The Widow File

by S. G. Redling

  “I’m glad. If it makes you feel any better, those guys who went in shooting today? They’re all dead too.”

  Dani closed her eyes and felt the world swirl around her. This man, this killer, was obviously insane, but she wasn’t lying when she answered him. “That does make me feel better.”

  She heard him fumbling. “Hey Dani, can I call you back? I have to take this call. It’s the client. Maybe I can find out what they’re looking for exactly. Would that help?”

  “Yeah, it would. Hey Tom, you wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”

  “No, Dani. I wouldn’t.”

  “If I can’t find this thing or they won’t make a deal, are you going to kill me?”

  She heard him breathe a long sigh. “I’ve really got to take this call.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Tom.”

  She stared at the dark phone in her hand. The evening had grown cold enough that she couldn’t really feel her fingertips, although the shrinking part of her rational mind told her that might partly be from shock. Choo-Choo stood in front of her, his lips moving, but it took more than a few moments before she could make out his rant.

  “… your mind? He wouldn’t lie to you? What do you think? You think this is some kind of blind date?” He grabbed her arms and bent down to stare into her eyes. “Dani, tell me you don’t really trust this guy.”

  “I don’t.” She didn’t. But she did. “I do. I mean, I trust what he tells me. I can’t explain.”

  “I can.” Choo-Choo released her arms and cradled both of her hands in his. “You’re afraid and you’ve been through a horrible trauma. You don’t want this to be happening and he knows that. He’s a professional killer, Dani. He knows how people think. He’s in your apartment right now—your apartment, where you should be eating Thai food, sitting in your pajamas watching crappy movies on your crappy couch with your crappy boyfriend, getting ready to have some crappy sex. But you’re not. You’re not because that man on the phone killed everyone we work with. He blew up our building and kidnapped our boss and now he’s in your apartment trying to figure out how to find you so he can kill you too. Do you hear what I’m saying, Dani? He is going to kill you.”

  Choo-Choo was right. She knew he was, but something in her brain refused to catch on to the truth. As she had learned to do a long time ago, Dani let herself be of two minds. The sensation comforted her. It felt like her brain operated by committee and she only had to observe. She wrapped her arm in Choo-Choo’s and led him down the sidewalk. “We’re going to go to my apartment and wait,” she said. “We’re going to wait outside for him to leave and we’re going to follow him.”

  “He knows what you look like.”

  “He doesn’t know what you look like.” She could feel the wonderful reassurance of thoughts taking shape and lining up in orderly ranks. “He doesn’t know you’re alive. Nobody does. You can follow him and see where he goes, who this client is.”

  “What makes you think he’s going to see the client?”

  “He took the call. He’s not going to stay in my apartment forever. He’s got to go look for me. I bet he’s going to try to find out more information about me. Maybe he’s going to ask Mrs. O’Donnell. We’re going to wait out here with a cab and when he comes out, you follow him.”

  “What are you going to do after we’re gone?”

  “I’m going to go up to my apartment and get some things. Some clothes, some money. A warmer coat, since I’m freezing to death. You tell me if he’s headed back my way.”

  “Maybe he won’t even come back here.”

  She shook her head. “He will. I know it.”

  “Dani,” Choo-Choo started to say more and then stopped. He gripped her arm more tightly and let her set the pace toward her apartment.

  Booker let the client rage while he slipped his socks on, followed by his shoes. He didn’t bother to keep the mouthpiece in place as he bent to tie the laces on his black wingtips, knowing it would be more than a few minutes before he got a chance to speak. He made little noises of agreement as he tucked the pillows back into their narrow curve. He got a few “okays” and “uh-huhs” in as he trailed his fingers over the clothes hanging in Dani’s closet. A lot of black, he noticed. It probably set off her black hair nicely. He tried to stifle a delighted laugh at the size of the boots and shoes scattered on the floor. He had concealed weapons on his body that were longer than her little soles.

  “We’ve got surveillance footage of her car as well as some additional background.” The client’s tirade seemed to be fading. “There’s no conclusive evidence that she’s got our ticket.”

  “She’s got it,” Booker said, sliding the closet shut. “She’s got it and she’s trying to figure out the best way to use it. She may not know what it is, but she knows that you want it.”

  He heard a clatter. The client had thrown something glass against something hard. Booker said nothing to calm the situation. “We’re meeting in fifteen minutes,” the client said. “The Black Door on M Street.”

  “That’s kind of public, isn’t it?”

  “Hiding in plain sight. That seems to be the trend right now.”

  Choo-Choo flagged a cab and bundled Dani inside it. A hundred-dollar bill convinced the old woman driving it to shut off the availability light, crank up the heat, and keep her eyes forward. She took the opportunity to read People magazine while Dani and Choo-Choo crouched low in the backseat watching the door to Dani’s apartment.

  “How long are we going to wait?” Choo-Choo asked. “Are we sure he’s going somewhere tonight?”

  “He’d be a piss-poor… hunter if he didn’t go looking for me.” She caught herself before she said hit man. The woman in the front seat might be ignoring them, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t listening. “He won’t stay out all night. He’ll come back here.”

  Choo-Choo pulled at the placket of his blue flannel shirt. “Let’s hope he’s not going anywhere with a dress code. I’m dressed like a skank. This couldn’t happen on a day I wore something presentable? Do you have any clothes on you?” At her questioning look, he reached for the nylon bag she had carried since pulling it from the trunk of her car. Despite his assurance they would return to the Milum Inn, Dani had insisted on carrying all her bags with her. They were starting to get heavy but their solidity grounded her. Choo-Choo stuck his hand into the bag she’d kept in her trunk and pulled out a faded black T-shirt. “This’ll do.”

  “What? That’s my size.” The words died on her lips as her friend peeled off his flannel shirt and lifted the hem of his stained Cap’n Crunch T-shirt over his head. All that pale skin she’d dreamed of over the years working with him rolled into view, every inch of it as pale and smooth and lovely as she had ever imagined it. He caught her staring at him just as he started to pull the smaller black tee over his head and winked at her.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s small. It’s… it’s really tight in the… It’s tight.” Her fingers fluttered in the general area of his chest and biceps that stood out in detail against the stretched fabric.

  “Give me your jacket.”

  “My what? Choo-Choo, it’s not going to fit.” Even as she protested, her arms moved without her conscious permission, taking off the loose corduroy jacket. “You’re going to look ridiculous in it. The sleeves won’t even reach your elbow.”

  “I know.” He slid into the jacket, the unstructured shape of it giving him just enough room for his shoulders. He unbuttoned the wristbands and rolled them back with a big flared cuff, pushing them almost up to his elbow. The coat barely met at his chest and he didn’t bother trying to button it. “It could be worse,” he said, gently pulling the long knit scarf from around Dani’s throat and wrapping it loosely around his own. “I should probably swap jeans with you. But even I draw the line at skinny jeans.”

  The thought of Choo-Choo stripping off his pants in the narrow confines of the cab made Dani’s mouth go dry and her face burn. He rummaged thr
ough her messenger bag, found her ChapStick, and smeared it over his fingertips. With a little puff of resignation, he ran his greasy fingertips through his blond hair, pushing it against its natural fall, the lip balm breaking the locks into a messy, tousled mop of hair. He reached down into the darkness of the floor well and did something to the cuffs of his jeans that Dani couldn’t see, then leaned back in the seat.

  It took her several seconds to see but when she saw it, she couldn’t look away. “How did you do that? You look like—”

  “A hipster. I know.” Choo-Choo didn’t sound thrilled.

  “How did you do that? I wear that jacket all the time and people tell me I look homeless.”

  He smiled at her. “You don’t look homeless, Dani. A little down on your luck maybe.” She continued to stare. “Look, if he’s meeting this client, he could be going anywhere. Hopefully it’s not some black-tie place. Fortunately those are rare in the city anymore. He’s probably going to a bar or club or someplace high-end, with lots of shadows and discreet seating. If there’s one thing I have plenty of experience with, it’s shadows and discreet seating. And I’m not proud to admit that this isn’t the first tight black T-shirt I’ve used to open doors. Nor is it the first time I’ve stripped in a taxi.”

  Dani forced herself to look back at the apartment building. “When we’re done with this, when we’re drinking that really expensive vodka that the FBI is going to buy for us, we’re going to have so much to talk about.”

  “That we will, Dani B. But for now, there’s our boy.” Choo-Choo leaned over the seat with another one-hundred-dollar bill, resting his chin close to the driver’s ear. “Marilyn, at the risk of being a cliché, do you see that man coming out of that building?”

  “Let me guess,” the driver put down her magazine. “You want me to follow his cab.”

  “Sorry to be so dull.”

  She considered him in the rearview mirror as Dani gathered her bags to slip out. “Honey, I get the feeling there is nothing dull about you.”

  Dani closed the door on Choo-Choo’s soft laugh, staying low in the shadows behind the cab until she saw the man hail another cab. She tapped on the window and Choo-Choo pressed his hand against the glass as the cab pulled into traffic.

  She wished she had seen more of Tom when he’d come down the steps to the sidewalk but she couldn’t risk being spotted. As far as she could tell, he didn’t know she knew where he was, that he had gotten into her apartment, that she knew what he looked like. It wasn’t much of an advantage but she’d take anything she had. Now she didn’t know if she had minutes or hours, but she needed to get into her apartment and get some things.

  Dani wondered if she would have felt the invasion if she hadn’t known about it. As soon as she opened the door, she could feel the difference in the air. She had no idea what Tom had touched, where he’d been in her space, what he had gone through, but Dani would swear she could feel the change. It wasn’t all paranoia either. Dani had always been able to tell as soon as she opened her door if Ben had stopped by in her absence. But Tom wasn’t Ben and she doubted very seriously if the killer would have stopped by just to bring her some shrimp lo mein.

  She moved to the kitchen. He’d been in her silverware drawer. The roll rail for that drawer had broken months ago and if you didn’t lift the drawer just so it closed crookedly. Dani knew how to close it without even thinking. The half-inch gap in the top right corner screamed at her like a siren, telling her to run and never come back.

  She couldn’t tell if he’d disturbed anything in the front room. She hardly ever sat out here when Ben wasn’t around, hating that lumpy couch she’d never gotten around to replacing. A flush of embarrassment rose on her cheeks as she looked at her living space with the eyes of an intruder. What impression had she made? The furniture looked cheap and lonely. Dani made good money at Rasmund and the rent wasn’t inexpensive. She’d taken the apartment because she liked the neighborhood. There just never seemed a convenient time to shop for better furniture or wall art. Did she look poor? Trashy?

  “What the hell, Dani?” She spoke loudly enough to shake herself from her thoughts. What did she care if the man who was hired to kill her didn’t approve of her décor?

  She was starting to sound as weird as, well, as weird as Tom sounded. He did sound weird, like he was attached to her in some way she couldn’t understand. Maybe that was a psychology of killers that she wasn’t familiar with. Maybe they needed to personalize their victims. Maybe he was trying to trick her into thinking they had a connection.

  It didn’t feel like a trick. It didn’t sound like one. Dani didn’t have Choo-Choo’s ear for the human voice but she prided herself on having an introvert’s natural manipulation sensor. Dani had always had a good sense of when she was being played and while it seemed bizarre to admit it, this didn’t seem to be one of those times. He hadn’t lied to her about being obligated to kill her either. Rather than lose herself in the ever-darkening possibilities these thoughts were leading to, Dani decided to file them away under the pros list in her ongoing pros/cons tally.

  Then she stepped into her bedroom. She knew immediately where Tom had been. Dani only made her bed before and after Ben came over. Otherwise her flannel sheets stayed in the shape of the nest she made in them. Dani considered her bed and the act of climbing into the warm little pocket she’d left there to be one of life’s most sublime pleasures. She’d set up everything in the area just so, from just enough room on her nightstand for a bottle of beer or a glass of water to the fold of the yellow duvet. She knew that when she climbed in, laptop in tow, her feet would dip naturally into the shallow indents she’d created in her mattress and the down comforter would puff up around her knees high enough to make her feel cozy but not so high as to block the fan vent on her laptop. Her pillows would be just where she needed them.

  She wondered if she would ever be able to get into her bed again.

  He was good. She had to give him that. The pillows were almost exactly as she’d left them and the comforter hadn’t been misshaped to any extreme, but Dani knew. She could feel it and the feeling of violation bordered on revulsion. She had to snap out of this, she knew. She had to get her things, get the hell out of here, and do something to keep that promise she’d made to herself in Rasmund when Tom had lied to her on the phone. She was going to kill him. She didn’t know how but right now, staring at the perversion of her safest of safe places, she knew she would kill him.

  She dropped to the floor beside her nightstand, trying not to look at her sheets. The thought that he might have done something revolting like jacking off in her bed made the blood pound in her ears.

  Later, she reminded herself. Later she could figure out how to kill him. Now she had to stay alive. Now she needed to gather whatever supplies she could.

  She lifted the edge of the rag rug and slid her hand along the floor. There was the knot in the pine floor. Two boards over and she pounded the side of her fist against the plank, popping it out of place. She worked by feel, moving her fingers along the narrow space until she found the plastic baggie stuffed with two thousand dollars and her passport. Choo-Choo seemed to have plenty of hundred-dollar bills in his wallet and she could only imagine why he carried that kind of cash, but neither of them could use their bank cards until this was over. Dani had little doubt that her accounts had been flagged and she would be tracked immediately. So far it seemed nobody knew about Choo-Choo making it out of Rasmund but they had to assume safeguards had been put in place. From this point on, they were a cash-only operation.

  Dani could work with that. This was just one stash she had in her place. She moved back to the laundry room, the same room where her work cubby lay hidden behind the prayer scarf and ironing board. She didn’t bother with that; she grabbed the plastic step stool and climbed on top of it in front of the washer/dryer combo. She had to lean to reach the Styrofoam pad she’d taped to the wall, the pad she’d told Ben she’d put there to keep the machine from ratt
ling so loudly against the wall. It was true that the pad had that quality. What it also had was a hollow center. It was a piece of packing material from a printer she’d gotten years before and she’d saved it for just this reason. Sliding her hand between the dryer and the wall, Dani’s fingers found another plastic baggie tucked into the foam opening. She pulled it out without dislodging the pad and saw the red rubber band wrapped around the bills. Five hundred dollars.

  There was one more stash of money. Dani didn’t know if or what they’d need the cash for but there was no way she was leaving this security behind for that crazy man. It was stupid, she knew. She had to get clothes and other supplies and she probably wasn’t even going to survive the night but she had learned early that cash is king; cash is freedom and Dani wasn’t giving her freedom to anyone.

  She flipped on the light in the kitchen. It had to have been more than twenty years earlier, before her mother had “taken a turn,” before Dani had spent her summers with her father in the cab of his big rig, that she used to go along with her mother on her job as housekeeper. She still remembered the badly concealed frowns of displeasure on the faces of the women her mother cleaned for, the looks of annoyance that their cleaning “girl” had brought a child along with her. Her mother always promised Dani would behave and Dani never let her down. She’d follow behind her mother like a ghost, peering into people’s laundry rooms and closets, into their medicine chests and food pantries. Dani would curl up like a mouse and watch her mother tackle soap scum and wine stains and stains on bedsheets that would make her mother blush.

  Most of the time, especially as her mother’s illness took hold, she would work quietly, lost in her own thoughts, looking up only occasionally to be sure Dani was minding her. Every once in a while, however, her mother would smile while she worked, winking at Dani and sharing little secrets with her about the people whose houses she was cleaning.