by Trace Conger
James fired a blind shot from the ground, but the blast missed the Denali and instead found the front of the house. As he struggled to re-grip the shotgun from the recoil, the man in the cap sprang across the hood and onto the pickup’s roof where he fired another two rounds into James’ head and neck.
The man in the cap jumped to the ground, and secured the Glock back inside his jacket. James coughed once, gurgled on the blood in his throat, slapped the dirt with his hand, and then fell quiet.
The man in the cap opened the Denali’s lift gate. He slipped off his jacket and shirt, dragged James’ body across the ground, and heaved him into the back of the SUV. He redressed, drove the Denali to the back of the property, wiped the inside for prints, and pushed it down the ravine.
A few minutes later the black pickup truck followed down the hill.
The man in the cap wiped the sweat from his forehead, checked his watch, and walked toward the bus station in Dry Ridge.
Six
BROOKE HARDING FLICKED ON THE single-cup coffee brewer on the granite countertop in her kitchen and smiled at the thought of Becca playing in her room upstairs. She poured a cup of filtered water into the machine’s reservoir, popped in the pre-packaged plastic container, and pressed the “brew” button. She stepped back and watched the array of colored lights blink on the front of the machine. It looked like a time machine about to take off for another era. After a few seconds, the machine gurgled, siphoned the water up from the reservoir, and spit out a stream of coffee into the cup below.
A shuffling sound crept in from the living room. The whirring of the coffee machine drowned out most of the commotion, but Brooke assumed it was Becca. Perhaps she had abandoned her bedroom for the play kitchen in the corner of the living room.
Becca loved to pretend she was cooking dinner in her red-and-white plastic kitchen, complete with cooking utensils and miniature pots and pans. She would display her plastic cuisine on the carpet for a mother-daughter picnic. If Daryl was lucky enough to return from the hospital in time, Becca would set a place for him too. If everyone was still hungry after their imaginary dinner, Becca would pass out slices of plastic chocolate cake and cardboard cookies. If they were lucky, tea and coffee followed.
Brooke grabbed her steaming mug from the coffee machine and rounded the corner, eager to see what kind of feast Becca had cooked up. As she turned into the living room, a fist collided with her jaw, knocking her into the side of the doorway and onto the floor. Her coffee mug shattered on the white ceramic tile. The punch didn’t quite knock her unconscious, but the kick to the head that followed did.
BROOKE OPENED HER EYES. SHE was slumped to her side on the couch. A man in a black leather motorcycle jacket, t-shirt, and ripped jeans sat on the coffee table in front of her. There was a Union Jack patch on his right shoulder and he wore thick-soled black boots.
“What’s your name?” he said. He wasn’t British, as the jacket patch had suggested.
“Brooke.” She pushed against the couch’s armrest to right herself, then wiped a stream of blood from her lower lip with her hand. Her head felt like a throbbing cotton ball. As if someone had somehow jammed a pillow between her ears. Pain and numbness battled for supremacy on the side of her face. She ran her hand across her head checking for blood from the boot stomp, but she didn’t find any.
The man sitting on the coffee table handed her a tissue. “For the lip,” he said. She blotted her lip and checked the tissue. A crimson streak stared back.
“Brooke, I’m looking for Dr. Daryl Jennings. He lives here, right?”
Brooke was about to answer when she heard her daughter singing in the upstairs hall. The gentle melody grew louder as Becca approached the top of the steps. The man in the motorcycle jacket slipped a knife from inside his boot and shook his head from side to side, silently telling Brooke not to call for her daughter.
“Don’t hurt her,” Brooke whispered.
“That all depends on you,” he said. The man nodded his head and for the first time Brooke realized there was a second man standing behind her. This other man, who was much larger than the man on the coffee table, lurched across the hardwood floor and took the steps three at a time. Brooke listened as her daughter screamed once and then fell silent. A moment later, the man carried Becca down the steps, a beefy hand covering her mouth. Becca kicked her feet from side to side, knocking the man into the banister as he stomped back toward the living room.
The big man pushed Becca onto the cushion next to her mother. Brooke turned to hug her daughter, and their tears merged together and trickled onto the couch.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” said the man in the leather jacket.
“No,” said Brooke wiping her daughter’s eyes.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Good, then we can begin.” He nodded again and the second man returned to his post behind the couch.
“I expect this to go very smoothly,” said the man in the leather jacket. “Tell me what I want to know and everyone goes on about their day like we were never here.” He leaned forward and whispered into Brooke’s ear so only she could hear. “If you don’t tell me what I want to know, I’ll open your daughter’s throat and you can watch her bleed out right here.”
Brooke nodded as he returned to the coffee table. She wiped her eyes with the palm of her left hand, her right wrapped tight around Becca.
“So, back to Dr. Daryl Jennings. This is his house, correct?”
“Yes,” said Brooke wiping away more tears.
“Mommy, I’m scared,” said Becca burying her face in her mother’s side.
“It’ll be okay, sweetie. No one is going to hurt you.”
“Where is he?” said the man.
“He’s still at work. At the hospital.” She wiped her face again. “Sometimes he’s there late. I don’t know when he’ll be home.” She paused. “Why are you looking for him? What do you want?”
“For the past several months he’s been delivering something very valuable to me. And then all of a sudden those deliveries stopped. I’ve left several messages with him, inquiring why this has happened, but he must not want to return my calls. So, now I’m here to follow up in person.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What deliveries?”
“That’s between him and me. When do you expect him home?”
Brooke wiped Becca’s face with her sleeve. “I don’t know. He was at the clinic this morning and he was supposed to be in surgery this afternoon, but that can take a long time. Sometimes he sleeps at the hospital.”
The man in the leather jacket sat silent for a moment. Thinking. Then he stood up and checked his watch. “Well, we don’t plan to wait that long, so here’s what you can do. You tell him to call Adler when he gets home. He knows how to reach me. And you tell him he needs to turn the valve back on, otherwise things are going to get messy around here.” He slipped the serrated blade back into his boot, reached out and ran his index finger across Becca’s chin. Brooke clenched her tight in her arms. “We clear?”
“Yes,” said Brooke.
“Good,” he nodded to the man behind the couch. “Tell him to turn the valve back on, Brooke. And remember, you and me can have another chat like this anytime I want. 5711 Tangerine Court is pretty easy to remember.” He ran the same index finger down the side of Brooke’s face and brushed a lock of red hair behind her ear. “And you’re pretty easy to remember, too.”
Brooke jerked her head to the side, still gripping Becca in her arms.
“Mommy,” wailed Becca.
“We’ll let ourselves out.” The two men walked toward the front door. “Oh, and if you’ve got a brain in that pretty little head of yours, you won’t be calling the police. If you do, bad things are gonna happen. Real bad things.”
Brooke nodded as Adler and the big man walked out of the house and closed the door. Brooke rushed the door and locked the dead bolt. She ran into the den and picke
d up the phone from the desk, her finger hovering over the keypad. Then she stopped, set the phone back down on the desk, returned to the couch, wrapped her arms around Becca, and cried.
Seven
AT 11:47 THAT NIGHT, DR. Daryl Jennings’ black Mercedes pulled into the driveway. He grabbed his leather bag from the passenger seat and headed toward the front door. It was locked. He fumbled with his key ring to find the right key, unlocked the door, and stepped in. The house was dark. Daryl scanned the living room and then stepped back outside to confirm that he had indeed walked past Brooke’s Range Rover in the driveway. The green SUV sat in its usual spot. He turned back to the front door and stepped inside the house. He flicked on the front porch lights and did the same for the chandelier above the foyer.
Daryl was walking toward the den to set his bag on his desk when he saw Brooke sitting in the high-backed leather desk chair. His eyes met hers in the dimly-lit room and for the first time he noticed how she was sitting. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her lean fingers interlocked in front of her shins.
“What’s wrong, honey?” he said, taking off his coat. “Why are all the lights off?” Daryl scratched his head. “Right, I was supposed to take you and Becca out for dinner. I’m sorry, I got slotted into an emergency surgery and forgot all about it.”
Brooke sat motionless in the chair. “Who’s Adler?” she said. Her eyes locked on his face.
“What?”
“Adler.” She wiped her eyes with a fist. “Who’s Adler?”
Daryl’s shoulders slouched and he dropped his coat to the floor. “What do you mean?”
Brooke released her arms and let her feet slide onto the floor beneath the desk chair. “The man who broke into our fucking house tonight, Daryl.” She rubbed her lip. “He said his name was Adler and that he knew you. He said you owed him something. Who is he? Do you owe him money? Is that why he came here?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about…”
“Becca was here,” Brooke interrupted. “That piece of shit threatened to slit my daughter’s throat right in front of me, so don’t for a second tell me you don’t know what the fuck is going on.” She stood up, walked toward Daryl and threw a right jab that connected just below his sternum. He staggered backward. “I’ll call the police, Daryl. I’ll call the police, take my daughter out of this house, and never come back!”
Daryl didn’t respond.
“Is it money? Do you owe him money? Talk to me Goddammit!” She cocked her arm back again.
Daryl raised is hands. “Okay, just stop,” he said. “I don’t owe him money.”
“Then what does he want? Why did he come here? He said something about turning a valve on. And that you’ve been delivering something to him. What did he mean?”
Daryl closed his eyes and exhaled. He opened his mouth to speak, but caught his words. He took a deep breath and began again. “He came to see me at the clinic a few months ago. Somehow he knew that I had privileges at Christ Hospital and that I could get access to certain narcotics. He threatened me, Brooke. Said he wanted me to get him fentanyl. Apparently that’s valuable on the street. Said if I didn’t get it for him that he’d mess things up for me.”
“So you’re selling drugs for him?”
“I wasn’t selling drugs. I was just getting one thing for him.”
Brooke bent toward the floor and placed both hands on her knees. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.
“I thought I could do it a few times and then he’d go away. He could make his money and then we’d be done with it. And that’s what I did. After a while I stopped. I cut him off and told him that the hospital was getting suspicious and that I couldn’t get it for him anymore. I figured that would be the end of it. I didn’t think he’d come here. You have to believe me, Brooke.”
“I’m calling the police.” Brooke spun toward the desk, but Daryl jumped in front of her and grabbed her outstretched arm.
“Damn it, Brooke,” he said. “If you call the police you’re going to cause even more trouble. I could lose my license.”
Brooke pulled her arm away. “Then what do you expect me to do? Just pretend nothing happened? You didn’t see his face, Daryl. You didn’t see how he looked at me. At Becca.”
“I think he’s just trying to intimidate us,” said Daryl.
“You’re fucking right he’s intimidating us. He threatened to kill us. All of us.”
“Look, once he realizes I can’t get the fentanyl any longer, he’ll move onto someone else, some other doctor, and this’ll be over.”
Brooke stepped closer to the desk.
“You weren’t here, Daryl. You didn’t see the way he looked at me. I don’t think he’s going away.”
“Let me handle it.” Daryl placed his hands on Brooke’s shoulders. “I’ll take care of it. Just let me talk to him. He’ll realize he’s barking up the wrong tree and he’ll move on. I can reason with him.”
“He didn’t look like someone you reason with.”
“We don’t need to involve the police. That’ll only make things worse.”
Brooke stepped backward out of his grasp and eyeballed the phone on the desk. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m not staying here waiting for this guy to come back. Becca and I will be somewhere else until you fix whatever you got us into.”
“What are you talking about? Where are you going to go?”
Brooke thought for a moment. “I’m taking her to my sister’s house first thing in the morning.”
“All right.” Daryl turned and looked at the stairs. “Is Becca asleep? I’ll go say goodnight.”
“She’s asleep, but she’s probably going to have nightmares for the rest of her life.”
Daryl turned back to Brooke and wrapped his arms around her. “Everything is going to be fine. I promise.” He released his grasp and headed up the stairs to Becca’s bedroom. On his way up the steps, he thought he heard Brooke pick up the phone on the desk.
Eight
I LIKE READING AT NIGHT. It calms my mind and lets me focus on something other than life. It also puts me into sleep mode. It was 12:05 am, and I was three chapters deep into Lee Child’s The Killing Floor when my cell phone rang. I don’t like late night calls. They never offer good news. No one calls at midnight to tell you they got engaged or that you got the job. Nighttime is reserved for the shit life throws at you. Like dying smoke detector batteries and bad news.
I grabbed my cell from the nightstand. Brooke’s image smiled back.
“You’re up late,” I said answering the phone.
“I need to talk to you,” said Brooke.
“Mission accomplished. What’s going on?”
“It’s Daryl.”
“Did he get hit by a bus?” Maybe good news did come at night after all.
“No, but he’s in trouble.”
“What he do? Overdose a patient?”
“No.” She paused. “It’s bad Finn. He got into something. Over his head.”
“All right, what is it?”
Brooke was silent. She was either composing her thoughts or second guessing herself for bringing me in. “Out with it,” I prodded.
“He stole some narcotics and passed them off to some dealer who’s selling it on the streets.”
“Shit,” I said. “This a one-time thing or something more?”
“He’s been doing it for a few months.”
Daryl appeared to be a squeaky-clean guy. The guy who always did the right thing. The level-headed, make-the-best-decision guy. That’s what Brooke liked about him and it’s what I hated about him. I guess everyone had secrets.
“How did you find out about it?” I said.
She paused again.
“How did you find out?” I repeated.
“Daryl realized he’d made a mistake and stopped supplying the dealer.”
“I assume that didn’t go over very well,” I said.
“No. The dealer came by our house this afternoon lookin
g for Daryl, pushed me around a bit, and scared the shit out of Becca.”
“Back up,” I said. “He came to your house? Did he hurt you? Or Becca?”
She was silent again.
“Did he hurt you, Brooke?” It rose inside me—that feeling of blind rage, where you want to put your hand through a wall, or through someone’s head, without giving a shit about the consequences.
“He pushed me around and split my lip, but I’m fine. More emotionally scarred than anything else.”
“What about Becca?”
“She’s fine. Just scared.”
“Then she’s not fine,” I said, already searching for my keys. “I’m coming over there.”
“No, Finn. That’s not going to help.”
“I don’t care if it isn’t going to help. I want to see my daughter. And make sure you’re okay.”
“I said I’m fine. And Becca’s asleep. Coming over isn’t going to help anything.”
My grip tightened around my cell phone and I waited for the device to shatter in my hand. I could feel my pulse jump, the anxiety building. I moved the phone to my other ear and paced the perimeter of my bed.
“Daryl is going to hit the fucking roof when he finds out I told you about this,” she continued. “But I didn’t know what else to do. Daryl is in way over his head, and I can’t go to the police.”
“The fuck you can’t go to the police. You should have called them before calling me.”
“This guy. Adler. He told me there’d be consequences if I did.”
“There are consequences for everything, Brooke. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Call the police. If you don’t, I will.”
“I’m hoping we can settle this without the police. Right now the hospital doesn’t know about the drugs. If I go to the police, it’ll all come out and Daryl will…” she stopped.
“Why are you protecting him?” I tried to be sensitive to Brooke’s situation. On one hand, Dr. Dickhead was in deep shit, and as far as I was concerned, the deeper the better. Like him or not, he’s a fixture in Brooke and Becca’s lives, but taking any blowback from his bullshit wasn’t an option.