At all costs

by John Gilstrap

  Curiously, he and Nick passed only two cop cars on their way to the airport. About fifteen minutes into the journey, the cops came barreling down the road in the opposite direction, doing about a million miles per hour, lights flashing, sirens whooping. Nick said something at the time, but Jake hadn’t heard it.

  The plan, as relayed to Nick earlier in the day by his stone-faced driver, called for them to drive past the entrance to Little Rock Airport, to a strip mall located a few miles down the road. They were to park in front of a sporting goods store and wait for someone to pick them up. From there, presumably, they’d be ferried off in Nick’s favorite Gulfstream to some new destination.

  Problem was, their designated chauffeur would be looking for a white Cadillac sedan, not a royal-blue Toyota pickup. After sitting for five minutes without being approached by anyone, Nick suggested that they move outside, to sit on the hood, where whoever was watching could catch a glimpse of who they really were.

  Another five minutes passed. Then ten. Finally, a car approached from the far end of the parking lot. At first, the driver appeared to be lost, cruising slowly down the line of shops, just a pair of headlights against the night. Then, without warning, the high beams flashed, and the big car took a hard turn to head right for them. Nick slid off the hood and retreated a few steps, while Jake slid his hand under his jacket to rest on his pistol. If it turned out to be the cops, everything would come to a noisy end right now. If it was marauding kids, they’d be sent scurrying on home. He hoped it was neither.

  The vehicle slowed as it neared the Toyota, and dimmed its lights again as it pulled to a halt. There was a click as the door unlatched, and in the wash of the interior light, Jake recognized Thorne’s familiar face. The big man uncoiled himself from the car’s front seat as Jake slid off the hood of the pickup.

  “Where’s Sunshine?” Thorne asked. His thick midwestern accent sounded somehow incongruous with his narrow eyes and V-shaped frame.

  “The cops have her,” Jake said grimly. “Travis got hurt, and Carolyn stayed with him.”

  “Mr. Sinclair is gonna be pissed.” Thorne’s tone made the observation sound like a threat.

  “That’d just break my heart,” Jake growled. Of all the ramifications inherent in Carolyn’s capture, her Uncle Harry’s being “pissed” didn’t rank among the top one hundred.

  “And what’s this piece of shit you’re driving? Where’s the rental?”

  “We had to leave it behind. We boosted this from a couple of paramedics.”

  Thorne’s features twisted into a look of utter disgust. “And what about your package? Where’s that?”

  Nick reappeared, leaned over the edge of the flatbed, and hoisted the body bag. “It’s right here. Looks like a small child.”

  Thorne didn’t give a shit what it looked like. His expression never changing, he opened the trunk for Nick, then closed it again after placing the body inside. “Have you had those gloves on the whole time?” he asked Nick.

  In all the confusion, Nick couldn’t say, but he chose to think optimistically. “Don’t leave home without ’em.”

  Thorne rolled his eyes. “Get in.”

  They did. Jake sat in the back with Nick, the two soft-sided money bags stacked between them.

  As it turned out, the airport was merely a convenient meeting place. Their true destination lay about forty-five minutes farther out and was accessible not by plane, but by car; down a series of progressively smaller, more primitive roads. Finally, the forest opened up again to reveal an antebellum mansion, rising like a medieval castle out of an endless expanse of cleared fields. Bright lights illuminated the facade of the brick residence, making it look like something from an amusement park.

  “What’s this?” Nick asked, but Thorne said nothing.

  They swung the turn into the half-mile-long driveway, crunching gravel as the mansion grew to fill the entire windshield. Jake thought back to the last time he’d dealt with Harry’s people, and he remembered the much more modest digs similarly located in the middle of nowhere.

  “So much for keeping a low profile,” Jake grumped.

  “It’s not about profiles,” Thorne grumped back. “It’s about protection. Out here, anybody comes, you can watch ’em for miles.”

  The driveway ended in a lazy circle surrounding a gaudy fountain which, as best Jake could tell, featured a flock of barfing swans.

  “Go on in,” Thorne instructed as he threw the transmission into park. “No need to knock. I’ll take care of the package in the trunk.”

  Nick and Jake exchanged uneasy glances before climbing out of the car and scaling the wide marble steps leading to the double front doors.

  Jake handed the gym bags to Nick and reached for the doorknob. He paused, then drew the Glock from its holster and let it dangle by his leg. He’d learned a long time ago to trust his instincts, for all the good they did him, but his instincts were unanimous in their advice to run back to the car.

  He opened the door slowly, hesitantly. He checked first to see if anyone was concealed on the hinge side before stepping in. A shimmering, polished brass chandelier dominated the ceiling over the ornate foyer, whose sparkling walnut floors had been inlaid with an ebony and pearl family crest.

  “Serious money here,” Nick mumbled under his breath.

  They moved softly in the heavy silence of the giant house, working their way to the right-toward the doorway of a small yet fabulously decorated room. Two lush, forest-green leather chairs framed a gorgeous fireplace, across from which sat a silk-upholstered sofa. Jake assumed this was what one would call a parlor.

  “Hey!” a voice boomed from behind.

  Jake led with his gun as he whirled to find Thorne walking briskly through the front door, dragging the body bag with one hand and carrying a cellular phone in the other. “Jesus, Thorne,” Jake spat, breaking his aim. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  Thorne paused at the sight of the weapon and regarded Jake with disgust. “Put that thing away,” he commanded. “I told you, the estate is clean. We’re safe here.” He dragged the orange bag across the foyer and thrust out the phone. “Here,” he said. “Mr. Sinclair wants to talk to you.”

  Mr. Sinclair can kiss my ass, Jake didn’t say. He reached for the phone.

  Thorne turned to Nick. “The rest of your shit’s in the kitchen. That’s where I’ll put this.”

  Nick nodded and followed the other man down the hallway, to disappear behind the dramatic, sweeping stairway.

  Jake brought the phone to his ear. “Yeah, Harry, this is Jake.”

  “Where’s Sunshine?” the old man demanded, his words like daggers.

  Instantly, Jake’s hatred for this bully tycoon bubbled to the surface, just as pure and as bitter as it had always been. “Carolyn’s not here,” he said. The tone that he’d hoped would sound defiant sounded soft instead, like that of a child confessing to a parent. This was, after all, the man to whom he’d sold his soul in return for an easy way out. “I had to leave her behind.” He took a minute to tell the story.

  “So you just ran away,” Harry charged. “You just left her to those pigs.”

  “There was no choice, Harry.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  Jake said nothing, merely sat down heavily on the elaborate sofa. Of course there were choices, but what else-

  “It’s that goddamn kid of yours!” Harry roared. “I told you no kids! And you deliberately ignored me! Why didn’t you listen?”

  Jake was stunned, struck dumb. Whereas just seconds before, he’d felt his self-worth swirling down the toilet, now he was ready for a fight. Goddamn kid? How dare he! For a long time, he stared at the phone, his mouth agape.

  “I asked you a question, Jake,” Harry’s voice buzzed from the earpiece.

  “We did listen to you,” Jake seethed. He found himself concentrating on his words, controlling his voice. “We did every goddamn thing you told us to do, and look where we are today.”
r />   “You didn’t listen!” Harry yelled.

  To hell with self-control. “We did listen!” Jake shouted back. “You said to run. We ran. You said to change our names and appearances. We did that, too. For fourteen years, Harry, we’ve done every goddamn thing you told us to do! And yes, we had a son…”

  Suddenly, the words caught in Jake’s throat, and he paused, as if choking. And the horror of it all became clear. “I had a son,” he repeated, and now his voice was barely a whisper. He’d just used the past tense.

  Oh, God…

  “He’s the only thing we ever did right, Harry, and I think I killed him.” He looked at the phone curiously for a moment, bringing it down to waist level, where he folded it shut and let it drop to the floor. The last person he owed an explanation to was Harry Sinclair.

  With his elbows wedged into his knees, he leaned forward and ran his fingers deeply into his hairline. The hopelessness of it all took his breath away.

  What kind of animal am I? he wondered. Killing my own son, and sacrificing my wife, just to save my own skin?

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered. “Oh, sweet Jesus, I’m so sorry.”

  And he came apart. He pressed his fists against his eyes to keep the sadness from spilling out, but it wouldn’t be stopped. It gushed out of him in breathless, choking sobs, and suddenly, in his mind, he wasn’t in Arkansas anymore. He was with his little boy, holding him steady as he pedaled his bicycle for the first time. Then he saw the pained expression that invaded Travis’s face every time they told him that it was time to move to another town. The tenements they’d lived in, the roach-infested trailer parks. The bruises when Travis yet again refused to back down from the local kids who wanted to see what the new guy was made of.

  God, Jake had tried so hard to be a good father, but in his zeal to keep his son in line, he’d never truly gotten to know the boy as a friend. The thought of it brought genuine pain. Suddenly, it was hard for him to take a breath.

  And in his most heroic moment-when he was hoping to save our lives-all I could do was yell. And strip him of his dignity.

  Jake wanted his family back. He wanted a group hug from the old days-a sandwich hug, where he and Carolyn were the bread and Travis was the jelly. The thought of never touching them again was more than he could bear. His mind played out a horror show, in which his only child lay trapped forever inside an airtight box, covered over by a ton of dirt, while his mother prayed for the moment when she could join him, every day suffering the torture of prison rapes and beatings.

  Such a pillar of virtue, that Jake Donovan. Always willing to let women and children suffer in his place. There were words for people like him in our society: coward-the most exclusive group of villains; people who throughout history have willingly stepped aside to let others die in their place. Deserters and draft-dodgers came to mind. Or ship’s captains who take the last lifeboat while their passengers drown.

  Like falling down a well, Jake found himself tumbling deeper and deeper into the blackest misery he’d ever known. And the well of misery had no bottom; just more blackness. Everything he’d ever loved was gone now, and it was all his fault. How could a man live with knowledge such as this? Knowing that he’d killed his own blood, how could he ever face a mirror again? How could he face another dawn?

  “Jake!”

  The harshness of the voice startled him. It was Nick, and he seemed agitated. “What?”

  “Are you coming or not?”

  Jake felt disoriented, mentally numbed; as if a chunk of time had passed without his notice. He checked his watch and was shocked to see that a full half hour of his life had somehow evaporated.

  “Coming where?” As he spoke, his throat felt thick.

  “To the kitchen,” Nick said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. His face turned grave. “Are you okay?”

  Jake stood uneasily, unsure whether to trust his balance. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just zoned out.” A few seconds passed, and then his head cleared. He followed Nick into the foyer, then stopped. “What’s in the kitchen?”

  Nick clearly felt uneasy. “I wanted to take a look at these remains before we ship them off to Chicago. The best place I can think of to do it is in the kitchen.” He responded to Jake’s curious glare with an offhanded shrug. “Don’t worry about it. Just something I noticed in the magazine. Probably nothing, but I thought we should check it out.”

  “What is it?” Jake pressed as he followed down the hall.

  Nick remained evasive. “I’ll tell you after we take a look. Like I said, probably nothing at all.”

  Body language alone told Jake that it was useless to press further.

  The kitchen was huge; like something that belonged in the back of an elegant downtown restaurant. Stainless-steel appliances shined like mirrors. Copper pots and pans hung from the ceiling, suspended in midair, it seemed, over a gleaming six-burner stove. The black and white tile floor was so clean that Jake found himself stepping carefully, lest he find that it was still wet.

  The orange body bag lay in a heap in the right-hand rear corner, placed there with all the care and respect that one would show to a throw pillow.

  “What is this place?” Jake asked to whoever would care to answer.

  “This house belongs to a physician friend of Mr. Sinclair’s,” Thorne explained. “He offered to let us use it for a while.”

  “Where is he?”

  Nick smiled knowingly at the question. Apparently, this ground had been covered once before.

  “Away,” Thorne said. He spoke with an annoying, sanctimonious grin, as if responding to a joke that he alone had heard. Every move the man made seemed designed to keep people on edge. This was a man to be feared.

  “What about contamination?” Jake asked.

  Nick shook off the concern easily. “Don’t worry. We’ve got some Saranex suits and some respirators. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Not us,” Jake corrected. “The room. This is somebody’s kitchen, for crying out loud.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Thorne advised. “You need the room, you use the room. Our host won’t mind.”

  Jake shared a look with Nick, but neither of them said anything.

  “The stuff you said you needed is in the boxes over there.” Thorne pointed. “Do you need me for any of this crap, or can I go sit down?”

  As Thorne departed, Nick knelt to open the boxes. “Looks like it’s all here.” He lifted two sets of white, hooded coveralls out of the largest box and handed one of them to Jake, leaving ten in the box. “God, there’s enough stuff here for an army.”

  “Easier to borrow by the box, I suppose,” Jake mused. He rubbed the fabric of the coveralls between his fingers and shot a curious look. “What is this stuff?”

  “Saranex,” Nick said. “See what happens when you drop out of the industry for a while? It’s basically a Tyvek garment with a Saran Wrap coating. Terrific stuff for low-level dust hazards.”

  Jake examined it more closely. “Feels kinda like Pampers,” he said, drawing a chuckle. He flapped the garment with a loud snap, then thrust one leg into his coveralls. He had to push hard against the stiff folds. Suddenly, he stopped, realizing he’d forgotten something. “Thorne!”

  It took a while, but in his own sweet time, Thorne reappeared at the kitchen door.

  “See what you can find out about Carolyn and Travis, okay?”

  The big man cocked his head and planted his fists on his hips. “And how do you want me to do that? Maybe I should just call the FBI and ask.” Shaking his head with disgust, he turned and disappeared again toward the front of the house.

  “Prick,” Jake spat under his breath.

  “He’s all personality, that one,” Nick concurred.

  Dressing for this level of protection was a far less complex task-more like dressing for surgery, but with a full-face respirator instead of a surgical mask. The respirator resembled a pilot’s oxygen mask, with the addition of a clear Lexan facepiece, wh
ich formed an airtight seal around the entire face, from eyebrows to chin. In place of an artificial air supply, the respirators used two disc-shaped high-efficiency filters to knock any particulates out of the air before they could reach the user’s nose or mouth.

  With the coveralls on, and their respirators in place, Jake and Nick lifted the hoods to cover their hair and donned two sets of gloves-latex under heavier rubber-and approached the butcher-block table. The bitter sacrilege of examining a child’s body on a surface designed for cooking was lost on neither man.

  The orange body bag lay in a heap under a bank of fluorescent lights, not nearly as bright as Nick might have liked, but certainly adequate to the task at hand. It took a half minute or so to straighten the bag out enough to access the zipper. Like peeling a banana, the orange layer opened to reveal the green bag, which Jake lifted just enough to allow Nick to pull the outer shroud away and lay it on the tile floor.

  “So tell me,” Jake said, his voice muffled by his respirator. “What’s the big mystery?”

  “We’ll see in a minute,” Nick said.

  Jake noted the lack of eye contact. “What is it?”

  Nick ignored him as he fumbled with yet another rumpled bag in search of the zipper. Finally, he got it open. In the glare of the overhead light, they saw for the first time just how fine a dust they’d been exposed to: the consistency of talcum powder. Jake examined the fine coating on his gloved fingers and fought away a wave of despair. The body’s natural filters were useless against so fine a particle size. Whatever Travis had breathed was free to travel into the deepest recesses of the boy’s lungs; free to do its maximum damage. He closed his eyes and took a deep, purified breath.

  Calm down, he told himself, fighting to find a ray of hope. You’re not a doctor. Quit trying to practice medicine. Maybe it’s not as bad as you think.