by Bryan Gilmer
“I thought I heard somebody stirring.” Caroline emerged from the tiny kitchen and crossed the living room to the doorway. Her smooth legs disappeared underneath a thick, white, terrycloth robe above the knee. Her hair was wet from a shower. “What time did you finally fall asleep?”
“No earlier than four. It didn’t seem like I disturbed you.”
“No. You felt nice.” She smiled at him. “As always. Coffee will be ready in a minute.”
Jeff realized he had felt oddly comforted, too, nestling into Caroline’s back. It was completely different from their other night together, which had been no warmth, just sex. This night had been no sex, just warmth. He felt a multi-dimensional attraction to her now, maybe the beginnings of a real connection, and he wanted to make love to her again with that on his mind.
“Caroline,” Jeff called after her, and she reappeared in the doorframe. “Thanks for letting me stay here. Seriously.”
“I didn’t want you out on the street.” She grinned. But as if she knew what he was thinking, she added, “I have to get dressed. I’m going to be late for work. Mugs are to the left of the sink. Help yourself.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“I’m busy and ambitious.”
With newfound modesty, she’d apparently taken her work clothes for today into the bathroom to dress there.
Jeff exhaled and walked toward the kitchen. The coffee pot was still brewing, and he decided it would be bad houseguest manners to hold his mug under the dripping filter to pour an early cup, so he just stood there as the European coffee maker spat and hissed. He noticed her work satchel on the dinette table. A folder was open, and he could see she’d been going through some notes before he’d awakened.
A page of handwritten bullet points said, “Knox family trust sold parcel to Reuss firm in August. Wake County Planning and Zoning approved plan of subdivision December. Tenants told to vacate MHs by Mar. 31.” The list ran several pages.
Caroline rustled down the hall, so he carefully edged toward the sink and the coffee pot. His mobile phone rang, and he jumped backward a step. Damn, was he still edgy. He made himself take a breath: Probably Cooperton.
Instead, it was the trucking company ready to drop off the furniture from his storage unit at the loft. “We’re at your address with your items, but we can’t find a front door, and there’s tape that says it’s a crime scene.”
Jeff cranked his neck backward and stared at the ceiling as he blew out a breath.
“I’m in an unusual situation,” he told the driver. “How many more stops do you have to make?”
The driver agreed to do his other deliveries first, and he gave Jeff his mobile number. He could take the furniture back to the warehouse if he had to, he said.
Jeff shook his head and stared at the ceiling, and the coffee maker sighed and exhaled loudly as it conveyed the last of the water from the tank to the filter basket.
Caroline reappeared – dressed – holding his khakis by one beltloop. She reached into his front pocket, fished out the house key she’d given him and slid it into her own pocket.
Jeff raised his eyebrows.
“I can’t let you move too fast on me,” she smiled. “But stick around as long as you need to this morning. The door will lock behind you when you pull it shut.”
* * *
Jeff went to his place, intending to shower there.
He found the spilled dinner right where he’d left it by the elevator. Jeff bent and scraped most of the meal back into its container, resenting Cooperton’s men for not cleaning it up. His face felt numb and stiff, as if he’d walked 15 blocks on a frigid day. He stood and rubbed his cheeks with his hands.
A note on pink paper on the coffee table said the Sheriff’s Office would send a crew on Monday to “recover” the Ellis’ furniture. There was gray fingerprint dust on nearly every surface.
He realized suddenly that he couldn’t stay here long enough to shower. The place was making him so anxious he wanted to peel off his skin. He filled a duffel bag with clothes, threw in his razor and deodorant from the bathroom and got the hell out of there.
He backed into the alley, stopped, jerked the parking brake and got out of the car. He paced down the alley a little way, hoping to calm his runaway pulse. The damn Scranton thing wouldn’t go away; that was the problem – the experience had been fucking with Jeff’s sense of security ever since it had happened, making it hard for him to settle down and go to sleep some nights and waking him with nightmares most of the rest.
Even when his conscious mind put it aside for months, it seemed his body remembered that someone could break in while he was most vulnerable, so his mind tried to keep him on hyper-alert all the time. He had been working to teach it to relax again. Jeff took a deep breath, blew it out, as he often did.
What had happened here at the loft yesterday was the same thing to his primal brain, the same gray outline of danger, proof to his mind that it had been correct to guard so persistently against this threat.
Jeff panicked at the thought that he might never be able to relax again – and he found himself glancing around the alley for threatening figures. He had the brief impulse that what had happened at his loft might be the work of the same gang from Scranton. He worked to attack the ridiculous notion with reason: He would’ve had trouble from them before now. He’d lived in Scranton another two years without problems. One of his attackers, the one Jeff had tackled against his dresser that night, was dead, another paralyzed, and the other guy wasn’t up for parole for five more years. He was being completely irrational.
Jeff looked up at the roofline of his building and wiped his hand across his face. He probably felt as much guilt about the episode as he did residual fear.
That the stupid fucks could make him feel guilty about what had happened especially pissed him off.
It had been nearly five years now. Jeff had done a TV report on Scranton’s gang problem. A gang he had neglected to mention on the air alongside its rivals had sent three guys – three stupid kids – to break into Jeff’s apartment and put the organization onto his radar.
When Jeff had wakened and fought off the guy upstairs, the two guys downstairs had hollered to each other to “jet.” The neighbor in the other half of the duplex had heard the yelling, called 9-1-1, and a Scranton cop patrolling one block over had arrived almost instantly, in time to see the first two kids bolt across the lawn.
The kid Jeff had fought was stupid enough to point a pistol at the cop, who fired seven shots from his service weapon, hitting the boy in the chest with two lethal rounds and crippling his 13-year-old cousin with a stray bullet that nicked his spine.
Fourteen. Thirteen. Thirteen. Born with no advantages. Already that hardened and dangerous as young teenagers, their highest ambition to be demonized on a brainless TV news report.
That one night had ended or irretrievably ruined each life. That was the pathetic reality of the situation. Jeff had been lucky to come out of it with just a broken nose and mild concussion.
Thirty-three
Protection Armaments stood in an aging shopping center with an awning made of corrugated metal. The gun shop was the only store with steel bars across its windows and doors. As he turned the knob to walk in, Jeff prepared himself for somebody like his uncle Drewry, a guy with a camouflage shirt, facial hair and a beer gut.
A brass bell attached to the door rang when he opened it, and a voice said, “Well hey there, honey.”
The woman behind the counter was the only person here. She was in her early ’30s with blonde hair, a great smile, tight jeans and a cropped top that showed off her flat stomach and navel ring. “I’m Trinity. What you lookin’ for this mornin’?”
For the first time in 18 hours, Jeff smiled. It made perfect sense for a firearms dealer to make an attractive woman its salesperson, he decided. “I’m interested in a pistol.”
“What’ve you got in mind?”
“Not sure.”
“Well, w
hat’s it for?”
“If somebody breaks into my apartment, I want to kill him.”
“In the gun business, that’s what we call ‘home defense.’ Most people will probably never have to use their gun, but they just sleep better knowing it’s there if they need it. And that’s worth every dollar you spend.”
“I must not be very lucky,” Jeff said. “I could have used one twice in the last five years.”
She raised her left eyebrow as he looked through a glass-top case. Pistols stood on clear plastic stands with manila tags dangling by white strings from their trigger guards. The gold velvet underneath made the black, chrome and blue-steel guns look like pieces of sculpture. The saleswoman reached in and grabbed a silver pistol with a $199 price tag. She aimed it at the floor, pulled back the slide and looked through the ejection port to make sure it wasn’t loaded. She pressed it into Jeff’s palm with the action locked open.
From his work covering crime in Scranton, Jeff recognized the brand as a cheap one favored by cracktown shooters. The guns often misfired. He gently set the gun onto the cork mat that seemed to be there for the purpose. “Something higher-end.”
He raised his gaze to a poster behind the counter that said, “Glock PERFECTION.” He smiled again. Cops usually carried Glocks, Sig Sauers or Smith & Wessons. “What about a Glock nine-millimeter?”
She raised both eyebrows and glanced toward the other end of the case, where the Glocks stood in rows with price tags above $500. “The Glocks are real nice. But you want a .40-caliber.”
“Why?”
“You know, knockdown. Stopping power.”
She pulled out two identical-looking guns. “This one’s the model 19. Holds 14 9 mm rounds.” She made sure it was unloaded and set it on another cork mat. This is the .40, and it holds 13. The bullets are bigger, so not as many fit. But you don’t have to use as many to get the job done, neither.”
She smirked and put this gun into Jeff’s hand. The handle felt like the same plastic as Ashlyn’s plastic cutting board, yet sturdy somehow. He pulled back the slide slightly and pressed a lever with his thumb so it sprang closed.
“You look great holding it.” She smiled. “That’s the one for you.”
“Okay, I’ll take the .40.”
Trinity smiled. “Great. Your permit?”
Jeff shook his head. She explained that under North Carolina law, he had to go to the Sheriff’s Office and fill out an application for a $5 handgun purchase permit. The sheriff would run a background check, and in about two weeks, he’d have the right to buy a handgun if it came back clean. Pretty tight ship for a Southern state, Jeff thought.
“Lot easier to get one if you’re a criminal,” she concluded.
“I have a good friend at the Sheriff’s Office,” Jeff said. “I promise you I’ll come back with a permit if you let me take the gun today.”
“Who is it?”
“Lieutenant Cooperton. You can call him right now.”
“Then go get the permit, and bring it back here tomorrow or whenever. We’ll sell you the gun.”
“I can’t wait for a permit,” Jeff said. “Somebody broke into my house last night. I’m afraid they’ll come back.”
Trinity searched Jeff’s face, narrowing her eyes. When they widened again, she took a breath, started to speak, closed her mouth again and then said, “Walk out to my truck a minute.”
Trinity locked the shop’s door behind them and led them around the side of the building, where her brown Ford F150 was parked. She opened the glovebox. “This is a Glock Model 22. It’s a .40-caliber, just like the one in there; it’s just not the compact model like that one is. There’s an ATM inside that quickie mart.” She pointed across the highway. “I’ll give it to you for $600 cash. You go on and take the pistol – if you’ll go get you a permit and bring it back to me to make it all legal. That gun’s registered to my daddy, and he’ll say he loaned it to you.”
Jeff nodded and crossed the highway to the ATM with the strong feeling that he was making an unwise decision, though the best one available to him. He withdrew the daily maximum of $300 from his checking account. Next he put in his Visa card and took a $300 cash advance.
When he brought Trinity the cash, she grabbed the gun by its barrel and handed the butt to Jeff. Loaded with ammunition, the pistol was twice as heavy as the one Jeff had handled inside the store.
He was careful to keep his finger outside the trigger guard. He pressed the button to drop the magazine of bullets from the handle, then racked the slide, which flung the unspent round from the chamber to the asphalt as his feet.
He remembered his father taking him to the pistol range while he was home from Taft during summers, felt keenly how incongruous his peers there and at the firm would find it that he knew his way around a handgun.
“Ain’t too handy without no bullets.” Trinity stooped and picked up the one Jeff had ejected. “Don’t worry; it won’t shoot unless you pull the trigger. It’s a safe weapon.”
Jeff re-loaded the ejected round into the magazine and slammed it into the handle of the pistol. But he didn’t retract the slide to chamber a round.
“I need collateral,” Trinity said.
Jeff squinted at her. “Like what?”
“Whatever you can convince me you’ll come back and trade that permit for.” She looked at Jeff’s wrist. “That watch.”
Jeff’s wristwatch was the Bulova his Pa-paw had treated himself to after fighting in the Philippines in World War II. “This was my grandfather’s.”
“Then I’d say you’ll be back. I’ll lock it up in our safe in the back.”
“I can’t do it.”
She pulled the gun from Jeff’s hand and reached into her jeans pocket to return the money.
Jeff thought of trying to fall asleep without the pistol. He reached to unbuckle the leather band.
Thirty-four
Jeff ended up showering at Ashlyn’s, which for all of its psychological discomfort seemed like the best option. He felt more like himself wearing a clean Polo shirt and khakis.
Cooperton called, asked how Jeff was doing and told him about another apparently related crime. “Another big-box store was vandalized. This time, the Value Warehouse Club. Last night after closing, somebody scattered a bunch of granola and trail mix in all the aisles, and this flock of birds they got living in there was eating it and then shittin’ all over everything all night. Same kinda eco-terrorism-type stuff like at the DIY. Looks like they broke in through a roll-up door on one side. Jimmied the alarm sensor and drove some kind of vehicle in. They can’t really tell if anything was stolen without doing a whole inventory, ‘cause they keep so much shit in that place all the time.”
Annie called Jeff’s mobile on his way back to the office, the new pistol within reach under a blue sportcoat on the passenger seat. “I was here catching up on some stuff, and your line rang, and I thought it might be that sheriff’s lieutenant, so I picked it up. But it was a woman named Margaret who said she’s an old friend of yours from college. She’d like to see you, but she’s only in town for two more days.”
Margaret Samuels had been Jeff’s girlfriend his senior year at Northwestern. They’d been great for each other. Only the different locations of their after-college opportunities had pulled them apart: he’d gotten the TV job in Wilkes-Barre, and she’d stayed an extra summer and fall quarter for a master’s before taking a job as a second violinist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
He’d always had the sense that Margaret would become part of his life again.
“She said she’s playing with her orchestra at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium,” Annie told him.
A pleasant nervousness in his stomach verified Jeff’s residual feelings. As soon as Annie said Margaret’s name, he’d wanted to see her.
“She leave a number?”
Annie gave it to him, and he thanked her as he wrote the digits on the back of a Taco Bell receipt. “I’ll be in around lunchtime.”
<
br /> “Sarah said she told you to take the weekend off.”
“I’d rather work.”
Jeff went back to the donut factory, parked, and held the new pistol at his side as he rode the freight up to his loft, reminding himself it was irrational to think an intruder would be here now. The doors opened, and he stepped over the greasy spot on the floor and took a closer look at the strange furniture. He couldn’t come up with any useful information. He made a mental note to ask Cooperton whether the furniture was arranged here the same as it had been at the Ellises’.
He checked again, but nothing was missing after the reverse-burglary besides the 12 ounces of beer, as far as he could tell. He tried to figure out what it meant that there wasn’t any graffiti, despite long, tall stretches of wall that should have looked like a ream of blank paper to this guy. He’d just left the little paper note.
Jeff gathered up his few clothes and toiletries and decided he would stay at Ashlyn’s until the police could retrieve the Ellises’ stuff. As he locked the makeshift garage doors, he ripped down the scrap of crime scene tape and wrote a note in ballpoint pen on the plywood: “To Contact Owner:” then the number of Ashlyn’s apartment where he planned to stay and his own cell number. He sat behind the steering wheel holding the pistol awkwardly. He stuck it behind the passenger seat and wedged it so it wouldn’t slide around, then he drove back over to Ashlyn’s.
On the way, Jeff touched base with Sarah. He could hear little Jacob fussing in the background. Sarah asked how he was doing. He said he was okay, realized he was lying, and realized he had to get his shit together and catch this guy. Sarah thought what had happened was horrible, and she was sorry for it. He should be careful and call if he needed anything. She offered to take Jeff off the investigation, which irritated him, and he could tell she knew it. She insisted again that Jeff take the weekend off, and he said he would think about it, though they both knew he wouldn’t.