by Alex Dolan
They visited a post office as part of their normal errands. For the first time in public, Walter took his attention off him while arguing with the postal clerk over the price of postage. Veda took advantage of that moment and wrote his name on a piece of copy paper, and then slipped it under the glass before Walter could stop him. He erupted, screaming at the boy and hitting him with a closed fist. Postal employees and fellow customers tackled and restrained Walter Gretsch until the police arrived.
• • •
I drove back to Bernal Heights past midnight and parked a half block from home. Learning more about Veda’s case deadened me, and I staggered across the street to my door before I heard the car.
A silver rental sedan slowly cruised by me. I didn’t recognize it as the one from that afternoon until I saw the two men, the same nondescript guys with facial hair, just without sunglasses. I froze on my doorstep and held my breath. I didn’t want to fight or run—I was too tired for both—but I didn’t know what else I could do. Scream I suppose, and hope the neighbors would come to their windows.
They passed me and only slowed down when they reached my cobalt hatchback. With the silver sedan idling, the man in the passenger seat got out of the vehicle, dressed in a black tracksuit. He glanced at me over his shoulder with a look that told me not to move, and then unlocked the hatchback with his own keys. The two cars drove off seconds later. My loaner vehicle had been repossessed.
When I got to my door, a small plainly wrapped brown package sat on my doorstep.
It was the same size as Leland’s spider package, wrapped in the same butcher paper. The small brick waited to be unwrapped.
I sat down in the hallway against the wall opposite my door. I stared at the package for some time. I had to assume the two men who’d just taken back the loaner car had left it there. If so, they would be working with Jeffrey Holt. If Jeffrey had left this for me, it couldn’t be a bomb. Outside of euthanasia, Jeffrey was the least violent person I knew. On the off chance he wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t drop off an IED that could take out my neighbors too. Still, I didn’t like it.
I had to take it inside. I gently lifted it off the doormat. The box was light, like the last one. I rattled it. Something loosely rolled around in there.
In my kitchen, I used a boning knife to slice the tape at the folded seams. Stripping back the paper, I found a pastry box. In fact, it was the same pastry box we’d opened in Shallot, Oregon.
I braced myself as I unfolded the side flap and tilted the box so that whatever was inside would spill out on my cutting board.
A cell phone slid out.
A text on the phone instructed me to call a number. Someone picked up on the second ring.
“What are you doing?” Jeffrey Holt was speaking. I was struck dumb by the sound of my mentor’s voice. “Kali?”
“I’m here.”
He was stirred up. “The man you’re working with is FBI. Do you know that?”
“Were you following me?”
“We put a tracer on the car.” That meant he’d known where I was the whole time and just reached out now.
I asked, “Why didn’t you call me on my cell?”
“Because I don’t know who’s listening.”
I tried to answer his initial question. “It’s not what you think.”
“He’s the same person who sent a bomb to my home.”
“It wasn’t a bomb.”
“It could have been.”
“Where are you?”
“You think I’m going to tell you?” I could only imagine the narrative he’d whipped up in the past few weeks with the nuggets of information he’d found.
“I’ve solved the problem—it’s fixed. I stuck my neck out, and it’s paid off. Everyone is safe.” And since I knew he would ask, I added, “I’m sure about this.” Although I wasn’t completely sure.
“Are you safe?”
I couldn’t answer that.
“Are you operating of your own free will?”
I had to think about that. “I believe I am.”
“Understand—so long as you’re associating with someone from federal law enforcement, I can’t see you. Or be seen with you. Ever. And I can’t imagine it will end well for you.” For the first time since I’d met him, I couldn’t tell whether Jeffrey was more concerned for me or for himself. “You need to really think about what you’re going to do next.”
“It’s all I’ve thought about,” I said, disconnecting before he could upbraid me.
Chapter 14
The sun was out at San Sebastián, but the wind was strong, and the few clouds in the air swam overhead like white whales. I’d driven there alone in a new rental, a black compact.
Midmorning, the scrub jays didn’t have any competition as they picked through the trash in the parking lot. I shuffled through the lot in clogs and green scrubs, a packed canvas duffel under my arm. My lanyard felt too crisp between my thumb and forefinger, too fresh from the laminator. According to the ID, my name was Kali Helms, and I was a registered nurse.
Leland had rigged all of this, but he couldn’t walk into the prison with me, not with all those cameras swiveling around on the rooftops. We’d gotten away with coming there together once, but he couldn’t be seen with me again. Not when I was in costume.
We’d planned out my visit over several nights. Tesmer joined the sessions, but Veda stayed in his bedroom. I hoped he’d appreciate all of this once it was over.
Whoever was watching the feeds from all those swiveling cameras could see my plain, natural hair. The chestnut bob. No wigs for me that morning. Prison guidelines prohibited hair extensions—anything the inmates could tear off and use. I hid my face as much as I could with geriatric reading glasses. Fake tattoos covered most of my forearms—detailed steampunk clock gears, what were referred to as “biomechanical” tattoos, a fantasy of cybernetic works underneath human skin. Without being able to dress in full costume, I hoped those details would distract guards in case someone wanted to track me down later.
Leland assured me that Leonard Royce knew how to fry the security footage, but with so many people to size me up when they checked me in, I worried whether they’d remember me. They’d remember how tall I was. Prison guards made their living by being able to size up an opponent, but my XXL scrubs fit me like a tent and hopefully hid the muscle. Still, I’d never felt so exposed. If something went wrong today, I would be supremely buggered.
I proceeded toward the two turrets that dominated the entrance. As I walked toward the front door, a heavyset woman toddled out of it. She was dressed in a bright dress, something you’d wear to church. Prison guidelines requested that visitors not wear anything red, because it matched inmate jumpsuits. This woman hadn’t paid attention. Amid the tropical muddle, she snuck in a little crimson with a flurry of tangerine. Her lipstick stuck out like a plastic pout on a Mr. Potato Head. Leland, I cursed to myself. I was staring at Helena Mumm.
She hadn’t factored into the plan. Leland might have arranged for Helena’s visit without telling me, or Walter might have reached out to her, desperate for some human connection before I came for him. Regardless, she walked right out the front door and down the walkway, just as I approached the building.
She looked at me. I couldn’t dive behind a car, not without attracting attention from her and the cameras. I would need to walk past Helena Mumm. I wore the same set of scrubs as when I’d visited Helena, the shade of faded AstroTurf, but had enough props that I hoped she wouldn’t recognize me.
For the first time, I noticed how she moved, back and forth like a metronome at adagissimo. She’d mismatched her shoes—one high heel and one flat sole. One leg might have been shorter than the other.
I kept my face down. Although the concrete promenade cut through a wide, trimmed lawn, the path itself was as narrow as a corridor. As we came closer, I saw her face change. She eyed me with pointed curiosity. I’d hoped my goggles and the tattoos would throw her, but no luck. Her f
ace pinched as we drew near. She knew me. My best bet was to walk fast enough that she wouldn’t stop me.
When we passed close enough to breathe on each other, it struck her. “Nursie.”
I should have kept my eyes forward, but I couldn’t help myself. I looked over as she spoke to me. My eyes jogged up to meet hers. I couldn’t hide my revulsion. She read the contempt in my face as our eyes locked, and there was that moment of familiarity where we understood the connection between us.
We stopped.
“You’re here for him.” Her voice sounded uncertain, even fearful. I wondered how much Walter would have told her, or if she just remembered me and pieced it together. She’d expected me to kill her during that visit, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to figure out why I was there.
Helena wanted a response, and when I didn’t give one to her, she insisted, “Answer me.” I needed to get the hell away from this woman, but I couldn’t run, and I couldn’t fight her in front of the cameras.
It felt strange being so close to her again. Back in her lounge chair, she’d seemed harmless as a beached seal. But now she was ambulatory. She stood a head shorter than me, but her girth made her intimidating.
“I’m late.”
Helena, quicker than someone her size should have been, tried to slap me with a gigantic arm. Daunted by the cameras and wired tightly from the tension, I surreptitiously knocked her hand away. It didn’t stop Helena. She swung a balled-up fist. I leaned back and the blow landed on my shoulder. Now we were fighting, with cameras recording us.
She closed in on me fast and pounded me in the ribs and breasts. Helena was strong. It hurt. I could see how she would terrify someone much smaller than her. She grabbed my shoulder to steady herself while she hit me, and I kept thinking about what that arm, now touching me, had done—plunged forks into children, sawed off legs. My blood was hot. Images from Leland’s files flickered in my head. I remembered a “missing” poster with Veda’s photo, posed with a naïve, openmouthed smile.
Cameras be damned.
I swung from the hip and smashed my knuckles into the bridge of her nose. Helena yelped and tumbled back onto her ass. Both hands muzzled her nose to stop the bleeding. Blood ran through her fingers. I cocked my arm for another, elbow at my ear, but didn’t throw it. Once she hit the ground I remembered how exposed I was.
In the lighthouse tower, the first guard I’d seen on the catwalk coughed into a two-way radio.
Helena wailed like a child. Like someone who’d never been hit and didn’t know what pain was. The fall had knocked off the high-heeled shoe. Her bare foot was bruised and swollen, with gout at the big toe. Still anchored in its shoe, the other foot was out of alignment with the leg. And I realized the foot was plastic.
I hadn’t noticed in her home, because she’d worn baggy sweatpants and thick stockings. In daylight it was plain. If I’d paid more attention to her feet when she walked, it would have made sense. I’d chalked up her gait to the obesity.
Behind me shoe soles slapped pavement like applause. Over my shoulder I glimpsed the shadows of two men charging me. Amped up from the fight, I pivoted with my hands in the air.
Royce and Kearns. Their two shaved heads gleamed like ample breasts in want of a nipple. I dropped my fists.
Royce drew close, his eyes darting around to the tower guard and the swivel cameras. He muttered, “Are you fucking serious?” I’d expected him to be all throbbing temples, but Royce was calm as a surgeon as he admonished me. “Fighting outside a prison? Do you know what people have gambled for this?” He swept a wave to the tower guard to signal the all clear. The guard didn’t stop studying us but seemed less hawkish. “Don’t ruin it.”
Kearns had been silent, but piped up to his partner. “Let’s get her in or get her out.”
Royce placed an arm over my shoulder and leaned into me. From a distance, it might look as if he were comforting me. He said, “You’re a nurse who got into a smackdown with a crazy. For the sake of everyone watching, act like you’re shook up.”
I rolled my shoulders forward and pretended I was in shock from the violence.
Kearns inclined his head toward Helena, and Royce stooped to put her shoe back on and help her up.
“Arrest her,” she demanded.
Kearns spoke with the same exasperated composure as his partner. “Go home, ma’am.”
“I’m bleeding,” she moaned, clinging to his arm.
“Go home and we won’t arrest you.”
She took her hand away. The blood below her nose looked like she’d won a pie-eating contest. “Arrest me? I’m the one hit! I need a doctor.” She sneered. “You’re taking the pretty white girl’s side? She’s on her feet and I’m down here. Who do you think needs arresting?”
Royce leaned in and dropped his voice. “Ma’am, we know who you are.”
She pointed to me. “And I know who she is.” The tower guard took an interest in us again. The cameras had stopped rotating. At least two lenses aimed at us and only us.
Kearns stood and loomed behind her. Both guards specifically chose their positions to intimidate her by bookending her front and back sides. Just as softly, Kearns said, “And who’s that?”
“She’s some kind of assassin.”
“You realize how that sounds?” Royce might have made a good therapist.
“I don’t give a goddamn how it sounds, if it’s the truth.”
Royce crouched down so his head was at her level, leaning forward on his fingertips. “All right, get this. Say you’re right, and she is some kind of assassin. Why would you pick a fight with this person?”
Helena explained, “She’s after my Walter.”
“And if she is?”
That stunned her. “Then arrest her.”
“It’s like this. We have one holding cell in there for this kind of thing. We honestly don’t pay much attention to what happens in there—we’ve got the rest of these inmates to worry about. If I put her in cuffs, I have to put you in cuffs too, because you hit first. Then we’ll throw you in the same room together. Do you really want to be alone with this person?”
Helena’s eyes widened. Kearns amplified her fear by resting a heavy hand on her shoulder. Helena babbled in protest as she ran out of options.
“Go home, ma’am,” said Kearns, releasing his hand.
Kearns helped her stand and escorted her to her car. On her way, she coughed up a little blood from the punch.
Royce and I walked toward the entrance. Up on the roof, the guard lost interest in us. The cameras began rotating again.
I talked to myself about what I’d just seen. “She’s missing a leg.”
“Focus now.” Royce steered me away from the front door. He led me around the turrets, around the corner of the building where a rusted steel door was plugged into the middle of a massive wall. Around it, paint flecked off in patches as big as dinner plates. “Service entrance,” he said.
I didn’t ask questions. When he pounded on the door it sounded like he was clanging an empty oil drum. Hinges shrieked when the door opened.
Another guard squinted in the sunlight, as if we’d freed him from a cave. He wore the same park ranger uniform as the others. A bushy white moustache swept over his wind-burned cheeks, and his stomach distended over his belt line. He didn’t look at me. “This her?”
“Who else would it be?”
Moustache escorted us through a checkpoint full of steel mesh and concrete. Two guards at a console looked at me with interest but no suspicion. To be friendly, a handsome beefy boy asked, “First time?”
Royce replied for me. “Visiting staff. She’s just here for the day.”
Our escort signed a registry for me, and then several doors opened in succession. We tunneled through a labyrinth of long hallways and right angles. Fluorescents reflected in recently mopped linoleum. Cameras dotted the corners, more obvious than outside the building.
It struck me that I didn’t know where we were headed. “Am I goin
g to his cell?”
Royce kept his eyes forward. “No.”
“Prison clinic?”
“Somewhere else. Try not to talk until we get there.”
Our escort abruptly stopped at a door. It had been painted to blend in with the hallway, and I might have walked by without noticing. He fluidly unlocked it. The corridor behind it was black as a mineshaft without fluorescent tubes to cast a dim glow.
Royce nudged me. “Walk through it like you belong here.” My heart quickened. Along the flame-seared slabs we trod into Gehenna.
Moustache gave us both flashlights, and three narrow beams bounded across the floor and walls as we pushed on. In the absence of light, the sound seemed to resonate more. Breathing seemed louder in the dark. Our footsteps clomped like horse hooves. I tried to guess where we were—maybe a service walkway for janitors and off duty guards. We kept at the same deliberate pace set by the man in front, following the light beams. Soon we approached a riveted door. Royce said, “We’re here.”
Our escort told Royce, “Don’t make a mess.” He turned and walked off.
“Gretsch is in there?” I asked.
Royce nodded.
I pointed the flashlight down the hallway and back to the door. “How many other people know about this?”
“Enough.”
I had to ask, “Why are you doing this?”
Royce pulled out his wallet, and then a small photo onto which he shined his flashlight. I recognized the image of the young girl from the boards up in Leland’s office. I didn’t ask how he was related, because it didn’t matter.
Royce cranked the handle and we entered. He flicked on the lights, casting an astringent sheen. The walls were the green hue of ill mucus. In the corner, a table had already been set up for me, covered with a stack of loose maps. A broad window looked into an adjacent room next to ours; it was a viewing gallery tiered with folding chairs.