Bodily Harm: A Novel

by Dugoni, Robert

  Jenkins swung the gun around the corner. Stenopolis had used the diversion to get out the door to the van. People on the sidewalk scattered, some seeking refuge behind a tree.

  Stenopolis fired back into the building, one bullet shattering the glass door into tiny crystals, the second exploding the mirrored wall near Jenkins’s head. When Jenkins looked again, Stenopolis had maneuvered around the back of the van to the driver’s side and forced his hostage inside.

  Jenkins rushed out, staying low to the ground, the sound of glass crunching beneath his shoes. He pressed his back against a parked car. The van’s red taillights glowed and the engine roared to life. Because Jenkins had double-parked beside the van, Stenopolis could not easily pull from the space. Jenkins stood, intending to shoot out the van’s tires, saw Stenopolis’s reflection watching him in the side mirror, and ducked back behind the parked car just as more bullets shattered the van’s two rear windows and pierced its metal door, leaving a puckered hole.

  The van jerked from the curb and smashed into the bumper of his rental car, the rear lights cracking and metal crunching as the van pushed it forward. Two more shots kept Jenkins pinned down. Stenopolis put the van in reverse and backed into the car parked behind him, crunching its fender and setting off the car alarm. Having cleared sufficient space, he clipped the rental car again before speeding down the street.

  Halfway down the block the van slowed and the passenger door flew open. The woman tumbled out onto the street, the van’s tires spinning on the rain-slicked pavement before the vehicle lurched forward. Jenkins hurried to the woman and redirected a car around her. She had a cut on her forehead and was shaking. Jenkins lifted her to her feet and helped guide her toward the sidewalk, looking back over his shoulder as the van’s taillights disappeared around a corner.

  SHE LAY IN the bathtub, her body submerged, eyes open, hair floating about her head like a halo. Tiny bubbles clung to her lips, and Sloane’s instincts propelled him toward the porcelain basin, stopping short when he saw the hair dryer in the water.

  Anne LeRoy looked to be not much older than her early twenties, just a kid with her whole life ahead of her. Not anymore. The weight of another death weighed like an anvil on Sloane’s chest and shoulders.

  “David!” Jenkins appeared in the bathroom doorway. “Shit!” He reached in and grabbed Sloane by the arm, dragging him from the room.

  “We have to do something,” Sloane said.

  “Nothing we can do.” Jenkins pulled him out the apartment door. “And the police will have too many questions we can’t answer.”

  INSIDE THE HOTEL room to which he and Jenkins had retreated, Sloane was supposed to be watching the television for news reports on the shoot-out at the Georgetown apartment building and the death of a young woman in that building, but his attention wandered and he could not focus. LeRoy’s death pushed him closer to the darkness, a place into which Sloane had so often felt himself slipping before he met Tina, a place to which he had hoped to never again return. It was a place void of all light, pitch- black, and cold. When he did fall, he felt like a man plunged into a deep, cylindrical hole, the walls sheer and impossible to climb.

  Sloane stood and walked to the hotel-room window, looking out on a dimly lit parking lot. He felt the walls and the darkness inching closer. When he closed his eyes, struggling to relax, he saw Anne LeRoy floating in her bathtub, her eyes gazing up at him from beneath the water, lifeless. Then the face changed; Tina, lying on the staircase, staring up at him but not at him, past him, her eyes already losing focus, the life within her fading. And it made him again confront what he had tried not to acknowledge, that as LeRoy lay dead, Sloane’s first concern had been for the information she had possessed and that he would not get, just as his first concern as Tina lay dying had been that he would again be alone. And he hated himself for it. He didn’t know how, or why, but he had never fully allowed himself to believe that he had made it completely out of that dark hole, that he had found a life and a purpose to go with it. All along, the darkness had lingered behind, waiting to envelop him, and he should have known, somehow, that if it could not have him, it would take that which meant the most to him. It always did. His mother. Melda. Now Tina.

  COOL AIR BRUSHED the spot on his chest where a moment before she had been resting her cheek, fast asleep. Tina propped her chin in the palm of her hand and peered down at him, her lips inching into an impish grin. Was it too much of a cliché or just too much of his ego that he thought she did indeed look radiant after an afternoon spent making love in their room?

  “A penny for your thoughts,” she said.

  “Am I that cheap?”

  The breeze fluttered the thin curtain of the patio doors, allowing another glimpse of the view from their terrazzo tile patio—the palm trees and tiled roofs of Santa Margherita and the colorful fishing vessels in the harbor and the yachts anchored in the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The breeze brought the sweet smell of the bougainvillea overwhelming the trestle and climbing the stucco onto the tiled roof. Somewhere in the distance a rooster crowed.

  “Actually, since Washington is a community property state, your thoughts are now only worth half a penny.”

  “I don’t know if it’s scarier to think that you knew that, or to think that you might have looked it up,” he said.

  She smiled. “You keep being this quiet and you won’t have to worry about it. Anything on your mind you would like to share?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by the view.”

  She turned her head to look out the patio doors. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “I meant you.”

  She inched up the bed to kiss him.

  Their lips parting, she whispered, “For a moment there I thought you went someplace else.”

  “I’m just enjoying the moment,” he said, half honest.

  He had left the room, not physically, but in his mind. Ever since the wedding he’d had moments where he felt as if he were a spectator, watching a man who looked much like himself interact with Tina. He had dismissed it, but the feeling had persisted. Upon further reflection, he came to realize that he was simply having difficulty grasping that he had found someone so good and that he was, for the first time in his life, no longer alone. It was almost too good to be true, too good to believe it could be happening to him.

  And that terrified him.

  “Well, get used to it, Mr. Sloane, because I expect there will be many more just like it.”

  “Then I better step up my workout routine, Mrs. Sloane.”

  Her auburn hair, which she had allowed to grow nearly to her shoulders, draped his face and fell across his chest. When she pulled back her eyes sparkled down at him, as blue as the sky, darkening with the setting of the sun.

  She rolled onto her back, her head resting on his shoulder. “Do you think about that?” she asked.

  “Think about what?”

  “The future, what it’s going to be like?”

  “I’m happy now,” he said.

  She glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye. “I could tell. But don’t you wonder what we’ll be like? Where we’ll be living? What our kids will be like?”

  When he didn’t answer she lifted again onto her elbow, the thin sheet falling across her breast. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You do realize of course that with the wedding vow comes the right to not accept that for an answer.”

  “Funny, I don’t remember that part.”

  “Oh yes, if you’re arrested you have the right to remain silent. Once you’re married you lose that right. ‘Do you promise to honor, cherish, and tell her everything on your mind, till death shall you part’?”

  “It’s nothing.” He moved to kiss her, but she pulled away suddenly.

  “Ah-hah! You said ‘it’; that means there is something.”

  He laughed. “Maybe you should have been the lawyer.”

/>   “Tell me.”

  Sloane turned his head and considered the pale orange plaster walls adorned with paintings of the Italian countryside. A price tag hung from each, painted by the owner of the bed and breakfast. “Have you ever had a moment where you suddenly feel as though you’re watching someone else living your life?”

  “Huh?”

  He thought how best to express it. “Have you ever had a moment where you feel like maybe you’re in a painting, looking out, and everything is so perfect, you wonder if it could possibly be real?”

  Her eyebrows inched closer. “I suppose.”

  “I don’t want to think about the future because I don’t think I could ever be happier than I am at this moment, and I’m afraid to let it go.”

  For a moment she didn’t speak. She put a hand to his cheek, caressing it. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore, David. I know you’ve lost so much that you must feel like you have to hold on to everything with both hands. But you don’t. You’re not going to lose me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Before I met you I never knew how alone I really was. I mean, I sensed there was something more to life than getting up and going to work and maybe having an occasional date, but that’s what I knew, what I thought life was. So I just came to accept it as the norm. And now I realize it’s nothing about what life is supposed to be. I mean, work is supposed to be what we do, not who we are. I just had one of those moments where I looked around and suddenly felt like I had to be someone else to be lying here in a room in Italy having just made love to someone so beautiful. This couldn’t possibly be real. It couldn’t be my life. This isn’t the kind of thing that is supposed to happen to someone like me.”

  Tears pooled in her eyes. “Someone like you? What does that mean?”

  And therein was the source of his frustration. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s real,” she whispered. “I’m real. We’re real.”

  “I know,” he said, but did not finish his thought aloud. And that’s what scares me so much. I’ve never had so much to lose.

  She sighed. “Then we won’t think about the future; we’ll just enjoy each moment.”

  She flipped her hair from her face and placed her cheek back against his chest, her fingers caressing his skin.

  For a moment he felt content again; then he turned to the side, seeing the image in the oval antique mirror in the corner of the room, the image at which he had been staring before she sought his thoughts for a penny.

  The man in the mirror remained foreign to him.

  THE DOOR TO the hotel room opened and Charles Jenkins stepped in. “Hey. You all right?”

  Sloane turned from the window, nodded.

  “Anything on the news?”

  Sloane looked to the television. He had no idea. “Nothing yet. You find out anything?”

  Jenkins had walked to a coffee shop down the block with Internet access. He held up a piece of paper. “An address, but we’re going to need to be careful and play this just right. We’ll likely only get one shot. We spook him and that could be the end.”

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  MONTGOMERY MALL

  BETHESDA, MARYLAND

  Albert Payne exited the Express Dry Cleaners with a finger full of hangers, the clothes dangling over his shoulder, the plastic wrap rustling in the breeze. His hand shook as he set a tall cup of coffee atop a garbage bin to maneuver his glasses over his eyes. Though early in the morning, his button-down, powder blue shirt already showed rings of perspiration beneath each armpit.

  Retrieving the cup, Payne sipped from the slit in the white plastic top while he waited for a silver Mercedes to back away from a parking spot. Then he stepped across the asphalt to the cars parked perpendicular to the businesses.

  He thought again about the argument earlier that morning. His wife was fed up with what she called his “moodiness and surly attitude.” She said he was short-tempered with the kids and went off to “la-la land” even when he was home and if he didn’t snap out of it she wanted him to move out. Most nights he’d fallen asleep in the leather recliner in the family room, watching television, mentally exhausted from another day wondering if, and when the man from China would return. He usually awoke in his chair and spent the evenings listening to the sounds inside the house and the voices in his head, some urging him to go to the police or perhaps to Larry Triplett, or maybe even Maggie Powers. Hell, they were directors of a government agency, they had to have connections that could help him, didn’t they?

  But those thoughts did not persist, pushed aside by his vivid recollection of the man’s cool detachment as the back of the Chinese woman’s head exploded and the spray of blood splattered Payne across the face and arms. The man had made it clear he would think nothing of killing Payne’s wife and children in similar fashion and leave enough evidence to link Payne to their murders as well as the murder of the Chinese prostitute. The police would assume Payne had gone off his rocker, gone absolutely crazy, and there would certainly be enough witnesses to confirm his recent erratic behavior to make that scenario plausible.

  The only thing that got him out the door in the morning was the hope that it would all be over soon. He would provide Powers with a favorable report on the Chinese manufacturing facilities and profess no knowledge of any dangers from new technology. Powers would testify similarly before Congress, Joe Wallace’s bill calling for more stringent safeguards on products and more funding to the agency would be defeated, and Payne could get on with his life and get back to his family.

  Anne LeRoy would not have that opportunity.

  He squeezed between two parked cars but came to a sudden stop when a man walking in the opposite direction blocked his path. A hanger slid from his grasp to the ground, his wife’s tan vest. He would have also spilled his coffee but for the white plastic lid.

  “I’m sorry.” Payne crouched to retrieve the hanger.

  “Let me help.” The man bent to help pick up the dry cleaning.

  Payne raised his eyes. “Thank you, but I think I can . . .”

  Behind him Payne heard a car stop, though he did not take his eyes off the barrel of the gun, only partially concealed by the man’s leather jacket.

  “You are going to stand and get into the backseat of the car behind you. You’re not going to yell, or say a word. Do you understand?”

  Payne nodded.

  “Good. Now, slowly.”

  When Payne did as instructed the man slid into the backseat beside him and pulled the door shut as the driver exited the parking lot.

  SLOANE CONSIDERED ALBERT Payne in the rearview mirror. Two mornings after Anne LeRoy’s death, Sloane and Jenkins had tracked Payne from his home in Bethesda to the strip mall. They had dismissed the thought of walking into his office to talk to the man, uncertain whether Payne had pulled the plug on LeRoy’s investigation as part of a scheme to conceal the information. If so, Payne could alert others involved that Jenkins and Sloane were in Washington, D.C., and asking questions. They decided to surprise Payne instead, but where? Not at his home; Payne had a wife and children. They also couldn’t very well do it at his place of business, where Payne would have the comfort of dozens of coworkers, not to mention security guards and video surveillance cameras. That meant following Payne until the right opportunity presented itself. The opportunity had come that morning, when Payne stopped at the strip mall to pick up the dry cleaning. Sloane and Jenkins had discussed the need to avoid a confrontation in a public place, but Payne had been surprisingly compliant. He had slid quietly into the back of the car, where he now sat looking like a man resigned to his fate and not interested in trying to fight or even negotiate.

  As Sloane drove, Payne spoke barely above a whisper. “Do you work for him?”

  Sloane and Jenkins made eye contact in the mirror. Albert Payne was not calm. He was paralyzed by fear.

  “Relax, Mr. Payne,” Sloane said. “We’re not going to hurt you; we might even be able to help you.”
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  Despite the reassuring words, Payne continued to bite at his lower lip, and his eyes remained unfocused, a vacuous gaze.

  Sloane pulled off the road into the gravel parking lot of a nearby sports complex with multiple soccer and baseball fields. At the back of the lot he parked near two baseball fields built side by side. Jenkins motioned for Payne to exit the back door. Payne left the dry cleaning on the seat but still held the cup of coffee. They climbed a row of metal bleachers and sat, a breeze blowing the tall, thin trees planted alongside the third base line. The baseball field was empty.

  “What is this about?” Payne asked.

  “Anne LeRoy,” Sloane said.

  The lenses of Payne’s glasses were flecked with dry skin. He looked to have a rash all about his neck and face, which still had remnants of a white cream recently applied. “You know Anne?”

  “No. But she called me,” Sloane said. “She said she had done an investigation on magnets in toys. She said you pulled the plug on her investigation. I need to know why.”

  “Who are you?” Payne asked.

  “I’m an attorney.”

  “An attorney?” Payne exhaled, as if he’d been holding his breath. “I don’t understand.”

  Sloane handed Payne a copy of the article in the Washington Post.

  “I have a case against Kendall Toys. I represent two families with children who died ingesting magnets that came from one of their toys. Kendall is about to bring that toy to market for the Christmas holiday, and all indications are that it will fly off shelves and into the homes of millions of children.”

  Payne read several paragraphs before putting the article down on the bench and staring out at the empty ball field. Another breeze silently rustled the branches of the trees.

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  Sloane knew fear was the cause of Payne’s reticence, but he also did not have the time or inclination to play games. LeRoy’s death meant Stenopolis was close. “Yes, you do, Mr. Payne. Anne LeRoy told me all about it.”