by Brett Baker
We didn’t have to say anything. Every word ever spoken, and millions more that never needed to be spoken, passed silently between us in those few seconds. I searched her face for any sign that the old Migsy still existed. I saw none.
“Don’t get all emotional,” she said, shaking her head, her voice thick with disdain. “You need to move on. Get over it.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, taking a few steps toward her. I leaned over and placed my hands on her knees, “I’ll be fine.” I patted her knee, stood up, and walked around to the back of the chair.
As I stood behind her she began to speak again. “It’s not too late, Mia. You’re young. You have time to change. If you just start…”
Before she completed her sentence I put my right hand on her chin, my fingers and thumb firmly grasping her jaw, and I placed my left hand just behind and above her right ear, squeezing her skull. In one quick, violent, simple motion I pulled my hands in opposite directions, twisting her neck. I heard the deep, vicious cracking sound as her neck snapped, and when I let go of her head she slumped to the left. After a quick slap on her neck, to which she didn’t respond, I leaned over the back of the chair, put my ear to her face and listened for sounds of breathing.
I heard none.
38
Chapter 38
A thick row of trees and bushes lined both sides of Route 17 south of Sawyerville, fifteen miles from Eutaw. The darkness of the western Alabama night sky provided additional cover as I turned onto the grassy two-track and followed it up a slight incline to the middle of the cemetery. I stopped the car, turned off the headlights, and stepped outside. Distant wails of animals I couldn’t identify pierced the quiet, but nothing disrupted the dark. The dense foliage completely shielded me from the roadway.
It didn’t take long before I found exactly what I’d come for. I knew it would take my eyes at least fifteen or twenty minutes to fully adjust to the darkness, but my sight didn’t matter. I felt the ground change from grass to dirt as I walked. I fell to my knees and ran my hand along the ground. Cool dampness confirmed that I’d found bare soil. I went back to the car, retrieved my shovel and a tarp from the trunk and returned to the bare spot.
A headstone already marked the adjacent grave as belonging to a woman named Cheetly, and as was custom in that cemetery, a large marble slab lay atop her grave, flush with the grass. The fresh dirt I had discovered must have marked Mr. Cheetly’s final resting place. His name was also on the headstone, but the date of death had been left blank. It would soon be etched into the stone forever.
I spread the tarp on the grass next to the dirt rectangle and began digging. It didn’t take long to get down four feet. Fresh dirt is considerably easier to shovel than undisturbed dirt. The gravediggers for Mr. Cheetly had done the difficult work for me. Satisfied that I’d dug deep enough—and careful not to go any further since I didn’t want to reach Mr. Cheetly’s casket—I went back to the car and hoisted Migsy out of the trunk and threw her over my shoulder. She’d always been a tiny woman, but as she grew older she’d begun to waste away. She couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. With my eyes fully adjusted to the darkness, I didn’t worry about tripping or falling down. When I got to the grave I fell to my knees and gently placed Migsy into the ground. I took off the sheet in which I’d wrapped her, straightened her body so she lay flat, and crossed her hands. A feeling of melancholy overwhelmed me, and tears ran down my cheek as I shoveled the dirt back into the grave, eventually covering her entire body, thinly at first, and then deeply. I folded the tarp when I finished, and the grave looked exactly as it did when I arrived. Soon a marble slab would cover Mr. Cheetly’s grave just as it did his wife’s grave.
For years to come visitors would stand at the foot of the two slabs and mourn Mr. and Mrs. Cheetly, ignorant of the wicked old broad also buried there.
I woke the next morning intending to fly to Vegas and then drive up to St. George to meet with Davis. If he still had Mount I wanted to talk to him. Despite the inherent sociopathy in people like him, I’d discovered that I could learn a lot by engaging with them. They had a unique perspective on the world and the people in it.
After a quick breakfast I called Davis from the hotel parking lot. He sounded alarmed when he answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Davis, this is Mia. How are things going?”
“I’ve been waiting to hear from you. Did you track down Logan? What the hell have you been up to?”
“I’m done with Logan. I’m in Alabama. Heading back your way soon.”
“Why are you back in Alabama?”
“Long story. I’m not ready to talk about it. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready.”
“You better check-in with Polestar. I called yesterday to see if they had a lead on you and they were concerned that you hadn’t briefed them. I mentioned Logan and of course they knew you’d encountered him on a previous mission, so they’re eager to know what’s happening.”
“I’m not certain I can go to The Summit about any of this,” I said. “Not until I dig deeper. Find some answers. The events of the past couple of days tell me that I can only rely on myself right now.”
“What’s going on, Mia?”
“I can’t say.” I thought that I could trust Davis. Our interactions always seemed genuine, and he’d provided some good information to me. Despite his youthfulness, he seemed quite capable. A good agent possesses a number of unique qualities, and Davis had many. However, I’d always trusted Migsy, so discovering her change of heart threatened my belief in everyone. Davis had earned the benefit of the doubt, but at that moment I couldn’t give anything to anyone. “It’s been a difficult couple of days. I don’t want to get into it. Suffice it to say that both of our missions have been resolved now.”
“You figured out what happened to your parents?”
“Yes. I’ll probably never find the people who actually killed them, but the more important justice has been served.”
Davis didn’t say anything. A few seconds of silence passed between us and I’d just begun to speak when Davis said, “You’re not going to tell me more than that, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” I said.
“Why are you coming back out here?”
“I want a crack at Mount. I’d like to find out more about his contacts with Logan. Maybe he doesn’t know anything else, but I’d like to talk to him and see what turns up. Even if there’s nothing related to Logan or Chamberlain, he’s done so many jobs and knows so many people that we may learn something by accident. Seems a waste not to press him a little while we have him.”
“I’m sorry, Mia, but you’re too late. We don’t have him any more.”
“What the hell does that mean? You let him go?”
“Fuck no, I didn’t let him go! I haven’t been doing this for two decades like you, but I’m no fucking idiot either. Let him go? So he can go off and get more jobs and kill more people? No, he’s not doing that. He’s dead.”
“Golly fuck,” I said. “I really wanted to talk to him. Did you take care of him?”
“Not really,” Davis said. “He was in bad shape when I went back to him yesterday morning. We talked a bit, but it still seemed like he was holding back, so I warned him that things would just get tougher for him, but he didn’t open up. I left for a few hours in the afternoon and when I came back around sunset he was dead. Dehydration or sun stroke or something.”
“I hear water deprivation is bad for the body,” I joked.
“Well if you had any doubts you could have looked at him and known it wasn’t good. His skin was dry and flaky. Looked like cracked, parched earth. The skin around his fingernails had pulled back a little, and his eyes looked sunken. I’m sure it’s not a pleasant way to go.”
“Sort of ironic that after killing so many people so quickly he dies in a way that’s just the opposite.”
“I guess so. I didn’t shed a tear though. Just dug a fucking grave right there and put him in
it. Reported it to Polestar.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. “Mission terminus?”
“That’s it. Although as Logan just proved, no mission is ever complete. We might finish the immediate task, find the answers we’re looking for now, but there are always more layers.”
“I guess I’ll go back to Chicago then,” I said. “Thanks for your help on this. I couldn’t have done it without you. And even though the answers crush me, I needed to know.”
“I’m sorry,” Davis said. “If you ever need a hand, track me down. I’d love to work together again.”
“Will do,” I said. “But if I catch you snooping around The Roost again no need to run off.”
“Does it ever get easier? Initiating contact with an agent you don’t know?”
“Never,” I said. “It’s always tricky. But if you think this was difficult, wait until you assume someone’s an agent and it turns out they’re not. This is a piece of cake compared to that.”
“Well I’ll know who to call for help,” Davis said.
We hung up the phone and I knew that I’d never work with him again. The Summit sometimes requires close contact in difficult situations with people who are complete strangers, which makes it possible to forge a legitimate bond out of nothing in a short period of time. But the transient nature of the work means those bonds are never nurtured, and often disappear almost as quickly as they formed.
And if a bond as deep and old as that which Migsy and I shared could sever, then why would I ever believe a newer, weaker bond would survive?
Perhaps the best thing for protection in The Summit, and for life in general, is avoiding bond formation at all costs.
39
Chapter 39
With Mount’s death, and subsequent unavailability for questioning, I decided to return home to Chicago. Despite spending the night in my hometown after burying Migsy, I didn’t consider contacting Johnny and Justine. They had continued to work at mom and dad’s house, but if I called them they’d want to know why I was in town, and I didn’t have the energy to concoct a believable story.
I returned to my apartment in Chicago, half-expecting to find an intruder waiting for me, and breathing a sigh of relief when no one attacked. As difficult as The Summit is, I always enjoy the sense of relief upon the completion of a mission. Knowing that Logan and Migsy were trying to kill me, and knowing that I no longer had to worry about them provided invaluable peace of mind. Every respite was temporary though. Weeks or days later a new threat to my life and well-being would emerge. The non-stop pace and seemingly endless number of criminals waiting in the wings proved exhausting. Although the adrenaline and the importance of the work still made the job worth it to me, seeing Migsy’s change made me wonder whether I’d ever become tired of The Summit and everything associated with it. I hoped not.
Even though Migsy’s betrayal threatened to ruin my ability to form any sort of relationship with another person, at least I didn’t have to wonder what happened to my parents. I’ve always believed that not knowing the answer to a mystery was much worse than whatever the answer was, and that particular truth held up, even when the answer took such an emotional toll.
I knew right away that Johnny would never have the answers I’d uncovered. Although my parents weren’t murdered directly because of my involvement in The Summit, my secrets were a contributing factor. Had Migsy never recruited me, had I never gone to Novosibirsk, had I never met Lloyd Logan, my parents would still be alive. I had no way to explain their deaths without explaining the rest of it, and I could never explain the rest of it, so Johnny had to remain in the dark. Up until that point I’d always convinced myself that Johnny was better off not knowing about The Summit. Any benefit that came from his knowledge of it was more than negated by the risks he’d have to endure, and the effects such information would have on the way he lived his own life.
However, I could no longer guarantee that the equation still made sense. Would Johnny rather remain ignorant of The Summit, or know the truth about our parents? I was the only one who could answer that question, and when I chose to protect him from knowledge of The Summit, while also cheating him out of the knowledge of our parents’ death, I could only hope that I’d made the right decision. I could never undo it. I had to tell him right then or never. Learning that I kept this information from him would only make it worse.
But I had no choice. He couldn’t find out about The Summit, both for The Summit’s sake, and his own sake. So before I called him I had to make sure that I knew exactly what I would say.
“I have to get out of here,” he said as soon as he answered the phone, ignoring any sort of greeting or small talk. “This place is too much. Maybe some distance will help, but I’ve had enough right now.”
“Distance in time or physical distance?” I asked.
“Both, but especially distance in time. I feel like I’ve been dealing with this for years and doing nothing else. It’s exhausting.”
“Go home,” I said. “We don’t have to finish all of this right now. Let the house stand as is. Ask Whit to keep an eye on things, and let’s just forget about it all for a while. Believe me, getting away from it is a big help.”
“So you’re feeling okay?” Johnny asked. “You’re not about to have a breakdown?”
“I’m doing good,” I lied. “Just trying to focus on what’s going on here and not obsess about all of that stuff.”
“I need to try that,” Johnny said. “I almost punched a police officer yesterday afternoon.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. That’s the fucking problem. Nothing happens around here. They’ve got no idea who killed them, no evidence to go on, and seemingly no idea how to progress in the investigation. I’m walking a fine line between concerned family member and angry fucking bully, but I don’t care. They need to do their damn jobs.”
I understood Johnny’s frustration. I felt the same thing just days before. However, the police had no chance to solve the murders. The men who Migsy hired knew what they were doing, and seemed to have left no trace. My encounter with them on the lawn was probably the only chance to bust them and I hadn’t reported it to police because I worried it would distract them from the main investigation. I doubt anything would have come from reporting it anyway, and part of me felt relieved that I hadn’t reported it. If the police captured the suspects after I reported it, they might have touched off a series of events that would lead to the disclosure of The Summit. Best that I kept it to myself.
“We might have to accept that we’ll never have answers,” I said through gritted teeth.
“I know,” said Johnny. He began to say something else, but stopped, and I heard him take a deep breath, followed by a sniffle. “They deserved better than this. They deserved a better death, and they deserve justice. That’s the worst part, not being able to give them what they deserve.”
“Justice exists in many different ways,” I said.
Johnny didn’t respond and a silence hung between us. “We’re leaving tonight. We’ve got to get back to the grove, and I need to clear my head. Justine’s been great, but I can tell the whole thing’s getting to her, too. We’ll leave this afternoon. Worry about the rest later.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I said. “Thanks for taking care of things.”
We talked about what else had to be done, and when we might do it. He obtained a promise from me to visit them in Texas, and we agreed to return to Eutaw by the end of the year. It would be our last trip to the tiny town we had loved so much.
Before we hung up I said, “I’m sorry, Johnny. For everything.” He asked what I meant.
I made up an answer.
Just like The Summit trained me to do.
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Also by Brett Baker
The Death Market
Must Come Down (Book 1 in the Mia Mathis series)
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For the Trees is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Brett Baker