After leaving out the back of the Pioneer, I made my way across the parking lot, through a wooded lot, and then passed through a number of parking lots until I reached the El Hombre. I maintained constant surveillance of my surroundings as I walked, and when I reached the El Hombre I took shelter between a couple of dumpsters at the edge of the property and watched to make sure no one had followed me or monitored me from afar. With no sign of Cooper or anyone else, I walked toward my room, trying to project a complete lack of care about who might be watching me.

  I unlocked the door, walked inside my room, and noticed right away that Tootsie and Scooby had disappeared. I expected The Summit’s cleanup crew to take care of the bodies while I was gone, and, as usual, they didn’t disappoint. After so many years working for The Summit, and with so many bodies in my wake, I still had no idea how they knew when their services were required, but some things are best left unknown. Better to just appreciate the reliability they’d always exhibited.

  Despite finding Jack’s owner, I felt no closer to learning Scooby and Tootsie’s identity, or who sent them to my room. Cooper doesn’t strike me as a contender for Citizen of the Year, but he doesn’t seem inherently evil either. He’s a prototypical macho bro who will probably never progress emotionally or intellectually from his present state, but that doesn’t mean he’s capable of ordering someone to be killed, much less try to carry it out himself. I suspect both men stole the car from Cooper and they came to my room without his knowledge. I was essentially back at square one.

  I needed to talk to Polestar to report what I learned, and also to see if they’d secured additional information about Coulson, his activities in Dixie County, or the desire of someone down here to want me dead. Having never been in the area before, I had no idea where to find a Roost. For situations like this The Summit maintained an information line that did nothing but provide an address of the nearest Roost when given a ZIP code. I dialed the number, and, as usual, instead of a voice answering, the ringing just stopped, replaced by silence. I gave the ZIP code, my own nonsense passcode – unicorn sovereignty – and a male voice responded with an address in Gainesville. Despite having not spent much time in the area, I knew that Gainesville was at least fifty miles away, which is much farther than most Roosts I’d called about in the past. I began to ask the man on the other end to verify that there wasn’t a Roost closer, but before I could finish my first word, I heard the line disconnect. The success of The Summit depended on reliability of information, a fact with which I’d become familiar over the years. Gainesville was the closest Roost, and I had no choice but to go there.

  I left right away. The lack of corpses in my room eased my mind as I got in the car, and as I pulled onto the highway I felt a sense of freedom which I recognized stemmed from leaving Cross City. The lady at the gas station said that she felt trapped by living in Cross City, and I wondered why she never broke free, but after spending less than twenty-four hours in the town, I understood the sort of mystical gravity pulling people back there.

  On the west side of Gainesville, a series of apartment complexes backed up to a retail strip anchored at one end by a shopping mall, and at the other end by a youth sports complex. I found the address associated with the Roost, and immediately realized that instead of being situated in the apartment building, the Roost was more likely in a nearby building. The pedestrian door for the garage that belonged to the Roost’s address was unlocked, which told me I was on the right track. I walked into the garage, in which an early 2000s Ford sedan was parked, no doubt to give the garage a lived-in feel, despite the car likely having never left the garage after being parked there the first time. Along the back wall of the garage I saw the familiar steel door, without a knob, but rather with a small hole. I reached under the door, curved my fingers upward along the back of the door, and lifted the metal bar off of the two pins on which it hung. I inserted the bar into the opening, twisted it, and the door opened.

  No matter where the Roost is located, the routine to get inside is the same.

  I climbed the stairs to the small, sterile apartment characteristic of every Roost. However, in this instance, it wasn’t so much an apartment as an attic. It wasn’t built with the intention of occupancy, but rather additional storage. Perfect for a Roost. After remaining still for a few minutes to ensure no one followed me, I grabbed the phone and dialed Polestar.

  Kathleen, the same person I’d talked to after eliminating Coulson, answered the phone.

  “I’m in Cross City, Florida, and I just want to verify that nothing else has come in regarding Martin Coulson.”

  “Coulson’s dead. You know that, right?”

  “Of course. I’m the one who killed him,” I said.

  “That’s all we have. It’d be better for you if his death looked like an accident or a suicide, so we didn’t clean th
at one up. We’ve monitored it closely, and it doesn’t appear there are any witnesses or leads. That’s a bit surprising considering the number of cameras always operating in Chicago. Surely someone has to have the whole thing on camera. Especially since you did it right by a train station. I can’t imagine there aren’t cameras at every angle around there. But whatever the case, we haven’t seen anything that leads us to believe that anyone’s on to you, or even that anyone knows what really happened.”

  “I’m sure the people who know his history will know his death was intentional,” I said. “You can’t kill as many people as he has and not expect it to come back around at some point. That’s not why I called though. Do you have any more information about why he spent so much time in Dixie County?”

  “No. That’s why you’re down there,” Kathleen said. “We’ve tracked Coulson to practically every country on earth, but Dixie County is the place he returned to more often. The assumption is that whatever caused him to be so involved in actions against our agents emanated from Dixie County. We’ve directed no shortage of resources to reviewing his history and looking for a common thread, but nothing exists yet. He eliminated agents involved in all sorts of cases.”

  “Understood,” I said. “I’ve run into some resistance down here.”

  “We’re aware.” Kathleen asked. “I’m surprised you ran into such strong resistance so soon. Didn’t you just get down there? Who are these men that we had to cleanup from your room?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me who they were. They came into my room while I was sleeping and tried to suffocate me. I thought maybe they had the wrong room since I’d just arrived in town, but I identified myself and gave them a chance to back off, but they didn’t take it. I only talked to three people, and all three claimed they had never heard of Coulson.”

  “One of them must know him,” Kathleen said. “How else would they know you were interested in him?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m going back to those people today. I’m not sure it’ll lead anywhere, but it stirred up trouble the first time, so I might as well try again. I also want to check a name with you. Cooper Oswalt. He’s a young guy, probably in his mid-twenties. Do we have anything on him? Seems rather harmless from our point-of-view, but I can imagine he drives the locals crazy. I’m sure he’s on his way to becoming a world class asshole, but he’s not there yet, so we may have nothing on him.”

  “Hold,” Kathleen said.

  While she checked for Cooper’s name, I wandered over to the small window at the front of the attic, and looked out onto the parking lot below. I saw a lone car, a black Ford Explorer, in the parking lot, and watched as a woman wearing a green t-shirt loaded her arms with a dozen plastic bags, staggered up the sidewalk, and then struggled to push the call button on the door of a building across from me. In my work for The Summit I’d come to see everyone as a threat upon initial contact, and I always breathed a sigh of relief when the lack of a threat made itself known right away.

  “We’ve got nothing on Cooper Oswalt,” Kathleen said in a voice so loud it startled me out of my moment of calm. “This is one of the people to whom you mentioned Coulson?”

  “No. I think the two guys who tried to kill me arrived in his car. I found it parked nearby, and inside I found a Zippo lighter that seemed to belong to one of them. I didn’t tell Cooper about the two guys. I just told him I found the car, and I was hoping he’d react or give me some information, but he seems clueless.”

  “I’ll make note of it. Let us know how it goes after you check in with the others. I assume you don’t have names for them?”

  “Just one. An old guy that one of the others referred me to. He lives on the outskirts of town, and owns a whole bunch of land. I can’t tell if he’s the wise old man of the town, or the town drunk. Could be both, I guess. Tyler Jo Hawkins.”

  Another few moments of silence as Kathleen checked Tyler Jo’s name. I didn’t expect anything to come back, but years in The Summit, and personal experience, had taught me that often the people we least expect are capable of doing dastardly things.

  “Tyler Jo Hawkins. We’ve got his name, but not much on him. As of 1992 he lived in Cross City, Florida, and served on the board of county commissioners in Dixie County. Usually if we have so little on someone it means they were an accessory to a case, but not a main player.”

  “So he’s only a little bit of a bad guy?” I asked.

  “Maybe not even a bad guy. Could be a victim. Could be a witness. Could be a resource. We can’t assume he did anything wrong.”

  “Good to know. Also, safe to assume that if he did anything wrong we’d have more information about him, wouldn’t we?”

  “Perhaps. Depends how much of a bad guy he is. As you know first-hand, we only deal with the worst of the worst.”

  “All right. Anything else?”

  “Good luck.”

  I hung up the phone, peeked out the window again, and saw no one. I couldn’t implicate Tyler Jo Hawkins in my attack simply because Polestar had a file on him, but with no other leads, it made sense to talk to him again. But as I left the Roost, I decided to pay another visit to someone else instead.

  Chapter 13

  I experienced a common mystery outside the Dixie County courthouse. With every parking place taken outside the courthouse, I had to drive around the block three times before I found a spot to park. As I got out of the car, I realized that I’d parked in a place that probably wasn’t a spot at all. I felt daring though, so I didn’t move the car. I once again walked up the five steps to the courthouse, past the Ten Commandments monument, and through the glass double doors. With the number of cars parked outside, I expected a fair number of people inside the building, but other than the smattering of people working behind the counter, I seemed to have the place to myself. I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to all of the people who arrived in the cars outside.

  I didn’t care about most people in the building though. I wanted to find one person in particular. And, it turned out, I didn’t have to search very long.

  The lady from the previous day saw me as she glanced up from the desk behind the counter, looked down at a paper in front of her, and then did a double-take when she recognized me. She pushed her chair back from the desk, as if she intended to stand up and greet me at the counter, but then seemed to think better of it, and scooted back to the desk. I walked to the counter and waited for her to look at me again. Instead she continued to look down at the paper in front of her. After thirty seconds I said, “Excuse me. I think I talked to you yesterday. I wonder if you can help me again.”

  When she looked up and saw my face she feigned surprise, smiled, and said, “Oh yes, I remember you. Did you have any luck finding the person you were looking for?”

  “Unfortunately, no. That’s why I’m back.”

  The woman came up to the counter, and said, “I’m sorry, but I think we’ve done all that we can do. If we don’t have the information, we don’t have the information.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “I’d like some information about Martin Coulson…”

  Before I could finish my thought, the woman interrupted me. “Look, ma’am, I don’t know how much more clear I can be. We don’t have anything on Martin Coulson.”

  “Oh, I understand that,” I said. I gave her the fakest smile I could muster. “You didn’t let me finish. I wanted to ask what you know about Cooper Oswalt.”

  I heard a slight gasp before she could hide her surprise. She looked behind her, as if checking to see if anyone had heard what I’d asked her. “Cooper is well-known in this town. However, as far as I know we don’t have any records on him. He hasn’t done anything. No kids, no wife, no property. We may have a copy of his birth certificate, but since he’s a living person it’s an entirely different process to obtain a copy of that.”

  “I’m not looking for that sort of information,” I said. “I guess I’m looking for more unofficial rather than official i
nformation. In a small county like this I can imagine you’d get to know the majority of your fellow citizens by working in the courthouse. Everyone ends up here for one purpose or another eventually, don’t they? And, as you say, it seems everyone in town knows Cooper. But is he a violent guy? I know he’s often in trouble with the law, and I suppose I’d have to go to the police to get his arrest record, but, generally speaking, do you think he’s a good guy?”

  “I’ve already told you, we have nothing on him. I’m afraid I can’t help.”

  I put up my hand to direct her to stop speaking. She obeyed, sighed, and crossed her arms, as if she surrendered to my command, but didn’t plan to do anything else that I wanted her to do. “Gollyfuck, I’m not asking you to help me in your official capacity with the county. I’m asking you to help me as a human being. I have reason to believe that Cooper might have been involved in an assault, and before I go to the police with this, I want to know whether I’m on the right track or not. So, I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

  “I’m Leona.”

  “Nice to meet you, Leona. I’m Mia. Mia Mathis. I’m sorry I didn’t introduce myself before. So, Leona, is Cooper Oswalt just your run-of-the-mill fuckup, or is there something specifically violent about his fuckedupness?”

  “I’m not in any position to comment on that,” Leona said. “I don’t know him personally.”

  “You didn’t know Ted Bundy personally either, did you? But dollars to donuts, you knew you shouldn’t get in a car with him, right? Am I on the right track about Cooper Oswalt?”

  Leona scratched the back of her head in the way that only a person who’s trying to buy time before responding to a question does. “He’s a jerk, not a killer. He’s macho, and full of bluster, but I don’t think he’s violent. At least not from what I’ve heard. And word travels fast in Dixie County, so if he had a history of that, I’d know.”

  “See, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?” Leona smiled, but said nothing. “Now what can you tell me about Martin Coulson?”