by Andy Rane
James walked into the gas station store, rubbing his hands against the cold, dry air. There was a young guy behind the counter with a bag of sunflower seeds. He looked bored, and his crooked nametag read “Jo-n”, as if the “h” had fallen off at some point and he’d just never bothered to make a new one.
“Bathroom?” James asked.
“Yep,” said Jo-n, and he pointed to a hallway in the back of the store.
By the time James came back out, Kevin and Paynter were standing at the counter. Paynter had pulled out a rather large clip of bills. James gave the clip a sideways look.
“Knew it was gonna be a long trip,” Paynter said in response.
“Guess so,” James said.
“Do you want anything? Something to snack on?” Paynter said.
“No,” James said, quickly, then added, “Thanks.”
“You haven’t had anything to eat today…you must be running on empty,” Paynter said.
James looked at him, trying to imagine the man as someone’s grandfather.
“Yeah, thanks, that’s ok, I’ll be fine. I’ll just ask Nic if she wants any--”
“She’s already come and gone,” Paynter said, a smile lighting his face. “I can’t imagine she eats that crap all the time, with a figure like that, but she must’ve had a craving…or something.”
Over Paynter’s shoulder, James saw Jo-n smiling and nodding, as if it was the funniest thing he’d seen in a long time.
“Two bags of stuff!” he said, half a sunflower shell flying, unnoticed by him, from his lips. He grinned broadly at James with another black shell still covering one tooth.
“Right,” James said. “I’ll be in the car.”
He walked out to find that Nicole had already taken over the rear seat. He stuck his head just inside the door. She was sitting with an open bottle of root beer in one hand and the half-eaten remains of a Twinkie in the other. Despite his cheerless disposition, she smiled at him. There was a smudge of white cream on her cheek.
“Is there room for me back there?” he asked, the anger melting away for a moment.
“No. Kevin’s sitting back here. Maybe he’ll even hold my hand,” she said.
“That’s not funny,” he said and slid into the seat beside her, pulling an empty wrapper out from under him.
“You can’t just hide away back here, James,” she said through a mouthful of Twinkie.
“Well, why not? I don’t feel like talking,” he said.
“Because it’s going to be a long trip and…”
“To where? Where the hell are we going?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I trust him. I think he’s really a nice man. There’s something very sincere about him. You were asleep. We talked about a lot of things. He really opened up to us. He wanted to tell Kevin something, talk to him about what it is we’re doing, but said it would be unfair to talk without you being awake for it.”
“How can you trust him?” James said. “This man, pushing sixty, walks into my house and shoots another man with a poison dart?”
“That guy had a gun on you, and you want to persecute your savior? What is wrong with you, James? What is it that’s bothering you?”
At that moment, both doors opened. Paynter got in on the driver’s side and sat down, turning to look at the both of them.
“Gas prices are outrageous,” he said.
Both James and Nicole nodded wordlessly. Kevin sat down in the passenger seat without a word and stretched his legs. James didn’t take his eyes off Paynter.
“Right,” Paynter said, “First-off, I pushed past sixty a few years back. I’m sixty-six. Second, that dart had Risperdal in it, not poison…though some might argue otherwise. And third, you’ve got a pretty powerful voice when you’re angry.”
James turned away and glowered out the front window.
“I have every reason to be angry,” James said.
“You deserve answers,” Paynter said.
“Then why don’t we hear some,” James said, no longer trying to hide how he felt.
“Fine,” Paynter said, and turned in his seat.
“Are our parents still alive?” Kevin said, suddenly.
Paynter frowned sympathetically at him and shook his head to the negative.
“No. In fact, their deaths are why we’re here,” Paynter said.
James focused on every aspect of Paynter’s face. This was where he’d expose his lies, James thought. Paynter continued.
“Your real parents were military folk. They had no extended family, so when they were both killed a week after—“
“How?” James interrupted.
“Car accident,” Paynter said too quickly for James.
“Oh,” Nicole said softly, biting her bottom lip.
“Anyway, the government stepped in and made some…bad decisions. What they had planned was immoral and unethical and those of us involved decided to put a stop to it. Myself, Dr. Taylor, and a woman by the name of Agnes Richardson formulated a plan to…hide you. It was crazy, but apparently they hadn’t seen it coming. By the time we were gone, the trail was cold. They chased me around the country for a while, but after a half dozen years or so, I stopped running…and they seemed content at giving up the chase. Then I received a phone call from an old friend. Agnes Richardson, who’d been living under a fake name, was murdered the other day…and the rumor was that it was a professional job. Why someone would go to the trouble of killing a woman in her early seventies beats me. Poor Agnes…,” Paynter’s voice faded and he seemed to lose focus.
“Why now, though?” James said. As hard as he had looked, James could pin no insincerity on the man…and that bothered him.
“I’m afraid we might have Dr. Taylor to blame for that. I’m not sure he ever stopped running. Tired of it, I think he might have mailed some documents to a couple of the big newspapers. If the papers tried to vet the information, it might have knocked the cobwebs off of some old files…and some forgotten fears,” Paynter said.
“So, now what?” Kevin asked.
“Now we go to find your brother,” Paynter said.
“Three of us, huh?” James said.
“Yes…three,” Paynter said and James wondered why the man had suddenly hesitated.
“Cool,” Kevin said.
“Yeah…well, we’d better figure out where we are headed,” Paynter said.
“What?” James said.
“You’re the one with the directions, James,” Paynter said.
“Ummm…ok. I don’t understand.”
“The envelope,” Paynter said and he started the car.
“It’s an empty old envelope,” James said.
“Sometimes you gotta think outside the box, James…or in this case, outside the envelope.” Paynter said
James unzipped his coat and pulled the envelope out from the inside pocket. He held it in his hand. Opening it, he pulled out the fake birth certificate and dropped it into his lap. He held the envelope up to the window as if to look through it. Nicole leaned over his shoulder, straining to get a better look.
“See anything?” Paynter said.
“No,” James said, straining to make something out of the nothing he was seeing.
“Good, that’s how it was designed,” Paynter said.
“And you designed it,” James said.
“Well, yeah, I guess I did,” Paynter said, as if that was the first he had ever thought of it that way.
“So, what am I missing?”
“Pull the envelope apart at the seal…as gently as you can,” Paynter said.
“You mean where the paper’s glued together?”
“Yes,” Paynter said and he reached down to his left and pulled out a compact US map.
James pulled at the center point of the envelope and gently tore the glued edges apart. First one, then the other. Then he saw it. In faint lettering visible beneath the glue, there were several letters, seemingly written in pencil. HUBBARDOH. James read the l
etters out.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“It’s a location,” Paynter said.
“O-H,” Nicole said, “Ohio?”
“Not exactly cryptic,” Paynter said, with a little laugh, and he scanned the map in his hand. James continued to look at the envelope, his head cocked to one side.
“And this is?” James said.
“Where your other brother lives,” Paynter said, “It sounds right. I’m not quite sure…it has been twenty-four years.” James shook his head.
“Great plan you have here,” James said.
“It’s worked so far. You’re alive aren’t you?”
“This was meant to keep me alive?” James asked.
“Give the guy a break, James,” Kevin said.
“So, where in Ohio is this?” said Nicole.
“That I don’t know. What I do know is that this map is useless. We’ll need a more detailed Ohio map.”
“Think the store has one?” James said.
“I gave a quick look before, knowing that we’d need a map eventually, but I didn’t see any. We might just have to wait until the border.”
“Great plan,” James said, tossing the torn envelope on the floor.
“The idea was to keep people away from you,” Paynter said.
“Including yourself,” James said.
“Yes,” Paynter said, quite seriously.
“Why?” James said.
“So they couldn’t use me against you,” he said, and started up the car.
Chapter 12
Samuel Isaacson stood at the end of his driveway, wearing nothing but his pajamas and thin summer robe. Despite the month, and despite the weather, he just couldn’t be bothered to get his winter robe down from the attic. Besides, he only ever wore it to get the paper in the morning. It usually took him all of a minute to complete the task. The driveway just wasn’t that long. Today, however, he had stopped at the end of the driveway long enough to feel the chill. Something had caught his eye.
The light on in the neighbor’s kitchen should not have bothered him as much as it did now. The neighborhood had been a quiet place to live for the past forty some odd years. You couldn’t change your cologne without someone knowing about it, but at the same time, they were all good people. They had all stopped by to give their condolences when his wife had passed three years earlier. Some of them even left food. One of the young couples had even added him to their Christmas card list, and he’d never had the heart to tell them their mistake. They were good people, and you just couldn’t take that for granted. The Masterson’s were good people too and living next to them had never been cause for excitement. That is, it hadn’t been, until the other night.
The previous morning, there had been a knock on Samuel’s door as soon as it was light. The officers were polite, if not a little brusque. Yes, he had heard the sirens, but only briefly. No, he hadn’t looked out the window, despite the flashing lights. He takes medicine to sleep at night and anything less than eight hours and he’s a zombie. Yes, he knew the boy lived alone. His mother was a wonderful woman and his father had always been there when Samuel needed something fixed around the house. He missed their presence, but he was sure they were with God. No, he didn’t know the boy well. He was a polite, respectful boy who had offered to shovel his driveway every time it snowed, but they hadn’t actually spoken much. Samuel felt bad for him, having lost both parents at such a young age. No, he didn’t know where the boy might be. As far as Samuel knew, the boy had a job. He had an uncle who lived somewhere in the Midwest. He had been down for the funeral a few weeks before, but that was all he really knew of that. No, he really didn’t know where James might be, or why he would have left his car, or why he might have dialed 911 in the middle of the morning and then disappeared. Yes, if he saw James, he would be sure to contact the police.
“Is the boy in trouble?” Samuel had asked.
“No, we’d just like to ask him some questions,” was the response they gave him.
Of course, Samuel thought.
So, now, as he stood looking at the light coming from James’ kitchen, that had not been on first thing this morning, it occurred to him what the officer had said. Samuel should call the police. Not because he had said he would, but because of the chill that had run through him upon seeing the light on. It hadn’t been from the cold after all. It was something else.
He gripped the paper and found himself moving through the snow, across the space between his driveway and James’ back porch. He paused when a figure moved quickly past the window. He cursed his forgetfulness, remembering his glasses were on his kitchen table. But, who the hell needs glasses to fetch the paper? He moved forward again, squinting in a vain attempt to gain some focus. His eyes remained on the window. He was almost to the back of the house when the kitchen light went off. The leather of his slippers seemed to be frozen to the snow, as he found it difficult to move. The thumping of his heart was deafening in his own ear and for a moment he imagined that the person in the house had heard this and run.
Samuel stepped up onto the back porch. With the light no longer on, the kitchen was obscured in the darkness. He looked at the back door. The handle looked damaged, though maybe he was just imagining it to be worse than it really was. Over-reactive fool, Samuel thought. But, when he reached for the handle, it gave a little too much and the door pushed open with little effort. He called out weakly and then cleared his throat to try again.
“James?” he said, though still not very loudly. He stood just inside the door and listened. He thought he could hear someone talking and called again. The talking stopped. Samuel walked further into the dark kitchen. He glanced around nervously. There were a few dirty dishes in the sink, but as far as he could tell, there was nothing out of the ordinary. No sign of struggle, no pool of blood. He glanced at the dinette and stopped once again. The teacup was placed at the edge of the table. The spoon was still in it, steam rising steadily from the lip. He heard the voice again, coming from the living room. It sounded a lot like James’, which emboldened him.
“James?” he called louder and strode to the living room.
When he rounded the corner, he saw a man with his back to him, sitting hunched on an ottoman in the middle of the room. It was James; at least, it looked like James. It was hard for Samuel to tell, without his glasses. But, this man had the same hunch in his shoulders that made James appear to be about an inch shorter than he probably was. But, he was dressed like Samuel had never seen him dress before. And, there was something about his hair. Something not quite right. He realized the man must be on the phone, and he spoke again, with somewhat less conviction.
“I’m sorry to bother you, James--” but the man, James, cut him off by standing up and suddenly speaking very loud. It confused Samuel.
“I said, there’s an intruder in my house!”
The man spun around on his heels with his arms spread out to both sides so suddenly that Samuel staggered and dropped his newspaper. This was not James. At least, this was no James he knew. His eyes didn’t need to be in focus, nor did they need the full light of day to know this was not James. But, it could have been his grandfather. Then, the spell was broken by what he knew to be a gun in the man’s left hand.
“James…you’re not…”
“Thank you,” the man whispered, and he quickly raised the barrel of the gun. Samuel barely had time to register the pain of the first two rounds when the third brought darkness.
Chapter 13
When he awoke, Dr. Fred Taylor reached for his neck, half expecting to find a large hole oozing what remained of his blood onto his neck. Much to his temporary relief, though still painful, his hand came back sans blood. Then he remembered why he was prone, what he had just been doing. He sat up quickly, a flash of white light tearing at his eyes and head. He wavered a moment, trying to blink away the pain. He couldn’t see for the stars, but he heard a voice behind him.
“The good doctor rises,” the ma
n said.
The sarcasm was evident to Dr. Taylor, but when he responded, he was in no way fit to question its reasoning. He kept his eyes closed, focusing on his words.
“Who are you?” Taylor asked.
“I am your goddamn guardian angel, Doc.”
Dr. Taylor tried to think through the pain in his head. It was letting up, or perhaps he was just growing used to it. He opened his eyes again, just a crack. He was no longer in the Masterson house; that much was certain. He still could not see the man who was speaking to him. He decided that, for now, it didn’t matter anyway.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“At the rattiest little motel I could find in the area. They don’t even ask you if you want them super-sized, they just come that way,” said the man, who followed the remark with a hoarse laugh.
“Why am I here, and not still on the floor in that house,” said Dr. Taylor.
“Because I wasn’t hired to kill you. But, you got in my way, and now you’re going to help me finish the job,” the man said.
“You weren’t following me?” Taylor asked.
“No, but I guess I should have. I was right there…and you went and fucked it all up.”
“It’s not over,” Taylor said.
“You better believe it’s not over. That’s why I saved your ass,” the man said. Taylor could see smoke and smell the cigarette.
Dr. Taylor touched his hand to his neck again, still expecting a Monty-Pythonesque stream of blood to start shooting from it. It still hurt. His whole neck and back hurt.
“You should’ve just left me on the floor,” Taylor said.
“The police were already on the way,” the man said.
“They called the police?”
“In a sense. You must’ve scared ‘em pretty good to get ‘em to leave in such a hurry. But, the boy was smart enough to drop your cell phone on your lap and boogie on out the door before anyone showed up. Luckily, I was right around the corner, waiting for said departure.”
“The boy? My cell phone? Jesus Christ…it probably wasn’t him…it was Paynter,” Taylor said.
“Paynter? Dr. Robert Paynter?” the man asked, a new enthusiasm in his voice.