If She Wakes

by Michael Koryta

  She stepped back and looked at what she’d done and tried to find the voice in her head that would say this was a mistake. Before it could so much as whisper, though, she glanced into the kitchen and saw the tidy arrangement of chairs and tables, no trace of violence.

  Friends in cells and friends in uniforms, the kid had said.

  Abby picked up the blanket with the guns and the ammunition and walked out of the living room. She crossed to the kitchen counter and picked up her phone. It had a charge and a signal, but she put it in her pocket without pause. She’d make the call to police, but not from here.

  She carried the guns to the door, found the basket where Hank kept odds and ends, and fished out his car keys. She was moving quickly and purposefully now, not wanting to slow down long enough to consider the reality of what she was doing. Driving away in a murdered man’s car was obviously a dangerous choice.

  Staying, though, seemed worse.

  24

  In another life, Gerry Connors had been a bomb maker, but that was long ago. For the past two decades, he’d been a networker, a middleman. He was not a fixer, although people often thought of him as one. In reality, he put the players together, and he kept silent when silence needed to be kept. He asked only the necessary questions, and he shared only the minimum of information. He handled contacts and he handled money. For the German, he’d handled the hiring of Carlos Ramirez, but he had not told the German of the hiring of Dax Blackwell. That had been his own decision.

  This now had the potential to cause real problems for Gerry.

  The kid sat across from him in the dark-paneled office with his customary slouch, eyes alert but body loose, and if he was at all aware of the trouble that he’d caused, he didn’t show it. If he was at all concerned about what this trouble meant to him, he certainly didn’t show that. If not for the kid’s lineage, Gerry might’ve had to view this as stone-cold stupidity, but Dax’s bearing was so similar to his father’s that in the midst of the frustration, there was a strange reassurance. Gerry dearly missed the kid’s dad and uncle. Right now, Jack and Patrick Blackwell would have kept his pulse down. He needed Dax to do the same. Because the German had paid a lot of money for killing Oltamu and recovering the phone and doing it all quietly. Efficiently. Gerry had managed to accomplish only a third of that.

  Now it was growing exponentially worse, Dax Blackwell seemed indifferent to the problem, and the German was due in town in forty-eight hours.

  “There was no iPhone except her own,” Dax said. “You’ve got what she brought in. I checked her phone. I chose to leave it behind because if she manages to make it out of those woods alive, it’s going to hurt her story when they find the house clean and her phone inside. But it was not Oltamu’s phone.”

  “Then where is Oltamu’s phone?”

  “That question would be easier for me to answer if I knew something about the situation. Like who wants it, why they want it, and who else might want it.”

  “That’s not your fucking role!”

  A shrug. “Then it’ll be harder.”

  “You’re not even sure she’s dead! She saw you, and she might be able to talk!”

  “Correct.”

  Gerry took blood pressure medication daily, and he thought that was the only thing saving him now. He breathed through his teeth and said, “You want to tell me how you’re going to deal with that? If she walks out of those woods, we’ll have some sketch artist’s rendering of your face on every news broadcast in North America.”

  The kid said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Pardon? You poisoned her, shot at her, and killed her boss, but you expect her to go quietly into the night?”

  Dax nodded calmly. Gerry was incredulous. Every time he wanted to kill the kid, he found himself asking questions instead. He did that again now.

  “Want to explain why she’d stay quiet?”

  “Her personal history. She’s been involved in a car wreck that left a movie star in a coma and, eventually, dead. People hate her for that. It’s always amusing to me just how much people care about some asshole in a movie, but they do. Her boss, Bauer, thought the Tara Beckley case might make Abby confront those demons.” He smiled at that, then said, “Sorry. That one kind of broke me up. I mean, how’s it going to help? But Hank Bauer, may he rest in peace, didn’t strike me as a particularly skilled psychotherapist. It was an effort, though. You have to appreciate friends who make an effort.”

  Gerry could hardly speak. The kid’s attitude was that astonishing. “You talked through all this with them?” he managed finally. “You got their life stories but no phone?”

  “I really only had the chance to speak with Mr. Bauer at length.”

  Gerry needed a drink. Needed to lie down. Hell, both. Lying down and drinking at the same time, that was what this called for. “Abby Kaplan is going to bring cops down all over this.”

  “I disagree. You’ve got to think about the story she has to tell them. You really think the police are going to buy that? I had this same conversation with her, and my guess is that it lingered. She’ll think about it before she calls, at least. I’m sure of that.”

  He hadn’t gotten the phone, he’d killed a man, and he’d left a witness alive, and if any of this bothered him in the slightest, it didn’t show.

  “The phone, however, remains a concern,” he said.

  “No shit, it remains a concern!” Gerry shouted. “That’s what I need. I didn’t ask you to kill some hick in Maine, I asked you to get the phone!”

  “Well, things come up.”

  Things come up. Holy shit, this kid. Gerry rubbed his temples and forced himself not to shout. “You said Abby Kaplan had the phone.”

  “That’s what I was told. She showed up in good faith for the boss with phones and chargers, like the salvage guy said she should have. They weren’t in a box. When I broke into her apartment, I found the box. Empty. There were no phones in the apartment either. But it’s not a lost cause. You can help me with that.”

  Gerry lowered his hands and stared. “I can help you with that.”

  Another nod.

  “How might I be of service to you, Dax?”

  The kid ignored the sarcasm and said, “I could talk to your client.”

  You didn’t ask to speak to the client. Ever. You pretended there wasn’t a client.

  Gerry said, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “I understand it’s not protocol, but—”

  “You understand it’s not protocol. Well, that’s reassuring. Why would you possibly need to speak to—”

  “But I think it’s time to consider that someone else has the phone,” Dax finished. “It’s difficult for me to locate that person if I don’t understand the value of the phone, do you see? I’ve come up with an alternative, though, if you don’t want me to have an open dialogue with your client.”

  “I do not want you to have an open dialogue.”

  “Then in lieu of that, we’ll have to settle for a lesser option. Suggest to your client that he give me the phone that Carlos grabbed by mistake. Let me work off that. Oltamu’s personal phone gives me a starting point.”

  The client did not have Oltamu’s personal phone. Gerry still did. It was in the drawer just below his right hand.

  “Could you do that much?” Dax asked, and there was something about his eyes that gave Gerry the uncomfortable sense that the kid knew Gerry had the phone. He was sniffing around the edges, asking questions that he shouldn’t, questions that he knew better than to ask.

  “You’re not your father or your uncle,” Gerry said.

  Dax’s face darkened. Barely perceptibly, but it was the first anger Gerry had ever seen him display.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m better than them.”

  Gerry snorted. “You think?”

  “Unquestionably,” Dax said. “They’re dead.”

  He was giving Gerry that flat stare again, the one that sent spiders crawling into your brain.<
br />
  “Think it over,” he said. “I’ll get back to work regardless. I will get the right phone, and I will kill Abby Kaplan if she’s still alive. These things will happen, but they’ll go slower if I don’t have some insight into the situation. And speed’s important at the moment.”

  He stood up, and Gerry almost told him to sit his ass back down, but what was the point? He wasn’t wrong; speed was important now.

  The German was coming.

  25

  Abby made the call from a service plaza off the turnpike where there was always plenty of traffic. She was in Hank’s car, and she knew she’d have to dump that soon, but for now it was the best of bad options. She thought about calling 911, decided against it, and called David Meredith directly.

  “What’s up, Abby? I gather you heard about our boy Carlos. Neat twist, eh?” He was cheerful, and the disconnect was so jarring that for a moment Abby couldn’t speak. David had to prompt her. “Hello? Did I lose you?”

  “No, sorry. Yes, I heard about Carlos Ramirez. I’ve also got a lot more detail on that than you can imagine, and it’s all bad. I’m going to tell it to you once, so you’re going to want to take notes or record it. Recording it would be better. I won’t be able to call back and go through it again, at least not right away.”

  Silence. Then: “Abby, what in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Can you record me?”

  “No. Not here. But I can call you back from—”

  “Take notes, then.”

  “Abby—”

  “Hank is dead,” Abby said, and her throat tightened, but she swallowed and kept talking. “He’s in the passenger seat of my car, which is wrecked in the trees at the end of his road. It looks like he died in the wreck, but he didn’t. He was murdered, and I nearly was, and it’s all got something to do with that accident at Hammel College. I don’t know what, but it—”

  “Abby, whoa, slow down here. He was murdered? You need to—”

  “I need to talk, and you need to listen and write it down,” Abby said. “I’d love to trust you, but I’m not sure that I can right now. I was pretty well set up. The story I’m about to tell you sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. You need to hear it. Can you just listen?”

  Another pause, and then Meredith, sounding dazed, said, “I’ll listen.”

  “Write it down too.”

  She told him about the call from Hank, and her arrival at the house, and the way things had gone from there. Told him about the generator and the Gentleman Jack and how she’d started the car and, with an assist from Hank, made it out the door. Told him how many hours had passed while she lay unconscious in the woods and what she’d found upon waking.

  Meredith didn’t interrupt, which was a relief. Abby wasn’t sure how she’d respond if the man started asking questions, if his voice held any doubt or disbelief.

  “You’ll find him there, and you’ll think that I’m out of my mind, but do me the favor of taking a good, hard look for physical evidence that shows I’m wrong,” she said. “Maybe it’ll be in Hank’s blood. Maybe you’ll find a bullet. Maybe the kid screwed up something at the house…but I kind of doubt that. Just promise me you’ll look.”

  “Of course we will,” David said, the first time he’d spoken in several minutes. “But you’ve got to come in. You know that, Abby. Running from this thing…it’s the worst choice. Nobody will believe you if you run, no matter what we find.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Abby said. “Hank’s dead, and I sound like a lunatic, telling this story. Today you’ll tell me that it will all work out, but tomorrow? Then the charges come. And you’ll promise me that it’s still not a threat because a good attorney will work it out, but I’m not sure. Hank Bauer of Coastal Claims and Investigations was murdered over a car accident involving a girl from Hammel College and a guy from Brighton who is already dead? That’s going to keep me out of jail?”

  “If it’s the truth, it will,” Meredith said, and Abby smiled grimly. She was watching the side-view mirror, looking for police cars; her scratched and bruised face stared back at her. She reached up and pulled a pine needle from her hair.

  “Get started on proving it,” she said, “and then I’ll consider coming in. Talk to Shannon Beckley, talk to Sam at that salvage yard, and you can verify my movements through the day. That’s worth something. Then work that scene right. Look for bullets, look for damage to the generator, get them to run toxicology tests on Hank’s blood that will find anything unusual. Get some forensics expert to see if he can tell whether he was tied up. Most important? Find out whose phone matters so much that people will kill over it.”

  She didn’t say that she had the phone. All Abby understood so far about the phone was that if she’d given it to the kid last night, she’d certainly be dead by now. She wasn’t inclined to hand it off to anyone else just yet.

  “When I call you next,” Abby said, “you can tell me what progress you’ve made. Then we’ll talk about me coming in.”

  “This is a suicide move, Abby,” Meredith said, and he was angry now. Fine. Let him be angry. Abby just needed him to do the work.

  “Two people have been murdered over that accident already,” Abby said. “I was supposed to be the third. I’m not inclined to make my location known to the world right now.”

  “Even if you did get charged, which shouldn’t happen if you’re telling me a legit story, then you’re safer with us than on the run, hiding from killers and cops.”

  “He said he has friends in jail.”

  “We’ll have you in protective custody.”

  “He said some of those friends are in uniforms.”

  “This is insane. If there is anything to what you’re saying, then we’ll find plenty of evidence to support it, and we’ll do that fast.”

  “See, I don’t like the way you phrased that. If there’s anything to what I’m saying. Already, you’re skeptical.”

  “That’s my job.”

  “And that’s why I called you,” Abby said. “To give you a head start doing your job. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Abby, damn it, if you—”

  She disconnected, powered down her phone, and stepped out of the Tahoe. She put the phone just beneath the front tire, backed up over it, pulled out of the service plaza, and got back onto the Maine turnpike. She drove north, toward where the towns were smaller and the woods were darker.

  26

  Blinks are coming.

  They’re not all the way there yet, but not far off either. Not impossible, certainly. Tara has worked on them with ferocious intensity, and while she hasn’t succeeded, something about her eye motion feels different. It’s promising, at least, a sensation like a door being forced open, just like when she was in the basement of that house on London Street.

  She thinks it’s an upward motion. She tries to blink, she demands that her eyelids lower…and while they do not obey, her focus seems to shift. A small difference, and a dizzying sensation, but she’s almost certain she’s looking upward. Her eyes are so damn dry that it’s hard to tell, though. They’re dry even though they constantly leak with tears at the corners. People dab the tears away from time to time, but people also avoid the kind of direct, hard stare that could tell her if indeed she’s making any progress here. The motion she thinks she’s achieving is so slight that thorough scrutiny would be required to observe it. In the early hours, people would look hard into her eyes, searching for her as if she were submerged in dark water. Shannon. Dr. Pine. The strange boy in the black baseball cap—his scrutiny might have been the most intense of all, actually.

  Those deep stares are rare now, though. Everyone has become more evasive, as if they’re fearful of Tara’s gaze, as if a coma is contagious. Or embarrassed by it, as if her eyes are a mirror offering an unflattering image.

  If anyone would look hard now, though, they would see that she is close to blinking. As close as you can be without succeeding, and she feels like that should be noticea
ble. If Shannon would just pay attention, she would notice. Tara is almost certain of this. But Shannon is immersed in a phone call, and she seems concerned.

  She’s holding her cell phone to her ear with her left hand and a ballpoint pen hovering above a notepad in her right, and her all-business attitude just crumbled with whatever has been said. Tara watches her face and feels a cold and certain assurance that this is the inevitable call that means the decision has been made. They are going to end her life. If life was what you called this frozen purgatory. Then Shannon speaks, and Tara realizes that it has nothing to do with her at all.

  “She might have killed someone? The same woman I spoke to? Abby Kaplan, yes, that was her name, but what in the world…” She stops, clearly interrupted.

  Tara is trying to follow the conversation, but it’s confusing—Abby Kaplan was one of the two strangers who’d visited her. Older than the second one, the one who pretended to be Justin Loveless and stared into Tara’s eyes like a hunter looking through a scope. That man seems right for a murderer; Abby Kaplan does not. Abby Kaplan is supposed to be part of her team, someone to help. The college hired her.

  Top-notch recruiting, Hammel, Tara thinks, put that one in your brochures. She wants to laugh, and even though she can’t, it is still a pleasant sensation. Terror is often present, and frustration is constant, but humor is beginning to appear now and then to leaven these, as if her brain has tired of the relentless sorrow. She sometimes thinks that if she could simply communicate her mere existence, the rest could be endured. She could learn to have a life with some pleasure, then. Not the life she’d imagined, of course, but still one worth living. If they just knew that she was in here. But without that…

  “Her own boss?” Shannon says into the phone. “Are you kidding me? I just…no, listen, I don’t give a damn about how Hammel is going to find a better firm, what does that even mean? Your first hire just killed her boss, and now you’ll admit that you could have done better?”