They had troubled me at first, these shades that followed me around. Now what bothered me was that I had almost grown used to them, that I could go on finishing my coffee or climb back into bed beside Kelly even with the dead girl in the room.
“Tom?”
I approached the bed. My eyes followed the curls of Kelly’s hair and the curve of her neck. I smiled. “I never remember my dreams.”
She propped herself up on her elbow. The sheets fell away. She reached for my wrist and pulled me into bed. I wrapped her up in my arms, looked at her for what seemed a long time, then rolled her on top of me. She kissed me, buried her face in my neck.
“I’m all sweaty,” I warned her.
“I don’t care.” She closed her teeth on the muscle at the side of my neck and made hungry noises. I caught her hands, pushed her back. She came down on her side on the bed. I moved closer, lying behind her. She backed into me. I grabbed her hips, felt her press harder, arch her head back as my lips found her ear, her cheek, her mouth.
We moved together, lost in each other’s bodies.
Afterward, she fell asleep, on her side, tucked under my arm, with her head on my shoulder. I wanted to join her, to give in to the drowsiness, but I couldn’t. I hadn’t slept—really slept—beside a woman in two years, only passed the night half awake, remembering the last time I’d given in to sleep beside someone. When I woke up, she was torn apart, and the blood was on my hands.
Kelly didn’t really know anything about me, though we’d been together for almost a year, long distance. At the beginning it had been mainly physical, but it had become something more, even if we didn’t acknowledge it. I’d never fallen into such an easy rhythm with someone.
She didn’t ask about why I had left the navy. Maybe she sensed it wasn’t something she wanted to know.
We were in San Diego for only a few days. I’d come to town on business, a medical conference, and she joined me afterward. She lived in Boston, and I had been moving around a lot.
With these weekends together, these sudden intimacies, the absences between, it was getting more serious than it would have if we’d lived near each other. I couldn’t let the past repeat itself, couldn’t let that happen again, not to her. I had been alone for a while now, and I hadn’t felt this way in a long time, but I couldn’t give in to it. It would be my weakness, and she would suffer.
Boom-boom-boom. A fist pounded on the door.
Kelly sat up in bed. “What’s that?”
“I got it.”
She held the sheets up to her chin. I pulled my shorts and a sweatshirt on and checked the peephole. It was a man in his forties with deep-set eyes. His lower lip was tucked behind his front teeth, making him look anxious and angry. Short-sleeved black uniform, SDPD badge: a local cop.
“Who is it?”
“Police.”
“About a case?” Kelly asked as she stepped out of bed and pulled the hotel robe on. I’m a doctor, and I sometimes talk to cops around the emergency department. “I don’t know,” I said, and I opened the door. Beside the local police officer, there was a man in a dark blue suit.
“Are you Thomas Byrne?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Special Agent Cruz with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You’ll have to come with us.” He lifted a warrant: You are commanded to arrest and bring before this court Thomas Byrne. It was a material-witness charge.
“Let’s go.”
“Is this about a patient?” I asked, and I started thinking back over the recent victims of violent crime who had been on my operating table. “I’m on vacation. Can we do it some other time?”
“Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
Kelly stepped beside me. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I said.
As I reached down, the agent and the local cop pulled their guns. “Stop right there!”
I lifted my hands.
“My wallet.”
Cruz turned, saw it, picked it up, and handed it to me.
“Where are you taking him?” Kelly asked.
“Local precinct.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Stay here,” I told her, picking up my cell phone and keeping my voice calm and even. “I’ll get this sorted out.”
I kissed her, then stepped outside onto the terraced walkway that ran around the exterior of the hotel. The agent cuffed my hands behind my back as Kelly stood in the door, a shocked look on her face.
“You’re done,” Cruz whispered in my ear as he jacked my arm up. I crossed toward the stairwell and could only imagine what Kelly was thinking.
They had come with the tactical teams: four vans, a loose perimeter with security at every exit, and deputies carrying rifles.
After all those years of guilt, I had expected some reckoning, pictured a thousand variations. But this didn’t make any sense.
They marched me downstairs to the parking lot and stuffed me into the back of a Chevy Tahoe. Two officers stood in front of Kelly. They had stopped her on the walkway near the top of the stairs. There was fear and confusion in her face, and a question: What did you do? She had been too smart to ask it.
I watched her through the window as the Tahoe pulled away. A material-witness charge, Feds, and long guns; they’d come for me with everything they had.
Chapter 8
“BOSTON, SEATTLE, HOMER, Flagstaff, Silver Spring.” Cruz shut the file. “You’ve lived in five cities in the last year.”
“That’s right.”
I rested my elbows on the metal table. We were at the police station, in an interview room with cinder-block walls painted white. A mirror, which I assumed was one-way glass for observation, was set into the blocks over Cruz’s head.
“What are you running from?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I move around for my job.”
“You’re a doctor. Emergency medicine, right?”
“A trauma surgeon. I work in emergency departments or trauma units. Locum tenens.”
“What does that mean?”
“Placeholder. It’s a doctor who goes where he’s needed.”
“And you chose to be this kind of doctor?”
“For now. It’s good money. A chance to travel.”
“Like I said, what are you running from?”
It was a good question, and I took my time answering it. I’m wary of people who are smarter than they look. They’re the dangerous ones.
I thought back to my last hospital, to the chief of the department’s office. I’d just finished cleaning myself up after a surgery. The medical center was in Prince George’s County, outside DC. We had a lot of gunshot wounds, a lot of PCP and bath-salt cases. The place was a knife-and-gun club, which kept me busy, which I liked. The chief offered me a permanent position, which was a great compliment, but I had to pass. I couldn’t stay.
“How many died?” I’d asked him. I had to know.
“Sorry?”
“From my table, how many died post-op?”
“Two,” he said.
I looked down, took a long breath in and let it out through my nose. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s the best record we’ve had in this hospital by far. I don’t even know that they could have been prevented.”
I said nothing.
“People die. You can’t save them all, and you can’t take it personally. Are you sure you won’t reconsider?” he asked.
“I appreciate it, really. But I’m going to be moving on.”
What are you running from? Where do you go, Tom? I had a few ideas, but I wasn’t about to share them with Cruz.
“You’re just a doctor, huh?” he said; he ran his tongue over his teeth and lifted a file. “I don’t think so.”
He took out a sheet of paper and whistled. “You’re in a world of hurt here, Byrne. Let’s start from the beginning. When did you fly into Southern California?”
&n
bsp; Question by question, I went through every minute of the last four days, and then Cruz started again from the beginning.
“I just told you.”
“Tell me again.”
He was looking for inconsistencies, for cracks. I ran through it all three times. They worked on me in turns—Cruz, a man from DHS, and another who didn’t bother identifying himself—asking me questions that made no sense: Had I been to North Carolina? When was the last time I’d left the United States?
“You can’t bullshit me, Byrne,” Cruz said. “I want the names of everyone you spoke with since you arrived here, from the top.”
I had dealt with guys like him before, in the navy, during the long investigations that came down right before I left. The secret to holding out against them is counterpoise: the angrier they get, the calmer you become; the more terrifying the stakes, the more you relax. Pushing back only lands you in trouble. They want emotion, a fight, anything to get you talking. They can’t stand trying to rattle the Buddha.
“I would like to talk to a lawyer,” I repeated, again. He was exhausted, I could tell. I was too. They hadn’t let me go to the bathroom for the past three hours. My head hurt; as they were escorting me into booking, they had banged my forehead on a door frame, causing a small laceration.
Cruz ignored me and started reading from the paper in front of him. “Use of a weapon of mass destruction. That’s life right there. Game over. And just for kicks, we add conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries. Not even your ghost will see parole.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Will you just tell me—”
“Conspiracy to destroy property by fire and explosive, twenty years. Use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, life. Carjacking.”
He was dumpy; his head was shaved, and the back of the neck looked like a pack of hot dogs. With my past and my job, I’m pretty good under pressure, even enjoy it after a fashion. But what little I knew about material-witness warrants made my mouth go dry with fear. I’d read stories in the paper about trumped-up national security charges, stupid mistakes, Feds run riot. People would be arrested and disappear—no lawyers, no press, no details to the family; they’d just be locked in windowless boxes for months or years.
Why hadn’t they read me my rights? Or let me call anyone or talk to a lawyer?
“Listen,” I said. “I have a lot of respect for the work you guys are doing. But there must be some sort of mistake. Like I told you, I’m just a doctor getting some R and R after an acute-care symposium. If you would explain why you’ve brought me in and let me call my girlfriend or a lawyer, we can sort this out without—”
“The only mistake is yours, cocksucker.” Cruz stood, shoved his chair back, and put his face in mine, his mouth shut tight, eyes slit in anger like he was about to deck me. I balled my fists until my fingernails bit deep into the flesh of my palms. I could feel the fury surge through me.
He put his hands on his hips and stuck out his chest, enjoying the fact that he was getting to me.
No. It’s what he wanted. If they couldn’t get me for a crime, they would just twist me until I gave them some reason to lock me up. This was a test, and the best way to get back at this man would be to deprive him of the pleasure of provoking me.
He was in his glory, with a genuine bad guy on his hands, puffed up like a boy playing soldier. But behind it there was fear. He kept his eyes fixed on me at all times, never turned his back. If anyone really thought that this case matched up to the charges he had listed, they would all be absolutely terrified of screwing it up, and of me.
“You’re not going to hit me, so drop the act and let me go to the bathroom.”
He shook his head and gave me a disgusted look.
“I am requesting counsel,” I said.
“Public-safety exception,” Cruz sneered. I could see my calm demeanor was setting him on edge more than any tough-guy act would. “I know you were in on that hit on the truck last night. So tell us. Where is the shipment?”
Last night. That was the first real detail anyone had let slip.
“I know you and all the other guys in your unit went to school for this. Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. We know the tricks.”
My unit? What was he talking about? I didn’t go to SERE.
“What am I supposed to have taken?”
He moved in close again, kissing close, then brought his mouth to my ear. “Pandora’s box. And we’re going to nail you for it.”
“Last night?” I asked. “Last night, between six and eleven p.m., I was at the home of Allison Archambault in Laguna Niguel. Have you tried talking to her yet?”
“So you know nothing except when the crime occurred.”
“You said last night!”
“And what, you have some accessory lined up with a ready-made alibi?”
“It was a fund-raiser for pediatric cardiology at UCLA. I was there the whole time. I spent forty-five minutes talking to the host. I can give you her number. She’s the former mayor.”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down twice. The agent glanced up at the camera. I looked at it too.
“Please. This is a mistake. Just call.”
He turned the list of charges around and left it on the table in front of me. It was six lifetimes of prison. I could guess what they were doing. No one could be more brutal to me than I could, so they’d left me alone to stew.
As the door closed, I saw him again. Every time they moved me, every time a new face appeared, the people holding me eye-checked a man who was wearing a light gray suit that cost a thousand dollars more than everyone else’s.
And no matter how wrong they were, with stakes like these, the time was working on me. One wrong word could mean my life was over. I didn’t know who the agent was talking to. Those crimes could easily be rounded into a capital case.
An hour passed. And another. And being locked up alone was bad enough, but soon the dead came, one by one, slumped in a corner of the room or leaning over my shoulder and whispering in my ear: We finally got you.
A beautiful woman from my past sat in the chair across from me, her body torn apart, and she asked me why she was dead and I was still alive.
I watched the red hand sweep on the interview-room clock. Six hours I’d been here. I hoped for Kelly’s sake that she had packed up and left, but I knew she’d be waiting for me. She had no idea what I did to people.
She was a civil engineer and served part-time in the Massachusetts National Guard. I had been a doctor with the navy, a surgeon.
She came into the ER a year ago, a workplace accident on a bridge construction. A cable had snapped and opened up her shoulder. I sewed her up. She was funny, reminded me of another girl I once knew with green eyes and a no-bullshit affect. Doctors have to be careful about patients falling for them, careful about taking advantage of the trust and power that comes with the ability to heal. I didn’t like the doctors who crossed that line. But with Kelly, I didn’t really have a say. She was getting discharged just as I wrapped up my shift. I was leaving town in two days. She told me she had a beat-up 1980s Honda motorcycle waiting for her back at the site.
“You shouldn’t be riding,” I said.
She looked at my keys and then at me. It was a look I knew pretty well.
“I don’t date patients.”
She lifted her papers. “I’m not your patient, and I don’t really have time for dates.”
“You don’t want anything to do with me. Let me call you a cab.”
“I don’t need to be told what I want.”
In the end, I didn’t stand a chance.
She asked me only once about what I’d done in the service. Before I became a doctor, I was a corpsman, the navy equivalent of a medic. I had been attached to a Marine expeditionary unit. The Marines are technically part of the navy, and the navy takes care of everything that has to do with medicine. I
went through the training for the Fleet Marine Force, wore the Marine uniform with U.S. Navy insignia, followed Marine discipline, and deployed with a squad. It was called going greenside. The photo and statue of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima is actually four Marines and one navy corpsman.
It’s not uncommon for Marines and navy guys to beat the shit out of each other in bars, but when I went out with the infantry guys, we all did fine. Once your Marines start trusting you as a corpsman, they call you Doc as a sign of respect.
After Kelly and I got together that first time, she asked me why I’d left the navy. I started to say something, then stopped. It was dangerous territory. She never asked again.
I had told her early on, straight out, that if she knew what was good for her, she’d find someone else.
She just laughed. “I like what I see so far.”
There had been women since, but none like her. It was the first time I’d thought, I’d hoped, I could change, for her sake, and for mine.
But she couldn’t say I hadn’t warned her.
The door opened. It was Cruz. I was innocent; innocent of everything he had thrown at me, at least. But that didn’t matter. The waiting, the seconds were wearing me down.
Cruz conferred with the man in the gray suit just before he entered.
“You’re free to go,” he said.
My mouth dropped open. I had questions, sure. I almost started to ask one, but my first priority was getting the hell out of there. I stood and walked straight through the door. They gave me back my wallet and pink-slipped my cell phone. It was in Evidence. The clerk hadn’t even finished the report.
I’d been in that room so long, the sun’s light blinded me as I exited the building. I jogged across the street, looking for anyplace that wasn’t a police station where I could use the bathroom.
I walked out of the McDonald’s with a cup of coffee and a handful of change.
Nothing about it made sense. They had had me in for everything short of treason, and then they’d let me walk without a word. I scanned the street for a pay phone.
Cold Barrel Zero Page 4