Savior-Corruptor

by Sam Sisavath

Blondie opened the glove compartment and took something out before turning around in his seat again and holding a thick manila folder out to her. Allie took it—it was heavy, weighed down with pages and pages of content—and flipped through a few of the ones on top. Even with minimal light, she could tell they were official police reports and forensics results.

  “Are these what I think they are?” Allie asked anyway, just to be sure.

  “Copies of everything collected so far by the Wells City PD and special county investigators,” Frank said.

  Allie looked up and over at Marshall. “County investigators? What are they doing down here?”

  “Assisting the WCPD,” Marshall said.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  Right. Because you’re Archibald Marshall, that’s why.

  “Who’s in charge of the investigation now?” Allie asked.

  “Officially, it’s the WCPD,” Frank said. “Detectives Dawson and Shannon, who I think you’ve met.”

  “We have.”

  “Nice guys. Bad at poker. So many tells.”

  “You said officially they’re in charge. And unofficially?”

  “Special county investigators, but they’re working behind the scenes. But rest assured, they’re out there. After tonight, there’ll be even more of them in town.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means watch your back.”

  She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t.

  Allie held up the folder at Marshall. “What’s going on? Why are you giving me these?”

  “You’ll need them if you’re going to find the people that killed my son and took his wife and child,” Marshall said.

  “Me?”

  “You have as much incentive to find them as I do, don’t you?”

  Allie nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Good. Then you should get to work.”

  Get to work? Allie thought, but before she could ask it, Windbreaker pulled the GMC over to the curb and stopped.

  Frank got out, then walked over to her door and opened it. The bodyguard leaned in, and when Allie stared daggers at him, he produced a key from his pocket before nodding at her handcuffs.

  “You want out of those things or not?” he asked.

  Allie held up her hands and he unlocked her manacles, a smug look on his face the entire time. She didn’t bother asking where he got the keys. Frank took the cuffs off her wrists and tossed them into a trash bin on the sidewalk.

  “Your prints are on those,” Allie said.

  “And your point is?” Frank asked. He didn’t look worried at all.

  Right. Because he works for Archibald Marshall. And what does Archibald Marshall have to be worried about?

  “Here,” Windbreaker said.

  Allie glanced over. The man was holding out a cell phone. Allie took it.

  “It’s untraceable,” Frank said. “Call if you need anything.”

  “Like what?” Allie asked.

  “Anything.”

  Allie climbed out of the SUV and rubbed at her wrists while glancing around at the emptiness. Wells City was dead asleep, and they were the only living souls standing around in any direction. Even the stoplights seemed to flicker with less enthusiasm nearby.

  “Follow me,” Frank said.

  She did, to the back of the vehicle, where the bodyguard opened the trunk and took out a white shopping bag embroidered with the logo of a store Allie had never heard of before.

  “You went shopping?” she asked.

  “Actually, yes. They’re a change of clothes for you. Hopefully they’ll fit. If not, there’s some money at the bottom to buy more, or whatever else you might need.”

  He handed the bag to her, and she took it.

  Allie stepped back and onto the sidewalk. She looked after Frank as he returned to the front passenger seat of the SUV.

  “That’s it?” Allie asked. “That’s all you’re going to tell me?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve already figured out what’s happening,” Frank said. “You being you, I mean.”

  Me being me? Allie thought as Frank climbed into the SUV.

  The bodyguard stuck his head back out a second later, and with that same smugness that made her want to punch him in the face, said, “Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”

  Frank slammed the door shut, and the SUV drove off.

  Allie stared after them in silence for a few seconds, watching as the big luxury vehicle lumbered its way slowly down the street, red taillights fading, fading…

  Then:

  “What the hell just happened?”

  Twenty-One

  There was no way she was going to use the phone Marshall’s men had given her. It was a cheap plastic flip, the kind used with bought minutes, then tossed away. A burner. There was a single number programmed into the contacts listing when she checked, after she’d gotten out of the street and slipped into an alley between a diner and bakery, both of which were closed.

  The risk that Marshall had given her a bugged device was too great, but she didn’t throw it away. She didn’t think she would need it, but you could never tell. After all, if Marshall really did believe that she didn’t kill his son, then he was a potentially powerful ally. The man had, literally, walked her out of her jail cell.

  The money at the bottom of the shopping bag would come in handy, though. She counted the cash in the semidarkness with only the glow of a streetlight on the sidewalk nearby to lend a hand. Two thousand dollars exactly, in one hundred bills.

  Next, Allie tried on the clothes Frank had bought her. Or said he’d done the purchasing himself, anyway. She didn’t actually believe him. There was something about the bodyguard that was hard to take at face value.

  She moved even farther into the rear of the alley before she undressed. The shirt—a plain black tee—was a little big, but that didn’t matter too much when she added a medium-size denim jacket over it. The pants, too, was one size too large. She added a belt before tossing her jailhouse clothes into the bag and walked back to the light.

  The streets were as quiet now as they’d been since she’d escaped from it moments ago. Allie walked along the sidewalk, listening for sounds of vehicles. Downtown Wells City remained asleep without another soul in sight, which could prove to be a problem if someone spotted her out here—a woman walking alone. A police car driving by might decide to stop and question what she was doing out at such a late hour.

  She wasn’t entirely sure which part of the city Marshall had dropped her off in. She’d stopped paying attention to the roads about halfway into the conversation; not that she would have recognized the streets anyway. Back when she was still a free woman, Allie had only driven through the whole town once, and that was to look for a diner to eat some breakfast. She’d found that on the south side of town, which she wasn’t sure was behind or in front of her now.

  The absolute silence, save for nearby traffic lights, made reliving every aspect of her conversation with Marshall easy. It also made remembering what Frank had said to her before they drove off just as easy:

  “Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”

  He had called her by her real name, not Aubrey White, the fake identity the WCPD had on her. How did they know who she was?

  The more she thought about it, the more Allie was surprised why she was so surprised someone had finally uncovered something she’d gone to great lengths to erase. Her fingerprints, birth certificate, Social Security number, work history—anything and everything that could point to her true identity had been wiped from existence years ago. It hadn’t been cheap, either, but at the time Allie had come into a large sum of money. In today’s world, money could buy you a lot of things, including a fresh new start.

  Or, at least, it was supposed to be a fresh new start.

  She made a mental note to get in touch with Randall when this was all over. He had a lot to answer for, not least of which was his not-all-that-subtle obsession with Lucy.

/>   You and me gotta have a talk, Randall.

  What else did Marshall know about her? Not just the person she was, but what she’d done?

  “Good hunting, Allie Krycek.”

  Marshall had given her money and clothes and freedom, and essentially told her “Now go catch my son’s real killer,” without actually coming out and saying those words.

  That meant he knew more than just her real name. He knew about her. About what she’d done.

  And, maybe more importantly, what she was capable of.

  There were still a lot of hours to go before Wells City woke up. When that happened, the police would discover that she wasn’t in her cell, and Lincoln, who’d told Frank to bring her back before dawn, would have a lot of explaining to do. Then again, the chances were good Lincoln wasn’t the only one who knew about what Archibald Marshall wanted and were willing to make it happen. Maybe they wouldn’t “discover” her disappearance for a while.

  Could she really hope for that, though? Was Marshall’s reach that powerful?

  I guess I’ll find out in the morning.

  That was still a few hours to go, which left Allie with nothing to do but to find a place to scour the files Marshall had procured for her. She had to stay out of the open but also needed lights to read with. She settled for a dirty bench next to a warehouse with exterior lights, and did just that for the next sixty or so minutes.

  There was nothing inside the first few pages that she didn’t already know, because she’d told them to the police herself—Aubrey White’s fake (and very short) history, the cabin, and a lengthy transcription of her interview with Detectives Dawson and Shannon. The most promising information came from the transcript of the 911 call that alerted the WCPD to potential trouble at the Marshall home.

  Allie read that now:

  Dispatcher: “911. What is your emergency?”

  Caller: “I think something’s happening at 2011 Stoner Street. You should send a car right away.”

  Dispatcher: “What’s happening, sir? What do you see?”

  Caller: “I heard screaming, shouting, then something that might have been a gunshot.”

  Dispatcher: “Did you say a gunshot?”

  Caller: “Yeah, a gunshot. You should send a police car.”

  Dispatcher: “We’ll do that, sir. First, I need to get your information.”

  Caller: “I saw a white Ford sedan parked outside the house at the time. I don’t think it belongs there.”

  Dispatcher: “Did you get the license plate of the vehicle, sir?”

  Caller: “No. It was too dark.”

  Dispatcher: “And you’re sure it was a Ford model white sedan?”

  Caller: “Definitely. I got a pretty good look at it.”

  Dispatcher: “Okay, that’s good. Now, I just need to gather some of your info—”

  [Caller hangs up]

  There was a notation that the dispatcher had attempted to reverse-call the number, but no one had answered.

  Burner phone, Allie thought. It’s probably buried in a landfill right now. They know what they’re doing.

  The caller had been a man, but the transcript didn’t mention if he sounded young or old, or any other descriptions. The call itself had arrived at 3:56 a.m. A police car was dispatched quickly, the officer arriving at the Marshall residence at 4:05 a.m. It took almost twenty minutes later before that same officer called in a dead body at 4:26 a.m., just as Dawson had told her during the interview.

  The important time was 3:56 a.m., when the anonymous call came in. Where was she at 3:56 a.m.?

  Already back at the cabin with Sarah and her baby. By 4:16 am, she’d been alerted to an intruder at the cabin.

  Twenty minutes between the call to the WCPD dispatcher and the event at the cabin. It was enough time for the same person to have been responsible for both. More than enough, actually. It didn’t even have to take half of that; just one extra minute to make a phone call. The man could have done it while standing in the woods outside her cabin. That was the “miracle” of cell phones these days.

  Allie flipped through more of the files. There had to be something that she could use as a jumping off point to search for the real killer, or killers. Even something that could tell her if Sarah was involved. Allie still wasn’t sure about that one. The possibility was too real: Sarah was being abused, so maybe she saw this as her only way out. Kill Tom, pin it on someone with no history in town, and live happily ever after with her accomplice—the man at the cabin.

  It was all too possible, and that was the problem. Anything was possible right now. She was still too far behind whoever was behind this, and had been for two days now.

  Again, that annoying feeling of helplessness, of being manipulated…

  Allie stopped shuffling through the copies when she saw something she hadn’t expected: A color photo of her leaning against the counter at the Don’t Stop In.

  What the hell?

  It was daytime in the picture, and from the clothes she was wearing, taken the same morning that Allie had stopped into the bar hoping to find some news on the TV. Instead, she’d run into Deputy Trent and his partner.

  Sonofa…

  There was a security camera in the Don’t Stop In, positioned somewhere at the back, and high up, judging by Allie’s pose in the picture. She hadn’t seen it the night before or the morning after.

  And there was Mickey, in the process of pouring her coffee.

  Allie found another photo, this one showing Trent and Evans entering the place.

  Another photo: Allie taking Trent hostage with his own gun.

  …bitch.

  Dawson had slyly not mentioned the existence of the camera or the photos it’d snapped of her during the interview. She replayed their confrontation back in her head, this time seeing it in a whole new light:

  “So if you don’t know who the Marshalls are, and you don’t have anything to hide, why did you assault Deputies Trent and Evans at the Don’t Stop In when they asked you about your vehicle?” Dawson had asked.

  “I didn’t assault them,” she had answered.

  “Three eyewitnesses said differently.”

  “Haven’t you heard, Detective? Eyewitnesses are the least dependable evidence in court. Ever heard of the Mandela Effect?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  “Well I’ll be sure to introduce it in court to educate you and Detective Shannon here. People sometimes think they remember something one way—sometimes they’re adamant about it—when the truth is something else entirely. Human beings are faulty creatures, easily tricked—sometimes by their own minds.”

  She thought she was being clever with that retort, and Dawson had just sat there and took it.

  …Because he already knew the truth and he was letting her dig her grave even deeper.

  “Dawson, you slick motherfucker.”

  The veteran detective had played her. The entire time.

  Allie couldn’t help it and smiled to herself. She couldn’t really hate Dawson. She’d played a game, hoping to extract information about Tom’s murder from him, and instead the detective had just gotten her to admit she was at the Don’t Stop In. That, combined with the photos…

  “Well played, Dawson. Well played.”

  She shuffled through more of the files, but there were just a lot of police documents, many of them pertaining to her fake identification. She skipped over them to get to Tom Marshall’s official forensics results.

  Tom had been shot in the back of the head with a .38-caliber weapon from close range. The bullet didn’t exit his forehead but had rattled around inside his skull. A .38. Just like the revolver that had been planted in her cabin.

  In the crime scene photos, Tom was wearing his pajamas and had blood on the front of his clothes. It didn’t look like his; aside from the gunshot to the back of the head, he had no other visible wounds that would have contributed to the splatters at the front. DNA test results on the extra blood hadn’t come in yet. W
hen they did, Allie suspected it would be Sarah’s, given how badly she had been bleeding from the gash on her temple when Allie found the other woman in the street.

  Allie continued sifting, but it was more official paperwork and police reports; nothing that would get her closer to undercovering the identity of the conspirators. And Allie was convinced it had to be more than one person involved. Yes, one man could do all these things, but it was more likely there was a party here. Was Sarah one of them? Or was she an innocent victim that desperately needed Allie’s help, even now?

  It took her a while before she realized it, but there was something about the photos from the Don’t Stop In that nagged at her. For some reason, there were only still shots of her during this morning’s hostage situation with Trent but nothing from the night before. That would have confirmed she’d been in the same room as Tom and Sarah Marshall, which if not proving that she knew them before Tom’s death, or had motive, would establish they weren’t complete strangers.

  Was it the lack of interaction between her and the Marshalls that kept Dawson from including the photos in his official report? Or were there even any photos of that night? And if not, why not?

  Allie went through the files again just to make sure she hadn’t missed anything. She hadn’t.

  No photos from the night Sarah left me the note. Why not?

  She placed the folder down on the bench next to her and stared at the empty street for a moment.

  Tom’s death. Murder, now.

  Sarah’s disappearance.

  A conspiracy to set her up.

  Who was involved? How many people?

  And how much did Marshall know that he wasn’t telling her? The man clearly knew a lot and had either come to his own conclusions that she was being framed based on the evidence, or he knew something else that convinced him of that fact.

  “Good hunting, Allie Krycek,” Frank, Marshall’s bodyguard, had said.

  And that was it. No clues on where she should start her “hunting.” It was almost as if they needed someone to do the grunt work for them but couldn’t get their hands dirty themselves.

  Why not?

  That was the problem: The whys. There were too many of them.