Into the Fire

by Patrick Hester

  “What happened?” Mom asked, sweeping in from the kitchen. Her pale hair pulled back into a bun on the top of her head. She wore a dark shirt and blue jeans, both of which had little spots of flour here and there on them. Usually that meant full-on baking mode normally reserved for major holidays like Thanksgiving, but that was still a month away.

  My nose caught the barest whiff of what my brain identified as bread baking. I didn’t really have a chance to ask her about it as she helped me get Pop into the chair, then started working the oxygen tank to increase the flow.

  “His tubes are tangled,” she offered, quickly pulling them loose.

  “He got excited,” I said.

  Pop’s eyes were bugging out of his head, his face flushed. Whatever Mom did seemed to help, just not fast enough. She pressed her hands against his chest, forced his eyes to stare into hers. Mom had a commanding presence when she wanted to, and Pop couldn’t help but pay attention.

  “Take a breath,” she ordered. “Focus on me. Calm down, take a breath.”

  He sputtered something incoherent, nostrils flaring.

  “That’s it. In through the nose.”

  The oxygen began to flow, the change in his body almost immediate. He started to relax, eyes closing, face returning to a normal color, chest moving up and down, up and down.

  “Watch him,” she ordered before disappearing into the kitchen.

  Pop didn’t open his eyes, but he continued breathing softly. When she returned, she held a small glass of milky liquid in one hand and pressed it against his lips, tipping the contents into his mouth. He sputtered but drank it, eyes opening only for a moment.

  “A sedative,” she said. “Plus codeine. They gave it to us just last week when he started having trouble sleeping. This will calm him and put him to sleep.”

  I nodded, saying nothing for a moment. He had trouble sleeping? They didn’t say anything to me about that before. I filed it away.

  “Want to get him to bed?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “He’s been sleeping on the couch lately. He has troubles with the stairs. He’ll be fine in the chair for now. What happened?”

  “He got up too fast,” I lied. “Started coughing, couldn’t breathe.”

  “I thought I heard yelling,” Mom said. She smoothed back his hair, rearranged his robe—all just an excuse to touch him. Pop wasn’t fighting anymore, wasn’t even paying us any attention. He’d used whatever energy he’d had and drifted off thanks to the sedative.

  “Simon dyed his hair.” Not truly a lie, just not what set Pop off.

  Mom stood up straight. “He dyed his hair?” Her voice crept up as the question ended. My mother, mortified, said “Oh, my Lord,” palm pressed against her chest.

  I wanted to laugh but could only manage a smirk and a nod.

  She left her hand on the spot where her gold crucifix touched her skin, an heirloom handed down from her mother and her grandmother before, both on their deathbeds when they presented it to their daughters. She told me one day she would give it to me, and she smiled every time she said it. I didn’t like to think about it. Bad enough being faced with Pop’s mortality; I’d rather not toss Mom’s in as well.

  “Well,” she said, “we shall see how long that lasts.”

  “I have to go,” I said, probably a little too quickly given how her face fell. “I’ve been up two days straight,” I added.

  This got a small nod and a look of concern before Mom stood up and gave me a long hug.

  “I’ll check in tomorrow,” I offered.

  “Thank you, dear,” she said.

  As I drove away, my mind raced along a new tangent: How the hell did Pop know Jack Mayfair?

  And who was Rosario?

  * * *

  What a day.

  All I wanted was to go home and collapse onto the bed. My dad knowing Jack Mayfair threw me, and whatever energy reserves I had left were done. Somehow the very idea that my father could know Jack Mayfair made all of this more real. Worlds were colliding.

  Unfortunately, my stomach took that moment to remind me that I hadn’t eaten more than a few peanut butter cookies all day. I changed course and ran through a BK drive-thru, ordering a Whopper with cheese, onion rings, and a large Diet Coke. Then I added an extra little cheeseburger to the order just in case, got my food, pulled around, and wolfed it down right there in the parking lot. Except for the onion rings—I like to save those for later. Sipping Diet Coke and munching an onion ring, I drove home and planned on making a trip to the gym sometime soon to work all of it off.

  Even on a full stomach, I couldn’t reconcile the idea my dad knew Jack Mayfair. I mean, sure, Mayfair had to be known by the cops, or else how could he do his job? But I’d never heard of him before today, and I’ve been doing this six years now. You’d think I’d hear the name once or twice in all that time, maybe catch a glimpse of him at a crime scene or something. How did Pop know him?

  This weighed on my mind as I locked the car and went inside my apartment building. It isn’t anything fancy, just one of those multistory jobs with the closed-off balconies just wide enough for a couple of people to stand side by side as long as they’re comfortable with personal space intrusions. You can even see the mountains from my balcony if you stand on your tiptoes and lean out over the edge. A lot.

  Trying to balance my Coke and remaining onion rings in one hand while digging my house keys out of my pocket with the other, I turned a corner and knocked an old man to the ground.

  “Oh my God! I’m so sorry!” I said.

  He shooed me away as I tried to help him to his feet.

  My eyes shot to the onion rings spread out on the ground. Five-second rule …? No, no—they were gone. Some things just had to be let go. At least I still had my Coke.

  Again I tried to help the old man up, but he refused, struggling to his feet under his own power. Upright, he was barely five feet tall, and I felt even worse for having knocked him down. Back hunched, he walked stooped over, meaning he could be a bit taller. He had a wide-brimmed hat and a walking stick or cane, both on the ground, so I scooped them up and handed them over, placing the cane in his bony fingers. Pale, bony fingers. Ugly fingernails, too, all yellow and cracked.

  “Not entirely your fault,” he chuckled, voice raspy and low. “I found myself lost in my own musings. Should’ve been watching where I was going.”

  “Still,” I said, “I feel terrible.”

  Standing over him and with his hat on, I couldn’t even see his face.

  “Sorry about the … food,” he offered, waving his cane at the onion rings.

  “It’s okay,” I said wistfully, thinking about the squirrels outside my bedroom window who would find a treat in the morning. “I didn’t really need to eat them anyway.” Bad enough I ate a Whopper and a little cheeseburger. I’d need to hit the gym. Next week, though. This week would just be too hard to manage. Definitely next week. Or the week after.

  “You should be careful, young lady. It’s difficult juggling so many different things at once. One needs to focus, to balance, in order to succeed.”

  “You’ve no idea,” I said under by breath. Then, louder, “Yeah. Well, I’m really sorry about this. Will you be all right?”

  “Oh,” he chuckled. “I’ll manage just fine. It’s you I’m worried about.” He tilted his head up, but I still couldn’t see his face. A cool wind blew through from somewhere, and I shivered. “Young people need their rest, especially ones as important as you. Aren’t you so very tired?”

  * * *

  I blinked at the sunlight breaking through the curtains in my bedroom. My alarm blared, and my backup alarm added to the noise with that loud beep-beep-beep thing it did. I’ve had dueling alarm clocks since the “missed final fiasco” of sophomore year in college.

  “What the hell?” I asked the room.

  I smacked the alarm button on clock number one and picked it up. Six-thirty AM I wore my favorite PJs and I didn’t even remember going t
o bed. How did it get to be morning? I’d been … what? I shook my head and stretched, feeling well rested but more than a little bit confused. Crossing the room, I turned off the backup alarm on the tall dresser, then went in search of coffee and found the cupboards mostly empty. I had baking soda in the fridge, two bottles of beer, and some iffy butter. I did have Cheerios but no milk. For a moment, I considered, then rejected the idea of beer Cheerios. Beerios.

  “I must’ve been more tired than I realized,” I said to the empty fridge, because who doesn’t talk to their appliances first thing in the morning? With a yawn, I decided I needed to be more proactive. So far, I’d been going with the flow, and the flow had been one long, brown river of smelly shit fast becoming my life. That needed to change today.

  I needed answers. As if in response to my thought, the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Twelve

  Day Two

  October 28th

  My favorite books growing up were the ones where kids solved mysteries and crimes the adults couldn’t seem to figure out. The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were favorites, but Encyclopedia Brown inspired me to start my own detective agency at the tender age of ten. Stolen lunches and lost toys made up the majority of my cases; cupcakes, Twinkies, and the occasional pudding cup my reward. Early on, it became clear I needed a partner, my own Sally Kimball or Bess Marvin.

  The new girl at school, the mousy one with her nose buried deep into a book on computers, of all things, fit the bill well enough.

  And lo, there’s the tale of the beginning of a lifelong friendship culminating in Jennifer Pena standing at my apartment door, holding a tray with two very large cups of coffee and, unless my nose betrayed me, a bag full of bagels.

  Jenni had come a long way since our first meeting, shedding that mousy girl for a tall, slender woman with reddish-brown hair and smooth, naturally tanned skin. This morning, she sported a bright yellow shirt and a pale purple knit scarf with a matching hat, both of which, if I knew my best friend, she had made herself. Did I mention the pink tennies?

  “Breakfast?” she asked with a smile.

  “Marry me?” I replied, moving aside so she could come in.

  “You look terrible,” she remarked, shedding her light coat and moving into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “Rough couple of days.” Still, she wasn’t wrong. Probably.

  “I know. I heard about Jorge.”

  “Shit. I need to call someone, see how he’s doing.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “There are a lot of angry cops hanging out at the hospital right now, and they’re hunting for someone to blame. I think it’s better if you keep your head down for a day or two.”

  “Great, just great.” I sighed. Of course they wanted a scapegoat. Hadn’t that been part of Mayfair’s pitch to my captain yesterday morning? Though my stomach grumbled, I asked, “Hey, would you mind if I take a quick shower? Before we eat?”

  “No, go for it. I’ll keep this stuff warm.”

  I walked into my bedroom and over to the little desk under the window. The chair wasn’t there. I found it next to the bed, which is odd because—

  —The room faded to a dull gray, the only color a dash of red in the hair of the woman standing just there.

  “You need your rest,” said the old man. He fell into the chair with a groan. The redheaded woman nodded. Even sitting, the old man’s hunched back stooped him over, head down and covered by a large, wide-brimmed hat that cast his face in shadows.

  “Go into the bathroom, change into whatever night clothes you wear to bed, then come back.”

  Moving like an automaton, she did as instructed, each step measured and careful. When she returned, she stood at the foot of the bed, awaiting more instructions.

  “Lie down.”

  Moving around the bed, she sat on the edge, then swung her legs up and under the covers.

  “You’ve had an eventful day,” the old man said, punctuating the sentence with a double tap of his walking stick. “Tell me about Jack Mayfair. Tell me … everything—”

  “—Sam? Sam, what’s wrong? Oh God, your nose! Hold on!”

  Blinking rapidly, I had a view my brain told me had to be the light fixture in the ceiling above my bed. Laying on the floor, head pounding, heart racing, I couldn’t remember how I got there.

  Jenni returned with a wet towel, pressing it against my face. When she pulled it away, a Rorschach pattern of dark red blood bloomed, and all other thoughts faded away.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  “Your nose is gushing! Did you hit it? Is that why you were screaming?”

  “Screaming?” I took the towel and pressed it against my nose with a wince. I didn’t remember hitting it. What happened? I remembered Jenni at the door, then going to take a shower, and the chair—

  “Sam! Stop screaming! What’s wrong?”

  “What?” I asked, dazed. “I … I don’t remember. Screaming? How’d I get on the floor?” I pulled a red-stained towel away from my face, pain stabbing my eyes and my head pounding like my whole brain wanted to bust out of my skull.

  “I think we need to get you to a doctor,” Jenni said, worried.

  “No!” I said a little too fast. “I’ll be fine, really. Just a bloody nose.” Pushing myself to my feet, the pain began to recede.

  Jenni held her arms out to catch me if I fell.

  “I don’t know,” Jenni said.

  “A shower is what I need. Then a bagel. Just give me a minute. Please. It’s okay, really.”

  “Okay, if you say so,” Jenni agreed, but I could tell she wasn’t really buying it.

  I wasn’t sure I did either. What the hell? Turning, I took the bloody towel into the bathroom and closed the door behind me.

  * * *

  One shower, two bagels, and the better part of an extra-tall cup of triple-sweet coffee later, I sat on a stool in my kitchen across from Jenni, wondering how much I could tell her and how much I had to keep secret. Jenni is my best friend in this world, the one person I know I can count on above and beyond all others to always be there for me. She knows the same holds true for me—no matter what, I will be there, which is why it kills me to even consider keeping any of this from her.

  Yet, does telling her about it expose her to the dangers? If she knows Werewolves, Ghosts, Vampires, and freaking dragons are real, what does that mean? Will she spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder? Will she always be wondering if that person is actually a bloodsucking creature of some kind? Or if that one could rip her to shreds with his or her bare hands? Can I do that to my friend?

  On the other hand, I had this massive need to vent to someone.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “You have the expression you had when you stole my boyfriend.”

  For the record, I never stole her boyfriend. Tenth grade was an accident. Mostly. Puberty. Shut up. Plus, I have apologized for it on multiple occasions and once with a very chocolate ice cream cake, so she really just needs to get over it and move on with her life. Besides, she doesn’t even like boys anymore.

  “I don’t know. Stuff. How’s Marie?”

  “Ah, stuff,” she said, deftly ignoring the question about her girlfriend. “Well, let me see if I can fill in some information, then you can tell me if I’m on the right track?”

  I nodded. If she didn’t want to talk about her girlfriend, that’s okay with me, because I didn’t want to talk about my boyfriend—or lack thereof, given we were broken up. Mostly. It’s complicated.

  Jenni worked for the Denver police, same as me. She’d been inspired by my father and his friends but didn’t really have what it takes to walk a beat. And I don’t mean she’s not strong—she’s one of the strongest people I have ever known. No, it’s different for different people. There’s just something else you have to have in order to put yourself out on the street night after night. Jenni knew how the job affected my mom. She wanted to help people, but not if it meant worrying her family every time s
he walked out the door, so she went into computer forensics instead. Put a keyboard in her hands, and she can do some truly remarkable things involving clouds, packets, bytes, and a slew of other words that make about as much sense to me in everyday conversation as Werewolf, Vampire, and dragon do.

  “Jorge is in the hospital, and everyone wants to blame you. You being you, training wasn’t exactly a cakewalk, and you probably wore him down to do something he didn’t want to do.”

  Understatement of the century.

  “Whatever happened next turned south faster than you could keep up with, Jorge got hurt—bad—and now you’re killing yourself with guilt over it. Probably your dad has already added to that guilt.”

  “It gets worse,” I admitted.

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve been transferred. Some kind of specialized task force.”

  “What?” Jenni sputtered. “How the hell did that happen? What kind of task force?”

  “I don’t know everything yet,” I said, mostly truthful. “It happened so quick.” I lit on an idea. “Actually, if you wanted to, maybe you could help me a little?”

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  That’s my girl! “I need you to find out everything you can about my new boss. Name is Jack Mayfair.”

  Jenni reached into her purse and pulled out her smartphone, typing the name into some app.

  “Also, see if you can dig anything up on ‘Rosario.’”

  “First or last name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sounds familiar,” she offered.

  Now that she mentioned it, it did sound familiar.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “When do you start with this new boss?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Oh, ouch.” She winced. “Okay. I will run down what I can when I get to the office.”

  “I’d appreciate anything you can find. I’m flying blind here.”

  “Does the task force have a name?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What sort of cases do they take?”

  “The weird ones.”

  “How weird?” she asked. “Are we talking X-Files weird or naked guy flashing people on the 16th Street Mall weird?”