by Brett Baker
“Tell me what you’re doing in that building and I’ll tell you what I’m looking for.”
“It’s none of your business what I’m doing in that building.” I was getting tired of going in circles with Sunshine. He seemed harmless. Perhaps he really was just a kid looking for somewhere to smoke a joint.
“So you admit that you don’t live there? What’s inside there? What’s with the big, heavy door?”
“What door?” I asked, not giving any ground.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Mia. The steel door with the new black paint and the top secret door handle. What are you doing inside there?”
“How do you know my name?” I asked.
Trepidation poured over Sunshine’s face, and I’m certain I heard his heart pounding in his chest. He looked left and right, as if he might not have to answer the question if he avoided looking at me. I bent over toward him, grabbed his chin, held it in my hand, and forced him to look at me. “I don’t know your name,” he said.
I slapped him. I didn’t mean to. The Summit’s training advised against slapping, as it’s more insulting than a punch. But his obvious lie pissed me off, and my instinct kicked in.
I grabbed his chin again. I wanted to spit in his face, but The Summit advised against spitting even more seriously than slapping. “Golly fuck you’re an idiot. You just called me Mia. That’s my name. I didn’t tell you my name, so how the fuck do you know my name?”
Sunshine didn’t respond. Instead, he used both hands to take advantage of my bent over stance, and pushed my shoulders so that I fell backward, landing on my butt, barely collecting myself in time to avoid bashing the back of my head against the asphalt. As I sat up, he jumped to his feet and took off down the alley in the same direction from which we’d come. I sprang up and followed him, yelling for him to stop, stunned that I’d allowed him to so easily take me out.
At the end of the alley he turned left and darted along the sidewalk. A half-block ahead he scurried in front of a bus as it came to a stop, and I had a quick flashback to Motorcycle Man’s body sprawled on the ground. Sunshine ran faster though, and that made all the difference as he made it to the other side of the street without breaking every bone in his body. The bus came to a stop in front of me, and I had to run around it, and wait for cross-traffic to clear before continuing the chase.
Sunshine put too much daylight between the two of us, and as I scampered up the steps of the El station, skipping two at a time, I watched as he entered a train just as the doors slid closed. By the time I paid my fare and negotiated through the maze of people on the platform, the train began to pull away.
With the numerous stops ahead on the line, I had no chance of figuring out where Sunshine exited. He simply disappeared into the anonymity of the city, and all I could do was return to my apartment. He hadn’t threatened my life, or injured me, and he seemed to want to avoid confrontation if at all possible, but he still made me feel less secure. Sunshine knew my name—just like Aviator Man did—and I had no idea why or how.
As I rode the train back to my apartment I couldn’t wait to get to Alabama, where I wouldn’t have to worry about menacing strangers who knew my name.
9
Chapter 9
Johnny booked a two o’clock flight for me. I packed my things, including an exquisite black dress that I’d worn on a number of occasions when I thought I might have to seduce a man as part of an operation. I doubted that it could double as appropriate funeral attire, but I had no other options.
I chose not to contact Stanley about my latest encounter. He might request another more in-depth phone call, or even worse, that I stick around Chicago to investigate. All I wanted to do was to get to Alabama though, so The Summit’s concerns took a backseat to my own. I expected to be gone less than a week. We’d bury mom and dad, maybe make some preliminary arrangements regarding the house, and then return to Alabama at a later date to tackle the gargantuan task of going through a house my parents had lived in for forty years.
At the airport I felt on guard and uncomfortable as I waited to board the plane. While working on a mission, everyone is a threat. I’ve seen agents die because they forgot that they can be attacked any time, any place. It’s because of that constant requirement of being on edge that The Summit provides periods of decommission. Missions are exhausting, even without engaging an enemy. The mental vigilance needed just to avoid being killed sometimes left me drained. Factor in the emotional toll that my parents’ death inflicted and I amazed myself that I had the energy to carry my luggage.
While on a mission, I travel light. The work requires a fluidity of travel, sometimes flying to multiple countries in a day, often under life-and-death circumstances, and I can’t be bogged down by stuff. But the trip to Alabama wasn’t a mission for The Summit. It was a mission for me. For my parents. And I wanted to be prepared. So I carried two suitcases in addition to my usual small backpack.
Before I left for the airport I talked to Johnny on the phone and he assured me that he’d be in Birmingham to pick me up when my plane landed. He and his wife, Justine, left their house in Texas earlier that morning. I’d only met Justine a handful of times. I liked her and understood why Johnny was so enamored with her. Although I looked forward to spending time with her and maybe getting to know her a little better, I wished it were under different circumstances.
The flight took just under two hours. Despite being tired, I didn’t dare close my eyes. Planes are a great place to quietly, easily kill someone. I should know; I once killed an Australian casino magnate who doubled as a cold-blooded mobster on an overnight flight from Sydney to San Francisco. The poor lady next to him tried talking to him at least a dozen times during the last hour of the flight, not realizing that he’d already been dead for six hours, and thus hadn’t moved a muscle.
So I made sure to keep my eyes open.
We landed and I retrieved my luggage, walked outside, and almost got run over by some maniac in a Subaru who raced around other cars and came to a stop just before his bumper clipped my knee as I stood on the curb. Before I could even object, or get into a defensive mode for whatever assault might await, I heard a voice say, “I’m not trying to kill you!”
I leaned over and looked in the passenger side window and saw Johnny behind the wheel. Justine, who sat in the passenger seat, and who I hadn’t even noticed when I looked in the car, said, “Your brother thinks he’s some kind of Nascar driver. All the way here he was making engine noises with his mouth like he’s driving in the Daytona 500.”
“Don’t be jealous of my driving skills,” Johnny said. “Hang on, I’ll help you.” He opened his door and walked around the front of the car as a police officer fifty feet away yelled at us to keep it moving. Johnny half-hugged me as he passed by to get my luggage and threw it in the back of the car. “Get in. Barney Fife’s going to have us arrested if we linger too long.”
I followed his advice and sat in the backseat behind Justine. He got in and took off so quickly the tires squealed.
“See, Daytona 500.”
“I can’t help it if these tires can’t handle this car’s power.” Justine laughed and shook her head. “How was the flight?”
“Quick. Easy. How about the drive?”
“Long. Difficult.”
“But made better because I’m here to keep you company,” Justine said. “And don’t listen to him. It wasn’t that long. He knew that we had to get here to pick you up, so he disregarded pretty much every speed limit sign along the way. I’m glad the brakes worked just now. He hadn’t used them in 600 miles so I had my doubts.”
“Don’t bad mouth my driving to her,” Johnny said. “A worse driver wouldn’t have made it here in time to pick her up. She should be happy that I’m so efficient.”
“Sounds like you guys had a good time,” I said, more gruffly than I’d intended.
Johnny looked at me in the rearview mirror, and then looked at Justine. “We have to get our minds off of this
somehow. It’s going to be a rough week. If we don’t inject a little levity when we can we’ll be done for. It helps to be around people you love.” He looked at Justine again, grabbed her hand, and squeezed it.
“I didn’t mean to imply that you guys were having a party instead of grieving,” I said. Johnny looked at me again in the mirror and nodded. “I’m glad you guys are here. Both of you.”
“I told Johnny I’m looking forward to spending some time with you,” Justine said. “He always says that we’d get along great, but we haven’t had a chance to hang out much.”
“I was just thinking the same thing,” I said. “And you’re right, Johnny. We can’t be all gloom and doom or this is going to kill us.”
We left Birmingham and Johnny raced down I-20 on the way to Eutaw. Somehow we managed to avoid talking about our parents during the entire seventy-five minute drive. Johnny talked about some of the pro bono work he performed as an attorney. Although he left law practice years before due to burnout, he loved offering his services for free. He’d always been quick to help those in need, and the success of their avocado grove allowed him to offer his legal services for nothing.
Justine ran the avocado business. When they’d moved to Texas she knew nothing about the fruit, but educated herself, acquired land, built their business, and now supplied avocados distributed in every state in the nation. More than once Johnny referred to her as his Avocado Mama, the healthier version of a Sugar Mama, since Justine created most of their income.
Working for The Summit I’ve become an expert at deflecting conversations away from me and my life. Most people prefer to talk about themselves anyway, so it’s not too difficult to redirect a conversation back to the other person. However, Justine possessed that rare quality of actually being interested in other people. When she asked questions about me, I tried to offer as few details as possible and then follow with a question about her.
Unsurprisingly, The Summit anticipated situations like this. They created a false career for every agent to help keep our cover. After the four fictitious years I spent at Princeton, The Summit made me a fictitious freelance technical writer. Every other month I received a document with new developments in the profession, and samples of work for me to claim. I spent hours studying the material so I could speak competently as a technical writer. My skills in redirecting conversations usually prevented me from having to employ many of the fallacies that The Summit provided, but Justine was persistent, so I had to draw on some of the knowledge The Summit sent my way. She didn’t let on that she knew I was bullshitting, so I think she bought it.
We exited I-20 toward Eutaw, and the car went silent. It’s the sort of silence that occurs when one has forgotten that they’re about to face something they’re dreading, and then they remember. For the length of the ride from Birmingham, the three of us might have just been family members who were catching up after an extended time away. But as we entered Eutaw, we remembered why we were there. The memories of our childhood rushed back to us on every street. We passed the primary school, the courthouse square, and some of the innumerable Antebellum mansions that still stand in Eutaw. Perhaps because we knew about our parents’ murders, or maybe because it had been a few years since I’d been back to Eutaw, or maybe the silence in the car, but something seemed to drape a cloud of darkness over the town, despite the bright sunshine.
“Johnny made reservations at the Econo Lodge,” Justine said, almost in a whisper.
“Oh, right,” I said. “Thanks for taking care of that. I hadn’t thought of it.”
On my past visits to Eutaw I’d just stayed with my parents and slept in my childhood bed. It never occurred to me that we’d stay anywhere else on this trip. But Johnny had correctly surmised that it might be a bad idea to stay in our childhood home. Less than twenty-four hours earlier my parents lay on the floor of that home in their own blood.
Johnny suggested we eat, but both Justine and I claimed no appetite. “Then we might as well go check-in at the hotel,” he said.
I nodded my agreement, but said nothing. Instead I stared out the window and watched familiar landmarks pass and wondered why everything seemed so foreign. Although I’d been away from Eutaw for many years, it still felt like home every time I returned. Things had changed, buildings had been torn down, new ones were built, locally-owned stores closed, and national chains replaced them, but the place always felt the same. But now, in the backseat of my brother’s Subaru, with our only connection to the town no longer living, it suddenly felt like just another town, strange in its plainness, lacking anything that made it home. I might as well have been in some small town anywhere in the country.
“Let’s go to the house,” I said.
I don’t know where the idea came from. I think I spoke it as I thought it. Had I waited a moment between the thought and its expression, I might have realized that going to the house was the equivalent of ripping off the Band-Aid, and I might have considered whether or not I was ready to rip it off. Minutes before, we were laughing about the inanity of writing technical manuals, and now I suggested that we face the most difficult encounter of our lives. Although we knew that our parents died, we still didn’t know what happened inside that house. Going there forced us to take the first step in finding out the truth.
“Are you sure you want to go?” Johnny asked. He looked at Justine as if waiting for her opinion.
“No, I’m not sure,” I said. “But we have to go sometime. If we don’t go now then it’s going to be hanging over us. Let’s just go there and face whatever we have to face.”
“They won’t let us in,” Johnny said. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. There’s no way they’ll be done with the investigation. It might be better to just leave them alone.”
“Let’s just go. If we can’t go in, we can’t go in. But I want to go.”
“I agree,” Justine said. “I don’t think they’ll let you in, but I think you’ll both feel better if you go now rather than later.”
Johnny nodded and turned the car around. Nine minutes later we made the same right-hand turn we’d made thousands of times during our life, onto the road where we grew up. The neighborhood had been on the edge of town when mom and dad bought the land forty years ago, which meant the lots were huge. Their house sat back fifty feet from the road, at the end of a gravel driveway that my dad had always refused to have paved for a reason that no one understood. Johnny slowed as we approached the house.
Yellow police tape ran from the large oak in the front yard, across to the mailbox at the edge of the road, toward the backyard and around the two trees from which my dad’s hammock swung, and then around to the other side of the house before ending back at the oak where it began. Most of the property was off limits. Two unmarked police cars and a white van with the word “Police” written in plain black letters on the side were parked on the grassy shoulder of the road. Johnny parked behind one of the cars. We didn’t see anyone in the yard, but we assumed a flurry of activity inside the house.
“What do we do?” Justine asked.
“Let’s get out,” Johnny said. “We won’t be here long before one of the officers comes outside to ask us what we’re doing.”
We exited the car and congregated at the bottom of the driveway, up against the yellow tape. The late-afternoon sun still radiated heat, and I felt beads of sweat on my brow. Johnny stood next to me and we watched the house, as if we expected someone to come address us, or the house itself to offer an explanation of what had transpired inside of it. The porch screen door was closed, and I knew that Whittaker Watson had found my dad, already dead and in a pool of his own blood, just inside the door. I closed my eyes at the thought. As I inhaled deeply, and slowly exhaled, Justine took two steps toward me and put her arm around my shoulder as she squeezed in between Johnny and me.
Then a horrific thought. “Are they still in there?” I asked Johnny, as I backed away from Justine. In my work for The Summit I’d seen more dead bodies
than most people had seen on television. I’d killed people, and experienced grisly events that no human should have to endure. None of it lingered with me. Somehow I eliminated it from my thoughts, and avoided letting it haunt me. But the thought of my parents still being inside that house, holes throughout their body, their blood pooled and congealed on the floor, murdered in the home they’d shared for forty years, threatened to shatter me.
“No, they’re not,” Johnny said. “Remember, mom went to the hospital in the ambulance. They got dad out of there shortly after. Whatever they’re doing inside there they’re doing without our parents.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
The screen door on the porch opened, and we watched as a uniformed officer from the Greene County Sheriff’s Department walked toward us. She wore a sheriff’s hat and looked down at the ground as she walked, one hand on her holster. The three of us said nothing as she approached, waiting to see if she’d come to talk to us.
“We’re inside to do a job,” the officer said. “Why don’t you get along and let us do it? Not right of you to stand here and gawk. This isn’t a Broadway show.”
“Yes, ma’am. My name’s Johnny, and this is my sister, Mia. Those were our parents inside there.”
The officer’s posture immediately softened, and I thought I saw her jaw drop slightly. “You’re the children?” she asked.
“We are,” I said. “We just got into town.”
“Well… I’m sorry about this,” she said. She seemed stuck for words. Her face showed obvious concern, but it seemed like she had something else to say. “My name’s Ruby Rueth. I’m helping out with this investigation. We’ve been at it since last night, and we’ve got more work to do, but I assure you we’ll figure this out. Right now it’s important that you just let us do our jobs. You’ve got plenty to take care of without worrying about what we’re doing.”