by Patrick Lee
Travis looked up at the hospital again. He watched people come and go from the two exits he could see.
The lack of a shortcut was trouble, but not disaster.
The lack of a stakeout position was.
It was the one problem he and Paige and Bethany hadn’t been able to plan around. No way to know exactly what he’d find on the north side of Monument Street, in terms of hiding places. In his most optimistic scenario there’d been a Dumpster sticking out of an alley, full to the brim with trash he could hide in and stare out through. No luck there—no Dumpsters or alleys along the north side of the street. Nothing but the unbroken row of buildings.
Travis had seen all of that this morning, then spent the day wandering the city trying to think his way through the problem. As an adult he could’ve solved it any number of ways. Buy a cheap harmonica and a little wooden box and stand there on the sidewalk busking. Wouldn’t matter that he sucked at playing harmonica—it would help push attention away from him, in fact. People would consciously not look.
But even the busking would’ve been unnecessary. A grown man could just walk up and down Monument, from the dig site to either intersection, back and forth all night long. Hours and hours, the same circuit, four hundred feet east and four hundred feet west. If anyone noticed the repetition and found it strange, would they even consider asking him about it? Not likely. People tended to see strangeness as trouble, which in turn they tended to avoid.
But none of those options existed for a ten-year-old.
Shit.
He turned another page of the comic book. Let his eyes drift over the images and words without processing them.
A shadow fell across his lap.
“Excuse me.”
Travis looked up and saw a woman in her thirties, a five-year-old girl in tow. The girl stared at Travis with big eyes and tried to hide behind her mother’s leg.
“Do you need help?” the woman said.
Travis offered a quick smile and shook his head. “I’m good. Thanks.”
Another trick—when you weren’t moving with purpose—was to be direct and certain. Let no ambiguity into your words or your tone.
He turned his eyes back to the comic book and ignored the woman.
The shadow stayed put.
“You’ve been alone here the whole time I’ve been waiting for the bus,” the woman said. “If you need to call someone, I have change. And we can wait here with you if you like—”
“Really, I’m fine,” Travis said, looking up at her again. “My dad always meets me here at six-fifteen sharp. He says it’s a safe spot ’cause it’s busy. I’m just early, that’s all.”
The woman frowned. Looked like she wanted to wait anyway, if only to have a word with his father about this arrangement.
“Seriously,” Travis said, “don’t miss your bus. I’d feel terrible.”
Another frown. The woman started to say something else, but didn’t. The little girl tugged on her hand, gesturing with her whole body back toward Broadway.
The woman exhaled deeply. “I don’t like it,” she said, and then she was gone, back to the knot of people at the intersection.
Her bus came two minutes later, and when it’d left, Travis stood and stuffed the comic book into his pocket. He stood there thinking, getting the mental equivalent of a test pattern. It could be nine hours before Ward staggered out of the hospital, and Travis couldn’t imagine how to stand watch for even thirty minutes.
He wandered toward the construction zone. The crew was still at it. From beyond the waist-high barrier and far below came the shouting of men and the rattle of air-driven tools. There was a stereo blasting Bob Seger’s “Hollywood Nights.” The glow of halogen worklamps shone upward onto the inside face of the far barrier, just beginning to compete with the dying sunlight.
Absent a Dumpster, the closest Travis had come to a plan had been a vague thought of hiding within the site itself. Slip over the barrier and stand on the edge of the chasm, and hope to find some kind of material scraps with which to conceal himself. Three or four wooden planks might’ve done—stand against a foundation wall on the north side of the street and lean the wood around himself in a jumble. In darkness it would’ve been hard for anyone to see him among the boards, and maybe he could’ve arranged them to create viewing angles on all four exits.
But there were no scraps of wood or anything else, and with the workers still on the job it was a moot point.
Travis stopped fifty feet shy of the concrete blockade. “Hollywood Nights” finished and “Still the Same” kicked in.
Travis ran his hands through his hair. How much longer could he loiter out here before somebody waved down a cop?
That thought had hardly formed when another shadow slid into view, paralleling his own as it stretched away down the pavement. Footsteps scuffed to a stop behind him, and a man softly cleared his throat.
Travis turned, half expecting a cop already.
Instead it was a guy in a dress shirt and khakis, fortyish and visibly awkward.
“Hey there,” the man said. The voice was gentle. He might have been addressing a stray kitten. Behind him there was nothing but wide-open street all the way back to the intersection. This guy had come a long way to say hello.
When Travis didn’t answer, the man stepped closer. Ten feet away now. “You look a bit lost. I couldn’t help noticing. I live right back there.” He nodded absently behind him, toward the block immediately beyond Broadway.
Travis shook his head and looked down at the roadbed, suddenly unable to stand the guy’s nervous expression.
“Just waiting for my dad,” Travis said. “I’m fine.”
The man advanced again. “You don’t look like you’re waiting. I saw you on the bench, and now you’re standing around down here. How would your dad find you if you’re all over the place?”
The voice was still soft, but under the awkwardness there was an edge of excitement.
“You need a place to sleep tonight?”
Jesus Christ. So there were two problems he and Paige and Bethany hadn’t planned around. He pictured them laughing their asses off when he told them about this one.
Another step. The man was close enough to touch him now, and when he spoke again he was almost whispering. “Nothing has to happen. Nothing you don’t want. I promise.”
Travis was still looking down. He fixed his eyes in the deadest glare prison had taught him, and raised them.
The man stepped back as if shoved.
“You better get the fuck out of here,” Travis said.
The guy nodded quickly and didn’t say another word. A second later he was gone, walking away down Monument at just less than a jog. He’d gone thirty yards when a fragment of his pick-up spiel came back to Travis.
I couldn’t help noticing. I live right back there.
Travis looked past the intersection of Monument and Broadway. The next stretch of Monument, west of Johns Hopkins, had a parking garage filling most of the south side and a row of town houses on the north. No doubt most of them had been converted to multiple units.
Any one of which would offer a perfect viewing angle on all four of the hospital’s north exits.
“Mister!” Travis yelled.
Chapter Sixteen
He introduced himself as Garret and led Travis up to his place on the third floor, four units west of Broadway. Garret’s every move was nervous and excited. He had a high, quick laugh with which he interrupted himself in almost every sentence.
He opened the door to his apartment and ushered Travis directly into the living room. The air smelled like a mix of candlewax and macaroni. Travis hardly noticed. His full attention had gone at once to the bay window overlooking Monument. Through the 45-degree pane on the left, facing Johns Hopkins, he would have a better vantage point than he could’ve dreamed of.
There would be a delay issue, of course. He’d be fifteen seconds getting down to the sidewalk from this place, and another ten or more
sprinting to the intersection. But that was fine. He’d have plenty of time to catch Ward if he emerged from one of the nearer two exits, and if he came out beyond the Grand Canyon, well, that was always going to be a pain in the ass. Even starting at a Dumpster right across from the hospital, Travis would’ve been forced to backtrack a couple hundred feet before heading north on Broadway to circle the block. Garret’s bay window was as good a starting point as he could’ve hoped for.
Travis took in the living room’s details. The coffee table was littered with magazines and beer cans and used paper plates and three heavy ceramic mugs. Travis crossed to the room’s midpoint and came to a stop with his shin at the coffee table’s edge. He heard Garret stop a foot behind him. Felt him standing there, holding his breath.
Travis turned around and looked up into his eyes. Garret returned the stare, then glanced at the top of his head. Travis knew his hair was matted from sleeping in the car yesterday—he hadn’t been able to fix it since then.
“You can take a shower if you like,” Garret said. “Or I’ve got bubble-bath soap, if that’s better. It’s an oversized tub, if . . . you know . . .”
He left the sentence unfinished.
Travis didn’t respond. He waited until Garret was looking him in the eyes again, and then darted his own gaze just past the man’s shoulder and flinched hard.
It never failed. Few people could help but react to the sudden, primal belief that something dangerous was right behind them. Garret pivoted, and in the same instant Travis scooped one of the mugs from the coffee table and swung it as hard as he could into the back of the man’s head. It would’ve been bad enough for Garret even if the mug had broken, but it didn’t. All of the force of the impact went into his skull instead. He made a grunting sound—“Uhnn!”—and crumpled and then sprawled. Travis dropped onto him and arced the mug down on his head three more times, putting all his weight into each swing, then scrambled backward away from him. He held the mug ready and watched the man.
Garret didn’t move.
After a moment Travis heard him breathing, slow and ragged. Travis stood and circled wide around him. He went to the closet by the entry door and found a roll of duct tape, came back and used a third of it binding Garret’s limbs and covering his mouth.
It was 10:30. Monument Street lay in pools of sodium light and the apartment was pitch black away from the windows. Travis had stood watch for over four hours. Realistically it would be hours more before Ward would likely appear, but there was no reason to look away. Garret had stirred and moaned a few times in the darkness, but had mostly remained unconscious. In the minutes after binding him, Travis had made a quick survey of the apartment. Mainly he’d hoped to find a pair of binoculars. No luck. He found a stack of photos showing Garret rock climbing with a woman, presumably his girlfriend. She was taller than Garret and built like a pretty serious weight lifter. Travis thought a psychologist could make a whole career out of the guy’s libido.
He also found a loaded snub .38 in the nightstand drawer. He left it there. Couldn’t imagine having a use for it in the coming hours.
Foot traffic on Monument north of Johns Hopkins had dropped to practically nothing at nightfall. No one was coming or going from the academic buildings on the north side of the street, and only a few left or entered the hospital—at least from these four exits.
Binoculars would’ve helped with the more distant pair of doors. They were between seven and eight hundred feet away, about the limit of Travis’s ability to tell bald from blond. He hoped Ward’s posture and movement would simply make it obvious. Hoped he’d see him and have not the slightest doubt who it was. The nightmare possibility—clawing at Travis all these dark hours like some animal inside his chest—was someone emerging beyond the construction zone who only might be Ruben Ward. Anyone bald and stooped would fit the bill, and there had to be all kinds of men like that inside the place. If one stepped out, there’d be no time at all to make a decision. Travis would just have to run. Half a mile around the block, as fast as he could move. And if he got there and found some arthritic sixty-year-old, he’d have to make the same sprint right back here, hoping like hell he hadn’t missed Ward in all the lost minutes.
He tried not to think about it.
He watched the street.
He waited.
Ruben Ward stepped out of the nearest of the four exits at seven minutes past midnight. So close Travis could see the black notebook under his arm. Travis watched the man just long enough—maybe three seconds—to be alarmed at how quickly he was moving. Ward staggered, but not slowly. More like a drunk perpetually chasing his balance. He made three lurching steps along the sidewalk, braced a hand against the building, then withdrew it and lurched forward again. Fast. Way the hell too fast. Between lurches and pauses he probably matched the speed of a healthy person walking.
Travis turned and sprinted for the apartment’s entry, vaulting over Garret as he went.
He was almost to the door when he heard a key plunge into the lock from the other side.
Chapter Seventeen
It didn’t happen like it would’ve in a movie. There was no drawn-out moment in which the lock disengaged and the knob made a hellishly slow turn.
It happened in half a second, start to finish: click-turn-shove.
Travis checked his momentum just in time to keep from catching the door with his nose, and just like that he was face to face with the woman from the pictures. The rock climber. Taller and stronger than Garret.
She startled and fell back a step, dropping a bag of groceries she’d been holding. Something shattered. Something rolled.
The woman was wearing a uniform of some sort. In the split-second he had to think about it, Travis guessed she was a stewardess. Or a car rental clerk. Or one of a thousand other things.
Her panic disappeared in the next second—probably the time it took to realize she was staring at a ten-year-old—and anger took its place. She came forward, kicking aside the fallen groceries, and swatted the light switch upward.
Travis squinted, not quite blinded but sure as hell stung by the sudden brightness.
“What the fuck is this?” the woman said. Her volume suggested she wasn’t just talking to Travis. She wanted an answer from Garret, wherever he was.
Travis drew back from her advance, realizing even as he did so that he was clearing the way for her to see Garret.
She saw.
For the second time in as many breaths she flinched and recoiled. Her eyes registered the purest bafflement, and then regardless of the conclusion she’d drawn—if any—she simply reacted. She lunged at Travis, shoving the door fully aside as she came on.
There was no chance of getting past her and onto the landing. Even if he did, he wouldn’t get away. She’d be faster than him. Much faster.
Travis staggered back and hit the coffee table with his calves. He lost his balance and went down hard in front of the couch, the woman already descending on him, getting a fistful of his shirt. Half of Travis’s attention was on her, and the other half, like a mental split screen, was on Ruben Ward. Lurching and bracing. Lurching and bracing. Probably halfway to the intersection by now. Once he reached it, there was no telling which direction he’d go, but in any direction there were places he could duck into within the next hundred feet. Which he might well do, out of fear that hospital staffers were right behind him—he’d have no way to know they weren’t.
Ward could reach concealment in the next thirty or forty seconds. Could be gone in the next thirty or forty seconds.
Travis became aware of the woman screaming at him. Asking who he was. Grabbing for both of his arms and trying to pin them. She got one. Went for the other. Travis yanked it away and did the only thing he could think of: put his index and middle finger together into a fused, rigid spike, and stabbed her in the eye with it.
She cried out and let go of his other arm, both of her hands flying to her face to feel for damage.
Travis twisted b
eneath her, got hold of one of the couch’s legs and pulled himself free. He heard her cursing and shouting and felt a rush of air as her hand just missed his back.
Then he was on his feet, bounding over the coffee table and toward the doorway.
The bedroom doorway.
Behind him he heard the woman’s tone change from anger to fear. Maybe she understood what he had in mind. The table clattered as she shoved it away and came after him.
The doorway was just ahead now. He hooked the frame with one hand as he went through, swinging his body like a sideways pendulum toward the nightstand. He got his free hand on the drawer pull just as the woman crashed into him from behind.
The drawer came fully free of its seat. Its contents flew. Reading glasses. A little box of tissue. The snub .38. Travis’s hand closed around its grip as he went down, and then he tumbled, knees and elbows hitting the floor in random sequence.
He came to rest with his shoulder blades against the far wall, the pistol in his hand and leveled back toward the direction he’d come from. Toward the woman.
She pulled up short six feet away, frozen on all fours like a cat in the last instant before pouncing.
Her eyes were locked onto the pistol’s barrel.
“Take it easy,” she said.
“It’s only a memory,” Travis said, and pulled the trigger.
The bullet shattered her collarbone and she collapsed, screaming and holding the wound. Travis was already up and sprinting, ignoring her, going right over her and through the doorway.
Across the living room. Through the still-open entry door and onto the landing. He was two flights down before he realized he still had the gun. He stuffed it into his front pocket coming off the final step, hit the exterior door’s latch bar and burst out into the cool night.
He faced the intersection, and the north stretch of Johns Hopkins beyond it.