“Understood, Jasper.”
You fucking shit stain.
This afternoon, before Jasper had the opportunity to make his second call of the day, Harry had decided to take a drive to clear his head, and maybe get a career saving revelation. Thus far, he had put thirteen more miles on Susie, and eaten four prepackaged cinnamon rolls that he had purchased at a gas station. He had also spent five dollars on scratch off lottery tickets in hopes that he could piss on Jasper and the FBI. Instead he ended up with more trash for Susie's floorboard.
As far as any manifestations of the proverbial light bulb over the head went, he had come up with zilch. At this point, he was just hoping to pass some shifty character walking the sidewalks, so he could stop and interrogate them–and feel like he was performing his job.
The great and powerful protector of the innocent and champion of the meek.
BANG!
Susie wailed with displeasure, smoke rising from under her hood.
BANG! BANG!
Her cries sang through the air like cannon fire. Smoke billowed in a blanket of thick black, and as her body slowed to a stop, she coughed her final words from her tail pipe. Now there was just a hunk of rubber and metal sitting on the side of the road, and nobody would ever know the life it once had.
Harry assessed his options, then, taking his brief-case and coffee mug, he glanced down once more at the odometer before closing the door for the last time.
502,819 miles.
He used his phone to look up the number of a local towing company and instructed them to deliver the vehicle to a junkyard. He wished that there could be more ceremony, but he had to resign himself to a quiet moment. In the dust on the trunk, he wrote, “See ya.”
A final goodbye to an old friend.
Harry wasn't ready to give up on the day, so he did a three sixty on the spot, and eyed several small businesses. He settled on a small diner across the street. It would do him good to get some caffeine in his system.
A humming neon sign told Harry that the name of the diner was Diner, or at least there was no other sign that Harry could see. A bell at the top of the glass door jingle jangled as he entered.
“Just have a seat anywhere you like,” called out an unseen female.
There were two older gentlemen seated at a booth in the corner playing checkers, they and Harry were the diner's sole business. He chose to sit at the corner of the counter near a revolving glass pie rack. He had seen things such as this in movies, but even at his age, had never seen one like it in person. He couldn't help himself from spinning the display, most likely much faster than was ever intended.
“What'll ya have?”
The waitress' voice pulled him away from the mesmerizing spinning of the pies. She was a robust woman, in her late forties, with a jaunty demeanor. Her presence alone put a smile on Harry's face, thoughts of his car temporarily withdrawn.
“Well, I know that it's in the afternoon, but could I still get some breakfast?” Harry asked politely.
“Breakfast served all day,” the waitress said, pointing to a sign on the wall behind her that read, Breakfast Served All Day.
“OK, good. I'll have two eggs over easy, sausage, gravy, and some pancakes with maple syrup.”
The waitress grinned, snapped her finger, and then turned to fetch his order. Harry returned to spinning the pies, and less than five minutes later, everything that he had asked for was sitting in heaping piles before him, along with a glass of fresh orange juice. He had not ordered the juice, but was grateful for it.
“Would you like some coffee too? Just put on a fresh pot.”
“Absolutely, Ma'am.”
The eggs were a bit runny, as he liked them, and he swirled the food on his plate into a collage of flavor, swallowing the concoction in huge bites befitting an ill-mannered child. The mess dribbled down his chin, and he ignored it until the last morsel was gone before finally mopping himself up with napkins found in a perfectly polished chrome dispenser.
The waitress returned then, as if she were simply waiting in the wings for her cue to enter stage left. Harry noticed for the first time that she had a patch sewn to the front of her white and cherry red striped dress with her name on it.
“Maggie, that's a pretty name. Is it short for anything?”
“Magdalena, and thank you.”
“Well, Magdalena, I'm going to need some of this delicious looking pie.”
He felt now as if he was a character in a story, and he was just playing his part.
This evening Harry Bland will be playing the part of the big city detective that just needed a small town piece of pie.
“We've got key lime, coconut, pecan, and pumpkin.”
Except she didn't say pumpkin, she said punkin.
“I'll have a slice of pecan and another of the pumpkin please.”
“You want whip cream on the punkin?”
“Should I?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, of course I do, Maggie.”
Maggie laid the pie down in front him delicately, as if it were a brittle masterpiece, and Harry could see in her eyes that she felt the pie was just that. Then she went to the back kitchen for a moment, returning with a bowl that had frosty vapor still floating above. She used a large spoon to drop a heaping pile of fresh whipped cream down on the pumpkin slice.
“You enjoy. I bake those myself.”
“Maggie, I have no doubt that they're going to be divine. One more thing, if you would please. Would you turn the volume up on that little TV just a tad?”
There was a small television sitting behind the counter, and it had been playing the local news on mute. The graphic behind the newswoman's head read “The Strawberries Killer.” When Harry could hear the voice of the newswoman, she was reporting on a musical titled Strawberries and Cream that would be hitting Broadway next month.
“OK, you can turn it back down again Maggie,” Harry said, shaking his head.
“Oh good. I'm all together tired of that nonsense, I must say.”
“You and me both, Maggie.”
Harry had already destroyed the pumpkin pie and was now diving into the pecan. With the first bite, he made an audible moan of delight.
Maggie's grin was as big as the world while she used a wet rag on the other end of the counter.
“I bet you bake these pies for your family at home too, don't you Maggie?”
“I sure do. My kids love them, and we all have the waistlines to prove it,” Maggie replied, chuckling, “What about you? You got a wife and kids at home waiting on you?”
“No Ma' am, not married.”
Harry always answered the married question with that answer, rather than the more accurate divorced and decimated. Any time he would tell someone that he was divorced, he either got a pitiful look that made him feel disabled in some way, or in some cases, he got an accusation. He found it surprising how many people automatically assumed that the divorce was his fault, as if he cheated or committed some other horrendous act and deserved to be left alone.
The truth was the opposite.
Harry had met Sara at a dance club to which a friend had dragged him. He had no dance moves to speak of and had always been a wallflower. As he nursed his gin and tonic, and watched his friend hit on everything moving on the dance floor, a woman approached him from behind and tapped him on the shoulder.
Harry was not a bad looking guy in those days, but even so, a woman approaching him was a rarity; especially when the woman in question was as attractive as Sara. She was a classic beauty, with dark, smooth skin, long auburn hair, and mouth slathered in lip gloss that sparkled from the club lights.
That night they had spoken for hours and exchanged numbers. Within a few weeks, they were exclusive and Harry was dangerously in love. One year later, they were married.
Harry doted over everything she did, and gave her anything she desired. After he had joined the Bureau, he was often away, but when he was home, he did whatever he could
to make her life a dream. This went on for a little over three years; until the day that Harry had come home early and found Sara in bed with another man inside her.
He left the house, without a word, but just as he thought the universe couldn't fuck him any harder, he got the full story.
Sara had been born in Mexico, and though Harry knew of her heritage, he was under the impression that she was an American citizen. She had been in the country under a temporary visa, and had married Harry just in time to get her green card. At the time, Harry had been all too happy to let Sara take care of the paperwork and details. She had insisted, and he enjoyed not having the responsibility. He just signed whatever she had told him to sign.
Before coming to the states, she had been married to a man named Juan Garcia, but divorced him just before the move. Juan was the man that Harry had caught fucking his wife. He had come into the country under a temporary visa as well, and Sara had been seeing him on the side for eight months.
They had planned the con from the beginning, and Harry was just the unfortunate schmuck they needed. When he returned to the house the next day, she had divorce papers waiting for him. She had been married to Harry for more than three years and was now a legal citizen of the United States. She would marry Juan, and the two of them would live happily ever after.
Harry entered a depression that was fathoms deep. He didn't have the strength to fight in the divorce, and he didn't care. She got nearly everything, and he let her take it. He never even told their friends the reason for their split, and to Harry's knowledge, they still didn't know.
That was fourteen years ago.
Sara still occasionally called him to see how he was doing, but Harry knew that was just to alleviate her guilt. It was nearly impossible to spend that much time living and pretending not to have something real rub off he supposed, but taking her calls only brought up what he had spent so long trying to forget, so he usually let them go to voicemail. He would listen to the messages later when he was good and drunk.
Maggie could tell that Harry wasn't saying everything, but said nothing to him, and asked no more questions.
“Maggie, you're a woman out of time. It's been my sincere pleasure to have met you.” He took the last bite of his pecan pie and stood to leave.
“You be careful out there,” Maggie said.
Harry bowed his head slightly in Maggie's direction and then began walking back to his motel.
NINETEEN
The network would only spring for one room, so Shelly had to bunk with Jake, who as it turned out, was a neat freak. Shelly was not. Shelly was filthier than the porn your father stashed above the armoire for those special nights when your mother was out with her girlfriends. When she found an old candy wrapper in her pocket, she threw it to the floor. Jake was there to rescue the trash and carry it to the safety of the garbage can. She had been torturing him in a similar fashion since she discovered Jake's apprehension to refuse.
“If you can't trash your hotel room, then what's the point of being a rock star?” Shelly said.
“It's a motel, and we're not rock stars.”
“Speak for yourself, Sister.”
Shelly had been calling Jake Sister or Darling since way back. Not long after their first job together at the Lincoln Hospital, in a living situation not unlike the one they were in now, she had begun to suspect that Jake was gay. He wasn't an overly obvious case though, and she couldn't be sure at the time. He had some feminine qualities, and occasionally would say something that sounded, well–gay. Truth was, the biggest reason she suspected him was the fact that they were so often in close quarters and he didn't seem to pay any attention to her, sexually speaking.
In order to get an answer, she had left the door open once while she took a shower. After, she walked out in a pair of panties, her breasts still dripping wet and nipples hard.
“If you wanted to know if I was gay, you could have just asked,” he said.
She stood, embarrassed and suddenly very shy about her body. She covered her chest with her hands and blushed. “Well are you?”
“Damn right. Now go put on some clothes, you silly bitch.”
Since then, they'd become much closer. She might even say that Jake was her best friend if he wasn't around to hear it. He was the only person that she felt comfortable enough with to be ridiculous. The side of her that just wanted to listen to Poison and jump on the bed only came out when she was with Jake. She didn't even feel comfortable enough for those kinds of things in her own company. When she was alone, she always felt like she needed to be doing something constructive to further the cause of not being alone.
The two of them had been cooped up in this motel room for far longer than she found appropriate to her health. They had managed to get a room in the same motel as FBI agent Harry Bland. Their room was on the opposite corner of the U shaped building, and on the second floor. From the window of their room, she could look right down onto Bland's door.
They parked the van at the rear of the building behind a large blue dumpster. It wasn't hidden completely, but unless agent Bland decided to take out his own trash, the van would go unnoticed, just as they had thus far. They only took the van out if they absolutely had to anyway; for everything else, they had a rented Corolla which was parked out front.
Shelly sighed deeply as she watched out the window. Jake was lying on the bed working on a book of crossword puzzles. He had nearly finished the book, and had two others finished and stashed in the drawer with the Bible.
Jake had no idea about Shelly's knowledge of Robert Kirkman, and she intended to keep it that way. As close as they had become, he was a perfectly honest person, and she wasn't going to let him interfere with her meal ticket. Shelly could lie when it meant bigger things for herself, as long as it didn't hurt the people that she loved. She was fiercely loyal to the handful of people that she had let in to her life, and would kill to protect them, but everyone else–including anyone that Robert may kill–meant nothing to her. She was the type that wasn't fazed a bit by hurricanes that killed thousands, or a nuclear meltdown that occurred halfway around the world, but when Jake's cat died last year, she cried all night with him.
She had tried finding Robert on her own. Mostly through internet searches and telephone calls to pin-point likely locations, but none had borne fruit.
She had the same problem that the authorities had; Robert was always on the move. Eventually, she decided that if she couldn't track down Robert herself, she would shadow the man who most likely would. Since then, she had stuck herself to Harry Bland like Velcro covered in super glue.
When she had heard that Bland would be taking the case over from the previous investigator, she had petitioned her boss to let her follow him exclusively. Someone else could cover the other, less important aspects of the story, but she agreed to film spots from time to time. She would just find a generic backdrop and record the story as if she were live on location. The public was quite gullible that way.
The murder of the motel clerk had been her first real chance to get a jump on the story. She had hoped that she could find something, anything, which would give her a clue. She knew that, after every murder, the police would scour the surrounding area. They knew Robert was on foot and couldn't have gotten far, but every time, he remained undiscovered.
The crime scene at the motel had been too crowded. There were so many police officers keeping people away that she never even got inside the motel's parking lot. She left Jake there to get what shots he could, and she went out to search alone.
No luck.
Still, she had a feeling, deep down in the recesses of her core, that she was on the right track.
She need only be patient.
TWENTY
Over the years, Sylvia had used countless aliases. Even before she had gotten into her current line of work, she had been obsessed with the idea of being someone else. When she was a little girl, she would often sign her homework with different names, and it drove he
r teachers batty. She would sign up for magazine subscriptions under names like Maria Chiquita Espinoza or Denise Slobbernob.
She had signed up for the Columbia House music club under dozens of different humorous names. She would use her neighbor's addresses, and then carefully watch their mail. She got good at knowing just how long it took for the initial package to arrive, and once she stole it out of their mailbox, she just moved on to the next neighbor.
When she got older, she was able to pull the same basic scam with credit cards. Back then, it was a lot easier to fake information with the card companies. Once she got the cards, she would max them out as fast as she could, and then ditch them. Sylvia never cared about the stuff she got. Sure, she would listen to the music or wear the free clothes, but it was always about the game for her; the idea, that for a short amount of time, she could pretend to be another person and have others believe it.
Victoria Pluto got a brand new pair of boots and then vanished into thin air.
Kacy Westerhamshire received twelve free copies of Thriller in the mail and then distributed them to the elderly patients at Pleasant Stay nursing home. She disappeared without a trace before anyone could thank her.
A rather young looking woman by the name of Carol Ann Blutarski was seen buying round after round at O'Malley's bar last month. Her legend will live on in our hearts forever.
And so on.
The day that she had met Melissa, she was in a bar drinking margaritas on another's dime. Melissa had asked Sylvia to watch her purse while she went to the restroom, and she had intended to do just that. As the seconds ticked off the clock, however, her curiosity peaked. She had tried to use one finger to gently pull back the purse's opening, but the margaritas in her made her hand uncooperative. Instead of gently peering inside, she knocked the whole damn thing to the floor.
Several passports spilled out, along with a stack of driver's licenses held together with a hair tie. As Sylvia got everything put back in the purse, she looked up to see Melissa hovering over her.
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