The Snow Swept Trilogy

by Derrick Hibbard

  “Your passport and boarding pass, sir?” the steward asked Ryan, startling Mae. She’d been so busy watching the flight attendants in the rear of the airplane, that she hadn’t noticed the steward working his way back through the first class section. The steward looked past Ryan and smiled at her, but his smile was tired and worn. Ryan leaned down into his bag—a leather attaché case—and pulled out his passport, grumbling all the way.

  “What’s going on?” Ryan demanded as the steward opened the passport and studied the picture there, and then compared the name with the name on the boarding pass. “You all saw my ticket and picture ID before we got on the plane and that was after spending an hour in the security line. This is just ridiculous. Why can’t you just do this as we’re leaving the plane?”

  “We are taking some precautionary measures before we land,” the steward said and handed the passport and ticket back to Ryan. He grunted and slid them into his bag.

  “That’s stupid."

  “I’m sorry for the inconvenience, sir.” The steward said, and then held out his hand to Mae.

  “Take the lovely young lady you’re harassing at this very moment,” Ryan said. “You think she’s some sort of terrorist? You think she's going to land herself a harem of virgins? I mean, look at her. She’s as blonde-haired and blue—oh wait, those are green—but about as American as you can be.”

  With his mention of the word ‘terrorist,’ the old lady across the aisle paled. Mae saw this, and so did Ryan, who gestured in her direction.

  “And the elderly here are getting restless and scared. Is this any way to treat the golden-aged passengers on your plane?”

  The steward nodded at the old woman, giving her a look that tried to apologize for Ryan’s behavior. Ryan was unconsciously distracting the steward from Mae, and for the first time, she was glad to be sitting next to the obnoxious and self-entitled punk. She pulled out her passport and ticket and handed it to the man, who took it and studied it carefully.

  “You colored your hair,” he said and smiled approvingly.

  “Actually, the blond is my natural color—I went brown for awhile, and then just couldn’t stand it.”

  “Okay, so we’re going to swap hairstyling tips now? Great,” Ryan said and rubbed his eyes. “You know, I’ve got an important meeting that I’m going to miss if you guys don’t get your act together and let us off this monster.”

  “Well, I think it looks very nice,” the steward said, doing his best to maintain the fake smile and ignore Ryan.

  “I once bleached my hair with hydrogen peroxide, but it didn’t turn out as good as hers. But then again, I wear white socks.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Pettingale,” the steward said and handed the passport and ticket back to her. Ryan stopped talking and his eyebrows arched when he heard the name she’d just been called. He opened his mouth, his eyes questioning, but Mae shook her head ever so slightly. He paused, and then stared in his lap. At least it shut him up, Mae thought.

  “Here you go, Miss,” the steward said, motioning with the passport. She smiled and took it quickly to mask her shaking hands. The steward kept his eyes on her a moment longer, the briefest hesitation, before turning away. Mae watched him move on to the lady across the aisle, who still looked as though death were upon them all.

  “Ms. Pettingale?” Ryan said. The confidence had faded and he no longer seemed as sure of himself as he had been throughout their entire encounter. He looked at her, looking more confused than anything.

  “Please don’t talk to me,” Mae said. She felt horrible, knowing that he knew that she'd lied. She watched the look of hurt first come into his eyes, and then get moved aside as he shrugged with a half smile, opened his magazine and began to read again.

  Mae sat in her chair for several seconds, then reached down into her bag and pulled out the small notebook containing her drawings. She closed her eyes and pictured the autumn ridge where she'd first been given a kiss. But this time it wasn't Adam who held her in his arms. No matter what she did, it was Ryan's face.

  Paper and ink.

  She uncapped her black felt-tip pen and touched the point to a blank page.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Morales opened his eyes and the world flooded back to him in one big gush. The room was dark except for a single white bulb that glowed from its fixture on the ceiling a few meters from where he lay. The air in the room smelled fresh, but had a faint chemical undercurrent, like a room that has just been cleaned and then aired with open windows.

  He heard a rhythmic whoosh of air to his left, and a soft beeping. He tried to turn toward the sound but couldn’t move his head. He lifted his fingers and touched the hard plastic brace that kept his neck and head in place. He moved his hand to where he could see it and saw a clear tube that entered a vein at his wrist, held in place by white medical tape. He tried to lift his other arm but found that it was also held immobile.

  Morales closed his eyes and pushed the whooshing and beeping sounds from his mind, thinking back to the moments before waking in the hospital. He remembered the cabin in the woods, the snow falling all around him, and the biting cold in his toes and fingers.

  Three gunshots, and the punctured glass—but of what? He thought hard, straining his mind to find and settle on the memory that seemed just out of reach. There was a road and rumbling sound in the distance, and the squeal of brakes.

  The bus, Route B, Michigan Ave.

  He saw the bus in his mind’s eye, and the girl climbing aboard, and Eddie pumping three bullets into the front windshield of the bus. He heard the click of his Desert Eagle and the whispered gunshot that followed, saw Eddie sprawl onto his back, and the girl, the girl who’d managed to slip through his fingers like running water, and it all came flooding back to him. He remembered her in the airport, remembered her in the van. His stomach dropped all over again when he remembered her holding the gun under his chin and whispering threats with her snake-like hiss.

  Bright lights, nurses, the sound of rushing feet over a tiled floor, the squeak of the gurney, the surgical masks and goggled eyes peering over him, all blurred together, and even though he tried, he could not remember anything specific following the girl’s escape in the van.

  She’d escaped again, he thought, and the taste of it was bitter in his mouth. She’d escaped and here he was, stuck in a bed and helpless. He opened his eyes and looked at the walls above him, settling on a round clock just inside his peripheral vision. Twenty-three minutes past two A.M. In the middle of the night, he thought, or hoped. If he’d slept through the night, then he’d have a much larger problem on his hands. The room was windowless, but it felt like the dead of night to him. Of course, there was no telling how long he'd been out.

  He gingerly moved the fingers of his free hand from the brace around his neck to the wound in his shoulder. He touched the bandages that were taped there, whispering a curse under his breath. He left the wound and felt for the button that would have been placed next to his free hand. When he found it, he mashed the button and waited. After several seconds, the door to his room opened and a nurse entered.

  “Sir?” the nurse said as she crossed to the machinery next to his bed and checked the data readouts. “What can I do for you?”

  “What happened?” Morales said, being careful to sound genuine.

  She studied him as if trying to figure out if he was serious.

  “You were shot,” she said, her eyes pitying, “and you’ve got some nasty bruises on your face.”

  “Where was I?” he touched his forehead and feigned a brief spout of dizziness. “I … I don’t remember much.”

  “And no one can blame you for that, sir,” she said, concerned. “You were in a van just outside the airport, parked in the unloading lane. The airport security found you unconscious and bleeding. It was lucky that they found you when they did, or you might well have bled out.”

  “Alone?”

  “No, they think that there was someone else who was sh
ot, because of the blood—at least that’s what I hear. Anyway, airport security didn’t know you were a police officer until the station put out a notice that you went missing after investigating another matter. It isn’t entirely clear, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Oh,” he said, his mind reeling. “And is there anyone here from the police department?"

  “Yes, sir,” she said and wrapped a blood pressure band around his arm. Once the band was fastened, she pressed a button on the console next to his bed and the band began to inflate. “The chief of police set two officers outside your door for protection, in case the psycho who shot you up in the first place showed up to finish the job, and there are a few others, friends of yours I think, who are still here as well.”

  “That’s good,” Morales said, licking his dry and chapped lips. He wanted a cigarette like nothing else in the world, craved even the feel of it in his lips.

  “Do you want me to let some of them come in for a visit?” she asked.

  He shook his head, and thought about who might be at the hospital, waiting for his recovery.

  The thought didn’t sit well with him. As far as friends in uniform that he might have, they would have been few and far between. He’d been with the Chicago PD for two-and-half years, transferring into the force as a detective from the Miami PD, where he’d served South Florida for eleven years. This was, of course, fabrication, mixed with truth. Even though he was a decorated detective, he did very little police work, only enough to maintain the façade.

  Morales reported to the Deputy Chief of Police, who took care of paperwork, making it seem as though Morales was a contributing member of the force. Morales had no idea to what extent the Deputy Chief was involved in his work with Il Contionum, but regardless of his role, he cleared the way for Morales to lay low and do his job. To that end, Morales knew few officers on the force. Most assumed that he worked for Internal Affairs, and for most, that was enough to give him a wide berth.

  Even if there were cops waiting to see if he was okay, the chance was too great that at least one of them was not who they said they were. Of course, nothing could rally the brotherhood of police officers like a brother fallen to a gunshot, but the risk was too great. He was a sitting duck there on the hospital bed, unable to move.

  “Am I going to be alright?” Morales asked. He tried to mask the rising anxiety in his voice, and it worked, coming off as timid and slightly pathetic. The nurse smiled sympathetically, and shook her head like a mother admiring her child who is just so cute.

  “You’ll be right as rain, but it’ll take awhile,” the nurse said. “The bullet passed through and missed everything that would have been cause for concern. I imagine that you’ll be up on your feet in a few weeks, no more than that.”

  Morales sighed and wondered if he should just get up and walk out of the hospital himself. Sure, it might make things worse as far as his body was concerned, but he knew that there were people on the outside who would be impatient.

  Very impatient, and wondering just where the girl had gone and how he'd let her slip away twice in one evening. He had to focus very hard on keeping the red rage at bay, to keep the anger from clouding his thoughts. He needed to be alert and ready for whoever was sent to take care of him in much the same way that he'd taken care of Eddie.

  “Anything else I can do for you?” the nurse asked, and Morales shook his head. She smiled and left the room, closing the door and leaving him in semi-darkness. He lay on his bed and looked at the ceiling tiles above, listening to the soft beeps of the machines.

  The telephone rang on the night table beside his bed, and he jumped, startled. A jolt of pain burst in his shoulder, and he cried out. The phone was placed within easy reach of his free hand, so he quickly lifted the receiver from its cradle and brought it to his ear.

  “Hello?” he said, but the only sound in response was a thin line of static. With each second that passed, the feeling in his gut grew heavier. His heart raced, and the pounding in his head worsened. His mouth suddenly felt dry and tasted like the head of a match. He swallowed with difficulty and pressed the phone into his ear.

  “Hello?” he said again, and forced the panic from rising. This time he heard a long release of air, like the sound of someone sighing heavily into the phone.

  “Harrison? Is that you? Listen, I’ll get the girl,” Morales said. He hesitated, then slammed the phone in its cradle. He exhaled slowly through pursed lips and closed his eyes. He rubbed the fingers of his free hand against his eyelids. The caller had to be Harrison, the boss of this operation, calling to confirm that Morales was indeed still alive.

  The door swung open, and a man quickly stepped inside and shut the door. He was dressed in a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled to just below the elbows. He had thinning hair that was a just a shade away from grey, and his belly, though not substantial, protruded from beneath his shirt. He peered at Morales with his back to the door, his chest moving up and down in rhythm with his quick breathing.

  Morales, on the other hand, was holding his breath, hoping that the end would come quickly, but knowing that he might not have such luck. A few years before, while still working in Florida, he’d slipped into the bedroom of a very sick congressman. Much like Morales now, the congressman was bedridden, with tubes running in and out of his body. The man was just shy of 50 years old, according to Morales’ intelligence report, and much too young to die. He was married with three children, two of them in college and the oldest in medical school. Like the congressman, the wife was a lawyer—they’d met and fallen in love in law school, and she was asleep on the sofa in the next room when Morales arrived.

  None of that mattered to Morales when he came into the room and shook the man awake from his drug induced slumber. Shaking his shoulders didn’t do much to rouse the man from grogginess, so Morales had broken open a small paper tube of smelling salts beneath the man's nose.

  A few seconds after his eyes had opened and focused on Morales, he’d known what was coming. His eyes were wide, and he tried to scream out, but Morales held his hand over the man’s mouth and leaned closer, whispering to him to keep his honor and not wake his wife, or she would have to die as well. That shut the congressman’s mouth, and he watched, wide-eyed, as Morales inserted a syringe into the IV that ran into the man’s wrist. He smiled at the congressman as he pressed the syringe and watched the potassium chloride solution first enter the IV, then drip into the man’s bloodstream. It was the same solution used in lethal injections, but unlike state-condoned executions, the congressman’s heart would stop without the benefit of a prior injection of pentobarbital and pancuronium bromide, drugs that made the person fall asleep before their heart was stopped, making the exit from this world much more peaceful.

  It took about thirty seconds before the congressman went into cardiac arrest. The pain and panic spread out over his face, and his eyes shone with fear, but his gaze never faltered. Despite the flooding and flittering fear in his eyes, the congressman stared at Morales until the life slipped from his body. He kept his honor.

  Morales stared back, smiling but devoid of emotion. Morales had not known why the man had to die, only that the orders had come, and he had obeyed.

  When it was over, Morales reached forward and closed the eyes with his thumb. Even though the man’s life was gone from those eyes, the fear had remained, and it was unsettling.

  And now, Morales waited for the injection, or a silenced bullet to the brain that would end his own life. He'd always known that it would come to this. You didn’t run with the wolves to die of old age in a retirement home. You ran for the thrills and chills, and when the end came—thrilling as it may be—it would always be harsh and too soon. He fingered the nurse call button, but knew that even if he did call the nurse, it would likely just get her killed as well. In the end, there wasn’t much he could do to stop the inevitable.

  Morales stared with a cool hardness in his eyes at the man leaning against the door. He was afraid, bu
t would not let the fear invade his eyes. He promised himself that there would be no fear on the outside for this assassin to relish.

  The man stepped into the light, crossing the room quickly and extending his hand. He lowered it quickly when he saw that Morales made no effort to return the gesture. A faint scent of cinnamon came with him as he pulled the nurse’s call button away from Morales’ reach. He stood before Morales, panting.

  “I’m Paul Freemont,” the man said. “And I think I know who shot you.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  "Excuse me?" the man in the bed asked, and Paul hoped that it was the policeman who'd been shot. Of course, with the police officers guarding his door, chances were good that this was indeed Officer Morales. Paul's heart pounded, and he felt the adrenaline rushing through his body. One of the policemen was flirting with a nurse at the nurses station a few doors down from Morales', and the other officer had left briefly to use the john. When the officer had asked his partner to guard the door while he was away, the one flirting with the nurse had summarily dismissed him.

  Paul didn't blame the guy. The nurse was cute and seemed to like the attention she was getting from the policeman. He'd been watching the scene unfold from a chair near the elevators, and when he saw one officer leave, and the other occupied with the nurse, he made his move. He pulled out his phone and pretended to be listening as he walked directly into Morales' room, not even getting a second glance from the police officer.

  "I think I know who shot you," he said again. "Well, not exactly, but there has been some weird stuff going on that you may have gotten involved in."

  "Who are you?" Morales tried to sit up, but the brace on his neck made it very difficult. He instead fingered the nurse call button, hesitating before pressing down. The expression on his face was weird, and Paul figured that Morales had been waiting for someone else, or was not sure if Paul was the person he was waiting for.